PERUGIA ():

By: Richard Gottheil, Ismar Elbogen

Town in Umbria, Italy. It had a Jewish congregation as early as the fourteenth century. Several Jewish scholars lived there; e.g., Daniel b. Samuel Rofe b. Daniel (dayyan about 1400); the poet and physician Moses b. Isaac Rieti (1436); the physician and cabalist Laudadius (Ishmael) de Blanis (1553); the liturgical poet Meshullam, Sofer; and the poet Joseph Ganso, who emigrated to Palestine (17th cent.). Some Hebrew manuscripts were written there.

It is probable that when the Jews were expelled from the Papal States many of them removed from Perugia to Rome, where the Da Perugia family was widely disseminated and exists to this day. Several persons of the name Perugia were active in upper Italy (Mantua, Venice) as rabbis.

G. I. E.