Rabbi Judah Moscato and the Jewish Intellectual World of Mantua in the 16Th–17Th Centuries Studies in Jewish History and Culture

Home , Israel Isserlein, Judah Moscato, Marco Mortara, Meir ben Baruch Halevi, Menahem Recanati, Torah scroll (Yemenite)

Rabbi Judah Moscato and the Jewish Intellectual World of Mantua in the 16th–17th Centuries Studies in Jewish History and Culture

Editor-in-Chief Giuseppe Veltri Leopold-Zunz-Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Halle-Wittenberg

Editorial Board Gad Freudenthal Alessandro Guetta Reimund Leicht Hanna Liss Diana Matut Ronit Meroz Judith Olszowy-Schlanger David Ruderman

Volume 35

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/sjhc Rabbi Judah Moscato and the Jewish Intellectual World of Mantua in the 16th–17th Centuries

Edited by Giuseppe Veltri and Gianfranco Miletto

Leiden • boston 2012 This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rabbi Judah Moscato and the Jewish intellectual world of Mantua in the 16th–17th centuries / edited by Giuseppe Veltri and Gianfranco Miletto. p. cm. — (Studies in Jewish History and Culture ; v. 35) “Proceedings of an international conference, organized by the Institute of Jewish Studies at Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), and Mantua’s State Archives”—ECIP data view. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-22225-0 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Moscato, Judah ben Joseph, ca. 1530– ca. 1593—Congresses. 2. Rabbis—Italy—Mantua—Biography—Congresses. 3. Jews—Italy— Mantua—Intellectual life—16th century—Congresses. 4. Jews—Italy—Mantua—Intellectual life—17th century—Congresses. I. Veltri, Giuseppe. II. Miletto, Gianfranco, 1960–

bM755.M59R33 2012 296.092—dc23 [B]

ISSN 1568-5004 ISBN 978 90 04 22225 0 (hardback) ISBN 978 90 04 22246 5 (e-book)

Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

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Preface ...... vii

I. Judah Moscato. His Life and His Work

1. Judah Moscato: Biographical Data and Writings ...... 3 Gianfranco Miletto

2. Principles of Jewish Skeptical Thought. The Case of Judah Moscato and Simone Luzzatto ...... 15 Giuseppe Veltri

3. Moscato as Eulogizer ...... 37 Marc Saperstein

4. On Kabbalah in R. Judah Moscato’s Qol Yehudah ...... 57 Moshe Idel

5. Amicitia and Hermeticism. Paratext as Key to Judah Moscato’s Nefuot Yehudah ...... 79 Bernard Dov Cooperman

6. Judah Moscato, Abraham Portaleone, and Biblical Incense in Late Renaissance Mantua ...... 105 Andrew Berns

7. Judah Moscato’s Sources and Hebrew Printing in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Survey ...... 121 Adam Shear vi contents

II. tHe Jewish intellectual World of Mantua in 16th–17th centurIES

8. the Gonzaga Archives of Mantua and Their Rearrangements Over the Centuries, along with an Overview of Archival Materials on Mantuan Jewry ...... 145 Daniela Ferrari

9. the Levi Dynasty: Three Generations of Jewish Musicians in Sixteenth-Century Mantua ...... 161 Don Harrán

10. Spatial Stories: Mantua and the Painted Jew ...... 199 Dana E. Katz

11. Saladin the Crusader, the Christian Haman, and the Off-key Priest: Some Reflections on Christians and Christianity in Yiddish Literary Texts from the Italian Renaissance ...... 227 Claudia Rosenzweig

12. Some Unknown 16th-Century Documents about Abraham Yagel and a Possible Link to the Controversy about the “Holy Diana” in the Mantuan Synagogue ...... 247 Daniel Jütte

13. On Abraham’s Neck. The Editio Princeps of the Sefer Yeirah (Mantua 1562) and Its Context ...... 253 Saverio Campanini

14. the Italian Translation of the Psalms by Judah Sommo .... 279 Alessandro Guetta

15. Savants and Scholars in Jewish Mantua: A Reassessment . 299 Shlomo Simonsohn

Bibliography ...... 311 Subject Index ...... 315 Preface

The picture on the cover perfectly illustrates the content of the following volume devoted to the Mantuan preacher Rabbi Judah Moscato (1532/33–1590) and his life, thought, and cultural environment: Michelangelo’s Moses, with characteristic medieval Jewish traits, as reproduced in that handbook of Jewish tradition, the Pesa Haggadah. A glance at this Mantua edition of 1568 clearly reveals the influence of the Italian Renaissance on the traditional Jewish world: the woodcut of Rabbi Akiva is obviously inspired by Michelangelo’s Moses.1 Judah Moscato is a typical example of the Jewish intellectual who was influenced by the Italian Renaissance world. Confronted bythe challenges of the new philosophical and humanistic knowledge, he did not reject it; rather, he strove to mediate between the secular culture and Jewish tradition. Even Moscato’s opponents recognized his extensive knowledge and the quality of his cultural and moral leadership of the Jewish Mantuan community. Because of the forced conversion of some Mantuan Jews, Moscato was imprisoned and subjected to intense psychological pressure in order to obtain his conversion as well. Yet the Carmelite fathers who argued with him for many days were finally forced to resign. They considered him “to be such a sagacious man that he alone could sustain the whole Synagogue and disturb all the Jews who intend to come to our faith.” As homo universalis, he combined in unique manner Jewish and Christian ideas, conceptions, and intellectual as well as scientific achievements: he was interested in natural science and Kabbalah and bridged the gap between Jewish tradition and the secular world. However, Moscato is not an exception. During the Renaissance period, Mantua was one of the most important, prosperous, and lively centers of Jewish culture. Eminent and influential scholars such as Azariah de’ Rossi, Moshe and Abraham Provenzali, Abraham Col- orni, Joseph Colon, Mordecai Finzi, and Salomone de’ Rossi lived and

1 See Julius von Schlosser, “Der Bilderschmuck der Haggadah,” in Die Haggadah von Sarajevo. Eine spanisch-jüdische Bilderhandschrift des Mittelalters, ed. David Heinrich Müller and Julius von Schlosser (Vienna: Hölder, 1898), 225. viii preface worked in Mantua. The importance of Mantua as a city of literacy, printed materials, and publishing houses was exceeded at that time only by Venice. So, for instance, the Nofet ufim by Judah Messer Leon (1474/76) and the first edition of the Zohar (1558–60) were produced by the Mantua printing house of Abraham Conat. In this stimulating cultural environment, Moscato could develop his literary creativity. Besides his two printed major works, the ample commentary on Judah Halevi’s Sefer ha-Kuzari, called Qol Yehudah, “The voice of Yehudah”,2 and the sermon collection Nefuot Yehudah (“The Dispersed of Judah”),3 Judah Moscato was the author of several responsa, sonnets, and liturgical poems that are still unpublished. His writings display his profound moral commitment and reveal his eclectic scholarship and wide knowledge of rabbinical and classical authors. Espe- cially in the history of Jewish preaching, Judah Moscato occupies a unique position and he can be regarded “as the father of the modern Jewish Sermon.”4 His Sermons clearly reveal and in a sense anticipate a Baroque taste for the dialectic method of Jewish exegesis. Moscato raised Jewish homiletics to a new rhetorical level. He treated theological and philosophical subjects with elaborate metaphorical concepts that make his language fascinating, yet at the same time also difficult even for a Baroque reader. In a letter to his teacher, R. Samuel Archivolti, Leone Modena compared the style of his own sermons with those of Moscato: “The sermon [i.e., Modena’s] is amplified through associations made in accordance with the art of rhetoric. I have not seen any printed sermons that follow this path. The language also is intermediate between the language of [ Judah] Moscato, of blessed memory, which is so highly polished and stylized that many do not like it, and the language of most of the Levantine and Ashkenazic rabbis, which is much simpler.”5 Particularly in his sermons, Moscato expressed his moral commitment not only to inquiry and truth, but also to teaching them to others. As a preacher, Moscato performed a mediating function between tradition and innovation, mixing and combining every source of his

2 Venice: Giovanni di Gara, 1594. 3 Venice: Giovanni di Gara, 1589. 4 See Israel Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1939. Reprint, Lanham: University Press of America, 1987), 194. 5 Quoted from Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching: 1200–1800 an Anthology (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1989), 412. preface ix sermons, from the rabbinic to classical and contemporary authors, from Neoplatonic philosophy to the kabbalistic tradition.6 His main purpose was to teach and educate, giving aesthetic pleasure to his listeners in melodious tune with the Horatian principle of utility (prodesse) and delight (delectare). * * * Despite his fame, Moscato’s life and writings have been little investigated. Leopold Zunz’s Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden historisch entwickelt7 initiated scientific inquiry into Jewish homiletics and the rediscovery of Moscato’s sermons. After Zunz’s pioneering work, Israel Bettan, Marc Saperstein, and Moshe Idel dedicated some studies to Judah Moscato.8 Alexander Altmann pointed out the importance of rhetoric in Moscato’s works,9 and recently Adam Shear has fitted Moscato into the humanistic context of the Italian Renaissance.10 However, a detailed monograph about Moscato and the cultural background that inspired his work has yet to be published. The only specific bio-bibliographical study about Moscato remains the monograph published in 1900 by Abe Apfelbaum.11 The present volume does not purport to correct this deficiency. It attempts only to highlight some salient features of Moscato’s works and life within the social and cultural context of Mantua in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This is all the more necessary because since

6 Regarding the function of the preacher as mediator between elite culture and popular culture see Robert Bonfil, “Preaching as Mediation between Elite and Popu- lar Cultures. The Case of Judah del Bene,” in Preachers of the Italian Ghetto, ed. David Ruderman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 67–88. 7 berlin: Asher, 1832. 8 Israel Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching (see fn. 2); Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preach- ing 1200–1800 (see fn. 3); Moshe Idel, “Judah Moscato: A Late Renaissance Jewish Preacher,” in Preachers of the Italian Ghetto, ed. David Ruderman (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), 41–66. 9 “Ars Rhetorica as Reflected in Some Jewish Figures of the Italian Renaissance,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard Cooperman (Cambridge, Mas- sachusetts/London: Harvard University Press, 1983), 1–22; reprint: Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, ed. David Ruderman (New York, London: New York University Press 1992), 63–84. 10 Adam Shear, “Judah Moscato’s Scholarly Self-Image and the Question of Jew- ish Humanism,” in Cultural Intermediaries. Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern Italy, ed. David Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 149–177. 11 Toledot Rabbi Yehudah Moscato (Drohobycz: Zupnik, 1900). x preface

Shlomo Simonsohn’s History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua,12 no other study focused on the Jews of Mantua has appeared. This volume is a record of the proceedings of an international conference, organized by the Institute of Jewish Studies at Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), where the project “Culture transfer in a new style: The Renaissance preacher, Judah Moscato (1533–1590)” is financed by the German Research Foundation (Bonn) and Mantua’s State Archives. It took place in Mantua, Judah Moscato’s hometown, in July 2009 and was financially supported by the Thyssen-Foundation (Cologne). The book is divided into two parts. The first is dedicated to the protagonist himself, his work and life; the second aims at a broader view and deals with the historical and cultural context of Renaissance Judaism. * * * In the first paper, Gianfranco Miletto presents some new documents recently discovered in the State Archives of Mantua. They not only contain important biographical information about Moscato himself, his family, and his environment, but also testify to Moscato’s moral qualities. The reports that the castellano of Mantua, Luigi Olivo, sent daily to the duke’s secretary during the imprisonment of Moscato show his firm character as a moral and religious leader who would rather die than deny his religion and his ethical principles. The correspondence of the duke’s officials permits us to better understand the changed relationship between Jews and Christians at the time of the Counter-Reformation and sheds needed light on Duke Guglielmo’s policies toward the Jews. Giuseppe Veltri focuses on an important issue of Renaissance philosophical history in which Moscato was involved: skeptical thought. He offers a wide introduction to the Jewish tradition of skepticism from the Middle Ages to modern times and gives an extensive comparison of the conceptions of Judah Moscato and his later colleague in the nearby city of Venice, Rabbi Simone Luzzatto. In his sermon XVI, Moscato doubted the validity of the human sciences, preferring to combine science with the study of the Torah. Moscato belittled the importance of the sciences, but did not totally reject them. The main sin of the sciences is—according to the preacher—not to search for

12 tel Aviv: Kiryath Sepher, 1977. preface xi agreement with the Torah, although their claim is very similar to that of religion, but to attain the perfection of God. A special genre of Moscato’s sermons that has been hitherto mostly ignored is the eulogies he delivered at funerals. Marc Saperstein illustrates Moscato’s exegetical method, examining the bibliographical information on the deceased and the rhetorical arrangement of the speech itself. Saperstein raises in particular the difficult question of the relationship between the rhetorical devices used in the printed Hebrew text and those in the eulogy as delivered in Italian. Saperstein’s analysis points up Moscato’s sincere emotions in the face of the loss through death of a great scholar, which remain apparent despite his substantial display of erudition and rhetorical emphasis. One of the two major works of Moscato is the Qol Yehudah, a commentary on Judah Halevi’s Sefer ha-Kuzari. Moshe Idel investigates the question as to why this particular book excited the interest of Moscato. It is very plausible that Moscato was attracted by the Platonic and esoteric features of Halevi’s book, which fits well into Moscato’s philosophical spirituality. Idel describes the function of the Kabbalah in Qol Yehudah and traces Moscato’s intellectual development. The Rabbi was, according to Idel, much more interested in Kabbalah in his later work, but always maintained a philosophical approach to his kabbalistic vision. As is the case with Azariah de’ Rossi and Leone Mod- ena, much less evident in Moscato’s commentary are the mythological aspects emanating from the Spanish Kabbalah, the Zoharic literature, and the unparalleled renascence of 16th-century Kabbalah in Safed. Moscato’s kabbalistic conception was influenced by the Renaissance theory of prisca theologia, according to which there is more than one source of revelation—a vision that differs from the unilinear theory of prisca theologia that was en vogue among the Jews at the time. On this point, Moscato is much closer to Marsilio Ficino than to any other Jewish thinker. Bernard Cooperman offers a study on Amicitia and Hermeticism as a para-text of Moscato’s sermons. Moscato, who perfected the form of the Jewish sermon, transfigured its substance, and raised it to the level of a distinct literary art, also often quoted classical philosophers and included their thoughts in his sermons. Any sense of alienness produced by Moscato’s references to Seneca and Aristotle would, Cooper- man suspects, have been assuaged by his clever biblical paraphrases. Moscato himself obviously saw the ancient traditions of Roman and hermetic wisdom as actually implicit in the Torah. xii preface

Comparing Moscato’s sermons with Portaleone’s encyclopedic description of Solomon’s Temple, Andrew Berns describes the intense interest in natural philosophical topics in the Italian Jewish culture in the sixteenth century. The integration of modern natural philosophical knowledge into homiletic and religious works proves the intensity of the exchange between Italian Jewry and Renaissance culture. A good illustration of this can be seen in Leone de’ Sommi’s translation of the Psalms into Italian. De’ Sommi tried to combine the lexical character of the Hebrew text with the Italian poetic tradition (see also below, on the contribution of Alessandro Guetta). The Christian and Jewish sources in Qol Yehudah are very useful for understanding the cultural background of Moscato. Adam Shear’s examination of Moscato’s sources reveals a mixed environment in which printed books and manuscripts co-exist, especially for scholars, although non-elite book owners were definitely turning to the printed book in this era. As a member of a learned elite who was writing for his peers, Moscato did not stop—according to Shear—using manuscripts or works only available in manuscript. In the second part of the book, dedicated to Moscato’s world of Renaissance Judaism, Daniela Ferrari reveals hidden treasures in the Gonzaga archives of Mantua, which are crucial for research into Jew- ish Studies. The archives produced by the Gonzagas, rulers of Mantua from 1328 to 1707, are one of the most complete and homogeneous collections on dynastic ruling families in Europe in the Early Modern period. Don Harrán presents the history of the Levi dall’Arpa family, a generation of Mantuan musicians well known outside the borders of the duchy. Daniel Levi dall’Arpa, for example, also worked for many years at the court of the Habsburgs in Vienna. But recognition as an artist did not always protect Jews in Mantua from persecution: Abramino dall’Arpa was forced to become a Christian, and Moscato was also involved in this forced conversion and imprisoned. The social relationships between Jews and Christians are explored by Dana Katz on the basis of the image of the Jew in Christian art, especially the image of the Norsa Madonna in Santa Maria della Vit- toria. She proves that those relations were not delineated as clearly as is often presented, and, in fact, changed quite often. According to Katz, the cartographic map of Mantua constitutes space as a topo- graphical order of things that set down architectural borders within preface xiii the broad domain of the countryside. Yet the Norsa Madonna reveals the alterity—the quality of “the other”—hidden within those borders and the complex consequences of its appropriated spaces. The Jews of Mantua were not a uniform community. Claudia Rosen- zweig examines the cultural transfer from Germany to Italy. Mantua, home to one big and active Ashkenazi community, was a center for Yiddish culture in northern Italy. Here, thanks to contact with the Italian Renaissance, new literary genres were created. They had an influence on Yiddish literature until the twentieth century. Someof those texts were even written in Germany and brought to Italy. The international importance of the Jewish community in Mantua is emphasized in Daniel Jütte’s paper. He demonstrates the European connection on the basis of Abramo Colorni’s (1544–1599) life and Maggino Gabrielli’s trading company. As a court alchemist, Colorni was one of the main characters in the cultural transfer from Italy to Baden-Württemberg and Prague. The meaning of magic, mysticism, and Kabbalah in the Italian culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is a central topic of the paper delivered by Saverio Campanini. His lecture about the first printing of Sefer Yeirah (Mantua 1562) and its reception among Christian scholars also illustrates the frequent tensions in the relationship between Jews and Christians in Mantua. Alessandro Guetta emphasizes a further aspect of Italian life in the Renaissance, namely translation, focusing on the Italian translation of the Psalms by Judah Sommo and its impact on the transfer of Jew- ish-Italian culture and discourse. He proves that the contribution of Jewish translators to the history of Italian literature and to the shaping of the Italian language was of incontrovertible significance; the translators belonged to two linguistic and cultural worlds. In a period in which any deviation from the mainstream was regarded with suspicion, it is important to understand the intellectual history of early modern Italy. Shlomo Simonsohn concludes the volume with a paper on research on Jewish culture in Mantua. He emphasizes the singular and most impressive contribution made by the Jewish community of Mantua— thanks to the diverse backgrounds of its members and its intense contact with Christian culture—in the arts, philosophy, and the natural sciences, across the boundaries of the Duchy of the Gongazas. * * * xiv preface

We would like to thank all the authors who contributed to this volume for their commitment to this project, their erudite and fascinating contributions, and their patience with what turned out to be a rather lengthy process. For their care and expertise, we are grateful to the readers who peer-reviewed the articles. We thank Julia Itin and Anna Grochocka who helped respectively in editing the introduction and compiling the index of sources. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support given by the Ger- man Research Foundation (DFG), the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and the Martin Luther University at Halle-Wittenberg. We are thank- ful for the copyright generously provided by the State Archives of Mantua, the Israel Museum, the Real Biblioteca del Monasterio del Escorial, the Staatliches Museum of Schwerin, and the Vienna Kunst historisches Museum. Jennifer Pavelko, acquisitions editor at Brill (Leiden/Boston), showed great interest in the book and supported us throughout; her assistant Katelyn Chin patiently answered numerous queries. We are grateful for their help with this project.

Halle/Germany, July 2011 I. judah moscato. his life and his work 1. judah Moscato: Biographical Data and Writings

Gianfranco Miletto

Biographical Data

The biographical data about the Mantuan Rabbi, Judah (Leone) ben Joseph Moscato, are fragmentary and uncertain. Not even the dates of his birth and death were known until I found his death certificate in the State Archives of Mantua, which also states the birth date of Moscato.1 According to the death certificate, Moscato died in Mantua on September 20, 1590, at the age of fifty-seven. He was therefore born after September 21, 1532. Recently discovered documents in the State Archives of Mantua and in the Archives of the Jewish Community provide new information about Moscato’s role as a representative of the Jewish community in the Duchy of Mantua as well as biographical data.2 He was probably born in Osimo (province of Ancona), a small town in the Marche region of central Italy. It is not certain when he went to Mantua. Moscato dedicated the Nefuot Yehudah to his brother-in-law R. Samuel ben Joshua Minzi-Berettaro as an expression of gratitude for having given him shelter in his house when he came to Mantua as a fugitive. According to Apfelbaum, Moscato refers to the acts of persecution against the Jews that took place in Ancona and in the Marche region

1 archivio Gonzaga, Registri Necrologici 18. See Gianfranco Miletto, “New documents from the State Archives of Mantua about Judah Moscato,” Revue des Études Juives 168, 1–2 (2009): 201–208. 2 see Gianfranco Miletto, “Rabbi Yehuda Moscato and a Case of Forced Conver- sion,” Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 34 (2007–2008): 149–163; idem, “A New Look into Judah Moscato’s Life: His Recently Discovered Last Will and Testament from the State Archives of Mantua,” European Journal of Jewish Studies 2 (2008): 271–276. In this paper, I summarize the results of my research in the State Archives of Mantua and in the Archives of the Jewish Community. The most important documents have been edited in the aforementioned papers. I am grateful to the employees of the Archives, Dr. Franca Maestrini, Dr. Ivana Freddi, and Dr. Maria Luisa Aldegheri, for their assistance with my research. 4 gianfranco miletto between 1554 and 1558 during the reign of Pope Paul IV (1555– 1559).3 According to Simonsohn, however, Moscato’s words refer to the expulsion of all Jews from the Papal State with the exception of the communities of Rome and Ancona, which Pope Pius V (1566–1572) decreed on February 26, 1569, with the Bull Hebraeorum gens sola.4 In the State Archives of Mantua I have not found any document supporting one hypothesis or the other. In any case, around 1570 Moscato was already an outstanding personality in the Mantuan Jewish community. Between 1573 and 1574 he was deeply involved in the dispute about Me’or ‘Enayim and in 1577 he acted as an arbitrator together with R. Gershon Cohen (Katz)-Porto in a legal affair between the bankers Abraham Yagel ben Hananiah Gallico and Samuel Almagiati.5 The Archives of the Jewish Community of Mantua also furnish documentary evidence for Moscato’s career as spiritual leader of the community; on July 27, 1580, he graduated as associate rabbi (aver), and in 1587 he was granted rabbinical ordination (morenu we-rabbenu).6 It is not certain whether Moscato was, in fact, appointed rabbi of Mantua. Indeed, the first known contract between the community and an appointed rabbi dates from 1633,7 and it seems that the title morenu

3 abe Apfelbaum, Biographie des R. Jehuda Moscato Rabbiner in Mantua mit besonderem Hinweis auf seine Bedeutung und seine Werke / Sefer toledot ha-gaon R. Jehuda Moscato (Dro- hobycz: A.H. Zupnik, 1900), 9. 4 shlomo Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua ( Jerusalem: Qiryat Sefer, 1977), 721. 5 for the dispute about Me’or ‘Enayim cf. Apfelbaum, Biographie, 10–11; Simonsohn, History, 637; Azariah de’ Rossi, The Light of the Eyes, translated from the Hebrew with an introduction and annotations by Joanna Weinberg (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2001), xliv. For the bankers’ affair cf. Simonsohn, History, 253; David B. Ruderman, A Valley of Vision. The Heavenly Journey of Abraham ben Hananiah Yagel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1990), 7 n. 20, 13 n. 53, 209. 6 archives of the Jewish Community of Mantua, Minute Books D, fol. 74a; Minute -and Bonaiuto Isaac Levi, Repertorio storico enciclopedico (1806, in manu ג Books V, fol. 3 script form), vol. 3, 249. The year of Moscato’s rabbinical ordination was first noted by Marco Mortara, without any reference to his source, in his Indice alfabetico dei rabbini e scrittori di cose giudaiche in Italia (Padova: Labor Riproduzioni e Documentazioni, 1886; repr. Milan, 1964), 43. Mortara’s information was quoted by Apfelbaum (Sefer toledot, 10), and is usually accepted: see, e.g., Israel Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching (Cincin- nati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1939), 195; Simonsohn, History, 722; Joseph Dan’s entry on Moscato in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition, vol. XIV, 515–516. 7 simonsohn, History, 579. For a critical remark about Moscato’s rabbinical function in the community of Mantua see Adam Shear, “Judah Moscato’s Self-Image and the Question of Jewish Humanism,” in Cultural Intermediaries. Jewish Intellectuals in Early judah moscato: biographical data and writings 5 we-rabbenu had only an honorary value, and did not necessarily refer to the office of community-appointed rabbi.8 In any event, some documents from the State Archives of Mantua, hitherto unknown, give new information about Moscato’s life and his role as the spiritual leader of the Mantuan Jewish community. In 1581 Pope Gregory XIII (1572–1585) issued two bulls concerning the Jews: in the bull Alias piae memoriae of May 30, the Jewish physicians were prohibited from treating Christians, and in the bull Antiqua Iudaeorum improbitas of July 1, the pope submitted the Jews to the Inquisition in all cases of blasphemy and offence against the Church, protection of Marranos and heretics, possession of forbidden books, and employment of Christian servants. The bulls were, of course, in force in the Papal States, but the pope also urged the implementation of these anti-Jewish instructions in all Catholic countries. The Jews, however, appealed vehemently against the papal ordinances to their rulers. In Mantua Duke Guglielmo I Gonzaga (1550–1587), although a strict Catholic, wanted to defend his autonomy from papal interference and would not at first permit the publication of the bulls. There were also practical reasons for not carrying out the papal enactments in Mantua. The prohibition against Jewish physicians treating Christians would have left whole communities without medical care. The prohibition was not new.9 Already in 1576, when Duke Guglielmo tried to enforce the papal laws against the Jewish physicians, which had been once again reconfirmed by Pope Pius V with the bull Romanus Pontifex (on April 19, 1566), protests occurred in the country. In 1577 the senior priest of Sermide, a village in the Mantua district, with four other local clerics, the official in charge of Carbonara Po, a neighboring village, and nineteen prominent residents of Sermide requested Duke Guglielmo to allow the Jewish physician, Abraham Portaleone, and his son Leone ( Judah) to continue practicing medicine as they had done

Modern Italy, ed. David B. Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 149–177, spec. 153. 8 Concerning the significance of the rabbinical titles aver, akham, morenu we-rabbenu and morenu ha-rav, see Robert Bonfil, Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1993), 35–38, 100–102. 9 Already the “Quinisext Council” (= “Fifth and Sixth”), also known as the Council in Trullo, held 692 in Constantinople under Justinian II, prohibited Christians from being treated by Jewish physicians. This canonical enactment was often reiterated in several later synods and councils. 6 gianfranco miletto until then to the benefit of the whole community.10 Eventually, the duke had to grant this request. Also in 1581 several petitions were addressed to the duke not to publish the papal bulls or, at least, to grant some exemptions.11 Also in this case Duke Guglielmo granted the request and prohibited the bishop from publishing the bulls as it appears from a letter, sent by the bishop of Mantua, Marco Fedeli Gonzaga, to Aurelio Zibramonti, the secretary of the duke, on July 10, 1581.12 Nevertheless, the bishop was pressing for the bulls to be published at least in the cathedral as the bishop of Ferrara had done. It was impossible for him not to obey the orders of the pope—so wrote the bishop to Aurelio Zibramonti on August 10, 1581.13 In order to justify to the Holy See his refusal to apply the bulls, the duke had in the meantime ordered the Jewish community to give some evidence that other princes had also not enforced the restrictive ecclesiastical edicts in their countries. The Mantuan Jews speedily satisfied the wish of the duke. On July 24, 1581, a letter, signed by “Leon de Moscati Hebreo” and “Leon da Pisa Hebreo,” was sent with the required documentation.14 They had accomplished what the duke ordered and asked the Jews of many countries about the behavior of their princes in relation to the papal bulls against the Jews. From Ferrara, Cremona, and Parma the answers came, some already with documents as proof. Copies of them are enclosed with this letter—write Moscato and da Pisa—and they will keep the original in case the duke should ask to see the documents. Further announce- ments from other countries are expected. These will be passed on either from Mantua or directly from the same countries, which have already been informed, in order to send all necessary information as quickly as possible. The letter is not addressed. The name of the recipient is missing but it can be conjectured without doubt that the letter is to Pompeo

10 archivio di Sato di Mantova, Archivio Gonzaga, F.II.8, 2601. See Vittore Col- orni, Gli ebrei nel sistema del diritto comune fino alla prima emancipazione (Milan: Giuffrè 1956), 32; idem, “Gli ebrei a Sermide. Cinque secoli di storia,” in Judaica minora. Saggi sulla storia dell’ ebraismo italiano dall’ antichità all’ età moderna (Milan: Giuffrè 1983), 409– 442: 418, 430–432; Simonsohn, History, 645. 11 See for example the letters of Abraham ben David Portaleone and Count Camillo di Castiglione published by Gianfranco Miletto, Glauben und Wissen im Zeitalter der Ref- ormation (Berlin / New York: De Gruyter: 2004), 1–13, 305–332. 12 archivio di Stato di Mantova, Archivio Gonzaga, 2615. 13 archivio Gonzaga, 2615. Cf. Miletto, Glauben und Wissen, 316–317. 14 archivio Gonzaga, 2614. judah moscato: biographical data and writings 7

Strozzi, the ambassador of Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga to the Holy See as is shown by a second letter, which Moscato, also in the name of da Pisa, sent three days later on July 27, 1581. In this letter, clearly addressed to Pompeo Strozzi, Moscato refers to the two packets of advice from Ferrara, Cremona, Venice, and Parma that had been sent with the former letter. Now, he heard that in Ferrara, without the permission of the duke, the bulls had been published “in some isolated places” and he felt that he was doing right to warn him.15 The Mantuan ambassador in Rome had received instructions from the secretary of Duke Guglielmo to explain to the Holy See the non- enforcement of the bulls. In order to support the ambassador’s diplomatic activity, Aurelio Zibramonti sent him a letter on July 25, 1581, that confirmed what Moscato and da Pisa had already reported. The Mantuan ambassador to Venice, Pace Moro, also said that the patriarch would not publish the bulls without the permission of the Vene- tian government.16 Also from Florence “Abramo Baroco, hebreo levantino” wrote on August 4, 1581, to Pompeo Strozzi. Abramo Baroco writes to the ambassador that he had been asked by “messer Leone Moscato” and “messer Leone da Pisa” to inform him about the attitude held by the Granduca regarding the question of the papal bulls. He could attest that the bulls had not been published in Florence and would be not published because the Granduca had once again confirmed the privileges granted to the Jews in his state.17 Judging from the documentation, it seems that the intervention of Moscato and da Pisa was successful. In June of 1587 Moscato was involved in a case of forced conversion and due to this he entered into conflict with the Duke of Mantua, Guglielmo Gonzaga (1538–1587), and his officials. The duke had long tried to convince the court musician, Abramino dell’Arpa, grandson of another celebrated court musician named Abramo dell’Arpa, to become a Christian. In June of 1587, Abramino seems to have been on the verge of conversion but his uncle Sansone, along with Moscato, tried to dissuade him.18 When

15 archivio Gonzaga, 2614. 16 archivio Gonzaga, 2614. Cf. Miletto, Glauben und Wissen, 9, 314–315. The shelf mark there quoted (F.II.8, 2615) is erroneous. 17 archivio Gonzaga, 1112. 18 archivio Gonzaga 2639, letter of Tullio Petrozzani of June 29, 1587. See Miletto, “Rabbi Yehuda Moscato and a Case of Forced Conversion,” 155–157. 8 gianfranco miletto

Duke Guglielmo learned that Sansone and Moscato had interfered in his plans, he ordered an inquiry and had the two arrested.19 Abramino, Moscato, and Sansone were imprisoned on June 29. In prison, they were urged to convert. Abramino and his uncle Sansone gave in, and under torture asked to be baptized.20 On July 12, Abramino and San- sone were baptized in the presence of the duke, who chose their new Christian names: Sansone was baptized as Bernardo and Abramino as Bernardino.21 There is no evidence that Moscato was also tortured. Nevertheless, he was subjected to intense psychological pressure. For several days, three theologians tried to convince him to convert through sermons and long disputations. The correspondence between the secretary of the duke and the governor (castellano) of Mantua, Luigi Olivo, describes the case and clearly shows Moscato’s personality. On July 6, the governor reported that Abramino and Sansone were not so “obstinate,” and mentioned that the Carmelite fathers who spoke with them hoped to obtain their conversion in due time. Con- cerning Moscato, the governor wrote: The same Fathers have also disputed and argued with Leone Moscato, who shows himself to be the most obstinate Jew that the wicked Syna- gogue has. They did not persuade him in any way! Finally, he said that he wants to die as a Jew in any case, even if he had to die as a martyr by his law. Thus, the aforementioned Fathers give up the hope of saving him. They consider him to be such a sagacious man that he alone could sustain the whole Synagogue and disturb all the Jews who intend to come to our faith. Thus, they think that he would be better off in any other place than in this city. We will see tomorrow what they can do. I will immediately give a report of the results.22 Two days later, the governor announced the conversion of Abramino and Sansone, but not of Moscato. The governor could only report the obstinacy of Moscato and the shiftlessness of the fathers:

19 archivio Gonzaga 2639, letter of Tullio Petrozzani of June 29, 1587. 20 archivio Gonzaga b. 2638, cc. 221–222: letter of Luigi Olivo, governor of Man- tua to Antonio Cizzuolo, secretary of the Duke from July 8, 1587. See Miletto, “Rabbi Yehuda Moscato,” 159–160. 21 archivio Gonzaga b. 2639: letter of Tullio Petrozzani to Luigi Olivo. This letter has been published in the introduction to the first volume of the English translation of the Nefuot Yehudah edited by Giuseppe Veltri and Gianfranco Miletto (Leiden / Boston: Brill 2011), 23. 22 archivio di Stato di Mantova, Gonzaga b. 2638, c. 218. See Miletto, “Rabbi Yehuda Moscato and a Case of Forced Conversion,” 157–159. judah moscato: biographical data and writings 9

The obstinate Leone Moscato does not show any intention to accept the truth; on the contrary, he argues about every trifle, explaining the Holy Scriptures in his own way. And when he feels that he is convinced, then rather than admitting the truth, he says that he is ignorant and not intelligent enough to be able to answer. He always poses new questions and when Father Lattanzi volunteers to explain all his wishes and to prove that the entirety of the Scriptures is fulfilled in Christ our Lord, he answers that he will listen to it, but that he will nevertheless persevere in the law in which he was brought up and nourished, and that he wants to die in this law. Therefore, Father Lattanzi is almost of the opinion that he is not even a good Jew. So his case is regarded as desperate; today, however, the aforementioned Fathers will make an assault on him with the Scriptures in hand and will leave him, once again, in his obstinacy and perfidy, in the hands of the devil. I will wait to hear what His Highness orders.23 The orders of the duke came very soon. On the same day—and this indicates how important Moscato’s conversion was to the duke—the secretary of Duke Guglielmo, Antonio Cizzuolo, expressed to the governor the great satisfaction that the duke felt concerning the conversion of Abramino and his uncle, and ordered, in the name of the duke, that the governor encourage the Carmelite fathers “with that Christian love which is appropriate for such an undertaking, in order to try to overcome and to confound that infernal dragon and obstinate Lion24 as well. Indeed this name fits him better than Moscato.” Cizzuolo added, “As His Highness felt great satisfaction at obtaining the conversion of the others, so he would feel a much greater satisfaction in acquiring this rabid dog so that he cannot further infect the whole fold more than it already is.”25 However, not even Father Santo Nerli, who was sent to Mantua by Duke Gugliemo, could obtain the desired conversion. In a letter to the secretary of the duke, the friar maintained that Moscato was “as obstinate as a devil”; thus, he finally gave up.26

23 archivio Gonzaga, b. 2638, cc. 221–222. See Miletto, “Rabbi Yehuda Moscato and a Case of Forced Conversion,” 159–161. 24 a pun on Moscato’s name—Leone (Lion). 25 archivio Gonzaga b. 2638, c. 640: letter from Antonio Cizzuolo, secretary of the Duke from July 8, 1587. This letter has been published in the introduction to the first volume of the English translation of the Nefuot Yehudah, edited by Giuseppe Veltri and Gianfranco Miletto (Leiden / Boston: Brill 2011), 23. 26 archivio Gonzaga b. 2640: letter from Friar Santo Nerli to Tullio Petrozzani. See Miletto, “Rabbi Yehuda Moscato and a Case of Forced Conversion,” 162. 10 gianfranco miletto

Moscato was released from prison only on August 21. On August 15, Duke Guglielmo had suddenly died; his son Vincenzo, who succeeded him, was not interested in converting Moscato. Thus, on August 21, Duke Vincenzo pardoned Moscato and ordered that he be set free. He also ordered the destruction of all records of the proceedings against Moscato.27 Fortunately for historians, a copy of the witnesses’ statements, which was attached to the first letter to the governor of Mantua by Tullio Petrozzani, was preserved. Moscato’s last will provides interesting information about his family. The last will was drawn up by the notary Alessandro Pia on Septem- ber 4, 1575, and was registered by the notary Sinforiano de Fortis on March 14, 1576.28 When this testament was written, Moscato was forty-two years old. He was married to Hester, who bore him four children: two daughters, Anna and Judith, and two sons, Angelo (Elanan in Hebrew) and Isaac. Moscato left fifty scudi in gold as a legacy to Anna, who was married to Jacob Finzi and who had already received her dowry. Moscato explicitly stipulated in the will that the fifty scudi in gold were to be her exclusive property. Her husband was never (ullo unquam tempore) to be in control of this money nor to enjoy any benefit from it. He could not inherit it, even if his wife were to predecease him. In such a case, Moscato stipulated that the sum should be shared equally among her children. To his other daughter, Judith, Moscato bequeathed the sum of three hundred scudi in gold, which she was to receive upon marriage. In addition, she was to inherit the rights to receive two hundred scudi in gold from the heirs of Salvatore ( Joshua) Berettaro, Moscato’s father- in-law, who had left this sum as a legacy to Moscato in his own will. Moscato’s relationship with his son Angelo (Elanan) was very difficult. In his will, Moscato disinherited him; indeed, his son wasto receive only the smallest portion that was legally permissible. Moscato did not explicitly state the reasons for this decision. He merely states that Angelo was not only utterly disobedient (inobedientissimum sibi patri mandatis paternis exhibuit ac exhibet) and contemptuous of the love of his

27 archivio Gonzaga, Mandati b. 41, fol. 90. See Miletto, “Rabbi Yehuda Moscato and a Case of Forced Conversion,” 163. 28 archivio di Stato di Mantova, Registrazioni Notarili anno 1575, c. 1472v. See Miletto, “A New Look into Judah Moscato’s Life: His Recently Discovered Last Will and Testament from the State Archives of Mantua,” European Journal of Jewish Studies 2 (2008): 271–276. judah moscato: biographical data and writings 11 father but—much worse—he dared to speak evil of him in public (palam obloqui nominique et famae illius detrahere ausus fuit). The other son, Isaac, was his only heir. He seems to have been younger than Angelo because he was not yet married and still lived with his mother Hester. However, as long as his mother was alive and did not marry again, according to the will, Isaac could enjoy no benefit from the patrimony, of which Hester was designated as usufructuary. She alone had the right to manage all of the patrimony (usufructuariam et massariam omnium et quorumcumque bonorum ipsius domini testatoris) that was the residue after all of the bequests had been made. She had to take care of and maintain her son Isaac and his future family, as long as he lived with his mother. Hester was to be freed from this obligation if Isaac decided not to live with his mother after getting married. In addition, Moscato bequeathed five soldi to the hospital of Mantua, as was customary,29 and ten scudi in gold to the sick and poor of the Jewish community. During the course of Moscato’s life, his relationship with his son Angelo never improved. Two years before his death, Moscato issued an official document certified by the notary, Magistri Battista, stating that his son Isaac was his only heir, even though he was already emancipated.30 According to the old Roman law, a son who was declared to be emancipated, i.e., liberated from the authority of his father (patria potestas), was legally independent. In the law of the Twelve Tables, the emancipated son had no right to the inheritance of his parent.31 This rule was no longer valid.32 Nevertheless, Moscato feared that Isaac’s emancipation could give rise to quarrels between him and his brother

29 see Simonsohn, History, 527. 30 archivio di Stato di Mantova, Archivio Notarile, Busta Magistri Battista, 5417 TER and Registrazioni notarili anno 1587, cc. 378v–379r. On August 31, 1575, Moscato declared his son, Isaac, to be emancipated, i.e., with full dispositive legal capacity. Archivio di Stato di Mantova, Registrazioni Notarili anno 1575, vol. VI, carta 1471v–1472r. 31 Gai Institutiones III: 19, Statim enim emancipati liberi nullum ius in hereditatem parentis ex ea lege habent, cum desierint sui heredes esse (“For instance, children who are immediately emancipated have no right to the inheritance of their parent under that law, since they are thereby divested of the character of self-successors”), quoted from Gai Institutiones or Institutes of Roman Law by Gaius, with a Translation and Com- mentary by the late Edward Poste, M.A. Fourth edition, revised and enlarged by E. A. Whittuck, M.A. B.C.L., with an historical introduction by A. H. J. Greenidge, D. Litt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904). 32 see Jane F. Gardner, Family and Familia in Roman Law and Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 15–21. 12 gianfranco miletto

Angelo. Thus, in order to prevent any conflict between the brothers,33 Moscato thought it opportune to declare in front of the notary that Isaac had the same rights of inheritance as he had enjoyed before the emancipation.34 This move reflects Moscato’s deep disagreement with his son Angelo. Besides these notarized deeds we have further information about Moscato’s family from sermon 28 of the Nefuot Yehudah, in which Moscato mentions the circumcision of a son of his beloved son Isaac and the name of another grandson, Joshua, who was appointed as a second godfather. In the text it is not specified if Joshua was a son of Isaac or of one of Moscato’s daughters.35 Moscato died one year after the publication of his sermon collection. His recently discovered death certificate is kept in the State Archives:36 On Thursday, on September 20, 1590, Rabbi Leon Moscato died of fever after twelve days in the quarter of the “Gryphon,” at the age of fifty-seven.

Writings

Books Nefuot Yehudah (“The Dispersed of Judah,” Venice: Giovanni di Gara, 1589). A collection of fifty-two sermons concerning several religious, ethical and philosophical matters.37

33 Ad tollendas omnes exceptiones litigandi quae oriri possent infra ipsum dominum Isach ac dominum Angelum alterum filium suum fratrumque ipsius domini Isach devenit ad praesentis instrumenti declarationem. 34 Dixit et declaravit se velle quod ipse dominus Isach eius filius habeat easdem[sic!] iura et rationes et actiones succedendi in bonis suis, quae habebat ante emancipa- tionem factam ut supra, quia mens et intentio ipsius domini Leonis semper fuit et est talis ut ipse dominus Isach eius filius possit habere partem sua agnatam in bonis ipsius domini Leonis post ipsius mortem prout habebit et habere potuerit aliquem filium suum non emancipatum. 35 Nefuot Yehudah (Venice: Giovanni di Gara, 1589), 122b. An English translation is in preparation. 36 archivio Gonzaga, Registri Necrologici 18. See Gianfranco Miletto, “New documents from the State Archives of Mantua about Judah Moscato,” Revue des Études Juives 168, 1–2 (2009): 201–208. 37 on page 234a, Moscato also mentions the month of publication: “The splendid work was finished in the month in which the Jews had light and gladness (Esther 8: judah moscato: biographical data and writings 13

Qol Yehudah (“The Voice of Judah,” Venice: Giovanni di Gara, 1594). A commentary on Judah Halevi’s Sefer ha-Kuzari.

Manuscripts

Poems and Sonnets Oxford, Bodleian Library 2317 (fol. 142b, a poem for a wedding); Oxford, Bodleian Library 2578 (fol. 3a. Elegy on the death of R. Josef Caro. The same elegy is also in Budapest, Kaufmann A 269); Buda- pest, Kaufmann A492 (fol. 59); Kaufmann A 541 (fols. 13a, 23a–b); London, British Library Or. 10222; London, British Library Or. 10471 (fol. 102a–b); London, British Library Add. 27078 (306b–307a); Lon- don, Montefiore Collection 488 (fol. 1b); Moscow, Ginzburg A 472/8 (fols. 240b, 249b, 250a, 255b); Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana N 134 Sup., 111 (fol. 1a); Frankfurt a. M., Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek Hebr.8°18 (fol.140). Some sonnets have been edited by Dvora Bregman, A Bundle of Gold. Hebrew Sonnets from the Renaissance and the Baroque ( Jerusalem / Beer- Sheva: Ben-Zvi Insitute and Ben-Gurion University, 1997), 86–93.

Responsa MS Frankfurt, Stadt-und-Universitätsbibliothek Oct. 135, fols. 71b– 73b.

Prayer Cincinnati, Hebrew Union College Acc. 204 (fols. 1–26).

Qol Yehudah Livorno, Talmud Torah 5; Moscow, Ginzburg 1666; Paris, Biblio- thèque Nationale Heb. 679; Budapest, Kaufmann 268.1.

16), in the year 389 as the abbreviated era, here in the city of Venice.” The book was then published during the Festival of Purim (14th of Adar), which corresponds to March 3, 1589. (See Eduard Mahler, Handbuch der jüdischen Chronologie, Frankfort a.M. 1916. Reprint Georg Olms Verlag Hildesheim 1967, 578). 2. Principles of Jewish Skeptical Thought. The Case of Judah Moscato and Simone Luzzatto

Giuseppe Veltri

In the last century, the study of skepticism enjoyed a spirited academic interest and enthusiastic popularity. Ancient Eastern and West- ern schools of skeptical thought and philosophy have been the subjects of numerous tractates, books, articles, and prises de position; nor is there any doubt that not only were the historical Pyrrhonian philosophy and the classical academies analyzed and described, but the currents of skeptical method in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period were also the objects of substantial investigation. Moreover, much secondary interest has been devoted to the study of ancient, medieval, and early modern Jewish skepticism. The entry of Alvin J. Reines in the old and new editions of the Encyclopaedia Judaica refers only to the fideist question of the unreliability of reason, and he quotes Judah Halevy and asdai Crescas on the inadequacy of neo-Platonic and Aristotelian physics and metaphysics as naturally acquired knowledge.1 However,—he comments—“in their refutations of Neoplatonic Aristotelianism, Judah Halevy and Crescas relied on reason and assumed the validity of empirical knowledge.”2 Skepticism is seen here, consequently, only as an argument to reinforce divine revelation. Reines mentions no other movement for the entire history of Jewish philosophy.

1 alvin J. Reines, “Skeptics and Skepticism,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 18 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 657–658. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 9 June 2010. 2 Ibidem. 16 giuseppe veltri

With some rare exceptions3 concerned mainly with Uriel da Costa,4 Aaron d’Antan,5 Salomon Maimon,6 or the everlasting question of whether and how the biblical book of Qohelet should be included in the history of skepticism,7 there is little on Jewish skeptical thought on academic shelves. In a very learned book on skepticism and irreligion, edited in 1997 by Richard Popkin, the famous specialist in the history of skepticism, there is no contribution on Jewish thinking at all,8 as though the question had never been dealt with by Jewish academies or scholarship. To the best of my knowledge, only Aryeh Botwinik has dealt with the topic, by overemphasizing the role of negative theology on the development of skeptical thought.9 In his book, Botwinik presents an ideal line that links the negative theology of Maimonides with the negative vision of the godhead in Nietzsche. He interprets monotheism as criticism and as a skeptical attitude to knowledge based on the negative process of understanding. That is nothing but an apo- phatic theology aimed at sharpening the skeptical sense of the phi-

3 on Francisco Sánchez and whether he was a Jewish convert to Christianity, see Elain Limbrick’s introduction to Francisco Sánchez, That Nothing is Known, ed. Elaine Limbrick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 6 ff. See also José Faur, “Sánchez’ Critique of Authoritas: Converso Skepticism and the Emergence of Radical Hermeneutics,” in The Return to Scripture in Judaism and Christianity: Essays in Postcritical Scriptural Interpretation, ed. Peter Ochs (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 256–276. 4 sanford Shepard, “The background of Uriel Da Costa’s Heresy: Marranism, Skepticism, Karaism,” Judaism 20 (1971): 341–350. 5 Martin Mulsow, “Cartesianism, Skepticism and Conversion to Judaism: the Case of Aaron d’Antan,” in Secret Conversions to Judaism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Martin Mulsow and Richard H. Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 123–181. 6 Nathan Rotenstreich, “The problem of the ‘Critique of Judgment’ and Solomon Maimon’s Skepticism, in Harry A. Wolfson Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of His Seventy- Fifth Birthday, 2 vols. ( Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1965), vol. 2: 577–702. 7 see for example James Lee Crenshaw, “The Birth of Skepticism in Ancient Israel,” in The Divine Helmsman. Studies on God’s Control of Human Events, Presented to Lou H. Silberman, ed. James L. Crenshaw and Samuel Sandmel (New York: KTAV Publishing House 1980), 1–19; Bernon Lee, “Towards a Rhetoric of Contradiction in the Book of Ecclesiastes” (Ph.D. University of Calgary, 1997), passim; William H. U. Anderson, “What is Skepticism and Can it Be Found in the Hebrew Bible?” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 13,2 (1999): 225–257. 8 Skepticism and Irreligion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Richard H. Pop- kin and Arjo Vanderjagt (Leiden: Brill, 1993); but see Richard H. Popkin, The History of Skepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003), passim, where he refers to some Jewish skeptical thinkers such as Halewy and Crescas without going into the question of Jewish skepticism. 9 aryeh Botwinick, Skepticism, Belief, and the Modern: Maimonides to Nietzsche (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), Questia, Web, 24 July 2010. principles of jewish skeptical thought 17 losopher in approaching the incomprehensible of God. There is some truth in this. I do not intend here to oppose or support the theoretical framework in which Botwinik positions himself. The negative theology, and monotheism above all else, is indeed a component of Jewish skeptical thought. However, the main question of skepticism is neither the negative theology nor the validity and consistency of reason and/or revelation, but the controversy in and about authority. According to the philological meaning of auctoritas, the term faces and puts into question epistemologically the sources of knowledge (reason, revelation) or the persons who embody authority—persons such as prophets, wise men, philosophers, and messiahs. The point of departure for the skeptical train is therefore not primarily Maimonides, but Judah Halevy together with asdai Crescas and Joseph Albo. They opposed the authority of reason, of the capacity of the intellect to reach a state of perfect knowledge, the attainment of perfection via the human sciences. However, we are entangled in a dangerous vicious circle, for only by using reason and empirical methods can we test their validity. We have no other way of criticism apart from criticisms of the source of knowledge. As is known, the critics do not reach per se a perfect agreement, as they deal only with opinion. And that is the problem of ancient and modern philosophy in relation to other sources of knowledge, such as Revelation, which per definitionem seeks not to present an opinion, but advances a claim to absolute truth. Claims of an absolute truth and consciousness of the weakness of human reason are the main points of the “crisis” of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1638, Rabbi Sima (Simone) Luzzatto published a small, apologetic but highly valuable book in Venice on the status of the Jews. It was an absolute novelty in the history of Jewish political thought: the Rabbi defined the forces that shaped the function/s of the Jewish minority in the economy of the Serenissima and mapped its scattered geographical world, its number and traditions, as well as the strati- fication of the Jewish population in the Diaspora.10 In this treatise,

10 Discorso circa il stato de gl’Hebrei et in particolar dimoranti nell’inclita città di Venetia (Venice: Calleoni, 1638), on the origin and composition of the book see Benjamin C. I. Ravid, Economics and Toleration in Seventeenth Century Venice. The Background and Context of the Discorso of Simone Luzzatto ( Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 18 giuseppe veltri the Rabbi of the “Scuola Grande Tedesca,” the Great German Syna- gogue, introduces the non-Jewish audience to the intellectual subdivi- sions of the Jewish academics, enumerating among the élite the rabbis, the philosopher-theologians, and the cabbalists. Referring to the second group, he comments: Although the Jews refer [for their decisions] to the [authority of the] doctors of the second class [i.e., the Rabbis], they do not fail to conform the sayings and pronouncements of the ancients to the commonly held doctrines. And although they firmly hold that the truths do not contradict each other, and that the simple opinion of the ancient sages should not be opposed to the evidence, so that their authority compensates the Jews, when human reason, deficient and defective of power, does not attain it with its argument.11 In this short text, Luzzatto refers to two different controversies: the question of the authority of ancient traditions and the query regarding authority in general. The first question focuses on the problem of the authority of the ancient sages whose sayings and pronouncements are dependent upon the doctrines of their time (i.e., conformity with “the generally held doctrines”). Here Luzzatto cryptically refers to the opinion of some rabbis and philosophers that both the opinion of the sages and the (scientific) evidence cannot be opposed (“they firmly hold that the truths do not contradict each other, and that the simple opinion of the ancient sages should not oppose the evidence”). The reader cannot overlook the commitment of the Rabbi to the obligation of the theological and dogmatic view according to which Revelation cannot be imperfect even though it may be opposed to (the scientifical or historical) evidence. The second and consequent question is the priority of the authority of the sages, or Revelation, over human reason if the latter, “deficient and defective of power, does not attain it with its argument.” With this expression, he introduces his later treatise on the failure of human

1978), 7–9; Giuseppe Veltri, Renaissance Philosophy in Jewish Garb (Boston, Leiden: Brill, 2009), 195–225, and passim. 11 luzzatto, Discorso, 80r: “E con tutto che tanto si riportano gl’hebrei alli dottori della seconda classe, non mancono però di ridurre li detti e pronunciati degl’antichi in conformità delle dottrine comunemente abbracciate, e benché tengono per fermo che le verità non s’oppongono l’una all’altra, e che la semplice openione delli antichi dottori non si deve opponere all’evidenzia, così la loro auttorità supplisce agl’hebrei, ove che la ragione umana è manchevole e diffetosa di potere con suoi argomenti arrivarvi.” principles of jewish skeptical thought 19 reason, his book Socrate overo dell’humano sapere (“Socrates, or on the human science”), where he denies the authority of sciences, the knowledge of the senses, and the logical inference appealing for systematic doubt. The first question is addressed in the controversy between Azaria de’ Rossi and the Maharal of Prague, which I have dealt with elsewhere.12 The second is the topic of two neglected scholars of the Renaissance and early modern period: Judah Moscato and Simone Luzzatto. The following comments are but a first foray into the question without pretending to be either an in-depth exploration or an attempt to be exhaustive with regard to the world of scholarship involved with it. A book on the topic is in preparation.

The Religious Skepticism of Judah Moscato

Judah Moscato is well known as the author of a collection of sermons called Nefuot Yehudah (“The Dispersed of Judah”)13 and of a commentary on Judah Halevi’s Sefer ha-Kuzari, entitled Qol Yehudah.14 Nefuot Yehudah belongs to the very core of his important oeuvre. Composed in Mantua and published in Venice in 1589, the collection of fifty-two sermons takes the subject of Jewish festivals as a kind of liturgical plat- form for addressing issues in philosophy, theology, mysticism, cultural history, and other arguments important for the speaker and his audience. Moscato’s philosophical positions stem from the rabbinical tradition, classical and contemporary authors, and neo-Platonic thought. He does not disdain to quote non-Jewish authorities prominently when they seem to confirm his position. And this is the case of Heraclitus in Moscato’s sermon about the validity of the sciences, a topic of Renais- sance philosophy and skepticism.

12 “Maharal against Azaria de’ Rossi: The Other Side of Skepticism,” in The Maha- ral of Prague: Jewish Though, Rabbinic Theology and Intellectual History on the Eve of Early Modern Europe (working title), ed. Meir Seidel (London, New York: Routledge Jewish Studies Series, 2012, in print). 13 first published in Venice by Giovanni di Gara, 1589. 14 Venice: Giovanni di Gara, 1594. See now Adam Shear, The Kuzari and the Shap- ing of Jewish Identity, 1167–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 135–169. 20 giuseppe veltri

In Sermon 14,15 Moscato addresses the topic of the validity of the human sciences.16 He notes that this sermon “will magnify the Torah and glorify its essence as being superior to the seven arts, by making clear the latter’s intrinsic deficiency” (XIV:1); he will “show how vain17 the human sciences are as long as they do not keep a covenant of con- cord with the divine Torah with respect to two differences [between them and the Torah]” (XIV:8). The preacher of Mantua bases his argumentation on two premises: the first one is of methodological meaning. The sciences prevent us החכמות מקצרות) from attaining truth in relation to the precious things :And he explains further .(מהשיג האמת בדרושים היקרים For while demonstration is found in most of the mathematical sciences, namely, geometry, arithmetic, music,18 and to some extent also astronomy, the same does not apply to ethics or to physics, and even less so to metaphysics, which is called “first philosophy” or “divine philosophy” by the philosophers. Surely mistakes are to be found in all of them, and particularly in metaphysics for, without a doubt, philosophers fall amazingly short of attaining the truth.19 The process explained here is the neo-Platonic or Plotinic pyramid, where the almost perfect sciences, mathematics, geometry, etc., are at the beginning and metaphysics at the end of the chain of logical probability. Moscato illustrates it with a famous example taken from Midrash Qohelet Rabbah 1:3:20

15 All the quotations and correspondent footnotes are taken from our edition and English translation: Judah Moscato’s Sermons. Volume Two, ed. Gianfranco Miletto and Giuseppe Veltri (Boston, Leiden: Brill, 2012). For the first volume see Judah Moscato’s Sermons. First Volume, ed. Gianfranco Miletto and Giuseppe Veltri (Boston, Leiden: Brill, 2011). 16 here I am following our summary of the sermon with comments primarily of mine. 17 the Hebrew verb lehavhil literally means “to emit steam” (or, in this context, in an interpretative way, “to turn into steam”). Yet here the expression is to be interpreted also in the light of the term havel, i.e., “vanity.” 18 In Italian, or Latin, in the text. For the music see Sermon I in the first volume of Moscato’s Sermons. 19 cf. Isaiah 50:2. 20 “R. Samuel b. Nahman taught in the name of R. Joshua b. Korah, “It may be likened to a man who sets on the fire seven pots, one on top of the other, and the steam from the topmost one has no substance in it.” (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 1:3). Translation from Christopher P. Benton, “In search of Qohelet,” http://www.maqom .com/journal/paper9.pdf (last accessed 24, July 2010). principles of jewish skeptical thought 21

[24] This provides a correct elucidation of the midrashic epigraph to our sermon. For the passage first posits how it is that man, in himself, when he relies solely on philosophizing, is like unto steam.21 Then it explains the nature of the “steam” which it treats on the basis of the statement of Kohelet, Steam of steams, etc.,22 by stating that there are the seven steams that lift up steam through the seven sciences. The subject of these sciences is likened to seven pots piled one on top of the other.23 For the pot on the bottom melts the vapors and lifts up the steam through the power of the fire burning under it. But since the second pot lifts up steam by power of the vapors rising from the first pot, its steam is certainly diminished. The same holds true for the third pot in relation to the second, and thus it is for all the seven pots, each in relation to the one immediately below it. This extends up to the seventh pot, which, since it is very far removed from the fire; and because of the fact that the heat of the vapors that rise to it from the sixth pot is faint, it indeed cannot raise steam endowed with any substance.24 [25] And lo, the same law also applies to the seven sciences. For each of them is sustained by another according to an ordering [like the one] we mentioned that proceeds from the mathematical sciences to the ethical [sciences], from the ethical [sciences] to the physical [sciences], and from the physical [sciences] to the divine [sciences]. Besides, the mathematical sciences are themselves sustained by one another, for geometry is sustained by arithmetic, and so is music, as [the calculation of ] the intervals between its sounds requires; and astronomy is sustained by both geometry and arithmetic. Thus, mathematical sciences direct the intellect and accus- tom it to understanding and to intellection. The Plotinic pyramid of the arts refers to the nature of human sciences and arts, which are sustained by one another according to an inner ordering. They possess some truth, but not enough to reach and attain perfect knowledge. It should be noted that the doctrine of successive vapors or fumes induces the reader to conclude that there is a chain of logical inferences from the mathematical sciences until metaphysics. At the top of the chain (or at the bottom of the pots), there is mathematics, which can be considered as the almost perfect science. I emphasize the adverb almost, i.e., not entirely perfect, for perfection is reserved for the Torah alone, with the help of which human beings may obtain their joyful purpose. The imperfection of mathematics lies

21 Psalms 144:4. The JPS translation has been modified to fit the context. 22 ecclesiastes 1:2. The JPS translation has, “Vanity of vanities.” 23 Qohelet Rabbah 1:3. 24 Ibidem. 22 giuseppe veltri in its abstract nature, while the natural sciences in their general meaning cannot be reliable because their subject is constantly changing, as Moscato states in Sermon XIII:7: You can see that mathematical sciences cannot provide suitable nourishment for the life and sustenance of the intellective soul because their subject depends solely on things that are envisioned in the intellect and do not exist outside of the soul, since the intellectually recognized objects are abstracted from matter, both ontologically and categorically.25 For, such things do not exist and were not created. Nor can the natural sciences [provide suitable nourishment for the life and sustenance of the intellective soul], since they concern things that are constantly changing. Even the sciences that the philosophers call “divine”26 cannot [provide suitable nourishment for the life and sustenance of the intellective soul], since speculation by means of them relies on farfetched estimates and very doubtful pretexts as their practitioners themselves admit.27 The claim of the profane sages—the object in Sermon XIV—is that the sciences and arts can help to obtain perfect knowledge. And that is the very question of the second error attributed by Moscato to the philosophers of sciences (XIV:27): . . . for by their philosophizing, philosophers will never attain any happy or joyful end. Even though they scheme about divine things, they will not raise steam endowed with any substance. That is, the cloud of incense of their soul shall never rise up28 to the upper bliss of everlasting immortality, since the attainment of unitive conjunction (devequt hitaedut) with the Agent Intellect is prevented from them, even according to their own position, as has been said. The postulation addressed here was explained at the beginning of Sermon XIV:10: And yet this conjunction has to be understood as a process of assimilation whereby one becomes like to Him through the attainment of all of the intellectually cognized objects. And this is impossible as Gersonides pointed out in his Sefer ha-Milamot (part I, chapter 12).29 It is also stated in Kohelet: All the things toil to weariness, etc.30 It is also said there: Also He hath set the world in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out [the work that

25 Literally, “in being and in definition.” 26 i.e. metaphysics and theology. 27 cf. Babylonian Talmud, Bava Mei‘a 3b. See also Sefer ha-Kuzari 4:25. 28 cf. Ezekiel 8:11. 29 gersonides actually denies this theory in Sefer ha-Milamot 1:4. 30 ecclesiastes 1:8. principles of jewish skeptical thought 23

God hath done from the beginning even to the end].31 This being the case, what is contingent on impossibility is impossible, wherefore they will never be able to make their soul enjoy the benefit of their labor.32 Moscato sees only one perfect way to reach perfection: occupation with the Torah, the only way to attain holiness, namely one’s own “happy and joyful purpose” (XIV:21). The preacher of Jewish Man- tua follows a perfectly constructed stylistic and rhetorical scheme that consists of constantly repeating a thesis as a refrain by adding more elements that should confirm it. He quotes the Babylonian Talmud33 to underscore the view that if man relies only on himself, he cannot attain true knowledge. The latter is, of course, to be achieved by means of one’s study of the Torah.34 Regarding the fideist principle, he commits himself to a kind of argumentation I would call “affirmative conviction”: The only- per fect science is the Torah, the only one capable of attaining felicity. And if there seems to be a contradiction with the natural sciences, it depends on human knowledge, which is defective. Further, he quotes Solomon, traditionally the father of every science, who was able to gather together the sum of his great knowledge. He refers to him and his seven names as an allusion to the seven arts, which Solomon declares void whenever they do not agree with and are not crowned by the Torah (XIV:70–73). And going back to his interpretation of the Midrash Qohelet Rabbah 1:3, he comments (XIV:75): You have also heard my words concerning the explication of this passage with regard to the seven sciences that are organized one on top of the other until they reach the seventh one, which they call “divine,” as it is the fruit of all of their speculation. And in the end, they give rise to a steam that has no substance. And all their wisdom will be swallowed if those who master them are not firmly grounded upon the foundations of the Torah. The “divine” seventh art is of course the philosophia prima, addressed already in Sermon XIV:9: . . . even less so to metaphysics, which is called “first philosophy” or “divine philosophy” by the philosophers. Surely mistakes are to be found

31 ecclesiastes 3:11. 32 cf. Ecclesiastes 2:24. 33 Babylonian Talmud, Bekhorot 8b–9a. 34 Sermon XIV:34. 24 giuseppe veltri

in all of them, and particularly in metaphysics, for without a doubt, philosophers fall amazingly short of attaining the truth.35 The philosophia prima or divina as a denomination of metaphysics goes back to the division of the sciences proposed, for example, among the Arabic as well as Latin schools (Avicenna and Thomas). As a representative member of Western philosophy, it is useful here to recall Roger Bacon, who speaks of the metaphysica as divina scientia, sapientia, and philosophia prima.36 Moscato is of the opinion that the human sciences, because they have been produced by human thought, cannot grasp the Divine without conjunction with the divine intellect; that is an axiomatic position, whose truth is notoriously taken for granted. The almost deductive conclusion is that they cannot per definitionem attain the truth. The sciences historically collect their knowledge from generation to generation (XIV:78), as a mirror of the natural order of nature, created in seven days by God (again the number seven). Two elements of their nature speak against the seven arts as “(divine) science,” for they are contingent (the time factor) and related to the natura creata (the space/matter factor in the creation). Speaking of the created nature (natura creata), it is obvious that he is discussing here the trustfulness of the organs of perception, the senses—a chief argument of skepticism, dealt with some decades later by Luzzatto (see next section) in detail. The senses are unable to attain truth: Nevertheless, all things toil to weariness, for [Fol. 70b] there is great toil in attaining such things. Man cannot speak37 by giving them a perfect definition because he cannot grasp its essence by means of their existence. This corresponds to the saying, The eye is not satisfied with seeing, since, indeed, knowledge commences with what the senses attain. And there are ten parts belonging to38 the sense of sight, for it is able to determine several distinctions, more so than the other senses. And it does not depend on the study of that which is other than it. This is the meaning of that which is written: Nor will the ear be filled with hearing.39 [80] These two senses40

35 cf. Isaiah 50:2. 36 Quaestiones alterae supra libros primae philosophiae. Opera Hactenus Inedita Rogeri Baconi 11 (Oxford, 1936), 30, quoted by Ulrich Köpf, Die Anfänge der theologischen Wissenschafts theorie im 13. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Mohr, 1974), 231 and corresponding footnotes. 37 Ecclesiastes 1:8. The JPS translation has been modified to fit the context. 38 Cf. 2 Samuel 19:44. The JPS translation has been modified to fit the context. The expression has an idiomatic meaning that could be rendered: “And the lion’s part is played by . . .” 39 ecclesiastes 1:8. 40 Viz., hearing and sight. principles of jewish skeptical thought 25

are mentioned because they are the most subtle and the most apt for the attainment of science; for [it is written] the hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them.41 Their activity shall be related to the Creator of all, more than that of the other senses, since by means of them man reaches intellection, which is the most perfect activity for him. [This] accords with the elucidation put forward by the author of Sefer ‘Iqqarim.42 If the senses are not apt for the attainment of knowledge, he asks (XIV:81), If the son of the king43 had so weak a perception of natural things, which are to be attained through the senses, then what is to be done by the musk [that grows] on the wall,44 who strives to reach the sublime things, which the senses cannot master in the least? The impossibility of formulating any sure statement concerning reality is also confirmed by the philosopher Heraclitus (XIV:86), who is expressly mentioned by Moscato: [86] Do not keep your ears from hearing that which I am accustomed to interpret regarding some of the verses mentioned above, namely, that it was the opinion of the ancient philosopher Heraclitus45 that one can make decisive statements concerning the truth of sensible objects only through things that are imagined and only through the appearance of things. [Heraclitus expressed this] by saying that everything flows at a uniform and constant velocity, and that there is nothing about which we can say: “That is x,” for while one is still glancing at it, it is no longer that thing in its substance. [87] He explicitly said that something that is one in its substance cannot appear twice, and he even went so far as to state that it is impossible to indicate anything through speech. Thus he would indicate things by hinting at them with his finger, thinking that the motion of his finger would be faster than putting things into words. His heart urged him to say that if he were to begin to indicate something with his words, then while he was still speaking about it, that thing would pass and would change into something with a different nature, before he could complete a statement about it.

