Special Zoom Event for Agnon House Travelers – Sunday, March 1, 2026

The University of Padua was the only European medical school to continuously permit Jews to study and graduate from the 15th to the 18th centuries. Padua, with its closeness to the Serene Republic of Venice, was at the forefront of the Renaissance, displaying openness unusual in Christian Europe. It drew leading scholars to its university’s faculty and by the 17th century increasing numbers of Jews came to study, mostly from Venetian territories around the Mediterranean. The mediaeval medical school buildings are well preserved and the anatomy dissection theatre of Andreas Vesalius and Galileo’s lecture theatre can be visited.

As we prepare for Agnon House’s upcoming tour of Northern Italy, including Padua, Dr. Kenneth Collins delivered a fascinating talk on Tuviya HaCohen, M.D. (Padua, 1683) whose pioneering encyclopedia of medicine Ma’aseh Tuviah was published in Venice in 1708 and Samuel Conegliano whose preparatory courses in Latin and science facilitated Jews’ entry into the medical faculty while enforcing their place within Jewish religious life. The talk will be illustrated with items from Tuviya’s book and the extravagant and colorful graduation certificates commissioned by the newly qualified Jewish doctors.

Dr. Kenneth Collins (a 3-time veteran of Agnon House tours: Ukraine ’18, Germany ’23, Provence ‘25) is a retired physician from Scotland who made aliyah in 2009. He is editor of Korot: Journal of the Israel Society for the History of Medicine and Science, Visiting Professor of Medical History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a Senior Research Fellow, University of Glasgow.

The program was themed with our upcoming visit to Northern Italy, but was open to all Agnon House tour members past and present.