CALVO, EMANUEL:

Italian physician and Neo-Hebraic poet; born at Salonica toward the end of the seventeenth century; died before 1772. In early youth he went to Leghorn with his learned father, Raphael Calvo, and on Oct. 23, 1724, was graduated as doctor in Padua. Calvo practised medicine with considerable success at Leghorn, but inclined to the Cabala toward the end of his life. Several of Calvo's poems are included in A. B. Piperno's collection "Ḳol 'Ugab," Leghorn, 1846. He was an intimate friend of the poet Abraham Isaac Castello and of Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto who wrote a eulogy of him in a Hebrew poem after his graduation, and subsequently corresponded with him. When Calvo died Joseph ben David wrote an elegy, which is published in his "Yeḳara de-Shakbe," Salonica, 1774.

Bibliography:
  • Nepi-Ghirondi, Toledot Gedole Yisrael, p. 284;
  • Carmoly, Histoire des Médecins Juifs, Anciens et Modernes, p. 241;
  • Rev. Etudes Juives, xxxix. 134.
J. M. K.
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