41 Proverbs 20:12. 42 cf. Joseph Albo, Sefer ha-‘Iqqarim, 3:2. 43 i.e., Solomon. 44 i.e., “the weak.” 45 Moscato writes the name in the Italian form of “Eraclito” [though in Hebrew letters]. 26 giuseppe veltri

Already Aenesidemus interpreted Heraclitus as proto-skeptic;46 his skepticism was a locus communis in the Middle Ages47 and was developed further in Humanism48 and in the Renaissance, as Donato Bramante’s painting of the laughing philosophers (Heraclitus flens: Democritus ridens) shows.49 Moscato appeals to him to reinforce his position against the validity of the sciences, contradicting himself because he affirms at the beginning that the first pot of the chain of steam is on the fire, i.e., that the sciences are created through the fire of the (true) knowledge. How can we explain that everything is relative by quoting Heraclitus? His answer is as unambiguous as it is logically problematic: [90] Therefore, my heart lifted me up to think and to say that perhaps Solomon meant to allude to this opinion when he referred to mundane things and the human sciences that derive from them as the vanity of steams. For by saying, All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not [Fol. 71a] full; unto the place whither the rivers go, thither they go again,50 he alluded to the metaphor of the stream mentioned by that philosopher, who wanted to point out the course of all natural things and their constant change. [91] Afterwards, he referred to that image with one language and one speech51 in accordance with the words of the philosopher that we have mentioned, when he said, All things toil to weariness; man cannot utter it, the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with 52hearing. And the meaning has been elucidated. The metaphor of steam describes the volatile nature of the sciences, which cannot rest on eternal results because they change in time and space; they are changing constantly and susceptible to weariness. The fire (of knowledge) is no longer a focus, because it does not fit in with his concept of philosophy. Quoting Genesis 11:1, Moscato suggests to the reader that he consider the sciences as an assault on the unity of God, an apologetic argument that cannot explain why the sciences

46 roberto Polito, The Skeptical Road: Aenesidemus’ Appropriation of Heraclitus (Leiden: Brill, 2004). 47 Martin Pickavé, “Henry Of Ghent And John Duns Scotus On Skepticism And The Possibility Of Naturally Acquired Knowledge,” In Rethinking the history of skepticism: The missing medieval background, ed. by Henrik Lagerlund (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 61–96, here esp. 72. 48 see for example Marcel Françon, “Petrarch, Disciple of Heraclitus,” Speculum 11 (1936): 265–271. 49 Jill Pederson, “The Academia Leonardi Vinci: Visualizing Dialectic in Renais- sance Milan 1480–1499” (PhD thesis, Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms Inter- national, 2008; The Johns Hopkins Univ., Diss., 2007), 117–124. 50 ecclesiastes 1:7. 51 genesis 11:1. 52 ecclesiastes 1:8. principles of jewish skeptical thought 27 are the common language of humanity and why revelation had to be added as a “supplement,” or better, as the core of human science and knowledge. Moscato’s lack of consequence is inherent in the system of fideist apologetics, which attacks the trustworthiness of the sciences in its discourse (the logic of the pots and the vapors) and postulates another perfect language for revelation. The question is inherent in every revealed religion that postulates a corrupt knowledge in order to justify an “added” doctrine that should be the core of the first one. The question is, in the end, how to perceive a supplementary knowledge if the instrument of perception is corrupt. That is the problem of the trustworthiness of the source of knowledge (the problem of authority), a question addressed by Simone Luzzatto (and then Baruch Spinoza). The Venetian Rabbi Simone Luzzatto wrote his major work, the Socrate overo dell’humano sapere, in 1651: it is a very important milestone in modern skepticism,53 and his detailed introduction to the question of human knowledge is a document of the Venetian reception of Euro- pean scholarship.54

Doubting Authority

Luzzatto’s treatise Socrate is a little-known book.55 There are few copies of the original and no translation exists in any modern European

53 on the history of skepticism, see Richard Popkin, The History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); Charles B. Schmitt, “The Rediscovery of Ancient Skepticism in Modern Times,” in The Skeptical Tradition, ed. Myles Burnyeat (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983): 225–251; Richard H. Popkin, “Prophecy and Skepticism in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 4/1 (1996): 1–20. No mention of Luzzatto’s book is made, with the exception of Popkin’s article on prophecy in which he refers to Ruderman’s contributions and erroneously to Luzzatto’s Discorso when speaking of “Jewish ‘third force’ thinkers of the time” (p. 14). Although Luzzatto’s Discorso is imbued with skeptical ideas, the Socrate is the best testimony of his skeptical ideas and thought. 54 on this aspect see my “Economic and Social Arguments and the Doctrine of the Antiperistasis in Simone Luzzatto’s Political Thought: Venetian Reverberations of Francis Bacon’s Philosophy?,” Frühneuzeit Info 23 (2011): 23–32. 55 title: Socrate overo dell’humano sapere esercizio seriogiocoso di Simone Luzzatto Hebreo Vene- tiano opera nella quale si dimostra quanto sia imbecile l’humano intendimento, mentre non è diretto dalla divina rivelatione (Venice: Tomasini, 1651). 28 giuseppe veltri language.56 There are some allusions to Luzzatto’s Socrate in the world of scholarship, but no scholars have addressed themselves to the work in its entirety and at length. With few exceptions in regard to acknowledgment of the value of Luzzatto’s works,57 the first to note the importance of the book was David Ruderman, who devoted a detailed chapter of his Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe58 to the work, summarizing its contents and focusing on the difficult problem of Luzzatto’s sources and his place in the world of early modern and Jewish scholarship. Mention should also be made of the dissertation of Ariel Viterbo at the Hebrew University of Jerusa- lem, partly published in 1997 in Italian. Viterbo deals with the book, describing its contents,59 and promises to present this in the future within a wider context. In his dissertation, he proposes to view and thus interpret the Socrate as an intellectual biography of Luzzatto. The aim of Luzzatto’s book remains to date a strange puzzle because of its totally “non-Jewish” content, while his earlier contribution, the Discorso, is a typical apologia of Judaism. According to Ruderman, even the book’s title is misleading, since Luzzatto does not deal with God and providence. Ruderman’s conclusion on the position of Luz- zatto departs from the path traced by Bernard Septimus who, taking only the Discorso into account, sees Luzzatto as a “Maimonides” of the seventeenth century. Ruderman proposes to consider him as a kind of “foreshadowing of the lens-grinder of Rijnsburg.”60 In this way, he tries to locate Luzzatto’s attempt to weaken and even subvert human knowledge by applying a radical skepticism lying within the process of skeptical philosophy and theology that leads to Spinoza.61

56 soon to be published: Simone Luzzatto. Scritti politico-filosofici di un ebreo scettico nella Venezia del Seicento, introduzione, commento e note a cura di Giuseppe Veltri (Milan: Bompiani). 57 see, for example, Jehuda Bergmann, “Sokrates in der jüdischen Literatur,” Monatschrift zur Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 80 (1936): 6–10, with reference to the genealogy of Shadal published by Busch, see below, footnote 83. 58 david B. Ruderman, “Science and Skepticism. Simone Luzzatto on Perceiving the Natural World,” in idem, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1995), 161–184. 59 ariel Viterbo, “La mitzwàh di studiare le scienze nell’opera di Rav Simchah (Simone) Luzzatto,” Segulat Israel 4 (1997): 54–67; idem, “Socrate nel ghetto: lo scet- ticismo mascherato di Simone Luzzatto,” Studi Veneziani 38 (1999): 79–128. 60 ruderman, “Science,” 184, for Septimus see footnote 2, above. 61 i tried elsewhere to prove that Spinoza did read Luzzatto, see Giuseppe Veltri, “La dimensione politico-filosofica dei caeremonialia hebraeorum: Baruk Spinoza e Simone Luzzatto,” Materia Giudaica 13 (2008): 81–90. principles of jewish skeptical thought 29

However, I do not think that a lack of ( Jewish and contemporary) theology automatically speaks against revelation and providence. Luz- zatto is rightly speaking only of human knowledge, while “divine” knowledge cannot be the topic of a book entitled “Socrates.” Other scholars before him, for example Abraham Portaleone, tried to resolve the conflict between science and religion, reducing all aspects of knowledge, even recent techniques and discoveries such as gunpowder,62 “philologically” to the Bible, an extreme consequence of the principle that all wisdom belongs to Israel, a notion also stated by Maimonides.63 Another alternative is the position of Azariah Figo: Someone cannot be an astronomer without prior knowledge of physics and mathematics, nor a doctor without prior knowledge of natural philosophy. Nor can a person acquire any knowledge unless he is accustomed to logic [. . .]. It follows, that one [field] justifies and prepares for the next, otherwise, the one which follows would have no foundation. But our Torah does not require any other wisdom nor any external knowledge, for everything is in her; she guides and informs herself with her own conclusions, principles, and ideas.64 According to Figo, the secular sciences are interdependent and the “Torah is complete and stands on its own,” as Gianfranco Miletto rightly summarizes.65 Yet, in this case we have no or little relationship

62 see Gianfranco Miletto, “Die Bibel als Handbuch der Kriegskunst nach der Interpretation Abraham ben David Portaleones,” in An der Schwelle zur Moderne. Juden in der Renaissance, ed. Giuseppe Veltri and Annette Winkelmann (Leiden: Brill, 2003): 78–89. 63 see Maimonides, More Nevukhim I, chapter 71. What Maimonides is dealing with is an indirect reference to the legend of the “theft of wisdom” by non-Jews; see Giuseppe Veltri, “Dalla tesi giudeo-ellenistica del ‘plagio’ dei Greci al concetto rabbin- ico del verus Israel: Disputa sull’appartenenza della sofia,” Revista Catalana de Teologia 17 (1992): 85–104 (ancient sources); idem, “The Humanist Sense of History and the Jewish Idea of Tradition: Azaria de Rossi’s Critique of Philo Alexandrinus,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 2 (1995): 372–393 (humanist echoes); Norman Roth, “The Theft of Philosophy by the Greeks from the Jews,” Classical Folia 32 (1978): 53–67; Eliezer Gutwirth, “The ‘Stranger’s Wisdom: Translation and Otherness in Fifteenth-Century Iberia,” Portuguese Studies 13 (1997): 130–142; for an evaluation of Maimonides statement, see Giuseppe Veltri, “Die humanistischen Wurzeln der ‘jüdischen Philosophie’: Zur Konzeption einer konfessionellen Ontologie und Genealogie des Wissens,” in Die philosophische Aktualität der jüdischen Tradition, ed. Werner Stegmaier (Frankfurt a. M: Suhrkamp, 2000), 264–272. 64 figo, Sefer Binah le-‘Ittim, vol. 2, sermon 43, p. 26b in the translation of Isaac E. Barzilay, Between Reason and Faith. Anti-Rationalism in Italian Jewish Thought 1250–1650 (The Hague, Paris: 1967), 201. 65 gianfranco Miletto, “Tradition and Innovation: Religion, Science and Jewish Culture between the 16th and 17th Centuries,” in Religious Confession and the Sciences in the 16th Century, ed. Jürgen Helm, Annette Winkelmann (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 105. 30 giuseppe veltri between the sciences and the Torah, i.e., the absolute standard of the truth that cannot be exceeded by any science and art. Although Luz- zatto is in favor of the excellence of the Torah, he does not explain the reason for its superiority. The Venetian Rabbi gives a very short summary at the beginning of the book.66 In its assembly in the temple of Appoline, the academy of Delphos decides whether to proceed against Socrates, indicted for trying to cancel the validity of the human sciences (“havere tentato l’eversione dell’humane scientie”).67 In his defense, Socrates enumer- ates the cause that led him to suspect that the human discipline lacked certainty. His doubts on the reliability of the human sciences originated in the controversial opinions of wise men on the principles of objects in Nature. First, he believed that his uncertainty originated from the different prevailing opinions about the senses, objects, intellects, and knowledge, but later he came to the conclusion that the unreliability of knowledge lies in the objects of discussion themselves. The analysis of the external and internal senses (common sense, imagination, and memory) induces him to suspect their validity as sources of knowledge because they are partly erroneous. Examining knowledge itself, he questions whether there is a doctrine about human affairs. In questioning prudence, he reached the conclusion that it is better to suspend judgment,68 although he admits that it can be harmful for civil life. Hippias advises him not to let his conclusions be known and shows him some civil and political teachings drawn from natural things. Timon urges him to provide proof of the weakness of human knowledge. He attacks captious philosophy: in its curiosity, it affirms an agenda of examining the primordial virtues, concluding with the vices. Socrates tends toward the opinion of Timon, praising the person who follows probability. After Socrates’ defense (or explanation of his convictions), the assembly, called to proceed against him, cannot make up its mind whether to pass judgment for trying to cancel the validity of the human sciences,

66 Socrate, 3–4; see Ruderman, “Science,” 164–172 for a résumé of Luzzatto’s work. 67 Socrate, 3. 68 Socrate, 13: “E chi harebbe [havrebbe] giamai stimato che la sospensione del giudicio, retenzione dell’assenso, il seguire nelli affari della vita il semplice e sincero probabile, et il rendermi ossequioso a cenni e taciti susuri delli Dèi, sugeriscano materia a’ caluniattori di lacerate la mia fama e deturpare il mio nome?” principles of jewish skeptical thought 31 or to pronounce him innocent. Plato convinces the members of the academy to postpone judgment until a far more opportune time. Suspension of the judgment, avoiding of agreement, and sincerely following the probable are Luzzatto’s “dogmata” originating in his skeptical thought. The accusation against Socrates, in Luzzatto’s view, shows that the opinion of human beings is of such firm certitude69 that it does not surrender to the torments of “importune discourse.” The accused can be questioned on the basis of the same principle that the prosecutor used against Socrates: use of the “importune discourse,” namely logic. Only with the help of logic can he convince others that a judgment is not possible: because we do not have certain truths, there is no evidence beyond doubt. The method of proving the uncertainty of human knowledge is of course motivated by the discoveries of his time; it was, obviously, attacked by some churchmen and intellectuals. Luzzatto’s argumentation is likewise awkward, not free of loca communia and circular argumentation, as I will I try to show in the following. The Venetian rabbi deals with visual art in the contest over the validity of sense perception. After the examination of taste and its defects, Socrates takes a close look at sight.70 He does not deny its excellent qualities (“egregie qualità”), not only in its function as a mediator between human highlights and events, but also in bringing human beings closer to the celestial body, even though they remain distant. Allusion is made here to the technical discovery of the telescope, which “proved the mistakes and defects which antiquity, following human discourse, retained as true and sincere doctrines.”71 The “defects” produced without or exposed by the telescope are here listed openly, following Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius (“Starry Messenger”), which offers a concise synopsis:

69 Socrate, 14: “rendendomi questa loro ingiuriosa accusa molto più che prima probabile, che nel nostro animo giamai alcuna indubitabile certezza, allogii et hora molto più di prima mi rimane probabile, che niuna opinione si trova appo l’homo di tal ferma esistenza, che al tormento del nostro importuno discorso, alla fine non ceda e si pieghi.” 70 Socrate, 94 ff. 71 Socrate, 94: “. . . e massime doppo che fu sufragato dall’egregio adminicolo del cannachialo che dimostrò l’errori e fallacie, che l’antichità normata dall’humano discorso giudicaua vere e sincere dottrine.” 32 giuseppe veltri

• The conviction that the galaxy was sublunary and consists of evaporation. Luzzatto already mentioned this first (false) conviction in his Discorso,72 attributing it to the Stoics. That is indeed the doctrine of evaporation/nourishment of Zeno of Cittium, a conception that goes back to Heraclitus.73 To the telescope of Galileo, however, the galaxy appears as a congeries of tiny fixed stars in the higher parts of the sky.74 • The telescope destroyed the belief that the moon was a clear and pure body, whereas it becomes evident that it is full of cavities and hills.75 • The conviction that only the moon has phases was corrected: Venus, like the moon, goes through regular phases, changing in appearance from crescent-shaped to a round disk.76 • The belief that Venus and Mercury were orbiting the earth was determined to be erroneous with its help, because they are satellites of the sun like the other planets.77

72 Discorso, 7r: “one finds that among the famous ancient philosophers, the Stoics dared to declare that the Sun, the Moon, and other Stars nourish and feed themselves from the vapor of our low earthly sphere.” 73 Stobaeus, 1.213. 15–21. On the reception of Stoic philosophy in the seventeenth century, see Le stoïcisme au XVI e et au XVII e siècle: le retour des philosophies antiques à l’Age classique, ed. Pierre-François Moreau (Paris: A. Michel, 1999). 74 Nuncius Sidereus (Venice: apud Thomam Baglionum, 1610): n.p. (after 16) “Est enim GALAXIA nihil aliud, quam innumerarum Stellarum coacervatim consitarum congeries: in quamcumque enim regionem illius Perspicillum dirigas, statim Stellarum ingens frequentia sese in conspectum profert, quarum complures satis magnê ac valde conspicuê videntur; sed exiguarum multitudo prorsus inexplorabilis est”; for an Eng- lish translation see Albert van Helden, ed., Galileo Galilei, Sidereus nuncius, or, The sidereal messenger, (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989). 75 Nuncius Sidereus, 5 and ff., see for s. 5v: “Lunam superficie leni et perpolita nequaquam esse indutam, sed aspera et inêquali; ac, veluti ipsiusmet Telluris facies, ingentibus tumoribus, profundis lacunis atque anfractibus undiquaque confertam existere.” 76 Nuncius Sidereus, 14 ff. “Quidam enim proprium esse ac naturalem ipsiusmet Lunê splendorem dixerunt; alii, a Venere illi esse impertitum; alii, a stellis omnibus; alii, a Sole, qui radiis suis profundam Lunê soliditatem permeet. Verum huiuscemodi pro- lata exiguo labore coarguuntur, ac falsitatis evincuntur . . .” 77 Nuncius Sidereus, 5v: “Verum, quod omnem admirationem longe superat, quodve admonitos faciendos cunctos Astronomos atque Philosophos nos apprime impulit, illud est, quod scilicet quatuor Erraticas Stellas, nemini eorum qui ante nos cognitas aut observatas, adinvenimus, quê circa Stellam quandam insignem e numero cognitarum, instar Veneris atque Mercurii circa Solem, suas habent periodos, eamque modo prêe- unt, modo subsequuntur, nunquam extra certos limites ab illa digredientes.” principles of jewish skeptical thought 33

• This instrument discovered that four moons were revolving around Jupiter.78 • Saturn was described as one planet, a union of three bodies which, similar to the earth, revolve around it over a period of thirty years. • The telescope informed us that the sun is full of hills, of volcanoes that emit fire and exhalations.

Not only does Luzzatto mention the positive discoveries of the telescope, he also regards it as an example of a defective instrument. Its praiseworthy achievements are counterbalanced, even exceeded by its frauds and defects.79 For it let “that which is big [appear] as little, something restless as motionless, one as two, something superior as inferior, the left as right, the square as round, the flat as deep, something close as distant.”80 The methodological inconsequence of Luzzatto is striking here because he deals at length with the scientific achievements of the telescope, but writes only very few sentences on the defects of this instrument, as if he were undecided whether to accept or refuse the discoveries of the telescope. If Socrates wants to prove the weakness of human vision, why spend so much time looking at the discoveries of a visual instrument? Because the instrument proves the defect of (ancient) observations of the sky, attained solely with the aid of human vision. The “discreet” critical reader here should note that the author apparently ends in a contradictio in terminis: how can we doubt the defect of the ancient optical vision of the stars through the telescope if that is even more defective? Luzzatto is perhaps quoting critics against this instrument, as reported by Simplicio’s statement in Galileo Galilei’s Dialogo

78 Nuncius Sidereus, 28v: “nunc enim, nedum Planetam unum circa alium converti- bilem habemus, dum ambo magnum circa Solem perlustrant orbem, verum quatuor circa Iovem, instar Lunê circa Tellurem, sensus nobis vagantes offert Stellas, dum omnes simul cum Iove, 12 annorum spatio, magnum circa Solem permeant orbem.” 79 on the positive and negative reaction to the Nuncius Sidereus as well on the political aspects, see Mario Biagioli, Galileo Courtier. The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993): esp. 103–157. 80 Socrate, 95: “. . . ma a questi suoi egregii suoi effetti mi conviene anco contrapporre le sue frodi et inganni, che equilibratti con le sue lodevoli conditioni triusciranno queste soprafatte da suoi vitii e difalte, facendosi sovente apparire il grande piciolo, l’agitato immobile, l’uno duoi, il superiore inferiore, il sinistro destro, il quadro tondo, il piano profondo, il propinquo lontano, e tante altre fallacie . . .” 34 giuseppe veltri sopra I due massimi sistemi del mondo:81 “I have considered as defects and deceptions of the lenses those things which other people have admired as stupendous achievements.”82 Galileo and his “successors” in astro- nomic discoveries were aware of the technical troubles with this instrument, especially in reference to lenses, a problem known as spherical and chromatic aberration, later solved by Newton. I do not think that Luzzatto is addressing these technical aspects of the telescope. For he does not speak of distortion of color because of refraction; rather, he wants to find its weaknesses for confirming his thesis of the defect of the senses. Luzzatto’s method of reasoning is, however, acceptable in one aspect: (the defect of) the telescope does convince him to conclude that the eye is defective, because the eye per se cannot realize and recognize reality.83 Note the fine increase in circular argumentation: ancient optical vision of the firmament is defective, since the new discovery of the telescope shows that optical vision per se is defective. Some centuries later, a descendant of the Luzzattos, Shmu’el David Luzzatto, commonly called Shadal, wrote some notes on the family’s genealogical tree and with reference to the Socrate of Simone. There he tries to justify the skeptical tendency of his ancestor, referring to the century of Descartes, to the crisis of Aristotelianism and therefore of the Scholastics, and the genesis of ancient Greek philosophy. Against the background of a skeptical approach to salutary beliefs (“salutari credenze”), the rabbi of Venice, erudite “philosopher and at same time a religious man”—as Shadal put it—considered it to be profit- able to belief and useful to society to lighten the uncertainty of human speculation. Shadal considered the Socrate to be an apologetic work designed to humiliate the temerity of false philosophers, supplying the believers with an apologetic arsenal against their attacks.84

81 italian edition: Galileo Galilei, Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, ed. Fabio Attori (Milan: Sansoni, 2001), 349. 82 “. . . ho creduto esser fallaci e inganni de i cristalli quelle che altri hanno ammirate per operazioni stupende.” 83 Perhaps Luzzatto is addressing here the mechanical problem of scaling, which Galileo deals with in his last work Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche (1638); see the English version: Two New Sciences, translated with introduction and notes by Stillman Drake (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974). On scaling, see also Michael S. Mahoney, “Sketching Science in the Seventeenth Century,” in http://www.princeton .edu/~hos/mike/articles/whysketch/whysketch.html (last accessed, March 2011, 9). 84 samuel David Luzzatto, Autobiografia di S. D. Luzzatto preceduta da alcune notizie storico-letterarie sulla famiglia Luzzato a datare dal secolo decimosesto (Padova: Crescini, 1878), 7. The biographical and genealogical notices have been translated into German and published in Vienna in 1847 by Isidor Busch, “Selbstbiographie des S. D. Luzzatto principles of jewish skeptical thought 35

There is much truth in this. However, if, on the one hand, the rabbi of Venice argues against the defects of knowledge gained through the senses and therefore of all knowledge based on this, on the other hand, he did not “absolve” his Socrate of the accusation of having attacked authority. Perhaps he was aware that every method directed against the human sciences can also be used against religion.

Conclusion

Luzzatto’s book is a deconstruction ante litteram of the whole edifice of empirical knowledge. For he assumed that all knowledge, tested by the intellect, is a product of the senses; these are of course not devoid of error. Luzzatto’s book is a skeptical approach to ancient and modern epistemology, not a treatise on theology. His intention, as Ruderman rightly stresses following Luzzatto’s own words, is to subvert “human knowledge,” adopting a mode of reflection that is “‘tentative, skeptical, and doubting’ rather than ‘dogmatic and assertive.’”85 Sometime later, Spinoza used the same method for analyzing “divine” knowledge, the theology of Hebrew and Latin tradition. In the introduction to the “benigno lettore,” Luzzatto is unmistakably clear: “Socrates confutes human, not inspired knowledge, infused by a superior mind.”86 It is difficult to know whether he was aware that the same skeptical method could be used when examining “divine” knowledge.87 Although the distance from rational to theological skepticism is small, the existing difference between them should be maintained.88 The problem he is

nebst vorangeschickten historischen und literarischen Nachrichten über die Familie Luzzatto seit dem XVI. Jahrhundert; aus dem noch ungedruckten italienischen Origi- nale übersetzt,” Kalender und Jahrbuch der Israeliten 6 (1847–1848), 95–116. The Italian perished in a flood—as the translator Davide Lotti reported in his edition published by Crescini. 85 ruderman, “Science,” 163. 86 luzzatto, Socrate, 1: “. . . confuta Socrate il sapere humano, non l’inspirato, & infuso da mente superiore.” 87 the inconsistency of some Jewish scholars of the Renaissance is known, such as Azaria de’ Rossi, who considered rabbinical sources as historically irrelevant, but defended the biblical aggadah and halakhah, considering them as true and historically reliable; see Veltri, “The Humanist Sense of History,” 372–393. 88 that is what Charles B. Schmitt, “The Rediscovery of Ancient Skepticism,” 229, also wants to stress: “Fideism—the position that faith alone provides the way to truth and that philosophical activity is of no avail—was a fairly common attitude among Renaissance skeptics.” In the footnotes, he mentions two of examples of fideist skepticism, Gianfrancesco Pico and Pedro de Valencia. 36 giuseppe veltri trying to resolve is very different from Moscato’s division of profane and holy sciences. While Moscato belittled the importance of the sciences, he did not totally reject them. The main sin of the sciences is not to search for agreement with the Torah, although their claim is very similar to that of religion, namely to attain the perfection of God. They are clearly on the false way to obtain it. Or is monotheism an obstacle to the human purpose to be like him, as Nietzsche would say? Luzzatto seems to reject a priori the authority of sciences, knowledge of the senses, and logical inference, advocating instead systematic doubt. Only doubt can preserve humans from being condemned by the agora, for the agora seeks to preserve truth and accepted moral customs. The deviation is not completely desirable, but it is socially and philosophically necessary. 3. Moscato as Eulogizer

Marc Saperstein

This essay brings together two themes: Judah Moscato as preacher, and the eulogy as a genre of Jewish homiletical literature. Each of these is a topic that has led to significant research and publication. Yet the overlap of the two—Moscato as eulogist—explores some still uncharted territory. Discussions of Moscato as preacher, focusing largely on his rhetoric, tend to avoid the four eulogies in his collection.1 And the stimulating article by Elliott Horowitz on the emergence of the eulogy in the second half of the sixteenth century as a recognized genre among Italian Jews worthy of preservation and publication discusses eulogies by four Italian contemporaries of Moscato—Isaac de Lattes, Abraham Sant’Angelo, Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen, and Leon Modena—but (except for one incidental reference) completely ignores the eulogies of Moscato.2

1 For an earlier bibliography, see Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching 1200–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 254, n. 6, to which must be added Moshe Idel, “Judah Moscato: A Late Renaissance Jewish Preacher,” in Preachers of the Ital- ian Ghetto, ed. David B. Ruderman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 41–66. Israel Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching (Cincinnati: HUC Press, 1939), chapter 5, includes references and quotations to the eulogies but does not consider them as a discrete genre. Alexander Altman, “Ars Rhetorica as Reflected in Some Jewish Figures of the Italian Renaissance,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 1–22, does not refer to any of the eulogies, nor does Joseph Dan, Sifrut ha-Musar we-ha-Derush ( Jerusalem: Keter, 1975). A Hebrew University source collection called Mivar derushim mi-sefer nefuot yehudah, put together by Moshe Idel for a course in 1980, contains texts of sixteen Moscato sermons, but not one of the four eulogies. An earlier collection put together by Yoram Jakobson in 1975 includes ten of Moscato’s sermons, but no eulogy. 2 Elliott Horowitz, “Speaking of the Dead: The Emergence of the Eulogy among Italian Jewry of the Sixteenth Century,” in Preachers of the Italian Ghetto, 105–162. See also the briefer and more general overview in Robert Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 277–280. On the early history of medieval Jewish eulogy, see Marc Saperstein, “Your Voice Like a Ram’s Horn”: Themes and Texts in Traditional Jewish Preaching (Cincinnati: HUC Press, 1996), 367–370. For contemporary (16th century) Christian eulogies, see Ralph Houlbrooke, Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 1480–1750 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), chapter 10, “Funereal Sermons”, Peter Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 156–169; Larissa Taylor, Soldiers of Christ: Preaching in 38 marc saperstein

While I will not repeat here the important questions raised by Horowitz in his opening paragraph, I would add some additional questions. What is the relationship between the “dazzling rhetoric,” including complex allusions and wordplay in the Hebrew text, and the rhetoric of the sermon as actually delivered in Italian? In other words, which of the rhetorical devices were added by the preacher specifically for the printed Hebrew text? What were the circumstances of delivery: immediately after the death, in the cemetery? At a memorial service at the end of the sheloshim? In the synagogue? Before a confraternity?3 When news of the death of a distant scholar arrived? Was the text before us the only eulogy offered, or one of several on the same occasion? Was there a special sub-genre for praises of a rabbi and scholar that would not apply to non-rabbinical leaders of a community, or more ordinary Jews? Where do we hear the personal voice of the preacher, cutting through thickets of dense erudition and somewhat sterile conventions, speaking of his own genuine feelings, his individual relationship with the deceased? Can we easily distinguish between conventional praises of wisdom or piety, and a perceptive characterization of a unique individual? The following are some components and characteristics of Moscato’s eulogies that deserve investigation.

Titles

All the sermons in Moscato’s collection have titles, generally based on biblical or (in a few cases) rabbinical or liturgical phrases.4 This practice would appear to be Moscato’s innovation: I would not swear that his are the first but I have not found an earlier collection of Jewish sermons with this feature.5 The general pattern in earlier collections of

Late Medieval and Reformation France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 18–19; Hilary Dansey Smith, Preaching in the Spanish Golden Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 30; John W. O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome (Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 1979), 169. 3 see the two eulogies given by Saul Levi Morteira for David Farar, one in the cemetery at the time of the funeral, obviously prepared in haste, the second—far more elaborate and polished—delivered at the end of the sheloshim: Saperstein, “Your Voice [. . .],” 367–410. 4 Bettan notes this (196), but does not comment on it as an innovation. 5 Half a century later, Saul Levi Morteira gave a title to each of his many hundreds of sermons but his teacher, Leon Modena, Moscato’s younger contemporary, did not moscato as eulogizer 39

Spanish or Ottoman sermons is to identify the sermon simply by the parashah, or by the circumstances of delivery. It is unclear whether the title would have been announced by the preacher (or someone else) at the very beginning. Its function in the printed text is twofold: to give the reader an idea of the content or the thematic texture through a concise phrase, and to enable the preacher to refer the reader to a different sermon in the collection. The titles of Moscato’s four published eulogies are:

32. Keter Shem ov ‘Oleh, “The Crown of a Good Name is Superior” (Avot 4,17), 33. Yeridat Pela’im, “An Appalling Decline” (cf. Lamentations 1:9), 34. Tif’eret ha-Adam, “The Splendor of Man” (cf. Isaiah 44:13), and 35. el Shaddai, “The Shadow of the Almighty” (Psalms 91:1).

The Deceased

The subjects of the eulogies were: 32. R. Samuel Cases, Rabbi in Mantua and Bologna, who died on Erev Rosh Hashanah (7 September 1572 in the Julian calendar); the eulogy was delivered at a gathering in the Great Synagogue of the Italians (Bet-Knesset ha-Gedolah me-ha-Lo‘azim) on the Fast of Gedaliah 5333.6

(at least in his published volume). As for contemporary Italian preachers, the pattern seems to be identifying the sermon by a brief summary of its central content, such as “Sermon on the True Peace of the Christian” (Predica della vera pace del christiano, 1549) or “Sermon on Self-Knowledge” (Predica della cognitione di se stesso, 1549), or “Sermon on Persecution and on the Victory of the Holy Church” (Predica delle persecutioni, et delle vittorie della Santa Chiesa, 1546). These are midway between simply stating the occasion and an original title as used by Moscato. I am grateful to Emily Michelson for this information. Cf. the similar use of titles based on content alongside the use of true original titles in contemporary English preaching: In God’s Name: Examples of Preaching in England, 1534–1662, ed. John Chandos (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971), vii–viii. 6 on Cases, see Shlomo Simonsohn, Toledot ha-Yehudim be-Dukasut Mantovah, 2 vols. ( Jerusalem: Kiryat Sepher, 1962–1964), 2:542. He edited the Meqor ayyim of Samuel Zarza, published at Mantua in 1559. Azariah de’ Rossi mentions a manuscript of a Hebrew translation of Al-Farghani’s Astronomy “that belonged to the heir of the wise Cases of blessed memory” (Light of the Eyes, translated and annotated by Johanna Weinberg [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001], 532). This shows that de’ Rossi was still writing toward the end of 1572 or even in early 1573 (long enough after the death of Cases that his heir would take possession of the manuscript and allow de’ Rossi to consult it). 40 marc saperstein

33. R. Moses Provenzali, described by Simonsohn as the greatest of the sixteenth-century Mantuan Rabbis. He died on 4 Elul (9 August) 1576 but the eulogy was delivered also on the Fast of Gedaliah, the day before the end of the sheloshim (6 September), because Moscato was indisposed with illness at the time of the funeral (see below). Early in the eulogy, Moscato refers to R. Zalman Katz (Shelomoh Cohen), who had died shortly before Provenzali, also in Mantua; the sheloshim had recently ended.7 34. R. Samuel Romilli, a rabbi from a banker’s family, who died during the week of parashat Va-Yera 5337 (beginning 19 October 1576); the eulogy was delivered during the same week.8 35. R. Isaac Foa, rabbi of Reggio, who had visited Mantua in 1562 to urge greater effort in education.9 He was also eulogized by Katzenellenbogen, Sermon No. 5, using the same theme-verse, and indicating more of a personal relationship than Moscato may have had. No date is given for his death; the eulogy was delivered during parashat Va-Yera.

Names

One distinctive characteristic of the eulogy is the use of the name of the deceased for homiletical purposes. 32. Moscato plays on the name Samuel in his eulogy for Samuel Cases: the good name (shem ov) in the title of the sermon is an important theme in the sermon, and Moscato makes the Hebrew for “his name” (shemo) into the first component of Shemuel. Thus “his name

7 Simonsohn, Toledot ha-Yehudim, 2:536–537. On Provenzali (and especially his responsa), see Abraham David, “Provençal, Moses ben Abraham,” Encyclopedia Judaica; Robert Bonfil,Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy (London: Littman Library, 1993), 24–44, 96–98, 202–206 (for a reference in the eulogy to the legal questions he received and replied to, see 89c top). For a tense period in his career, see Ephraim Kupfer, “Haramat ‘Keter Torah me-al rosho’ shel R. Moshe Provenzali we-nusa havdalah shelo,” Sinai 63 (1968): 137–160. On Katz, see Katzenellenbo- gen’s eulogy (Sheneim Esar Derashot, Sermon 11), parashat Ki Tee’ (Deut. 21:22); cf. Saperstein, “Italian Jewish Preaching: An Overview,” in Preachers of the Italian Ghetto, 34–35, n. 1. 8 simonsohn, Toledot ha-Yehudim, 543. 9 Ibidem, 425. moscato as eulogizer 41 is linked to God (shemo le-el) according to the pattern of our language which expresses great things by linking the matter with God, as in harere el, the great mountains (Psalms 36:7)” (81d bot).10 33. With Moses Provenzali, the name plays a significant role. It is first introduced playfully with a characteristic gematria: “The ark of God has been taken” (1 Samuel 4:17), for the numerical value of aron ha-Elohim [348] equals the value of Moshe [345], when we add three for the letters in the name Moshe to that number” (88d). Soon the name and the link with the biblical Moses will function in a far more significant manner. “How could I recount the power of his praises?” Moscato asks rhetorically in the traditional topos of modesty, “if I did not believe that I would see light through his resplendent light, for the skin of the face of Moses was radiant (cf. Exodus 34:29) like the face of the sun (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 75a).” From this assertion—that the sun-like radiance of the face of Moses (in the Bible/the deceased) would provide the preacher with the required illumination to fulfil his task—he moves on to a discussion of the six characteristics of the sun in the teachings of the Platonists, all of which are then applied to the deceased (88d). 34. samuel (Romilli)—nothing on the name. 35. isaac (Foa): Moscato plays on the name Yiaq, stating at the beginning that the word gever in gavra rabba is numerically equivalent to Yiaq if you add three for the number of letters in gever, making 208 (93b). In the middle of the eulogy, he notes that Yiaq is an acronym for the Hebrew words representing the four levels of being: Yesodot, ome’ah, ai, Qadosh, teaching that “all his components agree to complete the image of God that is in him by carrying out the will of His creator” (95b top). Still later in the eulogy, he returns once again to the name: “We may take a reference and sign for this in his name Yiaq,” using a well-known verse perhaps unexpectedly from the eshet ayil passage of Proverbs: “For he is dressed in strength and beauty, and he laughs (yiaq) at the final day (cf. Proverbs 31:25) when he arrives at his desired destination, where the weary may find rest” (95c).

10 references to Nefuot Yehudah are to the Warsaw 1871 edition, with page and column number, sometimes accompanied by “top,” “mid,” or “bot” in parentheses. 42 marc saperstein

Nose’

Characteristic of the Spanish preaching tradition, the nose’, or theme verse from the weekly Torah lesson, is read at the very beginning of the sermon.11 In Moscato’s eulogies, it usually is not a major focal point of the sermon and does not determine its structure or substance, but is often introduced at a significant point in the discourse. 32. the nose’ of the eulogy for Samuel Cases is the first verse in the lesson Ha’azinu—“Give ear, O Heavens, let me speak; Let the earth hear the words I utter” (Deut. 32:1)—to which Moscato gives an allegorical intepretation. The esoteric topic of Moses’s speech is a “journey to the level of perfection in theoretical and practical [virtues].” “Heavens” represents theoretical intellect, “earth” practical intellect, “rain” in the second verse is an abundant outpouring that overflows from the intellect and produces good deeds (83d). He then applies this general principle to the deceased. Later in the eulogy he recapitulates and applies the nose’: “Now, O princes, be wise, and listen, O heavens, and hear, O earth, a man who is like his blessing (cf. Gen. 49:28) at the level of his importance, for ‘my discourse shall come down as the rain’ (Deut. 32:2), ‘because my ear received a whisper from him’ ( Job 4:12). ‘My speech shall distill as the dew,’ which I say, based on experience. From the power of this man in the world, good and beneficial to all, the earth will bring forth grass” (84b mid). And a final return to the nose’, near the end, where the preacher’s words produce the rain of tears, and the recognition and remembrance of the perfection that has been lost will result in praise of God (Deut. 32:3), who will provide comfort and wipe away the tears (84c). 33. the nose’ from Ha’azinu in the eulogy for Moses Provenzali is especially apposite, as it contains both the name of the deceased and ,אל משה בעצם היום הזה לאמר עלה אל הר העברים הזה :the occasion “To Moses on that very day, saying, Ascend to this Mount of Abarim” (Deut. 32:48–49).12 Near the beginning of the eulogy, he plays with the Hebrew word Abarim, applying it to the task of the eulogist by trans- forming it into three related Hebrew words: “ascend to tell the praises

11 see Saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 66–73. 12 Note that the nose’ is taken from the end of one verse and the beginning of the next. For an earlier example of this, see Saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 70, n. 17. moscato as eulogizer 43 of this mountain of the Hebrews (‘Ivrim),” ascend to arouse listeners to anger (‘evrah) and sorrow over their loss, and ascend into the evenings (‘aravim), representing the darkness that has come over the world with his passing. This sort of language play must have been even more chal- lenging to listeners in the macaronic Italian of the delivery.13 Toward the end of the eulogy, following a dramatic passage that I will quote later, Moscato says, “Are these not the words of the Lord our God who is pleased with you, showing that He is ready and prepared to receive you in His bosom with genuine cordiality (be-sever panim yafot) and with great affection to embrace you with His holy arm. Now you, blessed of the Lord, ascend there, exulting and joyous, for how great is the goodness stored away for you in the rock of your origin (Num. 24:21). It is as our theme verse states, ‘To Moses on that very day, saying, Ascend to this Mount of Abarim,’ for from a miser- able, precarious life, you will pass to eternal and blessed life, while we walk onward weeping because of the setting of our sun. For the time of your disappearance is as morning for your soul, but as night for all of us” (89d). 34. Genesis 22:15–16 fits the central thesis of the sermon: that the perfect man is higher than angels. This is based on an allegorical interpretation of the ‘Aqedah (92a mid). At the end the angel cries out in recognition of Abraham’s greatness: “Now I know that you fear God more than I do because of the opposition of your impulses, for you were crafted from matter and the combination of opposites, as earlier explained, and you have not spared your son, your only son, alluding to the subduing of matter and elevating it as well to the level of spirituality” (92a mid). Moscato’s allegorical interpretation of the ‘Aqedah is that the Sages (in a Tanuma comment on Ps. 8: 5) hinted that the father, namely the intellect, slaughters his son, meaning that he overcomes his physical nature, which in turn consents to be subdued under it, thereby ascending to the level of spirituality. As we know, a Kulturkampf broke out in the early fourteenth century condemning the interpretation attributed to extreme philosophers that Abraham and Sarah were allegorical representations of matter and form.14 Here we have Moscato asserting

13 on the macaronic integration of Hebrew into a sermon delivered in Italian, see ibidem, 41. 14 this allegorical interpretation was actually included in the text of the second ban proclaimed by Solomon ibn Adret in the summer of 1305; see, for example, 44 marc saperstein that Abraham and Isaac were intellect and corporeality in a context that seems entirely beyond controversy or reproach. This reveals the problems of simplistic categorizations of individuals as “rationalist” or “anti-rationalist.”15 35. genesis 18:19. He uses the nose’ in a somewhat incidental manner: We know how he [the deceased] commanded his children and his entire household after him, “to keep the way of the Lord etc. [by doing what is just and right],” as it says in our nose’ (95c).

Ma’amar

Moscato’s discussion of the ma’amar, the rabbinical text chosen to be read immediately after the nose’ at the beginning of the sermon, is characterized by his use of the structuring device that I have called “the method of doubts.”16 Well known from Abravanel’s biblical commentaries, this technique for analysis of a discrete text begins by raising a series of “doubts” (sfeqot, the Hebrew equivalent of the Scholastic dubitationes): difficulties or questions that arise regarding the text. Then, sometimes after an introductory passage (haqdamah) that sets out fundamental premises or conclusions on which the subsequent discussion will be based, the author continues by resolving each of the sfeqot that has been raised. Moscato uses this technique in three of the four eulogies that he published. In the fourth case—a statement that the deeds of the righteous are greater than the creation of heaven and earth (Ketubbot 5a)— he explicitly states, “I will not raise its sfeqot, for they are many and

Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: JPS, 1961), 1: 302; Abraham S. Halkin, “Yedaiah Bedershi’s Apology,” in Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 165–167. 15 see for example Isaac Barzilay, Between Reason and Faith: Anti-Rationalism in Italian Jewish Thought 1200–1650 (The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 1967), chapter 9, 167–191, esp. 190 on the “moderate character” of “Moscato’s anti-rationalism,” and Adam Shear, The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 143–144. 16 see on this Marc Saperstein, “The Method of Doubts: Problematizing the Bible in Late Medieval Jewish Exegesis,” in With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exe- gesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Barry D. Walfish, and Joseph W. Goering (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 133–156. Continuity of this tradition following the Expulsion and before Moscato can be seen in the sermons of Joseph Garçon, Joseph ben ayyim of Benevento, Moses Almosnino, and others. moscato as eulogizer 45 obvious (lit.: ‘not concealed from human eyes’).” This material is not exclusive to the eulogy genre; it can be found in many other fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sermons, as well as other genres of Jewish writing, and there is no need to provide details.17

Exegesis

Another component of these eulogies—and this pertains to Moscato’s other sermons and much of contemporary Jewish preaching—is sustained exegetical discussion of biblical passages that may not seem to have any intrinsic connection to the occasion, but are interpreted in light of the underlying topic of the sermon. In many cases, these passages could be removed without detracting from the flow of the sermon.18 It almost seems as if they might be used as “filler” material to lengthen an address to a time period deemed appropriately significant for a major memorial occasion. I will simply note the following passages that Moscato discusses continuously in two of his eulogies: Ecclesiastes 3 (33:86c–87c) and Deut. 32:6–12 (33:87c–87d)—both in the eulogy for Provenzali; Psalm 8 (34:92b–c).

External material

The sources used by Moscato outside the canon of traditional Jewish texts (Bible and commentators, Talmud, Midrash) seem to be characteristic of the rest of his sermons and his commentary on the Kuzari

17 Note also Moscato’s defense of the value of serious wrestling with textual and conceptual issues in the context of the book of Job. Like the deceased he is eulogizing, Job was concerned with benefiting others: this is why he engaged in ongoing argumentation until the day of his death with those who came to comfort him, “For his tar’omet with his companions was only a give and take intended so that from the disputation the truth about the mystery of divine providence would be clarified” (83b). The phrase “from the disputation the truth will be clarified” (mi-tokh ha-wikkua yitbarer ha-emet) was used by Jewish writers to justify the use of the scholastic formal “disputed question” in their sermons, in which arguments defending both sides of a theological proposition are proposed, and then eventually the arguments for the erroneous position are refuted. See Saperstein, “Your Voice [. . .],” 84–86 and elsewhere in that book according to the index. 18 cf. the discussion of this regarding the sermons of Moses Almosnino in Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, 219–220, with examples in the following pages. 46 marc saperstein

(to which he frequently refers).19 The Kabbalistic material (including passages from Christian Kabbalists) has been discussed by Joseph Dan and Moshe Idel.20 Citations of Aristotle seem routine,21 as do references to Maimonides, Baya ibn Paquda, Joseph Albo, Isaac Arama, Abraham Bibago, and others.22 One intriguing reference that deserves to be investigated is triggered by the general statement that no crea- ture is capable of enduring fire, which is immediately problematized: Even though we recognize what has been told about the salamander, this is not the place [to discuss it further].23 Many hold also that the element of fire does not really exist, seeking to explain this from the words of the Philosopher [Aristotle] in the first book of his Sefer ha-Otot. The sage in the Kuzari 5,14 tended toward this view, as we have explained there (92d).24 I have already mentioned his discussion of the “Platonists’” teachings about the six distinctive aspects of the sun (88d). To me, most striking is a passage brought in near the conclusion of the eulogy for R. Isaac Foà, about the death of Socrates.

19 For references to the Kuzari in his eulogies (sometimes with his own commentary), see 86b, 92a, 92d, 94b, citing Aristotle. On the Kuzari commentary, see Adam Shear, “Judah Moscato’s Scholarly Self-Image and the Question of Jewish Human- ism,” in Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern Italy, ed. David B. Rud- erman and Giuseppe Veltri (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 159–160; idem, Kuzari, 135–169. 20 Joseph Dan, “Derush ‘Tefilah be-dim‘ah’ le-R. Yehudah Moscato,” Sinai 76 (1975): 210–232; Moshe Idel, “Judah Moscato.” 21 Ethics 81d, 85c (33), Sefer ha-Otot (92d), Sefer ha-Hawayah (88d). 22 Maimonides Guide I,54 (84b), Baya (88c (33), Albo (92c, 93a), Arama (frequently from ‘Aqedat Yiaq, also his commentary on Job); Bibago, Derekh Emunah (beginning of 34, 90c): seven ways in which God is contrasted with hule. 23 On the close association of the salamander and fire, see Babylonian Talmud, aggigah 27a and Rashi on Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 63b. The source of the idea that salamanders were impervious to fire may be Aristotle, Historia Animalium 5,19: “That it is possible for the bodies of certain animals to remain in fire without being burnt is rendered evident by the salamander. For this animal, as they say, while it walks through the fire it extinguishes it.” 24 reference is apparently to Aristotle’s Meteorology, translated into Hebrew by Samuel ibn Tibbon as Sefer Otot ha-Shamayim. See Otot Ha-Shamayim: Samuel ibn Tib- bon’s Hebrew Version of Aristotle’s Meteorology, edited and translated by Resianne Fontaine (Leiden: Brill, 1995), esp. 15–19; Resianne Fontaine, “The Reception of Aristotle’s Meteorology in Hebrew Scientific Writings of the Thirteenth Century,” Aleph 1 (2001): 101–139; Aviezer Ravitzky, “Aristotle’s Meteorology and the Maimonidean Modes of Interpreting the Account of Creation,” Aleph 8 (2008): 361–400. The chapter of the Kuzari cited is one in which the sage challenges the views of many philosophers regarding the four elements, especially elemental fire; Moscato provides background to this in his commentary, but does not cite Aristotle’s Meteorology as a source. moscato as eulogizer 47

Very close to the meaning of this point of ours is what Plato recounts in his book, Phaedo: His teacher Socrates, one of the righteous among the Gentiles, was slanderously accused of not worshipping their gods, and turning the youth away from the service of their gods; therefore they condemned him to death and made him drink a deadly poison as devised by their experts. He commanded that a cockerel be sacrificed at the time of his burial, saying in his final words, “We owe a cockerel to the Supreme Benefactor; be sure to fulfil this obligation, do not overlook it.”25 Some have said in explaining this, that since the cockerel calls out and proclaims that the day is near to come, he meant to indicate through the sacrifice that by the death of the body, the true day would shine for his soul, and that he was prepared soon to encounter light, the light of the supernal sun proclaimed by the call of the cockerel. That is why he made of it a sacrificial offering by fire. Others have said that the nature of the cockerel is to be suffused with the desire to mate, as the Philosopher wrote, and Socrates was the opposite of this, totally removed from this contemptible indignity (peitut), he wanted to demonstrate this by sacrificing that cockerel, which is his antithesis. Still others have said that he did this in order to teach that his words would awaken people from the sleep of their laziness and rouse them to the most worthy ethical qualities, as the cockerel arouses people by its call to get up from their sleep to carry out their daily tasks. But I have a different slant on this [. . .] (95c–d)26

Analogies, parables, meshalim

The mashal is an integral component of much Jewish preaching.27 The Hebrew word is used with a variety of meanings: in the plural as the title for the biblical book of Proverbs; in the singular for a whole range of literary genres intended to illustrate an abstract point in a concrete

25 in this passage, “Supreme Benefactor” (ha-meiv ha-elyon) replaces “Aesculapius.” If this is based on the actual text of the Phaedo as it appears to be, Moscato probably used the translation of Marsilio Ficino (e.g., Omnia divini Platonis opera, translatione Marsilii Ficini [Basel, 1546]). Here the key statement reads, “O Crito, Aesculapio gallum debemus, quem reddite, neque negligatis” (520). As Aesculapius was the Greek god of medicine and healing, the link with “benefactor” is understandable, but ha-meiv ha-elyon is surprising, as it does not appear to be a common phrase in Hebrew texts. 26 sandra Peterson, in “An Authentically Socratic Conclusion in Plato’s Phaedo: Socrates’ Debt to Aesculapius,” lists twenty-one modern interpretations of Socrates’ last words before giving her own, none of which corresponds to any of the interpretations provided by Moscato: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~peter009/debt.pdf. 27 saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 93–103. 48 marc saperstein manner, ranging from a simple analogy to parable, exemplum, and allegory. In a stunning example of linguistic imperialism, Moscato himself maintained that the word simile was derived from the Hebrew mashal with a transposition of the first and second Hebrew letters.28 In the present texts, there is nothing nearly as spectacular as the dramatic narratives used by Leon Modena.29 They may have been effective, however, in capturing the attention of listeners and gaining assent for the point being made. a. The first eulogy contains an example of a parable from commercial life, although it cannot be said to reflect sixteenth century Italy, as it is taken from Baya ibn Paquda’s ovot ha-Levavot (“Love of God,” ch. 6). The general point is drawn from the ma’amar about the importantance of a “good name” (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 17a); Moscato makes this the basis of a fundamental assertion about the importance of transcending the attainment of individual perfection by acting in a way that benefits others. Thus a learned teacher is superior to a brilliant scholar who shows no interest in teaching. Baya’s parable is about two merchants who come to town. The first has ten dinars and, increasing his principal tenfold, ends with one hundred dinars; the second doubles his principal, but has much more to start with, ending with ten thousand dinars. While the second merchant’s percentage of profit is much smaller than that of the first, because of his substantially higher base, he makes five thousand dinars profit, compared with ninety dinars for the first. The analogy is to a person who concentrates only on his own soul as compared with the person who includes benefiting others: the second will earn much more merit (82c).30 b. the second, near the introduction to the second eulogy, is a medical analogy to illustrate the conventional claim of incapacity to preach a eulogy in tension with the obligation to do so [below at n. 36].

28 sermon 31, 76c. 29 saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 98–100. 30 another analogy from commercial life is used in the second eulogy, for Moses Provenzali, regarding intellectual life. Here it is not the merchant but the money- changer (shulani see Bava Meia 2,3; 3,10). When he receives a sack of coins, he first counts the coins brought to him, then weighs them, and only then does he circulate them with correct information about their value. (This, he says, is similar to a parable of Bahya in his introduction to ovot ha-Levavot). That is the pattern of a wise man dealing with host of teachings: he must judiciously weigh and evaluate the ideas himself before dispensing them to others, a model reflected in Provenzali’s relationship to the preacher (88c). moscato as eulogizer 49

I am torn between these two opposite forces this way and that. I compare myself to a man who is seized with a tremor in one of his limbs. The physicians tell us that the symptom is the product of two opposite movements. The illness that has attacked that limb makes it seem heavy, tending to drop down, while the natural force in it tends to elevate it upward. Thus the opposition between these two forces leads to uncontrollable movements, which the physicians call palsy.31 This is the cir- cumstance that has befallen me. (85a bot) c. the third analogy is from the realm of the plastic arts. It comes from the third eulogy, “Tif’eret ha-Adam,” in which a central theme is the superiority of the human being above the angels. This seems intui- tively problematic, and Moscato illustrates one aspect by reminding his listeners that “delicate drawings made on rough material reveal the skill of the artist more than the same drawings made on fine material [. . .] for the artist does not inspire as much praise for a gold vessel on which he engraves delicate drawings as he would acquire stature and fame by doing such work on iron.” The gold represents the angels, the iron human beings; God’s crowning achievement is creating His masterpiece from base material, as in the verse, “God made man from the dust of the earth” (Genesis 1:27) (92c).32 d. Finally an analogy from the political realm is brought in order to clarify the progression of Psalm 8. If heavenly beings obey God, it is obvious that earthly beings will also do this; why was it necessary to mention human beings? To answer this, the preacher brings an analogy taken from Meir ibn Gabbai’s Mar’ot Elohim, eleq ha-takhlit (chap. 70): it is no surprise that intelligent human inhabitants would obey and honor the king of their realm, for that is the rational way to behave. If, by contrast, a lion, which behaves according to irrational instinct, obeys the king, that truly proves the greatness of his rule. The preacher concludes with a recommendation to his listeners: “The author went on at length: take the book and look it up” (92d).33

31 Ra‘ad we-ree u-falaut; cf. RaDaK on Jer 49:24 and Isa. 21:4, Rashi on Jer. 49:16. This passage was cited by Ben Yehudah in his Milon entry for resh-et-et 13:6562), cf. also ibidem, 10:4966 for citations from Hippocrates and Galen under the word palaut. 32 For analogies drawn from the world of art, especially painting, in the sermons of Saul Levi Morteira, see Marc Saperstein, “Ein Li ‘Eseq ba-Nistarot’ : Saul Levi Morteira’s Sermons on Parashat Bereshit” in Creation and Re-Creation in Jewish Thought: Festschrift in Honor of Joseph Dan, ed. Rachel Elior and Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 232–239. 33 Meir ibn Gabbai’s Mar’ot Elohim, generally known as Avodat ha-qodesh, was first published in Venice in 1567; eleq ha-takhlit is the third of four parts. It is worth noting 50 marc saperstein

Personal material

In the introduction to my survey article published in Preachers of the Italian Ghetto, I cited Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen’s eulogy for Judah Moscato. After a general discussion of themes appropriate to the time of year (between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) and the occasion (a eulogy for one of the great preachers of the age), he continues: “Here I began to recount the praises of the deceased, and to show how these four qualities were present in him to perfection.” We might expect that for most listeners on that occasion, this would be the high point of the eulogy, as it would be for us. Yet preparing his material for publication, Katzenellenbogen apparently decided that this personal tribute, applicable to only one individual and therefore ephemeral, was not worth printing. Only the theoretical part of the discourse, the engagement with classical Jewish texts and aspects of religious thought, would be of permanent significance. Our expectations are of course quite different. We do not look to the sermon in general and the eulogy in particular for original contributions to Jewish thought. What is most important for us is its value in illuminating the unique qualities of an individual as they were perceived by a contemporary, descriptions that transcend the standard topoi of encomium. We are fortunate, therefore, that Moscato himself did not eliminate from his printed texts such passages.34 Let us consider, for example, the material that comes near the end of his eulogy for Samuel Cases. Speaking of his mortal illness, Moscato asserts that “he seized the pattern (umanato) of Job with regard to his suffering the afflictions of his illness with strong love, never departing from his cleaving to God.” His concern for the other inhabitants of the city was renowned: “for on the day of his death, we investigated and did not find a single child, male or female, who did not know in detail the purity of this man” (84a–b).

that there were apparently sufficient copies available for the preacher to recommend his listeners to consult the book. 34 actually, he eliminated from the written text material a discussion of some Tal- mudic material that he included in the oral delivery, as he noted in his long eulogy for Moses Provenzali. Citing the Talmudic discussion of the honor done to Heze- kiah at his death (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Qama 16b–17a, on 2 Chronicles 32:33), Moscato continues: “In fulfilment of this, we found examples given in the Gemara; I said them, but I will not mention them [here] lest the material become excessively long” (148a). moscato as eulogizer 51

These statements might be viewed as hyperbole. But then Moscato recounts for his listeners the preoccupations of the deceased in the final hours of his life in a passage that is powerfully vivid: During the night preceding the day of his death, he was tossing and turning on his bed from his mortal illness. He asked that the book of Psalms be brought before him; those who attended him read aloud many of the Psalms, and he too made audible “the splendor of the divine voice” (Psalms 29:4), reciting weakly with his ebbing life force. When they He“ ,זובח תודה יכבדני ושם דרך אראנו בישע אלהים ,reached the verse who sacrifices a thank offering honors Me, and to him who points the way I will show the salvation of God” (Psalms 50:23), he set a boundary that was not to be crossed, saying “Stop, stop, do not pass beyond this.” They heeded his voice and did not continue to read in his presence. From this we see by allusion that he offered himself as a sacrifice to atone for his generation, revealing himself as the source of divine salvation [. . .] (84d).35 The final point—that the death of the righteous atones for the generation—is a commonplace of eulogistic literature. But it is occasioned here by a unique vignette: the description of a pious man, knowing that he is about to die, requesting to hear the words of Tehillim, and choosing precisely the verse that he wanted to be his last. It is unclear from this description whether Moscato was present at that moment, or reported it as recounted by others. But as he draws near to the end of his eulogy, he describes an encounter with the deceased unique to himself, from which the preacher derived new insight into a familiar biblical text: He was speaking to me of this [the sweet kisses of divine intimacy] not many days ago, when I was discussing the verse, Yishakeni mi-neshikot pihu, “Let him give me the kisses of his mouth (pihu)” (Song of Songs 1:2). I his ,פיהו was bewildered at the [apparently superfluous] heh in the word mouth. Why did the author not spell it the way he did in the verse, “He ”and tongue guards himself from trouble (פיו) who guards his mouth (Proverbs 21:23)? [. . .] Then he provided his own answer: Since the word -we derive the insight that the word “his mouth” writ ,פיהו was written ten in Hebrew with an additional heh refers to the fullness of the mouth. We thereby learn that this nation [of Israel], the Shulamite, yearning for God’s intimate closeness—which is the meaning of this book—used hyperbolic language of love and desire: that God’s kisses would be with

35 cf. the deathbed scene in Abraham Sant’Angelo’s eulogy for Maharam Meir Katzenellenbogen, Horowitz, “Speaking of the Dead,” 139–140; the eshet ayil passage of Proverbs is interpreted as a paean to the soul of deceased, 141–142. 52 marc saperstein

the full mouth. That is why he wrote, Let him give me the kisses of His mouth (pihu) (84d). Would anyone but an Italian conclude a eulogy by highlighting the distinction between an ordinary kiss and a full-mouth, “French” kiss!? Moscato also provides us with passages in which his own personal voice can be heard. It was an established convention of Jewish preaching for the preacher to proclaim his unworthiness for the task at hand, his inability to do what was expected of him. This topos of modesty is generally balanced by an assertion of the contraints that impel him to overcome his reluctance and to continue speaking.36 I cannot, yet I must. Like the beginning of the eulogy for Samuel Cases, the beginning of Moscato’s eulogy for Moses Provenzali draws on this convention. Following his nose’ and ma’amar, he invokes the image of the darkness following the setting of the sun as an expression of his mood at present following the death of Provenzali,37 clearly presenting himself as Provenzali’s disciple: The sun, which illumined with its brilliant ways my own dark and weak mind by imparting to me such a glow and vigor as inspired me with confidence to cope with questions too deep for me—that sun has set. I refer to the great light of our master and teacher, Rabbi Moses Proven- zali, who was a veritable fountain of living water unto me, in whose light I did see light (cf. Psalms 36:10). Now a darkness has come over me (Genesis 15:17): now I have been sent away empty-handed (cf. Genesis 31:42), devoid of strength and light; rather darkness enwraps me (Psalms 139:11) in profound depths of perplexity and confusion, so that even the simplest of all topics of investigation is a burden to me, and a small heap of stones seems to me like the highest of mountains (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 152a on Ecclesiastes 12:5). I apply to myself the verse, “My heart flutters, my strength fails me; the light of my eyes is also gone from me” (Psalms 38:11), Would that I were able to tell in sufficient detail the

36 see in earlier material the convention of the “reasons for silence” (including the claim of unworthiness) juxtaposed with the reasons that nevertheless compel the preacher to proceed, in Saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 76–77, with a fine example on 202–206. 37 Moscato will later return to explore the qualities of the sun as understood by the “Platonists” in eulogizing the deceased, introduced by the biblical motif that the skin of Moses’ face was radiant (Exodus 34:29, here applied to Moses Provenzali): “How could I recount the power of his praises, if I did not believe that I would see light through his resplendent light, for the skin of the face of Moses was radiant (cf. Exodus 34:29) like the face of the sun, as in the analogy I presented in the introductory section. [. . .].” moscato as eulogizer 53

praises of this man of God, to impress upon you appropriately the loss we have sustained, to fulfill what I was unable to do at the proper time because of my illness.38 It is absolutely certain and true that this lofty, exalted, sublime task is simply beyond my capacity. Yet a great duty rests upon me. I cannot evade it. Two conflicting emotions are struggling within me: a feeling of utter powerlessness, and a sense of unavoidable obligation (85a).39 Here we sense a gifted preacher breaking through the conventions of his genre. The reference to his illness at the time of the funeral is unmistakable, the references to darkness seem to transcend what is necessary for the sunset metaphor, the feelings of incapacity to accom- plish the simplest task seem genuine. A psychiatrist would be forgiven for suggesting, based on this passage, that Moscato had suffered from an incapacitating depression. This diagnosis might also be supported by the choice of title for the text: “Yeridat Pela’im” (“Appalling or Precipitous Decline,” based on Lamentations 1:9), as contrasted with its predecessor “The Crown of a Good Name Is Superior” and the following eulogy, “The Splendor of Man.” At several points in the eulogy, Moscato emphasizes the appalling decline in the status of the Jewish people: This is truly the precipitous decline that we have experienced in our generations. Indeed the dire statement of the sages has been fulfilled: “The Torah will be forgotten in Israel” (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 138b), alongside what R. Simeon bar Yohai said in the Zohar, “Mark now, there will come later generations when the Torah will be forgotten among them, the wise of heart will gather in their places, but there will be no one to close and open up. Woe to that generation!” (Zohar 3, 58a). The words of Hosea have been justified in us: “Else I will strip her naked, and leave her as the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, render her like desert land, and let her die of thirst” (Hosea 2:5), referring to being denuded of all temporal goods, as we are today [. . .] How much the more in the fall of this blessed man, a cedar in Lebanon (88b).

38 according to the introductory note in the printed edition, Provenzali died on the fourth day of Elul, and Moscato delivered the eulogy on the Fast of Gedaliah, 3 Tishrey, with a nose’ (Deut. 32:48) from Ha’azinu. Thus he did not deliver a eulogy at the time of the funeral and was preaching at the end of the thirty day period of mourning. 39 this translation is based on Bettan, Studies, 198, with significant modifications. 54 marc saperstein

This characterization of contemporary life, to which the preacher returns in his peroration, seems to transcend the familiar convention of decline. The personal voice recounting the preacher’s relationship with the deceased continues in other parts of the eulogy. Moscato affirms that he brought to Provenzali all his doubts about weighty intellectual matters, and Provenzali removed from him those doubts that were constantly arising in his theoretical investigation.40 Then, near the end, he addresses the deceased, sharing with his listeners something of great intimacy: his dream nine days after Provenzali’s death, in which he envisaged the deceased on his death bed: I remember a dream I dreamt only nine days after your death. [It was early in the morning, like the time of your demise.] You appeared to me as you were when lying prostrate on your bed of pain, in the last throes of your struggle with death. [Weeping] I approached your bed and craved your final blessing, which you graciously granted me by lay- ing your hands upon me. I then beheld you rise from your bed and ascend by a ladder. [. . .] Then I spoke in a vision to you with bitter weeping and woe: May the Lord your God be pleased with you. In the midst of this, the teaching went forth, that by means of the ladder placed upon the earth, its head reaching to the heavens, with angels of God— the souls of the blessed—rising and ascending on it, you had ascended to the Mountain of the Lord, to stand in His holy place, with clean hands and a pure heart (89c–d).41 Following the account of the dream Moscato continues, [a]re not these [the theme verse at the end of Ha’azinu, commanding Moses to ascend the mountain] the words of the Lord our God who is pleased with you, showing that He is ready and prepared to receive you in His bosom with genuine cordiality, and with great affection to embrace you with His holy arm. Now, O blessed of the Lord, ascend there, exulting and joyous; how great is the goodness stored away for you in the rock of your origin (Numbers 24:21, 89d). And finally, “We will accept the justice of the divine decree with what is written in our parashah today, ‘The Rock: His deeds are perfect [and all His ways are just’” (Deut. 32:4; 89d).

40 this may well have referred not only to legal matters but also to theological problems, such as the kind addressed in the first two responsa of Provenzali’s collection: See Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy, 149. 41 155b, based on the translation of Bettan, Studies, 223–224, with significant modifications. moscato as eulogizer 55

These texts provide evidence of a cultural event, with analogies to memorial services for major figures today.42 Eulogizing rabbinical scholars in his community, Moscato expresses, as expected, a profound sense of loss: for a personal mentor, for a source of life-giving rain, for the light that has departed with the setting of the sun, for a people that has experienced precipitous decline and in its fortunes feels overshad- owed by the learning of its Christian neighbors. Following the topos of modesty, he expresses his incapacity to pay appropriate tribute. The only comfort lies in the reward awaiting the deceased, and the power of his death to atone for the sins of the survivors.43 Yet as we follow him through what Horowitz has called “thickets of dense erudition and luxuriant eloquence” a different message emerges: that learning, talent, wit, and rhetoric remain in the eulogizers, and that the audience of listeners is equipped to appreciate their talents and their efforts. Although the sun has set, the world is not left in total darkness.

42 one thinks of the memorial tribute to Rav Joseph Soloveitchik at the end of the sheloshim period, with major addresses by Rabbi Norman Lamm, Dr. Hyam Soloveit- chik, and others. See Memories of a Giant: Eulogies in Memory of Rabbi Dr. Joseph. B. Soloveitchik, ed. Michael A. Bierman (New York: Urim Publications, 2005). 43 For examples of this theme, see Horowitz, “Speaking of the Dead,” 146 (Katzenel- lenbogen on Isserles, citing Zohar 3:218a), and 147 (Modena on Katzenellenbogen); Marc Saperstein, Exile in Amsterdam: Saul Levi Morteira’s Sermons to a Congregation of ‘New Jews’ (Cincinnati: HUC Press, 2005), 543. 4. On Kabbalah in R. Judah Moscato’s Qol Yehudah

Moshe Idel

Unlike the famous sermons of Judah Moscato, which attracted the attention of scholars because of the rhetorical skills of the homilist, the later book of the Mantovan author, Qol Yehudah, remained on the margins of scholarship until recently.1 This very rich, erudite, and complex commentary transcends in its size the smaller, though more elegantly written collection of sermons, Nefuot Yehudah. Its complicated content constitutes, presumably, a challenge even for scholars of Jew- ish thought, since no single sustained effort to analyze its main speculative approach is currently available. The present observations are no more than a prolegomena in this direction. Though Moscato is, to be sure, not the first commentator on the Book of Kuzari,2 the question should nevertheless be asked: why would a late sixteenth-century Italian thinker take interest in the mid-twelfth century Spanish book? Why would a particularistic thinker such as R. Judah Halevi attract the attention of a more universalistically inclined Moscato? One of the answers is that Halevi’s book Kuzari constitutes much more than just an important book in Jewish theology. A significant part of it deals with Sefer Yeirah, 4:25, and some other Jewish treatises belonging to Jewish esotericism in late antiquity are cited in his book.3

1 adam Shear, The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity 1167–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 97–99, 134–159. 2 see Dov Schwartz, ed., Commentary on the Kuzari, eshek Shlomo by R. Shelomo Ben Yehudah of Lunel (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2007). In this commentary, there are only very few references to Kabbalistic concepts. On the commentators on this book see ibidem, 12–16. 3 see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Merkavah Traditions in Philosophical Garb: Judah Halevi Reconsidered,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 57 (1990/1991): 179–242; Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines. Vision and Imagination in Medi- eval Jewish Mysticism, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 163–187; Diana Loebel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy. Sufi Language of Religious Experience in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari, (Albany: SUNY Press, 2000), and Moshe Idel, “The World of Angels in Human Shape,” reprinted in my Angelic World—Apotheosis and Theophany (Tel Aviv: Yedi‘ot Aaronot, 2008), 30–33. 58 moshe idel

Thus, out of all the main philosophical books written in the Middle Ages, this is the closest to early Jewish mystical treatises, such as the Hekhalot literature and Sefer Yeirah on the one hand, and a treatise that influenced Jewish medieval mystical literature, on the other.4 Another possible answer is that Kuzari is the most Platonic of the books of Jew- ish thought available to a Renaissance Jew. Critical of many aspects of Muslim philosophical thought as the book Kuzari was, it nevertheless offered an alternative that is imbued with Neoplatonic elements, stemming from a variety of Muslim sources, philosophical and mystical. Halevi’s book represents some form of philosophical spirituality that attracted the attention of sixteenth-century Renaissance figures, though they based their choice of philosophical spirituality on different sources.5 Thus, the merger of philosophy with some form of philosophical spirituality, and aspects of earlier Jewish esotericism, was a starting point that could attract the attention of a thinker in the second part of the sixteenth century. R. Judah Moscato’s Qol Yehudah is the first commentary on R. Judah Halevi’s Kuzari in which significant Kabbalistic elements have been adduced. Unlike Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed, which has been interpreted several times as if it is dealing with Kabbalistic secrets,6 this is not the case with Halevi’s book. Though much closer, phenom- enologically, to many forms of Kabbalah than the Guide, the book of Kuzari attracted much less attention from the Kabbalists, since they developed their own theories, especially regarding the theosophical

4 see, for example, Warren Zev Harvey, “Judah Halevi’s Synesthetic Theory of Prophecy and a Note on the Zohar,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 13 (1996): 141–156. 5 see especially Kuzari 3:1, 1–9. Below we make use of the 1880 Warsaw edition of Qol Yehudah. See Stephane Toussaint, “Ficino’s Orphic Magic or Jewish Astrology and Oriental Philosophy? A Note on spiritus, the Three Books on Life, Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Zarza,” Accademia 2 (2000): 19–33. 6 alexander Altmann, “Maimonides’ Attitude toward Jewish Mysticism,” in Studies in Jewish Thought. An Anthology of German Jewish Scholarship, ed. Alfred Jospe (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981), 200–219; Chaim Wirszubski, “Liber Redemptionis. The Early Version of R. Abraham Abulafia’s Kabbalistic Commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed in the Latin Translation of Flavius Mithridates,” Divrei ha-Akademia ha- Le’umit ha-Israelit le-Madda‘im 3 (1970): 139–149; Moshe Idel, “Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed and the Kabbalah,” Jewish History 18,2–3 (2004): 197–226; Moshe Idel, “Abulafia’s Secrets of the Guide: A Linguistic Turn,” in Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism. Proceedings of the International Conference held by The Institute of Jewish Studies, University College London, 1994, in Celebration of its Fortieth Anniversary, ed. Alfred L. Ivri, Elliot R. Wolfson, and Allan Arkush (Australia: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998), 289–329. on kabbalah in r. judah moscato’s qol yehudah 59 and theurgical factors. These departed in their detailed elaborations from the initial common denominators between them and Kuzari’s speculative approach. My claim is that some treatises that adopt a more philosophical approach to Kabbalah, such as the mid-thirteenth-century Sefer Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim by R. Isaac ben Abraham ibn Latif, or the sixteenth- century Sefer Lev Adam by the Mantuan Kabbalist R. Berakhiel Qafman, are quite prominent in Qol Yehudah, though they do not influenceNefu ot Yehudah significantly. They constitute a trend that is more universalistic, despite the conspicuous particularistic propensity of Halevi’s book and of major currents in Kabbalah.

Moscato and R. Berakhiel Job Qafman’s Lev Adam’s Approach to Kuzari

It is widely assumed that Moscato offered some form of synthesis between philosophy and Kabbalah, or that he displayed a synthetic or a syncretistic approach.7 Though this statement is true to a certain extent, it needs some form of qualification. In the situation in which we are now, it is easier than before to offer a better resolution, which distinguishes between the various philosophies he adopted and the various forms of Kabbalah he accepted or rejected.8 One of the main sources that influenced the project of commenting on Halevi’s Kuzari is a book by the Kabbalist Berakhiel Job Qaf- man. He was born in 1485 and wrote his book Lev Adam in Mantua in 1535.9 The book constitutes an effort to bridge the gap between Kabbalah and philosophy already found in the writings of some of his older contemporaries: he defines Kabbalah as an “inner philosophy.”10

7 see Isaac E. Barzilai, Between Reason and Faith, Anti-Rationalism in Italian Jewish Thought 1250–1650 (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1967), 167–191; Herbert David- son, “Medieval Jewish Philosophy in the Sixteenth Century,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard D. Cooperman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 106–145, esp. 130–132; Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching 1200–1800. An Anthol- ogy (London: New Haven, 1989), 39–43. 8 Moshe Idel, “On the Meanings of the Term Kabbalah—Between the Ecstatic and the Sefirotic Schools of Kabbalah in the 13th Century,” Pe‘amim 93 (2002): 59–60. 9 see more recently the full edition of Esther Barel, “Between Philosophy and Kabbalah: R. Barkhiel [sic] Job Kauffman’s Lev Adam,” Kabbalah 11 (2004): 91–299. We shall refer below to the pages of this edition. On Moscato and Qafman, see ibidem, 120. 10 see the texts and the discussion of Barel, ibidem, 128–130. 60 moshe idel

However, despite this general tendency in his single extant book, Lev Adam, he refrains from mentioning any of his precursors in Mantua, and one wonders how it is possible to write—at the end of the first part of the sixteenth century, and in Mantua—without mentioning the writings of Johanan Alemanno, also born in Mantua and a person who earned his title as a doctor there from Rabbi Judah Messer Leon. What was the “image”11—to use Shear’s term—of Sefer ha-Kuzari according to Qafman? And in the Chapters of Rabbi Berakhiel (ch. 2)12 it is written as follows: “The words of Maimonides are closer to truth more than to lie, and the words of Gersonides are closer to lie than to the truth, and the words of Rabbi Judah Halevi are all true in their entirety.”13 What is the meaning of this important distinction in its original context? R. Berakhiel Qafman explains that Maimonides was indeed generally wrong in his Guide but, in his later years, he studied Kabbalah with an old man, and this is the reason for the statement that his words are closer to the truth.14 He asserts that that his views differ from “some who wished to interpret the words of the Guide according to the way of Kabbalah.”15 No doubt this is a critique of Abulafia’s commentaries on the Guide, which he might have copied from the preface of R. Judah ayyat’s Minat Yehudah.16 Despite Qafman’s critiques of Gersonides and Maimonides, Moscato quotes the two neo-Aristotelians hundred of times with no significant reservations regarding their views. Moscato adduced the above passage from Berakhiel together with two other Kabbalistic books that praise ha-Kuzari: the early fifteenth- century Spanish Kabbalist R. Shem Tov ben Shem Tov’s Sefer ha- Emunot,17 and the late fifteenth-century Italian Kabbalist R. Elijah of Genazzano’s Iggeret amudot. Though he also adduces a non-Kabbalistic

11 shear, The Kuzari, 15. 12 there is a discrepancy between the number of the chapters as printed in Barel’s edition and those adduced by Moscato, though the content is the same. 13 Moscato, Qol Yehudah, Introduction, 12; R. Barkhiel, Lev Adam, ed. Barel, 249. Compare to the three types of philosophers according to Qafman, ibidem, 224–225. See also Adam Shear, “Judah Moscato’s Scholarly Self-Image and the Questions of Jewish Humanism,” in Cultural Intermediaries. Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern Italy, ed. David B. Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 163–164. 14 R. Barkhiel, Lev Adam, ed. Barel, 251. 15 Ibidem. 16 Minat Yehudah, Introduction. 17 Ferrara, 1556, II:4, fol. 132b. on kabbalah in r. judah moscato’s qol yehudah 61 book to this effect, Profiat Durant’s book (also known as ha-’Efodi), it is obvious that in Moscato’s opinion, the Kabbalists supported Halevi, and da Genazzano indeed declared in his quotation that Halevi’s views are in full accordance with Kabbalah.18 However, more important is Qafman’s vision of the affinity between Halevi’s Kuzari and Kabbalah: And the Rabbi R. Judah Halevi, blessed be his Memory, his words are true, since we have seen in that book that he attributed to the king of the Khazars many queries concerning the divine philosophy, and our Holy Torah and the Kabbalah. And he attributed to the Jewish companion [he-aver] a true answer to the questions, so that out of the queries and the answers we have extracted, many roots from the roots of the true Kabbalah and from the interpretations of those true ideas and the most spiritual [ penimiot] of them. These [roots] are destined to the intellectuals [maskilim] in a manner that we have seen, that the Rabbi [namely Halevi] reached the truth because of his wisdom.19 The pagan king of the Khazars is described as posing questions related to the “divine philosophy, and our Holy Torah and the Kabbalah.” In this context, Kabbalah means not just a transmitted knowledge but one that has to do with the highest form of theological knowledge. Thus, in a way, the Kabbalah is understood by Qafman to be known outside the circle of the Jews. The Jewish master who participated in the religious polemic that constitutes the gist of the book Kuzari answered the queries of the king, and by doing so he displayed an acquaintance with the principles of Kabbalah. Thus, the Mantuan Kabbalist conceives the content of Kuzari as consonant, at least in principle, with Kabbalah. By doing so, he made some Kabbalistic material more accessible in order to interpret the text of Kuzari—even more so, those parts that were conceived as dealing at length with topics such as Sefer Yeirah. Moscato copied in his commentary the two texts quoted above from Qafman’s chapters.20 From this point of view, Moscato definitely continues a line opened in Mantua in the generation before him. It was Halevi’s book that is the peak of Jewish thought, consonant as it is with Kabbalah. Such a vision invited the importation of Kabbalistic views in order to elucidate Halevi’s now canonical text.

18 see Eliyyah Hayyim ben Binyamin da Genazzano, La lettera preciosa, ed. Fabrizio Lelli (Florence: Giuntina, 2002), 139. 19 R. Barkhiel, Lev Adam, ed. Barel, 251. See also later on ibidem, 251–252. 20 Qol Yehudah, Introduction, 12, and IV, 42. 62 moshe idel

This means that both for Qafman and for Moscato, Kabbalah was considered as being unquestionably likewise the most reliable form of religious thought. Though I do not claim that Moscato wrote his commentary because of Qafman’s observations or the other two Kabbalists mentioned above, the latter nevertheless contributed to the manner in which he conceptualized the text he interpreted.21

Moscato on Kabbalah and Philosophy in Qol Yehudah

Written parallel to Nefuot Yehudah, this voluminous commentary is replete with references to Kabbalistic sources, some of which had never been mentioned in Moscato’s sermons, and they colored the thought of the Mantuan homilist with unexpected hues. Especially important is the most significant presence of some Kabbalistic sources, much more than in his earlier work. In this list, a rather rare book in the history of Kabbalah should be mentioned; this is R. Isaac ben Abraham ibn Latif’s Sefer Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim.22 Known in the fifteenth-century Renaissance by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,23 and presumably also by Johanan Alemanno, this book has been mentioned by R. Judah ayyat, in his introduction to Minat Yehudah, on the grounds that it mixed together Kabbalah and philosophy: The divine sage, R. Isaac ibn Latif, blessed be his memory, the author of Sefer [Sha‘ar] ha-Shamayim,24 and [urat] ha-‘Olam25 and eror ha-Mor and Sefer Ginzei ha-Melekh, whose words are more precious than gems; but insofar as his words concern the science of Kabbalah, one of his feet is

21 Ibidem, IV, 11; IV, 42; IV, 49; IV, 86; IV, 91; IV, 93; IV, 99, 125, Introduction, 12. 22 On this author, see Sara O. Heller-Wilensky, “Isaac ibn Latif, Philosopher or Kabbalist?,” in Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cam- bridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 185–223; idem, “The Guide and the Gate: The Dialectical Influence of Maimonides on Isaac ibn Latif and Early Spanish Kab- balah,” in A Straight Path. Studies in Medieval Philosophy and Culture, Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman, ed. Ruth Link-Salinger (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 266–278; idem, “The ‘First Created Being’ in Early Kabbalah and its Philosophical Sources,” Studies in Jewish Thought, ed. Sara O. Heller-Willensky and Moshe Idel ( Jerusalem: Magnes, 1989), 261–275. 23 see Moshe Idel, “The Throne and the Seven-Branched Candlestick: Pico della Mirandola’s Hebrew Source,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 40 (1977): 290–292. 24 the word Sha‘ar does not occur in the two editions of Minat Yehudah, but I have no doubt that it is a mistake of ayyat. 25 the word we-ha-‘olam stands, in my opinion, for another book of Isaac ibn Latif, which is not mentioned in the Mantuan edition of Minat Yehudah. on kabbalah in r. judah moscato’s qol yehudah 63

within while the other without [the field of Kabbalah]. Consequently, you should see only a small part of them, but not see all of them. And if God will tell me to do it, I shall distinguish the fine flour from what is flawed.26 ayyat’s rather cautious description did not deter Moscato, whose main propensity was to prefer philosophy to Kabbalah without, however, admitting it. Moscato was well acquainted with the first and the last books in the list, and their recurrence in Moscato’s commentary thus reflects a different conceptual approach from that of ayyat.27 Let me point out that ibn Latif’s books, like Berakhiel’s Chapters, were not published, and Moscato studied them in manuscript, as he also did with a series of other books cited in his writings, like Iggeret amudot. However, in the case of R. Berakhiel’s book, Moscato specified that they were not available to those who were interested in contemplation.28

Moscato and the Commentaries on Sefer Yeirah Printed in Mantua 1562

We may assume that Moscato had at his disposal Kabbalistic books printed in Mantua in the generation preceding the writing of his commentary. This includes the Zoharic literature, as well as a series of major Kabbalistic texts, such as Sefer Ma‘arekhet ha-Elohut with the commentary by R. Reuven Tzarfati and R. Judah ayyat, entitled Minat Yehudah, as well as the commentaries on Sefer Yeirah printed in 1562. As mentioned above, the Kuzari includes a sustained discussion of Sefer Yeirah; it is, in fact, a small commentary. In the part of Qol Yehu- dah related to this section, the commentator refers to a variety of commentaries on Sefer Yeirah, all of which are found together in the edition of this book with commentaries printed in Mantua in 1522. Some of them are Kabbalistic, such as the important commentary attributed to Rabad, but were in fact written by a late thirteenth-century Kabbalist, R. Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi.29 Similarly, he refers to the commentaries of R. Eleazar of Worms,30 the Pseudo-Sa‘adya’s commentary,31

26 Minat Yehudah, Introduction. 27 Qol Yehudah, I, 105; I, 32–33; IV, 5: IV, 97, 99, 125, 126; V, 16. 28 Ibidem, IV, 125. 29 Ibidem, IV, 93, 94, 119; V, 8. 30 Ibidem, I, 25; IV, 123. 31 Ibidem, IV, 94–95, 115, 118. 64 moshe idel and that of R. Moshe Botarel.32 His quotations from these commentaries notwithstanding, Moscato’s approach to Sefer Yeirah is far from being theosophical. Thus, for example, when he addresses this book, he indicates a rather reluctant attitude toward a Kabbalistic, namely theosophical understanding of the book, saying: Do not think that those issues will be interpreted according to the way of Kabbalah. Since despite the fact that he raised the ten fingers, we shall remember the ten sefirot of belimah33 etc., as it will follow, we shall not enjoy their interpretation as dealing with that wondrous wisdom, even as much as a small finger [. . .] see also how distant is its intention from being of those things, that they will rotate around the topics of the secrets of that lore that ascend on high, higher than the issues of nature. Now, I too shall be like him, since no one shall come to the gate of interpretation of his words and offer an interpretation that differs from his way.34

Conspicuous Absences

When writing, or in general when expressing oneself, there are not only affirmations that are formulated in a positive manner, but also aspects that are repressed or marginalized. Specific interpretations are, at least sometimes, selections between alternatives, only few of which are integrated into the discourse. Understanding sometimes implies also the possibility of guessing what remained unstated. This general observation is true also in regard to the specific choices made by Moscato for the sake of using a specific interpretation from a range of possibilities that I assume were available in his intellectual panorama. In order to be able to explicate the meaning of the choices he made, let me attempt to draw a concise picture of Kabbalah in northern Italy in the last two decades of the sixteenth century. The printing of the book of the Zohar in Mantua and Cremona was a fait accompli already in his youth. When he composed his writings, the polemic about the very printing had already subsided a generation earlier. Moreover, in his more mature years, the floruit of the Kabbalah in Safed had reached its peak and started to decline. Some of its most

32 Ibidem, IV, 83, 93. 33 cf. Sefer Yeirah 1: 3. 34 Qol Yehudah, IV, 83–84. on kabbalah in r. judah moscato’s qol yehudah 65 important developments were known in Italy, including among some of his contemporaries and acquaintances, such as Abraham Yagel and Menachem Azariah of Fano. Moscato was acquainted with some books written by Safedian Kab- balists, and he names three of the most important of them: R. Joseph Caro,35 R. Solomon Halevi Alkabez,36 and R. Moses Cordovero.37 However, he does it rarely, without citing, approvingly, theosophical passages. Nevertheless, outstanding in this context is the absence of the name and concepts related to R. Isaac Luria Ashkenazi, ha-Ari, doubtless the most famous among the Safedian Kabbalists. As he died in 1572, it is hardly plausible that Moscato, who completed his commentary at least more than a decade later, had not heard of or had no access at all to his texts or ideas. This is, in my opinion, hardly a matter of some oversight. One of the first Kabbalists in Italy to copy Lurianic treatises was a Mantuan Kabbalist, R. Ezra of Fano, the person who initiated the more famous R. Menahem Azariah of Fano in matters of Kabbalah.38 This omission is, in my view, not a matter of chance. The major trend of Lurianic Kabbalah is quite anti-philosophical, in a manner reminiscent of R. Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi, the contemporary of Luria, who wrote his sharp anti-philosophical book in Italy, on his way from Poland to Safed.39 More than any other Kabbalist before him, he used a plethora of anthropomorphic terminology, sexual imagery, and a theurgical understanding of the commandments. All these features are missing in Moscato’s picture of Kabbalah. Thus, in the ninth decade of the sixteenth century—the years that followed the decline of Safedian Kabbalah, but also its dissemination among Diaspora Jewry, especially in Italy—Moscato is an examples of those reluctant to fall under the spell of the great Safedian figures. He represents another conceptual wavelength.

