Maharik

Joseph Colon ben Solomon Trabotto, known by the acronym Maharik, was among the leading halakhic authorities of fifteenth-century Italy. Born around 1420 in Chambéry, then the seat of the Duchy of Savoy, he belonged to the Trabotto family, which preserved a tradition of descent from Rashi, and he received his primary training from his father, Solomon Trabotto. Crossing into the Italian lands, he held rabbinic posts in several communities, including Piove di Sacco, Mestre, Bologna, Mantua, and finally Pavia, where he died in 1480 and where he became a foremost figure of Talmudic learning. Questions on legal matters reached him from as far as the German cities and Constantinople. His responsa, assembled after his death and printed at Venice in 1519, became a widely cited resource that shaped later Ashkenazic legal writing.