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Kalonymos family

Wikipedia's first sentence called it “prominent jewish family who lived in italy”. Today it says “jewish family originating from lucca”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2010 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since. Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now. 1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2010

Kalonymos or Kalonymus ( ) is a prominent Jewish family originally from Lucca , Italy , which, after the settlement at Mainz and Speyer of several of its members, took during many generations a leading part in the development of Jewish learning in Germany . The family is according to many considered the foundation of Hachmei and Hasidei Ashkenaz .1 The name ought really to be spelled "Kalonymos," as Kalonymus ben Kalonymus and Immanuel of Rome both rime it with words ending in "-mos" . The origin of the name, which occurs in Greece , Italy , and Provence , is uncertain. Wolf thought it a translation of the Hebrew "Shem-Tob" ; Zunz, that it represented the Latin " Cleonymus " . Traces of the family in Italy may be found as early as the second half of the eighth century. As to the date of the settlement of its members in Germany, the opinions of modern scholars are divided, owing to the conflicting statements of the Jewish sources . Rapoport, Leopold Zunz , and many others place the settlement in 876 , believing the King Charles, mentioned in the sources as having induced the Kalonymides to emigrate to Germany, to have been Charles the Bald , who was in Italy in that year; Luzzatto and others think that it took place under Charlemagne , alleging that the desire to attract scholars to the empire was more in keeping with the character of that monarch; still others assign it to the reign of Otto II (973-983), whose life, according to the historian Thietmar von Merseburg, was saved in a battle with the Saracens by a Jew named Kalonymus. The following table, compiled from the accounts of Eleazar of Worms and Solomon Luria , gives the Italian and German heads of the family, which produced for nearly five centuries the most notable scholars of Germany and northern France , such as Samuel he-Hasid and his son Judah he-Hasid . Although all of them are mentioned as having been important scholars, the nature of the activity of only a few of them is known.2 A possible descendant of the Kalonymus bloodline lived in Sullivan County, New York until 2001. He arranged with the USGS to dedicate a nearby ridge as the " Kalonymus Escarpment ." Until shortly before the time of his death, he ran a small museum (now in ruins) at this location. see Zunz in Geiger's "Zeitschrift," iv. 199 Zunz, "G.3

This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 367958035.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “prominent jewish family who lived in italy”. Today it says “jewish family originating from lucca”. Read the current article and compare.
201020152020Oct '232025
Counts in the opening at each snapshot. Green: the word gained ground. Red: it was cut. Grey: no change.

What Wikipedia says this is

Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since October 7, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.

Then

prominent jewish family who lived in italy

Now

jewish family originating from lucca

Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.

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