35 Ibidem, III, 6, 60. 36 Ibidem, I, 24: Ayyelet ahavim, a commentary on the Song of Songs. 37 Ibidem, III, 34; IV, 49, referring to Pardes Rimmonim. Two of Cordovero’s more popular books were printed in Venice toward the end of Moscato’s life: Tomer Devorah and Or ha-Ne‘erav, in 1587 and 1588. 38 see Meir Benayahu, “Rabbi Ezra of Fano, a Sage, a Kabbalist and a Leader,” in Sefer ha-Yovel le-ha-Gerid Soloveitchik ( Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1984), II: 786–851. 39 Gershom Scholem, “New Information about Joseph Ashkenazi, ‘the Tana’ of Safed,” Tarbiz 28 (1959): 59–89, 201–235. 66 moshe idel

There is no doubt that Luria is in debt to the Zoharic literature for three modes of thinking. Indeed, much less evident in Moscato’s commentary are the more mythological visions of Kabbalah, as expounded in the Zoharic literature, and in those who followed this approach. This is more surprising in the period after the printings of the Zohar in Italy in a generation before the composition of Qol Yehudah. From this point of view, Moscato’s book represents a counterpart to the strong Zoharic propensity found in the Safedian Kabbalah, whose main contributions had reached Italy in Moscato’s lifetime, and were influencing some Italian Kabbalists, especially the famous R. Menahem Azariah of Fano.40 In this context, one should refer also to the absence of the more messianic messages of some sixteenth-century trends in Kabbalah. Widespread in Italy, and in a more moderate manner in Safed, before the last decade of Moscato’s life, messianic aspirations informed the lives of some of his contemporaries in Italy, such as R. Mordechai Dato.41 However, this is not the case with Moscato. The universalistic Kabbalah was only partly interested in revelations or mystical techniques, as the content of the writings of David Leon, Alemanno, Moscato, Yagel, Delmedigo, and Herrera convincingly demonstrate. The neglect of Abraham Abulafia’s numerous books, Johanan Ale- manno’s voluminous writings, R. Abraham de Balmes’s commentary on the ten sefirot,42 and R. Berakhiel ben Meshullam Qafman’s Lev Adam by the sixteenth-century Italian Jewish printers, as well as the absence of a Hebrew translation of Leone Ebreo’s philosophical best- seller Dialoghi d’Amore, illustrates the pivotal change that Italian Kab- balistic thought underwent during the sixteenth century. It shifted from continuing as an earlier Italian tradition toward a stronger inclination toward Kabbalistic material coming first from the West, namely Spain, and then from the East, namely the Ottoman Empire

40 See Robert Bonfil, “Halakhah, Kabbalah and Society, Some Insights into Rabbi Menahem Azariah da Fano’s Inner World,” in Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Isadore Twersky and Bernard Septimus (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 39–61, esp. 61, and his “Change in the Cultural Patterns of a Jewish Society in Crisis: Italian Jewry at the Close of the Sixteenth Century,” Jewish History 3 (1988): 18–19, where he speaks of the isolation of the Kabbalists—in my opinion mainly the Lurianic Kabbalists—from the general public. 41 see Yoram Jacobson, Along the Path of Exile and Redemption. The Doctrine of Redemp- tion of Rabbi Mordechai Dato ( Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1996). 42 see the edition of R. Cohen, Iggeret Assiriyah. on kabbalah in r. judah moscato’s qol yehudah 67 and Safed. It would suffice to compare this neglect of the son to the voluminous writings of the father, R. Isaac Abarbanel, which had been printed immediately.

Moscato’s Qol Yehudah: A Renaissance Treatise and Forms of Synthesis

Following the more speculative propensity of R. Berakhiel Qafman, Moscato offered basically a Kabbalistic vision of Kuzari. Judging from the outside, this is a synthesis between a pre-Kabbalistic text and a few later Kabbalistic sources that are supposed to explicate its content. From the inside, as I attempted to point out above, if we adopt Moscato’s perspective, there is a conceptual and philological conso- nance between the two forms of lore. From a more historical point of view, Moscato is superimposing a later mode of thought upon an earlier one. To be sure, Moscato is aware of the discrepancies between important Kabbalistic issues and views in the Kuzari. Nevertheless, he never criticized Kabbalah, and sometimes put it on a pedestal. In a manner more akin to Plotinus than to the Avicennian vision of innate intuition, however, some Kabbalists emphasized the importance of the technique of contemplating and combining certain special letters to attain a particular type of knowledge or paranormal experience. In any case, the concept of the immediacy of the intuitive act of cognition was reached by ibn Latif, as has been pointed out recently.43 Ibn Latif indeed refers to the possibility of reaching intelligibilia by a timeless process in several cases.44 The views of the medieval thinker did not have a larger echo in Spanish Kabbalah, but attracted the attention of some authors, both Jewish and Christian, in Italy in the Renaissance period. urat ha-‘Olam was known in late fifteenth-century Italy, as we learn from R. Judah ayyat’s critique found in the introduction to his Minat Yehudah written in Mantua around 1496, and in R. Johanan Alemanno’s Collectanaea. A somewhat similar approach is also found in the Kabbalah of R. Abraham Abulafia, a younger contemporary of ibn Latif and the

43 see Hannah Kasher, “The Term Kabbalah and Mekubal in the Writings of ibn Latif,” Daat 42 (1999): 7–12. On Hads, a concept that inspired ibn Latif, among many other Kabbalists, see ‘Amirah ‘Eiran, “The View of Hads in R. Judah Halevi and Maimonides,” Tura 4 (1996): 117–146. 44 see ibn Latif’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes (Constantinople 1585), 32–33, 48–49. 68 moshe idel founder of a type of Kabbalah that differs from the more philosophically inclined trend of ibn Latif. In contrast to ibn Latif, who distinguishes between Kabbalah as an orally received form of knowledge that takes place in time and wisdom, and knowledge that is higher and has the quality of suddenness, Abulafia takes a significantly different view, though it is apparently also related to Avicenna. His assumption is that there are different forms of Kabbalah: a lower one received orally or from books, and a higher one received as part of a mystical experience, which is superior to discursive reasoning. Abulafia also speaks of a type of logic that differs from Aristotle’s, one that leads easily to a prophetic form of cognition without the need for the long deliberations characteristic of the philosophers.45

Was Moscato a Kabbalist?

The sources from which Halevi drew his thought are basically speculative literature written in Arabic, which include a variety of philosophical texts, the Ismayliah,46 and Sufi material. All of them include some Platonic elements and, cumulatively, they create a more Platonic outlook that had its attraction for sixteenth-century Italian thinkers acquainted with the writings of Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, or Francesco Giorgio Veneto, as was Moscato.47 An analysis of some details in his commentary on a lengthy discussion in Kuzari IV:25 of a passage related to Plato’s Timaios, when compared to the earlier reverberations of this passage in Kabbalistic literature and commentaries on Kuzari, shows his speculative tendencies. Unlike the stark distinction between Kabbalah and philosophy dominant in Safed, in Italy this polarized approach was much less acceptable, both among Jews and Christians. In a way, Kabbalah was

45 Moshe Idel, “Transmission in the Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah,” in Transmitting Jewish Traditions. Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Difussion, ed. Y. Elman and I. Gershoni (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 149–154; idem, “Defining Kabbalah. The Kabbalah of the Divine Names,” in Mystics of the Book. Themes, Topics, & Typology, ed. R. A. Herrera, (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 97–122. 46 shlomo Pines, “On the Term Ruhaniyyut and its Sources and On Judah Halevi’s Doctrine,” Tarbiz 57 (1988): 511–540 (Hebrew), and Ehud Krinis, “The Idea of the Chosen People in Judah Halevi’s al-Kitab al-Khazari and its Origins in Shi‘i Imam Doctrine” (Ph. D. Thesis, Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva, 2007). 47 see below notes 69, 76, 80. on kabbalah in r. judah moscato’s qol yehudah 69 amalgamated in Italy, more than in any other country, within a variety of other types of lore, philosophy being the first of them. This is already the case with many of Johanan Alemanno’s writings, with Jehiel Nissim of Pisa, Berakhiel Qafman, and, to a certain extent, Isaac Abravanel. Thus, to judge these individuals as Kabbalists according to the types of discourse dominant in Safed would be to disqualify them as “authentic” Kabbalists. This would have also been the attitude of R. Judah ayyat, a century before Moscato: none of those born in Italy would qualify as an “authentic” Kabbalist, and even Asher Lem- lein would hardly pass the test.48 Neither would any of those figures insist that he indeed was a Kab- balist. Their turning to Kabbalah has nothing exclusivist, as in Safed or in many of the cases in Spain. We may speak rather about works wherein Kabbalistic views have been embedded, and though they were conceived of as supreme truth, they were never dealt with in an exclusive manner. What is the difference between Moscato’s Kabbalah and that of his older Safedian contemporaries? Though it would be simplistic to reduce all the discussions he quotes to just one issue, my answer is that the Italian homilist embraced the cosmological aspects of the Kabbalistic literatures, less prominent in Safed, tacitly rejecting the theosophical ones. The two main Kabbalistic systems in the Galilee town offered the two most comprehensive schemes in the history of Kabbalah, which means that they gave accounts of the concatenations starting from the highest level within the divine realm and extending down to the lowest one. This is true, yet only in principle. Both Cor- dovero and Luria offered only scant accounts of the created universe, though they speak in different terms about what is considered to be the Great Chain of Being. Cordovero is more concerned with accom- modating and harmonizing the various strands of thought found in the two main Kabbalistic corpora that he commented upon: that of the Zoharic literature on the one hand, and that of Tiqqunei Zohar and Ra’aya Meheimna on the other. He does so in many ways, but the most important of them is the exegetical-ontological principle of behinot, aspects of the various sefirot that may explain the different functions of the same sefirah in different descriptions in different literatures.

48 see Moshe Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, 1280–1510. A Survey (New Haven: Yale Uni- versity Press, 2011), 225. 70 moshe idel

Luria, on the other hand, rejected the propensity of his teacher toward behinot, and emphasized the paramount importance of the five divine configurations or countenances, the parufin, which are very prominent in the literature known as the Idra. In both cases, different as they are, the Zoharic thought stands at the center of the reformulations. Thus, though offering in principle comprehensive schemes, their theosophies and the possibility of participating in the processes taking place within the divine realm by means of the ritual, or in the divine sparks as spread in this world, absorb the energy of the Safedian Kabbalistic thinkers. The cosmic dimension as distinguished from the divine realm is peripheral to their religious concerns. From this point of view, the Safedian Kabbalists are following the gist of the Zoharic literature, anchored both in theosophy and theurgy. Those two concerns are basically alien to Moscato, though they were important in the Zoharic literatures. Though printed also in Mantua, the interest in the volumes that fascinated the Safedians is alien to the Mantuan homilist. This does not mean that he does not quote the Zohar at all, but that he did so in quite a special manner. Let me survey the eight and rather succinct quotes from the Zohar in Qol Yehudah. In the introduction, he quotes the lengthiest passage from the Zohar, where the topic is the need for foolishness in order to be able to discern wisdom. To the best of my knowledge, this passage contains no theosophical overtones.49 The second quote deals with the unity of the parts of the Torah, which are one just as the members of a human body are one.50 Elsewhere he cites the Zoharic assumption that God is angry with wicked men in order to help the emergence of righteous ones, who are thus purer.51 It is in this context that Moscato refers to the Zohar as AHZ’’L, amru akhamenu zikhronam li-vrakhah, namely “the ancient Rabbis, blessed be their memory, said.” This means that he accepted the antiquity of the book. Elsewhere, in Qol Yehudah, he quotes the Zohar in a discussion about the nature of the revelation of the three angels to Abraham, which is quite a midrashic exposition, without any theosophical connotation.52 In a fifth instance, Moscato discusses the relationship between the righteous men, addiqim, and the community as being like that of the limb and the entire body, in

49 see Qol Yehudah, Introduction 11, referring to Zohar III, fol. 47b. 50 Ibidem, I, 17, quoting Zohar I, fol. 134b. 51 Ibidem, I, 121, quoting Zohar I, fol. 140a. 52 Ibidem, III, 33, referring to Zohar I, fol. 101a. on kabbalah in r. judah moscato’s qol yehudah 71 the context of suffering. In this case as well, the Zoharic proof-text as adduced by the Mantovan homilist is removed from any specific theosophical cargo.53 In the commentary on the fourth part of Kuzari, Moscato adduces a short statement of the Zohar, to the effect that God is the soul and the spirit of the world. This notion, theological as it is, is nevertheless not theosophical here.54 In fact, this is not the view only of Kuzari but also of Maimonides.55 And last but not least, in the same part of his commentary, Moscato cites two short passages from the Zohar, where there is a discussion of the nature of the Heikhalot, the supernal palaces, the sub-sefirotic structures.56 Thus, all the eight relatively short passages cited in Qol Yehudah reflect the more homiletic and ethical aspects of the Zoharic literature. It should be mentioned that given this characteristic of some parts of Zoharic literature, Moscato’s modest quotes represent an implicit rejection of the theosophical aspects of this literature. This is the reason why the later layer of the Zohar, Tiqqune Zohar, printed in Mantua in 1560, and quoted at length in ayyat’s book together with Ra‘aya Mehemna’, has never been quoted, since it is densely theosophical. Neither is a commentator on the Pentateuch such as R. Menahem Recanati, printed twice before and thus popular in Italy, quoted in Moscato’s book. This is the case also with the quotes from Judah ayyat’s Sefer Minat Yehudah. A paramount example of Spanish Kabbalah that gravitates around the Zoharic literature, including hundreds of quotations from the Zohar and Tiqqune Zohar, this book has been quoted several times by Moscato.57 However, again as in the case of the direct quotes from the Zohar, Moscato does not select the mythological and theosophical- theurgical aspects of the book to quote. Let me adduce one example to this effect. ayyat employs the vision of the universe as a Great Chain of Being, one that unites man and God, but what he calls an iron chain, which points to the possibility of the lower human activities having an impact on the divine realm.58

53 Ibidem, III, 54, referring to Zohar, III, fol. 218a. 54 Ibidem, IV, 36, quoting Zohar, III, fol. 67a. 55 see The Guide of the Perplexed I:72. 56 Qol Yehudah, IV, 43 quoting from Zohar II, fol. 245a and I, fol. 144a. 57 Ibidem, III, 142, IV, 47–48, 127. 58 see Minat Yehudah, fol. 161b–162a, translated and discussed in Moshe Idel, Enchanted Chains. Techniques and Rituals in Jewish Mysticism (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2005), 47. 72 moshe idel

However, Moscato prefers another version of the Great Chain of Being as formulated by R. Abraham Shalom, a fifteenth-century Spanish philosopher who was also interested in Kabbalah.59 Shalom and Moscato are not concerned with the theurgical activity that the idea of a chain facilitated for the Kabbalists, but regard the structure of being as a chain, in the vein of many thinkers in the Latin West.60 In this context, it is worth mentioning a lengthy quote from R. Berakhiel Qafman’s Chapters, dealing with the ten sefirot and their names as they occur in Kabbalistic writings.61 Prima facie we have here a quotation that is theosophical. However, a more attentive reading reveals that Berakhiel, and presumably Moscato, follow him on this issue: the sefirot are interpreted as the first ten digits, namely as numbers, in a rather Pythagorean manner, losing thereby their mythical qualities.62 In short, from the quotations of theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah in Qol Yehudah, Moscato does not adopt either theosophy or theurgy.63 This is also the case with his much more numerous quotations from Nahmanides’ writings, which lack the theosophical elements; these are likewise quite rare in Nahmanides himself. This small and relatively short selection of quotes from the Zohar and Minat Yehudah is much more modest when compared to the numerous citations from ibn Latif or Berakhiel Qafman, which are longer and include more ideational content. The conflict between the theosophy of the Kabbalists and the views of R. Judah Halevi is obvious in the treatment of the nature of the Shekhinah. While for him and Maimonides, the Shekhinah is conceived as a created being, for the Kabbalists it—or rather she—was part of the world of emanation, namely a divine entity, which has feminine

59 Qol Yehudah, IV, 107, quoting a passage from Neveh Shalom, II, ch. 6 (Venice: 1575), fol. 32a. 60 see Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, A Study of the History of an Idea (Cam- bridge: Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1971), and Bernard McGinn, The Golden Chain (Washington, D.C.: Cisterian Publications, 1972). 61 Qol Yehudah, IV, 93–94. 62 see also Qol Yehudah V, 69, where he expatiates on the Aristotelian ten categories and the “transcendentals.” 63 see also my comments in “Judah Moscato,” 52–54. Interestingly enough, it seems that Moscato is the first to use the phrase tiqqun kelali, the general amendment, a term that will be used in the seventeenth and eighteenth century in a theurgical sense, however here not in such a sense. See Qol Yehudah III, 55. Moscato renders Halevi’s taqqanat ha-kol, and in both cases, it is the human body and its limbs that are addressed, not the divine world. En passant, on 54–55, he adduces a passage from the later layer of the Zohar, which seems to be inspired by Kuzari III:19. on kabbalah in r. judah moscato’s qol yehudah 73 characteristics.64 Moscato quotes the critique addressed by Judah ayyat to the philosophers, but is also well aware that Halevi does not share the views of the Kabbalists. After hinting at the discussions found in Qafman’s Chapters65 he writes, following a talmudic dictum:66 “we are not preoccupied by those secrets but we shall contemplate what has been allowed to us.”67 Therefore, in the moment when he confronts a serious theological clash over a major topic as understood by Halevi and other Jewish philosophers and by most of the Kab- balists, he adopts the more philosophical approach, however without denigrating the theosophical attitude of the Kabbalists. This propensity toward cosmological tendencies in Jewish thought, and the refusal to adopt the theosophical-theurgical trends so dominant in the sixteenth-century Kabbalah, represent a seminal choice. The philosophical framework constitutes the interpretive grid that informs what may be accepted from the theological point of view. Let me draw attention to a parallel to the discussion in this section. In his Nefuot Yehudah, in the sermon on music, Moscato deals with the impact of human action on the world, employing the image of two vio- lins that resonate.68 This view is found in a series of sources that could have been known to Moscato, especially Isaac Arama’s ‘Aqedat Yiaq, and R. Meir ibn Gabbai’s ‘Avodat ha-Qodesh.69 Those sources can be distinguished as either assuming the impact of the human action on the created cosmos, in the case of the former author, in which case I refer to the action as magic; or in the case of the latter, on the divine structure, the ten sefirot, an action that I call theurgical. Moscato chose the magical option and does not even mention the theurgical one. It is worth reflecting for a moment on the possible significance of the above instances of receptions of the Zohar. Though printed in Italy, and also in Moscato’s Mantua, the Zohar left only a scant impression on the Italian Kabbalists of the second half of the sixteenth century,

64 Qol Yehudah IV, 47–49. 65 chapters 18, 19, in ed. Barel, chaps. 17, 18, 287–293. 66 cf. Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah, fol. 13a. 67 Qol Yehudah IV, 49. 68 see Gianfranco Miletto, “The Human Body as a Musical Instrument in the Sermons of Judah Moscato,” in The Jewish Body, Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period, ed. M. Diemling and Giuseppe Veltri (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 377–393, and Moshe Idel, “The Magical and Theurgical Interpretation of Music in Jewish Texts. Renaissance to Hasidism,” Yuval 4 (1982): 33–63. See also my “Music in sixteenth-century Kabbalah in Northern Africa,” Yuval 7 (2002): 154–170. 69 see Idel, “The Magical and the Theurgical,” 35–51. 74 moshe idel while moving to the center of the Safedian Kabbalists, who did not necessarily use the printed editions of the book. The printing of the book did not affect a major Mantuan author, or the Kabbalists in Italy, despite the double printing, and only secondarily did those printings affect the Safedian Kabbalists. The fact that a major canonical book had been printed in a certain city did not mean that it would also influence the cultural events in that city. The cultural capitals or mental structures of the two cities seemed to be much more powerful than the availability of the Kabbalistic material. Such a complex attitude to Kabbalah is specifically Italian, though we should not expect a homogeneous rejection of theosophy and a tendency toward cosmology. It is found not only among a few Kab- balists, especially in Italy, but also among Christian Kabbalists.70 The manner in which some full-fledged Kabbalists in northern Italy had dealt with Lurianic Kabbalah, especially Abraham Cohen Herrera and R. Joseph Shlomo Rofe’ of Candia, reflected the centrality of a strong philosophical grid that informed and dramatically affected their different interpretations of Lurianic Kabbalah.71

Was Moscato a Renaissance Figure?

Who, therefore, was Moscato from an intellectual point of view? Scholars have offered different answers to this question, attempting to describe him either as a conservative figure, basically a medievalist (Isaac Barzilai, Herbert Davidson, and Joseph Dan),72 as an anti-rationalist (Isaac Barzilai),73 or as a Renaissance figure (my proposal), and more recently as in the main basically a “Jewish humanist” (Shear and Barzilai).74 The accuracy of such epithets depends very much upon

70 see Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, 227–235. 71 Ernst Cassirer, “Some Remarks on the Question of the Originality of the Renais- sance,” Journal of the History of Ideas 4 (1943): 49–56, and Ioan P. Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 12. 72 see Joseph Dan, “The Sermon Tefillah we-Dim‘ah of R. Judah Moscato,” Sinai 76 (1975): 209–232; idem, “The Homiletic Literature and Its Literary Values,” Ha-Sifrut 3 (1972): 558–567. 73 barzilai, Between Reason and Faith, 167, 184. 74 see Adam Shear, “Judah Moscato’s Scholarly Self-Image and the Questions of Jewish Humanism,” in Cultural Intermediaries, 149–176, esp. 154, 167, and Barzilai, Between Reason and Faith, 170–171. on kabbalah in r. judah moscato’s qol yehudah 75 how a scholar defines each. I have opted for a Renaissance interpretation of his thought based mainly on Nefuot Yehudah,75 and am glad that some of the more recent scholarship on the topic shares, at least to a certain extent, this propensity.76 Here I tried to do so by checking the manner in which he dealt with the variety of Kabbalistic material in Qol Yehudah. My main reason for attributing a Renaissance approach to Moscato is his adoption of a vision of the history of revelation related to the theory of prisca theologia, according to which there is more than one source of revelation—a vision that differs from the unilinear theory of prisca theologia, popular among the Jews.77 By doing so, he is much closer to Marsilio Ficino than to any other Jewish thinker I am acquainted with.78 As mentioned above, much depends on the manner in which someone defines the concepts he uses. For me, the humanistic tradition in the Renaissance is based much more on highlighting distinctions and historical developments rather than amassing many correspondences in an atemporal manner, as the Florentine figures did at the end of the fifteenth century. The philological and historical developments related to Italian humanism that had an impact on some of the open or hidden critiques of Kabbalah, such as Elijah del Medigo, Azariah de’ Rossi, and Leone Modena, are much less pronounced in Moscato, if at all. The later is less concerned, for example, with issues such as when the Zohar was written, a major concern in the writings of the

75 it is Israel Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching (Cincinnati: HUC, 1939), 192, who described Moscato as “a child of the Renaissance,” and see also my “Judah Muscato. A Late Renaissance Jewish Preacher,” in Preachers of the Italian Ghetto, ed. David B. Ruderman, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 41–66. On Moscato and Giovanni Pico’s vision of the Son of God, see also Moshe Idel, Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism (London: Continuum, 2008), 507–514. 76 see especially the studies of Adam Shear and Gianfranco Miletto mentioned above, notes 1, 69, 74. 77 see Nefuot Yehudah, sermon 5, 54; Idel, “Judah Moscato,” 52; and Qol Yehudah, V, 72. In more general terms see Moshe Idel, “Kabbalah and Ancient Philosophy in R. Isaac and Jehudah Abravanel,” in The Philosophy of Leone Ebreo, ed. Menahem Dor- man and Ze’ev Levy (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1985), 73–112; idem, “Kab- balah, Platonism and Prisca Theologia: the Case of Menashe ben Israel,” in Menasseh ben Israel and his World, ed. Yosef Kaplan, Henry Meshoulan, and Richard Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 207–219. 78 Moshe Idel, “Prisca Theologia in Marsilio Ficino and in Some Jewish Treatments,” in Marsilio Ficino, His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, ed. Michael J. B. Allen and Valery Rees (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 137–158. 76 moshe idel three figures mentioned above.79 At least in the tone that characterizes his treatment of Kabbalah, he is much more pietistic than critical. This also seems to be the difference between Moscato’s more positive attitude to Philo of Alexandria80 and the more critical one assumed by Azariah de’ Rossi.81 These observations do not assume that Moscato did not absorb important humanistic interests as well, such as his concern with rhetoric.82 It should be pointed out in this context that Moscato, like Aza- riah de’ Rossi and Leone Modena, resisted—though each in his own specific way—the more vigorous mythological approach to Judaism emanating both from the gist of the Spanish Kabbalah, the Zoharic literature, and from its unparalleled renascence in sixteenth-century Safedian Kabbalah. This is true, as mentioned above, though in a different manner, likewise in the case of Abraham Kohen Herrera and Joseph Shlomo Rofe’ of Candia, Moscato’s younger contemporaries. They studied Lurianic Kabbalah, but interpreted it in terms stemming from Renaissance Neoplatonism and other forms of philosophies en vogue in the sixteenth century. However, they are in fact operating in a period of dramatic religious change, one that altered the physiognomy of Judaism for many generations, since the mythical readings offered both by Cordovero and Luria conquered much of Jewish life in many Jewish communities, including those in Italy. If the Italian cultures, Jewish and Christian, were able to leave an imprint on the developments in Safedian Kabbalah—in my opinion, especially as a foil that triggered a more particularistic type of Kabbalah83—the arrival

79 For references to Ficino in Qol Yehudah, see IV, 42, V, 72. Moscato refers to other Renaissance figures in this book. See IV, 108, 191 where he refers to Alessandro Picolomini. See also IV, 101. 80 see Qol Yehudah, I, 112, IV, 68, V, 125. On the emergence of an interest in Philo in Moscato’s lifetime see Joanna Weinberg, “The Quest for Philo in Sixteenth-century Jewish historiography,” in Jewish History, Essays in Honor of Chimen Abramsky, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert and Steven Zipperstein (London: Orion, 1988), 163–187. 81 Giuseppe Veltri, “The Humanist Sense of History and the Jewish Idea of Tra- dition: Azaria de Rossi’s Critique of Philo Alexandrinus,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 2,2 (1995): 372–393. 82 For the impact of rhetoric on Renaissance figures, see Alexander Altmann, “‘Ars rhetorica’ as reflected in some Jewish figures of the Italian Renaissance,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman (Cambridge: Harvard Uni- versity Press, 1983), 1–22, and Robert Bonfil’s introduction to Judah Messer Leon, Nofet ufim ( Jerusalem: The Jewish National and University Library Press, 1981), 7–69. 83 Moshe Idel, “Italy in Safed, Safed in Italy. Toward an Interactive History of Sixteenth Century Kabbalah,” in Cultural Intermediaries, 239–269. on kabbalah in r. judah moscato’s qol yehudah 77 of the vast Safedian mythologies pushed aside the Italian propensity toward speculation and cosmology. They imposed a new type of religious order dominated, by and large, by no less mythological—in the eyes of many Jews—figures, Kabbalists at the end of the sixteenth and seventeenth century in the Galilean town. 5. Amicitia and Hermeticism. Paratext as Key to Judah Moscato’s Nefuot Yehudah 1

Bernard Dov Cooperman

Judah Moscato is one of the most widely studied of Renaissance Hebrew preachers, and his sermons have elicited considerable praise as representative of the Italian Jewish Renaissance. To Isaac Barzilay, Judah Moscato came closest to “the ideal of the uomo universale of Renais- sance days,” and his sermons demonstrated the blending of Judaic and classical cultures, of “regaining old boundaries” and bringing “secular” learning back into Judaism.2 For Israel Bettan, Moscato was uniquely “a child of the Renaissance . . . [who] perfected the form, and transfigured the substance of the Jewish sermon . . . [and] raised it to the level of a distinct literary art.” Moscato was the first whose “graceful and artistic” sermons give us a feeling of having been “addressed to a congregation” rather than written as a theological treatise.3 More recently, Marc Saperstein refers to Moscato as “one of the leading lights in that florescence of sixteenth-century Italian Jewish culture which is frequently associated with the Renaissance.”4 And yet, despite the fame of his sermons, we actually know very little about Moscato5 or his preaching career. As Marc Saperstein has

1 Sefer Nefuot Yehudah (Venice: di Gara, 1589). The first edition is conveniently digitized at http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/books/djvu/1252729. A recent edition with a much- expanded apparatus was prepared by Yom-Tov Porges (Bnei Brak: Mishor, 2000). A new edition accompanied by an annotated English translation is being edited by Gianfranco Miletto and Giuseppe Veltri as Judah Moscato. Sermons. Vol. 1 has already appeared (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011). 2 Between Reason and Faith. Anti-Rationalism in Italian Jewish Thought 1250–1650 (The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1967), chapter 9: “Judah Moscato (1532–1590),” 167–191. 3 israel Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1939; reprinted 1987), 192–226. 4 Jewish Preaching 1200–1800. An Anthology (New Haven and London: Yale Univer- sity Press, 1989), 253–269:253. 5 on Moscato, the standard biography remains Abba Apfelbaum, Sefer Toledot Ha- G[a’on] R. Yehudah Moscato (Drohobycz: A.H. Zupnik, 1900). Also valuable is the introduction to Judah Moscato. Sermons. I would like to thank the editors, Professors Miletto and Veltri, for sharing this with me. 80 bernard dov cooperman noted, “fundamental questions about the significance of his homiletical oeuvre are matters of continued debate.”6 Though his article on “Judah Moscato: A Late Renaissance Jewish Preacher” treats several of the sermons in detail, Moshe Idel focused intentionally on the dynamics of cultural interaction rather than on the homiletics per se.7 For his part, Joseph Dan treated the style and structure of the sermons, and demonstrated clearly that Moscato was a master preacher. But Dan’s conclusions that a surviving printed sermon closely corresponds to the original oral presentation and that the oral sermon was undoubtedly delivered in Hebrew to a multi-lingual and intellectually sophisticated audience have been challenged and remain to be proven.8 Moscato’s sermons present us with a particularly acute example of a general methodological problem: the inevitable gap between the original oral sermon and the surviving written or printed record. In this regard, Jewish sermons are especially inaccessible since they were usually delivered on Sabbaths and Holy Days when the audience was religiously prohibited from taking notes and, consequently, we have almost no auditors’ summaries as we do, for example, with sermons given by Protestant Christian divines.9 In general, historians have tended to ignore the circumstances of the original delivery, granting primacy to the surviving text and focusing their analysis either on the formal structure of the published presentation or on its intellectual

6 marc Saperstein, “Italian Jewish Preaching: An Overview,” in Preachers of the Ital- ian Ghetto, ed. David B. Ruderman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 22–40:24; idem, Jewish Preaching, 254. 7 Preachers of the Italian Ghetto, ed. David B. Ruderman (Berkeley: University of Cali- fornia Press, 1992), 41–66. 8 “The Sermon Tefillah ve-Dim’ah of R. Judah Moscato,” (Hebrew), Sinai 76 (1975): 209–232; idem, “Homiletic Literature and its Literary Values” (Hebrew), Ha-Sifrut 3 (1972): 558–567. Moshe Idel remains “skeptical about the possibility that these difficult texts were ever delivered as sermons in any synagogue, at least in the Hebrew form that we possess”; “Judah Moscato,” 46. I tend to agree with Robert Bonfil’s assumption that sermons were delivered in the vernacular, though no doubt extended biblical citations and sophisticated Hebrew terms drawn from rabbinic and liturgical texts could have been thrown in, with or even without an accompanying explanatory gloss. On the language of sermon delivery compare Robert Bonfil, Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press for Littman Library, 1990), 301–302, and Idel, “Judah Moscato,” 60, n. 28. 9 marc Saperstein, “The Sermon as Oral Performance,” Transmitting Jewish Tradi- tion: Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Diffusion, ed. Yaakov Elman and Israel Gershoni (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 248–277. amicitia and hermeticism 81 content.10 The preacher is imagined as at most a mediator between elite and popular cultures in a polarized intellectual landscape.11 A gap is assumed between preacher and audience, a binary polarity of learned speaker and unlearned congregants. Moscato’s sermons, which are characterized by complicated structures, an ornate and formal language, and frequent classical references, raise the question of audience with particular force. There are places in the printed sermons that seem to preserve elements of an original oral delivery. For example, Sermon 28, a sermon given on the occasion of his grandson’s circumcision, includes references to Moscato’s own family and hints at the name that would be given the baby at the end of the ceremony.12 None of this was edited out for the printed version. Similarly, in Sermon 16 Moscato praises the founders of Man- tua’s new academy and modestly suggests they have placed “a dwarf’s head [that is, himself ] on the body of a giant.” His self-deprecating humor is completed by a biblical citation (Ecclesiastes 10:1) equat- ing himself with the flies that spoil precious oil. This is of course a pun on his own name (Ital., mosca, fly) that would have been funny only if delivered in Italian. In his Hebrew printed version, Moscato neither edits out nor explains the joke.13 Even so, scholars have been hard put to imagine that these sophisticated texts were delivered to a synagogue audience full of less-educated individuals. Most assume, with Moshe Idel, that “Moscato’s views were understood only by the very few” and that “Moscato would surely have avoided” abstract Platonic and pagan views in his oral presentations.14 Scholars have

10 For recent overviews of the early modern Jewish sermon see David Ruder- man, “Introduction,” Preachers of the Italian Ghetto; Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 1200–1800; and idem, “Your Voice Like a Ram’s Horn.” Themes and Texts in Traditional Jewish Preaching (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1996). With regard to the sermon as part of popular piety and especially the impact of print on the sermon, see Moshe Rosman’s observations about preaching in “Innovative Tradition: Jewish Culture in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” in Cultures of the Jews, A New His- tory, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken, 2002), 519–570, esp. 530–540 and the sources cited there. 11 Using a rare set of Jewish sermon notes, Robert Bonfil seeks to identify the role of preacher as mediator within a polarized intellectual landscape; “Preaching as Mediation between Elite and Popular Cultures: The Case of Judah del Bene,” Preachers of the Italian Ghetto, ed. David B. Ruderman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 67–88. 12 Nefuot Yehudah, fol. 123a. 13 Fol. 75b–77b. 14 idel, “Judah Moscato,” 51, 47, and n. 31. 82 bernard dov cooperman tended to assume that what we have in print is considerably different from what might have been delivered. Rather than focusing on the evidence of Moscato’s preaching, historians therefore have explored his knowledge of humanist rhetorical norms or the place of kabbalah in his thought.15 As the reader may have already intuited, I find the radial dissocia- tion of preacher and audience an unconvincing paradigm, and so, in this brief contribution to the study of Moscato’s sermons I would like to reframe the question just a little. It occurs to me that in addition to its specific subject and formal structure the sermon was also a socially constructed ritual that occurred in a specific time and place and was governed by expectations that both preacher and audience brought to the event. For many people the sermon would be less a conveying of information than a ritualized listening; from this point of view it would be sufficient to catch just a few well-known phrases without understanding the specifics of the talk. This is not only the case for the unlearned in the audience. Sermons are a string of semiotic “signs” in the way that Roland Barthes understood mythological language as “second-order semiological systems.”16 The preacher and his audience, to the extent that they participated in a shared communal experience, were both acting out a set of social conventions. If an innovation went too far, it would strain and even shatter these conventions, as when the introduction of “art music” into the Ferrara synagogue a few years later alienated traditionalists. On such occasions implicit rules were made explicit and argued aloud; traditionalists pointed to ancient talmudic statements that forbade such frivolity, and proponents had to defend the Jewish “authenticity” of polyphonic singing.17 But this was

15 For Moscato’s rhetorical interests, see Alexander Altmann, “Ars Rhetorica as Reflected in Some Jewish Figures of the Italian Renaissance,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, Bernard Dov Cooperman, ed., (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 23–48, reprinted in idem, Essays in Jewish Intellectual History (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press 1981), 97–118 and Von der mittelalterlichen zur modernen Aufklärung (Tübingen: Mohr, 1987), 155–171. For his kabbalistic concerns, see Idel, “Judah Moscato.” 16 “Myth Today,” Mythologies, selected and translated by Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 109 ff. 17 Compare for example Judah Arye Modena’s introductory defense to Salamone Rossi, Ha-shirim asher li-shelomo (Venice: Bragadino, 1623), conveniently translated in Franz Kobler, ed., Letters of Jews through the Ages (London: Ararat Publishing Society, 1952), 416 ff. This strikes me as more indicative of the social dynamic than Modena’s more legalistic discussion in She’elot u-tshuvot zikne yehudah, ed. Shlomo Simonsohn ( Jeru- salem: Mosad ha-Rav Kuk, 1957), §6, 15–20 and his letter to Judah Saltaro, Iggerot Rabbi Yehudah Arye Mi-Modena, ed. Jacob Boksenboim (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University, amicitia and hermeticism 83 an exception. Though Moscato introduced classical citations and philosophical abstractions into his talks, there is no evidence that they led to open rupture. As a set of signs, his sermons apparently bridged any initial chasm between preacher and audience not through particular wording or specific concepts but by their very essence as conventionalized communicative efforts that met the expectations about subject and form brought into the room by everyone present. I am not suggesting that we can ignore Moscato’s audience. Far from it. The question, I would submit, is not whether everyone understood the totality of Moscato’s talks but rather how the various elements of the audience appreciated different parts of the talk. In a full-scale study of Moscato’s homiletic oeuvre we would want to reconstruct for each sermon the hoped-for communication between this very sophisticated preacher and a range of people in his audience. We would try, in other words, to identify the intellectual pleasure that Moscato wanted to give, and that the members of his audience expected to receive—each at his own level. In order to appreciate the sermon’s impact, we must try to reconstruct, albeit indirectly, the social context within which he spoke and wrote. In the present, limited study, I hope to begin this task, first by gathering together the little information we have about Moscato’s life and then by looking at the unusually extensive paratextual apparatus with which he sought to physically shape his published book.

Contexts of Preaching & Goals of Publishing

First to Moscato himself and his position in Mantua. Leon Moscato came to Mantua as a refugee from his native Osimo in the Papal States. It is not clear exactly when and why he came, but we do know that he was taken in by the family of a local banker, Salvatore Joshua Minzi-Berettaro—most likely, it seems to me, hired as a tutor for the family’s son Samuel.18 Eventually he would marry his charge’s sister

1984), § 64, 110f. Israel Adler provides a foundational discussion of the historical context in “The Rise of Art Music in the Italian Ghetto. The Influence of Segregation on Jewish Musical Praxis,” Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 321–364. 18 For references to the family see Shlomo Simonsohn, Toldot ha-yehudim be-dukasut mantova ( Jerusalem: Makhon Ben-Zvi 1965) [History of the Jews in the Duchy of Man- tua ( Jerusalem: Kiryath Sepher, 1977)], s.v. Berettaro. A description of how he was 84 bernard dov cooperman and by 1564, at about the age of 33, he was a permanent resident of Mantua in his own right.19 Moscato was engaged in various business ventures with his father-in-law,20 and he seems to have achieved a measure of financial independence.21 His business experience may lie behind the fact that in the winter of 1569 Rabbi Moses Provençal urged litigants to use Moscato as a guarantor for a disputed sum.22 It is often asserted that Moscato was appointed rabbi of the community in 1587, though the current state of the Jewish communal archive does not allow us to document his official role properly.23 Still, he was obviously regarded by the city’s non-Jewish authorities as the Jews’ religious

taken in by his future in-laws and studied with their son Samuel is contained in the dedicatory letter to Nefuot Yehudah directed towards Samuel. Historians have often suggested that it was Samuel who rescued the author, but the letter is quite clear on this point: Samuel’s parents had rescued the refugee scholar and “given him a place to engage in scholarly study.” At that point, Moscato says, he had given his own treasures to Samuel, and the two “had sat together as brothers, discussing religious matters.” Bringing a young man into the household as a tutor was a common Jewish educational mechanism at the time; see, for example, Mark R. Cohen, ed., The Auto- biography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi. Leon Modena’s “Life of Judah,” (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 86. 19 In a responsum dated 5 Heshvan 5327 (1566), Moses Provençal identifies Leon Moscato as “mi-yoshve irenu im kol bne veto dirat keva ze ki-shte shanim” (for about two years a permanent resident of our city together with his entire family); She’elot u-tshuvot rabbenu moshe provintsalo, ed. Abraham Joseph Yani and Abraham Yosef ( Jerusalem: Mak- hon Yerushalayim, 1989–1998), II, 98b, §180. On residency and citizenship in the Jewish community of Mantua, see Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua, 106 f. While he was a tutor and before his marriage, Moscato would not have been considered a permanent resident of the community. On the date of Moscato’s birth see Gianfranco Miletto, “New Documents from the State Archives of Mantua about Jehuda Moscato,” Revue des Études Juives 168 (2009): 201–208:205; idem, “A New Look into Judah Moscato’s Life. His Recently Discovered Last Will and Testament from the State Archives of Mantua,” European Journal of Jewish Studies 2 (2009): 293–298. Moscato’s death certificate, registered in the Mantuan Archivio Gonzaga and dated 20 September 1590, gives his age as 57, meaning that he was born in 1532 or 1533. 20 She’elot u-tshuvot provintsalo, §180, II, 98b–100b. 21 on Moscato’s personal wealth, see Miletto, “A New Look.” 22 She’elot u-tshuvot provintsalo, §179, II, 97a. 23 the assertion that Moscato was the chief rabbi of Mantua from 1587 seems to have been first made by Marco Mortara, Mazkeret akhme italya. Indice alfabetico dei rabbini e scrittori israeliti [Padua: Sacchetto, 1886], 43, and was repeated by historians such as Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching, 195 and Simonsohn, Toldot ha-yehudim, 525 and History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua, 722. Gianfranco Miletto, as he kindly explained in personal correspondence, relied on the 1806 manuscript Repertorio storico enciclopedico prepared by the communal archivist, Bonaiuto Isaac Levi (III, 249 in turn citing the communal Minute Book D, fol. 74a), when he indicated that Moscato was referred to as morenu we-rabbenu from 1587; “New Documents,” 202; and “Rabbi Yehuda Moscato and a Case of Forced Conversion,” Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 34 (2007/2008): 149–164; 150. amicitia and hermeticism 85 spokesman, a recognition that cost Moscato dearly when he was jailed for refusing to abandon his principled position during an attempt to force a local Jew to convert to Christianity.24 Whether or not he was formally appointed rabbi of Mantua, Moscato was clearly respected by the city’s Jews for his scholarship, both as a talmudic authority25 and as someone who could be consulted on conflicts between Jewish tradition and the historical conclusions to be drawn from gentile authors and humanist learning.26 His scholarship was recognized when, at some point, he was chosen to head the community’s new wa‘ad ha-akhamim, about which we shall have more to say below. With this picture of Moscato as both a scholar and a financially secure businessman, a person in other words not dependent on the community for his daily livelihood, let us return to the question of the audience to whom Nefuot Yehudah was addressed. Moshe Idel, as we noted, was skeptical about whether such “difficult and sometimes highly obscure passages (even difficult for Israeli graduate students in Jewish Thought!) could possibly have been presented by a preacher orally to a largely unlearned audience.”27 In fact, we know that at least in a few cases, Moscato’s talks were delivered to the entire community. Sermon 32, for example, specifically indicates that it was given “to the entire House of Israel in the large synagogue of the Italiani Jews (lo‘azim).” Admittedly, that was a special case: the sermon was a eulogy for the recently departed Rabbi Samuel Casès, and Moscato was one of the speakers at the communal ceremony of mourning that required

24 on Moscato’s role as communal spokesman see Miletto, “New Documents.” On his imprisonment in 1587, apparently because of his rigid opposition to Christian mis- sionary efforts in Mantua see p. 205 as well as “A Case of Forced Conversion.” 25 She’elot u-tshuvot provintsalo, I, §91, 152a. In 1566 (as we saw in She’elot u-tshuvot provintsalo, §180), Moscato called upon R. Moses Provençal to defend the family’s financial interests rather than issue an opinion on his own, but that does not really tell us anything about Moscato’s level of halakhic knowledge; he was taking advantage of Provençal’s authority and prestige. 26 azariah de’ Rossi referred to “that great Mantuan Rabbi Judah Moscato” and sought his opinion about drafts of his Me’or ‘Enayim; see The Light of the Eyes, trans. Joanna Weinberg (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 124, 635, and 673 as well as She’elot u-tshuvot provintsalo, I, §§68 and 69, I, 110–111. For the cultural context of that debate see Robert Bonfil, “Some Reflections on the Place of Azariah de Rossi’s Me’or ‘Enayim in the Cultural Milieu of Italian Renaissance Jewry,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard D. Cooperman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 23–48. 27 idel, “Judah Moscato,” 47. 86 bernard dov cooperman a large venue.28 A few other sermons—eulogies for prominent rabbinic scholars and three special fund-raising efforts29—were also probably given before a community-wide audience. As I have already suggested, however, despite the public setting not everyone in the audience necessarily expected to understand the entirety of these talks. More to the point, there was another venue in Mantua where Moscato could have expected a more sophisticated audience—the “academy” that he led. The bulk of Nefuot Yehudah, it seems to me, is best understood as a collection of “academic lectures” and formal addresses aimed from the start towards this more limited audience. This is not a trivial distinction: the intended audience would shape the form and the content of the sermons. Perhaps I can make this point more convincing by comparing Nefuot Yehudah with a manuscript anthology of sermons prepared by Mosca- to’s older contemporary, Isaac de Lattes.30 De Lattes’s sermons cover the Torah-reading cycle of a single year, each devoted to a single pericope or parasha, with a few marked in addition as being delivered on the “special” or “great” Sabbaths before Purim, Shavuot, and Passover.31 In other words, de Lattes’s collection is the notebook of a “working” preacher. It is not irrelevant that de Lattes was, for his entire life, financially dependent on a communal salary, on the fees he could earn for serving as a halakhic judge and advocate, and on support from

28 Given on the Fast of Gedaliah in the fall of 1572, sermon 32 is the earliest of the few dated sermons in Nefuot Yehudah. In the introductory passage Moscato indicates that “even he” or “he too” (af hu) felt obligated to participate in the communal occasion, language that suggests at least that this was an unusual thing for the approximately forty-two-year-old scholar. 29 sermons 21 for the redemption of captive Jews, 22 for the poor of the Land of Israel, and 24 for the community itself. The occasions for a few of the sermons seem to have been what we might call domestic or personal—the circumcision of Moscato’s grandson (Sermon 28, fol. 117b–123b or a talk to his own son about the proper method of study (Sermon 5). Unfortunately there is not information about the audience or location. Cf. also Sermons 29 (a circumcision), and 25–26 (weddings). 30 de Lattes was a Provençal scholar who made his way down to Rome in about 1537 and fulfilled various rabbinical roles including that of synagogue preacher in Jewish communities in Rome, Bologna, Pesaro, and Ferrara as well as a number of smaller centers. For a bibliographical and chronological discussion of these sermons see my “Political Discourse in a Kabbalistic Register. Isaac De Lattes’ Plea for Stronger Communal Government,” in Be’erot Yiaq. Studies in Memory of Isadore Twersky, ed. Jay M. Harris (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 47–68 and 79*–93*:56. 31 even the sermon delivered at the naming of “the daughter born to a certain Jew in Bologna in 1558” was specifically tied to parashat Shmot, the portion of the week. amicitia and hermeticism 87 wealthy patrons. He was paid to deliver his sermons week by week in front of a community.32 As for the Nefuot Yehudah, though the inclusion of exactly fifty-two sermons might suggest an annual cycle, the book’s contents follow neither the calendar nor the sequence of the biblical text as it is read in the synagogue. If Moscato delivered short weekly “synagogue talks”—what nowadays are called divre tora—that is not what he collected here. Moscato acknowledged, and indeed even emphasized, that these were “occasional” talks. In his introduction, he highlights the book’s title— The Scattered of Judah—explaining that the book covers a “scattered” set of topics and a variety of subjects.33 The earliest dated sermon was from 1572 and the book appeared in 1589: thus the fifty-two talks are drawn from a period that may stretch over seventeen years or more. Either Moscato preached only very rarely or this was intentionally only a small proportion of his talks. Some of the treatments are so complex that they seem to have been constructed from the start as extended essays and may never have been delivered at all.34 But most deal with a major Jewish holy day and were presumably delivered on those days. In addressing their individual subjects, all the presentations display a sophisticated structure and elaborate development. The infrequency of the talks, their esoteric themes, and their intricate presentations suggest that at least most were prepared for the yeshiva that, as mentioned earlier, was created by the community for Moscato to lead. We know very little about the curriculum at this institution; Moscato mentions only the study of Talmud.35 Nevertheless, as Robert Bonfil has convincingly

32 de Lattes never published his sermons, and we do not even know if he intended to do so. Notes attached to the sermons by Abraham da Sant’ Angelo seem to indicate that he had found them among his late father-in-law’s papers and himself composed the collected volume. Certainly by 1609 it was possible for a working rabbi to publish a set of weekly sermons; see for example Toldot ya‘aqov (Venice: Zuan di Gara, 1609) by the Florentine rabbi Jacob di Alba. 33 Nefuot Yehudah, fol. 2b. 34 For example, treatment of broad theological and philosophical issues such as the divine music of the spheres (Sermon 1), the doctrine of negative attributes (Sermon 3), or a comparison of gentile and Jewish knowledge (Sermon 14). Sermon 2, an analysis of the stylistically linked group of fifteen Psalms identified by the term “A Songof Ascent to David” seems similarly unwieldy as an oral talk. Of course, even lengthier and abstract texts may have been delivered orally; for example Sermon 1 is marked as linked to the Holiday of the Rejoicing of the Law, Simat Torah. 35 the terms for the institution are taken from Moscato’s inaugural address, Ser- mon 16, 140–144 (21 Elul, but s.a.). Sermon 43 was given during an intermediate summer break when the averim (the students) in the school were getting ready for the next talmudic tractate, which would begin the week after the Fast of the 9th of Av. 88 bernard dov cooperman argued, the yeshiva in Renaissance Italy should be seen as equivalent to an accademia—not a school as much as a gathering place for senior scholars.36 This seems certainly to have been the case in Mantua, as Moscato indicates in his inaugural address when he calls it a bet wa‘ad la-akhamim, a “meeting house for scholars.” We can assume that the curriculum and the scholarly conversations at this accademia were as philosophically sophisticated as its teacher.37 So far I have been trying to locate the audience to whom Moscato addressed his original oral presentations. It is equally—and perhaps more—important to think about the intended audience for his printed text. And here we are on much firmer ground because Moscato has left us clear indications of his intentions in the elaborate “paratextual” apparatus he created for the book.38 Moscato invested enormous effort in the titles, indexes, and other reader’s guides through which he sought to impose order on his “scattered” talks and turn them into a coherent and useful volume for his readers. First, he titled each unit to make its subject clear, and then expanded the traditional reshut (opening request for permission to speak) into a true introductory paragraph where he set out the theme and summarized the argument of

36 Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy, 20 ff. For a description of talmudic study in the Sephardic accademia in Ferrara, see de’ Rossi, The Light of the Eyes, 331; on the institution itself, ibidem, 677 f. 37 it may be worth mentioning that a few years later the young Leon Modena took over many of the stylistic features established by Moscato—from the selection criteria (eulogies, sermons for major holidays, and an inaugural talk) to the introductory summary for each sermon in his Midbar Yehudah (Venice: Zanetti, 1602). Modena also preached in an accademia—this one established under the patronage of, and in the home of, Calonymos Belgardo in Venice; see the introduction to Midbar Yehudah and Modena’s memoir. I do not mean to equate the two anthologies completely. Modena opted for a more popular Hebrew style, and he also provided “canned” wedding and bar-mitzva speeches that he had written for others, something hard to imagine in the case of Moscato; see below. Still, the parallels between Nefuot Yehudah and Midbar Yehudah are striking when we compare both with works like Toldot Ya‘aqov (Venice: di Gara, 1609), the homiletic anthology prepared by the Florentine rabbi Jacob di Alba mentioned above, n. 32. 38 Gérard Genette, “Introduction to the Paratext,” translated from Sueils (Paris: 1987) in New Literary History 22 (1991): 261–272. Though it is focused on early seventeenth-century Reformed England, Mary Ann Lund’s exploration of “Early Modern Sermon Paratexts and the Religious Politics of Reading” raises important questions about the perceived relative value of hearing live preaching as opposed to reading printed homilies; Material Readings of Early Modern Culture. Texts and Social Practices, 1580– 1730, ed. James Daybell and Peter Hinds (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 143–162. These deserve exploration for the Jewish case as well. amicitia and hermeticism 89 the lecture. As historians have already noted, such highlighting of the topic (as opposed to, for example, a simple reference to the biblical portion or verse) marks an innovation in the history of Jewish homiletics.39 But the level of innovation went beyond this: Moscato added a separately numbered, fourteen-folio pamphlet to follow the title page. First, there was a brief listing of the sermon themes strung together into a narrative with each sermon number inserted as a superscript at the appropriate points just as we might insert footnote numbers into a modern text.40 Then Moscato reiterated the sermon titles in a six-page list now adding a more detailed outline for each one.41 Even if to the modern reader such a double “table of contents” might seem cumbersome and repetitious, once we appreciate the effort that went into it, we realize that it was integral to Moscato’s goal for his book. The system of briefer, and then longer, summaries had first been tried in medieval manuscripts of Hebrew responsa and from there it was taken over in early printed books. At first, the individual responsa in these anthologies were numbered ordinally, and the tables were keyed to the ordinal numbers. Moscato followed this practice with his lists of sermons. Sermon number and title were also clearly marked in running heads on facing pages of the book, making it easy for the reader to locate the particular text. But our author knew that there was another, far more efficient, way of guiding the reader: once printers had adopted foliation (and pagination) subject indexes could be keyed to fixed page numbers. Once his sermons were set in type, the author set about creating just such an index. But again, to appreciate the task it is worth keeping in mind that Moscato did not have available a conventionalized set of terms with which to label and organize his theological and ethical concepts.42 At best he could build upon precedents such as the fourteenth-century Kad ha-Qema, an alphabeticized anthology of treatments of sixty ethical

39 the innovative aspects of Moscato’s presentation have been noticed by Saper- stein, Jewish Preaching, 254, Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching, 196 and others. 40 Nefuot Yehudah, fol. 3a. 41 Ibidem, fol. 3b–7a. 42 such terminologial conventions had been developed for halakhic works in the process of codification. On the development of the subject index in anthologies of Hebrew responsa in the manuscript era and during the transition to print, see my forthcoming “Organizing Knowledge for the Jewish Market. An Editor/Printer in Sixteenth-Century Rome,” in press in a collected volume of lectures given in memory of Myron Weinstein at the Library of Congress. 90 bernard dov cooperman and ritual concepts by Behaye ben Asher.43 He may also have been inspired by the topical index that Jacob ibn Habib provided in ‘En Ya‘aqov, an important milestone in the effort to organize and sys- tematize the non-halakhic aspects of the Talmud (Salonica: Jehudah Gedaliah, 1516).44 The most immediate model for Moscato was undoubtedly Moses ben Jacob Albelda’s Sefer Reshit Da‘at, a book from which he quoted at length in sermon §13 and which, as we shall see, was produced a few years earlier in Venice by the same printers that Moscato used.45 Neither Albelda nor Moscato created what would today be recognized as true topical indexes—that is, lists of subject terms arranged alphabetically. Rather, they highlighted rabbinic or biblical phrases and listed them in the order they appeared in the sections of their books. But if the conventions of Hebrew indexing were not yet fully developed, it is clear that Moscato was working diligently to guide his readers as best he could, providing them first with a table of the rabbinic texts “concerning which [he] had something new to say” (alemo titof imrat ha-meabber le-addesh davar),46 then with a list of some twenty massoretic notes treated in the book,47 and finally with a nine-page list of biblical references (offered somewhat apologetically, in the hope that it might be of some use).48 Though these guides did improve upon the model in Reshit Da‘at— they were keyed to page numbers and not just book chapters—Mosca- to’s listings remain cumbersome; they do not yet offer a quick way to find a specific theme, maxim, or even verse. The listings were set in order of first appearance in the book: for example, a rabbinic maxim

43 Kitve rabbenu behaye, ed. Hayim Dov Shevel [Charles Ber Chavel] ( Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kuk, 1970), 451. That Moscato was consciously copying Behaye ben Asher is suggested by the fact that he called his topic listing a “a strung-together tale [listing] the sermons in the book” while Behaye referred to his topic list as [חרוז] in which the titles of all the sermons are to be found.” Moscato’s [חרוזים] rhymes“ seems somewhat artificial unless he was influenced by not just חרוז use of the word the model but also the wording of the earlier book. Neither printed edition of the work then available (Istanbul 1515 and Venice 1546) included a separate list of these terms. 44 The organizational and typographic history of ‘En Ya‘aqov deserves a separate study. Meanwhile on this work and the slightly earlier Haggadot ha-Talmud (Constanti- nople: 1511), see Marjorie Lehman, “The Ein Ya‘aqov: A Collection of Aggadah in Transition,” Prooftexts 19 (1999): 21–40. 45 Nefuot Yehudah (1589), fol. 65b. Reshit Da‘at was edited or composed by Asher Parenzo and printed under the license of Zuan Bragadin in Venice in 1583. 46 Nefuot Yehudah (1589), fol. 7b–10a. 47 Ibidem, fol. 10a. 48 Ibidem, fol. 10b–14b. amicitia and hermeticism 91 that appeared in Sermon 1 was listed there, wherever it appeared in the talmudic or midrashic text. But then if the same maxim appeared again in another sermon, this was noted under the first appearance and not under the second. Thus, for example, if Maxim 2 occurs in Sermon A (folio 6b) and again in Sermon K (folio 129a), both citations of Maxim 2 are recorded under the heading for Sermon A (folios 6b, 129a), and Maxim 2 is not listed under the heading for Sermon K. Similarly, biblical verses were gathered together under the names of the books from which they came but then listed in the order of the sermons in which they appeared, with subsequent references to the same verse listed together with the first. And massoretic notes were cited with no location reference at all. But however awkward their realization, these tables of contents and citation lists show us that Moscato was aiming for more than a volume of model sermons. Rather he was trying to present readers with a thematically and topically organized set of sophisticated essays on major issues in Jewish thought. We should also notice the direction in which Moscato expected his source guides to be used. Note that he did not provide chapter or verse numbers for the biblical citations, nor any source references for the rabbinic maxims and massoretic notes. The point, in other words, was not to tell a reader from where a quote in the sermons came. Rather he was trying to guide someone already familiar with the classical tradition into the Nefuot Yehudah—to that sermon, folio, or page where a given passage was discussed. Just as with the titles and introductory paragraphs introducing each chapter, Moscato was turning his homiletic anthology into a reference work for an intended learned audience—for preachers looking for help in preparing their own sermons, but also, as I will try to argue below, for another kind of reader. I have presented all of these paratextual aspects of Nefuot Yehudah— the titles, tables of contents, and readers’ guides—as added or at least ordered by Moscato himself and reflective of his own deep concern with the physical presentation of his book. I assume that it was he who initiated and financed the book, and this gave him considerable lever- age over the production process. As was customary at this time in Ven- ice, the book had many “fathers”: Zuan Bragadin held the publishing license and Zuan di Gara was the printer at whose shop the volume was physically produced. The copy-editor, compositor, and manager for the project was Asher Parenzo, identified on the title page asne’eman beto of Bragadin. The Hebrew phrase, which literally means “a loyal 92 bernard dov cooperman member of the household,” is drawn from Numbers 12:7 and is often interpreted to mean that Parenzo was Bragadin’s employee. In fact, as I have indicated elsewhere, relationships between Jewish managers and non-Jewish license holders were neither static nor unidimensional, and I suspect that in this case Parenzo was much more an entrepre- a student ,(פורינץ) neur than an employee.49 Asher ben Jacob Parenzo of Rabbi Samuel Yehuda Katzenellenbogen,50 had grown up in the (פרינץ) printing trade. He may have been a relative of Meir Parenzo who, some decades earlier, had published in Venice under his own name and then through a license granted the nobleman Carlo Quer- ini. Asher seems to have specialized in ethical and homiletical texts: in 1582–1583 he produced Moses ben Jacob Albelda’s Sefer Reshit Da‘at, a book with which Moscato was, as we have already noted, familiar.51 In the case of Reshit Da‘at Parenzo tells us that the book was financed by one of his in-laws (meutanim), a certain Gentil ben Shabbetai. There is no reference to such financial support for the printing of the Nefuot Yehudah, and it seems likely that Moscato himself was the source of funding. We find an indication of the relation between author and printer in the rather lengthy errata list that Moscato insisted be added at the end of the book.52 This list was of course hardly unique; similar lists are to be found in other books of the time. The anxiety over textual errors was characteristic of the print era, and there is considerable work yet to be done on its causes and its impact on Jewish scholarly methods.53 As was true for many books of the era, the list of errors in Nefuot Yehudah was introduced by a brief paragraph from the com-

49 On the various and fluid relationships between Jewish scholars and entrepreneurs on the one hand and non-Jewish license holders and printers on the other in Italy in this period see my forthcoming article on the “Organization of Jewish Knowledge,” to appear in a volume of essays devoted to the study of the Hebrew book and published in memory of Myron Weinstein by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. 50 see his introduction to the Shnem asar derashot [Twelve Sermons] of Katzenel- lenbogen (Venice: di Gara, 1593). 51 Nefuot Yehudah, fol. 65b. 52 Ibidem, fol. 234b–239b. 53 For David McKitterick the mid-16th through the 17th centuries was “a period of anxiety” about, among other things, “inaccuracy in the printed book”; Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 8, and see especially his extended discussion in chapters 4 and 5. For a preliminary discussion of the issue in early Hebrew printing see my “Organizing Jewish Knowledge.” For a contemporary discussion of the reliability of traditional texts, both manuscript and print, see de’ Rossi, The Light of the Eyes, chapter 19. amicitia and hermeticism 93 positor (Parenzo) who noted in a defensive tone that “just as wheat cannot exist without straw, a print[ed book] is not possible without errors.” Many factors led to such error—workers’ haste, honest mistakes, and poor-quality originals. But, Parenzo indicated, Moscato had been unwilling to accept the limits of the printing process: We have, in order to please [the book’s] creator [latet naat rua le-yoro], agreed to provide him with a remedy by printing the table [lua] you are about to see. [In it] we will inscribe and list every distortion together with its correction, and indicate the folio, page, and line [where it occurred]. The reader was urged to use the list to correct his own copy, “and this will give pleasure to the author since all his words will be fit and without error.”54 Parenzo’s tone leaves little doubt that Moscato was in control: he was demanding what he had paid for. And so we have an image of Moscato the author—a man in his mid-fifties who teaches and preaches in an academy in Mantua and who for some time has been working to shape a literary legacy. We do not know whether some particular factor influenced him to publish his books specifically at this point in his life. He may have had a sense of impending death: he reported a lengthy illness in 1576, and his incarceration by Mantua’s Christian authorities in 1587 could not have been without its effect.55 He seems to have been working on several books simultaneously though he would live to see only the sermon anthology in print. (Qol Yehudah, his commentary on Sefer ha-Kuzari, would appear only posthumously, published by his sons in 1594.56 A third work, a commentary on Song of Songs, seems never to have been printed and is now lost.57) But whatever factors were pushing him to publish at this point in time, it is at least clear that printing Nefuot

54 on errata lists as a subject of scholarly investigation for the history of the book and print culture see Ann Blair, “Errata Lists and the Reader as Corrector,” in Agent of Change. Print Culture Studies after Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, ed. Sabrina Alcorn Baron, Eric N. Lindquist, and Eleanor F. Shevlin (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 21–41. 55 on 3 Tishri, 1576, Moscato reported that he himself had been quite ill that summer, and had therefore been forced to delay eulogizing Rabbi Moses Provençal, who had died a month earlier on 4 Elul. Nefuot Yehudah, Sermon 33, fol. 147a. 56 abba Apfelbaum, in his biography of Moscato, 28 noted the many internal cross-references beween the first two of these books, suggesting that they were being prepared simultaneously. 57 apfelbaum, op. cit., 52 lists references to this work in both of Moscato’s published works. 94 bernard dov cooperman

Yehudah was not a quick way to “jump start” a fledgling career or to make a living. Those were considerations for someone such as the young Leon Modena who, in 1602, hurriedly published some of his youthful sermons under the title Midbar Yehudah, consciously aiming his book at a broader, and linguistically less-sophisticated, audience than had Moscato.58 The mature scholar Moscato was working not on his career but on his legacy, relentlessly reorganizing his talks into a book, highlighting his themes, and providing his reader with well- paved paths into his intellectual world.

