Joseph Ha-Cohen and His Negative Attitude Toward R. Meir Katzenellenbogen (Maharam Padova)

Abraham David

Joseph Ha-Cohen—the greatest 16th-century Jewish historian—was born in Avignon, Provence, in the south of , on 20 December 1496. His parents, the physician R. Joshua Ha-Cohen and Dolsa Alconstantini, were among the expelled from in 1492. They found refuge in Provence, where they were married three years later. In 1502, the Ha-Cohen family moved to in northern . In 1516, Ottaviano Fregoso—the duke of Genoa—expelled all the Jews, including the Ha-Cohen family, from his duchy. A few years later, Joseph returned to Genoa, where he practised medicine. Life for Italian Jews was unstable, par- ticularly in the north, and like his compatriots, Joseph Ha-Cohen frequently found himself moving from place to place. Thus we find him living in various locations in the Genoa region, such as Novi, Voltaggio, Ovada, and Castelletto. Joseph died sometime after 1577, at over eighty years of age.1 There is no doubt that Joseph Ha-Cohen was a true scholar who was interested in various fields of the humanities. He left works in historiography,2 geography,3 medicine,4 poetry, belles-lettres and

1 For a short biographical survey of Joseph Ha-Cohen, see K. Almbladh (ed.), Joseph Ha-Kohen, Sefer E’meq ha-Bakha (Uppsala 1981), pp. 11–15. See also G. Musso, “Per la storia degli ebrei in Genova nella seconda metà del cinquecento. Le vicende genovesi di R. Josef Hakohen,” Scritti in memoria di Leone Carpi, D. Carpi, A. Milano and A. Rofe (eds.), (Jerusa- lem 1967), pp. 101–111. On his life in Genoa, see S. Simonsohn, “Joseph Ha-Cohen in Genoa,” Italia 13–15 (2001), pp. 119–130 [Hebrew section]. 2 See below. 3 Joseph Ha-Cohen translated into Hebrew three geographical treatises: Sefer ha-India ha-Ḥadashà written by Lopez de Gomara in close collaboration with Fernando Cortes, who wrote Historia general de las Indias and Cronica de la Conquista de Mexico (Zaragoza 1552), which Joseph Ha-Cohen renamed Sefer Fernando Cortes. The Hebrew translations of these works were copied at least four times by the translator himself. Those were pub- lished by M. Lazar (Lancaster 2002). Another geographical work translated by Ha-Cohen is Matziv Gevulot A’mim, written by Johannes Aubanus Boemus, Omnium gentium mores, leges et ritus (Augsburg 1520). Some chapters of the Hebrew translation were published by R.S. Weinberg, in Sinai 72 (1973), pp. 333–364. 4 Joseph Ha-Cohen translated a medical work written by Meir Alguadis in Spanish. Entitled Mekitz Nirdamim in Hebrew, it has been partially published by D. Margalit in Korot 6 (1975), pp. 533–560. 60 abraham david

­lexicography.5 Yet his unique place is that of the greatest Jewish historian of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. דברי הימים למלכי צרפת ובית אוטומאן התוגר His most important work is (Divrei ha-Yamim le-Malkhei Zarfat u-Beit Ottoman ha-Tugar; The History of the Kings of France and Turkey). The title does not reflect the real sig- nificance of this book. In fact, it is a chronological presentation of the his- tory of the European nations from the beginning of the Middle Ages up to the 1570s. French or Turkish history is not emphasised any more than that of other nations.6 Joseph Ha-Cohen himself later edited the Jewish mate- ;Emeq ha-Bakha‘) עמק הבכא rial in a separate collection that he called Vale of Tears). As mentioned previously, Joseph’s historiographical books include an abundance of edicts, and descriptions of the persecutions that were a way of life of Diaspora Jewish communities in medieval Europe.7 Joseph Ha-Cohen’s personal letters are known from a manuscript that was originally housed in the library of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) in Paris; the collection was first described by Isador Loeb.8 At the end of the 19th century, the Jewish scholar Prof. David Kaufmann of Buda- pest borrowed this manuscript from the Alliance Israélite, in order to pub- lish the letters. He published only three of them prior to his death shortly thereafter. The manuscript then remained in the Kaufmann Manuscript Collection, now located at the Hungarian Academy for Sciences in Buda- pest A332. None of the scholars who were interested in Joseph Ha-Cohen’s letters had any idea where they were preserved. I was lucky enough to find the lost manuscript on microfilm at the National Library of Israel. I thus had the opportunity to publish the entire collection more than twenty-five

5 A few manuscripts, mostly autographs, contain some of his poems, several of which were published by I. Davidsohn, Introduction to Sefer Shaa’shui’m (Berlin 1925), pp. 88–90. He also left two treatises: Peles ha-Shemot, a lexicographical work, and Iggeret Limud, a didactic style list of ways to begin Hebrew letters. 6 This historiographical treatise is divided into three parts. The first two parts were pub- lished in Sabbioneta (1554), while the uncompleted third part was published by D.A. Gross (Jerusalem 1955). His edition is based on a manuscript at the British Library (Or. 3656) (in the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the National Library of Israel (here­ after IMHM), no. 6411, fol. 150r–188r), which is an autograph dated 1577. Another manu- script, also an autograph dated a little earlier, contains the third part of Divrei ha-Yamim and is located in the same library (Or. 10378) (IMHM, no. 7749, fol. 394v-483r) (hereafter Ha-Cohen, Divrei Ha-Yamim). 7 A critical edition of this text, which is based on some manuscripts, has been compiled by Almbladh in Sefer ‘Emeq ha-Bakha. 8 I. Loeb, Josef Hacohen et les chroniqueurs Juifs (Paris 1888), pp. 7–15 (first published as an article in Revue des Ètudes Juives 16 (1888), pp. 32–40).