PAVIA, JULIUS (LULLUS) DA:

Italian scholar of the eighth century; one of the first European Jews known by name. According to Alcuin, he sustained in Pavia about 760 a religious controversy with the grammarian Maestro Pietro da Pisa. In a letter to Charlemagne, Alcuin writes as follows: "On my way to Rome in my youth [Alcuin was forty years old in 781] I remained for some days at Pavia, in which city a religious disputation was being maintained by Julius Guideo and Maestro Pietro da Pisa. It is commonly reported that this discussion is to be written down in a book and is to be preserved. Maestro Pietro is the most erudite of the distinguished grammarians at the imperial palace."

In Jaffe's "Monumenta Alcuiniana," p. 458, the name is written "Lullus" instead of "Julius."

Bibliography:
  • Gatti, G. Ticinensis Historia Mediolani, 1704, p. 39;
  • Güdemann, Gesch. ii. 12;
  • Vogelstein and Rieger, Gesch. der Juden in Rom, i. 160.
S. U. C.
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