Imagining a Learned Community

It is time to turn now to the most revelatory of the paratexts in Nefuot Yehudah—the author’s substantial introduction. Here, I think, we can gain access to the larger framework within which our author hoped to leave his mark.59 Moscato was clearly anxious over his decision to publish. He worried that he would be accused of presumptuousness. His was after all among the first—if not the very first—volume of Hebrew sermons published by a living author,60 and he begs the reader to forgive him

58 on Leon Modena’s motive for publishing his Midbar Yehudah see his 1602 letter to Samuel Archivolti in Iggerot rabbi yehudah arye mi-modena [English title: Letters of Rabbi Leon Modena], ed. Yacob Boksenboim (Tel-Aviv: Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies, Tel-Aviv University, 1984), §40, 83–85. Modena was soliciting Archivolti for a one-page letter of approbation to be inserted at the start of the book and offered the older man a few “talking points”: the sermons were stylistically innovative, adopting techniques from Christian preachers that had not been used in any of the existing printed collections of Hebrew sermons. Moreover, Modena added, he had written in a less-polished register than had Moscato whose style was unacceptable to many. Modena characterizes the language he used as closer to that understood by most Levantine and Ashkenazi Jews in Venice (84). It remains to be clarified whether Mod- ena expected that there was a popular audience for his sermons. 59 one of the questions about the impact of print technology on the Hebrew intellectual world is the extent to which printing fostered the emergence of an “authorial I” and legitimized the presentation of personal motives as central to the scholarly creative process. The personal tone of Moscato’s introduction makes it one of the central texts for an evaluation of this phenomenon. 60 there were, of course, several collections of sermons in print, but so far as I am aware all of these appeared after their authors were deceased. The year 1589 also saw the publication of a single sermon by R. Judah ben Bezalel of Prague under the title Drush na’e u-meshubba, available in the digitized online collection of the Jewish National and University Library, http://aleph.nli.org.il/nnl/dig/books/bk001100325.html. amicitia and hermeticism 95 for publishing that which should more properly have been “kept at home.”61 Almost apologetically he confesses to his own eagerness:62 Listen, my people, and I will testify before you [Psalm 81:9], how strong is the human heart’s desire to make known one’s insights [hassagot] to others. For though my intellect is like a dry or barren tree,63 it has blos- somed and sprouted, and has yielded fully ripened new insights in various investigations.64 My ambition [tshuka] nagged and pushed at me [cf. Judges 16:16] until I . . . presented [my findings] before you. Jeremiah’s words [20:9] apply to me [when he said]: “I thought, ‘I will not mention Him nor speak any more in His name’—but it was like a raging fire in my heart, pent up in my bones; I wearied myself trying to hold it in, but I could not.” Using Jeremiah’s words to describe the Jewish intellectual’s passion- ate need to publicize his ideas was something of a trope, a formulaic biblical precedent that justified authorial audacity.65 But Moscato, I think, meant the phrase quite literally. He stressed that he was following Maimonides’ understanding of Jeremiah’s words. He thus placed himself by association among the intellectuals and prophets whom Maimonides had described: men who had received such a powerful measure of divine overflow that they were forced to compose books and “to call upon the people to acquire true knowledge” even if such calls would be ignored and even when they exposed their authors to danger.66 While apologizing for his boldness, Moscato was simultaneously underlining the importance of his own work. Moscato admitted that his book derived from miscellaneous lectures, and he worried that it would seem disjointed and disorganized. In the introduction he assures the reader that he had been careful not to give in to the all-too-common temptation to broadcast his thoughts as soon as they occurred to him, a tactic that led to hopeless garbling

61 cf. Isaiah 24:13. 62 Nefuot Yehudah (1589), fol. 2a. 63 In their original contexts these phrases, drawn from Ezekiel 17:24 and Mishnah, Kila’yim 6:5 respectively, both refer to a dying tree that bears fruit. 64 Drushim—the term can also mean “sermons” or, more broadly, “exegetical investigations.” 65 in addition to Maimonides whom Moscato will cite immediately, Moses ben Naman used this same trope in the introduction to his biblical commentary (Chaim Dov Chavel, ed., Perushe ha-Torah le-Rabbenu Moshe ben Naman [ Jerusalem: Rav Kuk Institute, 1962], [19]) to justify composing a book despite his personal limitations. 66 moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, tr. Shlomo Pines (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1963), vol. II, 37, 375. 96 bernard dov cooperman of various separate topics. Moscato, in other words, is pointing to the fact that he had intentionally delayed publishing many years’ worth of sermons until he had edited and organized them properly. To do otherwise, he declared, would have been to play the fool.67 But what may strike the reader most forcefully in this elaborate apologia pro libro suo is Moscato’s repeated evocation of friendship, a theme that seems oddly out of place in context. After excusing himself as driven by natural and irresistible human desires, and praising himself as inspired by the same ideals that had moved the prophets and scholars of the past, the author quotes Seneca’s Epistles to Lucilius68 and Aristotle’s Ethics69—that is, classical, non-Jewish sources—on friendship. He uses these authors in order to stress the social nature of knowledge and to argue that it is only the ability to teach and share that makes one’s intellectual insights worthwhile. Then, in a lengthy and quite ingenious exposition of some difficult verses in Proverbs (17:27–18:2), Moscato argues that the isolated intellectual is so eager to speak to others that he will often announce his discoveries at inap- propriate times, hopelessly mixing up different topics. The isolated intellectual (nifrad—literally, the separated one) will fashion wings to rise to the heavens, but when he gives in to temptation and returns to earth in order to share his discoveries with his friends, everything pours out of him in an unstoppable and mixed-up torrent of ideas, and the rambling speaker comes across as a fool. Finally, Moscato ends by again asking for understanding from the reader since “it is natural for a person to call together an assembly of friends to join him in understanding what he has accomplished, [even though] this will result in a blurring of [distinct disciplinary] boundaries.” Why this invocation of friendship and the emphasis on the social experience of knowledge? There are several ways to approach this question. One is to begin with the few indications we have of Moscato’s own social experience as an intellectual. In his brief dedicatory letter to Nefuot Yehudah Moscato “testifies” to his undying love for his brother-in-law, Samuel Minzi-Berettaro, and remembers the wonderful way that the latter’s

67 Nefuot Yehudah, fol. 29b–30a. 68 Nefuot Yehudah, “Introduction,” fol. 29a, referring, I believe, to Lucius Anaeus Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, I, 6 “On Sharing Knowledge” (tr. Richard M. Gummere, [Loeb Classical Library, London and New York: 1925], I, 26 f.). Strik- ingly, in his flowery Hebrew expansion of the Latin source, Moscato renders the original socio (friend) with “bne adam asher ke-gili” (people my own age). 69 Nichomachean Ethics, IX.9. amicitia and hermeticism 97 parents had brought him (Moscato) into their house, made it possible for him to occupy himself with intellectual things, and arranged for the two boys to study together. I have already suggested that the letter is describing an arrangement under which the young Moscato, a refugee in Mantua, was hired as a tutor for Samuel. But the arrangement, he asserts, was not just utilitarian and financial. A genuine friendship of “brothers” grew up between the two young men. Once Moscato married his pupil’s sister, we may assume the relationship became even closer. But even before the extra ties forged by marriage, the letter tells us that the boys’ “give and take in divine matters” was based on an intimate link between intellectual activity and personal friendship; each was considered vital for the other. Another indication of the social context of intellectual life is provided in Qol Yehudah. The introduction to that work was based on an elaborate conceit drawn from the well-known biblical tale (Genesis 18) of three angels who appeared to Abraham and announced the imminent birth of Isaac. In his version, Moscato describes a group of three men, “their visage awe-inspiring like that of angels of God.” The visitors approach him asking that he expound to them on the meaning of Judah Halevi’s Kuzari. “If we have found favor in your eyes, please do not deny the request of your friends,” they beg. In the printed versions of the book, the three angel-like friends are named—Rabbis Avigdor and Raphael Cividali and Judah Saraval. But as Adam Shear has noted, these names are not to be found in the existing manuscripts of the commentary and were likely added in Venice as the book was being set in type. Shear suggests that the names were intended to lend the introduction “an air of authenticity,” making the book appear to be “a project commissioned by prominent leaders of the Venice and Mantua communities.”70 For our purposes, it is less important whether or not these rabbis actually studied with Moscato, or whether they gave their “imprimatur” to the book. What is significant is the manner in which Moscato chose to represent scholarly activity. He and his readers imagined learning occurring not in the Peripatetics’ agora or a university classroom but rather within a small and uninstitutionalized

70 see Adam Shear, “Judah Moscato’s Scholarly Self-Image and the Question of Jewish Humanism,” in Cultural Intermediaries. Jewish Intellectual in Early Modern Italy, ed. David B. Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 152. 98 bernard dov cooperman elite band of male intellectuals for whom engagement in study was an expression of friendship.71 To understand Moscato’s emphasis on friendship as part of the acquisition of knowledge, we must step out of the small community of Jewish Mantua. Friendship (Latin: amicitia; Italian: amicizia), a standard theme of classical literature, had been taken up with enthusiasm by Renaissance humanists. Drawing especially upon the works of Aristotle, Seneca, and Cicero, humanists expanded upon their models and saw friendship as a way of establishing their own intellectual communities separate from the institutionalized structures that governed society.72 From as early as the opening letter of Petrarch’s mid-fifteenth-century Epistolae rerum familiarium, we see emphasis on the ideal of amicizia as both a topic of study and a set of rhetorical norms to be articulated in correspondence and demonstrated in personal relations. In that collection Petrarch also demonstrates one of the strategies that would become conventional in establishing the bond of friendship. His introductory letter is a confession of personal weakness: in it he confesses to having produced relatively unsuccessful essays that he destroyed. He then co-opted his reader by asking him to hide this “failing” and participate in an editorial charade of perfect consistency. Petrarch is making an “open secret” of the fact that the collected Familiares is a “heavily edited work, one full of cancellations and concealment.” As Dolora Wojciehowski has pointed out, “Petrarch’s opening confession functioned . . . like a secret handshake” and the revelation of the author’s “real self ” became the basis of a bond of

71 compare also the description of the need to share scholarship with friends at the start of the introduction, drawn from Seneca and Aristotle. “When [the scholar] has -appear in his pleas (חבלים) no friends who can share in his goodness, imperfections ant experience and even his successes lose their worth.” Friendly gatherings have the same significance for Moscato’s image of scholarship as did the market place for the teachings of Socrates or the private home (as specifically opposed to the communal synagogue) for the sermons of the Provençal Jacob Antali collected in Malmad ha- Talmidim. 72 From the ever-growing body of scholarly literature on friendship in the Renais- sance, the reader might begin with Peter Burke, “Humanism and Friendship in Six- teenth-Century Europe,” Groniek 134 (1996): 90–98, expanded in Julian Haseldine, Friendship in Medieval Europe (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), 262–274; Reginald Hyatte, The Arts of Friendship. The Idealization of Friendship in Medieval and Early Renaissance Literature (Leiden, New York, and Köln: Brill, 1994), especially chapter 4; and Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), on “The Friendship of Citizens.” amicitia and hermeticism 99 friendship between him and his reader.73 Can we not say, then, that by coyly admitting to his own “excessive” enthusiasm, Moscato was playing out this established mode of humanistic literary self-presentation? Moscato’s citations of Seneca and Aristotle on friendship now make more sense: they are more than strained proof-texts to explain the intellectual’s need of an audience. They are an evocation of a “cult of friendship” widely shared in humanist circles, and they provide the necessary setting and purpose for the book: by preaching to the accademia and then eventually by publishing his sermons, Moscato was creating a circle of those who adhered to the norms of friendship. In this context, Moscato’s embarrassed “confession” that he was driven by a natural human desire to display his intellectual insights to his friends fits perfectly: acknowledged weakness cements the bond with his readers. Not all readers would have understood Moscato’s allusions to the humanist ideal. Certainly it was not apparent to Rabbi Samuel Katzenellenbogen when the latter eulogized Moscato in the fall of 1590. Katzenellenbogen was then head of the Venetian rabbinical court and a preacher in his own right,74 but he had little taste for non- Jewish philosophy, and he assumed that Moscato must have shared his opinions. For Katzellenbogen, the purpose of the sermon was “to inform the people of God’s edicts and teachings at the appropriate time”—for example, to explain the laws of Passover during the month leading up to that holiday (BT, Pesaim, fol. 6a). Alas, the passing generations have become corrupted, and the people has become, so to speak, like a patient who refuses to eat the flesh of fattened chickens, seeking rather tastier, sweeter foods that are not as healthy or nutritious. . . . In almost every community, the masses flee from talks on ritual laws [dinim we-halakhot] seeking legends and homilies [aggadot u-midrashim]. The wise preacher, however, who knows what he is about, will behave with them as would an expert doctor with an ill patient. When he sees that he needs [to administer] a certain diuretic [harakah ma] and he worries that [the patient] will find it distasteful and refuse to accept it, the physician will arrange to add some zucchero to it to make it

73 dolora A. Wojciehowski, “Francis Petrarch: First Modern Friend,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 47,4 (2005), 269–298. 74 asher Ziv, “Rabbi Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen” [Hebrew], Ha-Do‘ar, 34 (1972): 177–201. On the excellence of his preaching, which combined speculative acuity with “interpretations [ peshaim u-derushim] as sweet as honey,” see the introduction of Asher Parenzo to Shnem asar derashot, quoted by Ziv, “Rabbi Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen,” 186. The eulogy for Moscato, Sermon 3 in Katzenellenbogen’s anthology, appears on fol. 17a–20a. 100 bernard dov cooperman

pleasant to the palate, though he remains focused on the medicine that is needed for the disease. Similarly the preacher will begin speaking about interesting legends and midrashim, but the essential part of his sermon should be about the ritual laws appropriate to the season, for it is they that will lead the individual to true success.75 Katzenellenbogen was sure that Moscato’s penchant for citing classical authors was nothing more than a necessary concession to an unworthy audience. Katzenellenbogen was absolutely wrong. Far from being merely necessary decorations, the citations of ancient non-Jewish sources lay at the heart of Moscato’s message, in the printed volume and, we may assume, in the original oral presentations. Moscato was cautious in delivering this message: he could quote certain classical sources openly—perhaps because his contemporaries would dismiss these as mere decorations. But he had to be very careful about mentioning other non-Jewish sources, and here we find a second fascinating clue to Moscato’s intent in publishing Nefuot Yehudah. In the introduction, alongside open and apparently inoffensive citations from Aristotle and Seneca, Moscato twice refers to the individual who fashioned wings for himself and ascended heavenward to observe the ordered wonders of the divine hosts, remaining however not completely satisfied until he had returned and gathered his friends to tell them what he had seen. Moscato does not tell us where he got this metaphor, attributing it vaguely to unnamed “sages.” In fact this was a reference to the Corpus Hermeticum, which Moscato would have known through Marsilio Ficino’s Pimander, a translation from the Greek into Latin first printed in 1471. The fifth discourse, for example, dealing with the simultaneous visibility and invisibility of God includes Mercu- rius’s wish “utinam tibi daretur, ô fili, facultas, ut alarum adminiculo in sublimem aeris plagam volares . . .”76—that is, that his son be given the power to fly by means of a winged instrument to see . . . the coursing stars, and heaven speeding on its axis . . . Oh, this is a most happy sight to see, my child, to have a vision of all these in a single instant, to see the motionless set in motion and the invisible

75 Ibidem, fol. 19a. 76 Mercurii Trismegisti Liber de Potestate & Sapientia Dei, cui titulus Pimander cited from the Basel, 1576 edition of Ficino’s collected Opera, vol. 2, 1843. I have taken the lib- erty, in the texts cited below, of copying the flowing English translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, V.5 published by Brian Copenhaver, Hermetica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 19 and passim. amicitia and hermeticism 101

made visible . . . This is the order of the cosmos, and this is the cosmos of order.77 At the end of the first discourse Mercurio Trismegistus—the “thrice mighty” and the greatest of ancient philosophers—is sent away by his heavenly guide, Pimander, having been empowered and instructed on the nature of the universe and on the supreme vision . . . [He] began proclaiming to mankind the beauty of reverence and knowledge: “People, earthborn men, you who have surrendered yourselves to drunkenness and sleep and ignorance of god, make yourselves sober and end your drunken sickness, for you are bewitched in unreasoning sleep.”78 Later, he prays to the unknowable God: “Grant my request not to fail in the knowledge that befits our essence: give me power; and with this gift I shall enlighten those who are in ignorance, brothers of my race, but your sons.”79 Here it seems to me we have the key to Moscato’s self-presentation. What appears at first to be apologetic and self-deprecating is in fact a claim to supreme significance. Moscato is among the Maimonidean men who had received such a powerful measure of divine overflow that they were forced to compose books and “to call upon the people to acquire true knowledge.” And Moscato is on a par with Hermes, the greatest sage of the ancient world, who had fashioned wings, observed the heavenly forces in action, and dedicated himself to creating a community of the knowledgeable. I do not mean to offer a Straussian interpretation of Moscato— to suggest that we must search for an esoteric doctrine of Ficinian hermeticism intentionally hidden in the sermons. Moscato may have avoided scandalizing his audience, but it was not persecution that informed his “art of writing.”80 Even if he could not openly refer

77 i would like to thank Professors Valery Rees, Konrad Eisenbichler, and especially Arthur Lesley for helping me to pinpoint this passage. That Moscato was citing this image from Ficino’s translation of the corpus hermeticum rather than from the “Dream of Scipio” in Cicero’s “On the Republic,” 6:9–26, from Plato’s Phaedrus, or from any other classical representation of flying heavenward as part of the philosophical life is suggested by Moscato’s portrayal of making, rather than growing, wings: ki aso ya’ase lo knafayim. 78 Hermetica I:27, 6 (1839). 79 Ibidem. 80 cf. Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1952) as well as his introduction to Maimonides, Guide to the Perplexed, ed. Pines, xi ff. 102 bernard dov cooperman to Ficino, Moscato could cite non-Jewish authors and even refer to Mercurio Trimaesto in a sermon.81 In fact what is remarkable in Nefuot Yehudah is how well Moscato integrated his classical sources and hermetic insights, weaving them into masterful interpretations of biblical sources within coherent presentations. Moscato, the exegete, could present his biblical and rabbinic texts as smooth and elegant confirma- tions of his points. In this introduction, for example, he moved back and forth between the principles he discovered in classical texts and the meanings he assigned to biblical passages.82 As he tied together a personal confession of overeagerness with a humanist desire to create a community of scholarship, a Maimonidean image of the driven intellectual with a hermetic imperative to enlighten, he continually cited appropriate verses to make his point. Moscato turned from Ficino to Proverbs with remarkable adroit- ness and reinforced his message through an ingenious interpretation of a quite difficult text, making it all seem “obvious” in its continuity. He focused on the opening verse of Proverbs 18, a verse that at first seems to make little sense—more a string of words than a logical sentence. Le-ta’awa yevaqqesh nifrad, be-khol tushiya yitgala’. Commenta- tors and translators have found the verse to be a real challenge: how after all can one connect the opening word le-ta’ava suggesting desire with its apparent subject nifrad, the separate or isolated individual? And how shall we understand the final phrase that suggests inflam- mation or excitement over (or against) some form of wisdom or skill? A quick glance through available translations shows a wide variety of suggested solutions, none of them especially satisfying. The New Revised Standard Bible and the Jewish Study Bible, to quote two recent English translations, illustrate the problem. The first suggests: “The one who lives alone is self-indulgent, showing contempt for all who have sound judgment,” while the latter offers: “He who isolates himself pursues his desires. He disdains all competence.” Both are forced to admit in a

81 sermon 31, fol. 138b. This is a reference not to Ficino’s Pimander but to a widely circulated doctrine in the medieval (or late antique) pseudo-Hermetic Liber viginti quat- tuor philosophorum. Idel, “Judah Moscato,” 54, and see also Fabrizio Lelli, “Hermes among the Jews: Hermetica as Hebraica from Antiquity to the Renaissance,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 2 (2007): 111–135:132. 82 about the quotation of classical authors through biblical verses see Gianfranco Miletto, “La prédication juive en Italie aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles,” Les Cahiers du Judaïsme 22 (2007): 90–94. amicitia and hermeticism 103 footnote that the “meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain.”83 Among the medieval Jewish commentaries both Abraham ibn Ezra and Gerson- ides associated the verse with the ambition to study, though their interpretations differed greatly: for the former nifrad refers to a wandering, and therefore isolated, scholar who joins together with other scholarly bands, while for the latter nifrad refers to an isolated phenomenon that cannot be understood out of context but must be interwoven with other phenomena in a set of basic, universal principles. Granted the difficulty of the text and the wide range of -interpre tive precedents, Moscato’s exegesis is remarkable. He makes sense of the verse and integrates it, together with several surrounding passages, into a flowing narrative linking the two themes he had developed in his introduction: first, the isolated intellectual who desires to announce his insights but has to restrain himself and present his material in proper and logical order lest he “contaminate” his ideas through disorganiza- tion, and second, the Ficinian who has left this world to observe the upper spheres and who desires to return in order to inform his friends. For those in his audience, and they would have been many, who knew the verses of Proverbs by heart, the cleverness and elegance of his interpretation would have been both satisfying and aesthetically pleas- ing. Any sense of alienness produced by the references to Seneca, Aris- totle, and Ficino would, I suspect, have been assuaged by the clever biblical exegesis. As for Moscato himself, it is hard to believe that he did not see the ancient traditions of Roman and hermetic wisdom as actually implicit in the Torah. Much has been made in recent years of the Respublica litterarum, the early modern republic of letters that Anthony Grafton so elegantly compares to a “lost continent” mapped and defined by the habits and conventions of its scholarly citizens.84 Scholars have argued over whether Jews knew of that scholarly world, whether they were influenced by it, and (in more recent years) how they influenced it. There are historians who have celebrated any evidence of Jewish travel in

83 New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd edition, ed. Michael Coogan (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 926 [Hebrew Bible]; Jewish Study Bible, ed. Mark Brettler and Adele Berlin (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1476. 84 “A Sketch Map of a Lost Continent: The Republic of Letters,” in Worlds Made by Words. Scholarship and Community in the Modern West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni- versity Press, 2009), 9–34. The accompanying bibliography provides a convenient starting point for research on this topic. 104 bernard dov cooperman that republic. There are historians who have stressed the fortified border maintained by that ultimately Christian land, and the constant effort required by Jewish leaders to defend their own dominion from its hostile forces. Moscato’s sermons certainly indicate that the border was labile. But equally important they allow us to see how a Jewish intellectual in Mantua could dream of establishing a separate Jewish republic of letters, with its own academy, its own rituals of sociability and friendship, and its own aspirations to divine inspiration and grace. 6. Judah Moscato, Abraham Portaleone, and Biblical Incense in Late Renaissance Mantua

Andrew Berns

In Moshi‘a osim, his 1587 work on plagues, Abraham Yagel wrote: I heard from the mouth of the great sage [akham kollel ], our teacher and rabbi, rabbi Judah Moscato, may his Rock protect him, that when our eyes are opened to the incense offering [ma‘aseh qeoret], and when we see all the elements in it one by one, we will see that all of them are beautiful and treasured [and work] by natural means to stop infestation and devastation, for by their strength the air will be purified.1 Italian Jews of the late Renaissance took ancient incense seriously. There were at least two divergent approaches toward biblical incense in sixteenth-century Jewish culture. Principal representatives of those approaches lived in Mantua, a city that hosted a thriving Jewish community in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.2 Some scholars, the most notable of whom was Judah Moscato, the inspiration for this volume and the conference that preceded it, took a homiletical view of biblical incense. In spite of what Judah Moscato may have told Abraham Yagel about the importance of clearly seeing the elements of the pitom qeoret, his study of biblical incense was rather imprecise. He did not identify, describe, or recreate the fragrances burned in the ancient temple, even though he advocated visualizing them. Moscato mentions biblical incense to add detail to his exegetical project. And he was by no means alone in late Renaissance Mantua; others like him include his younger contemporary Abraham Catalano.3 But there was another method of scrutinizing biblical incense in late Renaissance Mantua, and Abraham Portaleone was its avatar.

1 abraham Yagel, Moshia osim ( Venice: di Gara, 1587), 18r. 2 shlomo Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua ( Jerusalem: Kiryath Sepher, 1977). 3 abraham Catalano, who died in 1642, wrote about the plague of 1630–31 in his ‘Olam Hafukh. ‘Olam Hafukh was published by Cecil Roth in Kove ‘al Yad 4 (1946): 67–101. 106 andrew berns

Portaleone is known to scholarship as a successful court physician to the Gonzaga family of Mantua who published, in addition to a series of Latin dialogues about gold, a long, digressive encyclopedia describing the sacrificial cult of the ancient temple in Jerusalem entitled Shile ha-Gibborim [Shields of the Mighty].4 Modern studies of Portaleone, especially those written before Gianfranco Miletto’s important contributions, treat Portaleone’s work as exceptional. But Abraham Portaleone was an enthusiastic participant in a growing movement of the second half of the sixteenth century: applying scientific, and especially medical knowledge to biblical analysis. Comparing Moscato’s treatment of biblical incense to that of Portaleone throws both into sharper relief. Such a juxtaposition also refines our knowledge of two conspicuous intellectual tendencies in sixteenth-century Jewish culture: allegorical and antiquarian readings of the Bible. Jews who were trained in Italian medical schools approached Juda- ism’s sacred texts in a new way. They brought their scientific training, with its emphasis on experimentation and precise identification of natural products, to bear on their studies of the Bible, Mishnah, and Talmud. This essay analyzes Portaleone’s study of biblical incense and places it in the context of a broader Italian movement of the sixteenth century that included other Jews such as Amatus Lusitanus, David de’ Pomi, and Moses Cases as well as contemporary Catholics such as Ulisse Aldrovandi.5 That movement was initiated by several

4 see, for example, Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1959), 318. Shile Ha-Gibborim has been translated into German and thoughtfully analyzed by Gianfranco Miletto. See Miletto, Die Heldenschilde des Abraham ben David Portaleone, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Peter Lang Verlag, 2003); see also ibid., Glauben und Wissen im Zeitalter der Reformation: Der salomonische Tempel bei Abraham ben David Portaleone (1542–1612) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004). 5 older bibliography on Amatus Lusitanus is listed in David B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 307, n. 113. More recently see Eleazar Gutwirth, “Jewish Bodies and Renais- sance Melancholy: Culture and the City in Italy and the Ottoman Empire,” in The Jewish Body: Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period, ed. Maria Diemling and Giuseppe Veltri (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 57–92; Giuseppe Veltri, “Jüdische Einstellung zu den Wissenschaften im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert: Das Prinzip der praktisch-empirischen Anwendbarkeit,” in Judentum zwischen Tradition und Moderne, ed. Gerd Biegel and Michael Graetz (Heidelberg: Winter, 2002), 149–159; ibid., “Il lector prudens e la biblioteca della sapienza antica: Pietro Colonna Galatino, Amato Lusitano e Azaria de’ Rossi,” in Hebraica hereditas: studi in onore di Cesare Colafemmina, ed. Giancarlo Lacerenza (Naples: Herder, 2005), 369–386. The best source of information on de’ Pomi’s life is the Hebrew autobiography included in ema Dawid. See judah moscato, abraham portaleone, and biblical incense 107

developments in sixteenth-century Italian culture including curricular reforms in university medical faculties, the popularization of botanical gardens, and renewed debate about the precise meaning and proper translation of Scripture. The tendency to blend natural philosophical and biblical research accelerated until the beginning of the seventeenth century when various epidemiological, economic, and demographic factors halted a process that had been in train, and steadily picking up momentum, for the previous half century. Practically speaking, medical training implied several things. First, it habituated its devotees to philological study. Student exercises and later professional works had as their goal the exact definition of ancient medical terms and substances.6 Lusitanus and Portaleone both applied this intellectual disposition toward a new way of studying the Bible. Second, it inculcated an interest in and sensitivity to identifying material objects such as plants and stones.7 Portaleone needed not only to see but also to smell the very herbs and resins mentioned in the Bible and the Talmud. In order to understand Portaleone’s reconstruction of biblical incense we must first explore the work of his immediate intellectual predecessors—both those who shared his interest in antiquarian study of Scripture and those who did not.

emh Dawid, sig. 5ar–5av. The Encyclopedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, vol. 16 (2nd ed., Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), 366–367, also has a useful entry on de’ Pomi. See also Ariel Toaff, Gli ebrei a Perugia (Perugia: Deputazione di storia patria per l’Umbria, 1975), 146–149; Ladislao Münster, “L’Enarratio brevis de senum affectibus [bref commentaire aux maladies des vieillards] de David de’ Pomi, le plus grand médecin israélite au XVIe siècle,” Revue d’histoire de la médecine hébraïque 20 (1954), 7–16, 125–136; Roth, Jews in the Renaissance, 223–225; Harry Friedenwald, “Apologetic Work of Jewish Physicians,” Jewish Quarterly Review N.S. 32 (1941/1942): 228–230; 407–408. On Cases (d. 1617), see Portaleone’s praise of him in Shile ha- Gibborim, 24v. More recently see Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua, 701. On Aldrovandi see Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 66–67 et passim; Giuseppe Olmi and Paolo Prodi, “Art, Science, and Nature in Bologna c. 1600,” in The Age of Correggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of the Sixteenth and Sev- enteenth Centuries, ed. Frances P. Smyth (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1986): 213–236, 224–225; Maria Cristina Bacchi, “Ulisse Aldrovandi e i suoi libri,” L’Archiginassio 100 (2005): 255–366. 6 Jerome J. Bylebyl, “The School of Padua: Humanistic Medicine in the Sixteenth Century,” in Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Charles Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 335–370. 7 richard Palmer, “Medical Botany in Northern Italy in the Renaissance,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 78 (1985): 149–157. 108 andrew berns

Judah Moscato: Incense as Allegory

One of Portaleone’s contemporaries who did not share his intellectual disposition was Judah Moscato. Moscato’s analysis of biblical incense is exclusively homiletical. Moscato first mentions incense in the eighteenth sermon from his 1589 collection Nefuot Yehudah, written for the festival of Shavu‘ot and entitled “The Golden Bell and its Pearl Hem.”8 He equates “fine oil” [shemen ha-ov] with the anointing oil [shemen ha-mishah] mentioned in Exodus 30. Moscato proposes that this oil is a sign of divine influence that “descends upon the head and intelligence of Aaron.” As proof of this, Moscato quotes Nachmanides’ commentary on this chapter that cites Isaiah 61:1, “the spirit of the Lord is upon me; because the Lord has annointed me to announce good tidings to the meek.”9 Moscato mentions Nahmanides and his gloss to show that heavenly spirit (rua ha-qodesh) is in fact shemen ha-ov. In Moscato’s sermon the oil mentioned in Exodus possesses mainly symbolic value. Indeed, Moscato’s treatment of biblical incense is consistently symbolic. Discussing Exodus 30:7–8, “and Aaron shall burn upon it sweet incense every morning [. . .] and when Aaron lights the lamps at evening, he shall burn incense upon it,” Moscato remarks that this alludes to “practical perfection,” or shlemut ha-ma’asi. He then quotes Psalm 45:9, “All thy garments are fragrant with myrrh, and aloes, and cassia: out of the ivory palaces stringed instruments have made thee glad,” and does this to demonstrate that qeoret may be equated with practical perfection. When it comes to “speculative perfection” [shlemut ha- ‘iyyuni], the key is in the previous verse (Psalms 45:8): “therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.”10 For Moscato the verses in Psalm 45 that mention incense do so to allude to two types of spiritual perfection. On occasions with even more gravity, such as his sermon for Yom Kippur entitled “The Place where the Repentant Stand,” Moscato engages in homiletic analysis of biblical verses that mention incense.11 Just as in his sermon for Shavu‘ot, he makes no attempt to identify the herbs of the incense mixture. Moscato glosses the phrase “all of your

8 Judah Moscato, Nefuot Yehudah (Venice: di Gara, 1589), 81r–88r. 9 Ibid., 86v. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 176v–184r. judah moscato, abraham portaleone, and biblical incense 109 garments,” with the remark “do not read ‘your garments’ [bigdotekha] but rather ‘your deceptions’ [begidotekha]. Since acts of deception themselves carry an odor like spices, as when a man returns from his evil amorous errands.”12 For Moscato, incense is reminiscent of faithless- ness and sexual promiscuity. Moscato’s efforts to allegorize biblical verses that mention incense are representative of an intellectual disposition that promoted the efficacy of reciting those passages in a liturgical context. Liturgical traditions in medieval and early modern Judaism stressed the power of reciting descriptions of biblical incense in obviating and eliminating the effects of plague. To choose one example, Moscato’s younger Mantovano co-religionist, Abramo Catalano, clearly believed in the benefit of reciting an enumeration of the biblical pitom qeoret, or incense mixture. In his 1631 work ‘Olam Hafukh Catalano writes that the Jewish community of Pisa would chant the pitom qeoret liturgy every Monday and Thursday in the synagogue.13 And Moshe Idel has written about the role of incense in Sefer Ha-Meshiv, a late fifteenth-century mystical text, and has stressed the importance of liturgy in pre-modern Jewish communities’ efforts to combat the plague.14 Yagel’s reminiscence about Moscato’s remarks on the power of the incense mixture with which this essay began indicates that Moscato believed its elements possessed salubrious properties. But it is not at all clear what Moscato meant by “seeing” the elements in it, “one by one.” However strong his emphasis on the visual and empirical aspects of the incense mixture may have been, his project was of an entirely different nature than that of Portaleone who, after all, wanted to do more than see the elements of the incense mixture; he wanted to smell them. But before we turn to Portaleone, we must quickly

12 Ibid., 179r. 13 catalano, ‘Olam Hafukh, 74. 14 Moshe Idel, “Investigations in the Methodology of the Author of Sefer Ha-Meshiv” (Hebrew), Sefunot 17 (1983): 185–286. Sefer Ha-Meshiv was written by Isaac ben Leon in the second half of the fifteenth century. The Zohar, medieval Judaism’s most central text, underscored the utility of reciting passages pertaining to the incense mixture to prevent the plague. See Idel, “Investigations,” 264 n. 8. In the late sixteenth century Rabbi Yom Tov Zahalon also advocated reading aloud passages about incense in order to combat the plague. Zahalon’s work, and its influence on Rabbi ayyim Vital, is mentioned by Gerrit Bos in his “ayyim Vital’s ‘Practical Kabbalah and Alchemy’: A Seventeenth Century Book of Secrets,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 4 (1994): 61. I thank Moshe Idel for this reference and for sharing the relevant portion of Zahalon’s undated and unnumbered manuscript with me. 110 andrew berns

survey another, earlier, approach to the incense of the Bible, one more philological than experimental. For without precise knowledge of what the names of biblical herbs and resins meant, Portaleone would never have endeavored to assemble those products.

Amatus Lusitanus: Incense as Philology

Identifying ancient plants was a popular pastime in Renaissance Italy. Classicists such as Niccolò Leoniceno and Melchior Guilandino wrote commentaries on Pliny’s Natural History that identified in contemporary terms the plants and herbs that Pliny discussed.15 Similar commentaries on Dioscorides and Theophrastus abounded as well. Identifying and describing plants was not merely an academic exercise; practical concerns undergirded botanical research in this period.16 Physicians, pharmacists, and charlatans wished to know what medical benefits plants possessed. Focusing on biblical incense allows us to explore a node that connected natural philosophy to biblical studies. That node was formed by philological analysis. The first philologically rigorous treatment of biblical incense in the sixteenth century was written by the converso physician Amatus Lusitanus. Though he hailed from Iberia, as his name makes plain, he lived for a number of years in northern Italy, including Mantua, during Moscato’s lifetime. More to the point, Lusitanus also addressed the verse in Psalm 45 (44 according to the Vulgate)

15 niccolò Leoniceno, De Plinii et aliorum medicorum erroribus liber (Ferrara: Ioannes Maciochius, 1509). The best introduction to Leoniceno’s work is Daniela Mugnai Carrara, “Profilo di Nicolò Leoniceno,” Interpres 2 (1979): 169–212. Melchior Guilan- dino, Papyrus: hoc est commentarius in tria C. Plinii maioris de papyro capita (Venice: Antonius Ulmus, 1572). On Guilandino see Loris Premuda’s “Melchior Wieland,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles C. Gillispie (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1976), vol. 14: 335–336; Roberto de Visiani, L’Orto botanico di Padova nell’anno 1842 (Padua: Coi tipi di Angelo Sicca, 1842), 9–12; Giovanni Battista de Toni, “Melchi- orre Guilandino,” in Gli scienziati italiani dall’inizio del Medio Evo ai nostri giorni: repertorio biobibliografico dei filosofi, matematici, astronomi, fisici, chimici, naturalisti, biologi, medici, geografi italiani, ed. Aldo Mieli (Rome: Leonardo da Vinci, 1923), 73–76, which has the most thorough list of older scholarship on Guilandino; Giorgio E. Ferrari, “Le opere a stampa del Guilandino” in Libri e stampatori in Padova, ed. Antonio Barzon (Padua: Del Seminario, 1959), 377–463; Anthony Grafton, “Rhetoric, Philology and Egyptoma- nia in the 1570s: J. J. Scaliger’s Invective against M. Guilandinus’s Papyrus,” Papyrus Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42 (1979): 167–194. 16 see Brian W. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing. Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006). judah moscato, abraham portaleone, and biblical incense 111 that Moscato used as fodder for his homiletic exegesis. In fact, he went so far as to print the verse in Hebrew characters in the middle of his 1558 Latin commentary on Dioscorides’ Materia medica.17 It is one of only two appearances of Hebrew characters in Lusitanus’ printed oeuvre, signaling that he— and those who printed his work— thought it worthy of special attention. The sixty-sixth enarratio of his commentary on Dioscorides’ Materia Medica deals with Stacte. Lusitanus uses his knowledge of natural philosophy to correct an inaccurate reading of Scripture that had originated in Jerome’s Vulgate translation and seeped into a number of other translations and commentaries. He remarks that “many think that the psalmist indeed called [the spice] in Psalm 44 ‘gutta’ or ‘tear,’ as the verse reads: ‘therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows, all thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloe, and cassia.’ ”18 Displaying his strong acquaintance with the Hebrew Scriptures as well as his botanical expertise, Lusitanus protests that “the truth is that the Davidic text does not have it as such; the true Hebrew is not in accordance with this.” Exposing deficiencies in the text of the Vulgate, Lusitanus argued that “that inept imitator, who was not Jerome, had gutta for ahalot—the word itself certainly indicates aloe wood.”19 Amatus Lusitanus’s critical remarks were directed not only at ancient biblical translations but also contemporary scholars. For example, he found fault with the Hebraist Sebastian Münster’s rendering of these terms. Lusitanus lamented that Münster, “a man learned in many languages,” translated ahalot with “aloes.” “The truth of the matter,” Lusitanus explained, “is that he should have translated it as lignum aloes, and not aloen.” Showing his talent both for biblical exegesis and botanical identification, Lusitanus points out that “aloe is a type of sap, which the Hebrews call in their language aloe. Ahalot, on the other hand, is aloe wood. As such, Münster would have been more correct to say ‘myrrh, aloe wood, and keza.’ ”20 Lusitanus’s exposition of ahalot demonstrates Hebraic competence and botanical erudition. His medical education helped him fuse those skills; Moscato was not the

17 amatus Lusitanus, In Dioscorides Anazarbei De materia medica libros quinque enarrationes (Lyon: Matthias Bonhomme, 1558). 18 Ibid., 91: “Apud vero Psalmistam, ut multi putant, psalmo 44 gutta, sive lachrima nominatur, quum legitur: propterea unxit te deus, Deus tuus oleo laetitiae, prae con- sortibus tuis, myrrha et gutta et casia.” 19 Ibid., 92. 20 Ibid., 93. 112 andrew berns beneficiary of that type of professional formation. Trained as a medical student to analyze classical Greek and Latin texts and consider all possible translations of them, Lusitanus did the same thing for the Hebrew text of Scripture. Amatus Lusitanus was not Abraham Portaleone’s only Jewish predecessor to take an acute interest in biblical incense; David de’ Pomi, another Italian Jewish doctor, did too. De’ Pomi’s investigations of the olfactory world of Scripture adumbrate Portaleone’s. De’ Pomi’s Hebrew entry on myrrh from his trilingual Hebrew-Latin-Italian dictionary of 1587 entitled ema Dawid reads: “Myrrah, in the vernacular. Song of Songs chapter one. According to others it is a type of tree which drips sap and has a fine smell. Psalm 45.”21 Fortunately, de’ Pomi’s entries are not always so banal. For example, his Italian definition of the Hebrew term levanon contains the following remark: “Everyone who passes by that mountain affirms that they smell a fra- grance of marvelous quality, and attests that the scent is still present two hundred and fifty miles from the mountain.” He goes on to add that the cedar wood used to build the ceiling beams of Solomon’s temple “is extremely durable and knotted and does not putrefy. It is no wonder that Solomon used [this wood] in building the Temple, which, due to its material and its divine composition, might still be found today in its pristine state.”22 In fact, the oil (or resin) from trees that grew on Mount Lebanon yielded two of the four incense elements specified in Scripture: frankincense and myrrh. And Mount Lebanon exerted a powerful influence on the imagina- tions of other sixteenth-century Italian naturalists who read the Bible carefully. In 1587 Ulisse Aldrovandi completed an eleven-hundred- folio-examination of the wood used to build the cross upon which Jesus was crucified, entitled De cruce.23 While describing aloe wood Aldrovandi mused that “one of the greatest desires of my life has been to see Jerusalem and Mount Lebanon for devotion and also to know the great variety of plants set there by God.”24 Strikingly, the natural objects surrounding scholars such as Aldrovandi, Lusitanus, and Portaleone were associated with biblical ones. And the equivalence of

21 david de’ Pomi, ema Dawid. Dittionario novo Hebraico (Venice: de Gara, 1587), 85r, col. 1. 22 Ibid., 70v, col. 1. 23 biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna ms. Aldrovandi 51 (2 Vols.) 24 Ibid., vol. 1: 111r. judah moscato, abraham portaleone, and biblical incense 113 biblical objects with modern plants was performed not only in scholarly monographs; it took place in books with much wider circulation. Giuseppe Quercetano’s Pharmacopeia, first published in 1608 and popular among Mantova’s pharmacists, is filled with plant names that occur in the Bible.25 The text boasts of ways to indentify “true aloe, true myrrh, and true cassia wood,”26 which, as we saw in Lusitanus’s Dioscorides commentary, was an easy product to confuse. Aldrovan- di’s comment about cedar wood and Quercetanos’s interest in “true” forms of biblical plants offer compelling evidence that within the medical and antiquarian community of late sixteenth-century Italy, common medicaments were understood to be the equivalents of biblical ingredients.

Abraham Portaleone: Incense as Antiquarian Research

In Moshi‘a osim Abraham Yagel noted that “all the oils that are in the incense mixture were already used by the ancients in their valued fumigations against the plague.”27 Though Yagel did not carefully describe those oils, Abraham Portaleone did. And doing so was a dangerous proposition. For Portaleone did more than just identify elements in biblical incense: he instructed his readers in the art of making one of its vital components. While ancient Jewish law codes and medieval rabbinical authorities prohibited the assembly of this mixture and legislated stiff penalties against those who transgressed this law,28 Portaleone chose a very public forum—a printed book—to spell out in clear detail how exactly one might do this. As such he helped trans- form the subject into one worthy of learned attention.29 In this last section I wish to isolate the role of Portaleone’s philological and medical training in helping him to compound the anointing oil.

25 Giuseppe Quercetano, La Farmacopea overo Antidotario Riformato, trans. Giacomo Ferrari (Venice: Guerigli, 1619). 26 Ibidem, 1619 ed., 120, 212. 27 Yagel, Moshi‘a osim, 18r. 28 see, for example, Maimonides’s Laws of the Vessels of the Temple 2:9. 29 blasio Ugolini, Thesaurus antiquitatum sacrarum (Venice: J.G. Herthz, 1744–1769), 34 vols. Ugolini includes the Hebrew original and a Latin translation of portions of Abraham Portaleone’s Shile ha-Gibborim. For Portaleone’s chapters on incense see vol. 11, cclvij to dxlviij. 114 andrew berns

Before Portaleone provides precise instructions for the re-creation of biblical incense, he first identifies and describes each element of it. It was a difficult endeavor, and Portaleone confessed as much: In the explication of spices for the incense mixture all of the commentators are perplexed. This one says one thing, and another says something else according to their delusions and dreams. I have not seen one among them who arrived at the truth about the essence of incense. Therefore I shook the hem of my garment (Nehemiah 5:13) and wore myself out trying to find useful sayings and truthful words; I shall put some true words to paper for everybody’s sake.30 Indeed, Portaleone put quite a few words to paper: he penned eleven chapters on the topic, which taken together comprise some twelve percent of his encyclopedic work. An analysis of Portaleone’s remarks on myrrh, since it was a plant that, as we have seen, engaged Moscato and seriously interested Lus- itanus, shows how botanical and biblical studies progressed in the second half of the sixteenth century. Identifying myrrh was difficult and, in Portaleone’s view, the medieval and Renaissance commentators whom he read were not qualified to do so. Portaleone’s approach to identifying myrrh was rigorously philological, and to his mind many rabbinical authorities had not successfully designated that plant. For example, he criticizes Nathan ben Yehiel of Rome [Ba‘al he-‘Arukh], a twelfth-century Jewish lexicographer, for misusing a Greek word and confusing two plants: The Ba‘al he-’Arukh, may his memory be blessed, wrote ‘mor in Greek is mosco.’ Until this day I have never seen that scented mosco is called this in Greek. The mosco that the Greeks call bryon is not the scented mosco that the Ba‘al he-’Arukh notes.31 Portaleone explained that bryon is something that looks like white wool and has a sweet smell; on the tree the Greeks call this peuke, and in Latin it is called picea. Portaleone used his refined botanical knowledge, as well as his greater familiarity with Greek, to display his advantage over his rabbinical predecessors. In another instance Portaleone castigates Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508) along with other post-classical rabbis, and exclaims “it completely escapes me why they did not seek to know the truth of the matter from King Solomon, may

30 abraham Portaleone, Shile ha-Gibborim, 81r. 31 Ibid., 86r. judah moscato, abraham portaleone, and biblical incense 115 peace be upon him.”32 To demonstrate how one might do that, Porta- leone directed his readers to the book of Kings, where Queen Sheba is reported to have brought mor and other spices to King Solomon “from her own land,” and also the Song of Songs, in which King Solomon, the presumed author of that biblical book, states “I shall go to the mountain of myrrh.”33 Portaleone states that King Solomon learned to grow myrrh from Queen Sheba, and raised it on mountaintops, or at least on high mountain plains. An avid reader of Mattioli’s commentary on Dioscorides’ Materia Medica,34 Portaleone knew passages in which Mattioli cited Pliny. Pliny discussed myrrh’s origin among the Sabeans, a people known for cultivating myrrh and frankincense, and whom Renaissance readers identified as Queen Sheba’s subjects. Additionally, Portaleone was familiar with Theophrastus’s discourse on myrrh, which speaks of myrrh growing on high, snowy mountains, and which Mattioli quoted at length. And in at least one late sixteenth- century Latin edition of Mattioli’s work on Dioscorides, Portaleone might have read Caspar Bauhin’s letter to the Holy Roman Emperor, which contains the observation: O Most Illustrious and Merciful Lord: among so many and so great a number [of tales], remarkable is this tale of Solomon, wisest of kings, namely, that, as part of the affairs of his rule, he desired to write a com- pete account of all plants, from the cedars of Lebanon to the Hyssop of the walls [of Jerusalem] so that he might proclaim the wisdom of the best and greatest God. This history was destroyed (alas, we long for it) to the great detriment of humanity.35 In the end Portaleone never proves the identification of mor as myrrh on precise philological or botanical grounds; he simply assumes its identification, and uses classical literature to confirm cryptic statements in the Bible regarding myrrh’s provenance.

32 Ibid., 86v. 33 song of Songs 4:6. 34 Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi di M. Pietro Andrea Mattioli nelli sei libri di Pedacio Dioscorides Anazarbeo Della Materia Medica (Venice: Valgrisi, 1568). Mattioli’s edition of Dioscorides was, in the words of Findlen, “the most well-read scientific book in the sixteenth century.” Paula Findlen, “The Formation of a Scientific Community: Natu- ral History in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” in Natural Particulars. Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe, ed. Anthony Grafton and Nancy G. Siraisi (Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press, 1999), 369–400, 373. 35 Printed in Petri Andreae Matthioli medici Caesarei et Ferdinandi Archiducis Austriae Opera quae extant omnia: hoc est, Commentarij in VI. libros Pedacij Dioscoridis Anazarbei de medica materia (Frankfurt: Officina Nicolae Bassaei, 1598), unnumbered folio just before sig *2r. 116 andrew berns

But identifying biblical plants was only one part of Portaleone’s mission; another was to produce oil from their extracts. To do this he relied on knowledge gained from observing and conversing with spice grinders and pharmacists in Mantua. In fact, Portaleone declared that he wrote his work “according to the specifications of the spice grinders.”36 But his study of incense was also framed as an expansion of classical and medieval Jewish literature: rabbis in the Talmudic tractate Keritot discuss the weight of the various elements of the incense mixture, but the Talmudic text does not provide the particulars. Instead it contains such generalities as “Moses would boil the olive oil with the spices,” and their “roots were first soaked in water, then removed from the water, then they poured oil over them.”37 Although there are some details about how much olive oil was used, and how much anointing oil emerged at the end of the process, the section lacks detail about the weight, quantity, and proportion of spices. With regard to Maimo- nides’ treatment of this issue, Portaleone is much more explicit. Having circumvented the biblical and talmudic prohibitions against preparing the anointing oil, Portaleone announces that “I have decided to teach you the pharmacist’s method of making the oil of installation. Listen and I will speak in accordance with what God places in my mouth, since the Rav [Maimonides] skipped over this topic in the first chapter of the Laws of the Temple.”38 Framing his work on incense as an elabo- ration of a passage Maimonides disregarded, Portaleone lent his work legitimacy in the sphere of halakhah, or Jewish law. However, Portaleone’s remarks about distilling the anointing oil had much more to do with contemporary pharmacology than with medieval commentary. For example, Portaleone uses the word trocischi to describe the piles of spices that pharmacists laid out to dry in the sun. Here Portaleone’s professional experience informs his understanding of the biblical world: “They would put together piles of incense not yet ground up finely and place them in trocischi—they are small, fine, squared piles [of spices] and they are stretched out in the open air until they dry completely.”39 Then, Portaleone informs us, the process is repeated a second and third time. According to Portaleone, the

36 Portaleone, Shile ha-Gibborim, 94r. 37 babylonian Talmud, Keritot 5a. 38 Portaleone, Shile ha-Gibborim, 97r. 39 Ibid., 95r. judah moscato, abraham portaleone, and biblical incense 117 way the Jewish sages describe this process of drying things out is much more general—they say it only happens twice a year, once during the hot season, again during the rainy season. In addition to what he learned from pharmacists, Portaleone took much from Christian botanists of the time. For example, at one point Portaleone urges his sons, the addressees of Shile ha-Gibborim, to read Prospero Alpino, a well-regarded botanist: “If you want to know more details about ori, read his books from cover to cover; they are in Latin, and you will find there all that you desire and you will see that even in our time we have this sort of sap that will never depart from the world, with the grace of God, may his name be blessed.”40 For Alpino first- hand experience and direct observation were key factors. In fact he wrote to Giovanni Mauroceno, the addressee of his De plantis Aegypti liber, that he “saw and observed these plants, in various places in Egypt.”41 This approach found favor with Portaleone. In an earlier section of Shile ha-Gibborim in which he praises the energetic efforts of various modern explorers and roving botanists, Portaleone remarks that they “traveled and wandered around to nearly all corners of the globe and they saw what the ancients, sitting peacefully under their tents, quickly writing down their dreams and their falsehoods, did not see.”42 Portaleone not only constructed the incense mixture and explained to his readers how they might do so; he also justified his actions. That justification began with a theological argument: By the Lord of Heaven and the Lord of Earth, I adjure whoever reads my chapter not to compound the oil after this [fashion] but rather [to make the oil] as God commands, by the authority of the prophet, especially since we are in exile because of our sins, and we have contracted the impurity imparted by a corpse, and we are not able to properly purify ourselves through the process described in the written Torah, in the pericope uqah [ Numbers 19:1–22:1]. It is not unreasonable to think that the impure person might involve himself in this holy pharmacology, that he should become pure by the commandments of God in particular.43

40 Ibid., 95v. Portaleone refers to Alpino’s De balsamo dialogus, which was printed together with De plantis Aegyptiis liber in the Venice, 1592 edition. 41 Prospero Alpino, De plantis Aegyptiis, sig a2r: “conspexi ac observavi [. . .] in variis locis Aegypti.” 42 Portaleone, Shile ha-Gibborim, 89v. 43 Ibid., 100v. 118 andrew berns

Conclusion

Medical education facilitated Jews’ application of their scientific training and experience to the study of scripture and Jewish antiquities. Viewing Lusitanus’s, de’ Pomi’s, and Portaleone’s studies of myrrh as evidence of a progression from textual analysis to antiquarian exegesis to performative re-creation of a biblical practice, it is clear that the applications of botanical research multiplied during the second half of the sixteenth century. The more that scholars such as Portaleone knew about biblical plants, the better they felt they could understand Scripture. Portaleone wrote his Hebrew encyclopedia to bring the material culture of the biblical world to life. Indeed the introduction to Shile ha- Gibborim is explicit about Portaleone’s desire to re-create, at least in the minds of his readers, the details of sacrificial life in the ancienttemple. 44 And a half century earlier participants at the Council of Trent wished to make a similar point. Duing the twenty-second session, held on September 17, 1562, under the aegis of Pope Pius IV, authorities affirmed the centrality of incense as a component of Catholic worship that would “excite the minds of the faithful” and assist them in the “contemplation of those most sublime things which are hidden in this sacrifice.”45 Writing about Portaleone, Alessandro Guetta has compared his desire to visualize temple sacrifices to a Jesuit spiritual exercise, and labeled this approach “repentant science.”46 Building on Guetta’s insight, I would like to underscore how Portaleone’s medical training and professional experience, which sensitized him to plant names, accustomed him to philological research, and encouraged him to learn from unlettered professionals such as pharmacists and spice-grinders. This helped him probe the meaning of scientific terms in the Bible. Portaleone’s musings on biblical incense must not be seen as frivolous

44 Ibid., 2r–3v. 45 council of Trent, session XXII, September 17th, 1562, Chapter V, “De Mis- sae caeremoniis et ritibus.” The relevant passage reads, “ut mysticas benedictiones, lumina, thymiamata, vestes aliaque id genus multa ex apostolica disciplina et tradi- tione [. . .] et mentes fidelium per haec visibilia religionis et pietatis signa ad rerum altissimarum, quae in hoc sacrificio latent, contemplationem excitarentur.” See Ämil- ius Ludwig Richter, Canones et decreta concilii tridentini (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1853), 126. 46 Alessandro Guetta, “Avraham Portaleone, le scientifique repenti,” in Torah et science: perspectives historiques et théoriques. Études offertes à Charles Touati, ed. Gad Freudenthal, Jean-Pierre Rothschild, and Gilbert Dahan (Louvain: Peeters, 2001), 213–227. judah moscato, abraham portaleone, and biblical incense 119 or sui generis but should be understood within the context of devout natural philosophical research into the material culture of the Bible. Portaleone’s project to re-create anointing oil clearly demonstrates that scientific knowledge supplemented, and in no way undermined, religious understanding. Without his deep familiarity with Pliny, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides, he would not have been able to, in his words, “become pure by the commandments of God.”47 And without his immersion in the pharmaceutical world of Mantua, which his profession required of him, he would not have had the technical skills or personal connections to reconstruct a portion of biblical incense. Judah Moscato was not a medical practitioner. His approach toward biblical incense was completely different, and rooted in very different soil: that of homiletic exegesis. When Moscato told Yagel sometime before 1587 that he wanted to “see” the elements of biblical incense, he was not being literal. When Portaleone announced his intention to see, assemble, and smell that same incense, he most certainly was.

47 Portaleone, Shile ha-Gibborim, 100v. 7. Judah Moscato’s Sources and Hebrew Printing in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Survey

Adam Shear

In a project such as the one that produced this volume and the conference out of which it grows, we pursue a deeper understanding of the particular mental framework and intellectual output of an individual figure; in doing so, we examine text in context, using the social, political, and even material conditions of the society in which our figure lives as the backdrop to our understanding of the extant “works” of the individual. At the same time, we pursue another goal in a dialectical relationship with the first: We also seek to use our study of the individual’s work as contributing more evidence for the reconstruction of the culture that surrounds our particular subject—context from text, if you will. Two modes of historical inquiry can thus be distinguished: the first, a focus on text that more or less treats context as backdrop. The second mode is one that works outward from text toward a definition of some extra-textual aspect of the culture that produced (or later transmitted or preserved) that text. In practice, of course, the two modes are often practiced together or almost simultaneously within one historical project or publication. Indeed, “context” is the slippery concept here, as it can be applied both synchronically—to the society that produces the work—and diachronically within the framework of literary history or the history of ideas, in which the work is placed within a particular intellectual or literary trajectory. In my previous work on Judah Moscato and his commentary Qol Yehudah [QY], I was interested not only in elucidating Moscato’s work, but in placing it within both a synchronic context of sixteenth-century Italian Jewish intellectual culture and a diachronic context of the reception of Judah Halevi’s Book of the Kuzari, the subject of the commentary.1 In doing so, I argued that Moscato’s commentary reflected

1 adam Shear, The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), esp. ch. 3, “The Kuzari in Renaissance Italy” and ch. 4, “Judah Moscato’s Project and the Making of an Authoritative Work”; and idem, “Judah Moscato’s Scholarly Self-Image and the Question of Jewish Humanism,” in 122 adam shear

Renaissance Jewish intellectual trends, particularly in what I saw as a synthetic and synthesizing approach to medieval and classical Jewish authorities, and in his emphasis on Jewish knowledge and practice as paths to human perfection. I also suggested that Moscato viewed the Kuzari as a vehicle to offer a kind of encyclopedic presentation of a sixteenth-century Italian rabbinic humanist-kabbalistic-philosophical synthesis; and that the dissemination of this new “Renaissance Kuzari” affected the later reception of Halevi’s work. Here, I leave aside the long-term diachronic context of the reception history of the Kuzari and turn toward Moscato’s more immediate context, his own intellectual and cultural world in the second half of the sixteenth century in northern Italy. But I am interested here not in an examination of the ideas in Moscato’s work as they reflect and/or shape this environment, but in using his work as a “native informant” about the ways in which Jewish scholars in this period related to text— what might be called the “book culture” of the sixteenth-century Jew- ish intellectual. Moscato certainly lived in a “book culture”: he had mastered a large number of texts and cites many books (sefarim) in his own writings. A careful study of the way he cites texts, however, and careful attention to the language of his citations reveals a multi-faceted approach to texts. On the one hand, printed books and manuscripts were part of his everyday scholarly toolkit. At the same time, however, he often seems to cite texts from memory. The border between quotation and paraphrase—one familiar to every scholar and student in our time—is not clearly defined. Moreover, clear distinctions between “work,” “book,” and “text” cannot always be made.2 Moscato may cite a literary composition associated with a particular author or collective of authors (Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah or “our sages” in the Talmud)—a “work” of literature.3 He may quote a particular “text” (an

Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern Italy, ed. David Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 149–177. 2 In thinking about the differences between “work,” “text,” and “book,” I am influenced by Peter L. Shillenberg, “Text as Matter, Concept, and Action,” Studies in Bibliography 44 (1991): 31–82, esp. 38–47, and 81. The distinction between “work” and “text” was made by Roland Barthes (see Shillenberg, “Text,” 38 n. 8) but in a way that elides the distinction between the work as authorial composition and the material form (“book”). 3 Moscato usually names his sources, but not always. In this context, we can note the nineteenth-century debate over whether Moscato “plagiarized” from earlier unprinted commentaries on the Kuzari in QY. See Eliakim Carmoly, “Analecten. 8. Plagiate,” Israelitische Annalen 13 (1839): 101, and Samuel David Luzzatto’s response judah moscato’s sources and hebrew printing 123 arrangement of words) or simply refer to ideas that may be found in the work/text. And of course, his access to the “work” in a particular form (“text”) comes usually from a particular material version of the work (a “book”) although sometimes through oral transmission. Sometimes— either by specific reference from Moscato or through conjecture—we may identify the version of the work (the “book”) used by Moscato. In other cases, where the text quoted by Moscato differs from versions (texts) known to us, we are faced with a question: did he paraphrase or misremember or was he using a different text unknown to us? Moscato was born in 1523/1533 and presumably obtained his rabbinic and “secular” education in the 1540s and 1550s, although nothing is known about this period of his life. Sometime in the 1560s, he came to Mantua where, by the beginning of the 1570s, he was already a prominent figure. Whether or not he held a formal communal office (the evidence is ambiguous on this point), he was established in the 1570s and 1580s as one of the leading Jewish intellectual figures in Mantua.4 He died in 1590, one year after his book of sermons, Nefuot Yehudah [NY], was published in Venice. Four years later, his sons brought his commentary on the Kuzari to the press of Giovanni di Gara in Venice. The sermons in NY are undoubtedly reworked and expanded Hebrew versions of sermons given (most likely in Italian) in the synagogue in Mantua in the 1570s and 1580s, and it seems also that the commentary on the Kuzari had a similarly long genesis.5 Moscato’s entire education and his mature scholarly career were conducted against the backdrop of the printing press. Northern Italy was the center of Hebrew printing from the late fifteenth through the early seventeenth centuries and, by the middle of the sixteenth century, print was the preferred, indeed even assumed, medium of publication for Italian Jews, and numerous editions of medieval and classical Hebrew texts had been issued.6 Although there is some evidence that in the next volume, “Über die angeblichen Plagiate Abrabanel’s und Moscato’s,” 2 (1840): 25. 4 For the biographical details, I rely on Gianfranco Miletto and Giuseppe Veltri, “Introduction,” in idem, eds., Judah Moscato’s Sermons. Edition and Translation, Volume One (Leiden: Brill, 2010). 5 For my reasons for concluding that Moscato worked on the commentary throughout the period of composing the sermons, see Shear, The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 142. 6 For fuller discussion of the centrality of Italy, see Adam Shear and Joseph R. Hacker, “Introduction,” in idem, eds. The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy (Philadel- phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 124 adam shear

Italian Jews were discarding manuscripts in favor of printed editions in this period, manuscripts of old and new texts continued to be produced and used by Italian Jewish intellectuals until well after Mosca- to’s lifetime.7 At the same time, Moscato lived at a time when Hebrew bibliography was in its infancy and where scholars such as Moscato were unaware of certain books or were rediscovering medieval texts and wondering whether they should be printed. Moscato himself was unaware of the first edition of the Kuzari, published in Fano at the beginning of the sixteenth century, which had become an exceedingly rare book in northern Italy by the second half of the century.8 The correspondence of Italian Jewish intellectuals in this period is replete with references to unknown or newly found texts and commentaries.9 Given that Moscato comes from one of the first generations of Jewish scholars to take print for granted, what can we learn from an examination of the sources used by Moscato and more particularly by the ways in which he cites and refers to his sources? In answering this question, I offer a programmatic discussion of how his texts might be used as a “native informant” for a historical ethnography of the use of texts among the learned Jewish elites of northern Italy in the sixteenth century. The first thing to be said about the sources of QY and NY is that there are a lot of them: Moscato’s commentary and his sermon collection suggest a very broad erudition. In QY, Moscato refers explicitly to a large number of Jewish and a fair number of non-Jewish authors (some of whose work he could have known in Hebrew translation but a few only available to him in Latin or the vernacular); a few are contemporary or recent authors, but the majority are from antiquity or the medieval period. As is common in medieval and early modern Hebrew literature, he cites most of his sources by the name of their author (e.g., Rambam) or authors (e.g., “our sages in tractate Sanhe- drin) or by the tautological “author of ” formulation (e.g. Baal Neve Sha- lom). It is probably better to say that Moscato cites authorities, that is “author” (or auctor) in the old sense of the word—the person or persons

7 On the discarding, see Mauro Perani, “Morte e rinascita dei manoscritti ebraici: il loro riuso come legature e la loro recente riscoperta,” in Studi di storia del Cristianesimo per Alba Maria Orselli, ed. Luigi Canetti (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2008), 313–336. On the continuing use of manuscripts, see Colette Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, trans. Nicholas de Lange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 8. 8 see Shear, Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 45–46. 9 For an example related to Moscato and the Kuzari, see ibidem, 127. judah moscato’s sources and hebrew printing 125 responsible for the source and whose individual or collective prestige lies behind the validity of the source. For this reason, it is easier to count the number of authorities (either individual authors or works with collective authorship) in order to yield an approximation of the number of sources cited. This is not an accurate count (or even necessarily a good approximation) of the number of individual “books” (in the sense of material artifacts) consulted: in some cases, an authority may be cited whose text was read as a commentary or an annotation to another work (that is, two different authorities may represent one codex volume consulted) whereas in other cases an authority may have been consulted in multiple codex volumes representing different works of the same author. And while in most cases, when Moscato cites an authority, he is directly quoting (or paraphrasing) a text; in other cases, he is reporting the view of an authority as cited or quoted in another source. With these complicated caveats in mind and excluding individual books of the Hebrew Bible and individual tractates of the Babylonian Talmud, we can say that Moscato cites approximately 140 “authorities” in the course of his commentary. The list includes works of midrash, a large number of biblical commentators, commentators on the Talmud and authors of novellae and codes, and individual works of Kabbalah, philosophy, geography, historiography, or philology. The list also includes Plato, Aristotle, Galen, Hippocrates, Avicenna, Averroes, Ptolemy, and Boethius, as well as Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino. Philo is also represented and Josephus is quoted along with the Hebrew Sefer Yosippon.10 At least one of Moscato’s contemporaries cites even more sources than he does. In his large work Me’or ‘Enayim [The Light of the Eyes], Moscato’s friend Azariah de’ Rossi cites some 250 different authors and individual books.11 What accounts for the higher number of sources (around one hundred more) in Azariah’s work is his extraordinary recourse to non-Jewish authors, both classical and Christian, from the patristic period to his own day. Moscato cites a few non-Jewish authors (mentioned above) but far fewer than Azariah. In terms of Hebrew

10 For the full list, see the appendix. 11 I rely here on the index of sources that Joanna Weinberg prepared for her annotated translation of Azariah de’ Rossi’s Me’or ‘Enayim: The Light of the Eyes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), and her discussion of de’ Rossi’s use of sources in her introduction, xxxiii–xlii. 126 adam shear sources, even a superficial comparison reveals a very close congruity in the reading programs of the two men. Likewise, we may compare Moscato’s extensive list of Hebrew sources to that of Abraham Por- taleone, a younger contemporary of Moscato and de’ Rossi. In his encyclopedic work, Shile ha-Gibborim, Portaleone cited approximately 150 authorities, of whom 72 are Jewish/Hebrew sources.12 A consid- eration of all three authors leads to the conclusion that although they shared much the same Hebrew “library,” Moscato was more deeply rooted in Jewish and Hebrew sources while de’ Rossi and Portaleone made more extensive use of non-Jewish and, indeed, non-Hebrew literary sources. The implication of these long lists of cited authors is that Moscato had access, either in his own library or in the libraries of others, to a very large number of books. While some of the individually enumer- ated authors just recited could be read by Moscato within the pages of a single codex (such as a Talmud tractate or a Biblia Rabbinica volume), the era of large numbers of Talmudic or biblical commentaries collected in one printed edition had not yet come. It is worth remem- bering that a typical biblical book even in Bomberg’s Biblia Rabbinica would have no more than two commentaries.13 Some of the individual authorities cited (Maimonides for example) would be represented in multiple works in multiple books. So let us conservatively estimate that the number of codices viewed is roughly equal to the number of authorities cited and thus Moscato viewed something approaching 150 “books” in the course of preparing his commentary. Although Moscato lived and worked in the city of Mantua, which we know was an environment particularly rich in books, a collection of even one hundred books would have been quite large.14 Among the 430 collections surveyed by the Inquisition in Mantua at the end of the century, studied by Shifra Baruchson, only one library consisted of more than 350 books and only forty-four ( just over 10% of the total) consisted of more than one hundred books. The large majority of libraries (70%)

12 gianfranco Miletto, Glauben und Wissen im Zeitalter der Reformation: Der salomonische Tem- pel bei Abraham ben David Portaleone (1542–1612) (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 267–296. 13 the very large number of commentaries on the page associated with the Mikra’ot Gedolot format is a later invention. See B. Barry Levy, “Rabbinic Bibles, ‘Mikraot Gedolot,’ and other Great Books,” Tradition 25 (1991): 65–81. 14 on Jewish books in Mantua, see Shifra Baruchson, Sefarim we-qor’im: tarbut ha- qeri’ah shel yehude Ialya be-shilhe he-renesans (Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1993); and Giulio Busi, ed. Libri ebraici a Mantova (Fiesole: Cadmo, 1993–2003). judah moscato’s sources and hebrew printing 127 consisted of only one to fifty books.15 It is possible that Moscato may have had a personal library that encompassed most of his sources, but it is more likely that his own library was smaller and that he made use of texts borrowed from others or read while visiting in their homes. Moreover, while many of the works cited by Moscato were quite common, he also cited a number of works that were quite rare—even in book-rich Jewish Mantua. Again, if we take the data collected by Baruchson (albeit for a period slightly after the time in which Moscato worked), we can see a number of works cited by Moscato that are extant in only one or two copies among the Jews of Mantua at the end of the century, and of these many were extant in manuscript. For example, he frequently cites the works of “Ran” (Nissim Gerondi), among them Kelale ha-Ran, which was extant in one manuscript copy, and the printed edition of his idushim. This printed book was edited by Joseph Ottolenghi and published in Riva del Garda in the middle of the sixteenth century and was less rare but still only extant in ten copies in seven libraries in end-of-the-century Mantua. He also cites Boethius’s Consolatio, most likely using a Hebrew translation found in one manuscript copy in one library in Mantua, but possibly using the Italian vernacular translation—found in two copies in two libraries. Medical works by Galen and Hippocrates, also cited by Moscato, could be found in three and two manuscript copies respectively.16 Two copies of eshev ha-Efod by Profiat Duran, an important source for Moscato in commenting on the discussion of the calendar and the international dateline in Kuzari 2:20, were found (in manuscript) in two libraries. It is important to note that works that Moscato quoted frequently and across many sections of the Kuzari tend to appear on Baruchson’s lists as printed editions and as found in many libraries. On the other hand, works that he cites only once or twice or in a concentrated manner on a particular subject (such as the use of eshev ha-Efod in the calendar discussion) tend to appear in these lists as manuscripts and in only a handful of libraries. In other words, we might distinguish between a basic collection of works important to Jewish intellectuals such as Moscato and more specialist literature to be consulted on specific topics.

15 baruchson, Sefarim we-qor’im, 106. 16 Ibidem, 164. 128 adam shear

Assuming that Moscato had a personal library at his disposal (and that the conditions in Mantua in the 1570s resembled those in the 1590s), the conclusion I draw is that he had a core collection of (mostly printed) books that were constant objects of study and reference while preparing his comments on the Kuzari and were available to him throughout the long process of teaching and writing about the Kuzari. On the other hand, he sought out works that he knew or imagined or had heard were relevant to particular topics covered in the Kuzari in the libraries of his learned neighbors, in order to fully treat the topic at hand. And, of course, he had to know which neighbors to go to: in the absence of public libraries, intellectuals had to familiarize themselves with the scholarly interests, reading habits, and book acquisition strategies of friends and colleagues.17 It is not clear—given our inability to access the contents of Mosca- to’s own studio18—whether the fuzzy border between paraphrase and quotation for Moscato is mainly a product of faulty memory or of incomplete note-taking. It is likely to be a combination of both. If my supposition about the relatively small size of his own library is correct, he must have often borrowed books for a short time or read or consulted them while visiting in another’s home. Later, when referring to that book in his own writing, he would have had to rely on memory or on notes taken and preserved for later reference.19 Moscato’s list of sources includes works both available in print and those only available in manuscript and we may also assume that he sometimes consulted a manuscript copy of a printed book or a manuscript version of a source in lieu of a printed edition that was, for whatever reason, unavailable to him. But I suggest that it is most likely that the majority of texts consulted by Moscato were printed books and that his own library most likely consisted mainly of printed books.

17 Public libraries were beginning to emerge in this period in some Jewish contexts: Joseph R. Hacker, “The Sephardic ‘Midrash’: A Jewish Public Library” (in Hebrew), in Rishonim ve-aaronim: meqarim be-toldot yisra’el mugashim le-Avraham Grossman, ed. Joseph R. Hacker, Benjamin Z. Kedar, and Yosef Kaplan ( Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2010), 263–292. 18 we do now have such a study of the library of Moscato’s contemporary Mor- decai Dato. See Élodie Attia, “La bibliothèque du kabbaliste italien Mordecay Dato: nouvelles preuves,” Revue des Études Juives 168 (2009): 483–506. 19 The near-absence of extant commonplace books or their equivalent in contemporary Hebrew manuscript collections is puzzling. However, more careful examination of some miscellanies and not-fully catalogued material should yield examples of “notebooks” of intellectuals in the future. judah moscato’s sources and hebrew printing 129

A very large majority—perhaps 90 percent or more—of the Hebrew works cited by Moscato had been printed by the 1570s (when he began his work on QY). This is a tentative conclusion based on the early stages of systematic bibliographic research on each source cited by Moscato in QY and NY. It seems that not more than one in ten works cited by Moscato in QY were not extant in any printed edition during his lifetime. This is perhaps not particularly surprising as he worked about a century after the beginning of Hebrew printing, and lived in northern Italy which was for most of the sixteenth century the dominant center of Hebrew book production (rivaled only by Con- stantinople and Salonika in the first half of the century) and a center of the Hebrew book trade. By the end of the century, as Baruchson found in her study, printed books absolutely dominated Mantuan Jewish libraries. While 285 of the 430 book collections in Mantua in the 1590s contained manuscripts, only fourteen percent of the total number of books listed were in manuscript.20 Moreover of those 285 families that owned manuscripts, only 16.5% of them owned more than ten manuscripts. In other words, we may say that by the end of the century only forty- seven out of 430 Mantuan Jewish households were active users and consumers of manuscripts. Moscato lived at a time when manuscripts still played a role, especially for scholars interested in textual comparison (as Moscato was) or in more obscure texts (as Moscato was), but the printed book was becoming the default for consultation of standard or classical sources. Indeed, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the widespread availability of printed books was crucial to the intellectual activity of Moscato (or de’ Rossi or Portaleone). If we compare their work to that of their Mantuan predecessor, Judah Messer Leon, we see quite a difference. In his Nofet ufim (Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow), Messer Leon cites (again leaving aside biblical books), only nineteen sources, eight non-Jewish authors on rhetoric, and eleven works in Hebrew or Aramaic (including the Talmud and translations of Averroes and Aristotle).21 In Messer Leon’s scholastic commentary on Aristotle’s

20 baruchson, Sefarim we-qor’im, 205. 21 Rabinowitz, “Introduction,” liv–lx. The sources are Aristotle, Rhetoric (most likely in Todros Todrosi’s Hebrew translation of Averroes’ Middle Commentary); pseudo- Aristotle, Rhetorica ad Alexandrium; pseudo-Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herrenium; Cicero, De inventione; Quintilian, Instituto oratoria; Victrinus, commentary on De inventione; Boethius, 130 adam shear

Physics, recently published by Mauro Zonta, we see him using a dozen or so scholastic sources.22 A comparison with other authors of the late fifteenth century would doubtless yield a similar conclusion: while erudition is a qualitative judgment and thus a matter of relative perception, the number of sources that an intellectual would cite in the course of displaying erudition was dramatically higher in Moscato’s day than a century before. One might well object that the comparison is unfair given that Messer Leon’s works cover more limited topics or function within a more narrow, professional or technical discourse, while Moscato, de’ Rossi, and Portaleone offered comprehensive, indeed encyclopedic, works that dealt with a very wide range of topics. But this objection raises a new question: might it be that works such as QY or Me’or ‘Enayim that rely on the sifting, citing, and quoting of so many sources are possible only after the printing press has had some time to work its magic?23 While we might find a medieval or a fifteenth-century author who had read as much as Moscato or de’ Rossi, it is very difficult to escape the conclusion that print had a great effect on Moscato’s scholarly life in providing him with an abundance of potential sources. The historian Ann Blair has written of “information overload” in the sixteenth century, a sense on the part of contemporaries that there was too much to read, too much to learn. The rise of new encyclo- pedias, of bibliographies, lexicons, and dictionaries seems designed in part to transmit all this new knowledge and in part to manage the flow of information.24 However, Moscato does not seem to be bothered by

De differentiis topicis; “Alanus,” Rhetorica ad Herrenium; Targum Onkelos; Mishnah Avot, Shevu‘ot, and Makkot; Babylonian Talmud Berakhot or ‘Eruvin; Eleazar Kalir’s piyyut; commentaries on Psalms by Rashi and Ibn Ezra; David Kimi, Shorashim; Immanuel of Rome, Maberot; Averroes, Commentary on Metaphysics; Aristotle, Physics; Messer Leon, Mikhlal Yofi; and idem, Livnat ha-Sappir. 22 see Mauro Zonta, Hebrew Scholasticism in the Fifteenth Century: A History and Source- book (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006, 267–272; and the revised list that takes account of additional manuscripts in idem, “The Knowledge of Latin Philosophical Literature among Jewish Philosophers in 15th Century Italy. Scholastic Sources in Yehudah Messer Leon’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics.” in Hebrew to Latin/Latin to Hebrew: The Mirroring of Two Cultures in the Age of Humanism. ed. Giulio Busi (Berlin: Freie Uni- versität; and Torino: Nino Aragno Editore, 2006), 154–156. 23 cf. Mordechai Breuer’s comments on the importance of print for David Gans and his listing of Gans’s sources: Sefer ema dawid le-rabbi dawid ganz, ed. Mordechai Breuer ( Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1983), 23–29. 24 Ann Blair, “Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload, ca. 1550–1700,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003): 11–28. See also the other essays in the same volume of that journal, and especially the introduction to the special issue by judah moscato’s sources and hebrew printing 131 the possibility of too many sources; rather, he seems to wish to cite as many as possible, to be comprehensive on any subject, and particularly where establishing the correct reading of a text is at issue. In commenting on Kuzari 3: 27, in which the aver mentions some biblical passages in which the written consonantal text seems to mis- represent meaning (according to rabbinic interpretation) and must be corrected by the masoretic tradition (for example the vocalization of Moscato notes that ,( ַנ פְ ׁשִ י in Psalms 24:4 where the masora reads נפשו “all printed Bibles” contain this reading. Given that some seventy editions of the Psalms were printed before 1570 it is difficult to imagine that Moscato indeed checked all of them, or even that he checked all of those that were printed in Italy; however, what is noteworthy here is the authoritative pronouncement and the emphasis on systematic review. In the same passage, he notes different spellings of this example in two different editions of David Kimi’s Mikhlol (the second being the edition “with the annotations of R. Elia the Grammarian”).25 Perhaps underneath this desire to check all the sources (or at least to present the image of checking all the sources) is a compulsion and an obsessive anxiety, but it is certainly not overtly manifested. However, neither Moscato’s own references to printed editions nor the overwhelming percentage of his sources that were available in print should lead us to ignore the important role of manuscripts for Moscato and his audience in the second half of the sixteenth century. In addition to noting Moscato’s citation of some works that were not in print and were available to him only in manuscript, we should not assume that he always used printed editions of works that he cites. An examination of the phrasing of each quotation of Moscato’s and a comparison to printed editions would be a worthwhile endeavor; and this would no doubt yield a number of places in which Moscato’s text differs from printed editions. In such cases, he may be quoting a manuscript, quoting from a text (from a manuscript or printed book) from memory and thus introducing deviations, or simply paraphrasing without being concerned with word-for-word accuracy. In the absence of a systematic investigation of each quotation in QY and a comparison to all extant manuscripts of the period—a project

Daniel Rosenberg, “Early Modern Information Overload,” 1–9. And see now Blair’s fuller treatment in Too Much To Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). 25 see Moscato, Qol Yehudah on Kuzari 3: 27 (ed. 1880), 68. 132 adam shear which could take several lifetimes to complete—I would like to make a few observations about the way that Moscato cites his sources (i.e., how he refers to them) and what this may tell us about the interaction of print and manuscript in his own scholarly habitus and, by extension, the conventions of his scholarly world. Moscato does not cite books using our scholarly conventions, which ask for place and date of publication and page number. Mishnah and Talmud passages are quoted according to tractate and chapter;26 commentaries to the Pentateuch are cited by weekly portion (while the Pentateuch itself and other biblical passages are cited by chapter [not chapter and verse] Anyone who has familiarity with the Hebrew literature of this period knows this, of course, and we are so used to it that we do not pause. But I point it out in order to draw out a particular point: despite my confidence that Moscato mostly used printed books, for almost all of his citations it is actually impossible to determine whether he refers to a printed edition or a manuscript, and he certainly does not offer (except in rare cases) a pointer or a clue that orients the reader toward a specific printed edition or a specific manuscript. Rather, his citations are sometimes to an authority which provides an idea or a set of ideas and he may be either quoting, paraphrasing, or simply citing; sometimes to “texts”—i.e., to specific verbal formulations of such an authority; and only rarely to specific “books”—i.e., a particular codex containing printed or handwritten text. The kind of standardization we associate with print (citing the Tal- mud by folio page, for example; or indicating which edition of a book is used) had not yet come into place, a century after the development of printing, for Moscato or for his readership. On certain occasions, he wishes to draw attention to something he has found in a particular (printed) edition and it is only here that he provides more specificity. I have already mentioned his reference to Kimi’s Mikhlol “with the annotations of R. Elia [Levita].” In the context of the same discussion, Moscato cites “Midrash Tehillim according to the text of Yalqut מדרש תהלים עצמו הנמצא אצלנו“ presumably Yalqu Shim‘oni ]” and ]

26 It is easy to be misled here by use of later editions; in the comment on Kuzari 2:12, the 1880 edition reads “Mishnat Ketubot daf 49,” a reference that points to the Mishnah as quoted on page 49 of the standard editions of the Babylonian Tal- mud tractate Ketubot 49. However, the 1594 edition cites “Mishnat Ketuvot, perek na’ara,” the older form of citation by tractate and chapter, which Moscato generally employs. judah moscato’s sources and hebrew printing 133

The Midrash on Psalms itself which we have in print.”27“—”בדפוס Both works—Yalqu Shim‘oni and Midrash Tehillim “itself ”—were indeed available to Moscato in print: Midrash Tehillim had been printed in Constantinople in 1512, in Salonika in 1514/15, and in Venice in 1545/46 (most likely the one used by Moscato), and Yalqu Shim‘oni had been printed in Salonika in the 1520s and reprinted in Venice in 1566. And both works were found in a relatively large number of libraries in Mantua at the end of the century.28 The precision in reference to sources in the discussion of 3:27 is the exception, however. Elsewhere, when the discussion does not rely on the sifting of multiple textual versions, Moscato simply cites “Midrash Tehillim.”29 Moscato is not writing to explicate Halevi for the masses. From the tenor of the discussions in QY, it is clear enough that Moscato’s commentary is intended for a learned audience; while the reader may not be expected to already have his level of erudition (and the occasion for the commentary is the perception of the learned elite of Jewish Italy that the Kuzari requires explication) but he (and most certainly the intended reader is male), is expected to understand the references to sources and to have recourse to the same “library” as Moscato. The vastly expanded body of texts now available as a result of print does not lead Moscato down the road of popularization. Moscato expects his reader to already inhabit the same bibliographical environment, as it were, and he does not intend to take the reader by the hand and guide him into a new space. This is insider language for insiders. If we, the outsider anthropologists, wish to decipher the native language and offer a “thick description” of the culture of the Jewish learned elite in mid-sixteenth-century Italy, we must rid ourselves of the assumption that a scholar quotes “books” in both the sense of “work” and the sense of material codex. When we cite (in our culture), we cite a book in a dual sense: a particular literary work with an associated author and a particular edition. We have already seen that Moscato does not always quote or cite a “book” in the second sense—that of a particular edition. But it is important to note that he does not always cite a “book” in the first sense either.

