Parchment Doctoral Certificate – Apostate Jacob Benjamin de Pinto – Leiden University.

Rectores Professores Academiae Lugduno-Batavae Lecturis Salutem – doctoral certificate from the University of Leiden (Lugduno-Batava), presented to the apostate Jacob Benjamin de Pinto of Amsterdam. Leiden, November 15, 1836. Latin and some Dutch.

Large parchment certificate, in neat calligraphy, signed by the rector of the university and several other professors, attesting that Jacob Benjamin de Pinto was awarded a doctorate in medicine after submitting an academic work on rabies. On margins, other inscriptions from 1838-1839.

Jacob Benjamin de Pinto (1809-1886), born to a distinguished Sephardic family in the Hague, concluded his studies in medicine in 1836. He apostatized to Christianity in his forties, and was one of the founders of the first Baptist community in Zutphen. Authored a sharp anti-rabbinic tract.