Ricci (Lat. Ricius), Paul,
was a convert from Judaism in the 16th century. For a time he was professor at Padua, in Italy, when the emperor Maximilian I appointed him as his physician. Ricci was especially famous as a Cabalist, and translated a large portion of Joseph Gikatilla's cabalistic work entitled שערי אורה (The Gates of Light), which he dedicated to Maximilian, and which Reuchlin used very largely. Erasmus was his special friend, whom he also defended against Stephen the Presbyter, who had attacked the Cabala, as can be seen from a letter of Erasmus, dated March 10, 1516: "Paulus Riccius sic me proximo colloquio rapuit, ut mira quaedam me sitis habeat cum homine saepius et familiarius conserendi sermones." To his former coreligionists he endeavored to prove the truth of Christianity philosophically. Living in a time when the Turks were the terror of the European nations, he used his influence to bring about a union between the Christians against their common foe by publishing his In Virulentam Immanissimamque Turcarum Rabiem, ad Principes, Magistratus, Populosque Germanioe (Augsburg, 1546). Of his numerous writings we only mention, Statera Prudentium, a mystical treatise on Moses, the Law, Christ, and the Gospels (s. loc. 1532): — Opuscula Varia (printed by Burgfrank, Pavia, 1510, and often). See Fü rst, Bibl. Judaica, 3, 155; Wolf, Biblioth. Hebr. 1, 966; Jocher, Gelehrten Lexikon, s.v.; Adams, Hist. of the Jews, 1, 346; Bayle, Dictionnaire, s.v. "Riccio;" Kalkar, Israel u. die Kirche, p. 87; Levita, Massoreth ha-Massoreth (ed. Ginsburg), p. 9; Gratz, Gesch. d. Juden, 9:193 sq.; Pick, Mission among the Jews, in the Quar. Rev. (Gettysburg, 1876; reprinted in the Jewish Intelligencer, Lond., Nov. and Dec., 1876), p. 368. (B.P.)