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Paulus Weidner
Jewish convert to Christianity and Hebrew scholar (1525–1585) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Paulus Weidner von Billerburg (né Nathan Ashkenazi;[1] 1525–1585) was a Jewish convert to Christianity, a medical doctor, and professor of Hebrew at the University of Vienna.
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Nathan Ashkenazi was born into a Jewish faith (the businessman and medical doctor Solomon Ashkenazi was an elder brother) in Carinthia.[1][2] He studied medicine at the University of Padua,[1] and practiced at Udine,[2] from whence he was called back to his homeland by the Estates of Carinthia to practice medicine there.[1][2]
During a six-year stay in Carinthia, after careful study of his and the Christian religion, he decided to become a Christian.[2] Realising the danger that threatened him on the part of his co-religionists, he kept his intention secret for a year, and having made up his mind, he left Carinthia and went to Vienna.[2]
Weidner joined the Roman Catholic Church in Vienna in 1558.[1][2] He received thereafter the patronage of successive Austrian emperors, who employed him as personal physician and even consulted him on certain matters.[1] On 13 March 1560, Emperor Ferdinand I confiscated all the Hebrew books of the Bohemian Jewry, and had them brought to Weidner in Vienna for scrutiny; he found no fault in them, and had them sent back to Prague.[1]
Weidner was professor of Hebrew at the Vienna University, and was appointed by Imperial permission to preach occasionally to the Jews.[3] He was six times dean of the faculty of medicine and thrice rector of the university.[1] He was ennobled, with the title "von Billerburg", in 1582.[1] He died in Vienna in 1585.[2]
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Works
His first work, Loca Praecipua Fidei Christianae Collecta et Explicata (Vienna, 1559; 2nd edition 1562, with Epistola Hebr. ad R. Jehudam, Venet. Habitantem, cum Vessione Latina), is particularly aimed at the Jews, to convince them of the truth of Christianity.[2][1] He dedicated this work, in the preface to which he gives information about his life and conversion, to Emperor Ferdinand.[2] Weidner's last published work was Sententiae Hebraicae (1563), a collection of proverbs.[1]
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