27 Qol Yehudah, on Kuzari 3: 27. 28 see Baruchson, Sefarim we-qo’rim, 146: Yalqu Shim‘oni: 29 copies in 27 libraries; Midrash Tehilim: 27 copies in 25 libraries. 29 Qol Yehudah, on Kuzari 1: 115. 134 adam shear

Most often, Moscato cites an authority whose words on a particular subject may be found in various types (or genres) of literature: perhaps in a “midrash” or in a “mishnah” (the authorities cited as “our sages”); or in a “commentary” (“perush”) or perhaps in a work identified by title— and it is only the last type that is always found in a “book.”30 Keeping this in mind may help untangle one of the more difficult textual problems in both QY and in NY: Moscato’s use of midrash. In both works, we find ostensible quotations of midrash that do not conform to any printed text that we have. Certainly, we can attribute this to various factors: quotation from memory and/or the use of no-longer-extant manuscripts with different texts. However, when Moscato cites midrashic texts, we must distinguish, I think, between his more specific citations—“Midrash Tehillim” or “Bereshit Rabbah”—which seem to refer, both for Moscato and his readers, to specific books (whether available in print or manuscript)— and more general citations that seem to refer not to a book but simply to a genre or category of literature. In his comments on Kuzari 2: 14, for example, Moscato cites “the midrash on [the verse] “Joshua conquered the whole of this region.” The verse is Joshua 11:16. Where or what is the Midrash on Joshua? One will not find a book with such a title; rather, Moscato intends to refer more broadly to midrashic interpretation of this verse. We might assume that his access to such a midrash would have been through one of the printed editions of the Yalqu Shim‘oni anthology which covered the book of Joshua and which often referred to the text it collected as “midrash” in a general sense.31 Recent scholarship on the anthological nature and the eclectic formation of pre-modern printed editions and manuscripts of the various works of “Midrash” should give us pause.32 Moscato’s reference to a midrash (lower-case m) on a verse in Joshua could in fact be a pointer

30 the notion that sefer is both a generic term for book and the term for individual treatises (“works”) identified with an individual author seems to underlie Johannes Reuchlin’s categorization of Hebrew literature in his Gutachten über das jüdische Schriftum. See n. 51 below. 31 on the anthological nature of Yalqu Shim‘oni, see Jacob Elbaum, “Yalqu Shim‘oni and the Medieval Midrashic Anthology,” Prooftexts 17 (1997): 133–151. 32 See Elbaum, “Yalqut Shim’oni”; Marc Bregman, “Midrash Rabbah and the Medieval Collector Mentality,” Prooftexts 17 (1997): 63–76; and Burton L. Visotzky, “On Critical Editions of Midrash,” in Recent Developments in Midrash Research, ed. Lieve M. Teugels and Rivka Ulmer (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2005), 155–161. judah moscato’s sources and hebrew printing 135 to any number of midrashic compilations, in print or not, known to us or not. While we might track down the particular text that he had in mind (which is difficult as he does not in fact offer a quotation from the ‘midrash’ on this verse), I think we should consider this reference by Moscato as reference to an authoritative body of literature rather than to a specific book. On the other hand, sometimes Moscato means to refer to specific works, and indeed, to a specific book. In the course of a discussion of the sacrality of the land of Israel, he cites a source apparently known as “pesiqta”—he writes that “[ he] found [an explanation] in Pesiqta.”33 The relatively rare specificity that indicates Moscato’s own perusal of a text suggests reference to a specific book, perhapsPesiqta zutarta o-rabata, by Tuvia ben Eliezer, published in Venice 1545/46. This work is most frequently known to modern scholars by a different title—[Midrash] Leqa ov—but this title came into use only in the nineteenth century. Blasio Ugolino in his eighteenth-century Thesaurus antiquitatum sacrarum refers to it as simply “Pesiqta.”34 But the passage that Moscato quotes from “pesiqta” regarding the interpretation of Deuteronomy 17:16 (on the possibility of a king who would send Israelites to Egypt) is not found in the sixteenth-century printed edition of Pesiqta Zuara o rabbata.35 It can be found, however, in the 1885/86 edition published in Jerusalem by Moses Aaron Padova under the name Midrash Leqa ov and rely- ing on a fuller manuscript of the original eleventh-century work.36 In other words, Moscato apparently used some manuscript of the work of Tuvia ben Eliezer known in his milieu as “pesiqta”—a kind of generic type of midrash and not a specific and demarcated literary “work” contained in a printed book.37 Indeed, when Azariah de’Rossi did want to specifically cite the printed version of this work, he referred to “our printed edition of Pesiqta Rabbati or Zuarti,” an indication that his reader might be likely to turn to manuscripts of the “Pesiqta.”38

33 Qol Yehudah, on Kuzari 2: 22. 34 see the Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1906; digital version: http://jewishencyclopedia .com/), s.v. Tobiah ben Eliezer. 35 Tobia b. Eliezer, Pesiqta Zuara o rabbata (Venice: Bomberg, 1546), 86r. 36 see page 58 there. 37 note that the Jewish Encyclopedia entry suggests that the printers of Venice titled the work based on their misunderstanding of the fact that the individual sections were labeled “pisqa”; in fact, it would seem that they used the title in common parlance. 38 Me’or ‘Enayim, chapter 19, Weinberg trans. p. 324. Weinberg has “printed editions” but the text indicates only one: “ha-nimet elenu ba-dfus.” 136 adam shear

And this work, known to Moscato and de’ Rossi as “Pesiqta” and partly extant in a printed edition titled Pesiqta Zuarta o-Rabbati and later published in a different version as Midrash Leqa ov, is apparently not (for Moscato) the same as another work of Midrash that Moscato cites as “Pesiqta Rabbati.”39 No midrashic work with this title was printed until 1654, and a search of the union catalogue of Hebrew manuscripts reveals only one complete manuscript with this title dated before 1570 (Parma 3122, a late thirteenth-century manuscript in an Ashkenazic hand) and only five fragments that fit the criteria for date (a geniza fragment,40 a fourteenth-century Ashkenazic manuscript,41 a sixteenth-century Ashkenazic manuscript in a Christian Hebraist hand,42 a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century Italian manuscript,43 and one additional fifteenth-century manuscript).44 Given (1) Azariah’s garbled reference to Pesiqta Zuarta as “Pesiqta Rabbati” and (2) the absence of a printed edition of what we think of as “Pesiqta Rabbati” in sixteenth-century Italy and (3) the relative pau- city of manuscripts now extant that were plausibly extant in sixteenth- century Italy, one might imagine that Moscato’s reference to “Pesiqta Rabati” was in fact also to the work of Tuvia ben Eliezer. However, Moscato’s quotation of the comment of what he calls “Pesiqta Rab- bati” about the correspondence of twelve constellations to twelve tribes is not found in Pesiqta Zuarta (Venice 1545/46) or in its nineteenth- century successor Midrash Leqa ov, but can indeed be found in Pisqa 4.1 of Braude’s 1968 translation of the 1654 edition as collated with the Parma manuscript.45 This small glance at the difficulties of tracking down just two of the texts used by Moscato points to some of the methodological difficulties that would face someone preparing an annotated translation of QY and that do face the team working now on a translation of NY.46 But I point this out here in order to underscore both the continued use of

39 Qol Yehudah, on Kuzari 3: 17, 1594 edition, p. 153. 40 F 24449= T-S. NS 329.609. 41 F 15770= Paris BN 1408/15. 42 F 33587= Basel-UB R 1119. 43 F 1447= Wien-Oster. Nationalbibliothek Cod. hebr. 180. 44 F 30730= Wien Bib. des Stiftes Schatten 374. 45 See Braude, vol. 1, p. 84. (Unfortunately I did not have access to either the 1654 edition or the Parma ms when writing this paper.) 46 under the auspices of the DFG-funded project Kulturtransfer im neuen Stil: Der Renaissance-Prediger Yehuda Moscato (ca. 1530–1590). The first volume has been- pub lished; see n. 4 above. judah moscato’s sources and hebrew printing 137 manuscripts and the ways in which the availability of printed books helps to define the context for the use of manuscripts. In addition, we can see that the specificity of a citation varied depending on the needs of the author and his imagined reader. While Moscato refers to a text called “pesiqta” that might be found in any number of material forms, Azariah de’Rossi in the same period refers to the specific printed “book.” Moreover, Moscato’s citation of “pesiqta” as belonging to the genre of “midrash” with no reference to an author or to a specific book is also telling as it appears that he does not distinguish “pesiqta” as a separate “work” but rather as a subset of the larger genre of “midrash.” Moscato and de’ Rossi seem to stand at a pivotal transitional moment. If we look just at the category of “midrash” it is clear that prior to print, medieval scribal practices (the “open book” phenomenon that Malachi Beit-Arié has pointed to47) and the conceptualization of many midrashic manuscripts as compilations or anthologies of rabbinic interpretation48 contributed to the formation of midrash not as a category of distinct works or books, but as a genre of authoritative textual material which might be manifested in variable combinations in material artifacts (individual manuscript codices). The operations of the printing press created “books”—individual editions with titles and stable contents. In the modern period, as we see from the trajectory of midrash research, scholars imbued by our book- centric literary culture tried to isolate ur-texts of particular midrashim on the model of modern printed books. One might say that confidence in this project gave way to frustration and then to a realization that midrashic research could be reconceptualized by discarding the notion of the “book” or at least by not projecting that notion backward to the period of late antiquity and the middle ages. The latest trends in the study of midrash tends to de-emphasize the search for an “original” text of particular “works.” As Burton Visotzky has written:

47 see Malachi Beit-Arié, Hebrew Manuscripts of East and West: Towards a Comparative Codicology (London: The British Library, 1993); and idem, “Publication and Repro- duction of Literary Texts in Medieval Jewish Civilization: Jewish Scribality and Its Impact on the Texts Transmitted,” in Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Diffusion, ed. Y. Elman and I. Gershoni (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 225–247. 48 see the work Elbaum and Bregman, cited above, and the work of others in the special issues of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History devoted to the subject in volume 17 (1997). 138 adam shear

Here the question must be raised, particularly regarding aggadic texts, whether there ever was an Urtext or whether all aggadic texts are, as it were, a “libretto” of a performance and so, by definition, will vary from one performance to the next. Martin Jaffee’s work on orality has focused this issue particularly acutely as he attempts to understand the nature and rhetoric of orality in rabbinic Oral Torah.49 We see a similar development in the evolution of scholarly unders- tandings of the Zohar, in which an emergent consensus focuses on the role of the sixteenth-century editors in forming a unified work, although debate remains regarding the extent to which pre-print zoharic texts should be considered on the model of genre or the model of book.50 Certainly some medieval texts were already associated with a single author and were already conceptualized as “books” (sefarim) in the pre- print era. Note that Johannes Reuchlin, in his defense of Hebrew literature from the beginning of the sixteenth century and one of the first explicit categorizations of Hebrew literature in any language, places these works as a category distinct from Talmud, midrash, and perush (all of which he relates to as genres): “The work of philosophers and scholars of all disciplines; these are commonly called Sefarim, which means books, and each is designated according to the discipline of the author.”51 I would like to suggest that Moscato and his intended readership stand, in the second half of the sixteenth century, at a transitional moment in the passage from a culture dominated by manuscripts to a culture dominated by print. But the transition is not a simple binary replacement of manuscripts with printed editions. Rather, under the influence of print, some portions of classical and medieval Jewish literature became “bookified.” This is an inelegant formation but one that I propose as a further development of (in?) Jewish textuality.52 Jewish culture was already textualized—in the sense of emphasizing

49 Visotzky, On Critical Editions, 159. 50 On this see the recent work of Daniel Abrams, “The Invention of the Zohar as a Book: On the Assumptions and Expectations of the Kabbalists and Modern Scholars,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 19 (2009): 7–142. 51 Johannes Reuchlin, Recommendation whether to Confiscate, Destroy, and Burn all Jewish Books. trans. Peter Wortsman (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2000), 34. I have discussed Reuchlin’s categorization in an unpublished paper, “Reuchlin and the Categorization of Hebrew Literature, circa 1500,” presented to the World Congress of Jewish Stud- ies, August 2009. 52 On the concept of “textuality” for historians, see Brian Stock, Listening for the Text: On the Uses of the Past (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 144–146. judah moscato’s sources and hebrew printing 139 the use of written material over oral transmission—by the end of the Middle Ages if not before.53 Although many texts were disseminated in manuscript codices as discrete “books” that were understood as examples of discrete literary works by particular authorities, the material forms of other texts—usually those understood as having a collective or institutional authority (midrash as the pre-eminent example)—were understood as parts of a larger whole. In the early modern period and apparently as a result of printing fixed “editions” of a text, print facilitated a new conceptualization of such texts as discrete “works” and ultimately as “books.”54 An examination of Moscato’s sources reveals a mixed environment in which printed books and manuscripts co-exist, especially for scholars, although non-elite book owners are decisively turning to the printed book in this era. As a member of a learned elite and writing for his peers, Moscato does not stop using manuscripts or work only available in manuscripts; indeed, although he uses printed books, his frame of reference often seems to remain that of an intellectual world built from manuscripts in which each copy of a text is individuated, but in which a citation might be to an individual copy (for purposes of textual comparison) or to a generalized “authority” (almost as an abstraction disconnected from a material text). At the same time, we can see the signs of the transition in which the norms of print—in terms of the conceptualization of all types of literature as bibliographi- cally distinctive “books”—are emerging.

53 See Talya Fishman, “Rhineland Pietist Approaches to Prayer and the Textual- ization of Rabbinic Culture in Medieval Northern Europe,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 11 (2004): 313–331. And see now her expanded argument in eadem, Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) 54 The use of the term “fixed” will call to mind the work of Elizabeth Eisenstein and her recent debate with Adrian Johns over the degree to which print led to stabiliza- tion of texts. For an introduction to the issues in this complex discussion, see Anthony Grafton, Elizabeth Eisenstein, and Adrian Johns, “AHR Forum: How Revolutionary was the Print Revolution,” American Historical Review 107 (2002): 84–128. Here, I only suggest that individual editions seemed “fixed” in the minds of early modern readers although sophisticated consumers of printed books (such as Moscato or Azariah de’ Rossi) knew that the texts contained in the printed books could be different from texts in manuscripts. Presumably this awareness stems from their own still-frequent recourse to manuscripts. As the use of manuscripts declines, eventually the dominance of printed editions of older works leads to the situation that Shillenberg complains about: the “assumptions [of literary critics] about textual stability (e.g. that a work is a text and a text is a book and the book at hand is, therefore, the book itself ).” (Shillenberg, “Text,” 38). 140 adam shear

Appendix: Authors and Books Cited by Name by Moscato in Qol Yehudah

(excluding biblical books and talmudic tractates)

Midrash and Related Literature Avot de-Rabbi Natan Baraita de Torat Kohanim [Sifra] Bemidbar Rabbah Bereshit Rabbah Ekha Rabbati Mekhilta “Midrash” Midrash Mishle [Midrash on Proverbs]55 Midrash Ruth Midrash Tehillim Pesiqta [Pesiqta zuarta o-rabbati ] Pesiqta Rabbati Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer Shemot Rabbah Sifre Tana Debe Eliyahu Tanuma Wayyiqra Rabbah Yalqu Shim‘oni

Biblical commentaries Isaac Arama Gersonides Abraham Ibn Ezra David Kimi Nachmanides Rashi Ovadiah Sforno

Halakhic codes and Talmudic commentary Maimonides, Mishneh Torah Maimonides, Commentary on the Mishnah

55 On this work and its various names, see Burton L. Visotzky, trans. with an introduction and annotation, The Midrash on Proverbs (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). judah moscato’s sources and hebrew printing 141

Maimonides, Commentary on Avot Maimonides, Pereq eleq

Authors of individual books Abraham bar iyya Abraham Bibago Abraham ibn Daud Abraham ibn Ezra Abraham Shalom Baya ibn Pakuda David Kimi Elia Levita Gersonides asdai Crescas Isaac Abarbanel Isaac ibn Latif Isaac Israeli Joseph Albo Ma‘arekhet ha-Elohut Moses Maimonides Moses Narboni Profiat Duran Saadia Gaon Samuel ibn Tibbon Seder Olam Rabbah Sefer ha-Yashar Sefer Toldot ha-Hakhamim Sefer Yeirah Sefer Yosippon Shem Tov ibn Shem Tov Zohar

Classical authors Aristotle Boethius Cicero Galen Hippocrates Plato Pseudo-Aristotle, Sefer ha-Tapua Ptolemy Pythagoras Quintilian 142 adam shear

Jewish authors in Greek Josephus Letter of Aristeas Philo

Medieval authors in Arabic Averroes Avicenna

Renaissance authors Marsilio Ficino Pico della Mirandola II. The Jewish intellectual World of Mantua in 16th–17th centurIES 8. The Gonzaga Archives of Mantua and Their Rearrangements over the Centuries, along with an Overview of Archival Materials on Mantuan Jewry1

Daniela Ferrari

The archives produced by the Gonzagas, rulers of Mantua from 1328 to 1707,2 are one of the most complete and homogeneous collections in existence for dynastic ruling families in Europe in the Early Modern period.3 As the artistic historical patrimony of the city represents the vibrant and tangible testimony to its historical legacy, the documentary patrimony represents the “paper memory,” and is thus itself a monument. The archives stand in a kind of counterpoint to the external image constituted by the monuments in stone. They enable us to reconstruct, from the inside, the history of the family as well as of the city and of the small state in the Padan plain, in the complex plot of relations and relationships that reticulates and spreads in the course of European history. From the fifteenth century, in fact, the Gonzagas maintained regular diplomatic relations with the other Italian and European courts, where ambassadors, residents, and orators were appointed.4 Their

1 The first part of this paper is based on a previous publication: Daniela Ferrari, “Interventi di riordinamento tra Cinque e Settecento. Il caso mantovano,” in Salva- tore Bongi nella cultura dell’Ottocento. Archivistica, storiografia, bibliologia, 2 vols., ed. Giorgio Tori (Rome: Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, 2003), vol. 2: 809–833. 2 The bibliography about the Gonzagas is very extensive; this applies to all: Cesare Mozzarelli, Lo stato gonzaghesco. Mantova dal 1382 al 1707 (Turin: Utet, 1979, repr. 1987). 3 cf. Guida Generale degli Archivi di Stato Italiani, 4 vols., ed. Guido D’Angiolini and Claudio Pavone (Rome: Ministero per i Beni Culturali 1981–1994), vol. 2: 767. For the history of the Gonzaga Archive, still today of fundamental importance are: Pietro Torelli, L’archivio Gonzaga di Mantova, vol. 1, (Ostiglia, Mantua: R. Accademia Virgili- ana di Mantova, 1920); Alessandro Luzio, L’archivio Gonzaga di Mantova. La corrispon denza familiare, amministrativa e diplomatica, vol. 2 (Verona: R. Accademia Virgiliana di Mantova, 1922). Both works have been reprinted on my own initiative, in 1988 and 1993 respectively. 4 another fundamental source on this topic is Romolo Quazza, La diplomazia gon zaghesca (Milan: Istituto per gli studi di politica internazionale, 1941). 146 daniela ferrari main assignment was to report daily upon the current political situation, but by their presence they became privileged channels for picking up and conveying news and information in the most diverse fields of history and culture in general, including Jewish culture. The Gonzaga archive was later integrated with other documents dated after the demise of the ruling family. They are typical archives of court and Chancellery concerns, also encompassing documents from different magistracies, municipal and princely, as well as earlier documents prior to Gonzaga rule, in particular from the era of the Bonacolsi dynasty that ruled in Mantua from 1272 to 1328. The Gon- zaga archives have added value because of the tragic destruction of the municipal archives by fire in 1413, when the town hall (the palace of the “podestà”) where the archives were stored burned down. The Gonzaga archives went through a substantial rearrangement according to subject matter during the eighteenth century, based on an encyclopedic conception typical of the Enlightenment. The upshot was that this restructuring upset the organization of the Chancellery and of the other organs of government as a whole, confounding the original ordering of documents and deeds, which reflected the com- plexity of relationships and connections among them. As in other Italian seigniories, in the early stage of their rule the Gonzagas faced the constant necessity of legitimating themselves and utilized the archives to this end. The archives became an institution vital for the public interest, though they nonetheless basically preserved a family character. They also received various kinds of documentation generated by the ordinary activity of the judicial and administrative authorities. The first documentation of the existence of the Gonzaga archives dates back to 1343.5 From this period up to the sixteenth century, it is possible to trace the different phases of its formation, which coincide with the stages of the institutional evolution of the Mantuan state. Between the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century, the state structure took on decidedly seigniorial features, with a well-defined administrative organization and a body of laws (with the statutes of the preceding Bonacolsi reign later changed by the

5 Archivio di Stato di Mantova (from now onwards ASMn), archivio Gonzaga, b. 2881, copialettere, libro 1, c. 37v. Luigi Gonzaga, Captain of the People (“Capi- tano del Popolo”), in one letter to Mastino della Scala quotes documents kept in the archive: “quorum rellatione et aliis instrumentis in archivis nostris repertis. . . .” the gonzaga archives of mantua and their rearrangements 147

Gonzagas in 1404) effecting a political-institutional transformation. In 1433, the Gonzagas received the title of Marquis from the emperor, and after 1530 were given the title Duke of Mantua. Meaningful for the reconstruction of the Gonzaga archives, whose story is parallel with the institutional story of the dominion as a whole, are the first inventories of documents compiled from 1367, and later updated in 1432, 1456, and in the period 1500–1535.6 They are alphabetically arranged, taking into account their importance for the territory, since they are conceived as tools of daily use, a function of the administrative activity of the court. These holdings testify to the progressive growth of the archives, in part the result of a large volume of correspondence from abroad: the network of accredited correspondents appointed to the principal foreign states is well documented by the various series of correspondence, which is preserved almost in its entirety.7 Ca. 1480–1481, a “secret” archive of the house of Gonzaga was located on the upper floor of St. George’s Castle, in a special con- tainer, the so-called Cassono da li Signi, a particular section that constituted the nucleus of the future court archives. It encompassed the documents of immediate interest to the ruling family of Mantua. Spe- cific studies have led to a hypothetical reconstruction of the Cassono, a piece of furniture that was composed of two parts, one above the other (pars superior and pars inferior), with thirteen compartments, called colti, corresponding to thirteen index books of the inventory, distinguished by letters of the alphabet from A to S.8 With the increase in the business of state, it was necessary to divide the archive into two sections. So, in the first half of the century, a small archive (archivio piccolo) was created and set in the upper rooms of the castle. There the most intimate documents concerning the prince and

6 Pietro Torelli, L’archivio Gonzaga di Mantova. See also Jürgen Axel Behne, Das Archiv der Gonzaga on Mantua in Spätmittelalter (Marburg: degree thesis, 1990), and idem, Antichi inventari dell’archivio Gonzaga (Rome: Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali, Ufficio Centrale per i Beni Archivistici, 1993). 7 The items of the Gozaga correspondence amounts to 2,871 envelopes (“buste”) for a total of 3,726 items that constitute the whole holding. Therefore, the correspondence represents around 77 percent of the Gonzaga archives. The most conspicuous correspondence comes from the old Italian states before the unification of Italy: Roma (233 envelopes), Milano (187 envelopes), Venezia (172 envelopes), Ferrara (100 envelopes), Firenze (53), and the European Courts: Francia (86 envelopes), Corte Cesarea (82 envelopes), Spagna (42 envelopes). 8 Behne, Antichi inventari, 23–29. 148 daniela ferrari his family were jealously guarded. A larger archive (archivio grande or Cancelleria) was situated on the lower floor, where all the documents pertaining to the various branches of the administration of the state were drawn up, received, and gathered. Testimonies from 1563 tell us that “the great archive” was placed in the “room of the Sun” (“Camera del Sole”) together with the Chancellery.9 In the second half of the sixteenth century, the structure of the court archives was now clearly organized and well defined. Actually, the reign of Duke Guglielmo (1550–1587) is characterized by a reorganization of the institutions into the typical forms of the modern state.10 The endeavor to reorganize the state that characterized Duke Gug- lielmo’s government had repercussions on the management of the archival holdings of the court. According to the theory of Robert- Henri Émile Bautier, archival holdings in the modern era are defined as arsénales de l’autorité, namely tools for the exercise of political power, which rulers utilize as weapons of defense and offense.11 The general situation was notably complicated by the acquisition of the archives of the Monferrato, which the Gonzagas came into possession of as a consequence of the marriage of Federico II Gonzaga to Margherita Paleologo, celebrated in 1531.12 In 1576, the jurist Tul- lio Petrozzani and Francesco Bottesini, attorney of the duke, were entrusted with the reorganization of the archives. Bottesini died a few years later, but he left an accurate report dated December 1, 1576, which reflects precisely the aforementioned concept that the archives were tools of government.13 In his report, Bottesini describes the

9 letter to Francesco Tosabezzi, June 19, 1563, quoted by Torelli, L’archivio Gon zaga., XXXV. 10 duke Guglielmo Gonzaga in 1571 instituted the Senate of Justice (“Senato di Giustizia”), appointed for the administration of civil justice (cf. Cesare Mozzarelli, Il Senato di Mantova: origini e funzioni, in Mantova e i Gonzaga nella civiltà del Rinascimento (Mantua: Mondadori, 1977): 65–98), and two years later the “Magistrato Camerale,” with administrative and financial functions (cf. Roberto Navarrini, Una magistratura gonzaghesca del XVI secolo: il Magistrato Camerale, in Mantova e i Gonzaga nella civiltà del Rinascimento, 99–112). Each of these magistracies had its own archive. 11 Robert-Henri Émile Bautier, “La phase cruciale de l’histoire des archives: la constitution des dépôts d’archives et la naissance de l’archivistique (XVI-début du XIX siècle),” Archivum 18 (1968): 139–149. 12 on the troubled history of the archives of Monferrato, see Daniela Ferrari, “Le carte disperse. Documenti riguardanti il Monferrato conservati a Mantova,” and Elisa Mongiano, “Istituzioni e archivi del Monferrato tra XVI e XVIII secolo,” both papers in Stefano Guazzo e Casale tra Cinque Seicento, ed. Daniela Ferrari (Rome: Bulzoni, 1997), 197–217 and 219–240. 13 Torelli, L’archivio Gonzaga, XXXVIII. the gonzaga archives of mantua and their rearrangements 149

problems that had to be faced and suggests some solutions, of both a technical nature, as for example the difficulty of reading and interpreting writings from previous centuries, or to compile means, as well as a practical nature, such as the arrangement of the colti, or wooden boxes.14 After the death of Bottesini, another jurist, Francesco Borsato, elab- orated a plan of intervention in 1582 to be implemented within a span of fifteen to eighteen years. It was later realized partially by the “castellano” (the local squire) of Mantua Luigi Olivo and by the chancellor Antonio Cizzuolo. This project15 focused on four principal collections of documents: first, writings concerning the state of Mantua; second, writings concerning Casale and Monferrato; third, the domestic and foreign correspondence of diplomats and documents bound up with the administration of the state. This third collection of documents lacked any classification; consequently, sorting by alphabetical and chronological order was proposed. A similar arrangement was also suggested for the fourth and last group of “Lettere, instruttioni o scritture di poco rilievo et momento.” The first two parts were of fundamental importance because they were connected to the legitimization of the titles of the Gonzagas to the dukedom of Mantua and the Monferrato. The archival holdings pertaining to Monferrato were in great disorder, doubtless also due to the transfer of materials from Casale to Mantua. The arrangement of the Gonzaga correspondence depended substantially on the realization, even partial, of Borsato’s project. The same system has been maintained down to today, and in spite of several rearrangements and later integrations, its general features are still recognizable.16 The rearrangement of the court archive was connected to the organization and the structure of the Chancellery. The main task of the

14 asMn, Archivio Gonzaga, b. 2597, c. 813r–v. Cf. Ferrari, “Le carte disperse”, 198–200. 15 asMn, archivio Gonzaga, b. 2617, letter of February 13, 1582. The letter has been published by Torelli, L’archivio Gonzaga, XXXVIII–XL. 16 The Gonzaga correspondence has been transmitted in over sixty series, which are divided into four sub-series. They encompass instructions to the ambassadors; original letters of the princes or chiefs of government by whom they were appointed; the correspondence of the same envoys, ambassadors, and residents; and a lot of miscellaneous writings, including general and recapitulatory reports of the diplomatic missions. Cf. Alessandro Luzio, L’archivio Gonzaga di Mantova. La corrispondenza familiare, amministrativa e diplomatica, vol. 2. 150 daniela ferrari

Chancellery was the production, authentication, and maintenance of property deeds. By tradition, they were thought to be the expression of the direct will of the prince, as well as the management of the domestic administration and of international relations. At the end of the fifteenth century, it became crucial to reform the Chancellery as well, and that could not be delayed. The differentiation of functions and competences called for coordinating the activity of government; this could only be resolved by the personal engagement of some counselors of the lord.17 Under Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga (1587–1612), Tullio Petrozzani, jurist, secretary, and counselor, was given the task of implementing an articulated project for the reform of the Chancellery that would also include the archive, with whose reorganization he had previously been entrusted.18 He was likely responsible for a series of archival dispositions19 (with an attached list of employed officials) on the basis of which the regulations for the archive were compiled in 1591.20 The most meaningful innovation concerns the individualization of a Chan- cellery of state, located on the upper story of the ducal palace, where foreign affairs were treated, while on the lower ground floor there was the common Chancellery. The common Chancellery dealt with all kinds of affairs in which the duke was not direcly involved. The officials of the duke were responsible for the documents that they signed.21 However, the distinction is more formal than substantial. In fact, the documents speak of the Chancellery “of above” and “of below,” but there was a general understanding that the facility should remain an

17 Mozzarelli, Mantova e i Gonzaga, 107. 18 cf. Daniela Ferrari, “La cancelleria gonzaghesca tra Cinque e Seicento. Carriere e strategie parentali al servizio dei duchi,” in “Gonzaga. La celeste galeria.” L’esercizio del collezionismo, ed. Raffaella Morselli (Milan: Skira 2002), 297–318; 308–309. 19 asMn, Archivio Gonzaga, b. 3013, cc. 6–22, minute and copy, both without date, but dated 1591 by an anonymous archivist. The document has been partially published by Luzio, L’Archivio Gonzaga di Mantova, 87–88, and in its entirety by Alberto Borgogno, “Prime indagini sulla cancelleria mantovana al tempo della signoria,” Ricer che medievali 1 (1966): 71–74. Through a comparison of the document with many signed letters kept in the Gonzaga archive, the document can be ascribed to the hand of Tullio Petrozzani. 20 asMn, Archivio Gonzaga, b. 3013, cc. 24–27, an anonymous and undated document. A title and a date were added in the eighteenth century by an archivist. The whole document has been transcribed and published by Ferrari, “La cancelleria gonzaghesca,” 312–314. 21 asMn, Archivio Gonzaga, b. 3013, c. 16r. the gonzaga archives of mantua and their rearrangements 151 institute. The counselors were at the top echelon of the administration, assisted by the secretaries and by the chancellors. The functions of the ducal secretary-archivist in particular were redefined. His functions extended beyond such strictly technical affairs as the keeping and management of the documents. He also assumed many duties that were previously handled by the “castellano,” who also directed the archive. The archivist was charged with the management of the documents that he received from the secretaries and the chancellors. He had to put the documents into special boxes and attach a label to each document describing its contents. Furthermore, he had to compile inventories for every single box. The inventories were then gathered in a general alphabetical register. Like the counselors and the secretaries, the archivist also had to take the oath of loyalty and secrecy. He resided in the castle and noted in a special register the essential elements of the dossier upon entry and exit from the archive, a duty that today we would define as “records management.” It was also his duty to coordinate the work of couriers and to monitor and supervise their work, to draw up accurate lists of deliveries by foreigners from outside the city, to sign the lists of the hosts who accommodated persons on behalf of the court, and as a record keeper, to draw up daily lists of births and deaths in the city.22 In addition to the reform of Petrozzani, other provisions were enacted by the “castellano” Antonio Guarino. In 1592 he ordered ambassadors to return all office correspondence with Mantua; instructions were sent to them and correspondence exchanged with the Chancellery. This material was kept separately according to the place of origin. The ambassadors had to return the original letters of the princes; the secretaries countersigned the letters that they drew up23 and the drafts of the Chancellery were preserved. Care was taken to record ordinary letters and signed letters of the duke in separate

22 The “castellano” was a very important official in the administration of the state. Besides the direction of the archive, he was entrusted with the management of political news. Important to mention among the “castellani” are Giovanni Giacomo and Sabino Calandra, Francesco Tosabezzi, Nicolò Guarino, Pietro Martire Cornacchia, Cesare Riva, Luigi Olivo, Cesare Andreasi, and Tullio Petrozzani. Cf. Ferrari, “La cancelleria gonzaghesca,” 317, fn. 139. 23 Quazza, La diplomazia gonzaghesca, 18. 152 daniela ferrari registries. The delivery of documents from one secretary to the other was also recorded.24 There was also a strict organization of incoming and outgoing post. Ordinary messengers arrived on Mondays in Mantua from Venice, Brescia, and Ferrara; from Rome on Thursdays; from Milan on Fri- days; and from Verona on other days. The messengers departed from Mantua three times a week to Milan (Monday, Thursday, and Sat- urday); to Brescia and Ferrara on Mondays; and to Rome, Naples, Florence, Bologna, and Romagna on Friday.25 Tullio Petrozzani’s direction of the Chancellery represented a high point in regularity and order and constituted the optimal prerequi- site for the efficient organization and management of the archive. However, his plan demanded a degree of rigor and diligence that the subordinate officials could not deliver. So at the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was a return to a simpler division of the tasks,26 as reflected in the fact that the registries for letters stop after 1611. We have no evidence of a significant reorganization of the ducal archive during the seventeenth century, although the rule of the Gonzagas-Nevers, who came to power after the extinction of the main branch of the family (in 1628), brought a substantial reform of the registry.27 After coming under Habsburg domination at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the distinction between “archivio grande” and “archivio piccolo” was dismissed, and there was only one archive. Particular attention was paid to the rearrangement of the Gonzaga archive and to the organization of new magistracies. The old holdings were newly catalogued in order to prepare spaces and structures for the documents generated by the new organs of government. This rearrangement of the archive is a tool of good government, the image of a well-ordered monarchy, from the Imperial Chancellery to the last peripheral office, in a conception of the archive that is typical of

24 In the letter-books, the missives, often complementary to those received, were transcribed before they were sent. Therefore the series of the letter-books and of the domestic and foreign correspondence are tightly correlated, and one cannot be studied without the other. 25 asMn, Archivio Gonzaga, b. 2958, copialettere 406, c. 43r, remark put between two letters dated August 16 and September 7, 1595. 26 Quazza, La diplomazia gonzaghesca, 18–19. 27 see Francesca Fantini D’Onofrio, “Fonti per la storia della cancelleria gonza ghesca: gli ordini ducali dal 1628 al 1707,” Civiltà Mantovana, n.s. 19 (1988): 39–60. the gonzaga archives of mantua and their rearrangements 153 the ancien régime: “shrine of the arcana principis protected by absolute secrecy.”28 Around 1760, the idea arose of a general rearrangement of the ducal archive. The promoter was the counselor Francesco Antonio Tamburini, “minister delegated for the secret archive.”29 The archive was be used for dealing with contentious issues concerning “secular prerogatives, especially in regard to jurisdiction, taxes, feuds, and relationships with the ecclesiastical authority.”30 Particularly in our case, the rearrangement of the ducal archive was dictated by contingent reasons, primarily concerning the relation between the Monferrato and the Savoias. Thus, the Mantua archive was reorganized in the eighteenth century in line with reforms of the administration itself. The Imperial Chancellery required in this connection a general recognition of the archive of the Monferrato, from which many papers had already been transferred to Vienna in 1743.31 In order to make the retrieval of the documents as fast and easy as possible, and to accommodate the new cultural trends of the epoch, a classification system based on subject or archival fonds was introduced. Today classification by subject is rejected because documents are easily misclassified and removed from their proper context. This makes searching for documents more difficult and interferes with search strategies for institutional history and makes it hard to explore changes in individual magistracies.

28 daniela Frigo, “La rappresentazione dell’amministrazione a Mantova tra antico regime ed età napoleonica: palazzi, riti e simboli,” Jahrbuch für europäische Verwaltungs geschichte, 6 (1994): 210. 29 This is the appellation for the official appointed to the archive in one report of the vice-president of the “Magistrato Camerale” on 12 February 1781. Cf. Archivio di Stato di Milano (from now onwards ASMi), Uffici Regi, parte antica, b. 271. 30 Giuseppe Pansini, “Gli archivi politici negli Archivi di Stato italiani,” in Gentium memoria archiva. Il tesoro degli archivi, ed. Maria Grazia Pastura (Rome: Ministero per i Beni Culturali 1996), 89. 31 letter of September 21, 1762 by the plenipotentiary minister Count Carlo di Firmian: “Essendo state fatte varie diligenze in codesto archivio, molte carte furono estratte, spedite a Vienna e dalla Corte fatte consegnare al ministro di Sua Mae- stà signor conte di Canale nel 1743. Si crede che nell’archivio molte altre ve ne siano rimaste. Prego vostra eccellenza d’incaricare il consigliere Tamburini perché, coll’aiuto del prefetto e vice prefetto dell’archivio, faccia le dovute diligenze per rinve- nire tutte quelle carte che riguardano il Monferrato e di mandarmene l’inventario, perché possa in appresso dirle sopra di queste la mente di Sua Maestà” (ASMn, archivio della direzione, b. 22). 154 daniela ferrari

The results of the rearrangements undertaken at the end of the eighteenth century32 reflect the actual structure of the Gonzaga archives, organized in index books under headings from A to Z, according to the scheme reproduced in the appendix to this chapter. In the 1920s, the archival holdings were again rearranged and ordered by Pietro Torelli and Alessandro Luzio. Their work helped to ensure the cultural value of the Gonzaga archives and their extraordinary potential for historical research.33 Their respective inventories describe every collection in the archive synthetically; items are marked by a serial number, which allows for more efficient management of documents in transit from the depositories to the reading room and facilitates bibliographical citation. Underpinning the inventories of Pietro Torelli and Alessandro Luzio is the magisterial work of another archivist, Stefano Davari (1836–1909). The son of a seller of sweets and a native of Belluno, he was appointed on December 30, 1869, as “chancellor scribe,” and by the end of the nineteenth century he had become an outstanding and representative figure in the cultural life of Mantua. The relationships with Italian and foreigner scholars he maintained testify to his qualifications as an expert researcher on the Gonzaga archival holdings, a first-rate transcriber, and a knowledgeable paleographical advi- sor. Stefano Davari had a shy personality and seemed uninterested in pursuing the rewards of a career as a recognized expert, yet he devoted an indefatigable and phenomenal energy to rearranging, compiling, annotating, and transcribing the archival holdings. The annual reports of the directors of the archive record the progress of Davari’s rearrangements, and he described his own work in a series of articles and publications not always particularly consistent, but accurate and always well documented. They remain a fundamental bibliographical

32 The Italian version of this paper gives a detailed account of these rearrangements. See above fn. 1. 33 Regarding Pietro Torelli, see: Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana, Convegno di studi su Pietro Torelli, Mantova, 17 maggio 1980 (Mantua: Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana 1982); on Alessandro Luzio cf. Daniela Ferrari, “Alessandro Luzio archivista,” Bollet tino Storico Mantovano n.s. 8 (2010): 119–140; about both directors see also: Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Direzione Generale per gli Archivi, Repertorio del personale degli Archivi di Stato, volume I (1861–1918), ed. by Maurizio Cassetti with an introduction by Elio Lodolini (Rome: Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, 2008), sub voce. the gonzaga archives of mantua and their rearrangements 155

reference even today.34 His work on the creation of indexes is especially impressive for its quantity and scope: Davari compiled in manuscript form around forty indexes of several series of the Gonzaga correspondence, bound in separate volumes. These indexes are an irreplaceable means of research, still consulted daily in the reading room of the archives. Furthermore, he wrote numerous notes, remarks, summaries, and quotations, gathered in twenty-three envelopes—the so-called buste Davari, which function as a kind of filter for access to the Gonzaga fonds (i.e., the entire body of records associated with an organization or family). The buste Davari have in turn become an archival fonds in their own right rather than a mere accessory to research. Today archival science has universally accepted the theory that cataloguing is a useful operational limit for the use of documents, because they have been removed from their actual living contexts in an irrevers- ible way. In the Mantuan archives the manipulation of “natural” files for the purpose of creating “ideal” files, according to certain statistical schemes, has had some limits of application. In fact, the interventions in rearrangement have primarily affected the files of the Chancellery, which make up the major core of the Gonzaga archive. Thus the dam- age was limited. Other kinds of mixtures—such as with other fonds, as happened in certain other archives—did not occur, and at most we find marginal contaminations. As far as the presence of Jewish culture in Mantua is concerned, some extensive studies are available, which is rare for other Jewish settlements in Italy. An essential point of departure is the research of Shlomo Simonsohn and Vittore Colorni, true pioneers in the study of Italian Judaism, especially in North Italy and Mantua. Their work has left its deep imprint on Jewish historiography, particularly as it concerns the history of Italian Jewry over the centuries down to the present.35

34 Noteworthy among his main works are: Cenni storici intorno a opere e fortificazioni della città di Mantova nel secolo XVI (Mantua: Stab. Tip. eredi Segna 1875); Notizie storiche intorno allo Studio pubblico ed ai maestri dei secoli XV e XVI che tennero scuola in Mantova (Man- tua: Stab. Tip. eredi Segna 1876), and especially Notizie storiche topografiche della città di Mantova nei secoli XIII, XIV, XV (Mantua: Stab. Tip. eredi Segna 1903). On Davari, see Anna Maria Lorenzoni, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1987), vol. 33, 115–118. 35 Their publications are very numerous. I limit myself to noting two: Shlomo Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua (Tel Aviv: Kiryath Sepher, 1977), and Vittore Colorni, Judaica minora. Saggi sulla storia dell’ebraismo italiano dall’antichità all’età moderna (Milan: Giuffrè, 1983). 156 daniela ferrari

The earliest historical evidence concerning Jewish settlement in Mantua dates from the year 1145.36 From the second half of the thirteenth century until the end of the fourteen century, evidence of any Jewish settlement in Mantua is lacking. Toward the end of the fourteen century, Jewish money-lenders moved to Mantua, first from Rome and nearby regions, and at the beginning of the fifteenth century, from Germany and France.37 The Jews were welcomed because their capital helped sustain the continuous economic and social growth of the middle class; often they guaranteed the financing of important undertakings in the small state of the Gonzaga. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Jewish community grew steadily and became indispensable to the local economy, thanks to the flourishing financial trade of the “banchi feneratizi” (money-lending banks) in the city and in the principal centers of the dukedom. This economic service and the considerable taxes and frequent donations paid into the Ducal Chamber ensured the protection of Mantuan Jews by the Gonzagas, in the face of the increasingly hostile anti-Jewish policy pursued by the popes. In the sixteenth century, Mantua was one of the most outstanding centers of Jewish humanism and distinguished itself particularly by its ability to combine Jewish tradition with classical culture as well as with the values, lifestyles, and cultural stimuli of the Christian environment. This is evident in the history of music and the theater. Scat- tered across the whole territory of the dukedom, the Mantuan Jews were part of that ideal Respublica Iudaeorum that was established in Italy, despite numerous difficulties, and they enjoyed a well-organized network of trade and money-lending, useful for improving commercial relationships and cultural exchange. Promoters of this network were rabbis like Jehuda Moscato as well as artists, physicians, and men of culture.

36 “Con sicurezza sappiamo invece che il sommo Abraham Ibn Ezra nel suo pere grinare per l’Europa e l’Asia toccò brevemente pure Mantova, dove nel 1145 terminò l’opera grammaticale “Tzachod” quoted from Vittore Colorni, “Prestito ebraico e comunità ebraiche nell’Italia centrale e settentrionale con particolare riguardo alla città di Mantova,” Rivista di storia del diritto italiano, VIII / 8, fasc. 3 (1935), 43, reprint in Judaica minora, 205–255: 243, ft. 120. It can be assumed that “Ibn Ezra did not settle alone in a strange city devoid of Jews” (quoted from Simonsohn, History of the Jews, 3). This evidence was quoted first by Giovanni Bernardo de’ Rossi, Manuscripti codices hebraici bibliothecae J. B. De Rossi (Parmae: Ex publico typographeo, 1803) 172–174, cf. Colorni, Prestito ebraico, 244. 37 simonsohn, History of the Jews, 4–5. the gonzaga archives of mantua and their rearrangements 157

Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, six synagogues (three Ashkenazi and three Italian) were built, and until 1610, when Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga established the ghetto, which was not abol- ished until January 21, 1798, the Jews were free to live in all quarters of the city. What are the principal sources available for the history of Jewish culture in Mantua? Apart from the principal and more direct sources, kept in the archive of the Jewish community, the holdings of the State Archive of Mantua in general and of the Gonzaga Archive in particular include abundant and very interesting documents regarding the Mantuan Jews and their relations with the Christians authorities. In the Gonzaga Archive, the series called “Università degli Ebrei”38 and covered by the index book “S” contains all the records that deal expressly with the Jews. During the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, the documents were subdivided according to their subject matter into series: orders, rules, privileges, contracts and deeds concerning the ghetto, the synagogues, the cemetery, and the banks for moneylending, over a period from the early fifteenth to the first half of the eighteenth century. However, the most substantial portion of the documentation concerning the history of Mantuan Jewry is not stored solely in one fonds. On the contrary, many documents are scattered in several and notable series of the Gonzaga Archive, especially among the internal correspondence and the decrees, and in smaller measure, among the records of foreign correspondence and the drafts of the Chancellery. The internal correspondence, designated as “da Mantova e paesi dello stato” (rubrica “F. II. 8”), allows us to reconstruct the life of the city, of the court, and of the communities of the small state, in all their aspects; to penetrate into the internal meanderings of the administration; and to become familiar with the minor chronicles of all the daily events that the various courtiers and officials reported on in minute detail. A kaleidoscope of disparate figures comes to life: men of letters, artists, musicians, actors, teachers, architects, religious persons, and numerous subjects who request favors or call for justice. Numerous among them are Jews who apply to the rulers or to the officials of the court with a wide variety of motives, furnishing news and information, direct or indirect, on their life and on their activities.

38 archivio di Stato di Mantova, Archivio Gonzaga, bb. 3389–3391. 158 daniela ferrari

The series of letter-books (“copia-lettere”), namely the volumes in which outgoing letters were transcribed before they were dispatched, a scribal function, is tightly correlated with the internal and foreign correspondence. The series of the correspondence and that of the “copia-lettere” complement each other, since the answer to a letter or a supplication is often preserved among those recorded in the “copialettere.” The series of the decrees, by contrast, contains dispositions regarding the administration of the government (therefore they are situated in the series of the Gonzaga Archive called “F-Legislazione e Sistemazione del Governo”). The most consulted series are those of the decrees as well as those of the “Patenti” and “Mandati,” because the issued enactments reflect the administrative life of the state and are an expression of the direct will of the prince. Compiled in the form of a book, typical of the deeds of government from the first years of the fifteenth century, the volumes record heterogeneous enactments: from imperial or papal investitures to peace treaties, from the description of a party to commemorative verses, from military behavior to the constitution of dowry, from the privilege for the crowning of Petrarca to the confiscation of private goods.39 Numerous are the decrees of citizenship issued by Marchesi and later by the Gonzaga dukes that may concern citizens of Jewish origin, but even more numerous are the decrees granting the right to establish banks of money-lending, or confirming that right in order to continue the trade. Another important documentary series includes the orders and provisions of a general character issued by the Gonzagas during their rule, predominantly designed to guarantee public order, the so-called “Gride,”40 which were displayed in special sites of the city to be read by anyone, or “to be shouted out” in order to ensure their observance by subjects unable to read. Many of these enactments and prohibitions specifically concerned the Jews. In addition to the Gonzaga Archive, the notarial archives are of considerable importance. These contain an impressive quantity of records that lend themselves to research in several disciplines and

39 cf. Torelli, L’Archivio Gonzaga di Mantova, XXXII. 40 archivio di Stato di Mantova, Archivio Gonzaga, bb. 2038–2043 (from 1402 to 1707). the gonzaga archives of mantua and their rearrangements 159 are among the most important fonds of the State Archive of Mantua. These series are certainly less known and less investigated by scholars of the Gonzaga Archives, because they were only recently acquired by the archive and definitively arranged. Furthermore, these records display some problems of interpretation, due in particular to the notaries’ cursive writing styles, often abbreviated and difficult to decipher. The notarial archives, which cover an extended period (from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries), are a collection still waiting to be investigated, a trove that can offer new, interesting information, as the recent discovery about Leone Moscato proves. Furthermore, the notarial records of the Mantuan Archives are particularly useful for research. Unlike most analogous fonds, they are furnished with alphabetical indexes according to baptismal name or according to the last name of the individuals involved in the deeds. These instruments, although still in manuscript form, constitute a formidable resource that facilitates the direct consultation of documents. In fact, in addition to the names of the persons concerned, they record the kind of deed (such as wills, dowries, and sales), the name of the notary, and the date of the deed. Finally, for the sake of completeness, I would like to mention two documentary collections in the Gonzaga Archives that date from the French period of domination and the Restoration respectively: the files of the Jewish Academy (“Accademia Ebraica”),41 which gather in twenty-eight folders the deeds produced by the specific competent judicial institution in subjects of contentious and volunteer jurisdiction between 1791 and 1804; and the registry of the Jewish communities (“Stato Civile delle Comunità Israelitiche”), an internal series of the “Imperial Regia Delegazione e Congregazione Provinciale” that in seven folders keeps records of birth and certificates of marriage and death from the Jewish communities of Mantua as well as from the province from 1845 up to 1861.

41 leonardo Mazzoldi, “L’Accademia ebraica mantovana,” Bollettino storico manto vano 11–12 (1958): 365–372. 160 daniela ferrari

Appendix

Schema of the arrangement for subject or index (“rubriche”) of the Gonzaga Archives

Rubrica A. Riservati e cancelleria Rubrica B. Dominio della città e stato di Mantova Rubrica C. Affari de’ confini Rubrica D. Affari di famiglia dei principi dominanti di Mantova Rubrica E. Corrispondenza estera Rubrica F. Corrispondenza interna e Legislazione e sistemazione del governo Rubrica G. Affari di polizia Rubrica H. Finanze Rubrica I. Commercio e industria Rubrica L. Acque pubbliche e regali Rubrica M. Strade pubbliche e regali Rubrica N. Affari di posta Rubrica O. Affari della caccia Rubrica P. Materie ecclesiastiche Rubrica Q. Istruzione pubblica e belle arti Rubrica R. Affari delle comunità dello stato Rubrica S. Università degli ebrei Rubrica T. Affari dei particolari Rubrica U. Tribunale di giustizia civile e criminale e dipendenze Rubrica X. Affari militari Rubrica Y. Trattati Rubrica Z. Araldica 9. The Levi Dynasty: Three Generations of Jewish Musicians in Sixteenth-Century Mantua

Don Harrán

The harp the monarch minstrel swept, [. . .] No ear so dull, no soul so cold, That felt not, fired not to the tone (Lord Byron).1 The cognomen Levi resonates, for Jews, with widespread historical and musical associations. Its roots are in biblical Israel, where it links with the Levites, who, beyond being responsible for the maintenance of the Temple, exercised musical functions as singers and instrumentalists in its services. The present study focuses on three musicians from three successive generations of mishpaat Levi, “the Levi family,” in sixteenth- century Mantua. They are not foreign to the scholarly literature,2 but, except for short references, nowhere has the rather fragmentary archival information on them been summarized and evaluated. The three musicians are important because they number among the few Jewish ones known by name from Renaissance Italy and because they raise larger questions, not least of them, in the context of this volume on Judah Moscato, the relation of the Levis, as musicisti, to Moscato’s extensive sermon on music. Since a biographical connection between one of the Levis and Moscato has recently been demonstrated,3 which frees me from presenting evidence of that connection, I shall limit my closing remarks to the relevance of this sermon to music making by the Levis and, more generally, by Jews and non-Jews in sixteenth- century Italy.

1 From “The harp the monarch minstrel swept” in Byron’s Hebrew Melodies (1815): The Poetical Works of Lord Byron (London: Oxford University Press, 1930), 77 (lines 1, 8–9, out of twenty). 2 for details, see below. 3 As clear from various documents, including several new ones discussed by Gian- franco Miletto. See his study in this volume. 162 don harrán

Abramo Levi

Abramo Levi, otherwise Abramo dall’Arpa (or dell’Arpa), i.e., Abraham the harpist, has a patchy early biography.4 There is an oblique reference to him in a notice of the death of his wife in 1534.5 No less oblique is the reference to an unnamed Jewish harpist in a letter written by Ippolito Capilupi6 to Don Ferrante Gonzaga, lord of Guastalla, on 25 February 1542.7 The letter recounts various festivities held in

4 For Abramo and descendants, see variously under Shlomo Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua ( Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer, 1977; translated from Toledot ha-yehudim be-dukasut Mantova, 2 vols. [same, 1962–1964]), 670–671; Eduard Birnbaum, Jüdische Musiker am Hofe von Mantua von 1542–1628 (Vienna: M. Waizner, 1893), 11–12, or as revised and translated into Italian by Vittore Colorni, “Musici ebrei alla corte di Mantova dal 1542 al 1628: presentazione e aggiornamento,” Civiltà mantovana 2 (1967): 185–216, esp. 191, and, after Colorni’s edition, further revised and translated into Hebrew and then into English by Judith Cohen (Musika’im yehudiyyim be-atsar dukasei Mantova (1542–1628) [Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1975], 12–13; Jewish Musicians at the Court of the Mantuan Dukes (1542–1628) [ibidem, 1978], 14); Pietro Canal, “Della musica in Mantova,” Memorie del R. Istituto Veneto di Scienza, Lettere ed Arte 21 (1879): 655–774 (repr., Geneva: Minkoff, 1978), at 701; Antonio Bertolotti, Musici alla corte dei Gonzaga in Mantova dal secolo XV al XVIII (Milan: Ricordi, 1890; repr., Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1969), 35; and Iain Fenlon, Music and Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Man- tua, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980–1982), 1:43, 67–68. For other harpists identified by the surname “dall’Arpa” (or alternatively “dell’Arpa”), though Christians, see Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik, 2nd rev. ed., ed. Ludwig Finscher, 29 vols. (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1994–2008), Sachteil, 4:78: from the early fifteenth century, Pietro dall’Arpa, Taddeo dall’Arpa, Zannino dall’Arpa; from the later sixteenth century, Giovanni Leonardo dall’Arpa (on whom more below); from the early seventeenth century, Orazio Michi dall’Arpa. 5 In the necrological records for 1534, “Fortuna, wife of Abram de larpa,” is said to have died on 1 April at the age of 22; after Archivio Gonzaga, Schede Davari, folder 16, fol. 187. She would have been born, then, in 1512 and, as customary for Jewish girls, wed to Abramo between the ages of 14 and 18, hence in the later 1520s. Abramo, by contrast, and as customary for Jewish males, would, at the time of matrimony, have been several years older, hence born perhaps after 1505. On ages of betrothal and marriage for Jews of both sexes in early modern times, see Howard Adelman, “Italian Jewish Women,” in Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, ed. Judith R. Baskin, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 150–168, esp. 143. 6 First secretary of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga. 7 For Don Ferrante, see Luigi Pescasio, Don Ferrante Gonzaga: principe di Molfetta, signore di Guastalla, viceré di Sicilia, stratega dell’imperatore Carlo V (Suzzara: Edizioni Bot- tazzi, 2000). The document has variously been quoted in the early secondary literature, first by Giuseppe Campori, Gli artisti italiani e stranieri negli stati estensi; catalogo storico corredato di documenti inediti (Modena: R. D. Camera, 1855; repr., Rome: Multigrafica Editrice, 1969), 375–377; then by Carlo D’Arco, Delle arti e degli artefici di Mantova, 2 vols. (Mantua: G. Agazzi, 1857; repr., Bologna: Forni, 1975), 2:128–129; and finally by Alessandro D’Ancona, “Il teatro mantovano nel sec. XVI,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 6 (1885): 1–52, 313–351, specifically 2–5. Because of its relevance to Mantua, it has been mistakenly identified as belonging to the Archivio Gonzaga: see, the levi dynasty 163

Mantua during Carnival, among them the performance, in a private house, of a moresca, or lively dance, impressive “for its costumes and its music for voices and instruments.”8 Eight dancers took part: dressed as shepherds and wearing masks, they were headed by “their god Pan dressed in the same manner, but having goathorns.” He was imperson- ated by “a Jew who plays the harp” (presumably Abramo dall’Arpa) “and, as their god, [Pan] was first to enter the hall, doing so in the manner of a moresca with his harp in hand.9 The eight shepherds then for example, Birnbaum, Jüdische Musiker am Hofe vom Mantua von 1542–1628, 11, and Fenlon, Music and Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Mantua, 1:67 n. 58. D’Arco appears to be the only writer to trace it to the Archivio Estense in Modena: op. cit., 2:128 n. 1 (I am grateful to Dr. Daniela Ferrari, director of the Archivio di Stato in Mantua, for dispelling the confusion over the document’s location and directing me to the three items in which it is quoted). Yet the director of the Archivio di Stato di Modena, Prof. Dr. Euride Fregni, kindly informed me that after searching for the document in various collections (Archivio Segreto Estense [henceforth A.S.E.], Cancelleria, Raccolte e Miscellanee, Documenti di Stati e Città, serie di Mantova e Guastalla; A.S.E., Can- celleria, Raccolte e Miscellanee, Carteggi e documenti di particolari, busta 288: carte dal XVI sec. di vari membri Capilupi: Benedetto, Camillo, etc.; A.S.E., Cancelleria, Sezione estero, Carteggi con principi esteri, vol. 35: lettere di Ferrante I Gonzaga a vari Estensi dal 1520 al 1573) she was unable to locate it, saying that it appears to have become lost in the eighteenth century (clearly, Campori and D’Arco must have seen it in the nineteenth!). Nor, as the one possibility that remained to be explored, is the document currently in the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria: I thank its director, Dr. Luca Bellingeri, for running a search for it in its holdings, though to no avail. On Ippolito Capilupi’s correspondence with Ferrante Gonzaga (originally held in the Archivio Segreto di Guastalla), see Lino Chiesi, “Papa Giulio II e la guerra di Parma e della Mirandola secondo il carteggio d’Ippolito Capilupi con Ferrante Gonzaga,” Atti e memorie della R.(egia) Deputazione di storia patria per le provincie modenesi, 4th series, 4 (Modena: Vincenzi, 1893): 215–230. 8 The private house was that of Count Brunoro, in charge of hunting expeditions for the duke (“[. . .] in casa del Conte Brunoro [. . .] si fece la Moresca [. . .] la quale, et per gli habiti, et per una musica di voci et stromenti,” etc.). 9 It would seem rather incongruous for Pan to have been represented by a harp player. His instrument in mythological lore was a syrinx (or panpipes): see, for example, Baldassare Peruzzi, La gara tra Apollo e Pan (frieze, c. 1508; Rome, Villa della Farnesina), or Annibale Caracci, Polifemo e Galatea (fresco, c. 1600; Rome, Palazzo Farnese). Yet he is sometimes depicted with a flute, as in Giovanni Stradano, Allegoria della musica (fresco, 1561; Florence, Palazzo Vecchio), or Giorgione, Cantore con flauto (before 1510; Rome, Galleria Borghese); or with a recorder, as in Niccolò dell’Abate, Figure di musicanti (1540; Modena, Galleria Estense). In an intermedio for 1539 we read that a musician appeared to play “that instrument of seven reeds [i.e., panpipes] carried by the god of the countryside,” but he actually played the instrument cleverly hidden inside it, a stortina (alias storta), i.e., krummhorn: see A Renaissance Entertainment: Festivities for the Marriage of Cosimo I, Duke of Florence, in 1539, ed. Andrew C. Minor and Bonner Mitchell (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1968), 246, and for the song the instrument accompanied, “Guardane, almo Pastore” (“Look here, fair shepherd”), 247–262 (lines 6–7 read: “Nulla habbiam noi, che questi dolci fiati / Et queste voci sole” [“We have nothing but these sweet pipes / And these voices 164 don harrán followed him individually, [. . .] performing the same moresca as did their god.”10 Abramo must have remarried in the later thirties or early forties, for a son named Benedetto is reported to have died, at two years of age, in 1543.11 In 1544, Abramo, as Abraam de Levi, was granted a license to open a loan bank in Mantua, although, losing capital, he surrendered his share in it to a certain Joseph ebreo in 1545.12 His name figures among taxpayers in the records of the Jewish community for 1549 and 1550.13 In 1554 he is listed on a court payroll under Duke Guglielmo.14 Certain evidence points to a stay in Rome in early 1555. An “Abramo dell’Arpa” is identified for that year, in a document cited in the monograph Geschichte der Juden in Rom, as “the musician from Mantua” (ha-menaggen mi-Mantova).15 I could not trace the document (dated 22 January 1555), nor could I corroborate the stay from other sources. For the sixteenth century the Geschichte based its survey on the acts of the Jewish community.16 The same acts were more meticu- lously combed by Kenneth Stow for his documentary history on The

alone”]). Still, the harp, as a string instrument, is a far cry from the wind instruments of the syrinx and stortina. 10 “Quei che fecero la moresca erano otto servidori [. . .] vestiti a guisa di pastori [. . .] et con maschere al volto [. . .] Oltre a questi otto pastori, eravi il Dio lor Pan vestito nella medesima maniera, ma con le corna [. . .] Questo è uno Giudeo, che suona l’arpa, [. . .] il quale fu il primo ad uscir in sala come lor Dio, sì che se ne uscì in modo di moresca con l’arpa in mano, dietro al quale uscirono ad uno ad uno gli otto pastori, [. . .] facendo la medesima moresca, che haveva fatta il lor Dio,” etc. The author then specifies the instruments and some of the dance steps. 11 Necrological listing for 13 July 1543; after Archivio Gonzaga, Schede Davari, folder 16, fol. 194. 12 Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga, Libri dei decreti 42 (6 February 1544; 29 April 1545). 13 Mantua, Jewish Community Archive, Minute Books A 23 and A 27a. 14 Or more exactly during the regency of his uncle, Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga (Guglielmo acceded to power in 1550, yet became of age only in 1556). See Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga, 401 (a memorandum, prepared by Giulio Cavri- ani, head of the Ducal Treasury, upon the request of the Duchess Margherita), 34, 40, 41, 43; relates to payments for 1554. Abraam da l’Arpa appears there as one of 169 persons fed by the court (in a “nota di tutte le bocche che si trovano in corte”). The document has been reproduced in Aldo De Maddalena, Le finanze del ducato di Mantova all’epoca di Guglielmo Gonzaga (Milan: Istituto editoriale Cisalpino, 1961), appendix 1 (159–192), with the “nota” on 177–179. 15 Hermann Vogelstein and Paul Rieger, Geschichte der Juden in Rom, 2 vols. (Berlin: Mayer & Müller, 1895–1896), 2:122. There the Mantuan Abramo dell’Arpa is said to have “spent some time in Rome” (“der auch eine Zeitlang in Rom lebte”). 16 As specified in ibidem, 2:433. the levi dynasty 165

Jews in Rome.17 Stow lists four references, for the years 1549–1555, to an Abramo ha-menaggen, i.e., player or instrumentalist18 (not to be confused with the Abramo, son of Eliezer ha-menaggen, cited for 1538).19 Nothing is said of his musical activities. Rather the references concern a claim to a cazagà, i.e., key money for rental; a dispute over the pur- chase of two synagogues; the guarantee of a pledge; and the taxation of meat. The menaggen in question was probably Roman. Abramo dell’Arpa, assumedly the Mantuan Abramo, turns up in Vienna around mid-century. In the accounts of the imperial court chapel under Charles V he is inscribed, for 1549, as “Abraham the Jew, a harp player.” He was paid not for his playing, however, but for teaching Italian dance to the sons of Charles’s brother Ferdinand (who, after 1558, became Emperor Ferdinand I).20 How long this service lasted is not easily determined. In one secondary source he is said to have been at the court “between 1545 and 1556,” though the assertion cannot be confirmed.21 There is definite evidence for Abramo’s presence in Mantua in the 1550s. Abramo appears to have acted as an intermediary in transfer- ring at least three payments of 270 lire by the Jewish community, in the years 1550, 1551, and 1553, to Church authorities for work on the renovation of the Cathedral.22 In 1550, further, the community

17 Kenneth Stow, The Jews in Rome, 2 vols. (Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1995–1997). The coverage is for the years 1536–1558, according to acts drawn up by notaries over the years 1536–1640 and housed in Rome, Archivio Storico Capitolino, Sezione III (Notai ebrei). 18 Ibidem, 1:389 (for 1549; item 946); 2:571, 615 (for 1553; items 1344, 1435); 2:751–752 (for 1555; item 1728). 19 stow, The Jews in Rome, 1:90 (item 251). 20 “Abraham Juden härpfenschlager, aus gnaden in abschlag seiner belonnung vor- wögen das er der Römischen K(aiserlic)h(e)n M(ajest).(ät) etc. edlknaben wellisch tann zen gelernnt [. . .] zechen taller” (“Abraham ebreo, the harp player, who, as a reward for having taught the sons of His Imperial Roman Majesty how to perform Italian dances, was favored with the payment of ten thalers”). Edlknaben has been taken to refer to the emperor’s sons. But it could also designate his attendants. See, for the reference, Alfred Smijers, “Die kaiserliche Hofmusik-Kapelle von 1543 bis 1619,” Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 6 (1919): 139–186, 7 (1920): 102–142, 8 (1921): 176–206, and 9 (1922): 43–81; esp. 8 (1921): 191. 21 after Max Grunwald, Vienna (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of Amer- ica, 1936), 78. 22 see Mantua, Archivio Storico Diocesano, Archivio del Capitolo della Cattedrale, LM 2897 (1552), fol. 172r, where, for the last of them, one finds the entry: “The Jew- ish community has forwarded me, on 21 May 1553, through Mr. Abramo de Levi dall’Arpa, in the name of the said community, [the sum of] 270 lire” (“La sinagoga all’incontro de haver conta(ti) a me alli 21 di Maggio 1553 p(er) m(esser) Abra(mo) 166 don harrán received permission to establish a slaughterhouse according to its own regulations (modo hebreorum), with the provision that it be overseen by “Abram Levitiis called dalla Arpa”: it was he who decided which Jews could cut or sell meat.23 Abramo, upon his request, obtained exclusive rights to run the slaughterhouse in 1561. As before, the permit was valid for ten years and prohibited other Jews from exercising the trade without Abramo’s consent.24 In mid-December 1566 Abramo was suspected of larceny.25 The circumstances are vague. It turns out that the stolen goods were retrieved and the identity of some of the thieves revealed. There was a move, all the same, to incarcerate Abramo, though the Capitano di Giustizia, or chief of police, was wary of doing so without the duke’s instructions. The duke made it known (through a court official named Zasso) that “he would not be displeased if [Abramo] were to be detained,” though he asked that as his servant, he be allowed to explain himself. Even

de Levi dal’arpa in nome di detta sinagoga—lire 270.0.0”). The same entry recurs on the interfolio between 171v and 172r, along with earlier ones similarly worded for 1 July 1550 and 3 June 1551. I am grateful to Dr. Licia Mari for providing me with copies of the documents. 23 “Fu gia concesso, et data licenza, libertà, et facoltà, alla universita degli Hebrei qua di Mantua di poter fare una beccaria secondo il loro costume in detta Citta [. . .] Confermiamo la detta concessione di far’ far’ la beccaria fatta come di sopra, con consenso pero solamente di Abram Levitiis detto dalla Arpa [. . .] Prohibendo espres- samente ad ogni Hebreo sia di che sorte et conditione si voglia il far’ o, far’ fare beccaria, et vendere overo far’ vender’ di qual si voglia sorte a persona alcuna [. . .] senza licenza authorità et consenso di detto Abram”: Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga, Libri dei decreti 43 (26 June 1550). 24 “Havendoci Abram de Levi detto l’Arpa Hebreo fatto supplicare che vogliamo conceder à lui solo licenza di poter per anni diece segattar, et far segattar in questa nostra Città bestie di ogni sorte da carne siamo stati contenti di compiacerlo. Per tanto in virtu della presente nostra concediamo, et diamo licenza, libertà et facoltà al detto Abram, così ch’egli solo possa per diece anni prossimi à venire, segattar, et far segattar in questa nostra Città bestie d’ogni sorte da carne, prohibendo a ciasche- duno altro Hebreo il potervine segattare, ò far segattare senza il consenso d’esso Abram,” etc.; Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga, Libri dei decreti 46 (16 February 1561). 25 Archivio Gonzaga 2576, two letters, the first from Francesco Crotto to Pietro Martire Cornacchia, Castellano (governor) of Mantua (12 December 1566), the second the Castellano’s response (13 December 1566). That the letters refer to Abramo Levi and not to his grandson Abramino, as Canal read them (“Della musica in Mantova,” 700), might be assumed from their mention of “Abramo hebreo” or “Abramo” (in the first) and “Abramo dal Harpa” (in the second). Such name distinctions, however, were not always observed: Abramino is listed on the court payrolls for 1577 and 1580/81 as, respectively, “Abramo dell’arpa ebreo” and “Abraam dell’arpa” (see below). the levi dynasty 167 so, “lest any time be lost,” he ordered that if Abramo was still not in prison, he ought to be.26 Abramo appears to have died in 1567 or early 1568.27 Around that time the poet and playwright Luigi Groto wrote a sonnet to com- memorate the death of “an outstanding Jewish musician,” doing so, as we read in the inscription, at the behest of the same musician’s sister, Signora Rosa Levi.28 Rosa Levi, who dabbled in poetry (one sonnet of hers has survived), converted to Christianity in Adria (some thirty miles south of Venice), at an early age, in 1565.29 The only contemporary Levi of any musical renown would have been Abramo in Mantua. But given the age and geographical differences between

26 “[. . .] et poj che si è venuto in cognitione di parte de ladri et si sono ritrovate le robe [. . .] il S.(igno)r Zasso scrive poj non so che d’Abramo hebreo mostrando di creder che per suo parere sia stato posto prigione havendo mezo assicurato il S.(igno)r Cap.(ita)no che non farebbe dispiacere a sua ecc.(elenz)a se lo facesse distenere, a questo mi dice lej, che quando vi fusse stato tempo d’intenderne prima la mente sua, havrebbe voluto che essendole Abramo servidore, le ne fusse prima stato parlato, ma non essendo stato bene il metter tempo in mezo, non le dispiace che si sia fatto senza aspettare altro consenso, anzi ordina, se non si è fatto, che si faccia stanti le cose, come le narra esso S.(igno)r Zasso” (12 December 1566). The Capitano di Giustizia informed the Castellano that “he would execute whatever he was asked to on the part of His Excellency [the Duke]” (“il Cap.(ita)no di giust.(izi)a mi mandò a dir hier sera che eseguirà quanto si domandava per parte di s.(ua) ecc.(elen)za”; 13 December 1566). 27 And not in 1566, as he is sometimes said to have (see, for example, Fenlon, Music and Patronage, 1:67 n. 58), though, from the two letters above, he clearly was alive until mid-December 1566. My search for his name in the necrological records for the years 1565 to 1568 (Archivio di Stato, vols. 9–10) was to no avail. That Abramo must have died before April 1568 is clear from a decree issued on that date by Duke Guglielmo upon the request of the Jewish community: it permits it to run the butcher shop “[previously] in the hands of Abramo da l’Arpa” (“Havendo supplicato la Uni- versità degli Hebrei di questa nostra Città di Mantova, a volerle concedere la beccaria de loro Hebrei ch’era ne’ le mani di Abramo da l’Arpa; siamo stati contenti di compiacerla,” etc.; Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga, Libri dei decreti 48 [1 April 1568]), for as long as “other licenses granted the same community are valid” (“stendendosi per tutto il tempo, per lo quale si stendono le altre concessioni fatte a detta Università”; the previous one, from 1561, specified ten years—see above—and there would have been no need for its renewal if Abramo had not died). For documents in the Mantuan Jewish Community Archive regarding the decree for 1568, namely, Book A, no. 10, and Minute Books A 81a, see Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua, 348 n. 110. 28 “Fu fatto questo Sonetto in morte di uno eccellentissimo Musico hebreo a richi- esta dalla Signora Rosa Levi sua sorella”: the inscription appears not at the head of the poem, but in the annotated table of contents to its publication in Groto’s Rime, part 1 (Venice: Fabio, & Agostino Zoppini fratelli, 1587), 189. 29 For bio-bibliographical data, see Don Harrán, “Rosa Levi,” in Italian Women Writ- ers (electronic database), at (University of Chicago, 2008). 168 don harrán them, Abramo clearly could not have been Rosa’s brother. Even so, the sonnet warrants translation, and piques curiosity, for its praise of another, hitherto unknown Levi musician:30 Behold the one who, in singing and playing, receives the palm: no equal did he have in the sea or on earth or in the air or in the heavens; 3 Rather he conquered in the heavens, in the air, on earth, and in the sea Phoebus, the swans, the nymphs, and the sirens.31 At royal banquets, on lofty stages 6 He vividly showed his unusual talent; With his playing he sweetens the bitter pains of the broken heart32 and brightens dark shadows. 9 The Stygian asylum completely changed; Gods were without wrath and the guilty without suffering; Every snake became mild, every monster placid. 12 Tantalus,33 Sisyphus,34 the Furies,35 Ixion,36 Tityus,37

30 “Ecco chi in canto, e in suon la palma ottiene / Nè in mare, o i[n] terra, o in aria, hebbe o i[n] ciel pare / Ma vinse in ciel, in aria, in terra, i[n] mare / Febo, i cigni, le Ninfe, e le sirene. / In reali conviti, in alte scene / Vivo mostrò il valor suo singolare. / Spento addolci col suon le pene amare / Del centro, e l’ombre fosche fè serene. / Tutto cangiossi a l’hor lo stigio hospitio, / Li dei senz’ira i rei senza martiro, / Mite ogni serpe, placido ogni mostro. / Tantal, Sisifo, l’Empie, Ision, Titio / A i costui dolci accenti non sentiro / La sete, il sasso, l’urna, il vento, il rostro”: Groto, Rime, part 1, 131. 31 Verses 2–4 refer to the said musician’s superiority over creatures on earth (viz., humans) and in the heavens (Phoebus), waters (swans, nymphs, sirens), and air (presumably singing birds). 32 for centro as “heart,” see Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (Venice: Giovanni Alberti, 1612), 243 (under cuore); and perhaps as “the depths,” ibidem, 170 (under centro), with a reference to Dante, Inferno 2.83 (“Dello scender quaggiù in questo centro”). Thus the verse above can be translated not only as a human being’s “heart” but also as the earth’s “depths,” which, without the musician’s song, are dismal. 33 Like two other figures in this verse (Sisyphus, Ixion), Tantalus was consigned to Tartarus, which, as the lowest stratum of the Underworld, was reserved for punishment of the most shameful evildoers. For having stolen ambrosia from the gods and revealed their secrets, Tantalus was made to stand under a fruit tree and whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches would rise up to escape his grasp. 34 A greedy, deceitful king punished in Tartarus by being forced, for eternity, to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back. 35 “Le Empie” are taken here to refer to the Furies (Furie, Erinni). When not stalking their prey on earth, they were thought to dwell in Tartarus where they inflicted their tortures on its inhabitants. 36 After Ixion murdered one of his kin and assaulted Hera, he was punished by being fastened to a perpetually revolving wheel. 37 After assaulting Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis, Tityus was banished to Hades where two vultures tore at his liver. the levi dynasty 169

upon hearing his sweet sounds, did not feel Thirst, the rock, the tomb,38 the wind, the beak.39 Removing the rhetorical veneer from the inscription and the verses, one can discern a small but significant number of biographical details. The musician was described as Jewish, and thus unlike Rosa did not convert. He was both a singer and an instrumentalist (“in singing and playing”). With his gifts as a musician he won great acclaim (“outstanding,” “receives the palm,” “showed his unusual talent”). He was probably a welcome invitee to the court, if not a more permanent musician on its roster, appearing in private diversions (“at royal banquets”) and the theater (“on the lofty stages”). This would make sense for Mantua, with its hefty program of musical and theatrical activities, including performances of a Jewish troupe for which there is documentation from the mid-sixteenth century on.40 Perhaps the circumstances should be reconsidered. The only way Abramo could have been Rosa’s brother would be, for one, to read the notice of his wife’s death in 1534 and, after his presumed remar- riage, of his two-year-old son Benedetto’s death in 1543 as pertaining to a still earlier, and till now undocumented, Abramo dall’Arpa, or Abramo I; and, for another, to identify the Jewish harpist who played the part of Pan in 1542 as an Abramo II in his early teens. Even so, serious questions prevent the latter’s identification with Rosa’s brother: why was Abramo II in Mantua and his sister in the Veneto? Could he originally have been called to Mantua after making a name for himself as a juvenile harpist? Since Rosa converted as a young girl, and the youthful Abramo must, nevertheless, have been her elder by at least twenty or more years, is it possible for the two of them to have been separated by such an age discrepancy? In describing Rosa’s parents

38 Meaning perhaps the weight of the tomb. 39 These five substantives are applicable to the five figures in the previous verse: thirst (Tantalus), rock (Sisyphus), tomb (Fates, who tortured their victims unto death, hence led to their “entombment”), wind (Ixion, exposed to its gusts on a revolving wheel), beak (Tityus). 40 on the Jewish theater in Mantua, see Alessandro D’Ancona, Origini del teatro italiano, 2nd rev. ed., 2 vols. (Turin: Loescher, 1891), 2:398–429; Claudia Burattelli, Spettacoli di corte a Mantova tra Cinque e Seicento (Florence: Casa Editrice Le Littere, 1999), 141–180; Susan Parisi, “The Jewish Community and Carnival Entertainment at the Mantuan Court in the Early Baroque,” in Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts: Studies in Honor of Lewis Lockwood, ed. Jessie Ann Owens and Anthony Cummings (Warren, Michigan: Harmonie Park Press, 1997), 293–305; and Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua, 656–668. 170 don harrán in an oration pronounced upon her baptism, Groto said they were “old”;41 were they so old, in fact, as to have had Rosa as a child in their later years?42 Or did her father remarry and beget Rosa with a second wife? If Rosa and Abramo II were really siblings, Rosa did not break off relations with her brother after baptism; indeed, by requesting that Groto honor him in verse she obviously took considerable pride in him. But all this is speculation.

