Among all those who busied themselves with Hebrew in the fifteenth century, no one was of more importance than Pico della Mirandola. He was not satisfied with a knowledge of the Hebrew grammar and Scriptures, but penetrated into the Jewish Cabbalah and even made himself familiar with the literature of the Talmud. That such pursuits, though they may not have gone very far, were at all possible to him, he owed to his Jewish teachers. Most of the instruction in Hebrew was in fact given by Jews, some of whom, though generally not till after conversion to Christianity, became distinguished University professors and much-esteemed writers.[466] Among the Oriental languages, Arabic was studied as well as Hebrew. The science of medicine, no longer satisfied with the older Latin translations of the great Arabian physicians, had constant recourse to the originals, to which an easy access was offered by the Venetian consulates in the East, where Italian doctors were regularly kept. But the Arabian scholarship of the Renaissance is only a feeble echo of the influence which Arabian civilisation in the Middle Ages exercised over Italy and the whole cultivated world--an influence which not only preceded that of the Renaissance, but in some respects was hostile to it, and which did not surrender without a struggle the place which it had long and vigorously asserted. Hieronimo Ramusio, a Venetian physician, translated a great part of Avicenna from the Arabic and died at Damascus in 1486. Andrea Mongajo of Belluno,[467] a disciple of the same Avicenna, lived long at Damascus, learnt Arabic, and improved on his master. The Venetian government afterwards appointed him as professor of this subject at Padua. The example set by Venice was followed by other governments. Princes and wealthy men rivalled one another in collecting Arabic manuscripts. The first Arabian printing-press was begun at Fano under Julius II. and consecrated in 1514 under Leo X.[468]