AMBRON

AMBRON (Heb.עמרוֹן), SHABBETAI ISAAC (17^th–18^th centuries), Italian scholar who lived in Rome; member of a distinguished Roman family, whose ancestors left Spain after the expulsion of 1492. About 1710 Ambron composed his Pancosmosophia, a treatise on the universe, written in Latin. In this, in opposition to the astronomical and cosmological opinions of Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Galileo, but in accordance with beliefs current among Jewish mystics and kabbalists, Ambron maintained that the earth was semi-elliptical and the firmament solid; the hidden side of the world included paradise with its bliss and hell with its torments. The Inquisition in Rome and Venice opposed the publication of the treatise as harmful to Christian beliefs. The work with many engravings was sent to Leipzig to be published, but was lost. Another work by Ambron, containing corrections to the Bibliotheca Magna Rabbinica of Giulio *Bartolocci, also disappeared. Ambron was a member of the council (congrega) of the Roman community. ezekiel ambron, banker and literary patron, was active in Roman Jewish affairs in the middle of the 18^th century and friendly with Pope Clement xiv, on whose death in 1775 he hurriedly left Rome for Florence. He was perhaps the father of sabbato isaac ambron, who wrote in Italian an interesting account of his pilgrimage to Ereẓ Israel (Montefiore Ms. 520, etc.).

bibliography:

Vogelstein-Rieger, 2 (1896), 279–81, and passim; A. Milano, Il Ghetto di Roma (1964), 392–3, and passim; C. Roth, in: rej, 84 (1927), 7 ff.

[Attilio Milano]