R. Azariah b. Moses dei Rossi (c. 1511–c. 1578), was born in Mantua to the Min ha-Adummim family, one of the most eminent families in the history of Italian Jewry. According to a legend quoted by Rossi himself, the family was one of the few that the emperor Titus brought to Rome from Jerusalem after the destruction of the Second Temple. Rossi received both his general and Jewish education in Mantua, but spent most of his life outside his native city. He studied medicine and apparently earned a meager living as a doctor throughout his life. He wandered to several cities in Italy, especially in the Papal States, and lived for some time in Ferrara, Ancona, Bologna, and Sabbioneta. When the pope expelled the Jews from his domains in 1569, Rossi settled again in Ferrara, where he wrote his major work. Toward the end of his life he returned to Mantua, where he died after supervising the printing of his Me'or Einayim.