Gerónimo de Santa Fe

Who is Gerónimo de Santa Fe?

Jerónimo de Santa Fe was a Spanish physician and religious writer who after conversion to Catholicism, wrote in Latin as Hieronymus de Sancta Fide.

Born Yehosúa ben Yosef ibn Vives, his epiphet "al-Lorquí", from Lorca, near Murcia, may indicate his place of birth or later residence. An alternative hypothesis places his home time as Alcañiz.

According to Richard Gottheil it is not correct to identify him with the author of the same name who wrote an anti-Christian letter to Solomon ha-Levi. The only proof offered for such an identification is a note appended to the manuscript of the letter to the effect that "the author afterward became a Christian." This note, not in another manuscript, was probably added by a later copyist who was misled by the similarity of the names. Joshua ha-Lorki was baptized before Vicente Ferrer delivered his proselytizing sermons in Lorca. Although not a rabbi, as Spanish chroniclers claim, he was well versed in the Talmud and in rabbinical literature. In order to show his zeal for the new faith he tried to win over to Christianity his former cobelievers, and to throw suspicion on them and on their religion.