Daniel dall’Arpa

Abramo’s son was Daniel (or Daniele).43 In 1557 he was given permission to run a loan bank, together with Joseph of Civitavecchia, in Volta (a municipality about thirteen miles northwest of Mantua).44 Some writings relate him to Innsbruck and Vienna, with Mantua as an intermediate station. They are confined to the years 1567–1572. Daniel may have been in Innsbruck for a short time, at the court of Archduke Ferdinand II: in one document “Daniel Levi, a Jewish harpist and dance master” is said to have “solicited both written authorization to travel [to Innsbruck] from Ferrara45 and a permit to take up residence in the Jewish quarter, where, as a princely servant, he might live without harassment.”46 The document is housed in the regional

41 “Non loderò la coppia di quei beni caduchi, in cui da prima nasceste, e che hora lasciate; perche abbandonati da voi giuditiosa, e lodata, si scoprono indegni di loda”: from “Oratione di Luigi Grotto cieco d’Hadria nel battesimo della Signora Rosa Levi Hebrea fatta Christiana,” Le orationi volgari di Luigi Groto cieco di Hadria (Venice: Fabio, & Agostino Zoppini Fratelli, 1586), fols. 27r–35r, and its reprint, with more extensive marginalia, though otherwise consistent in wording, in 1609 (Treviso: Aureglio Reghettini), fols. 27v–35v (references, here, are to the later edition), esp. 27v–28r. 42 If, say, Rosa were thirteen at the time of her baptism (19 June 1565) and Abramo II thirteen at the time of his first “official” mention in Mantua (25 February 1542), she would have been born in 1552 and he in 1529. Here the age difference between them is twenty-three years. 43 As clear from a decree for 1557, a letter by Lionardo da Leze (18 February 1569), and a report by Tullio Petrozzani (28 June 1587), all three to be cited below. 44 See Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga, Libri dei decreti 45 for 12 November 1557, where Daniel is identified as “the son of Abraam de Levi with the surname dalla Arpa” (“Daniel filius Abraa’ de Levi cognominati dalla Arpa”). 45 Why Ferrara, some fifty miles east of Mantua, and not Mantua, is not clear, unless Daniel’s services were sought at the Este court under Alfonso II d’Este. 46 The implication being that other residents of the “Jewish quarter” were not so well protected. “Daniel Levi, jüdischer Harfenschlager und Tanzmeister, ersucht um einen Passbrief heraus von Ferrara und um die Erlaubnis, dort, wo andere Juden woh- nen, als fürstlichen Diener unangefochten leben zu dürfen”: quoted by Walter Senn the levi dynasty 171 archives for Innsbruck among special requests submitted to Ferdi- nand, in a section for “foreign musicians, applicants for employment, etc.”47 Though undated, it relates to the period of Ferdinand’s rule: 1564–1595, which, for Daniel, can be narrowed to 1567–1568. Daniel turns up in Vienna, after 1 November 1570, as a dance teacher to the sons of Emperor Maximilian II, with a monthly emolument of twenty gulden.48 He seems to have continued in this capacity until his death two years later: a marginal notation in the same source recording his employment in Vienna states that “he died on the last day of May in the year 1572.”49 Daniel may have left Innsbruck in 1568 or early 1569, returning to Mantua. There he remained for most of 1570 before taking up residence in Vienna in November (or earlier). While in Mantua, he was apprehended for forging a signature on two monetary notes, yet released on bail because his services were needed for a production of the Jewish theater. “For three days now,” the vice-commissioner of justice, Lionardo da Leze, wrote to the public prosecutor,50

in his Musik und Theater am Hof zu Innsbruck: Geschichte der Hofkapelle vom 15. Jahrhundert bis zu deren Auflösung im Jahre 1748 (Innsbruck: Österreichische Verlagsanstalt, 1954), 150 (in the section of “musicians and trumpeters” serving Archduke Ferdinand II, 139–150, esp. 150). 47 Ferdinandea, Supplikationen (Innsbruck, Landesregierungsarchiv in Innsbruck, L; undated). For “foreign musicians,” etc., see Senn, ibidem, 390–391. 48 As recorded in the listings of “Auszüge aus den Statuslisten und Instruktionen des Maximilianeschen Hofes sowie der Hofstaate der Gemahlin und der Kinder des Kaisers, 1529–1576” (Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv); reproduced in Senn, Musik und Theater am Hof zu Innsbruck, 339–403, specifically 398. There, under “Tantz- maister,” one reads: “Daniel Levi. Ist den Ersten November Anno &c. Sybentzigis- ten, das monnat zwaintzig gulden R(heinisch) für all seine underhaltung angenomen worden: 20 fl.” 49 see Senn, Musik und Theater, 398 n. 130: “ist den Lessten tag May a(nno) &c. 72 gestorben.” 50 “1569. 18. Febbraio. Molto Mag.(nifi)co s.(igno)re oss.(ervandissi)mo[:] Feci gia tre giorni distenere Daniel hebreo fig.(liuo)lo d’Abram dall’arpa, per imputat.(io)ne d’haver commesso falsità in due sottoscrittioni di questa sua mano a dui scritti di fini generali fatte tra lui et un brachiel pur hebreo, Et perche hoggi esso Daniel data la sigurtá di 300. lib.(bre) conforme alli statuti di S.(uo) Fisc.(ale) ha risposto all’inquisi‑ t.(io)ne formatali contra sopra tal’imput.(atio)ne merita esser rilassato, Che io peró non ho voluto fare senza participat.(io)ne et commiss.(io)ne di S.(ua) Alt.(ezz)a Ser.(enissi)ma in absentia di S.(uo) Fisc.(ale) ancorche come uno che ha da recitare nella comedia mi sia questa [sic] dimandato dal s.(igno)re Theodor san Giorgi. Peró V. S. potrá alla p.(ri)ma occasione certificarne S. Alt.(ezz)a alla quale co(n) ogni humiltá faccio river- entia di Palazo il 18. di feb.(ra)io nel 1569. D. V.(ostra) S.(ignoria) Se.(rvito)re Lion- ardo da leze Vic.(ecommissa)rio di Giust.(iti)a” (Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga, 3391: 18 February 1569, fol. 37r). 172 don harrán

I have had Daniel ebreo, son of Abramo dall’Arpa, detained on the charge of having falsified two signatures in his own hand on two writings regarding general matters concluded between him and a [certain] Brachiel, also ebreo.51 Since the same Daniel, after providing a security of three hundred pounds in conformity with the statutes of His Inspector of Public Revenues, answered [the allegations] in the investigation into the aforementioned charge against him, he deserves to be released. Yet in the absence of His Inspector of Public Revenues I did not wish to do this without an announcement and order of His Most Serene Highness,52 even though I had been requested to do so by Lord Theodor San Giorgi on grounds of his [ Daniel’s] having to act in the comedy. But Your Lordship can, at the first opportunity, certify this to His Highness, to whom I bow in all humility. Dated 18 February 1569, the letter contains the only reference to Daniel’s “artistic” doings in Mantua. His importance as an actor or musician in the Jewish theater clearly overrode any considerations of detainment on charges of fraud. Like his father Abramo, Daniel, in short, seems to have been a harpist and dance teacher. But without more specific information, his activities in German courts as well as in Mantua remain in the shadows. Summarizing Daniel’s employ in Vienna, for example, Walter Pass said that “of Levi we know no more than his name.”53

Abramino dall’Arpa

Better known is Daniel’s son, viz., Abramo’s grandson, Abramino,54 a musician for whom there are several documents—letters, notations, listings—from 1577 to 1593. Though he may have “inherited” his

51 The two signatures would then be his and Brachiel’s. Strictly speaking, only Brachiel’s was falsified. 52 Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga. 53 “[. . .] kennen wir auch von Levi nicht mehr als seinen Namen”: Pass, Musik und Musiker am Hof Maximilians II (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1980), 240. 54 Generally identified as Abramo’s “nephew” (Canal, 701; Birnbaum, 191; Fenlon, 43; Simonsohn, 671), indeed, nipote can be read as either nephew or grandson. Yet the latter is sustained by the alternate designation abiatico and the full genealogical statement “il detto Abramino fig.(liuo)lo che fù di Daniele già fig.(liuo)lo di Abram vecchio dall’Arpa” in the report (from 28 June 1587) to be cited below. the levi dynasty 173 grandfather’s slaughterhouse as one source of income,55 he obtained additional funds from his employ at the Mantuan court: his name appears on payrolls for 1577 and 1580/81.56 In the first of them, he is listed among twelve musicians, including the maestro di cappella Giaches Wert, as “Abramo dell’arpa ebreo,” recipient of 36 scudi, or 16.4 lire per month; in the second, he figures among fifteen musicians, now as “Abraam dall’arpa,” with the same salary. Abramino’s skills as a harpist were widely recognized. Writing in 1585, the poet and painter Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo referred to him, along with his grandfather Abramo and the non-Jew Giovanni Leon- ardo dall’Arpa (from Naples), as the three most prominent harp play- ers of their time.57 He names them again in his Rime (1587), saying that “the great Giovan Leonardo” excelled as a harpist no less than “the Jew [Abramo] of Mantua” and “his son [recte grandson] Abram.”58 Yet his praise of the two Jews’ playing abilities did not prevent him from condemning Jews qua Jews elsewhere, in a sonnet “against the Jews.” Its first two quatrains read thus:59

55 See above, for the slaughterhouse, under Abramo, particularly the degree issued on 1 April 1568. 56 Cf. Susan Parisi, “Musicians at the Court of Mantua during Monteverdi’s Time: Evidence from the Payrolls,” in Musicologia humana: Studies in Honor of Warren and Ursula Kirkendale, ed. Siegfried Gmeinwieser, David Hiley, and Jörg Riedlbauer (Florence: Olschki, 1994), 183–208, esp. 185 (the payroll dated 1577; Milan, Biblioteca Ambro- siana, MS Y 13 sup., esp. fol. C. 65r) and 186 (the one dated 1580/81; Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga, 3146, at fol. 47r). 57 in Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’arte della pittura, scultura e architettura (Milan: Paolo Got- tardo Pontio, 1585), 348 (“Gio. Leonardo detto da l’Arpa, l’Ebreo da Mantova, & suo figliuolo Abraam”: here, as in the next statement, the author mistook Abramo’s grandson for his son). Cf. Moshé Barasch, “Traces of Jewish Musicians in the Trat- tato of Lomazzo,” in Yuval: Studies of the Jewish Music Research Centre, I, ed. Israel Adler in collaboration with Hanoch Avenary and Bathja Bayer ( Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1968), 86–88, esp. 87. On Giovanni Leonardo (c. 1525–1602), see Ulisse Prota-Giurleo, “Gian Leonardo dell’Arpa nella storia della musica,” in his Scritti inediti e rari, ed. Gennaro Borelli and Giorgio Mancini (Naples: Arte tipografica, 1988), 27–33. 58 “Udiasi ancora quel che tanto seppe / Del suon de l’arpa il gran Giovan Leonardo, / Con l’Hebreo da Mantoa che mai tardo / Non fu co’l figlio Abram intorno à quella”: Lomazzo, Rime (Milan: Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1587), book 3, 164. The passage occurs in a poem on famous sixteenth-century “musicians” (among them Giuseppe Caimo, Annibal Padovano, Nicola Vicentino, Adrian Willaert, and Gioseffo Zarlino): ibidem, 163–164 (eleven quatrains plus two-line commiato). 59 “Potiam ben rallegrarsi noi per quello, / Che morir volse spinto d’amor nostro: / Per liberarci dall’Infernal Chiostro, / Dove stetter gl’Antichi e Satan fello. / Ma ’l Popolo crudel che ’l puro agnello / Uccise; e qual spietato e strano mostro / Piansel 174 don harrán

We can well rejoice for him Who wanted to die, incited by his love for us, 3 In order to free us from the infernal cloister where the ancients and wicked Satan resided. But may the cruel people that killed the pure lamb 6 and, like a spiteful and strange monster, wept for him while it killed him, forever feel The harsh bite of grief in its defiant heart. Abramino’s Judaism was ever a problem, which the authorities hoped to solve by securing his conversion. In 1582 he and his son (named perhaps Malachi) were to be convened together with a “master of theology,” but it turned out, after searching for them, that they were in Ferrara.60 The efforts to break his will must have intensified in the years to come, but it is only in 1587 that we hear of their continuation. Of the nine letters so dated,61 the first two are known from the secondary literature62 and the rest were recently uncovered (in connection with Judah Moscato) by Gianfranco Miletto, to whom I am grateful for sharing their content before publication. I shall refer at length and in full translation to the first of the nine, which, as it happens, does not appear in Miletto’s studies on the set,63 nor does it, beyond short extracts, in earlier ones;64 and shall briefly summarize the others for their conversionist matter as it applies not to Judah Moscato, as

mentre l’uccise; il duro rostro / Del dolor senta ogn’hor nel cuor rubello,” etc.: Rime, book 1, 42 (sonnet headed “Contro gl’Hebrei”). 60 To which, if they had been forewarned of the summons, they may deliberately have absconded. “Molto Ill.(ust)re s.(ign)or mio s.(ign)or oss.(ervandissi)mo Mant.(ov)a [1]582. 29. Lug.(lio) Hò mandato à circar Abram dall’Arpa et suo fig.(liuo)lo acciò venissero co’l s.(igno)r Theologo costì, mà si è ritrovato che sono à Ferrara” (from a letter that Luigi Olivo, Castellano of Mantua, wrote to the duke on 29 July 1582). On Malachi dall’Arpa, see, for evidence in the Mantuan Jewish Community Archive, Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua, 671 n. 329. 61 28 June, 29 June, 5 July, 6 July, 8 July (x 3), 11 July (x 2). 62 Canal, “Della musica in Mantova,” 701 (28 and 29 June); Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1959), 284 (28 June); Parisi, “Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua, 1587–1627: An Archival Study” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1989), 541 n. 7 (28 and 29 June); eadem, “The Jewish Community and Carnival Entertainment at the Mantuan Court in the Early Baroque,” 297–305, esp. 301–302 n. 36 (28 and 29 June). 63 Both the one in this volume and the one entitled “New Documents from the State Archives of Mantua about Yehuda Moscato,” Revue des Études Juives 168 (2009): 201–208. 64 In particular, the two by Parisi mentioned above. the levi dynasty 175 did Miletto, but to Abramino. All translations here and elsewhere are my own. Document 1 is the protocol of an interrogation: the singer Gio- vanni Andrea Robbiato65 and, to a lesser extent, the ducal barber and archer Mr. Francesco di Brasoli were, at the instigation presumably of Duke Guglielmo, sounded under oath for their knowledge of Abramino’s inclination toward Christianity. We learn that Robbiato, on his way from Goito66 to Mantua with Abramino as a travel companion, explained to him the advantages of Christianity over Juda- ism: Abramino listened, but disagreed. After arriving in Mantua, Robbiato took Abramino to the ducal church of Santa Barbara to witness, from the organ loft, the baptism of Duke Guglielmo’s grandson (Ferdinando).67 Abramino feigned interest in the ceremonial, yet remained silent when a monk clarified to him the difference between Holy Baptism and circumcision. Rumors of the incident immediately spread to the Jewish community, and that same evening Abramino’s uncle Samson together with Rabbi Moscato, worried lest Abramino be persuaded by the Christian proselytizers, rushed to him to strengthen his will (Robbiato tried to overhear the conversation, but the three purposely spoke in Hebrew). When Abramino was asked, on the following day, whether he would convert, he temporized, saying that, yes, he had a certain impulse to do so, but had still not decided. Rob- biato and Brasoli must have been lively speakers, for their words, as copied by Tullio Petrozzani, the duke’s consigliere di stato,68 read almost as a dramatic scenario (bracketed numbers are editorial; see fig. 1 for a single page and the Appendix for the full document as transcribed from the original).69

65 Bass singer, in the service of the Mantuan court from c. 1585 to 1600; cf. Parisi, “Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua, 1587–1627,” 489. 66 About ten miles northwest of Mantua, Goito was the site of a country residence particularly favored by Guglielmo. 67 Second son of Vincenzo (1562–1612). Vincenzo was prince until 1587 when, upon the death of his father, Guglielmo, he became duke. He was succeeded in 1612 by his first son Francesco (1586–1612), who himself was succeeded, in the same year, by his brother Ferdinando (1587–1626). 68 Petrozzani (1538–1609). On his art collection, see Guido Rebecchini, Pri- vate Collectors in Mantua, 1500–1630 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2002), 199–201. 69 Mantua, Archivio Storico, Archivio Gonzaga, 2639. 176 don harrán

Figure 1. Inquiry (28 June 1587). Mantua, Archivio Storico, Archivio Gon- zaga, 2639 (the first of six pages). Courtesy, Mantua, Archivio di Stato. the levi dynasty 177

[Interrogation held] on the 28th of June, 1587, in the fortress of Goito,70 in the afternoon Mr. Giovanni Andrea Robbiato from Milan, a singer of His Highness, said [1] that on the morning of the Feast of Saint John the Baptist,71 going to Mantua by coach, he had with him Abramino, the grandson of the deceased Abramo dall’Arpa, and having begun to speak to him about our Christian religion, while trying to show him that it was the best and should be practiced, for it supersedes the one that the Jews profess, the said Abramino did not agree, but nevertheless appeared to listen to the explanation, saying that he would have done whatever God had inspired him to do; [2] that after having arrived in Mantua, the said Robbiato directed the same Abramino to the organ loft in Santa Barbara during the celebration of the Holy Baptism of the second male grandchild of His Highness72 and Abramino appeared to be pleased with those ceremonies, and standing nearby was a monk of Sant’Agnese,73 who, unfamiliar to him [ Rob- biato], talked with the same Abramino, explaining to him the substance of the said sacrament of the Holy Baptism by comparison with circumcision, but Abramino did not provide the said father with any answer in this regard;74 [3] that afterwards, having ascended to the new hall near the garden, to go from there to the lake75 where the concert was to be held while the lord cardinal Caetano76 dined,77 up to the said hall there came an uncle of the same Abramino, as he himself [ page 2] described him,78 and whose name he [ Robbiato] did not know, and he was accompanied by

70 For “fortress” the text has Rocca, which refers more specifically to the tower of the castello, the walls of which were destroyed in an earthquake of 1693. In this tower there appear to have been prisons. 71 24 June. 72 Ferdinando, second son of Vincenzo I (as above). 73 Augustinian convent in Mantua (in the Piazza Virgiliana), not far from Santa Barbara, itself within the confines of the Ducal Palace. 74 Namely, his conversion. 75 Probably the Lago Inferiore alongside which the Ducal Palace was situated. 76 Cardinal Enrico Caetani (1550–1599), who, as papal legate in Bologna at the time, came to Mantua to baptize the grandson. On Caetani and Bologna, see Andrea Gardi, Il cardinale Caetani e la legazione di Bologna (1586–1587) (Rome: Fondazione Camillo Caetani, 1985). 77 The sentence seems garbled in the original. There it read: “That afterwards having ascended to the new hall near the garden where the concert was to be held in order to go to the lake where the lord Cardinal Caetano dined,” etc. We know from a letter written by Tullio Petrozzani on the following day that the concert took place on the lake (“per fare un concerto Musicale la sera alla cena data nel lago all’Ill.(ustrissi)mo S.(igno)r Car.(dina)le Caetano”; Archivio Gonzaga 2639, 29 June 1587), thus the revised version above. 78 “He himself ” in reference apparently to Abramino, though it may have been the uncle who described the blood relationship. 178 don harrán

the rabbi Leone Moscato79 who had a black lobe on one cheek and who, as he [ Robbiato] heard from a certain little Jewish hooligan known to him by sight and active as an errand boy in Angelino’s store located on the corner of the small Piazza dell’Aglio,80 was, I say, the said Moscato, and they approached Abramino, walking and talking with him in that hall, then out on the gallery facing San Pietro,81 and the said Mr. Gio- vanni Andrea approached him to hear what they might be saying, but they were speaking in Hebrew, so he did not understand them, nor did Abramino say anything to him;82 [4] that the same day before noon Abramino went to his house to take his harp, bringing it to the room of the same Robbiato, and in the afternoon the aforementioned uncle of Abramino came to him, and both of them, after having spoken a bit together, asked him [ Robbiato] to let him go home to draw up certain accounts relative to the inheritance of his lord,83 and so he went there, staying away from the court for about two hours, and after having returned, he [ Robbiato] took him to Santa Barbara, as above; [5] that in the evening of the abovementioned day he did not wish to dine at court, rather he went home, after his said uncle used his offices84 and the same Abramino made his own plea, saying that in court he would have suffered;85 [6] that on the same day he [ Robbiato] found, in the piazza,86 Mr. Paolo Marnos, who asked him [ page 3] whether the said Abramino was with His Highness, and answering him that he was, he countered [with the question] if he would become a Christian, and in answering that he did not know, but believed more yes than no, Marnos then said he had heard from the Jews, not naming whom, that they were afraid he might become a Christian and, as to himself, he believes that the Jews know that Abramino’s becoming a Christian is favored by His Highness, to whom the same Abramino had said that ever since he was a small child he had been under pressure to become a Christian, but that he had no thoughts about this and that he had been circumcised and that he did not wish to be a Christian;

79 Leone from Judah Leone (in Hebrew, Aryeh) Moscato. 80 The Jewish market adjacent to the Piazza dell’Erbe. 81 The cathedral. 82 about conversion. 83 The original reads “di suo Messere,” in reference, perhaps, to Robbiato, who, previously, had been addressed as “Messer” (inscription to letter, sentence 3), translated there (and elsewhere for all others so addressed) as “Mr.” Yet someone else could have been meant. 84 To release him from dining there. 85 From being obliged to eat food not prepared according to Jewish dietary regulations. 86 Probably the Piazza Sordello before the Ducal Palace. the levi dynasty 179

[7] that yesterday Mr. Don Mattheo da Carpo, singer of His Highness,87 followed the same Abramino about for more than three hours, as his Reverence88 said, but found that he was most pertinacious; [8] that now Abramino appears to be firmer and more determined not to become a Christian and not to admit the urgings to this end before he went to Mantua on the abovementioned day of Saint John the Bap- tist, for earlier he did not freely deny them even though he still did not agree with them; [9] that this morning, conversing with Abramino, he said to him that should he have any hesitations about the Christian faith’s being better than his, he ought to speak or let some rabbi of his speak with one of our theologians who would have dispelled them, but the said Abramino answered that his rabbis are afraid of speaking [ page 4 ] thereabout lest they be put before the Inquisition, and when the said Robbiato told him that he believed that His Highness would have granted him the favor of their being able to speak, Abramino answered: “May God will that His Highness give license to two or three of the said rabbis to dispute with the Christian theologians,” from which one might infer that they would have made known that their faith is better than ours, et hoc est quantum, etc. (and that is as much as, etc.).89 [10] Shortly afterwards Mr. Francesco di Brasoli, the barber and archer of His Highness, relayed the following things, namely, that last Saturday eight days had passed since he, by commission of His Highness, went to Mantua to take away, as he did, the said Abramino, son of Daniel, himself son of the former Abramo dall’Arpa, by horse, and afterwards the said Abramino stopped here until he returned to Mantua on the Feast of Saint John the Baptist, and while he stayed here the same Mr. Francesco spoke to him, several times, about becoming a Christian, for he still had an order from His Highness to do so, and although he did not get the said Abramino to resolve to become one, he [Abramino] appeared nevertheless to listen willingly to such explanations, appearing to doubt whether it was right to have been born a Jew and have Jewish parents, and at the same time promised the same Mr. Francesco that upon his return90 he would want to go from Mantua [ page 5 ] to the Madonna delle Grazie91 and see those miracles. The said Abramino did not refrain, moreover, from eating cooked fish and other victuals among the courtly dishes, especially macaroni with milk, cheese, and butter, cheese itself,

87 According to Parisi, he may perhaps be identified with the musician Don Mat- teo Foresto on the court payroll of c. 1589 (“Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua, 1587–1627,” 460). 88 Not clear to which ecclesiastic this refers (Cardinal Caetani?). 89 Continuation: “as was reported under oath” (see below). 90 To Mantua. 91 Appears to refer to the sanctuary of Madonna delle Grazie (Lady of Graces) in Curtatone (about four and a half miles southwest of Mantua), a place of pilgrimage because of its purported miracles. 180 don harrán

and salted ricotta, without any reserve, and likewise pancakes made from eggs, cheese, and butter, all of them dishes made at court and of which the courtiers partook, and further fruit pie, from which signs the same Mr. Francesco conjectured a good inclination on Abramino’s part to become a Christian, but that after he was in Mantua and came back into circulation, he showed a stubborn will not to become a Christian, refusing to go to the abovementioned church of the Madonna and declaring that he does not want to become a Christian and that he wishes to die a Jew, despite his having eaten, even now, cooked fish, as above, and in short the aforementioned Abramino made it understood, after having returned, as above, that he will do everything to keep from outwardly becoming a Christian, while the same Mr. Francesco added that he did not hear from the aforementioned Abramino that when he was in Man- tua he was instigated by other Jews and turned away by them from the inclination that he had shown before, et hoc est quantum cum iuramento, etc. (and that is as much as was reported under oath, etc.). [11] Shortly afterwards [ page 6 ] the aforesaid Robbiato under oath relayed that, today, talking with the aforesaid Abramino, the latter told him that when he was in Mantua, as above, his uncle Samson spoke to him, urging him particularly to continue in the Hebrew faith and not to give ear to words spoken to him about becoming a Christian, et hoc est quantum [cum] iuram[ento] (and that is as much as can be reported under oath). We are told that the Jews feared Abramino would convert; that Abramino had been under pressure to do so ever since he was a child; that Duke Guglielmo took a personal interest in winning him over to Christianity; that the rabbis hesitated to argue over their faith with the Christian theologians for fear of the Inquisition; that Abramino sometimes ate at court, which the Christians took to mean that unable to observe Jewish dietary laws there, Abramino seemed willing to convert; and that while the Christians kept up their coercive efforts to have him abandon his Judaism, the Jews counteracted by encouraging him to resist.92 And resist he did: “he did not agree”; “he did not wish to dine at court”; he evaded conveying anything definitive about his inclinations; he gave no thought to becoming a Christian; he indicated that the faith in which he was born was the one in which he wished to die. To placate his Christian interrogators he awakened expectations by dissembling a show of interest: “he appeared” to listen, “he appeared” to be pleased with the baptismal ceremonies, “he appeared” to hearken to the explanations of Francesco di Brasoli. But

92 “[. . .] essortandolo à continuare nella fede hebraica, et non dar orecchie à parole che gli venissero dette di farsi Christiano.” the levi dynasty 181 he said nothing to commit myself except for the ambiguous comment that “he would have done whatever God had inspired him to do.” The report, beyond confirming the essentials of Abramino’s biography, namely, that he was a harpist, that his father was Daniel, and that his grandfather was Abramo dall’Arpa, has its share of piquant collateral detail, not least of which the dark wart on Rabbi Moscato’s cheek or the Jews’ intentional use of Hebrew to prevent being understood by Christians or the various dishes that Abramino ate at court. Though the Christians assumed from his partaking of these foods that he was violating Jewish dietary prescriptions, there was actually nothing wrong with eating cooked fish (as long as it had both fins and scales), or macaroni, cheeses, milk, butter, eggs, and fruits. What was forbidden was eating shellfish or a mixture of meat and milk93 or, by extension, meat or cheese dishes prepared in the same utensils, which, since Abramino had no way of knowing whether they were, was probably the main reason why, to quote the report, “he did not wish to dine at court” and “would have suffered” if he had to. The letters that follow the report reveal the unrelenting pressure brought on Abramino to convert. I will not go into detail, because they can be read in Miletto’s studies. In brief: Abramino refused to convert, so Guglielmo had him rounded up “for immediate and painstaking interrogation” along with the two persons he suspected were responsible for his obstinacy, his uncle Samson and Rabbi Moscato.94 His interrogators tried to get him to admit their part in dissuading him, but even when put on the rack he would not say a word, hence was “put in prison with windows locked.”95 “To His Highness’s knowledge, and by his order, discussions were held with him to lead him to the holy Christian faith.”96 His resistance to the arguments of the various “reverend fathers” sent to talk Christian sense into him97 broke down, we are told, upon hearing Samson, probably in an adjacent cell,

93 See Exodus 23:19, 34:26; Leviticus 17:9–12. 94 Letter by Tullio Petrozzani to the Castellano of Mantua (Luigi Olivo) from 29 July. 95 Letter by Luigi Olivo to an undesignated addressee from 6 July. 96 Letter above from 29 July. 97 On these fathers, who belonged to the Carmelite order, see letters dated 6 July (Luigi Olivo to an undesignated addressee), 8 July (Luigi Olivo to Anteo Cizzuolo), 8 July (same), 8 July (Anteo Cizzuolo to an undesignated addressee). The Carmelite order in Mantua can be traced from 1413 to 1783. For its early history there, see Ludovico Saggi, La Congregazione Mantovana dei Carmelitani sino alla morte di B. Battista Spagnoli (1516) (Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1954), and for the Carmelites at 182 don harrán cry out in pain under torture. Both of them thereupon acknowledged their wish to be baptized,98 as in fact they were, four days later, on 12 July, in San Benedetto (some nine miles southeast of Mantua), in the presence of the duke, upon his request.99 Since the Gonzagas did not have a country villa with its own private chapel in San Benedetto, the ceremony is likely to have taken place, by deference to the rank of the duke, in the church within the monastery of San Benedetto, where, moreover, the duke probably resided during his visit.100 The sacrament was administered in contravention of the customary indoctrination of prospective converts over a forty-day period in a Casa dei Catecumeni, from which regulation a certified exemption had been duly obtained.101 Guglielmo was clearly in a hurry to savor his victory,

large, Joachim Smet, The Carmelites: A History of the Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, 3 vols. (Darien, Illinois: Carmelite Spiritual Center, 1975–1982). 98 Letter by Luigi Olivo to Anteo Cizzuolo from 8 July. 99 Letter by Tullio Petrozanni, from San Benedetto, to Luigi Olivo, 11 July. Petrozzani conveyed the duke’s mandate that the dominican theologian Santi Nerli (whose services were variously engaged at the court under dukes Guglielmo and Vin- cenzo I) come to Mantua to visit Abramino and his uncle Samson in prison (the Predella; see next footnote) and verify their wish to be baptized. Should it prove to be genuine, the duke would have Nerli bring them “to us here” (“qua dinanzi”), supposedly San Benedetto, for the baptism to be performed (“Havendo inteso S.(ua) A.(ltezza) [. . .] il profitto d’Abbramino nella santa fede nostra [. . .] ha deliberato che il Rev.(erendo) padre fra Santo [sic] Nerli valentissimo Teologo venghi a Mantova [. . .] per chiarirsi se il detto Abbramino et Sansone suo zio sono in termine di poter rice- vere l’acqua del Santissimo battesimo volendo S.(ua) A.(ltezza) che in tal caso esso padre li conduchi qua dinanzi per che siano battezati alla presenza dell’A.(ltezza) S.(ua)”). For confirmation of San Benedetto as the place of baptism (probably in the same named basilica), see below for Abramino’s new Christian appellation (Bernar- dino San Benedetto Renato). 100 According to Dr. Federica Guidetti, curator of the Museo Civico Polironiano, Comune di San Benedetto Po, the abbey had a building for housing guests (as stipulated, moreover, by provisions in the Rule of Saint Benedict, particularly chapter 53), with special apartments for those of merit. If not there, the duke might have stayed in the Villa Galvagnina (about six miles away), a property belonging to the Gonzagas and used for hunting expeditions. On its second floor, there is a fireplace with a fresco painting of the coat of arms that Guglielmo acquired in 1573 when Emperor Maximil- ian II conferred on him the title of Duke of Monferrato. 101 “et accertatomi che era necessario l’haver dispensa del tempo assegnato dai canoni di quaranta giorni dall’ordinario, ho procurato haverla in autentica forma”: from letter by Santi Nerli to an undesignated addressee, though he appears to have been Petrozzani, 11 July. Reporting on his visit to Abramino and Samson in prison, he found them “readily disposed toward the most holy baptism [. . .] hence tomorrow morning [. . .] we will come to perform the holy enterprise” (“Ho trovato Abraim, et Sansone in ottima disposittione per il santissimo battesimo [. . .] onde domattina [. . .] verremmo per eseguire l’impresa santa”). The forty days in the Casa dei Catecumeni were reduced to five, though the indoctrination started earlier: in letters from 5–6 July (respectively from Anteo Cizzuolo and Luigi Olivo) we learn that Abramino and the levi dynasty 183 if not over Moscato, who, true to his middle name (Aryeh, Leone), proved to be an “infernal lion” in withstanding all pressure—indeed the rabbi said that even if his interrogators “argued with him for a thousand years,” he would not yield102—then at least over Abramino, who had promised the duke to be “as much a [stubborn] Christian as he was a stubborn Jew.”103 Unfortunately, no baptismal certificate could be located. The Bene- dictine monastery of San Benedetto was suppressed in 1797, after which its church became a parish church (an earlier parish church, San Floriano, from the time of the monastery, had been demolished).104 Registers from the monastic period were destroyed, lost, or, in part, transferred to the Archivio di Stato, Mantua, although it turns out that none of those presently in the Archivio have listings of births, deaths, marriages, or baptisms.105 The first such registers to be preserved in the later parish church in San Benedetto date from 1684.106 One reads, in the secondary literature, that Abramino was called to Goito to play for Duke Guglielmo “in his dying hours.”107 The allegation, to all appearances, owes to Pietro Canal’s fanciful reading of that portion, in the report from 28 June, about Robbiato’s being asked “whether the said Abramino was with His Highness” (in Goito), to mean that he was with him at the time. But Guglielmo died a month and a half later on 14 August 1587, and if Abramino played for him

Samson had been transferred to the prison in [ Largo di Porta] Predella (Mantua), “in order for them to be better and more conveniently catechized.” 102 Letter by Luigi Olivo to Anteo Cizzuolo from 9 July. 103 Letter by Luigi Olivo to Anteo Cizzuolo from 8 July. 104 i owe this information, again, to Federica Guidetti. 105 As reported to me by Daniela Ferrari, who kindly examined relevant files in the Archivio di Stato, specifically, folder (busta) 2637, fasc. San Benedetto, fols. 423–444, for 1587; folder 3328, Prepositura di San Benedetto (copies of documents relating to the parish church of San Benedetto); the section ( fondo) Corporazioni religiose sop- presse, vols. 490–575 for the abbey of San Benedetto (notarial deeds, privileges, law- suits involving monks or monasteries, trials, etc.); the archive Beni Demaniali e Uniti (landed and combined properties) for the same abbey (limited to the eighteenth century). The Archivio itself has a gap in its own registers of births and baptisms for the years 1560–1590. On the vague possibility that the documents might have been preserved elsewhere, I asked Licia Mari, who, following this study from the beginning, graciously offered her help, to check the Archivio Storico Diocesano (Archivio del Capitolo della Cattedrale), Mantua; the parochial registers in Goito (particularly those for the years 1584–1600); and the archive of the Carmelite monks in Mantua (these same monks, it will be remembered, interrogated Abramino and Samson while in prison): her efforts, for which I am most grateful, were unfortunately to no advantage. 106 As I was informed by Don Albino Menegozzo, priest of the parish church. 107 Cf. Canal, “Della musica in Mantova,” 701, also D’Ancona, Origini del teatro italiano, 2:400, and Fenlon, Music and Patronage, 1:43. 184 don harrán in his final hours, it would have been after his conversion and under a new name. As we know from one of the letters uncovered by Miletto, the duke requested that Abramino, once baptized, be renamed Ber- nardino.108 The information is precious, for it enables us to identify, as I long suspected one could, the musician called Bernardino in various notations for the years 1588 and 1589 as the former Abramino ebreo. In February 1588 Mr. Bernardino San Benedetto Renato109 is said to have received a payment of seventy lire “for his services in singing for the Most Serene Lord, Duke Guglielmo, of blessed memory.”110 The payment was made six months after the duke’s decease and, possibly, in remuneration for Bernardino’s singing (and playing the harp) to the duke in what Canal described as “his dying hours.” In the salary register for 1589 there is a listing for Bernardino as a singer, who received monthly payments of thirty lire.111 That Bernardino cantore was in fact Abramino arpista is clear from two notices: in August 1589 the sum of 73.16 lire was paid to “Bernardino dal’arpa” for going to Milan; and in September 1589 the duke (Vincenzo) sent “some clothes to Bernar- dino Renato the harp player, who lies ill in Mantua.”112 But that is not the end of the story. Four years later, in 1593, the last date we have for Abramino, he is addressed, again, as ebreo, in a letter by Annibale Chieppio, secretary to the new duke, Vincenzo I. Chieppio writes to the duke that “after having arrived here at Ponte di Lago Scuro I found Abramino ebreo who, coming from Mantua, dis- embarked from the boat. He gave me letters that I now send to Your

108 Letter by Tullio Petrozzani to an undesignated addressee from 11 July. 109 Renato, “reborn,” a typical name for Jewish apostates. The designation San Benedetto might sustain the supposition that the baptism was celebrated in the church of the benedictine monastery (see above). 110 Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga, 3141 (February 1588): “Salariati: A Mes.(ser) Ber.(nardi)no S.(an) Ben.(edet)to Renato per h.(ave)r servito per cantare Il Ser.(enissi)mo S.(igno)r Duca Guglielmo di f.(elice) mem.(oria)—L 70”; noted in Parisi, “Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua, 1587–1627,” 650 n. 545. 111 For the listing, see Parisi, “Musicians at the Court of Mantua,” 188, after Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga, 395 (Parisi sets the word “harp” in brackets alongside Abramino’s name). 112 For the first (20 August), see Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga, 410, register, 43, fol. 44: “A di 20 agosto [1589] Duc. 12—A Bernardino dal’arpa per andar a Milano L 73.16”; for the second (30 September), see Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Davari, 16, #536 (a letter of Prior Cavrani): “S.(ua) A.(ltezza) m’ordinato che siano dati alcuni vestimenti per Bernardino Renato che suona l’arpa, il quale sta infermo li in Mant.(ov)a.” Both are reported in Parisi, “Ducal Patronage,” 650 n. 545. the levi dynasty 185

Figure 2. Letter written by Annibale Chieppio to Duke Vincenzo I. Mantua, Archivio Storico, Archivio Gonzaga, 1259 (22 November 1593; the inscription at the top—“Serenissimo,” etc.—has been removed here because it is spaced too far away; it may be read in footnote 113). Courtesy, Mantua, Archivio di Stato.

Highness,” etc. (fig. 2).113 It is not as if Bernardino alias Abramino returned to Judaism—the Inquisition would have made it almost impossible for him to do so. Rather it shows either that people who

113 “Ser.(erenissi)mo s.(igno)re mio s.(igno)re et P(a)trone col.(endissi)mo [1]593: 22: 9[=nove](m)bre Gionto quà al Ponte di lago scuro ho ritrovato Abramino hebreo che venendo da Mantova smontava di barca Il q(ua)le mi ha dato letre che hora invio à V.(ostra) A.(ltezza),” etc. For details, see inscription to fig. 2. 186 don harrán knew Abramino under his old name continued to call him so or that, for Christians perhaps, Jewish converts were always suspect of being Jews under cover, hence Abramino ebreo.114 So much for the fragmentary account of three Jewish harpists over three generations of the Levi family in sixteenth-century Mantua. How does their activity relate to Judah Moscato’s sermon on music?

The Levis and Moscato’s Sermon “Higgayon be-khinnor”

The sermon is based on the midrash about a kinnor hanging over David’s bed. “When midnight came,” the midrash reads, “a North Wind blew upon it and it would play of itself, and David would sit and busy himself with Torah until the break of dawn.”115 What is a kinnor? The contemporary Hebrew dictionaries—Maqre dardeke, ema Dawid, Galut Yehudah—describe it as a lute (liuto)116 (not so however that of the Italian Hebraist Marco Marino, who translates kinnor into Latin as cithara).117 Though the lute existed in ancient Israel,118 it was better known from the later Middle Ages in its modern variety, after the Arabic ‘ud.119 The

114 Further confusion arises from an obituary notice of the decease, in 1589, of “Sarra, the daughter of Abramo Levi, in the district of Camello after eight days of fever from smallpox, at nine months of age” (“Sarra fig.(liuo)la d’Abramo Levi nella con.t(rad)a del Camello è morta di febre e vaiolo in otti di—de nove mesi”); Man- tua, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga, Libri necrologici 18 (4 November 1589). Abramo here appears to be Abramino. 115 Talmud Bavli, Berakhot, 3b–4a. 116 Makrei dardekei (Teacher of Schoolchildren; Naples: Joseph ben Jacob Ashkenazi Gunzenhauser, 1488), fol. 31a (liuto, in connection with Genesis 4:21 and Psalms 33:2); David de Pomis, ema David (David’s Plant): Dittionario novo hebraico, molto copioso, dechi- arato in tre lingue (Venice: Juan de Gara, 1587), fol. 63a (liuto, in connection with Psalms 137:2 and Ezekiel 26:13); Leon Modena, Galut Yehudah ( Judah’s Exile): Novo dittionario hebraico et italiano cioè Dichiaratione di tutte le voci hebraiche più difficili delle scritture hebree nella volgar lingua italiana (1612), 2nd ed. (Padua: Giulio Crivellari, 1640), fols. 9b (leuto, in connection with Genesis 4:21), 39a (now lauto, in connection with 1 Samuel 10:5). 117 Marco Marino, Arca Noe: thesaurus linguae sanctae novus, 2 vols. (Venice: apud Iohannem Degaram, 1593), fol. 427a. 118 See, for example, Bathyah Bayer, The Material Relics of Music in Ancient Palestine and its Environs: An Archeological Inventory (Tel Aviv: Israel Music Institute, 1963), 26 (with details on three artifacts). 119 On the earlier history of the lute, see Friedrich Behn, “Die Laute im Alter- tum und frühen Mittelalter,” Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft 1 (1918–1919): 89–107; Wilhelm Stauder, “Zur Frühgeschichte der Laute,” Festschrift Helmuth Osthoff zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht and Hans Hucke (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1961), 15–25. the levi dynasty 187 lute, moreover, has a rounded wooden body with strings stretched across it (fig. 6 at end of chapter)120 and, therefore, could not have played of itself, as the midrash said it did, for the same body prevented any air blown on its strings from producing a sound. It is safe to assume that the midrash referred to a lyre of the type known in classical Greece121—it was relatively small, could have been hung over a bed, and had an open body, which left its strings completely exposed to the air (fig. 3). Though persisting, after Roman times, in folk culture, the ancient lyre appears to have been, if not unknown, at least unused in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian art music. An instrument called lira (or lira da braccio) had been introduced in the fifteenth century, but beyond its similar name, it had an entirely different form, resembling that of a violin (fig. 4).122

120 For a modern reproduction, though inferior to the one in fig. 6, see Cantigas de Santa María, esp. vol. 3: Julián Ribera, La música de las cantigas: estudio sobre su origen y natu- raleza con reproducciones fotográficas del texto y transcripción moderna (Madrid: Tipografía de la Revista de Archivos, 1922), middle section (unnumbered pages), specifically no. xvii. 121 Or if not to a lyre, then to its larger, more professional counterpart, the cythara (see above, under Marco Marino). For Clement of Alexandria, for example, David was a kitharista: see his Exhortation to the Greeks (early third century), translated from the Greek by G. B. Butterworth (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: W. W. Heinemann, 1919), 12/13 (from chapter 1). Lyres and cytharas seem to have been common in ancient Israel (see Bayer, The Material Relics of Music in Ancient Palestine and its Environs, 26–32, with a list of forty-four artifacts, of which a large number are on coins). Vincenzo Galilei says, in fact, that “among the string instruments now in use in [late sixteenth-century] Italy one might mention, first of all, the harp, which is none other than an ancient cythara of many strings”: Dialogo della musica antica e della moderna (Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1581; repr., New York: Broude Brothers, 1967), 143 (“fra gli strumenti adunque di corde che sono hoggi in uso in Italia, ci è primamente l’Harpa, la quale non è altro che un’antica Cithara di molte corde”). “Since no sufficiently clear vestiges survive for us to understand the Davidic lyre,” Marin Mersenne decided, in his treatise on instruments, to “explain it only according to its use by Europeans” (“Cùm nulla vestigia satis clara nobis supersint, quae nos in Davidicae Citharae cognitionem adducant, [. . .] eam solùm explicabimus quae apud Europaeos est in usu”), i.e., as a harp: Harmonicorum libri XII [. . .] editio aucta (Paris: Guillaume Baudry, 1648; repr., Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), in Book 1 of instruments, proposition 43 entitled “Cinnyrae seu Cytharae figuram, parte, Harmoniam, & usum explicare,” 68–71 (with a full-page depiction of the harp on 69 and 70). On the cythara as a metaphor, in the patristic literature, for “an inner spiritual substance,” see Nancy van Deusen, The Harp and the Soul: Essays in Medieval Music (Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1989), particularly chapter 6: “The Cithara as Sym- bolum: Augustine vs. Cassiodorus on the Subject of Musical Instruments,” 201–255, at 202–204, 249–250. The same may be said of the kinnor in Moscato’s sermon. 122 with various differences, among them the number of strings: the violin had four, the lira five plus two ‘drone’ strings separate from the fingerboard. While the violin originated in the medieval Fiedel or vielle, receiving various characteristics of its modern 188 don harrán

Figure 3. Linus teaches Iphicles (twin brother of Hercules) how to play the lyre. Painting on a skyphos by the Pistoxenos Painter (early fifth century B.C.E.). Courtesy, Schwerin, Staatliches Museum, Kunstsammlungen Schlösser und Gärten, KG 708.

So, practically speaking, the only string instrument with an open body capable of producing a sound when air blew upon its strings would, in Moscato’s time, have been a harp. Abraham ben David Portaleone writes in Shile Ha-Gibborim (1612) that “in the vernacular the kinnor is called arpa,”123 which is probably what the other lexicographers meant when they translated it as a lute. Referring to the aforementioned midrash, Portaleone notes that of all instruments, the kinnor alias arpa “would be able to play of itself from the blowing of wind. [. . .] If you

descendant in the fifteenth century and continuing to develop thereafter, the lira had a short-lived existence: it fell into disuse by the later sixteenth century. For a full-page color illustration of fig. 4, see Emanuel Winternitz, Musical Instruments of the Western World (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, [1967]), 63 (plate 10); and for a study on the lira, idem, Musical Instruments and their Symbolism in Western Art (London: Faber and Faber, 1967), 86–98 (“The Lira da Braccio”). 123 Shile Ha-Gibborim (Shields of Heroes; Mantua: printed in the author’s house, 1612), fol. 8a (and, again, 8b). the levi dynasty 189

Figure 4. Lira da braccio from the workshop of Giovanni d’Andrea (Verona, 1511). Courtesy, Vienna, Kunsthisto- risches Museum, Collection of Historic Musical Instru- ments (SAM 89). 190 don harrán put the nevel, the ‘ugav, the minnim,124 and other instruments facing the wind, they will neither sing nor play.” It comes as no surprise that “all nations on earth, in painting King David (may he rest in peace!), did so with an arpa in his hand and not with another instrument.”125 David was so depicted not only in works by Christians, but also in Jewish publications, among them, in Italy, Jacob Uziel’s epic poem about him126 and various haggadot for Pesa127 (fig. 5). I translated kinnor as “lyre” in accommodation to the initial midrash in the sermon. Moscato would have understood it, however, as “harp,” in accommodation to the music practice of his time, which leads us back to the Levi family and the pertinence of its music making to the sermon’s thematics. One wonders: could Moscato have been prompted to discourse on the kinnor because of the fame and skills of Abramino Levi as a harp

124 The nevel, for Portaleone, is a lute (ibidem, fol. 7d), the ‘ugav a viola da gamba (ibidem, fol. 8b), and the minnim a clavichord (fol. 7c). Modena understands them slightly differently: nevel, viola (Galut Yehudah, fols. 39a, 81a); ‘ugav, cythara (cetra, ibidem, fol. 9a); minnim, organ (ibidem, fol. 89b). Referring to “the harp and psaltery of the Royal Prophet [ David] and all the other instruments mentioned in the Holy Scripture,” Marin Mersenne wrote that even “the most knowledgeable rabbis confess they are unable to know their true shapes or the way in which they were played” (“Car quant à la Harpe, & au Psalterion du Prophete Royal, & de tous les autres instrumens [sic], dont il est parlé dans la saincte Escriture, les plus sçavants Rabbins confessent qu’ils n’en peuvent sçavoir les vrayes figures, ny la maniere dont on les touchoit”): Harmonie universelle, contenant la théorie et la pratique de la musique, 3 vols. (Paris: Sébastien Cramoisy, 1636; facs. repr., Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1963), 3:175 (“psaltery,” for Mersenne, was what “the Hebrews call nevel”; 3:173). Not only were later rabbis confused over the instruments, but so were earlier ones: Talmud Bavli, ‘Arakhin, 13b, reports an argument over the difference between kinnor and nevel, saying that “since Rabbi Judah equates the kinnor with the nevel ‘asor (the ten-string psaltery), one would conclude that the kinnor and nevel are identical.” 125 Portaleone, Shile Ha-Gibborim, fol. 8b. See, for relevant studies (and illustrations), King David in the Index of Christian Art, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton: Princeton Uni- versity Press, 2002); Hans Joachim Zingel, König Davids Harfe in der abendländischen Kunst (Cologne: H. Gerig, 1968); Margareth Boyer Owens, “The Image of King David in Prayer in Fifteenth-Century Books of Hours,” Imago musicae—International Yearbook of Musical Iconography 6 (1989): 22–38; Hugo Steger, David Rex et Propheta: König David als vorbildliche Verkörperung des Herrschers und Dichters im Mittelalter, nach Bilddarstellung des achten bis zwölften Jahrhunderts (Nuremberg: Hans Carl, 1961), esp. 50–62; Martin Van Schaik, The Harp in the Middle Ages: The Symbolism of a Musical Instrument (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992); and Bernd Kalusche, Harfenbedeutungen: Ideale, ästhetische und reale Funktionen eines Musikinstruments in der abendländischen Kunst. Eine Bedeutungsgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1986). 126 Uziel (d. 1630), David, poema heroico (Venice: Barezzo, 1624; in Spanish), title page. 127 Mantua, 1560, fol. 28a; Venice, 1609, fol. 4a (and six other pages); Venice, 1629, fol. 12b (and two other pages); etc. the levi dynasty 191

Figure 5. King David with harp. Woodcut from Seder haggadah shel Pesa (Ceremonial of the Haggadah for Pesa; Venice: Ioanne de Gara, 1609), fol. 4a. 192 don harrán player? To our knowledge, Abramino was the only harpist employed at the court under Duke Guglielmo,128 and the duke, as was said, appears to have been so impressed by him as to request his services not only in Mantua but in his country palazzo in Goito. Abramino could have been to Moscato as was the menaggen, or “player,” to Elisha (“Bring me a player, and when the player played [naggen ha-menaggen], the hand of the Lord came upon him [Elisha]”; 2 Kings 3:15), namely, a stimulus to the mind, “which becomes strengthened,” to quote Moscato from the sermon, “to sail forth upon lofty speculations.”129 The sermon is best adjudged against the backdrop of the new vogue for harp music and its performance not only in later sixteenth-century Mantua, where the Levi family held a near monopoly,130 but, at the same time, in other centers, particularly Naples, where, according to one scholar, the harp, by the early seventeenth century, had become a “national instrument.”131 True, few examples of harp music were printed at the time, but the harp appears to have been widely employed as a solo instrument in works both composed and improvised and as an accompanying instrument, along with others, in vocal and instrumental works.132 Some vocal collections specify the arpa, or arpone, or arpa doppia among the accompanying instruments.133 Others imply its use

128 For others who played the harp and often additional instruments in court activities from 1589 on, see Parisi, “Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua, 1587–1627,” 128, with reference to Giulio Cima, Giovanni Maria Lugaro, Lucrezia Urbana, and Adriana Basile. 129 sermon 1, Nefuot Yehudah, fol. 4a. 130 See other harpists just mentioned. 131 Elena Barassi, “Costume e pratica musicale in Napoli al tempo di Giambattista Basile” (a poet and story writer, 1566–1632), Rivista italiana di musicologia 2 (1967): 74–110, at 105. See also Dinko Fabris, “L’arpa napoletana, simbolismo estetico- sonoro di uno strumento musicale del primo Seicento,” in Modernità e coscienza estetica, ed. Franco Fanizzi (Naples: Tempi Moderni, 1986), 211–262; and idem, “L’arpa a Napoli nell’epoca del Viceregno spagnolo,” in De música hispana et aliis: Miscelánea en honor al Prof. Dr. José López-Calo, S. J., en su 65 cumpleaños, ed. Emilio Casares Rodicio and Carlos Villanueva (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Com- postela, 1990), 241–262. 132 On the early history of the harp and its music, see Roslyn Rensch, The Harp: Its History, Technique, and Repertoire (London: Duckworth, 1619); Mirella Vita, L’arpa: profilo storico e repertorio (Udine: Pizzicato, 1991); Hans Joachim Zingel, Verzeichnis der Harfen- musik (Hofheim am Taunus: Hofmeister, 1965); and Catherine Michel and François Lesure, Répertoire de la musique pour harpe publiée du XVII au début du XIXe siècle (Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1990). 133 Some nineteen collections (from 1609 to 1643). For this and the next two sentences, I rely on the collections inventoried in Bibliografia della musica italiana vocale profana pubblicata dal 1500 al 1700, ed. Emil Vogel, Alfred Einstein, François Lesure, the levi dynasty 193 by calling for an accompaniment on any kind of instrument (“con ogni sorte di stromenti”);134 or on one or another instrument (for example, a chitarrone “over altro stromento”);135 or on one or more specified instruments that could be replaced by “similar ones” (for example, a lute “o altro simile stromento”).136 The composer Antonio de Cabezón (d. 1566) remarked that “the harp is so close to a keyboard instrument that anything that can be played on the keyboard can, without much difficulty, be played on the harp.”137 Since David was the major protagonist in Moscato’s sermon and, as just said, appeared as a model figure for harp playing in European art, one might ask: to what extent was the renewal of harp music in the later sixteenth century inspired by David? It was precisely in the later sixteenth century that the beginnings of a seeming Jewish musical Renaissance138 can be discerned in works of various ebrei, most notably Salamone Rossi, who is reported, in the introduction to his Hebrew “Songs by Solomon” (Ha-Shirim asher li-Shelomo), to have composed them “as a gift offering to Jesse’s son [ David],” with whom he felt a particular affinity for “being named as was his[ David’s] son [Solomon, Shelomo].”139 His whole intention, we read there, was to “restore the crown [of music] to its original state as in the days of Levi’s sons [viz., the Levites] on the platforms.”140 But how? By “setting to music [. . .] the words of [ David’s] psalms.”141 Indeed, of the thirty-three works in the collection, the lion’s share, twenty to be exact,

and Claudio Sartori, 3 vols. (Pomezia: Staderini, 1977), and Bibliografia della musicale strumentale italiana stampata in Italia fino al 1700, ed. Claudio Sartori, 2 vols. (Florence: Olschki, 1952–1968). 134 Some twenty-two collections (from 1549 to 1657). The same indication occurs in some thirty-four instrumental collections (from 1571 to 1625). 135 Some thirty-three collections (from 1602 to 1647). 136 Some sixty-nine collections (from 1605 to 1647). 137 according to Michael Morrow, “The Renaissance Harp: The Instrument and its Music,” Early Music 7 (1979): 499–510, at 501. 138 About which see Don Harrán, “Notes on a Jewish Musical Renaissance,” Daed- alus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 137 (2008): 96–100; and, at length, idem, “An Early Modern Hebrew Poem on Music in Its Beginnings and at the End of Time,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 64 (2011): 3–50, esp. 29–38. 139 Ha-Shirim asher li-Shelomo (Venice: Pietro and Lorenzo Bragadini, in the [printing] house of Giovanni Calleoni, 1623), fol. 4a (a dedicatory poem by Leon Modena), also Modena’s Divan, as edited (after Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Mich. 528, fol. 63a) by Simon Bernstein (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1932), 82–83 (“le-hovil shai le-ven Yishai [. . .] nikra kemo veno”; stanzas 2, 4). 140 “Heshiv ‘atartah le-yashnutah ki-yemei benei Levi ba-dukhanim” (ibidem, stanza 7). 141 “Hevi be-musikah [. . .] divrei tehilotav” (ibidem, stanza 8). 194 don harrán are from the Book of Psalms. Just as Rossi identified with David as a psalmist, so Abramo Levi and his grandson Abramino are likely to have identified with him as a harpist, and not just any harpist, but one who was able, according to Moscato, to use his instrument as a vehicle for spirituality—higgayon be-khinnor meaning both to produce sounds on the kinnor and, as the verb le-hagot implies, to contemplate them. Thus David plays a central role, among early modern Italian Jews who composed, performed, and conceptualized music, in renewing their ties with an ancient musical practice. Music, in which David excelled, was described in Jewish writings as a science, or okhmah, that the nations had taken from the Hebrews along with other sciences, though in time their Hebrew origins were forgotten.142 Just as David figured heavily in Christian painting, so he didin Christian music. The Book of Psalms was an integral part of the liturgy of the Offices from the sixth century on and hundreds of collections of polyphonic psalms were composed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Thus it is no wonder, to quote Moscato about the renewal of sciences among Jews in later times, that “everything [originally] came from our hand and from our hand143 was returned to us. [. . .] We will take the best from them,” namely, the works of the Christians, “and the worst we will not take,”144 so as to restore Hebrew learning to its erstwhile splendor. Though Moscato’s sermon on music was intended via its midrash as a lesson to Jews at large to strengthen them in their belief, it could just as well, in its emphasis on the kinnor, have been intended as a particular lesson for Abramino. It is hard to know when exactly the sermon was preached, but, since Abramino was under pressure to convert, as

142 Moscato, Nefuot Yehudah, Sermon 5, fol. 30b (“the roots and contents of all the sciences were taken from us first to the Chaldeans, then to Persia and Media, then to Greece, and then to Rome, and in the course of time and with the many aggre- gations [of these sciences] it was not mentioned that these sciences were taken from the Hebrews, but rather from the Greeks and Romans”). See, similarly, Maimonides, Moreh nevukhim (Guide for the Perplexed), 1.71. On Jewish attitudes toward philosophy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in particular the rejection of Aristotelian intellectualism in favor of Platonic mysticism, yet the acceptance of sciences for their practical utility, see Giuseppe Veltri, “Jüdische Einstellung zu den Wissenschaften im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert: Das Prinzip der praktisch-empirischen Anwendbarkeit,” in Judentum zwischen Tradition und Moderne, ed. Gerd Biegel and Michael Graetz (Heidel- berg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2002), 149–159. 143 That is, by our doing. 144 Ibidem, fols. 30b–31a (“ve-im ken mi-yadenu ha-kol u-mi-yadenu natenu lanu. [. . .] Et ha-tov nekabbel me-hem ve-et ha-ra‘ lo nekabbel”). the levi dynasty 195 he himself admitted, ever since childhood, it would have been applicable to him at any stage. If, in fact, Moscato equated Abramino’s harp with David’s kinnor, he may have been saying that it is not enough for Abramino to play his instrument: he must do so after immersing himself in Torah. The instrument “would play of itself ” when “the spirit of the Lord spoke in him and its words were on his tongue.”145 Torah was a safeguard against the dangers of the outside world. By studying it, Moscato said (after Psalm 119), “Your [God’s] laws became songs to me” (zemirot hayu li ukekha)146 to maintain the Jews in their faith. We will never really know what inspired Moscato to write his sermon. But that the harp played a prominent role in it automatically leads, for notions of its ontology, to the Levi family and, more generally, to the welter of questions that surround the popularity of harp music and its practitioners in the later sixteenth century. The questions are of relevance not only to Moscato’s sermon and Jewish musicians in the Renaissance but, clearly, to the history of music at large.

Appendix

Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga, 2639. Report of inquiry into Abramino dell’Arpa’s inclination toward Christianity, as summarized by Tullio Petrozzani (28 June 1587, unsigned; six pages) A di. 28. di Giugno. 1587. nella Rocca di Goito il dopo desinare. M(esse)r Gio:(vanni) Andrea Robbiato Milanese cantore di S.(ua) A.(ltezza) hà detto Che la mattina di S. Gio:(vanni) Batt(ist)a andando à Mantova in Carroccia era con lui Abramino abiatico del già Abramo dall’Arpa, et essendo entrato à parlar seco della religione n(ost)ra Christiana, con sforzarsi di mostrargli che q(ue)lla era ottima, et da esser osservata, non più quella che tengono gli hebrei, detto Abramino non consentì, mà però mostrò di ascoltare il ragiona- mento, dicendo che havrebbe fatto q(ue)llo che fosse stato inspirato da Dio, Che dopo arrivati à Mantova detto Robbiato condusse l’istesso Abramino sù l’organo in s.(an)ta Barbara mentre che si faceva il s.(an)to Battesimo del secondo s.(igno)r Nipote di S.(ua) Alt.(ezz)a et mostrò che à lui Abramino piacessero q(ue)lle cerimonie, et gli si trovò appresso un frate di s.(an)ta Agnese qual non conosce, che ragionò co’l med.(esim)o Abramino, dechiarandogli la sostanza di detto sacramento del s.(an)to Battesimo à comparatione della

145 Ibidem, Sermon 1, fol. 4b. 146 Psalm 119:54; Nefuot Yehudah, fol. 7a. 196 don harrán circoncisione, mà Abramino non rispose al detto P(ret)e risposta alcuna à proposito, Che poi essendosi ritirati sù la sala nuova presso il Giardino ove si haveva da fare il concerto per andare al lago ove il s.(igno)r Car.(dina)le Caetano cenò, sù la detta sala venne un zio di esso Abramino, come lui stesso [ page 2] disse, et del quale non sà il nome, accompagnato da Leone Moscato rabì che haveva un bolettino negro sopra una guancia, et hà inteso da certo hebreo qual è un puttazzo che conosce per vista, et era gargione di bottega d’Angelino che stà su’l cantone della piazzola dall’Aglio, hà inteso dico ch’era il detto Moscato, et s’accostarono ad Abramino passeggiando in detta sala, et ancora sù la log- gietta verso s.(an)to Pietro, et ragionando con lui, et detto m(esse)r Gio:(vanni) Andrea se gli accostò per intendere che dicessero, mà parlavano hebraico che non li intese, ne Abramino gli disse cosa alcuna. Che l’istesso di nanti disnare Abramino andò à casa sua à tuore l’Arpa portandola alla Camera di esso Robbiato, et dopo desinare vi venne il p.(refa)to zio d’Abramino, et tutti due dopo haver parlato un pezzo insieme lo prega- rono à lasciarlo andare à Casa per far certi conti pertinenti all’heredità di suo Messere, et cosi vi andò, stando fuori di Corte circa due hore, che poi tornato lo condusse in s.(an)ta Barbara come di sopra. Che la sera del sudetto di147 non volse cenare in Corte, mà andò à Casa, havendone fatto ufficio il detto suo zio, et instanza l’istesso Abramino con dire che in corte haveria patito. Che l’istesso di esso trovò in piazza m(esse)r Paolo Marnos, il quale dimando148 [ page 3] se Abramino detto stava con S.(ua) A.(ltezza) et rispon- dendogli de si, gli replicò se si sarebbe fatto Christiano, à che rispondendo che non lo sapeva, mà che credeva più de si, che di nò, all’hora il Marnos disse d’haver inteso dalli hebrei, non nominando quali, che havevano paura che non si facesse Christiano, et quanto à lui crede che gli hebrei sappiano che S.(ua) Alt.(ezz)a habbia caro che Abramino si facesse Christiano, Il q(u)ale Abramino hà detto à lui che sino da putto picciolo gli era stato dato l’assalto di farsi Christiano, mà che lui non vi haveva pensieri et che era circonciso, et che non voleva esser Christiano. Che hieri m(esse)r Don Mattheo da Carpo cantore di S.(ua) Alt.(ezz)a fù dietro ad esso Abramino più di tre hore, come esso R.(everen)do disse, mà trovò ch’era pertinaciss.(im)o Che adesso Abramino mostra d’esser più duro, et risoluto in non farsi Christiano, et non admettere le persuasioni in ciò, che non era prima che andasse à Mantova il di sudetto di S.(an) Gio:(van) Batt(ist)a, perche all’hora non negava liberam.(en)te se bene anco non consentiva. Che q(ue)sta mattina ragionando con Abramino se haveva qualche scru- pulo nella fede Christiana che non fosse migliore della sua, dovesse parlare, ò far parlare da qualche suo Rabi con alcuno de n(ost)ri Theologi che li havrebbero chiariti, mà detto Abramino rispose che, i, suoi Rabini temono

147 Recte dì. 148 Recte dimandò. the levi dynasty 197 di parlar [ page 4] di ciò per non esser messi all’Inquisitione, et dicendogli detto Robbiato che credeva che S.(ua) Alt.(ezz)a gli havrebbe fatta gr(ati)a che havessero potuto parlare, Rispose Abramino, Dio volesse che S.(ua) Alt.(ezz)a desse licenza che due, ò tre de detti Rabini disputassero co(n), i, Theologi Christiani, con voler inferire ch’essi havrebbero fatto conoscere che la loro fede è migliore della n(ost)ra, et hoc est quantum etc. Puoco dopo M(esse)r Fran.(ces)co di Brasoli barbiere di S.(ua) Alt.(ezz)a et Arciere hà deposto le seguenti cose, ciò è, Che sabbato passato furono otto giorni ch’esso di co(m)missione di S.(ua) Alt.(ezz)a andò à Mantova à condur fuori, come fece, il detto Abramino fig.(liuo)lo che fù di Daniele già fig.(liuo)lo di Abram vecchio dall’Arpa, à cavallo, et dopo detto Abramino si fermò quì sino che ritornò à Mantova la festa di S.(an) Gio:(van) Batt(ist)a et mentre stet[t]e qui più volte esso m(esse)r Fran.(ces)co gli parlò del farsi Christiano, perche ancora haveva cosi ordine da S.(ua) Alt.(ezz)a di fare, et se bene dal detto Abramino non hebbe risolutione di volersi fare, non dimeno mostrava d’ascoltar volentieri tali ragionam.(en)ti mostrando di dubitare di non fallare essendo nato Giudeo, et havendo delli parenti giudei, et in detto tempo egli promise all’istesso m(esse)r Fran.(ces)co che al ritorno suo da Mantova voleva [ page 5] andare alla Mado(n)na di Gratie, et vedere q(ue)lli miracoli,149 Non si guardò ancora detto Abramino di manggiare del pesce cotto nelle patelle di corte, et delle altre vivande, et mas- simam.(en)te delli maccaroni co’l latte, formaggio, et buttiro, del formaggio, et della povina150 salata senza rispetto alcuno, et parim.(en)te delle frittelle fatte con ovi, formaggio, et buttiro, tutte vivande di q(ue)lle fatte in Corte, et de quali manggiavano, i, curiali, et ancora della Fruta in pasticcio, dalli quali segni esso m(esse)r Fran.(ces)co conietturava buona inclinatione di Abramino di farsi Christiano, mà che dopo ch’è stato à Mant.(ov)a et è ritornato fuori, hà mostrato animo pertinace di non farsi, disdicendo di andare alla sudetta chiesa della Madona, et dichiarandosi di non voler farsi Christiano, et di voler morire giudeo, con tutto che habbia ancora adesso manggiato del pesce cotto come di sopra, et in somma Abramino sud.(ett)o si hà lasciato intendere dopo ritornato come di sopra, che farà d’ogni cosa dal farsi Christiano in fuori, soggiongendo l’istesso m(esse)r Franc.(esc)co di non haver inteso da Abramino p.(refa)to che quando è stato à Mantova sia stato subornato, et disviato da altri hebrei dall’inchinatione che prima mostrava, et hoc est q(uantum) cum iuramento etc. Puoco dopò [ page 6] il p(redet)to Robbiato co’l giuramento hà deposto che hoggi raggionando co’l p.(refa)to Abramino esso gli hà detto che quando esso fù à Mant.(ov)a come di sopra sansone suo zio gli parlò particolarm.(en)te essortandolo à continovare nella fede hebraica, et non dar orecchie à parole che gli venissero dette di farsi Christiano, et hoc est quantum [cum] iuratum [etc.]

149 in the original, the portion from andare to miracoli is underlined. 150 otherwise ricotta. 10. Spatial Stories: Mantua and the Painted Jew

Dana E. Katz

Maps tell spatial stories. The publication of the Civitates Orbis Terra rum, a six-volume compendium of city views from around the world, chronicles a taxonomy of spatial relations.1 This monumental atlas of urban life, executed from 1572 to 1617, conveys cartographic tales of the boundaries of dominion, the expansion of the world stage through exploration, the concept of mapping as an eyewitness account, and the consumption of the city as spatial appropriation. That the compilers of the Civitates, principally Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, engraved Renaissance Mantua within its bounded volumes speaks to the town’s

I would like to express my gratitude to the Michael E. and Carol S. Levine Foun- dation, the Renaissance Society of America, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and Reed College for supporting this research. 1 on the Civitates Orbis Terrarum, see Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum: Cities of the World, ed. Stephan Füssel (Köln: Taschen, 2008); Lucia Nuti, “The Perspective Plan in the Sixteenth Century: The Invention of a Representational Language,” Art Bulletin 76 (March 1994): 105–128; Johannes Keuning, “The ‘Civi- tates’ of Braun and Hogenberg,” Imago Mundi 17 (1963): 41–44; John Rennie Short, Making Space: Revisioning the World, 1475–1600 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2004), esp. 101–108; Raleigh A. Skelton, “Introduction,” in Civitates Orbis Terrarum, ed. Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg (Cleveland: World Pub. Co., 1966), v–xlvii. For the broader context of the early modern mapped city, see Juergen Schulz, “Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of Venice: Map-Making, City Views, and Moralized Geography Before the Year 1500,” Art Bulletin 60 (September 1978): 425–474; Svetlana Alpers, “The Mapping Impulse in Dutch Art,” in The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 119–168; Lucia Nuti, “Mapping Places: Chorography and Vision in the Renaissance,” in Mappings, ed. Denis Cosgrove (London: Reaktion, 1999), 90–108; Renzo Dubbini, Geography of the Gaze: Urban and Rural Vision in Early Modern Europe, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Naomi Miller, Mapping the City: The Language and Culture of Car tography in the Renaissance (London: Continuum, 2003); Francesca Fiorani, The Marvel of Maps: Art, Cartography and Politics in Renaissance Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Bronwen Wilson, “From Myth to Metropole: Sixteenth-Century Printed Maps of Venice,” in The World in Venice: Print, the City, and Early Modern Identity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 23–69. 200 dana e. katz spatial practices with territorial boundaries and navigable waters (Figure 1). Mantua was a small, hereditary principality governed by the House of Gonzaga from 1328 to 1708. Despite its modest size, Mantua extended the reach of its powers through savvy politics, including the strength the Gonzaga princes obtained, real and symbolic, through marriage and through allies. The incorporation of a bird’s-eye view of Mantua in the Civitates presents the town’s position among the foremost cities of the world to symbolize their geopolitical parity.2 If the Civitates is a celebration of the world’s leading cities, then the map of Mantua within this series of town plans and views offers a powerful vision of urbanity. Representation offers the city a perspective and prospective view of lived space, a cartographic look into the practices of urban life. Indeed, the mapmakers treat Mantua as a majestic town nestled among verdant countryside and floating upon the splendid lakes of the Mincio. Boatsmen dot the waterways, yet their spatial significance diminishes among the expanse of terrain. The map stages Mantua’s territorial control and geographic protection through neighboring lakes and distant mountains. The vastness of the pianura is interrupted if only momentarily by the density of Mantua’s architecture. The town, emptied of its citizenry, remains a repository for its monuments, including the Basilica Sant’Andrea (here labeled) without yet its terracotta and stone façade (Figure 2). The oblique view of the town, rendered in per- spectival lines and artistic flourishes, combines the Euclidean measure of geometry with the pictorial observation of chorography to convey space.3 Boats, streets, and bridges align in synchronized orthogonals to direct the trajectory toward the town and to give narrative authority, as specified in the decorative cartouche, to Mantua, [. . .] urbs clarissima et antiquissima.4 This is a map, as all maps are, of bounded space. The engraver literally carved Mantua out from its environs to denote the characteristic

2 Molly Bourne, “Francesco II Gonzaga and Maps as Palace Decoration in Renais- sance Mantua,” Imago Mundi, 51 (1999): 51–82. 3 See Nuti, “The Perspective Plan in the Sixteenth Century,” 105–128. 4 the full cartouche reads: “Mantua, Lombardie, Transpadane urbs clarissima et antiquissima, venustissimum, in medio paludium, situm obtinet Anno salutis M D L X X V ad viuum delineata.” “Mantua, famous and very old Lombardian city, situated on the far side of the Po, built in the middle of a marshland lake. Drawn true to life in the year of our Lord 1575.” See Braun and Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, ed. Stephan Füssel, 184–186. spatial stories: mantua and the painted jew 201

- D igiti photo: H istoric II , no. 50, 1575 or 1576. ( D epartment of Geography, , vol. P roject) L aor Cartographic Collection, Shapell Family Cities Civitates Orbis Terrarum E ran U niversity of Jerusalem, I srael, ebrew H ebrew T he engraving from the L ibrary of , Mantua roject and ational N ational P T he Figure 1. zation © 202 dana e. katz

Figure 2. Mantua, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, detail ( photo: © The National Library of Israel, Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, Shapell Family Digitization Project and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Geography, Historic Cities Project) spatial stories: mantua and the painted jew 203 contours of a Renaissance town: its churches, its palaces, its bridges, its gates. The spaces of the city are on display, circumscribed by the near rectilinear limits of its city walls. Such walls are a recurring architectural feature in the Civitates maps, partitioning space as they structure the lives of those folded within their geometries.5 “The power and importance of city walls lay in their ability to defend the city and to protect its population,” writes Maria Georgopoulou. “The walls, complemented by city gates, defined the space within and differenti- ated it from the area outside. Urban space was clearly demarcated.”6 To be sure, fortification walls designate the contours of community through their physical embodiment. Walls emblematize the city’s cir- cumference and its exclusivity from without. As Leon Battista Alberti theorized in De Re Aedificatoria(c. 1452), “the construction [of city walls] must be robust and bold in all its details, and so high as to dominate the roofs of any private houses” to defend the supremacy of the city’s sightlines from the outside world.7 Enclosure remained the principal feature of the urban image.8 Yet city walls also provoke paradox in that the points of differentiation between the walls’ two faces are also their common points. In their liminal position between town and country, terra firma and water’s edge, inside and outside, they open themselves through direct contact to what lies beyond their perimeters.9 It is the approachability of the walls, the urge to scale them or to find their perforated points, that distinguishes their architectonic allure. It is the stories narrated at the threshold of enclosure “between a (legitimate) space and its (alien) exteriority” that determine the walls’ contradic- tions.10 Spaces that delimit can also appropriate. Walls that separate

5 John Rennie Short notes, “In Civitates the city is both displayed and bounded. In almost all of the images, the city walls figure largely. Cities were often fiercely independent, being home to independent power centers, princes and prelates, guilds and town councils. Looking through the atlas at the many pictures of cities, one gains a very strong sense of cities standing apart as separate communities, reinforced by walls and battlements.” Short, Making Space, 107. 6 Maria Georgopoulou, “Mapping Religious and Ethnic Identities in the Venetian Colonial Empire,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 26, no. 3 (1996): 473. 7 leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), 118. 8 dubbini, Geography of the Gaze, 74. 9 on the spatial theories of boundary, see, for example, Henri Lefebvre, The Pro duction of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), particularly 86–87; Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1984), 126–130. 10 See de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 129. 204 dana e. katz can also be crossed. The act of drawing boundaries challenges the very nature of the operation and underlines the spatial stories that polarize and cohere community in the same discursive moment. Enclosure through city walls and gates constituted an idea of the city based on the spatial restrictions of communal incongruity. In his seventh-century Etymologiae, Isidore of Seville distinguishes the physical boundaries of community from their symbolic representation: “a city is so-called on account of its inhabitants rather than its walls.”11 Here the idea of the city takes on a human dimension, as the physiognomies of community are set apart from spatial considerations. The emphasis on the communal collective in Isidore’s definition stands in marked contrast to the material places of the city mapped in the volumes of the Civitates, which present space as a physical location related to the ideals of Albertian architecture. “Towns should be drawn in such a manner that the viewer may look into all the roads and streets and see also all the buildings and open spaces,” writes Georg Braun to explain his preference for the oblique view.12 As documents of urban civilization, the Civitates town plans identify social space through the infrastructure of human activity rather than through the humans who occupy the space. As such, the cartographic rhetoric employed by Braun invites the viewer to engage in a utopian vision that idealizes the city’s ordered places and harmonizes its disparate topographies into a universal whole devoid of a human presence. The constructed spaces of Mantua offer a bird’s-eye view of a fertile land that nonetheless remains unpopulated. Oarsmen perhaps pepper the lakes of the Mincio, but the town’s streets, churches, and piazzas await signs of life. The mapped Mantua presents a totalizing view of the city, a utopian portrait of an inhabited city, that is emptied of its residents to highlight its architectural distinction.13 Such communal distinction requires the protection of city walls. Enclosure plays an integral role in the production of space, functioning both as mediator of and barrier to the constructive processes and activities of urban life.

11 as quoted in Stephen J. Milner, “The Florentine Piazza della Signoria as Prac- ticed Place,” in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 83. 12 John Goss, Braun & Hogenberg’s The City Maps of Europe: A Selection of 16th Century Town Plans and Views (London: Studio Editions, 1991), 5. 13 louis Marin distinguishes the ideal city from the uninhabited and uninhabitable imaginary city. See Louis Marin, “The City’s Portrait in its Utopics,” in Utopics: Spatial Play, trans. Robert A. Vollrath (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1984), 208. spatial stories: mantua and the painted jew 205

In the Civitates the ring of walls serves merely as a symbolic conceit, for its meanings and complexities can be activated only by the citizens dwelling within its defensive reach. The walls’ prominence of position at the threshold of civic life was a socially coded form of spatial order that joined the disparate and interactive networks of urbanity. City walls articulate the oppositional relationship of the interior and exterior worlds to lay claim to their vulnerabilities and to expose the conflicting elements of their social construction. As Henri Lefebvre writes, “Visible boundaries, such as walls or enclosures in general, give rise for their part to an appearance of separation between spaces where in fact what exists is an ambiguous continuity.”14 The spatial practices of enclosure create sites of negotiation where communities are forged and social incongruities are contested. If, indeed, the partitioning of space through city walls epitomizes a paradoxical process of communal belonging, Mantua provides a remarkable civic context to explore the culture of urban fragmentation and coalescence during the Renaissance. In Mantua the barrier between inside and outside was not necessarily a frontier to be transgressed but a threshold to be traversed.15 Throughout the early modern period, Mantua’s city walls were continually traversed by outsiders, most notably Jews, who dwelled within. The reprobate practices of Jews allegorized in Christian theology perhaps defined their status as the archetypical religious outgroup, but princely sponsorship of Jewish settlement permitted Jews a vulnerable position within city walls. In Renaissance Mantua, Jews took up residence with Gonzaga authorization in the fourteenth century to serve as moneylenders and merchants, among other trades.16 The Gonzaga protected their Jew- ish subjects from popular violence, permitting Deodato ben Sabato Norsa and his sons to carry arms to defend themselves from Chris- tian attack and at various times absolving Jews from wearing yellow badges that sartorially marked them as impure and ignoble. Despite

14 lefebvre, The Production of Space, 87. 15 elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space (Cam- bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001), 65. 16 a small community of Jews lived in Mantua in the twelfth century when the city was a republic. Documents, for example, record Abraham Ibn Ezra in Mantua in 1145. Mantuan Jewry grew under Gonzaga rule with the population increasing to 3,000 by 1600. Shlomo Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua ( Jeru- salem: Kiryath Sepher, 1977); Encyclopaedia Judaica (Detroit: Macmillan, 2007), s.v. “Mantua.” 206 dana e. katz their seigniorial-approved status, Jews remained outsiders within city limits. As Ania Loomba affirms, “the outsider is not safely ‘outside’ at all,” to denote “the fragility as well as strength of the boundaries between communities.”17 Such boundaries were not in fact fixed. Instead, perimeters are a form of social production and reproduction that were never securely set, “always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation.”18 In this chapter, I explore the shaky ground inhabited by the Jews of Mantua as a discourse on space and its semantics. I consider how pictorial representations negotiate relations between reality and image to provide a panoramic view of Renaissance Mantua and the social constraints defining its space. The Civitates map of Mantua may lay out the town and fashion its environmental physiognomies, but the physical spaces of the city collide with its social and symbolic representation in one of Mantua’s most polemical paintings: the Norsa Madonna (Figure 3). While the map of Mantua suggests a stability of place, a contained world of protected topography, the Norsa Madonna conversely articulates the transience of that suggestion, the denial of regulated walls, the sacrifice of an accomplished stability. What the map cuts up of the Mantuan landscape, the Norsa Madonna figuratively cuts across.19 Completed around 1499 by an anonymous artist, the sacred panel depicts the Madonna and Child enthroned. At their feet are four prominent members of the Norsa moneylending family, identified as Jews by the badges blazoned on their chests. This painting offers only a cursory view of the luxuriant Lombard countryside and its alpine elevations, but in its struc- tured orientation it offers a spatial story of Mantua’s boundaries and the bodies, Jewish and Christian, that set those boundaries in motion.

17 ania Loomba, Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2002), 18. 18 Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Dif ference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), 222. See also Lefebvre, The Production of Space. 19 Michel de Certeau’s analysis of spatial practices informed the following analysis. According to de Certeau, “What the map cuts up, the story cuts across.” De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 129. Martha C. Howell submits the concept of Certeauian space to the complexities of political space in explaining that images “not only gave expression to a powerful vision of urbanity; they also helped make late medieval urban life itself possible, because urban rights, privileges, and duties were defined and given force by the spaces with which they were associated and in which they established legitimacy.” Martha C. Howell, “The Spaces of Late Medieval Urbanity,” in Shap ing Urban Identity in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Marc Boone and Peter Stabel (Leuven: Garant, 2000), 3. spatial stories: mantua and the painted jew 207

Figure 3. Madonna and Child with Saints and Norsa Family (Norsa Madonna), c. 1499. Mantua, Sant’Andrea ( photo: Alinari / Art Resource, NY) 208 dana e. katz

To contextualize the Norsa Madonna requires an examination into the localized movements of Gonzaga-authorized Jews. To localize the Jewish presence in Mantua requires a study of the intertwined social relations built between Christians and Jews. Those relations guide us to particular points on Mantua’s map, to hallowed grounds profaned, to boundaries reconfigured, narrating their own spatial stories of geographic propinquity and social marginality. In 1493 the Jewish banker Daniele da Norsa acquired a house in Mantua with an image of the Madonna and Child attended by saints on its façade. After receiving written approval from the Vicario of the Bishop of Mantua, Daniele effaced the fresco from his home. This act, regarded as an affront to Christianity, incited the populace to scrawl denigrating words about Daniele and the Jews on the house walls. Two years later on May 27, 1495, the Vigil of Ascension Day, Christians participating in a religious procession discovered pictures of saints with inflammatory phrases drawn on Daniele’s home. The processioners accused Daniele of blasphemy and stoned the house to avenge the Jew’s crime. Daniele was not in the city during this episode but on his return wrote a letter dated May 29, 1495 to the marquis of Mantua, Francesco Gonzaga, pleading for the court’s protection.20 The marquis’s consort Isabella d’Este, governing Mantua with the marquis’s protonotary brother Sigismondo while Francesco was away at battle, issued a decree of immunity that absolved Daniele and his coreligionists of any wrongdoing.21 The marquis, however, annulled

20 “Ill.mo signor mio. Volendo io viver et morire sotto l’umbra di vostra Ex.tia, da Villafrancha venne ad habitare a Mantua, dove gli tolse una casa da S.to Simone, suso la quale erano figure de sancti. Et dubitando [. . .] dicte figure fusseno guaste da altre persone che me amen [. . .] et io havesse la colpa. Tolse licentia da R.do domino vicario del vescovo de far tor zoso esse figure, et pagni tutto quello che me comise esso domino vicario. La vigilia de la Assensione proxime passata, essendo io absente da Mantua, fu messo certe figure da sancti cum versi suso essa casa, che passando ultra la precessione ogniuno guardava et molte persone cridavano et trasevano sassi in casa, et credo se non fusse stato domino maestro Jacobo da Capua [captain of the guards] che per gratia sua fece tor zoso esse figure, me haverbeno metuto a sacho. Et aciò che per lo advenire non occurra tale ne mazor excesso, et non sia più vituperato, prego la prefata V.Sig.ria quella se degni fargli tal provisione circa ciò che io possa vivere securamente in quesa vostra inclita citade [. . .] Mantue xxviiii Maii 1495.” Let- ter, Daniele da Norsa, Jew, to Marquis Francesco, May 29, 1495, Archivio di Stato di Mantova, Archivio Gonzaga (AG), busta (b.) 2447, carta (c.) 137. 21 aG, Libri dei Decreti, no. 24, 246–247. See also Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua, 15. On Isabella d’Este and the Jews, see Deanna Shemek’s edition of Isabella d’Este’s selected letters in translation, forthcoming from the Univer- sity of Chicago Press. On crime and punishment in Renaissance Mantua, see David spatial stories: mantua and the painted jew 209 the pardon. Writing from camp on July 31, 1495, Francesco ordered Daniele to replace the whitewashed image of the gloriosissima matre with a more ornate and more beautiful Marian image that would meet with the marquis’s satisfaction.22 Weeks later Francesco modified the initial decision to replace the fresco. Instead, as a penalty for Daniele’s alleged blasphemy and to compensate for the whitewashed image, the marquis forced Daniele to pay 110 gold ducats for the execution of the Madonna della Vittoria altarpiece, painted in 1496 by Mantua’s eminent court artist Andrea Mantegna (Figure 4).23 In addition, the marquis ordered the Jew’s house to be razed and replaced by the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria (Figure 5). The church, with its late gothic façade, prominent oculus, and frescoed interior, became the resplendent home to Mantegna’s painting.24 A few years later clerics arranged the commission of another Madonna and Child image, which also

Chambers and Trevor Dean, Clean Hands and Rough Justice: An Investigating Magistrate in Renaissance Italy (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997). 22 “[. . .] li zudei cum omne presteza la facino refare piu ornata et piu bella che sia possibile, et in questo usarite tal diligentia che quando tornarimo ad casa la possiamo vedere cum nostra satisfactione.” Letter, Marquis Francesco to protonotary brother Sigismondo Gonzaga, July 31, 1495, AG, b. 2961, libro 4, f. 49. 23 letter, Marquis Francesco to Sigismondo Gonzaga, August 18, 1495, AG, b. 2961, libro 4, f. 70. While away at battle, Francesco enlisted Sigismondo, the Augus- tinian priest Fra Girolamo Redini, and Don Marco Antonio da Porto, the rector of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, to assist him in arranging the Mantegna commission and the construction of the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. See letter, Fra Girolamo Redini to Marquis Francesco, August 8, 1495, AG, b. 2447, c. 381; and letter, Sigismondo Gonzaga to Marquis Francesco, August 30, 1495, AG, b. 2110bis, c. 339 for Mantegna’s payment schedule. 24 For further description of Daniele’s travails and transcriptions of relevant archival documents, see Attilio Portioli, “La Chiesa e La Madonna della Vittoria di A. Mantegna,” Atti e Memorie della Accademia Virgiliana di Mantova 9 (1884): 55–79; Ales- sandro Luzio, “La Madonna della Vittoria del Mantegna,” Emporium 10 (1899): 358–374; Paul Kristeller, Andrea Mantegna (Berlin: Cosmos Verlag für Kunst und Wissenschaft, 1902), 317–353 and 558–562; Mary Harris Bourne, “Out from the Shadow of Isa- bella: The Artistic Patronage of Francesco II Gonzaga, Fourth Marquis of Mantua (1484–1519),” ( ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1997), 74–150 and 711–740; Dana E. Katz, “Painting and the Politics of Persecution: Representing the Jew in Fifteenth- Century Mantua,” Art History 23, no. 4 (November 2000): 475–495; idem, The Jew in the Art of the Italian Renaissance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 40–68. See also Ronald Lightbown, Mantegna: With a Complete Catalogue of the Paint ings, Drawings, and Prints (Oxford: Phaidon, 1986), 176–185; Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua, 14–16; Paolo Norsa, Una Famiglia di Banchieri: La Famiglia Norsa 1350–1950 (Naples: L’Arte Tipografica, 1953), 30–35; Enrico Castelli, “I Banchi Feneratizi Ebraici nel Mantovano (1386–1808),” Atti e Memorie della Accademia Virgiliana di Mantova 31 (1959): esp. 34–40; Mantova: La Storia, ed. Leonardo Mazzoldi, vol. II (Mantua: Istituto Carlo d’Arco per la Storia di Mantova, 1961), esp. 437–442. 210 dana e. katz

Figure 4. andrea Mantegna, Madonna della Vittoria, 1496. Paris, Louvre ( photo: Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY) spatial stories: mantua and the painted jew 211

Figure 5. the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, 1496. Mantua ( photo: author) 212 dana e. katz hung in the Santa Maria della Vittoria complex (Figure 3).25 This panel, largely known as the Norsa Madonna, represents the enthroned Madonna and Child with Daniele da Norsa and his family rendered underfoot. The scholarship on the two paintings privileges the Madonna della Vittoria because of Mantegna’s renown and because of the numerous extant documents related to the painting’s commission. Whereas I have previously analyzed these works in tandem as artful representations of Mantuan civic identity, here I concentrate on the Norsa Madonna to reveal the spatial strategies betraying its identity politics.26 The conception of the painted field defines, as it refines, the boundaries marked out by religious difference. That is, the Norsa Madonna clarifies the roles and relations between Jew and Christian disseminated from its pictorial design to situate and temporalize practiced social and spatial narratives of community. Despite Daniele da Norsa’s vindication of all sacrilege in 1497, the Norsa Madonna was commissioned around 1499, most likely by Fra Girolamo Redini, an Augustinian priest to whom Francesco Gonzaga entrusted the care of the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria.27 The painter portrays the enthroned Madonna and Child in the center of the composition, flanked by Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist to the right and Saint Jerome, with his identifying lion, on the left. Jerome holds in his hands a model of the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria and displays it to the church’s visitors. Daniele and his family are relegated to the bottom of the Mantuan

25 the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria on the via Fernelli underwent structural alterations with its suppression by the French in 1797 and when the church was later converted for secular use. Although no known construction documents for the small church survive, its exterior form has remained more or less intact with some changes to the church’s doors and fenestration. Some of the original frescoes survive in the church’s interior. Bourne, “Out from the Shadow of Isabella,” 105–106. The anonymous painting of the Madonna and Child with Saints and Norsa Family now is found in the Chapel of San Sebastiano in Mantua’s Basilica Sant’Andrea. Mantegna’s Madonna della Vittoria now is in the Louvre. 26 See Katz, The Jew in the Art of the Italian Renaissance, 40–68; idem, “Painting and the Politics of Persecution: Representing the Jew in Fifteenth-Century Mantua,” 475–495. 27 redini was active in the Augustinian Hermit communities of Gonzaga, Man- tua, Guidizzolo, and Ostiglia during the mid-1490s. Around 1496 to 1508, Francesco selected the priest to serve the Gonzaga court in an official capacity, frequently as Mantuan ambassador to Venice and Rome. Redini served as prior of Santa Maria della Vittoria from March 9, 1498 to December 1, 1499. See Bourne, “Out from the Shadow of Isabella,” 95, n. 48, and 116–117. It is possible that the Hieronymite friars, who maintained the church and its newly constructed convent after Redini, commissioned the work in c. 1500. Saint Jerome was the patron saint of the Hieronymite Order as well as Redini’s name saint. See Lightbown, Mantegna, 179. spatial stories: mantua and the painted jew 213 altarpiece, separated from the Virgin by an architectonic throne (Figure 6).28 Daniele, probably the central male figure with gray beard, dark eyes, and hooked nose, appears weathered and defeated in the aftermath of his alleged blasphemy. The artist carefully depicts Daniele with individualized physiognomy, including the wrinkles of his face, the furrow of his brow, and the fatigue in his eyes, in order to create a recognizable likeness of the Jewish moneylender. Such naturalism is also repeated in the faces of the other Jews.29 The three figures accompanying Daniele are sometimes identified as the moneylender’s son Isaac, depicted at the left with a long, dark beard, and their wives. Predicated on dichotomous relations of domination and submission, virtue and perfidy, the Norsa Madonna renders salient the conception of community and its points of distinction (and connection) that spatially comprised Renaissance Mantua. The juxtaposition of the celestial Vir- gin and the anachronistic Jews offers visual testimony to iniquities and inequalities in Mantuan society. The position of the Norsa, painted as a frieze of figural busts, their bodies depicted outside the limits of the painted field, unequivocally designate their status as outsiders disenfranchised from Mantua’s religious community and denied protection by its angels and saints. Participation in the polis requires a Christian identity and faith in Marian sacrality. To deny the consequence of the enthroned Virgin and Child is to repudiate willingly (or forcibly) the Mantuan majority and its bounds of civility. That repudiation is made explicit with the inclusion of a Latin inscription at the apex of the Norsa Madonna. Above the Virgin’s head, two angels, acting as God’s messengers, hold a plaque with the words Debellata Hebraeorum Temeritate (Defeat of the Jews’ Temerity, Figure 7). The inscription serves as a textual mnemonic of the Jew’s iconoclasm, a sustained pictorial response to the blasphemy of Jewish profanation. The haggard faces of the Norsa family below, together with the humiliating epigraph floating above, indicate the parameters of communalexclusivity. The artist arranges the composition with coordinated axes that cen- tralize the Christian cosmos as they marginalize Jews. The painting

28 Though the surviving documentation does not permit the precise identification of the four people situated at the bottom of the Mantuan altarpiece, it seems evident from the archival documents on Daniele da Norsa’s travails that the figures represent the Jewish moneylender and members of his family. 29 on the gendered treatment of Jewish physiognomy and costume in late medieval painting, see Sara Lipton, “Where are the Gothic Jewish Women? On the Non- Iconography of the Jewess in the Cantigas de Santa Maria,” Jewish History 22 (2008): 139–177. 214 dana e. katz D iocesi photo: author, © detail ( ( N orsa Madonna), di Mantova) Madonna and Child with Saints and Norsa Family Figure 6. spatial stories: mantua and the painted jew 215 D iocesi di Mantova) photo: author, © detail ( ( N orsa Madonna), Madonna and Child with Saints and Norsa Family Figure 7. 216 dana e. katz

enunciates marginality’s peripheralization through discourses of space. The spatial practices of community in Mantua disenfranchised Jews to naturalize communal distinctions. It is at the panel’s base where the Norsa Madonna offers the contested proximities of religious difference to mark out boundaries, spatialize alterity, and mobilize walls through social denunciation. In Renaissance Mantua conflict, if only transitory, caused those walls to shift. As Bryan Palmer remarks in his histories of transgression: Marginality is simultaneously an identity/consciousness and a structure/ place. It is a construction both social and concrete, removed from power’s centers in displacements physical and discursive. As such it is often related to the oppositional dualisms and polarizations within which difference is articulated [. . .] How such difference is perceived and lived, however, is never ultimately “set.”30 The unsettledness and variability of the boundaries circumscribing the Jews’ marginalization, physical and discursive, underwent a systemic shift in Mantua with Norsa’s perceived act of irreverence. The stage was set when Daniele Hebreo whitewashed a Marian image and was accused of profanation. Daniele paid the fine for his blasphemous transgression, 110 gold ducats, but his penalty took architectonic form as well when his house was razed and replaced by the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. In this instance, the sacredness of the church dedicated to the Madonna of Victory purified the site of profanation. That is, the identity of place was transformed, marked by ecclesiastical architecture and performances of ceremonial processions and Christian rites, to eliminate a formerly Jewish space and to achieve solemn retribution.31 Cleansing social order required church architecture, at once to designate the space as previously profaned and the threat as presently extinguished. Adaptations to the built environment that entailed converting a Jew’s home or synagogue to a Christian chapel were a familiar architectural trope in early modern Europe. According to the Chronicles of Saint-Denis, a Jewish moneylender named Jonathan allegedly desecrated a Eucharist in Paris in 1290, a sacrilege that catalyzed

30 Bryan D. Palmer, Cultures of Darkness: Night Travels in the Histories of Transgression (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), 5. 31 regarding the transformative powers of place, Yi-Fu Tuan explains, “Places can be made visible by a number of means: rivalry or conflict with other places, visual prominence, and the evocative power of art, architecture, ceremonials and rites.” See Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977), 178. spatial stories: mantua and the painted jew 217 a series of Christian miracles. Embedding the stories of eucharistic thaumaturgy in the urban form, Pope Boniface VIII authorized the wealthy Parisian Raynier Flaming in 1295 to erect a commemorative chapel on the site of the Jewish desecrator’s home.32 The spatial sacrality in Paris spread when a neighboring house was also sold to maximize the scale of the chapel’s urban impact; the immediacy of the miraculous experience required an edifice of visual prominence and cultic authority. In fourteenth-century Pulkau in Lower Austria, a similar event occurred when accusations of host desecration at the hands of a local Jew ignited civil disorder, leading to the erection of a chapel dedicated to the Holy Blood on the site of the Jew’s irreverence. As Mitchell Merback points out, “host-crime affairs, stretching from Paris (1290) to Passau (1479) and key northern German examples like Sternberg, in Mecklenburg (1492),” altered local geographies when “the site of the new chapel [became] identified with key urban resources of the former Jewish community.”33 Charges of eucharistic defilement were not an explicit precondi- tion to exposing Jews as agents of pollution and revealing the miracle-working potential of a destroyed Jewish space. On February 21, 1519, with the imperial court weakened by the death of Maximilian I, the city of Regensburg expelled its Jewish population (ostensibly due to allegations of ritual murder dating to 1470), destroyed the Jew- ish cemetery, and razed the synagogue to the ground. Regensburg became a pilgrim site when an extraordinary event occurred during the synagogue’s demolition. As the building was coming down, the master stonemason, Jacob Kern, was severely wounded but mirac- ulously recovered without injury. To acknowledge the miracle, the Regensburg community built a chapel dedicated to the Virgin on the site of the former synagogue and placed on the altar a copy of a known miracle-working image of the Virgin, the Schöne Maria, attributed to Saint Luke.34 The thaumaturgical powers of the Schöne Maria and its

32 See Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999), 44–45. On pollution and the rituals of purification, see Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1966). 33 Mitchell B. Merback, “Fount of Mercy, City of Blood: Cultic Anti-Judaism and the Pulkau Passion Altarpiece,” Art Bulletin 87, no. 4 (December 2005): 593. 34 regarding the Schöne Maria and the pilgrimage practices of Regensburg, see David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chi- cago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), esp. 100–104; Michael Baxandall, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 218 dana e. katz later copies prompted pilgrims, over 50,000 in 1519 alone, to travel to Regensburg and to pray before the image. From Paris, to Pulkau, to Regensburg, to Mantua, tearing down landmarks of Jewish pollution created a spatial order that prevented the sullying spread of defilement and enhanced Christian narratives of everyday piety and otherworldly marvels. The transfer of land from the Old Covenant to the New came with a new definition of community, as the structural inequalities of urban society were transformed when the city converted its synagogues to churches. In Paris and the German-speaking regions, the social polar- ization between Jew and Christian ended when the city expelled or exterminated its Jewries. In these all-too-common examples, the charges lodged against local Jews went beyond the boundaries of tolerable behavior and initiated civic mandates for the Jews’ eradication. Maintaining boundaries ( physical, social, symbolic) was a necessary practice of daily life; to exceed them made Jews intolerable and therefore expendable in the eyes of Christians. Whereas social inequalities and collective mistrust ultimately provoked communal homogenization in Paris, Pulkau, and beyond via exile, forced conversion, or execution, Jews in Renaissance Mantua preserved their place as a legally- constituted community confirmed by the Gonzaga lords. The politics of place, however, were neither absolute nor unproblematic in Man- tua. Transgressions against pre-established boundaries were dealt with not through directives of annihilation; rather, the Gonzaga secured the Jews’ point of place through destabilizing policies of displacement. Charged with attacking Christianity through its pictured imprint, Daniele da Norsa lost his home and in 1497 relinquished, by command, his adjacent property, most likely for the erection of a small Augustinian convent adjoining the Church of Santa Maria Vittoria.35 On August 19, 1497, Marquis Francesco Gonzaga absolved the Jew

1980), 83–84; Allyson F. Creasman, “The Virgin Mary against the Jews: Anti-Jewish Polemic in the Pilgrimage to the Schöne Maria of Regensburg, 1519–1525,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 33, no. 4 (2002): 963–980; Miri Rubin, Mother of God: A His tory of the Virgin Mary (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), 374. See also R. Po-chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988), 66–85; Dean Phillip Bell, Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germany: Memory, Power and Community (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); idem, Jews in the Early Modern World (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008). 35 letter, Jacopo da Capua, capitano della guardia, to Marquis Francesco, June 16, 1497, AG, b. 2449, c. 415; and letter, Marquis Francesco to Jacopo da Capua, June 20, 1497, AG, b. 2962, libro 7, ff. 24v–25. spatial stories: mantua and the painted jew 219 by formal decree, after Daniele had transferred a considerable sum of money and property to the Gonzaga court.36 This punitive program of confiscation bespeaks the oscillations in local ambivalence and animos- ity toward Jews that made protection of the Jews politically hazardous for the prince and persecution of the Jews communally unifying. It was this process of social fissure and urban fragmentation that gave rise to the concept of community in Mantua and its imagined geography in the Norsa Madonna. “Community,” as Edward Muir writes, “was neither a genetic nor an affinal unity, but a spatial one.”37 The idea of community in Mantua was built on movable boundaries that distinguished the incorporated Christians from the cities’ disenfranchised Jews. Space was not a neutral category but an expression of control whose measured limits were imprecise and mutable. Authorities often altered the city’s spatial dimensions when sites of confrontation threat- ened the community’s security, sacrality, or morality. Supervision of prescribed places within the public sphere was always tightly regulated, even as the contours of that prescription remained elastic. The divisions of society inscribed in the urban fabric stayed firm yet flexible to stabilize the community and foster civic accord. Jews always maintained a subordinated status within the complex texture of communal life. Yet their placement within an urban matrix of shifting borders and delimiting places of private life presented the categorical exclu- sions necessary for a cohesive community.38 Practices of representation and ritual codified the Jews’ distinct space. The visual disenfranchisement, displacement, and dismemberment of the Jews in the Norsa Madonna were part of the process. Daniele and his

36 twenty-two Jewish families, including the Norsa, received clemency for various alleged crimes. AG, Libri dei Decreti, no. 27, ff. 3–4v. 37 edward Muir, “In Some Neighbours We Trust: On the Exclusion of Women from the Public in Renaissance Italy,” in Florence and Beyond: Culture, Society and Politics in Renaissance Italy. Essays in Honour of John M. Najemy, ed. David S. Peterson with Daniel E. Bornstein (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2008), 283. On community formation, Elizabeth Grosz writes: “Communities, which make language, culture, and thus architecture their modes of existence and expression, come into being not through the recognition, generation, or establishment of common interests, values, and needs, and the establishment of universal, neutral laws and conventions that bind and enforce them (as social contractarians proclaim), but through the remainders they cast out, the figures they reject, the terms that they consider unassimilable, that they attempt to sacrifice, revile, and expel. There are many names for this unassimilable residue: the other, the abject, the scapegoat, the marginalized, the destitute, the refugee, the dying, etc.” Grosz, Architecture from the Outside, 152. 38 See Muir, “In Some Neighbours We Trust,” 273. 220 dana e. katz family, whose truncated bodies and hardened physiognomies betrayed their own suffering, offer spatial structure to the Jewish community’s debasement. Situated below the feet of the Virgin, the Norsa remain the vanquished foes of Christianity. The naturalism of their faithful likeness exposes their humanity and identifies them as the community’s constituent members. Traditionally Jews are rendered as generic stereotypes in early modern art, as monstrous creatures capable of usurious corruption, desecration of Christian images, or even deicide. In the Norsa Madonna the artist’s command of pictorial verisimilitude in the Jewish men’s hooked noses, head covers, and halakhically-trimmed beards contemporizes the everydayness of the Jews’ communal presence and collective punishment. Their inferior disposition participates in a dialogical relationship with Christianity that is grounded not in ancient biblical exegesis but in contemporary geographies of social relations. The representations of space that marginalized the Jews did not suppress completely and absolutely. The spatial separation between the Norsa and the enthroned Madonna provides an urban narrative that fractures society as it adjoins it. John the Bap- tist perhaps dangles his foot near Norsa’s spouse making contact with her headdress, but the Virgin, whom Daniele purportedly wronged, hovers at a distance. To fill this empty space the artist turns to the decorative powers of color and patterning to paint a richly woven rug. Even as this red-carpet treatment saturates the space, it calls attention to the pregnant void pictorially constructed between the Virgin and her desecrators. Such a manipulated and controlled space certainly has significance. This subjective interstice speaks to the volatility and variability of marginality. The conception of community in Mantua is born in this void and substantiated through its empti- ness. City walls may well define the limits of the community, but the empty spaces that they envelop give the community its color, texture, and meaning. The visual subjugation of Jews in painting did not often permit such distant physical proximities. In coeval images related to the Jews of Renaissance Trent, a city in the southernmost region of the Holy Roman Empire where Jews were burned at the stake for the alleged ritual murder of the young Christian boy Simon Unferdor- ben, the sanctified Simon stands directly on the Jews with the soles of his feet. The immediate propinquity of Christian and Jew symbolizes the spiritual and temporal defeat of the Jews, as such sacrifice was a necessary outcome of divine justice. In the gilded relief by Hans spatial stories: mantua and the painted jew 221

Klocker of “Beato” Simon of Trent from c. 1495 in the Museo Dioc- esano Bressanone, Simon of Trent stands atop the truncated heads of Tobias, Moises, and Sam[u]el, the most prominent Jews residing in Trent whom Prince-Bishop Johannes Hinderbach in 1475 imprisoned, tortured, and executed for the death of young Simon (Figure 8).39 Only the bas-relief plinth with its carved volute identifying the Jews’ names prevents the oversized Simon from crushing the Jews underfoot. The late fifteenth-century fresco in the Church of San Fabiano e San Sebastiano in Cavareno, now in ruinous condition, similarly positions the locally beatified Simon immediately atop the recum- bent Jew, who writhes beneath his feet (Figure 9).40 This symbolic language of direct contact demonstrates that (divine) justice has been served. As Jews become objects of swift justice, the spatial separation between Jew and Christian is no longer necessary to make material Christianity’s triumph. Such spatial dynamics express the physically powerful and punitive forces of justice, as denoted in the iconography of Giustitia who conquers prisoners underfoot to convey a retribution fully realized. The well-known roundel adorning Venice’s Ducal Pal- ace offers a vision of the sword-wielding personification of justice in the form of Venecia with enemy outsiders squashed beneath her feet (Figure 10).41 If justice is indeed retributive, then Venecia defends her citizenry and their honor from “civil disorder and military threat.”42 If justice is indeed corrective, then Venecia offers a cautionary tale for prospective enemies of the state to prevent future evil from befalling her shores. These examples demonstrate that the pictorial proximities of friend and foe ultimately wrought physical destruction. Whereas the strong arms of justice provoked purgation of the Jews in Trent (as in Paris, Pulkau, and Regensburg), the boundaries of civic community in Mantua were instead inclusive. The panel, exemplified in its textual epigraph, Debellata Hebraeorum Temeritate, does not suggest the defeat of Jews but rather the defeat of the Jews’ temerity. Jews continued to contribute to the community after the Norsa affair

39 See Katz, The Jew in the Art of the Italian Renaissance, 63–65. 40 ibid., 151. 41 david Rosand, “Venetia Figurata: The Iconography of a Myth,” in Interpretazioni veneziane. Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro, ed. David Rosand (Venice: Arsenale Editrice, 1984), 177–196. See also David Rosand, The Myths of Venice: The Figu ration of a State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), esp. 26–36. 42 rosand, “Venetia Figurata,” 179. 222 dana e. katz

Figure 8. hans Klocker, “Beato” Simon of Trent, c. 1495. Bressanone, Museo Diocesano ( photo: © Museo Diocesano Bressanone) spatial stories: mantua and the painted jew 223

Figure 9. Simon Triumphant, late fifteenth century. Cavareno, Ss. Fabiano e Sebastiano ( photo: author, with the consent of the Arcidiocesi di Trento) 224 dana e. katz

Figure 10. Venecia, mid-fourteenth century. Venice, Ducal Palace ( photo: author)

but were cautioned from overextending the limits of tolerable behavior. Those limits were always in motion to accommodate the contested map of the Jews’ social (and economic) geography. The Norsa Madonna specifies, as it memorializes, the spatial practices of Renais- sance Mantua. The mechanisms that define space in painted discourse and architectural practice can be neither divided nor subordinated. That is, the conceptualized spaces of the city executed pictorially to mediate the tensions of state power, economic viability, and religious difference correspond to the lived spaces of their inhabitants, Christian and Jew. The painting thus offers a social production of spaces to lay claim to the Jews’ precarious position within the Mantuan streets. The spatial stories: mantua and the painted jew 225 theological disputation in this work centers not only on the nuances of the New Testament but also on the living spaces it conceives. It is the hallowed ground on which now sits Santa Maria della Vittoria, the church cleansing the Norsa’s iniquities and born in effigy by the monument held by Saint Jerome, that undergirds Mantuan spatial praxes and their negotiated effects of community. It is the hierarchical juxtaposition of the Virgin and Jews, punctuated by a poignant void underfoot, that provides the spatial controls of Mantua’s collectivity. The cartographic map of Mantua perhaps constitutes space as a topo- graphical order of things that engraved architectural borders within the broad domain of the countryside, but the Norsa Madonna reveals the alterity hidden within those borders and the complex consequences of its appropriated spaces. 11. Saladin the Crusader, the Christian Haman, and the Off-Key Priest: Some Reflections on Christians and Christianity in Yiddish Literary Texts from the Italian Renaissance

Claudia Rosenzweig*

The presence of Ashkenazi communities in Renaissance Italy led to the creation of works in Yiddish that had a significant and enduring impact on developments in Ashkenazi Judaism. Northern Italy, in particular, saw the composition and printing of texts that signalled the start of genuinely new literary genres, which would survive well into the twentieth century. The quantity and variety of extant Yiddish texts from the Italian Renaissance attest to a very rich, complex, and intriguing association with the ambient culture—a culture that, while it exerted a fascination, was clearly perceived as different and, above all, Christian. Among the various studies that have dealt with Ash- kenazi Judaism in this period, suffice it to mention a paper by Jacob Elbaum (1985) in which he gives a lucid account of the intense interaction between Ashkenazi Jews in Italy and their brethren in Germany and Poland, and the degree to which these ties were reinforced by the invention of printing.1 As we learn from the front pages of many prayer books and books of Minhagim, as well those belonging to the literature of “entertainment,” Ashkenazi Jews had a strong perception of their unity; often books that were printed in Venice were sold in Cracow, and in later centuries reprinted in Prague and Amsterdam. In Italy the important role of the Ashkenazi Minhag would persist, although at the beginning of the seventeenth century Ashkenazi Jews seem to have gradually abandoned the use of Yiddish and shifted to Italian or Judeo-Italian languages.2

* i am very grateful to Jennie Feldman for revising the English of this paper and for her helpful suggestions. 1 Jacob Elbaum, “Kishrei tarbut bein yehudei Polin ve-Ashkenaz le-vein yehudei Italia ba-me’ah ha-16,” Gal-Ed, 7–8 (1985), 11–40. 2 Chone Shmeruk mentions the fact that Yaakov Heilprun, already known as a translator into Yiddish of Hebrew works such as Keter Malkhut, decided to publish a Italian version of Benjamin Slonik’s Mitzvot Nashim in 1614. The book was printed in 228 claudia rosenzweig

The Italian city of Mantua, home to Judah Moscato—to whom this collection of essays is dedicated—is the ideal starting-point for a reflection on Yiddish literature in Italy. A major centre of Ashkenazi Jewry, it saw the printing of at least thirteen different works in Yiddish, ranging from translations into Yiddish of the Bible, prayer books, Passover Haggadot, and books of precepts for women (Mitzvot nashim or frauen büchlen) to a chivalric poem in Yiddish.3 Here, too, were produced the book inventories that would prove one of the most valuable sources of information on the history of Jewish culture in Italy in the sixteenth century. These were the lists of books owned by Jewish families in Mantua, submitted to the censor in 1595.4 The lists feature books from different genres and in various languages. Together with the Bible and prayer books, and studies on Halakha, philosophy, and mathematics, we find that many families owned literary books in Hebrew, Yiddish, Latin, and Italian. Some of the Yiddish works produced in Mantua have not survived: Mayse Khanuke beloshn Ashkenaz (1558); Kearas Kesef,

Venice in 1616, in Padua in 1625, and reprinted later. According to Shmeruk, this indicates Heilprun’s belief that in Italy there was a wider audience for a book in Ital- ian than in Yiddish, thus pointing to a decline in the usage of Yiddish in Italy. See Chone Shmeruk, “Yiddish Printing in Italy,” in Yiddish in Italia, ed. Chava Turniansky and Erika Timm, with the Collaboration of Claudia Rosenzweig (Milan: Associazione Italiana degli Amici dell’Università di Gerusalemme, 2003), 171–180, and in particular 179–180; see also No. *34, 68. For Slonik’s work, see Edward Fram, My Dear Daughter. Rabbi Benjamin Slonik and the Education of Jewish Women in Sixteenth-Century Poland (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2007). It should be noted that these books of Minhagim, printed in Latin characters with Hebrew terms in Hebrew characters, should be regarded as being in Judeo-Italian rather than in Italian. See Maria Luisa Mayer Modena, “Il ‘Sefer miwo’ della Biblioteca di Casale Monferrato,” Italia 4, 2 (1985), in particular XVII–XXI. 3 See Turniansky and Timm, Yiddish in Italia, Nos. 10b, *11, *13, *17a, *17b, *17c, *17d, *17e, *28, *29a, 30, *54, 82, and the Desiderata, *93, *94, *95. 4 See Shlomo Simonsohn, “Books and Libraries of Mantuan Jews, 1595,” Kirjath Sepher 37 (1962): 103–122; Agnes Romer-Segal, “Sifrut yiddish weqahal qoreha be- me’ah XVI—Yetzirot be-yiddish bereshimot ha-‘ziquq’ mi-mantowa, 1595,” Kirjath Sepher 53 (1978): 779–790; Robert Bonfil, “Le biblioteche degli ebrei d’Italia nel Rina- scimento”, in Manoscritti, frammenti e libri ebraici nell’Italia dei secoli XV–XVI, Atti del VII Congresso internazionale dell’AISG, S. Miniato, 7–8–9 novembre 1988, ed. Giuliano Tamani and Angelo Vivian (Rome: Carucci, 1991), 137–150; Shifra Baruchson, Books and Readers. The Reading Interests of Italian Jews at the Close of the Renaissance ( Jerusalem: Bar- Ilan University Press, 1993), French translation: La culture livresque des juifs d’Italie à la fin de la Renaissance (Paris: CNRS, 2001); Chava Turniansky and Erika Timm, Yiddish in Italia, N. 82, 163–165. For a general introduction to reading habits in the Jewish world during the Renaissance see Robert Bonfil, “Reading in the Jewish Communi- ties of Western Europe in the Middle Ages,” in A History of Reading in the West, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 149–178. some reflections on christians and christianity in yiddish 229 a collection of morals (1558); Shmue fun der frume Shoshane [. . .] Shmue fun der Yudis (1562).5 This last work was likely a Yiddish version of the Deuterocanonical stories of Susanna (Daniel 13) and of Judith. According to Chone Shmeruk, the book printed in Cracow in 1571 and having the same title could be the reprint of this lost edition, published in Mantua before 1562.6 The hypothesis can be strengthened by the fact that other Hebrew and Yiddish books from Mantua were reprinted in Eastern Europe, attesting to the central role played by Northern Italy in the history of printing.7 In this paper, I propose to focus on a particular aspect of sixteenth- century Yiddish literature. In their research on representations of the Other in epic literature in Europe, David Quint and Sergio Zatti have shown that, from the Chanson de Roland to Torquato Tasso’s Gerusa- lemme liberata, the Other is often the Moor, the Pagan, the Saracen, the Turk;8 I shall endeavour to see what happens in Yiddish literary texts when that typical figure is, on occasion, replaced by the Other par excellence in Jewish history in Europe, namely, the Christian. Much has been written from a historiographic point of view on the relations between Jews and Christians in Germany and Italy during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, following the seminal work by Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance (1961).9 This presentation will

5 See Chava Turniansky and Erika Timm, Yiddish in Italia, Nos. *93, *94, *95 respectively. See also Chone Shmeruk, “Shisha defuse’ Mantova beyidish shelo’ hayu we-lo’ nivre’u,” Alei Sefer 8 (1980): 74–78. 6 Chone Shmeruk, Yiddish Literature in Poland. Historical Studies and Perspectives ( Jeru- salem: The Magnes Press, 1981), N. 8, 79 (Hebrew). 7 Zeev Gries, Printing and Publishing before 1800, in Gershon D. Hundert (editor in chief), The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale Uni- versity Press, 2008), vol. 1, 1454–1458, on-line version http://www.yivoencyclopedia .org/. 8 See David Quint, Epic and Empire. Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993), and Sergio Zatti, L’uniforme cristiano e il multiforme pagano. Saggio sulla “Gerusalemme Liberata” (Milan: il Saggiatore, 1983); La rappresentazione dell’altro nei testi del Rinascimento, ed. Sergio Zatti (Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi, 1998) and Sergio Zatti, Il modo epico (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2000). On the perception in Italy of the dramatic changes in Mediterranean politics in the sixteenth century, see also Giovanni Ricci, I turchi alle porte (Bologna: il Mulino, 2008). 9 Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance. Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval & Modern Times (London: Oxford University Press, 1961). The bibliography on these themes is too extensive to be presented here. For medieval Ashkenaz, see David Mal kiel, Reconstructing Ashkenaz. The Human Face of Franco-German Jewry, 1000–1250 (Stan- ford. California: Stanford University Press, 2009) and the bibliography quoted there. For Italian Jewry in the Renaissance, see especially Robert Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renais- sance Italy (Los Angeles, London; University of California Press, 1994). And idem, Lo 230 claudia rosenzweig not, therefore, be primarily historical. The texts from which I will quote are mostly from the sixteenth century and are manifestly literary in character; on the one hand, then, they are not directly connected with religious observance and are relatively unconstrained, while on the other, they cannot be used simply as historical sources, since literature always contains a fictive component that diverges from reality.10

Saladin, the Crusader

One of the most important literary works of this period is the Yiddish chivalric poem Bovo d’Antona by Eliyahu ben Asher ha-Levi Ashke- nazi, also known by the name Elia Levita or, in Yiddish studies, Elye Bokher (1469–1549). As a reworking of an Italian source, and the first example of ottava rima in Yiddish and in a German language tout court, this text offers a perfect example of the tension between an assimilation of external models and patterns, and the concomitant Jewish modification of the material. I have examined elsewhere the wayin which Christians and Christianity are represented both in this poem and in another by the same author, Paris un’ Wiene;11 it may be argued, however, that these Renaissance romances cannot be seen as typical, being the creation of a specific individual in Italy’s Ashkenazi Jewish community. Elye Bokher’s distinctive personality made him a complex figure who invites further research. Not only was he in contact with non-Jewish intellectuals, notably Italian Hebraists and Christian kabbalists, he also enjoyed the hospitality of the Augustinian cardinal Aegidius of Viterbo, at the very centre of Roman cultural activity. In spazio culturale degli ebrei d’Italia fra Rinascimento ed Età barocca, in Storia d’Italia. Gli ebrei in Italia, ed. Corrado Vivanti, vol. 1: Dall’alto Medioevo all’età dei ghetti (Torino: Einaudi, 1996), 411–473. 10 “Il mondo fittizio dell’opera letteraria è diverso da quello reale, e ci incuriosisce e ci interessa proprio per la sua diversità. Ancora una volta, è la non-corrispondenza che pare sostanziale per la comunicazione. [. . .] Il testo dunque non imita e non rispecchia, e già con questa selezione che esso opera si pone come alternativo o pole mico rispetto alla realtà, in ogni caso come complementare.” Cesare Segre, Introduzione all’edizione italiana, in L’atto della lettura. Una teoria della risposta estetica, ed. Wolfgang Iser (Bologna: il Mulino 1987), 14. 11 “Christians and Christianity in the Yiddish Bovo d’Antona (1507–1541)” (forthcoming in the Proceedings of the Conference “Between Jews and Christians: the Many Faces of the Jewish Polymath Elijah (Bocher) Levita (1469–1549),” organized by The Hebrew and Jewish Studies Unit of the University of Oxford in collaboration with the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) of Paris). some reflections on christians and christianity in yiddish 231 the latter part of his life he proved remarkably adept at living both inside and outside the confines of the Jewish community, working in fields as different as Hebrew and Aramaic grammar, linguistics, and printing. I do believe, anyway that in the Bovo d’Antona, composed in Padua in 1507—that is, in the first period of the author’s life in Italy— where we see evidence of the assimilation of external cultural features, there are distinct traces of what must have been the cultural baggage of Ashkenazi Jews newly arrived from Germany. For the purpose of this study, let us examine two stanzas from an episode in which the eponymous hero has been taken prisoner by the Sultan, the prototype of the enemy leader in the chivalric literature of the period. The Sultan’s daughter, Margherita, is in love with Buovo, who faces death. In the Italian version, which is the source of the Yiddish text,12 she begs her father to offer Buovo the possibility of converting to Islam, thereby saving his life. Buovo’s refusal is just two lines long: “Disse Buovo la morte voglio io / Inanci chio rineghi il vero dio” [191.7–8], “Said Buovo, I wish for death / before I would deny the true God.” In the Yiddish Bovo d’Antona the passage is more extended (stanzas 246–247): Then he answered in this manner / “You should never think / that I will ever leave my faith / even were you to give me all your kingdom (land) / I believe in a God who is majestic and great / I shall not stray from His commandment / I shall acknowledge His Holy Name / For His sake I shall let myself be hanged and burned. // He is my Creator, praised be He! / He has never forsaken me in all my days / and He has helped me up to now / I will not despair of His Holy Name / therefore leave off your request / you need not entreat me more / do not suggest I will leave Him / I will not exchange a living God for a dead one.”13 Whereas in the Italian Buovo a single sentence suffices for the purpose of the plot’s development, the Yiddish text employs two stanzas for what appears to be an affirmation of Jewish faith. Keeping in mind the general tone of this romance, with its rich use of irony and its often graphic scenes written in the “low style,” including occasional accounts of gourmet banquets and sexual intercourse, one is struck by

12 the source of the Yiddish romance is Buovo di Antona di Guidone Palladino, rezunto e rivisto, impresso a Bologna per Caligula Bazalieri il 15 aprile 1497. 13 english translation based on Jerry Christopher Smith, Elia Levita’s Bovo-Buch: A Yiddish Romance of the Early 16th Century (Diss. Cornell 1968, Ann Arbor, University Microfilms 69–5777). 232 claudia rosenzweig the sudden seriousness and vehemence of these lines. Chone Shme- ruk has drawn attention to Elye Bokher’s skill in closing the ottava with a strong “punch line,” and here we have a particularly masterful instance. Shmeruk also interpreted the last two lines of the second above-quoted ottava as a polemic against the getsn-diner, the hayden—a general reference to the pagans,14 as one finds in most chivalric - lite rature of the period, where no distinction was made between Moors and pagans, and there was considerable confusion as to the nature of Islam. Erika Timm reads this passage as a refutation of conversion to Islam.15 It is my opinion, however, that we can read here an echo of the persecution suffered by the Jews in Germany, an echo of Kid- dush ha-Shem, Jewish martyrdom, in particular in the context of the Crusades. In the last line, the “dead” God refers, I believe, to Jesus, as opposed to the “living” God of Israel.16 In Bovo’s declaration, the Jewish faith is contrasted not so much with Islam, as with Christianity. Hengen un’ brennen, “be hanged and burned,” is a binomial or twin- formula quite common in both German and Yiddish, but it can be stated anyway that here these twin-words17 do refer to Jewish history or, more particularly, to Jewish memories of the massacres perpetrated by the Crusaders, especially during the First Crusade, in Germany in 1096. The traditio of the manuscripts of the Chronicles of the persecutions against the Jews during the First Crusade tell us how Ashke- nazi Jews arriving in Italy kept copying and transmitting the history of these tragic events.18 There is a rich bibliography on the place of these persecutions in Ashkenazi Jewry. Whatever the answer is, a situation

14 See Chone Shmeruk, Prokim fun der yidisher literatur-geshikhte (Tel-Aviv: Perets Far- lag, 1988), 150–151. 15 See Erika Timm, Einführung in Paris un Wiene. Ein jiddischer Stanzenroman des 16. Jahrhunderts von (oder aus dem Umkreis von) Elia Levita (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1996), pgf. 9.4.3, CXXVII. 16 See the use of the term peger muvas, ‘trampled corpse’ for ‘Jesus’ in the Hebrew chronicles of the First Crusade [Anna Sapir Abulafia, Invectives against Christianity in the Hebrew Chronicles of the First Crusade, in Crusade and Settlement, ed. Peter W. Edbury (Cardiff: University College Cardiff Press, 1985), 67–72]. See also Hebräische Berichte über die Judenverfolgungen während des Ersten Kreuzzugs, ed. Eva Haverkamp (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2005). See in particular the chapter “Tod oder Taufe,” 9–14. I develop this analysis in The Bovo d’Antona by Elye Bokher. A Critical and Com- mented Edition (Brill: Boston, Leiden, forthcoming). 17 On twin-words in Yiddish, see Edward Stankiewicz, “The Linguistic and Poetic Aspects of Yiddish Twin-Words,” in Studies in Jewish Culture in Honour of Chone Shmeruk, ed. Israel Bartal, Ezra Mendelsohn, and Chava Turniansky ( Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1993), 73–82. 18 See Eva Haverkamp’s Einleitung to her edition of the Chronicles, Hebräische Berichte, 1–244. some reflections on christians and christianity in yiddish 233 that in the Italian Buovo d’Antona was usual and common for the genre of the cantari, roused something completely different in the Yiddish reworking: by forcing Bovo to choose between conversion or death, the Sultan ceases to be merely a figure of chivalric literature, and becomes, briefly, a cruel, threatening, and powerful Christian. The attack is here against the very essence of Christian faith: the divinity of Jesus. The above passage seems particularly striking because this romance, imbued as it is with the influence of Italian literature of that period— being based on an Italian source, written in ottava rima, and replete with Italian (Venetian) terms—at the same time illustrates the way in which references to the Jewish past in Germany were woven into this work, and Levita’s readers were able to recognize them among the images of knights and princesses, and scenes of tourneys and battles, and of court romance. No less than his works, Elye Bokher’s biography tells us the story of a Jew who was able to live apart from the community of his coreligionists, and who was active in many fields, from Hebrew -gram mar and lexicography to the work of printing shops and the teaching of Hebrew to Christians; but his Yiddish texts, written mostly in the first part of his stay in Italy, tell us more about what he conceived for his Jewish readers. In fact, the Bovo d’Antona was composed in 1507, probably for a Jewish patron or patroness, and hence was very close to its reading public. Elye Bokher was undoubtedly the most eminent Yiddish poet in the Italian period of Yiddish literature. Let us now consider another poet, one who did not enjoy the same fame.

The Christian Haman

The second text I would like to present is a poem, a lid, written in Venice by a melamed, a teacher, Gumprecht of Szczebrszyn, a town close to Lublin, which in the sixteenth century had its own Jewish community. The text, a song in honour of Purim, is preserved in a (possibly an autograph) manuscript, copied in Venice in the winter of 1553–1554.19

19 the only extant copy is kept in the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Budapest (Collection Kaufmann Nr. 397) and has been published by Moritz Stern, Lieder des 234 claudia rosenzweig

The manuscript also includes a song on Hanukkah where the author specifically recalls the confiscation of Hebrew books in Venice in 1553, on the instruction of Pope Julius III. He composed his songs, he writes, when the books were already in the hands of non-Jews. Let us look at the passage in full (lines 465–482):20 Since this has happened / that because of our sins the (holy) books have been taken / and are still in the hands of the non-Jews, / and the best ones have already been burned, / and none of them has remained, / with which one can spend time / and now devout women are eager / so that all the time they want to know / what to do at every moment / and what things mean / and they had the habit / of asking someone to clarify for them the Megillah / in targum or in another “jewel.”21/ Now because of our sins everything is useless / and our (holy) books roll about in the garbage. / Wherefore I considered [the matter] so long / that I translated the Megillah into Yiddish. This remark offers important clues to understanding the author’s attitude and his motivation in writing what he calls ein hüpsch gesank (“a beautiful song,” line 491) with the stated purpose: di layt zu makhn lakhn (“to make people to laugh,” line 513). Let us now read that section of the poem which he calls Purim-shpil (vv. 707–720):22 He [Haman] has a tzelem upon his heart / with which he brought sor- rows upon us / each one has to bow down to him / only Mordechai turned his back on him. / Haman said: “You, Jewish dog! / Why do you not fear for your welfare? / Why do you not want to bow down?” /

venezianischen Lehrers Gumprecht von Szczebrszyn (um 1555) (Berlin: Verlag Hausfreund, 1922). See also Turniansky and Timm, Yiddish in Italia, N. 60, 120. Walter Röll of the University of Trier is preparing a new critical edition. The text was reprinted with the title Targum sheni ‘al megillat ester in Prague around 1480 (see A. E. Cowley, A Concise Catalogue of the Hebrew Printed Books in the Bodleian Library (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929), s. v. Targum Sheni, on Esther, 691 and in Fürth or Wandsberk in 1707—see Moritz Steinschneider, Catalogus Librorum Hebræorum in Bibliotheca Bodleiana, 1 vol. (Ber- lin: Welt-Verlag, 1931), N. 1163, N. 1164, 172, (now Bodleian Libray, Opp. 4º 938 and Opp. 8º 629), and Jutta Baum-Sheridan, Studien zu den westjiddischen Estherdichtungen (Hamburg: Buske, 1996), 59. It must be noted the term tzelem in the later reprints of this song has been replaced and neutralized. 20 See also Avraham Ya’ari, Srefat ha-talmud be-italyah, ed. Avraham Tzioni (Tel Aviv: Avraham Tzioni 1954), in particular 52, where Gumprecht of Szczebrszyn’s song about Hanukkah, and in particular this passage, are quoted. 21 here the term derived from German Geschmeide seems to be used in a figurative sense. See Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, 33 vols. (Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel, 1854), s. v. geschmeide, 4. 22 the term does not refer here to a theatrical representation but, as in other texts of the same period, to a poem composed and sung on the occasion of Purim. See, for example, Paris un’ Wiene, v. 5.5 and especially the footnote 2, 5. some reflections on christians and christianity in yiddish 235

Mordechai answered: “I am right / you are indeed my sold slave. / I will show you the letter. / I am a Jew and not a Christian / I will not bow in front of any tzelem. / And even if you are already a nobleman / you are nonetheless mine.” The fact that Haman is represented with a tzelem on his heart (line 707) is interesting. The term, which in Biblical Hebrew has the meaning of ‘image, likeness (of resemblance)’, had acquired the meaning of ‘idol’ in Late Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew. In Old Yiddish it seems to have the meaning of ‘idol, graven image of a pagan divinity’ and also, as in Modern Yiddish, of ‘cross.’23 The term thus went through a process of tabooization. In Elye Bokher’s poem Paris un’ Wiene, which survives in the printed version of 1594 from Verona, but was probably printed as early as 1556,24 the term already appears with the meaning of ‘(Christian) cross’ (line 94.6) and is attested with this meaning in many Yiddish texts from the sixteenth century.25 Further evidence, from an external source from the same period, that the term is loaded with the historical burden of the complex relations between Jews and Christians, comes from the Sefer ha-Ziqquq by Domenico Gerosolimitano (1555–1621), the first version of which was written in 1596. Here the author, a Jew who converted to Christian- ity and was appointed as a censor in Mantua in 1595, indicates the rules to be applied in order to “expurgate” Hebrew books. In the introduction to his guide, he writes: “And all this requires great study with understanding and knowledge, and particularly where idolatry is mentioned.”26 In fact, the second of these rules stipulates that each

23 In the first extant edition of the well-known Yiddish Tsenerene (Hanau 1622), the term mostly has the meaning of Götzenbild, ‘image of a pagan divinity,’ and appears only once with the meaning of ‘cross.’ See Simon Neuberg, Pragmatische Aspekte der jiddischen Sprachgeschichte am Beispiel der ‘Zenerene’ (Hamburg: Helmut Buske, 1999), 131– 132. See also Werner Weinberg, Die Reste des Jüdischdeutschen (Stuttgart: W. Kohlham- mer, 1973), s. v. zëilem. 24 See Turniansky and Timm, Yiddish in Italia, Nos. *69 and *91, 134 and 167 respectively. 25 the term also has the same meaning in Judeo-Italian languages, especially in Piedmont and in Mantua. See Paola Diena, Glossario giudeo-piemontese, in Ebrei a Torino. Ricerche per il centenario della sinagoga, 1884–1984, ed. comunità israelitica di Torino (Torino: Umberto Allemandi & C., 1984), 231–244, in particular s. v. selem, 241, and Maria Luisa Modena Mayer, “Millim ‘ivryiot be-sfat ha-yehudim be-Italya benose’ hanarut,” in Kenes Venezia, brit ‘ivrit ‘olamit, oktober 1986, 31–38, especially 33. For Medieval Hebrew, cf. the list of terms referring to Christians and Muslims in Leo- pold Zunz, Die synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters (Berlin: J. Springer, 1855–1859, repr. Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1967), 460. 26 See Shifra Baruchson-Arbib and Gila Prebor, “Sefer ha-Ziqquq (An Index of For- bidden Hebrew Books): The Book’s Use and its Influence in Hebrew Printing,” La 236 claudia rosenzweig time the word tzelamin is found, the expression shel aku’m (‘ovde’ kokhavim u-mazalot), ‘those who worship the stars and the planets,’ is to be added, to ensure that the term refers to ‘idols’ and paganism and therefore cannot be understood as a reference to the cross.27 The episode in the above quotation from the poem by Gumprecht of Szczebrszyn is based on the Targum Sheni and Midrash Rabbah, in particular in the comment on Esther, 3.2 and 3.5, where it is said that Mordechai does not bow before Haman because the images of idols embroidered on his clothes, front and back, would make this an act of idolatry.28 The fact that Haman was a former slave of Mordechai is also based on Jewish sources.29 The most striking aspect of the Yid- dish text is that it states explicitly—and this is the only such instance known—that Haman is a Christian.30 This is repeated later, in line 1061, where he is said to be eyn frumer krist, ‘a devout Christian.’ Even more striking is the fact that, later in the text, the humiliation imposed on Haman is reinforced by the fact that when he is compelled, in his turn, to bow down in the presence of Mordechai, his limbs creak and

Bibliofilia 109 (2007): 3–31. The Sefer ha-Ziqquq was published by Gila Prebor, “Sefer Ha-Ziqquq” by Domenico Yerushalmi (1555–1621) and its Influence on Hebrew Printing (Ph.D Thesis, Bar-Ilan University 2003). 27 See William Popper, The Censorship of Hebrew Books (New York: The Knicker- bocker Press 1899; repr. New York: Ktav, 1969), 82, and Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, The Censor, the Editor, and the Text. The Catholic Church and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon in the Sixteenth Century, Translated by Jackie Feldman (Philadelphia: University of Penn- sylvania Press, 2007), 121. 28 “The garment which the wicked Haman was wearing, upon it were embroidered two images, one in front and one in the back, and if you would stand up and bow down to him, it would result in your actually worshipping idols.” [Bernard Grossfeld’s English translation, The Two Targums of Esther (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991), 168, quoted in Elliott S. Horowitz, Reckless Rites. Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Vio- lence (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), 66]. Horowitz writes also: “In fifteenth-century Northern Europe two of the leading Ashkenazic rabbis, Jacob Weil and Israel Isserlein, both ruled rather leniently in the matter of Christians wearing the sign of the cross. Not only did neither rabbi recommend that Mordecai’s example be emulated—neither even mentioned it. Weil ruled that it was pemissible to bare one’s head in the presence of a monk whose habit bore the sign of the cross. Isserlein (whose responsum was later cited by Alashkar) was more cautious, suggesting that it was best to avoid situations in which a potential transgression of such severity (i.e., idolatry) was involved. He recalled that in his youth a certain priest of Vienna would fold his robe over the sign of the cross when he expected to be visited by Jews for business purposes, so that they would be able to show him proper respect. Nonethe- less, Isserlein also respectfully cited a more lenient ruling (by R. Isaac of Oppenheim), according to which the act of bowing before a priest wearing the sign of the cross was an acknowledgment of his exalted position but not necessarily of the truth of his religion. [Horowitz, Reckless Rites, 68]. 29 See, in particular, Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 15ab. 30 Baum-Sheridan, Studien zu den westjiddischen Estherdichtungen, 58. some reflections on christians and christianity in yiddish 237 he is forced to run before him fun gas zu gas / durch dik un durch dine / un say troken oder nas, ‘from street to street, through thick and thin, dry or wet’ (vv. 1247–1250). Later, when he has to help Mordechai prepare for the meeting with the king, Homen der eidel landsher / must zu einem balbierer wern / er kam mit seiner seif un’ scher, ‘Haman the fine ruler of the country / has to become a barber / he came with soap and scissors’ (lines 1234–1236).31 In post-Biblical sources there are already indications of humorous and (pre)carnivalesque elements in the representation of Haman.32 However, in Gumprecht of Szczebrszyn this process goes further and Haman becomes a figure of ridicule in a very realistic description clearly intended to present the story of the Megillah of Esther in the light of contemporaneous events and their impact, recasting the pagan enemy and persecutor from ancient times as the Christian enemy and persecutor of the present. The realism and humour deployed in the Yiddish text lends additional force to this enterprise. We will also find a Christian Haman in later versions of purim-shpiln published by Chone Shmeruk, such as in Ein schein Purim Shpil (1697), a clearly anti-Christian text, where the tzelem on Haman’s back becomes more explicitly ain kraiz, a cross. But this takes us beyond Italy and into a different century.33

The Off-Key Priest

A mayse in rhyming prose with the title of Shiras ha-melekh, ‘the song of the king’, appears in the collection of mayses appended by Anshel Levi to his Yiddish translation of the Midrash le-pirqe avot. The manuscript, kept in the National Library in Paris (héb. 589), was copied in northern Italy in 157934 and published by Yaacov J. Maitlis in 1978.35 According

31 in the Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 16 is said that Haman was a sappar, a ‘barber’ in Kefar Qartzum. 32 Mikra leyisrae’l. A Bible Commentary for Israel, ed. Shmuel Ahituv, Esther, Introduc- tion and Commentary by Adele Berlin ( Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 2001), 39. 33 Yiddish Biblical Plays. 1697–1750, ed. Chone Shmeruk ( Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1979), especially 170f. 34 See Turniansky and Timm, Yiddish in Italia, N. 48. 35 anshel Levi, An Old Yiddish Midrash to the “Chapters of the Fathers,” ed. Yaacov J. Maitlis ( Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1978), mayse 72, 169–170. For a reproduction of the text see also Early Yiddish Texts 1100–1750, ed. Jerold C. Frakes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 346–348. 238 claudia rosenzweig to the editor, this story was “imported” from an external source and thus offers an example of a response to Christian elements.36 [There was once] a king who was proud and also wise / as your listening will suffice [to know]. / Young was he, and high-minded / his voice shone forth from his good heart. / He had a problem with singing, although he was willing to sing, / and he thought / nobody sang better [than him], / for when he sang he was off-key. / He did everything well / but nobody liked his singing. / Which was why he wanted to sing, for such was the impulse of his nature. / Now it happened that he sang a song in this way. / Nearby there was a noble woman / who had lost her little donkey [also: beloved]. / Her crying knew no bounds, / and oh! Her lament! For I tell the truth! / When the king saw her crying / with gracious affection he spoke to her: / “Tell me, lady, what is it that causes your eyes to be so moist?” / He thought: she is so taken, / the woman, with / his beautiful voice. / He said: “Should I sing some more?” / She declared: “Master, it causes me such great pain!” / She said: “I must protest. / Why are my eyes wet? / Because I have wept. / An ass came to me from thence / whom the wolves have devoured, / whom I cannot forget. / When you sing so truly / you remind me of my ass. / In the town I cry out: Oh you ass of mine! / It surprises me greatly / that your voice is so like / that of my ass, so rich!” / The king was ashamed / that he was recognized for his ass-voice. / He truly felt himself / to be a veritable ass. / As the proverb says: by their dancing and praying / shall you know the fools.37 / Therefore to be silent is an art / to speak brings disfavour.38 / With that

36 See Maitlis, An Old Yiddish Midrash, note on p. 169. Maitlis adduces several possible sources for this tale: the Exempla di Jacques de Vitry, in particular the exemplum N. 56, see The Exempla or Illustrative Stories from the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques de Vitry, ed. Thomas Frederick Crane (London: Folk-lore Society, 1890), 22, and a closer source, the collection of exempla by Johannes Pauli (1455 ca. 1530 or 1533), Schimpf und Ernst heißet das Buch mit Namen, durchlauft es der Welt Handlung mit ernstlichen und kurzweiligen Exempeln, Parabeln und Historien, Schwanksammlung, 1519 in Thann vollendet, 1522, in particular N. 576. He also quotes the Yiddish version Der magid un der bok, cited in Immanuel Olswanger, Rosinkess mit Mandlen, Aus der Volksliteratur der Ostjuden; Schwänke, Erzählungen, Sprichwörter, Rätsel (Basel: Verlag der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde, 1931), N. 256, 159–160, where instead of the king we find a magid and instead of an ass a bok, a billygoat. For Ulrich Boner’s version, see below. There is also a shorter, Latin version, in prose, by the Italian humanist Poggio Bracciolini (1380– 1459). See his Facezie, con un saggio di Eugenio Garin, Introduzione, traduzione e note di Marcello Ciccuto, testo latino a fronte (Milano: Rizzoli, 2002), N. CCXXX: Praedicator multum clamans quomodo confundebatur, 358. Following the editio princeps in 1470, this book was reprinted many times. On the fact that in all the sources, except the manuscript published by Maitlis, the story is told of a priest, see below. 37 Cf. below the moral of mayse N. 5. 38 Cf. the German proverb Schweigen ist ein Kunst / klaffen (oder: viel waschen) ist ungunst, in Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wander, Deutsches Sprichwörter Lexicon, 5 Bänden (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1963), s. v. schweigen, N. 101. some reflections on christians and christianity in yiddish 239

I will conclude / God should us send the messiah soon. / We will praise him with sweet voices / so that it will resound in the clouds. / All the world will hear / and they will say: truly do we like the song well. / It shall be soon in our days / to that let every man say amen. The same mayse appears in another source from Italy, from the same period, but in a different version: the Küh-bukh, ‘Book of Cows,’ a collection of tales printed in Verona in 1555,39 and again in 1595 in the printing shop of Messer Francesco delle Donne,40 then reprinted, with some changes, by Reb Moshe Wallich in the printing shop of Johannes Wust in Frankfurt am Mein in 1697, with the title Sefer Mes- holim.41 In the Verona version, instead of the king we find a cleric. The text will be reproduced in the extant version from 1595. In the text that follows, significant variants in Wallich’s edition will be indicated by the initials of his book, SM. It is the mayse N. 6, 9v–10r. The print is illustrated, and here the illustration serves as a sort of title and introduction.42

39 this print has been lost, but we know of it from external sources. See Turniansky and Timm, Yiddish in Italia, N. *90, 167. 40 See The Book of Cows, a Facsmile Edition of the Famed Kuhbuch, Verona 1595, from a unique copy in a private collection, with an introduction by Moshe N. Rosen- feld (London: Hebraica Books, 1984); Eli Katz, “Das ‘Kuhbuch’ und das ‘Sefer mešolim’. Die Überlieferung eines Mitteljiddischen Textes,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 112 (1990): 81–95, and Turniansky and Timm, Yiddish in Italia, N. *70, 138. 41 Book of Fables. The Yiddish Collection of Reb Moshe Wallich. Frankfurt am Main, 1697, ed. Eli Katz (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994). On this work, see also Maks Erik, Di geshikhte fun der yidisher literatur fun di eltste tsaytn biz der Haskole-tkufe (Varshe: Farlag Kultur-Lige, 1928), 368–372, and cf. Jeremy Dauber, In the Demon’s Bedroom. Yiddish Literature and the Early Modern (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), 87–139. 42 See Chone Shmeruk, The Illustrations in Yiddish Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century. The Text, the Picture and their Audience ( Jerusalem: Akademon Press, 1986), in particular 33. This illustration from the Küh-bukh is not taken from Ulrich Boner’s Edelstein. See Doris Fouquet, Der Edelstein. Faksimile der ersten Druckausgabe Bamberg 1461, 16. I Eth. 2° der Herzog-August-Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel (Stuttgart: Müller and Schindler, 1972), N. 69; 1: 134–135. There the same story is illustrated with an altar on the left, a book open on it, a priest standing in front of it, and to the right of it there is a woman with joined hands. For a reproduction of both tables, see Diane Wolfthal, Picturing Yid- dish. Gender, Identity, and Memory in the Illustrated Yiddish Books of Renaissance Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2004), fig. 110a and fig. 110b. Wolfthal assumes here that the illustration of the Edelstein’s first edition has been substituted in the Küh-bukh because “the Yiddish book omits all visual references to Christian practice” (Wolfthal, Picturing Yiddish, 175). 240 claudia rosenzweig

Book of Cows, f. 9 v

And now in such a manner I will make you know another exemplum. The priest reads what he lacks. And a pretty girl watched.43 The mayse reads as follows: A priest [SM: A man] who lived across the Rhine considered himself clever and wise. He lived in a fine village and thought no one could sing better than he. He thought his voice had a really pleasant sound. He thought it was both clear and pure; but it was more like a wooden bell or a broken chime. He wore a long [SM: fine] coat of a soft cloth [SM: Holland cloth] which he wore at all times, and before him he held a large book. He opened his mouth, like a big bracco dog44 [SM: consulted the book], and began to sing the compieta45 [SM: the melody]. The

43 i am borrowing from Eli Katz’s translation, which I have attempted to adapt to the first, 1595 version. See Book of Fables, 56–59. 44 See German bracke + hund (Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, s. v.). In Yiddish the term seems to be a loanword from It. bracco, Prov. bracon, Altfranz. Bracon, ‘tracker dog, sniffer dog.’ The term also appears in another Yiddish text from Italy, the Bovo d’Antona, v. 145.3, but apparently it was no longer understood, for Reb Moshe Wallich decided to replace the term and rewrite the sentence. 45 from Lat. and It. compieta, “ultima delle ore canoniche, che chiude la giornata liturgica. Lat. Completa.” See Salvatore Battaglia, Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, voll. I–XXI (Torino: UTET, 1994–2002) s. v., Engl. ‘compline’ (Night Prayer, Prayers some reflections on christians and christianity in yiddish 241

Malgreta [SM: A pretty maiden] was standing nearby. As soon as she heard the priest [SM: the man] sing she stopped and began to weep and wail. The priest [SM: The man] thought she was doing this on his account. He bellowed and shrieked more shrilly. The Malgre[t]a [SM: the girl] screamed more loudly still. The priest [SM: The man] said: “My dear young lady, tell me the cause of your weeping and what it means. Is it regret over all of the compieta [SM: the lovely things] you have missed? If you are willing to reward me I will sing something especially for you.” The woman [SM: the girl] said: “Oh, it is a wonder I do not die from sorrow. I swear by my oath that when I hear you sing I can hardly master my emotions and I can’t restrain myself from weeping. For without doubt you remind me of my donkey which I have lost. He behaved just as you do and had a voice just like yours. I and all my children [SM: friends] will always be sad that I lost him. He had the loveliest ears and a beautiful long tail. You quite remind me of all my sorrow; I could easily drown myself from the great sadness in my heart. I will give you two candles if you will leave off your singing; for otherwise you will only make me weep and lament for my donkey all the more.” The priest [SM: The man] became a mockery in everyone’s eyes. They all said he had a voice like an ass. Everybody avoided him. He suffered pain, disgrace, and vexation. He never undertook to sing again for he learned that it did not become him. This fable is similar to the preceding one which you have read before this.46 The moral is the one of the preceding mayse in the Küh-bukh about the raven and the cheese (8v–9v), that in Wallich’s reworking appears as the second mayse of the collection: This example surely applies to one who deceives himself and thinks very highly of himself. He thinks that everything he does is a credit to him. A man who does not know himself is surely a fool. He will soon be disgra- ced and everyone will mock him. An old proverb that they always said states, “Many a fool is revealed in dancing and praying.” That is why I tell you, you should consider well who you are and observe yourself in the mirror, so what happened to the raven won’t happen to you. The end. The story is clearly based on the Edelstein by Ulrich Boner, a Domi- nican from Bern who lived in the first half of the fourteenth century.47 at the End of the Day), the final church service (or Office) of the day in the Christian tradition of canonical hours. 46 english translation based on Eli Katz, Book of Fables, 48. For the changes in the order of the mayses of the Küh-bukh in the Sefer mesholim see Eli Katz, “Das ‘Kuhbuch,’ ” 83–84. 47 the story is N. LXXXII, Von einem Pfaffen und von einem Esel. Von Uppekeit der Stimme. See the digitalized version of Franz Pfeiffer’s edition (Leipzig 1844). Retrieved 242 claudia rosenzweig

This collection of stories in rhyming prose is one of the sources of the Küh-bukh, and if we compare the two versions, we see that in the Yiddish story the description of the priest is more ironic than in the German original: not only is his voice compared to that of an ass, but we are told, in addition, that he sings like a wooden bell or a broken chime, that the poor lady would rather drown than have to listen to him any more, and that she is prepared to give him a reward of two candles if he will just stop singing! In addition, the reference to the long tail of the donkey can be read as a vulgar double-entendre, reinforcing the comic parallels between the priest and the ass.48 The priest, the bell, the compieta, the candles—all these elements certainly point to the fact that the story has been imported into Yiddish with its original Christian features; the fact that it appears in Yiddish indicates, moreover, that the Jewish author felt entirely free to mock the off-key priest. Although the Christian terms are not couched in any denigrating or taboo-like formulations—as was often the case in Jewish texts—the story cannot remain “neutral” because it becomes part of the Yiddish literary system, and the humour will be at the expense of the Christians, the external dominant culture. In Reb Moshe Wallich’s later version, the mayse would be modified: every reference to Christia- nity is omitted—except the two candles—and, in Eli Katz’s opinion, it goes through a process of “cultural/religious despecification”;49 we see here “a “universalizing” rather than a “Judaizing” tendency.50 So the pfaff becomes simply a man, and the compieta51 a melody. It should also be noted that in all the versions we know (Latin, Ger- man), the story is told of a priest, and only in Anshel Levi’s version, from 1579, is the priest replaced by a king, in a story entirely devoid

July, 8th, 2011, from http://books.google.com/books?id=U9xJAAAAMAAJ&hl. On Boner, see also Klaus Grubmüller, Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters Verfasserlexi- con, herausgegeben von Kurt Ruh, zusammen mit Gundolf Keil, Werner Schröder, Burghart Wachinger, Franz Josef Worstbrock, zweite Auflage (Berlin – New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1978–2004), s. v., vol. 1, 947–952 and Erika Timm, “Die ‘Fabel vom alten Löwen,’ ” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 100 (1981): 109–170 and especially 156–163. 48 this is suggested by Eli Katz, Book of Fables, 278, and I tend to agree. 49 eli Katz, Book of Fables, 278. 50 eli Katz, Book of Fables, 21. See also idem, 263–264. 51 the fact that this term appears in the Yiddish text and rhymes with the name of the woman, Malgreta, or Margherita, might suggest (1) freedom in dealing with the German source and the addition of an ‘Italian touch’; or (2) an Italian intermediary. The compieta does not appear in the German, where the priest sings a Mass at the altar; the name of the woman is not given. some reflections on christians and christianity in yiddish 243 of any element relating to Christianity. The style, the words, sometimes even the rhymes are very similar to Boner’s text, and also to the Küh-bukh. Was the term melekh also intended to neutralize the Christian element? Might this have been prompted by the Church’s increasingly problematic control, since we are already in the second half of the sixteenth century, of Hebrew—and Yiddish—books, making it expe- dient to avoid any complication? Was it a form of self-censorship in response to the fear of persecution, or out of the belief that one should not expose readers to a story about external Christian culture? Since the manuscript was copied for a woman named Perlen, who is cited as the person to whom the book is dedicated, the second hypothesis is very probable. In any case, it is remarkable that we have two different Yiddish versions of the same German tale; the fact that both are from Northern Italy and appeared within a short period of time—in 1555 and 1579—testifies to the success of this literary genre, and the demand for “entertainment” literature that promised a good laugh. Making fun of the clergy was commonplace in the non-Jewish—German and Italian—literature of the period. In both these versions, the story is comic and draws on the notion that “empty vessels make the most noise,” as in the case of the cleric (this is the version in Poggio Brac- ciolini), and also think too much of themselves.52 In both cases, the character we mock represents authority, whether as priest or king. But the differences between the two Italian versions in Yiddish also arise from the fact that the manuscript by Anshel Levi has undergone a certain Judaization—or oikotypization—albeit somewhat contrived, in

52 indeed, this is the main point of the mayse, and is interpreted as such by most scholars who have classified the folktales. See, in particular, Dominic Peter Rotunda, Motif-Index of the Italian Novella in Prose (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University, 1942), in particular X 436: “The parson sings like a donkey (goat). The parson sees an old woman weeping and believes she is touched by his singing. When spoken to, she says she has been reminded of her donkey (goat) which she has lost.” This is Type 1834: “The Clergyman with the Fine Voice. When officiating, he sees an old woman weeping and believes her to be touched by his singing. Feeling flattered, he asks her why she weeps, but she answers that she had been reminded of her old goat that had been taken by the wolf [X 436] (Variant: she is afflicted by the thought that her son is studying to be a parson) [X 426]” [Anti Aarne, and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale. A Clas- sification and Bibliography, Second Revision (Helsinki: Indiana University 1961), 503]. See also Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, 5 vol. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966), 511, and Hans-Jörg Uther, The Types of International Folktales. A Classification and Bibliography. Based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, Part II, Tales of the Stupid Ogre, Anecdotes and Jokes, and Formula Tales (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedakatemia/Academia scientiarum fennica 2004), N. 1834, 447. 244 claudia rosenzweig particular at the end, where he adds a proverb featuring the Old Yid- dish term orn, ‘to pray’, from Lat. orare, and the Hebrew omen, ‘amen’: as dás šprich wort ságt: an tanzén un an orén / da derkent man di torén (As the proverb says: by their dancing and praying / shall you know the fools). The fact that this proverb appears also in the moral of mayse 5 of the Küh-bukh and that in mayse 6 it is said that the moral is the same of the preceding one, could suggest that Anshel Levi reworked the version of the Küh-bukh. He could well have known the printed edition of 1555 that has not survived.53 Moreover, to justify the presentation of a mayse with no Jewish content—in a collection where most of the mayses are based on Talmudic Haggadot—he associates the theme of voice and singing with the prayer asking God to send the messiah soon; according to the moral of the tale, we should ask to have sweet voices in order to praise Him, voices that will resound in the clouds so that all the world will recognize their beauty and hence their truth. In the same manuscript, the author expresses his wish that the messiah should come “as far as Cremona and Venice.” The reworking of the text is therefore evident both in the neutralization of the Christian elements—the priest, as noted, being replaced by a king—and the Judaization of the final part. The version of the mayse that appears in the printed Küh-bukh has much less reworking, as we have seen. This collection features many stories that have not undergone the Judaizing process, and present Jews and Christians in an entirely neutral way. In the tale that Eli Katz has entitled The Murdered Jew and the Partridge,54 a story based on Ulrich Boner’s Edelstein, tale LXI, Von einem Juden und eine Schenken, the moral is of a very general nature: whoever commits a crime believing that he will evade punishment for lack of witnesses, will in the end be found out and have to pay the penalty. The Yiddish mentions that the victim was a Jew—as in the external source, and could have drawn attention to the vulnerability of the Jews, but does not. It “imports” the story as told in the German version and gives it a universal moral. Overall, the Küh-bukh is a remarkable literary work, a collection of novelle in the best Italian Renaissance tradition, based on different sources, Jewish and non-Jewish, but above all evincing a broad knowledge of life, with openness and humour, enhanced by beautiful illustrations. It appears

53 See above, p. 239. 54 eli Katz, Book of Fables, mayse XXIV, 62–66. some reflections on christians and christianity in yiddish 245 to be the work of an author who has no religious conflict with the surrounding culture, and looks for universal morals rather than for Jewish muser, unlike other collections of mayses in Old Yiddish.

The examples I have chosen from among many others, trying to cover different literary genres—the chivalry romance, the poem on Purim, the mayse—suggest a continuous oscillation between a negative stance towards Christianity and Christians, and a more neutral one. The negative representation of Christians is easily understood in the context of the long-standing persecution suffered by Jews not only in Medie- val Germany but also in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One of the quoted texts was composed in Venice as Hebrew books were being burned on the orders of the pope. In light of this, it is all the more remarkable that we cannot speak of a single attitude to the surrounding culture on the part of Ashkenazi Jews in Italy. Sometimes the Christians are represented as persecutors, while on other occasions they are depicted with humour. The humour can be bitter, as in the text by Gumprecht of Szczebrszyn, where Haman is a Christian, or relatively mild, as with the off-key priest, at whom the Jewish reader allows himself to laugh, thus joining his Christian counterpart, who is amused by the same cleric and the same ass. It might be suggested that the Jew laughed more heartily and enjoyed the cathartic effect of it but, if so, the point is made subtly. It remains a fact that Jews accommodated a surprisingly substantial and complex portion of the Italian literature of this period into their Yiddish texts, even though it was undoubtedly perceived as linked to the Christian faith. This suggests that in literary texts reflecting an imagined world, Jews felt relatively secure: Ashkenazi Jewry does not seem to see itself as a vulnerable minority, defending itself against the intrusion of external elements. The tension with the Christian world is always there, as a matter of fact, but appears to be reworked and transformed through literary creativity. Through mockery or neutralization Jews continuously test the limits of their freedom to represent the Christian Other, at least until the impact of censorship, which will become increasingly violent in the second part of the sixteenth century. Finally, even though the extraordinary achievement of Yiddish literature in Italy—which has prompted some historians to speak of it as the golden age of Old Yiddish literature tout court—has been attributed largely to the contact with Renaissance culture, it is difficult to establish definitively how much this literature owes to that encounter, 246 claudia rosenzweig and how much derives from the intrinsic features of Yiddish literature, which continued to flourish up to the 20th century. Most of the literary genres and works appearing in Italy, whether newly composed there or originally conceived in Germany (we might note that Elye Bokher was born and grew up in Germany, Gumprecht of Szczebrszyn lived for a while in Germany before establishing himself in Venice, and Anshel Levi wrote in the colophon that he came from Germany to Italy)55 did indeed find a fertile ground in the peculiar configuration of Italian cities and towns, while the printing shops gave the technical support for the diffusion of these same works, often adding illustrations that would have lent prestige and been reused beyond the Alps. At the same time, these Yiddish works were reprinted several times in other centres of Ashkenazi culture, such as Frankfurt am Main, Prague, Cracow, and Amsterdam, and would be rewritten in the following centuries in new versions in Eastern Europe, thus attesting to the vitality, openness, and plurality of interests among Jewish readers of Yiddish in Europe.

55 See Maitlis, An Old Yiddish Midrash, 174. 12. Some Unknown 16th-Century Documents about Abraham Yagel and a Possible Link to the Controversy about the “Holy Diana” in the Mantuan Synagogue

Daniel Jütte*

The life and work of Abraham ben Hananiah Yagel (1553–c. 1623) have received increased scholarly attention in the last few decades. There are many ways to approach the colorful biography of Yagel, a moneylender, physician, and prolific writer on a variety of topics, including the natural sciences, magic, and Kabbalah. In the 1980s, David B. Ruderman undertook an exploration of Yagel’s “cultural universe” and depicted him in a seminal study as an “erudite but eccentric savant.” Ruderman argued that Yagel’s fascination with Kabbalah and his interest in natural philosophy were not necessarily to be viewed as a contradiction.1 Yagel is also well known for having authored an early modern Jew- ish autobiography. His earliest extant book, Ge’ izzayon (A Valley of Vision), is available to scholars in English translation with commentary.2 Yagel began to write Ge’ izzayon in 1578 when he was twenty- five years old. Apart from the question as to whether it is his“best book,”3 it is clearly the most detailed source on his early life. These years were, no doubt, a painful period in his life.4 They are marked

* i should like to thank Daniela Ferrari, director of the Archivio di Stato di Man- tova (hereafter: ASMn), for discussions of my findings and clarifications. I am also grateful to Gianfranco Miletto and David B. Ruderman, who commented on a first draft of this article. 1 David B. Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science. The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth- Century Jewish Physician (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988). For an introduction to Yagel’s biography, see ibid., 8–24. The quotation is on 163. 2 A Valley of Vision. The Heavenly Journey of Abraham ben Hananiah Yagel, trans., with an introduction and commentary by David B. Ruderman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990) [cited hereafter as Ge’ izzayon]. 3 Cf. Ruderman in the introduction to his translation of Ge’ izzayon, 16. 4 the events are sketched in Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science, 11–15; Shlomo Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua ( Jerusalem: Kiryath Sepher, 1977), 252–253. 248 daniel jütte by his failure to continue the banking activities of his father. From the early 1570s on, the son was running a pawn bank in the small town of Luzzara, in the duchy of Mantua. It soon turned out that the young Yagel lacked experience and know-how in this field, partly because of his preference for intellectual matters, and partly because of the sudden death of his father. Yagel’s business started to deteriorate when he established an unofficial partnership with a Jewish woman named Rina, who invested in his bank.5 This step was intended to consoli- date the bank, but instead resulted in about five years of controversy and financial instability. Soon after Rina had entered the business, she announced that she was going to withdraw her money from Yagel’s bank. Furthermore, Rina brought Yagel into serious danger by staying together with her family at his house in Luzzara after she had precipi- tously left Mantua because of an outbreak of the plague (1575/76). Yagel had to hire guards in order to protect himself and his guests from a raging mob outside his house. These events, however, did not lead to an end of the arguments between Rina and Yagel. Rina insisted on withdrawing from Yagel’s business and would not agree to a payment in instalments. Yagel’s financial situation then deteriorated further because of the plague and because he was obliged by law to lend money to the poor. Eventually, he began to negotiate with the Almagiati family, who were powerful Jewish loan bankers in the duchy. While Yagel hoped that the Almagiati brothers would replace Rina as his business partners, it soon became apparent that they were trying to drive him out of the banking business altogether. They publicly damaged his reputation, cancelled the negotiations, ambushed him, and eventually managed to have him sent to prison. While in jail, Yagel began to write his autobiography in 1578.6 It is no coincidence that the dream described in Ge’ izzayon takes place in a prison cell, or that several sections of the account deal with the events in Luzzara. Next to nothing is known about the period between Yagel’s imprisonment in Mantua and the final settlement of the affair. “We do not know the end of the story,” Shlomo Simonsohn concluded.7

5 Cf. Ge’ izzayon, 87: “The Holy One, blessed be He, who brings people pursued by fate to one inn in order to punish them together, purposefully brought about a partnership [between me] and Madame Rina, the wife of Jacob de Lacairo, may the Lord preserve him.” 6 ruderman, introduction to Ge’ izzayon, 6. 7 Simonsohn, Jews in the Duchy of Mantua, 253. some unknown 16th-century documents 249

Some previously unmentioned sources from the Archivio di Stato di Mantova may shed new light on these events. These sources are notarial documents from the first half of the year 1579. They can be found in the files of the Christian notary, Giovanni Francesco- Car nevali in Mantua.8 These documents seemingly mark—at least from the legal point of view—the end of the controversy over Yagel’s bank in Luzzara. The settlement of the conflict was preceded by a “sentence” (sententia) that was apparently accepted by all parties involved. The three arbitrators can be identified as Juda Ya’aleh da Cologna,9 Angelo Trabotto,10 and Joseph de Forti [azak].11 The conditions of the agreement were, unsurprisingly, not favourable to Yagel’s interests. In practice, they led to his complete withdrawal from his moneylending activities. Two documents can be singled out in this context. The first one is a solutio (discharge) between Yagel and Rina. This document describes the modalities of paying off Yagel’s debts to his business partner. The second document is also a solutio, but it refers to the settlement of Yagel’s financial obligations to the Almagiati brothers. Attached to each solutio is a list that describes in detail how Yagel was supposed to clear his financial obligations to Rina12 and to the

8 the signed originals of notarial documents were usually handed over to the conflicting parties. The notary kept copies of the documents. In these copies words and formal expressions were frequently abbreviated. In Yagel’s case notarial copies of various documents were assembled in one file. Note that two of them bear the autograph signature of Yagel (in Latin letters). The file can be found in ASMn, Archivio notarile (hereafter A.N.), busta 2901 bis notario Giovanni Francesco Carnevali). Important documents such as the “solutiones” were also copied into the massive volume of the city’s “registrazioni notarili.” Thus see also ASMn, A.N., Registrazioni notarili, a. 1579, cc. 1162v–1165v. 9 “Juda Jahala figliuolo del quondam Salamon da Cologna.” Yagel mentions him several times in Ge’ izzayon, 203, 207–209, 278. Cf. also Simonsohn, Jews in the Duchy of Mantua, 226. 10 “Angelo figluolo [sic] del quondam Isac trabot[to].” 11 “Joseph de Forti figliuolo del quondam dottore et fisico Sal[amon].” This arbitrator can be identified with Joseph azak of San Martino (in the Mantovano). At his house Yagel was to spend later some of the last months of his life (1623). This was the same house where years before a mysterious incident, the return of the soul of azak’s deceased daughter-in-law, was said to have happened. In his writings, Yagel mentioned this event which aroused his interest. Cf. Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science, 17, 20. 12 “Questa e la lista delli crediti et la soma delli pegni et nota delle altre cose dati et assegnati a madonna Diana de messer Jacobo Belcaiero per pagamento in essecutione d’una sententia data d’ogni lite et di discordie vertiva tra di noi per conto di dinari haveva prestati nella compagnia del banco di Luzzara a me Abram Jaghel hebreo Moncelsi abitante al presente in Luzzara.” This documents dates from 9 April 1579. 250 daniel jütte

Almagiatis.13 Yagel had to hand over the remaining loans and securities to his adversaries. The rent from his house in Ferrara was assigned to his creditors, though the property itself continued to belong to him.14 In addition to the documents described, the notarial file also contains related documents, such as procurations. The entire fascicle in the notarial busta consists of nearly fifty sheets, most of which are in Latin (with some exceptions in Italian). Some of them are not easily decipherable, partly because of their poor physical condition.15 The aim of the present article is to draw the attention of scholars to the existence of these sources. I neither intend to undertake a comprehensive transcription of these documents that were found by chance, nor to provide more than a preliminary survey of the material. It is my hope that future scholars will soon take up the task of a complete transcription and closer examination. At this point, it suffices to say that the documents offer insight from three different perspectives. First of all, the extensive file is a valuable source for general research on the dynamics of ( Jewish) moneylending in this period. Secondly, a more thorough examination of the documents will add important details to the account provided by Yagel himself in his Ge’ izzayon about the collapse of his business—an account that until now has remained the only source on the events. Thirdly, the newfound documents also reveal unknown biographical and pros- opographical information. For example, it finally can be established with certainty that the name of Yagel’s mother was Smeralda Finzi.16 More importantly, however, the documents also provide information on the background of Yagel’s female business partner. She was probably a more astute businesswoman than historians have conceded. In

13 “Lista delle crediti assignati per me Abramo Jaghel hebreo et madonna Bersa- bea Fano Cologna et madonna Dina Cologna hebrei alli magnifici fratelli figlioli del quondam messer Simone Almaggia per pagamento di tutti i conti et calculi havemo havuto a fare insieme fin al di presente.” Batsheva Fano was Yagel’s mother-in-law, Dina his wife. This document dates from 7 April 1579. 14 on the house see Ruderman, “Introduction,” to Ge’ izzayon, 7, 10. 15 therefore, cf. also the more accessible versions of some of the documents which were copied into the volumes of the “Registrazioni notarili.” 16 in contrast, the name of Yagel’s father was already known to scholars. In the notarial documents he is commonly referred to as the late Gratiadio da Monselice. I have not been able to establish Smeralda’s place in the genealogy of the Finzi family. Vittore Colorni’s genealogy of this prominent Jewish family ends in the late fifteenth century, cf. Vittore Colorni, “Genealogia della famiglia Finzi. Le prime generazioni,” in Judaica Minora. Saggi sulla storia dell’ebraismo italiano dall’antichità all’età moderna (Milan: A. Giuffré, 1983), 329–342. some unknown 16th-century documents 251

Ge’ izzayon she is referred to as “Madame Rina, the wife of Jacob de Lacairo.”17 Given this spelling of the names it is not surprising that later scholars were unable to find traces of either Rina or her husband.18 In the notarial documents, by contrast, her name appears as “Diana del Ben[e],” the wife of a certain Jacobo Belcaiero. The existence of the del Bene family in late sixteenth century Mantua is indeed well documented.19 Future research will have to place Diana del Bene in this context. In any case, it is possible now to identify Rina as Diana del Bene and thus as the woman who was wealthy enough to commission a Torah scroll in 1575 from the famous scribe Meir ben Ephraim di Padova20 and to employ a “fattore” in Luzzara.21 Further- more, it is probable that Diana del Bene was a close relative (perhaps the sister) of the Mantuan preacher David del Bene. The latter created a veritable uproar among contemporary Italian rabbis in 1598 when— in one of his homilies delivered in the synagogue in Mantua—he spoke -Various histo 22.[קווי״לה סאנטה דיאנה] ”about “quella santa Diana rians have referred to this episode as an example of the circulation of non-Jewish ideas—in this case the reference to a pagan deity—in the world of early modern Italian Jews. The existence of a real Diana in Mantua who was probably even closely related to the preacher David del Bene might shed new light on this episode. It is possible that the young preacher made a play on words (i.e., names), alluding to the pagan deity Diana as well as to his relative Diana del Bene, a prominent member and (“holy”) benefactor of the community, who—in his eyes—deserved to be held in high esteem. The discovery of the documents discussed here may not come as a surprise to those familiar with Ge’ izzayon. For Yagel himself, in his autobiography, left hints to historians as to the existence of notarial documents. In his account he mentions that before his imprisonment he had already

17 Ge’ izzayon, 87. 18 Cf. Ruderman’s remark in his commentary to Ge’ izzayon, 87, n. 5. 19 For further information on the family, see David Kaufmann, “The Dispute about the Sermons of David del Bene of Mantua,” Jewish Quarterly Review 8 (1896): 513–524. 20 David Kaufmann, “Meir b. Ephraim of Padua. Scroll-writer and Printer in Man- tua,” Jewish Quarterly Review 11 (1899): 266–290, here 280. 21 A Jew named Bonaiuto di Camerino is mentioned frequently in the documents as “eius factore in loco Luzarie.” 22 kaufmann, Dispute, esp. 519. 252 daniel jütte

asked them [his adversaries] to reach an agreement with me that went beyond the letter of the law. I did this by sending for Samuel Grassetto and Isaac Almagiati [and asking] them to appear in the house of the city’s notary and to declare in his presence that while I remained in negotiation over the matter, [I was prepared] to hand over the securities of the bank as a deposit to Madame Rina as they had requested. The ledger of credit would remain sealed up in its present location until the time of judgment. In the meantime, the pledges and credit would remain in this manner for a month.23 By the time Yagel was in prison, new notarial documents had been drawn up and signed. The imprisoned Yagel recounts: “Indeed, I already had offered them guarantees and everything had been handed over in a pledge, a sum much larger than what they had paid me [for my bank].”24 If the documents mentioned by Yagel in this paragraph are identical with the documents now found in the Mantuan Archives, then this conclusion also has implications for the dating of the events. It would mean that Yagel was still in prison as late as spring 1579. Ge’ izzayon, then, could not have been finished before that time.

23 Ge’ izzayon, 209. These, however, are not the documents discussed here. 24 Ibid., 280. 13. On Abraham’s Neck. The Editio Princeps of the Sefer Yeirah (Mantua 1562) and Its Context

Saverio Campanini

רבי שמעון בן יוחי אומר אבן טובה היתה תלויה בצוארו של אברהם אבינו שכל חולה הרואה אותו מיד מתרפא שנפטר אברהם אבינו מן העולם תלאה הקדוש ברוך הוא בגלגל חמה.1 In 1566, in his Bibliotheca Sancta, the Dominican Sixtus of Siena2 recalls a telling episode of his career as a censor and a bibliographer. Since his recollections are the clearest representation of the delicate relationship between censorship (including the destruction of books) and the apparently neutral auxiliary practice of bibliography, they deserve to be quoted here extensively: Pius V Pont. Maximus, cum ante pontificatum, ei divinitus collatum, amplissimo ac sacro totius Christianae Inquisitionis Senatui praeesset, anno videlicet humanae salutis MDLIX, misit me Cremonam ad abo- lendos Thalmudicos Hebraeorum libros impiae ac prodigiosae doctrinae; quos Iudaei ex omni ferme Italia in eam urbem, tamquam in commune Iudaicae nationis asylum, convexerant. Cum igitur ea de causa coepis- sem diligenter evolvere universas ipsorum bibliothecas, et typographi- cas officinas, omnium, quae tum in Italia erant, copiosissimas, reperi

1 babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 16b. 2 Andrea Del Col, “Note sull’eterodossia di fra Sisto da Siena. I suoi rapporti con Orazio Brunetto e un gruppo veneziano di ‘spirituali,’ ” Collectanea franciscana 47 (1977): 27–64; John W. Montgomery, “Sixtus of Siena and Roman Catholic Biblical Schol- arship in the Reformation Period,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 54 (1963): 214–234; Fausto Parente, “Alcune osservazioni preliminari per una biografia di Sisto Senese. Fu realmente Sisto un ebreo convertito?,” Italia Judaica. “Gli ebrei in Italia tra Rinasci- mento ed età barocca.” Atti del II Convegno internazionale, Genova, 10–15 giugno 1984 (Rome: Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 1986), 211–231; Ulderico Parente, “Sul preteso giudaismo di fra Sisto da Siena davanti all’Inquisizione romana (1551–1553),” in Le inquisizioni cristiane e gli ebrei, ed. Giorgio Bernardi, Lucio Bianco and Sergio Carrà (Rome: Academia Nationale Linceni, 2003), 375–405; see Fausto Parente, “Quelques contributions à propos de la biographie de Sixte de Sienne et de sa (prétendue) culture juive,” in Les Églises et le Talmud: ce que les Chrétiens savaient du judaïsme (XVIe–XIXe siècles), ed. Daniel Tollet (Paris: Presses Paris Sorbonne, 2006), 57–94, also reprinted in Fausto Parente, Les juifs et l’Église romaine à l’époque moderne (XVe–XVIIIe siècle) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2007), 205–231. 254 saverio campanini

infinitum numerum hebraicorum voluminum, inter alia vero, infras- cripta Hebraeorum expositorum in divinas scripturas commentaria, quorum cum aliquam mentionem apud nostros explanatores, praecipue scholasticos, prius invenissem, libuit eorum nomina summatim colligere, et hic collecta in calce huius libri appendicis loco subnectere.3 [The Pope, Pius V, before being elected, by divine intervention, to the pontificate, when he was still the dean of the inquisitorial commission, in the year 1559, sent me to Cremona in order to destroy the Talmudic books of the Jews, containing impious and superstitious doctrines, that the Jews had brought from all over Italy to that town as a safe haven for the Jewish nation. When I started to search their libraries and the printing presses, the most productive of those then existing in Italy, I found an infinite number of Hebrew books, among others the following Hebrew commentaries on the Scriptures. Since I had found some mention of them among our commentators, especially the scholars, I decided to list their names in a summary form and to print them here as an appendix to this book.] In the catalogue of Jewish exegetes of the Bible immediately following this surprising document, we find a significant note on the item “Simeon, filius Iochay”: Simeon, filius Iochay, inter iudaeos expositores vetustissimus, scripsit ante Christum natum volumen ingens in Pentateuchum, Zoar nuncupatum, cuius duo millia exemplaria in officina typographica Cremonensi excusa invenimus, et iam ab Hispanis militibus incendio destinata servavimus.4 [Simeon, the son of Jochay, among the most ancient Jewish exegetes, wrote before the birth of Christ a large volume on the Pentateuch, called the Zohar. I found two thousand copies of the book in a printing press in Cremona and was able to rescue them from the hands of the Spanish soldiers, who were about to burn them.] Sixtus came to destroy, and he did destroy but he returned from his journey to Cremona with two further possibly unexpected results: first and foremost, a bibliography of Jewish biblical exegetes and also the satisfaction of having saved the edition of the Zohar that had just been produced by Vincenzo Conti from the ignorance and the fury of the Spanish soldiers.

3 Bibliotheca sancta a F. Sixto Senensi, ordinis Praedicatorum, ex praecipuis catholicae ecclesiae autoribus collecta, et in octo libros digesta, Venetiis, apud Franciscum Senensem, 1566, lib. IV, 485. 4 Bibliotheca sancta, cit., lib. IV, 487. The text is quoted also by Fausto Parente, Quelques contributions. the editio princeps of the sefer yeirah 255

This story is not without a significant Mantuan epilogue if one considers that the Dominican Sixtus of Siena was accompanied in his activities by the convert Vittorio Eliano,5 who was himself to become a printer for the Jesuit order. Now, in a copy of the Tiqqune ha-Zohar, printed in Mantua in 1557,6 the starting point of the great publishing campaign of the Zoharic literature in Mantua, we read: “Revisto per mi Vittorio Eliano il qual non ha bisogno di corettione.” Technically, one could define this censorship rather as an imprimatur, i.e., an official licence to print. There has been a long discussion, prompted by Heinrich Graetz, whose lack of sympathy for the mystical literature is well known, on the possible influence of Christian repression of Jewish literature on the blossoming of Kabbalah in print in the second half of the sixteenth century. In his Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes he described the Zohar, metonymically used for the entire kabbalistic literature, as the “Schoß- kind des Papstums,”7 the favorite child of the papacy, suggesting that the explosion of kabbalistic publications in the years immediately following the burning of the Talmud (1553 in the papal states; 1559 in Cremona, as we have seen), had been a direct consequence of the policy of suppressing the Talmud and, as it were, of the “suggestion” that the Jews should replace the basis of their faith with a new one, one more acceptable and, to a certain degree, more compatible with

5 for a list of documents concerning the inquisitorial activities in Mantua and Cre- mona in the year 1559 and for Eliano’s role during that campaign, see Moritz Stern, Urkundliche Beiträge zur Stellung der Päpste zu den Juden, mit Benutzung des päpstlichen Gehei- marchivs zu Rom, vol. 1 (Kiel: H. Fiencke, 1893), 117–134. 6 It is Gershom Scholem’s copy, preserved at the Jewish National Library of Jerusalem (sign. R 2141). In a comment in Hebrew at the beginning of the book, בסוף הספר כתב נכדו המומר של ר' אליהו בחור ויטוריו אליאנו כי :Scholem writes הוא ראה את הספר ]לפני ההדפסה![ ועל כן איננו זקוק לתיקון צנזורה!! )ולא נודע Scholem recognized that Eliano’s signature is not, in the strictest sense of .דבר זה( the word, a censorship note, but rather the confirmation that the book should not be censored, because it had already undergone a preventive censorship process. It is well known that Eliano worked as a preemptive censor of the Cremona edition of the Zohar but, as Scholem points out, less is known about his activity as censor of the Mantuan edition of the Tiqqune ha-Zohar. The whole problem deserves further research and cannot be properly treated here. In any event, a digital copy of this book, with Eliano and Scholem’s notice, is available at http://aleph500.huji.ac.il/nnl/dig/ books/bk001758795.html. 7 heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden von der Verbannung aus Spanien und Portugal (1496) bis zur dauernden Ansiedelung der Marranen in Holland (1618) (Leipzig: Oskar Leiner, 1877), 369. 256 saverio campanini the central tenets of the Christian faith: namely the Kabbalah and especially the Zohar. Among the critics of this too simplistic and quite ideological view, the most prominent was, without doubt, Isaiah Tishby.8 He made a convincing case against the idea that the printing of the Zohar and of the mystical literature, which was fiercely opposed within the Jewish communities in Italy, was in any way influenced by the Christians. His conclusion concerning the question of whether the Christians played any role in the publishing of the Zoharic literature or, after its publication, in suggesting some sort of replacement of the Talmud, is very trenchant: such a thing “never was and never will be.” Although they have taken into account the very well-documented arguments developed by Tishby, some voices in recent literature have opened the discussion anew. I would like to mention here at least two major scholars. On the one hand, there was Yehudah Liebes,9 who saw some Christian influences in the very texture of the Zohar itself, documenting that its usage in the polemical literature from Pablo de Heredia to Petrus Galatinus was not only based on forgeries, but had a substantial basis in the text, thus justifying some Christian sympathies for the Zohar and for kabbalistic literature as such.10 On the other hand, the scholar who in recent years devoted much energy to the study of the Jewish printing press in the sixteenth century, particularly in Man- tua, was Giulio Busi.11 He has drawn attention to the undisputable fact that, at the very least, the printing of the Zohar is also to be understood as a response to the attack that the Counter-Reformation had directed against the Jews, who represented the most visible form of heterodoxy within the boundaries of the temporal power of the Church.

8 Isaiah Tishby, “Ha-pulmus ‘al sefer ha-zohar ba-me’ah ha-shesh ‘esreh be-ital- yia,” in iqre qabbalah u-sheluoteah ( Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1982), 79–130. 9 see Yehuda Liebes, Studies in The Zohar (New York: State University of New York Press, 1993). 10 I offered a comprehensive look at the question of the role of (authentic and forged) kabbalistic literature for the polemics surrounding Johannes Reuchlin, Pablo de Heredia, and Petrus Galatinus in Saverio Campanini, “Quasi post vindemias racemos colligens. Pietro Galatino und seine Verteidigung der christlichen Kabbala,” in Reuchlins Freunde und Gegner. Kommunikative Konstellationen eines frühneuzeitlichen Medienereig nisses, ed. Wilhelm Kühlmann (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2010), 69–88. 11 Giulio Busi, “Materiali per una storia della qabbalah a Mantova,” Materia giudaica 2 (1996), 50–56; idem, Mantova e la qabbalah / Mantua and the Kabbalah (Milan: Skira, 2001); idem, Il laboratorio cabbalistico mantovano, in L’enigma dell’ebraico nel rinascimento, ed. idem (Turin: Nino Aragno editore, 2007), 99–128. the editio princeps of the sefer yeirah 257

More modestly, and from a different perspective, I have directed attention to some phenomena that are related to the main core of my own research and to the specific case study I wish to present here. I will briefly summarize the steps that led me to my present position. In earlier studies, I pointed to a clear distinction among some Christian interpreters between the Talmud and the Kabbalah, which has, in turn, a possible origin as early as 1486 in a famous passage of Abraham Abulafia.12 Then I showed how this distinction was deep- ened and reached an almost canonical status in the works of the most prominent Christian Kabbalists of the Renaissance, such as Johannes Reuchlin and Francesco Giorgio Veneto.13 Moreover, I have studied the formation of the kabbalistic libraries of these two intellectuals,14 suggesting that the birth of Jewish Studies coincided with the beginning of Christian Kabbalah.15 Even when the turning point of the Ref- ormation and Catholic Reformation had passed, there still remained a significant interest in Kabbalah, sometimes taking the ambiguous form of the retraction of a youthful passion, as was the case in Federico Borromeo’s De cabbalisticis inventis. It had, at least in one very relevant chapter, the form of a bibliography of Jewish mysticism.16 Finally, and getting closer to the topic of the present paper, I have suggested that in a seventeenth-century bibliography of the Hebrew book, as represented by the Bibliotheca Magna Rabbinica of Giovanni Battista Iona, Giulio Bartolocci, and Carlo Giuseppe Imbonati, the relationship between interest in the mystical tradition of Judaism, even in a monumental

12 saverio Campanini, “Talmud, Philosophy, Kabbalah: A Passage from Pico della Mirandola’s Apologia and its Source,” in The Words of a Wise Man’s Mouth are Gracious. Festschrift for Günter Stemberger on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. Mauro Perani (Ber- lin: De Gruyter, 2005), 429–447. 13 Idem, “Talmudisti e cabbalisti. Un’immagine dell’ebraismo alle origini della qabbalah cristiana,” in Civiltà e popoli del Mediterraneo. Immagini e pregiudizi, ed. Anselmo Cassani and Domenico Felice (Bologna: Clueb, 1999), 119–135. 14 Idem, “Dimidium animae meae. La biblioteca cabalistica di Johannes Reuchlin,” in Johannes Reuchlin. L’arte cabbalistica, ed. Giulio Busi and Saverio Campanini (Flor- ence: Opus Libri, 1996), LI–LXX; idem, “Le fonti ebraiche del De harmonia mundi di Francesco Zorzi,” Annali di Ca’ Foscari 38,3 (1999): 29–74; See now, F. Zorzi, L’armonia del mondo, Introduzione, traduzione e note a cura di S. Campanini, (Milan: Bompiani, 2010). 15 Idem, “I cabbalisti cristiani del Rinascimento,” in La cultura ebraica, ed. Reinach Sabbadini (Turin: Einaudi, 2000), 149–165; idem, “Die Geburt der Judaistik aus dem Geist der christlichen Kabbala,” in Gottes Sprache in der philologischen Werkstatt. Hebraistik vom 15. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Giuseppe Veltri and Gerold Necker (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 135–145. 16 Idem, “Federico Borromeo e la qabbalah,” Studia Borromaica 16 (2002): 101–118. 258 saverio campanini work purporting to have a very negative attitude toward Kabbalah, and the pitiless display of power manifested by censorship was a very complex one, not without double entendres and fundamental ambiguities, typical of the Baroque attitude toward Jewish culture at large.17 The editio princeps of the Sefer Yeirah, which appeared in Mantua in 1562, is a very convenient vantage point for illustrating in detail my thesis. I have therefore chosen it as a broader perspective on the central issue of the dissemination of kabbalistic literature in the Jewish and non-Jewish world in the Renaissance, and also to illustrate the high degree of interaction, conflict, and collaboration between Christians and Jews in this cultural enterprise, which involves the debated topic of the role of “kabbalistic” literature in interfaith discussions. The main issue at stake here is the formation of a new or revised canon, as the Reformation and the Council of Trent had brought about a traumatic change in the view of which books of Scripture should be considered part and parcel of the inspired word of God. This process was accompanied by a vehement discussion and, especially on the Catholic side, by a definitely centralized policy of censorship. Similarly on the Jew- ish side, one notices the effects of a growing campaign against Jewish literature, beginning in the first years of the sixteenth century, through the Dominicans in Cologne, triggered by the convert, Johannes Pfef- ferkorn, and accompanying the entire development of the so-called Christian Kabbalah. This should be seen as the prehistory of Christian Hebraism, as well as a vigorous reaction, a rethinking of the cultural profile of Judaism in an age of unprecedented challenges. Three main points deserve to be emphasized here: 1) Christianity and its denominations were in a phase of deep change and transformation; 2) knowledge of the Jewish literature accessible to the Chris- tians had been steadily growing and differentiating in the half-century preceding the Reformation and the opening of the Council of Trent; and 3) the Jewish “canon” itself seemed to be touched by this wave of instability, to the point where the mystical literature, especially the Zohar, found its way to the printing press. This is not only the printing of books that had already existed; in many cases, especially as far as the Zohar is concerned, their publication became a philological

17 Idem, “Wege in die Stadt der Bücher. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der hebräischen Bibliographie,” in Reuchlin und seine Erben. Forscher, Denker, Ideologen und Spinner, ed. Peter Schäfer and Irina Wandrey (Ostfildern: Thorbecke Verlag, 2005), 61–76. the editio princeps of the sefer yeirah 259 as well as theological event. As we now know, the publication of the Zohar, due to the circumstances of its origin and its manuscript tradition, amounted to the “canonization” of a text form not existing as such beforehand. To sum up, I refer here to the thought-provoking study of Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin,18 although the attack on the Talmud is not really a novelty in the history of the Church, the peculiar circumstances in which it took place around the middle of the sixteenth century shaped it into a much more complex factor of transformation. The beginning of the censorship of Hebrew books, the development and the perfect- ing of the instruments for making this censorship possible (inter alia, the beginning of a Hebrew bibliography), are, at the same time, instruments and outcomes of this process. The influence of this eruption of violence and control, however, went even further because it contributed (although without a lucid plan) to reshaping the “canon” of Jewish literature, urging a new selection and ranking, with a decided shift toward mysticism to the detriment of the classical halachic dimension, which was of course not palatable to the Christians on theological or on apologetic grounds. Finally, the “canonic” effects of this change are also measurable in the definition of a relatively stable textual shape for the books that had been the object of a secular transmission. The publication of the editio princeps of the Sefer Yeirah comes at the completion of this process. Among the most important figures in this historical development one should count, without doubt, Jacob ben Naftali ha-Kohen of Gazzuolo, who played a major role in the flourishing of the mystical literature in print. Among the towns of his activity were, in particular, Sabbioneta, Mantua, and Venice where, as far as the documents show, he ended his career, quite melancholically, as the assistant of the Christian printer Giorgio (Zorzi) Cavalli.19

18 Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Censorship, Editing, and the Reshaping of Jewish Identity. The Catholic Church and Hebrew Literature in the Sixteenth Century, in Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Allison Coudert (Philadel- phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 125–155; Idem, The Censor, the Editor, and the Text. The Catholic Church and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon in the Sixteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 19 On Jacob ben Naftali ha-Kohen of Gazzuolo, see also Pier Cesare Ioly-Zorattini, “La connaissance du monde juif à Venise au XVIe siècle,” in Les Églises et le Talmud, ed. Tollet, 95–107, esp. 102. Idem, Processi del S. Uffizio di Venezia contro ebrei e giudaizzanti, vol. 1. (1561–1570) (Florence: Olschki, 1982), 267–315. 260 saverio campanini

The entire curriculum of Jacob of Gazzuolo is marked by his collaboration with Christian printers, but this fact is not sufficient, in my view, to suppose any propensity toward Christianity. After all, it was a matter of necessity for many Jews to work for Christian printers who had the financial means and the political connections needed to obtain the authorization to publish, as is shown by the long list of Chris- tian printers of Hebraica, from Bomberg to Giustinian and Bragadin. Nevertheless, the very fact that Jacob of Gazzuolo had been involved in many editorial projects with Christian printers shows that he was not prejudicial in his attitude and opposed to this sort of collaboration, and that he knew his business partners very well. The Christian printers included, inter alia, Venturin Ruffinello,20 his son Giacomo,21 the whole family Filippono (Francesco,22 and his sons Calidano and Filotarsi),23 the previously mentioned Zorzi Cavalli,24 and even the competitor Vincenzo Conti, whom Jacob helped after the partial damaging of his enterprise, the printing of the Zohar in Cremona, by the Spanish soldiers. The most felicitous years of activity enjoyed by Jacob of Gazzuolo coincide with his stay in Mantua, where he published, among many other titles (thirty-two items are still extant),25 the main bulk of the

20 Ya‘aqov ben Yehudah Weil, Sheitot, Mantua 1556; Seder shel Pesa, Mantua 1556; Elijah Levita (famous uncle of Vittorio Eliano), Sefer ha-Baur, 1556–1557; Megillat Antiokos, Mantua 1557; Mi kamoka, Mantua 1557; Toledot Yiaq, Mantua 1558. 21 Yehudah ha-Kohen Kalatz, Sefer ha-Musar, Mantua 1560–1561; Masseket Avot, Mantua 1560; Refa’el ben Gavri’el Norzi, Se’ah solet, Mantua 1561; Aharon Sagi Naor, Sefer ha-minefet, Mantua 1561. 22 Mishnah of Sabbioneta 1556 ff. 23 Sheitot, Mantua 1563. 24 Tefillot mi-kol ha-shanah (Siddur according to the Ashkenazi rite), Venice 1566. 25 This is not the place to complete a longstanding desideratum of research and provide the annals of the Hebrew printers of Mantua or, more modestly, of the printer Jacob of Gazzuolo, but a simple list of titles and dates should give an approximate idea of the importance of the editorial activity of the latter. Here follows a list of the Kab- balistic editions in Mantua in which Jacob of Gazzuolo played a role: Sefer ha-Zohar, 1558–1560 (contemporary of the one-volume edition that appeared in Cremona under the printer Vincenzo Conti); Tiqqune ha-Zohar, 1558; Ma‘arekhet ha-Elohut, 1558 (contemporary of the edition provided by Abraham Usque in Ferrara); Samuel Ibn ara, Meqor ayyim, 1559; Joseph Gikatilla, Sha‘are Orah, 1561 (contemporary of the edition of the same work that appeared in Riva di Trento); Sefer Yeirah, 1562. As for the other, non-kabbalistic works where the name of Jacob of Gazzuolo is mentioned as the publisher, here is a list: Yedidiah Bedersi, Beinat ‘Olam, 1556; Patum ha-qeoret, 1556; Mazor (at the house of Venturin Ruffinello), 1556–1560; Livyat en, 1557; Siddur tefillah, 1557; Seder shel Pesa, 1557; Isaac Caro, Toledot Yiaq, 1558; Bachyah Ibn Paquda, the editio princeps of the sefer yeirah 261 classics of Jewish mysticism, which can be roughly dated to the years 1558–1562. These years open and close with two very important manifestos possibly authored by Jacob of Gazzuolo. The first is a programmatic text concerning the publication of the Tiqqune ha-Zohar, an extremely valuable document for the history of Hebrew printing in Mantua and a decisive step in the dissemination of kabbalistic literature in the Renaissance.26 The second, especially interesting for our present contribution, is an appendix to the editio princeps of the Sefer Yeirah, which appeared in 1562 in Mantua, under the signet of Jacob ben Naftali ha-Kohen of Gazzuolo alone, toward the end of his brief but very intense activity as a printer of Hebrew books in the town on the Mincio. Since the importance of these “editorial” texts is quite remarkable, I reproduce both of them, with a minimal number of references, at the end of this contribution. Before concentrating on the latter text, I would like to summarize the broader context of the publication itself. The Sefer Yeirah, as the secondary literature endlessly repeats, was published first in a Latin translation, ten years before the publication of the Hebrew original: the appearance in print of the Hebrew Sefer Yeirah in Mantua was preceded by the publication of the Latin translation with a commentary, both authored by the French oriental- ist Guillaume Postel, issued at the expense of the author in Paris in 1552.27 This was, in fact, the first edition but not the first Latin translation: the manuscript Add. 1141628 at the British Library preserves

ovot ha-Levavot, 1559; Calendar for the year 5320, 1559; Ya‘aqov ben Yehudah Weil, Sheitot u-bediqot, 1560; Tefillot mi-kol ha-shanah (Siddur according to the Ashkenazi rite, in Judeo-German), 1560; Tefillot vulgar de tutto l’anno (the Siddur in Italian printed with Hebrew characters), 1561; Gershom Scaramella, Yeus ha-addiqim, 1561; Calendar for the year 5322, 1561; Mishnah, 1559–62 (the first two volumes were printed by Tuviah Foah in Sabbioneta, the other four in Mantua by Ya‘aqov ben Naftali ha-Kohen from Gazzuolo (with Filipono?); Ya‘aqov ben Yehudah Weil, Sheitot, 1563. 26 see below, Appendix I. 27 Abrahami patriarchae liber Iezirah, sive Formationis mundi, Patribus quidem Abrahami tem- pora praecedentibus revelatus, sed ab ipso etiam Abrahamo expositus Isaaco, et per Profetarum manus posteritati conservatus, ipsis autem 72. Mosis auditoribus in secundo divinae veritatis loco, hoc est in ratione, quae est posterior authoritate, habitus. Vertebat ex Hebraeis, et commentariis illustrabat 1551 ad Babylonis ruinam et corrupti mundi finem Cuilielmus [sic] Pos- tellus Restitutus, Parisiis, Vaeneunt [sic] ipsi authori, sive interpreti, G. Postello. In scholis Italorum, 1552. There is also a reprint: Sefer Jezirah. Übersetzt und kommentiert von Guillaume Postel. Neudruck der Ausgabe Paris 1552, ed. Wolf Peter Klein (Stuttgart—Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1994). 28 On the ff. 11v-8. Another copy is preserved in Bergamo. 262 saverio campanini the oldest Latin translation, attributed to a certain “Magister Isaac,” which could have been made in Rome in 148829 and later belonged to the Christian Kabbalist Johannes Reuchlin. The text of this translation, without any references to the time and place where it was made, was published in 1587 in the anthology of Christian Kabbalah and appeared in Basle, under the editorship of Johannes Pistorius.30 Even before that date, in fact, there might have been at least one, but more probably two translations of the Sefer Yeirah, whereas some of its commentaries in Latin translation are still extant.31 The first one might have been the work of Flavius Mithridates, whose rendering of the Sefer Yeirah is not preserved, although three commentaries survive in his Latin translation, and it is hardly plausible that, among the translations he made for Pico della Mirandola, there should not have been also a version of the Sefer Yeirah itself.32 During the same period Ludovico Lazzarelli was also interested, as his Crater Hermetis shows, in the same book and in the commentary by El‘azar of Worms, which he quoted in the context of a passage concerning the creation of a golem.33 I cannot

29 British Library Add. 11416 f. 11v–8 Liber Abraham de creatione Cabalisticus successive filiis ore traditus, hinc iam rebus Israel inclinatis ne deficeret per sapientes Hierusalem arcanis et profundissimis sensibus litteris commendatus (deleted but leg- ible: per magistrum Isaac translatus Roma), incipit: Triginta duabus viis scientiae, expl. Rome translatus anno 1488. 30 Johann Pistorius, Artis cabalisticae, hoc est reconditae theologiae et philosophiae scriptorum tomus I, Basle 1587. There are also two reprints of this seminal anthology: Frankfurt am Main: Minerva 1967; and Trient: La Finestra 2005. I have reviewed the latter reprint, Materia Giudaica 12,1/2 (2007), 332–334. In this review I also noted that Pisto- rius, who served as librarian of the Margrave of Baden in Durlach, heir to Reuchlin’s legacy, had direct access to the ms. now in London, which has been his source in preparing his kabbalistic anthology. 31 The commentaries are preserved in the ms. Vat. ebr. 191. They are 1) a short version of the Commentary of El‘azar of Worms; 2) an anonymous commentary of Abulafian origin, whose Hebrew original has been published by Yisrael Weinstock, Perush Sefer Yeirah “almoni,” mi-yesodo shel Abraham Abul‘afia ( Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1984); 3) the authentic commentary by Nachmanides, published in the Hebrew original by Gerschom Scholem, “Perusho ha-amitti shel ha-Ramban le-Sefer Yeirah,” Kiryat Sefer 6 (1929–1930): 385–419. 32 saverio Campanini, “Pici Mirandulensis bibliotheca cabbalistica latina. Sulle traduzioni latine di opere cabbalistiche eseguite da Flavio Mitridate per Pico della Mirandola,” Materia Giudaica 7,1 (2002): 90–96; idem, “Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada (alias Flavio Mitridate) traduttore di opere cabbalistiche,” in Guglielmo Raimondo Mon- cada alias Flavio Mitridate. Un ebreo converso siciliano, ed. Mauro Perani (Palermo: Officina di Studi Medievali, 2008), 49–88. 33 see my review of W. J. Hanegraaff – R. M. Bouthoorn, Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447– 1500). The Hermetic Writings and Related Documents (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005), in Materia Giudaica 12,1/2 (2007): 329–332. the editio princeps of the sefer yeirah 263 expand here on this topic, but it seems clear enough that the interest in the Sefer Yeirah in the Christian world coincides with the beginnings of the Christian Kabbalah, particularly because the text was believed to have been handed down by means of oral tradition by the patriarch Abraham in person. It is not surprising, therefore, to find quotations, sometimes in Hebrew, from the Sefer Yeirah in the Christian Kabba listic literature (Paulus Riccius, Johannes Reuchlin,34 Petrus Galatinus, Francesco Giorgio or Zorzi). Most prominent in this list is the Domini- can Agostino Giustiniani,35 because he quotes an important passage

34 The translations by Reuchlin in his De arte cabalistica (1517) differ from the abovementioned Latin translation preserved in the ms. Add. 11416 of the British Library. 35 Agostino Giustiniani, Psalterium Hebraeum, Graecum, Arabicum, et Chaldaeum, cum tribus Latinis interpretationibus et glossis, Genua 1516, 138r–140r: Vie Dei quas ipse docuit Mosse sunt uti ego sentio Dilectio Dei et proximi quibus duabus viis patet iter ad celestem patriam. Doctissimi vero hebraeorum cabaliste numerant duas et triginta vias quas vocant vias scientie Dei quasque edoctos fuisse a Deo optimo maximo non ambigunt patrem Abraham Mosse et reliquos patres qui fuerunt ante Christi adven- tum. Comprehenduntur vero he due et triginta vie decem sephirot ut ipsi vocant et duabus et viginti alphabeti literis. De decem sephirot sic habetur in libro formationis עשר ספירות בלימה א' רוח אלהים ברוך ומבורך quem hebrei vocant cepher icira שמו של חי העולמים קול ורוח ודבר זה רוח הקדש ב' רוח מרוח חקק וחצב בה כ''ב אותיות יסוד ג' אמות ז' כפולות וי"ב פשוטות ורוח אחת מהם ג' מים מרוח חקק וחצב בהם תהו ובהו רפש וטיט חקקן כמין ערוגה וחציבן כמין חמה ושכבן כמין מעזיבה ד' אש ממים חקק וחצב בה כסא הכבוד ואופנים ושרפים וחיות הקדש ומלאכי השרת ומשלשתן יסד מעונו שנא' עושה מלאכיו רוחות משרתיו אש לוהט ה' חתם רום ביוד שלש אמות וקבען בשמו הגדול יה"ו וחתם בהם שש קצוות פנה למעלה וחתמו בהן ו' חתם תחת ופנה למעלה וחתמו ביו"ה ז' חתם מזרח ופנה לפניו וחותמו בהי"ו ח' חתם מערב ופנה לאחריו וחותמו בהו"י ט' חתם לצפן ופנה לימינו וחתמו בוי"ה י' חתם דרום ופנה שאמלו וחתמו בוה"י אלו עשר ספירות בלימה רוח אלהים רוח מרוח Idest: Decem sephirot idest decem .ורוח מים ואש רום ותחת מזרח מערב צפון ודרום incorporei abstractique numeri seu potius decem incorporee secreteque unitates. Una, spiritus Dei sive spiritus Deus, benedicens et benedictum nomen eius, qui est vita mundi, vox et spiritus et verbum, hic est spiritus sanctus, cuius (ut habent aliqui libri) principium perscrutari non potest, et cuius finis nullus est terminus. Due spiritus de spiritu, exculpsit inciditque in eis duas et viginti literas pro fundamento, tres matres, septem duplices, et duodecim simplices, et spiritus unus de eis. Tres aqua de spiritu, sculpsit inciditque in eis inane et vacuum, cenum et lutum. Eas ad areole simili- tudinem sculpsit, utque murum statuit, et eas pavimenti instar contexuit. Quatuor ignis de aqua sculpsit inciditque in eis thronum glorie et rotas, seraphim et animalia sanctuarii, et angelos ministerii et ex tribus his regiam suam fundavit ut dictum est. Qui facit angelos suos spiritus et ministros suos ignem urentem. Quinque sigillum altitudinis in misterio trium matrum, ex simplicibus contituitque eas in magno suo ex quibus sex sigillavit extrema, aspexit superius, et sigillavit ipsum cum יהו nomine Septem, sigillum orientis aspexit .יוה Sex aspexit deorsum et sigillavit ipsum cum .הוי Octo, sigillum occidentis, aspexit posterius et .היו anterius, et sigillavit ipsum cum Novem, sigillum septentrionis aspexit dextrum et ipsum .הוי sigillavit ipsum cum Decem, sigillum meridiei aspexit sinistrum et ipsum sigillavit cum .והי sigillavit cum ,Hec sunt decem abstracte unitates. Spiritus Dei, spiritus de spiritu, spiritus aque .והי 264 saverio campanini in Hebrew and he promises to comment on the book in more detail, possibly in an edition of the Hebrew text. However, that edition, as a matter of fact, never saw the light of day. Only Postel, as already mentioned, was successful in publishing the Sefer Yeirah in his own idiosyncratic translation; this was not at the printing press of Oporinus in Basle, but rather at his own expense in Paris. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, a new translation was made for, or even by, the already mentioned cardinal Borro- meo. It is preserved, still unpublished, at the “Biblioteca Ambrosiana” in Milan.36 Not only was the book itself known and frequently quoted, but it had been commented on according to different traditions: besides the commentaries already translated as early as 1486 for Pico della Mirandola and preserved in the ms. Vat. Ebr. 191, other Christian Kabbalists, especially Paulus Ricius, Johannes Reuchlin, and Francesco Giorgio, read and quoted, in the years 1517–1525, numerous commentaries on the Sefer Yeirah (Reuchlin quotes the pseudo-Rabad, the commentary of Jacob ha-Kohen of Soria and, but this is perhaps a mistake, the commentary of “Isaac”;37 Giorgio also refers to Jacob Kohen, to “rabbi Moses,”38 rabbi Isaac, rabbi Tedacus Levi,39 “rabbi Samuel,” to be identified with Samuel Ibn Motot, and an “Abraham de ‘olam aba,” perhaps referring to Avraham Abulafia). The purpose of this brief list is to show that all the elements we find in the Mantuan edition of the Sefer Yeirah, the variations in the manuscript tradition and the commentaries, had already triggered the interest of the Christian

ignis, superius, inferius, oriens, occidens, septentrio et meridies. Duas vero et viginti literas trifariam partiuntur, patres hebrei. Tres matres, Septem duplices, Duodecim simplices. Ex quarum varia combinatione, constituunt sese innumerabiles portas innu- merabilesque scientie domos et hac alphabetaria revolutione volunt elici posse verum sensum verumque intellectum legis et prophetarum et has dicunt esse vias de quibus hoc loco loquitur divinus vates. Sed de his alias maiore ocio et non in scholiis, sed iusto commentario. 36 biblioteca Ambrosiana (Sussidio B 209, formerly GS IV 26; cf. Iter Italicum, volume VI, Italy III and Alia itinera IV. Supplement to Italy (G-V), Supplement to Vati- can and Austria to Spain, (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 69: inter alia a translation of the Sefer Yeirah, of the Ma‘arekhet ha-Elohut, from Gikatilla, excerpts from Cordovero’s Pardes Rimmonim, from Pico et al.). 37 It is, de facto, a quotation from the pseudo-Rabad, already alluded to, always under the name of “Isaac,” by Paulus Ricius, in his Isagoge. 38 Presumably Botarel. 39 mistakenly added to the commentators on the Sefer Yeirah, the mention depends from Reuchlin. the editio princeps of the sefer yeirah 265

Kabbalists of the Renaissance and could find interested and, at least to a certain extent, informed readers among the Christians. Both points are resumed in the short text signed by “the printers” (ha-madpisim) at the end of the Mantuan edition: the textual variants were so important in quantity and in quality that the decision was taken to publish two versions of the text one after the other. This was also in order to allow the reader to follow the different commentaries, based as they are on different versions of the book itself.40 The simple list of the points I have made should suffice, I believe, to argue in favor of an implicit multi-layered dialogue with the Chris- tian world as the appropriate context for understanding the features of the editio princeps of the Sefer Yeirah in Mantua: 1) the interest in the book among all the principal representatives of the Christian Kab- balah; 2) the general shift towards mysticism related, directly or indirectly, to the repression of the Talmud; 3) the long tradition of joint typographical ventures between Christian and Jewish entrepreneurs, justified by mutual interest, but also useful for the Jewish party to ease the acute problem of obtaining permission to print works of remarkable commercial potential; 4) the need to provide a stable edition of an erratic textual tradition, also similar to the parallel development within the Christian world concerning the study of classical literature; 5) the publication, together with the text itself, of medieval commentaries in order to provide an interpretive tradition, thus enhancing the “canonical” character of the Sefer Yeirah (whose textual portions are called, not by chance, “mishnayiot”). As to the connection between the Sefer Yeirah and the Mishnah, which was, in 1562, on the verge of being completed at the same publishing house, one should recall that, in later editions,41 the six chapters of the Sefer Yeirah are added to the “orders” of the Mishnah. Nevertheless, there are two more points I would like to emphasize in order to show how deep and varied the cultural exchange and the mutual influence between Christians and Jews in Renaissance Italy had become, even in a “dark age,” as the period marked by the last sessions of the Council of Trent and their immediate aftermath could aptly be described.

40 See, on this point, the first, more philological, paragraph of the Appendix II below. 41 see, for example, the edition of the Mishnah published in Venice in 1704–1705 by Bragadin, or the later editions printed by M. Ottolenghi (Leghorn 1845) and S. Belforte (Leghorn 1892). 266 saverio campanini

One should pay particular attention to the choice of the commentary of Mosheh Botarel,42 which in turn was canonized and appears obvious today, as the second of the five commentaries encircling the main text of the Sefer Yeirah. The peculiarity of this exegetical work is that, as the author clearly and candidly states in his preface, it was written at the request of a Christian pupil. After having stated that no sum of money, no matter how large, would convince him to reveal the secrets he learned from his teacher, Botarel explains: והואיל ורואה אני זה האיש מאיסטרו יואן מוכתר בכתר המעלה :אמרתי וללבי גליתי לתת מהוד זאת החכמה מוטל עליך ורציתי לגלות לו כבשי דרחמנא. והרי ארז’’ל גוי העוסק בתורה הרי הוא ככהן גדול שלפני לפנים פנה. ובעזר האל הנורא אבאר לו 43.ספר יצירה [As I saw that Maestro Ioan was crowned with the crown of excellence, I thought: I want to give you the part of splendour of this wisdom which is allowed. I wanted to reveal to him the paths of the merciful One. The Sages, of blessed memory, say: A Gentile who studies the Law is like the high priest44 who enters the holiest of the holies. With the help of the awesome God, I will explain to him the Sefer Yeirah]. Again, towards the end of the commentary,45 Moshe Botarel recalls his Christian pupil as the addressee of his exegetical efforts and the work itself is understood as a fortifying meal offered to Maestro Ioan. Moreover, the numerous quotations from Plato and Aristotle in the preface and in the commentary itself encourage one to see in Botarel’s project a pre-humanistic programme aimed at reconciling philosophy and Kabbalah, in the vein of another Spanish kabbalist such as Joseph ibn Waqar, a harmonization of the two main approaches to the Sefer Yeirah itself, the philosophical and the mystical. As a matter of fact, in later years, it was precisely the openness to a Christian readership expressed by Botarel and signalled implicitly by

42 To the bibliographical references given further in the footnotes, referring to the alleged messianic claims of Mosheh Botarel: Nehemias Brüll, “Ha-mashiach mi- Cisneros,” Ha-Maggid 25 (1878), 198–199; Heinrich Graetz, “Ein Pseudo-Messias im XIV. Jahrhundert,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 28 (1879): 78–83. 43 ed. Mantua 1562, 20r (The page number in the edition is wrongly given as 15). 44 babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 59a. אמר משה בוטריל הראתי בעבור מאיסטרו יואן כחי. ולא :ed. Mantua 1562, 54r 45 .עצרתי רוחי. כי בשלש החכמו' מדד או החזיק כל. לכן נתתי לו זה למאכל the editio princeps of the sefer yeirah 267 his publication in Mantua that led to the explicit usage of Botarel’s commentary as the main source of a Christian Kabbalistic text. It became a very influential one, if we consider that it had been written by Johann Steudner, the teacher in rebus cabalisticis of the Princess Antonia of Württemberg, for whom the famous “kabbalistic” altarpiece of Bad Teinach was painted. In 1665 Steudner published in Augsburg the polemical work bearing the title Jüdische ABC-Schul. Vom Geheimnüß deß dreieinigen Gottes und Schöpfers Iehouah auß einem denckwirdigen Spruch R. Mosi Botril über das Buch Iezirah eröffnet, where already on the title page the name of Botarel is mentioned as delivering a possible confirmation of the Christian dogma of the Trinity. In turn, Steudner depended on the incomplete Latin translation provided by the converted Jew Johann Stephan Rittangel, rather than on a direct usage of the Mantuan edition. Rittangel published a new46 Latin translation of the Sefer Yeirah in Amsterdam in 1642, together with parts of the introduction by the pseudo-Rabad (The Thirty-two Paths of Wisdom) and some excerpts from the exegetical tradition. Interesting enough, Rittangel had already used the commentary by Botarel in the polemic against the anti-Trinitarians, Socinians, and Unitarians of sorts, in the treatise entitled De veritate religionis Christianae (which appeared posthumously in Franeker 1699).47 It is evident that the publication of the commentary on the Sefer Yeirah by Mosheh Botarel in the first edition of the book itself was due not only to its objective importance; it also has to be read as a clear invitation to potential Christian readers to understand the universalistic significance of the book, its permanent value, without any confusion on matters of faith but with the firm purpose of making the treasures of Jewish mysticism accessible to a Christian readership. However, a complex combination of factors, including the influence of the Christian environment and of the growing Christian interest in Jewish literature, especially prompted by the Christian Kabbalah between the end of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century, but also revived in a polemical sense by the campaign leading to

46 The third published but, with that of Borromeo, the fourth still extant. 47 De veritate religionis Christianae. Pars prima articulis duobus, continet testimonia ex S. Scrip- tura et rabbinis, I: De SS. Trinitate; II: De Christo. Pars secunda de Iudaeorum Cabbala, qua S. Scripturam intepretantur. Autore D. Johan. Stephano Rittangelio, Bambergensi, S. Lin- guae in illustri accademia Regiomont. Professori, Franequerae, apud Wibium Bleck Bibliopolam 1699. 268 saverio campanini the censorship of the Hebrew books, left a subtle though durable trace in the making of the editio princeps of the Sefer Yeirah. On the very last page of the book, a rather unusual feature appears. I present here the translation of the introductory lines written, I believe, by Jacob ben Naftali ha-Kohen of Gazzuolo: The printers said: we decided to recall here the names of the sages who have been quoted by the commentators of the Sefer Yeirah which we have printed48 and the titles of a choice of the works they have written about the wisdom of Kabbalah, in which they commented upon the text of this sealed book. They did this in order to make known how vast is the sum49 of their speeches in the eyes of the perfect and of the numerous,50 and in order to leave for the ones coming after us the mission of bringing their secrets to the fore, everyone with what he will be able to find, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord.51 This premise is followed by one of the first instances, if not the very first one, of a Hebrew bibliography, listing names of authors and book titles, comprising twenty-three authors and thirty-three titles. It differs from the usual booklists found in the medieval codices because it refers not to real books but rather to “desiderata,” to possible books, ordered through an initial principle of systematization. Moreover, all the books belong to one literary field, i.e., Jewish mysticism. The authors and titles, on the other hand, are derived from the quotations or the references offered by Mosheh Botarel, a fact that clearly denounces the origin of this bibliography as merely a list of references extracted from that exegetical work.

Here is the list of authors and titles whose Hebrew original is reproduced in Appendix II at the end of this paper:

I) Abraham of Rimmon,52 Sefer ha-Berit (1);53 II) sa‘adiah, Sefer ha-Emunot; Sefer Even ha-Filosofim (33); III) Aharon, the great Kabbalist of the Academy of Babel, Sefer ha- Nikkud (2); Sefer ha-Pardes (2);

48 Literally: “which we have written” [katavnu]. 49 cf. Psalms 139:17. 50 cf. Nahum 1: 12. 51 Isaiah 11:9. 52 That is, Granada (Rimmon in Hebrew = “pomegranade”). 53 The number following the titles refers to the bibliography published by Adolf Jel linek, “Biographische Skizzen,“ in Literaturblatt des Orients (1846): 187–189. The absence of a cardinal number means that a particular item is absent from Jellinek’s list. the editio princeps of the sefer yeirah 269

IV) eliahu, Sefer Zeh ha-Sha‘ar la-Shem (3); V) Yom Tov, Ketem Paz (15); VI) Isaac ben Samuel, Ketem Paz (21); VII) Jacob ben Ruben, Sefer Hekhal ha-Shem (18); VIII) ‘Azri’el ben Menachem, Sefer ha-Milluim (34); IX) meir ben Todros of Toledo, Sefer Lifne u-le-Fanim (27); X) Judah ben Shemariah, Sefer Miqweh Israel (13) XI) eli‘ezer ha-Kallir, Sefer Kevod ha-Shem (4); XII) bachyah, Sefer Ohel Mo‘ed (7); Sefer ha-Emunah (7); Sefer ha-‘Asiriah (8), Sefer ha-‘Iyyun; Sefer Sod ha-Shem; XIII) natronay, Sefer ha-Tarshish (32); XIV) ramban, Sefer ha-Rimmon; Sefer Oar ayyim (8); Sefer Eden Gan Elohim (8); XV) baruk the great Kabbalist, Sefer oshen ha-Mishpat (9); XVI) hay Gaon, Sefer ha-Kemiah (10), Sefer Kol Ha-Shem Be-Koa (10); XVII) shabbatay, Sefer Tavnot ha-Mishkan (37); XVIII) ruben the Spaniard, Sefer ha-Shulan (35), Sefer ha-Belimah; XIX) Jacob ben Meir ben Nissim, Sefer anif Melukah (19); XX) mosheh ben Isaac, Sefer Hakkarat ha-Middot (29); XXI) Joseph Ashkenazi, Keter Torah (16); XXII) meir of Rothenburg, Be’er Mayim ayyim (25); XXIII) menachem, father of Azriel, Sefer Urim we-Tummim (30).

The list is allegedly extracted from the five commentaries, but on closer examination, it appears that all the titles and all the authors come from one commentary only, namely that of Mosheh Botarel. The very idea of preparing and publishing a bibliography, even a more modest index of references, shows a clear Christian influence, since the great novelty of these years was the publication of Konrad Gesner’s Bibliotheca Universalis (Zürich 1545), already a mature product of the printing revolution. Not by chance was it the result of the Council of Trent’s efforts to organize, control, and tame the menacing and seemingly uncontrollable diffusion of knowledge. Its roots are to be sought, though not exclusively, in Abbot Trithemius’s (author of the De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, a sort of bibliography avant la lettre) fascination for coding and organizing knowledge. It is perhaps not only a coincidence that the Sefer Yeirah, a book about combinatory permuta- tions as the matrix of the universe on the basis of a few symbols and its commentary ad extra by Botarel, should be at the root of the first attempt at organizing knowledge through a metonymic method: the pars pro toto of bibliography. As is well known, the history of Hebrew 270 saverio campanini bibliography, of which the small booklist we are describing could be considered a chapter in prehistory, is marked by two factors: the Chris- tian pre-eminence and influence, and the generally negative attitude toward Judaism of its pioneers (Buxtorf and Bartolocci). Even the first genuinely Jewish Hebrew bibliography, that authored by Shabbatai Bass, the Sifte Yeshenim (which appeared in Amsterdam in 1680), is still pervaded by the influence of Christian authors, some of them even listed in a special section of the book, called Sha‘ar ha-ionim (Gate of the External Ones). At the same time, to come more specifically to the history of kabbalistic bibliography, whose initiator was no doubt Johannes Reuchlin, the most complete bibliographia cabbalistica of the first half of the sixteenth century is to be found inthe De harmonia mundi of Francesco Giorgio. Moreover, as I have shown elsewhere,54 the main author perused by Giorgio to reach his remarkable number of over fifty titles, is none other than Moshe Botarel. This explains, inter alia, the striking similarity of the booklist published by Giorgio, and repeated without question by later authors such as Agrippa of Nettesheim, but even in a more critical age in the Bibliotheca orientalis of Johann Heinrich Hottinger,55 with the one printed, almost forty years after Giorgio, by Jacob ben Naftali of Gazzuolo. Botarel’s commentary, with its programmatic purpose of reconciling Kabbalah and philosophy, written for the instruction of a learned Christian eager to deepen his knowledge of the tantalizing aphorisms of the Sefer Yeirah, with its rich treasure of quotations and references to obscure sources, seemed the ideal candidate for exposing to a decisive test a discipline still in its cradle, such as bibliography. And this is precisely what happened first in Giorgio’s De harmonia mundi and then in Jacob ben Naftali’s most influential editio princeps. Ironically, almost none of the titles listed in this bibliography, printed also to stimulating research on them, seem to exist. There is no question that it is epistemologically much easier to demonstrate that a given title or author’s name corresponds to a real book or person rather than the opposite, since the demonstration of the nonexistence of something has always been a slippery problem. On the basis of our present knowledge concerning extant Kabbalistic books, the

54 saverio Campanini, Le fonti ebraiche. 55 Johann Heinrich Hottinger, Promptuarium sive Bibliotheca orientalis, (Heidelberg 1658), 31–36. the editio princeps of the sefer yeirah 271 booklist appended to the editio princeps of the Sefer Yeirah of Mantua could be fittingly described as a puzzling blend of pseudonymy and pseudepigraphy. The fame of Moshe Botarel, always included in the standard editions of the Sefer Yeirah, started to decline at the beginning of the critical confrontation with the Jewish past, especially in German lands. As one of the fathers of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, Samuel Judah אולם נחשד האיש הזה אצלי מאד שמביא Rapoport, wrote in 1828:56 ספרים שלא הי' נמצאים כלל בעולם, והרבה מהם לא ראה איש ולא In my view] שמע אותם. ולדוגמא מי יודע מספר כבוד ה' לר"א הקליר? this man (Botarel) was always suspected of being a forger because he quotes books never found in the world, many of them unseen and unheard of. For example: who knows a Sefer Kavod ha-Shem by El‘azar ha-Kallir?]. Even more definitive was the judgment by Leopold Zunz:57 “Die im Sohar citierten Werke [. . .] scheinen ebenso wenig existirt zu haben, als je folgende bei R. Moses Botril vorkommende Schriften vorhanden gewesen58 [. . .] erdichtete Anonyme [. . .] mancher Autor erdichtet einen Verfasser und ein Werk zugleich.” [The works mentioned in the Zohar [. . .] seem to have the same low degree of existence as the following works appearing in R. Moshe Botarel’s commentary [. . .] some anonymous works are invented [. . .] some writers invent the author and the work at the same time]. Of a similar opinion was Leopold Dukes,59 who wrote: “dieser Autor [war] ziemlich leichtgläubig (um den gelindesten Ausdruck zu brauchen), so ist die Existenz dieses Werkes [i.e., Sa‘adyah’s Even ha- Filosofim], dessen Namen schon verdächtig ist, mehr als zweifelhaft” [This author was quite credulous (to use the politest expression), and the existence of this work, whose name is already suspicious, more than doubtful].

56 salomon Rapoport, “Toledot rabbenu Sa’adyah Ga’on we-qorot sifraw,” Bikkure ha-‘ittim (1828–29), 20–37, in part. 36, n. 47. 57 Leopold Zunz, Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden, historisch entwickelt. Ein Beitrag zur Alterthumskunde und biblischen Kritik, zur Literatur- und Religionsgeschichte (Berlin: A. Asher, 1832), 407–408. 58 here follows an inventory of invented books, attributed to real authors. 59 Leopold Dukes, Literaturhistorische Mittheilungen über die ältesten hebräischen Exegeten, Grammatiker und Lexikographen nebst hebräischen Beilagen (Stuttgart: Adolph Krabbe, 1844), 103–104. 272 saverio campanini

To the best of my knowledge, Moriz Steinschneider was the first to use the adjective “notorious” to describe Botarel, a term that would become standard in later secondary literature.60 Adolph Jellinek61 could only try to defend Botarel by asserting that he was not the perpetrator but the victim of the pseudepigraphies. (“Wir glauben, daß Botarel diese Schriften wirklich vor sich gehabt und selbst oft der Betrogene gewesen”) [We believe that Botarel had really had these works on his desk, and has been the victim of forgeries]. At the other end of the spectrum (probably for polemical reasons), we find Julius Fürst, who finds no reason to doubt the authenticity of the attributions and quotations found in Botarel’s commentary.62 In more recent years, a new attempt toward a revision of this intimidat- ing consensus was made by the late Zipora Brody, who spared no effort to rescue Botarel’s compromised reputation.63 Be that as it may, in dealing with Botarel and his dubious sources Zunz and Jellinek resort to the very same means of their predecessors, Francesco Giorgio and Jacob of Gazzuolo, that is to say, they produce a bibliography of authors and titles quoted by Botarel as the first step towards a clarification of their philologico-historical status. After all, it was Konrad Gesner who put on the title page of his momentous Bibliotheca universalis the programmatic words: Catalogus librorum omnium extantium et non extantium; the ideal of completeness, the ever resurfacing motor of any bibliographic project finds one of its limits in the nonexistent books. From a purely bibliographical point of view, in which the description of books tends fatally to replace the real thing with the token, imaginary books have the same dignity as any other book, but cataloguing them, precisely because of listing them and making them, ironically, more easily retrievable, paves the way to exposing them as fabrications. The years of the triumph of bibli-

60 moritz Steinschneider, Jewish Literature (London: Longman, 1857), 110. 61 Adolf Jellinek, “Biographische Skizzen,” 189. 62 Julius Fürst, Geschichte des Karäerthums. Von 900 bis 1575 der gewöhnlichen Zeitrechnung. Eine kurze Darstellung seiner Entwickelung, Lehre und Literatur mit den dazugehörigen Quellen- nachweisen (Leipzig: Oskar Leiner, 1865), 161–162: “Es ist nicht der entferntenste Grund vorhanden, die Existenz und die Autorschaft dieses Buches bei Botarello zu bezweifeln, da es längst bekannt ist, dass Botarello eine große Sammlung von Jezira- Kommentaren zusammengebracht hat und niemals ein Falsator, sondern ein kab- balistischer Schwärmer war.” 63 Zipora Brody, “R. Moshe Botarel, perusho le-sefer yeirah u-demuto shel ibn Aharon,” in Gershom Scholem in Memoriam, ed. Joseph Dan, Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 21 (2007), 159–206. the editio princeps of the sefer yeirah 273 ography are also the epoch of the most successful parodies or satires of catalogues. One is always reminded of the celebrated catalogue of the Abbey of Sainct-Victor by Rabelais or of the Courtiers’ Library by John Donne: in both these satirical inventories, the part of the Kabbalah and especially of its Christian avatar was by no means marginal.64 This is one of the most striking ironies of the history of science: the quest for nonexistent books brings about a deeper knowledge of the existing ones. The programme that was common to Giorgio and Jacob of Gazzuolo, the desire to fill the world with (these) books, could not be fulfilled, but it was the first step in an ongoing project, albeit a negative one, aimed at filling the world with knowledge. This is the eternal problem and, at the same time, the ever-resurfacing task of bibliography: the catalogue can function metonymically as a substitute for the books but it can also be used as a powerful tool to search for them: only in searching for the books can it be established that they do not (yet) exist. On the other hand, the nonexistence of some books reminds the bibliographer of a trivial truth, so often forgotten, namely that bibliography is not a substitute for the real books: it is a description, and not the real thing. Nevertheless, the teaching of the Sefer Yeirah is not ambiguous on this point: the world was created by combining a tiny number of elements, following, or initiating, the alphabetical order of reality.

64 I have briefly dealt with these two imaginary libraries in Saverio Campanini, “Wege in die Stadt der Bücher” and idem, “Francesco Giorgio’s Criticism of the Vulgata: Hebraica Veritas or Mendosa Traductio?,” in Hebrew into Latin—Latin into Hebrew, ed. Giulio Busi (Turin: Nino Aragno, 2006), 206–231. 274 saverio campanini

Appendix I 65

שלומי אמוני ישראל66 ראשי גולת אריאל המה הגברים אשר מעולם אנשי שם חכמים ונבונים בעלי תריסין מחצצים בין משאבים67 ישבי על מדין יוסף י"י עליכם ארך ימים ושנות חיים ושלו' השקט ובטח עד עולם. באלפי ישראל אודיע נאמנה כי קול מלחמה ברמה נשמע68 במחנה העברים על דברת בני האדם אשר שננו כחרב לשונם דרכו חצם דבר מר לירות איש עני ונכה רוח אשר בעניו שת לבו לאצור ולכנוס נתן לכסף מוצא לחפור ממטמונים כל אשר מצאה ידו מספר הזהר והתקונים. גם בלילה לא שכב לבו לעמוד עם תלמידיו רעיו ואוהבי שמו להגיהם עם עשר העתקות אשר היו לפניו אשר שמו בידו אנשי שם יחידי סגלה ובתוכם החכם הרופא המבהק איש אמונים גבור בארץ יהיה ורעו הנעלה כמ"ר יהודה מבלניש69 יצ"ו.70 והנעלה תפארת המשכילים והדרתם שממנו יתר וממנו פנה לתורה ולתעודה כמה"ר אליקים ממצירטי71 י"י ישמרהו ויחיהו ובניו יהיו כמוהו. ושרים ונכבדים יראי י"י וחושבי שמו. וכי כביד מצאה ידו ורוח י"י נשבה בו לזכות בו את הרבים נשמע קולו בבאו אל הקדש אנשים ראו כן תמהו נבהלו נחפזו לכתוב עליו שטנה להפר עצתו ולקלקל מחשבתו אל המאור הגדל לממשלת היום72 בויניציאה ולשאר החכמים יצ"ו. וכאשר שמע האיש המסכן ההוא קול הצעדה בראשי הבכאים גבורי כח לוחמים נגדו איש חרבו על ירכו73 בחרבות וברמחי' שנס מתניו וירץ לפני א"ח א"ב74 בכל חכמה ומדע כולל ובפרט בחכמת הקבלה ענו ונשוא פנים זקן מלא רחמים ה"ה כמהר"ר אליה חלפן75 יצ"ו ולפני מעלתו ולפני חכמים אחרים ערך משפטו ודינו גם לא יבזו לו. ובימים ההם נאספו עליו נכים ולא ידעו קרעו ולא דמו76 חרוק עליו שנימו77 לשומו מרמה ולבלעו חנם.78 ויהי כל העם נדון79 ונעשו על זה כתות כתות. כת אחד היו מואסים חכמת הקבלה גם כופרים בה אמרו מי ר' שמעון כי נעבדנו וכי נשים לדבריו לבנו הלא קטון הוא בערך שאר התנאים שהיו בדורו יען כי בכל עת שחולק עמהם אין הלכה כמותו. הוא אומר שהמניח תפלין בחול

65 Tiqqune ha-Zohar, Mantua 1558, [147v–148r]. The text reproduced here follows the errata corrige ([147r]). 66 2 Samuel 20:19. 67 Judges 5:11. 68 cf. Jeremiah 31:14. .חבלניש The printed text, obviously faulty, reads 69 70 Cf. for the identification of this important figure with the physician and banker, Laudadio de Blanis, Nehemias Brüll, “Miszellen”, Jahrbücher für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur 1 (1874): 221–237, esp. 236–237; see also Ariel Toaff, “Maestro Laudadio de Blanis e la banca ebraica in Umbria e nel Patrimonio di San Pietro nella prima metà del Cinquecento,” Zakhor 1 (1997): 95–112. 71 sic for “Macerata.” 72 Genesis 1:16. 73 Exodus 32:27; Song of Songs 3:8. 74 1 Kings 18:46. 75 cf. David Kaufmann, “Elia Menachem Chalfan on Jews Teaching Hebrew to Non-Jews,” Jewish Quarterly Review 9,3 (1897), 500–508. 76 cf. Psalms 35:15. 77 cf. Psalms 35:16. 78 Job 2:3. 79 2 Samuel 19:10. the editio princeps of the sefer yeirah 275

המועד בר קטלא הוא. והאשרי על פי התורה אשר יורוהו חכמי התלמוד היה מניחם ומברך עליהם הנה שאין הלכה כמותו. מבטן מי יצא היום ספר הזהר אשר עד הנה לא נודע מקומו איו ובישיבות רבני צרפת וספרד לא נזכר שמו. ומי יודע אה לעת הזאת בקרבנו יושבים ברי לבב נקיי השכל טהורי הרעיונים אשר בדאו מלבם הפשטים ההם והמדרשים. אין טוב לאדם מספר ימי חייו אשר נתן לו האלקים כי אם לדרוש ולחקור הויות אביי ורבא והדינים על פי התלמוד בבלי והפסקים התהלך לפניו והיה תמים בעשית המצות לבד ומה יתן לך ומה יוסיף לך80 לבקש טעמים וסבות גדולות נסתרות ונפלאות ומה העדות והחקים אשר צוה י"י אלקינו ורזים סתומים וחתומים. כת אחר סבוהו גם סבבוהו והיו אומרים לו דבר אתה עמנהו ונשמעה מה הנה עשר ספירות ספר אתה למען תצדק81 אם הם עצמותו ית' או חוץ ממנו מאחר שאין ליחס רבוי בעצמותו ית' חלילה. כת אחר היו אומרים שאין להתעסק בחכמת הקבלה כי מי הוא זה ואיזה הוא אשר ימלאנו לבו להכנס בחצר גנת ביתן המלך82 בדור הזה לקצר המשיג ולעמק המשג שאי אפשר לבא אל תכליתה החקר אלק' תמצא אם עד תכלית שדי תמצא.83 כת אחר היו אומרים שאין לעסוק בה כדי שלא יבא האדם לטעות בה ושגיגתה עולה זדון. כת אחר היו אומרים שאין רשות לאדם לפרוץ גדר אשר גדרו וגבלו ראשונים ולגלות סתרים עתיקים ודברים עמוקים אשר מאז ומני קדם היו סתומים וחתומי' ואיככה נוכל וראינו84 שתשתפכנו אבני קדש בראש כל חוצות85 דברים שכסן עתיק יומין יעלו על שפתי רקים ופוחזים | נאנחים ונאנקים. ויהי כי הציקו לו86 אלו הכתות כל אחד לפי דרכו ולא עצר כח87 לפייס רצון איש ואיש ירבו ידברו גבהה גבהה יצא עתק מפיהם לא יוכל הארץ להכיל את כל דבריהם כי נתנו עליו בקולם ותצלנה שתי אזניו88 נחבה אל הכלים בחדרי חדרים פלח ידו והחזיק בקלמוסו והשיב אמריו להם קצת ראיותיו היו מאשר כתב ר' יהודה חייט בהקדמתו89 וקצתם מאשר כתב ר' ברכיאל90 בהקדמתו וקצתן מספרים אחרים עם מה ששם אלקים בפיו והנוח הפסק שם ביד בחור מעם חכם חרשים ונבון לחש91 המשכיל כמ"ר עמנואל יצ"ו מפיהם למען יקבלו ממנו כל אלו הכתות תשובתם. ובו אבד ושבר מצבות הבעל אשר בנה עליו ויקף והמקלות אשר פצל ברהטים92 ברב חלומות והבלים ודברים הרבה האיש אשר דמה לו

80 Psalms 120:3. 81 Isaiah 43:26. 82 esther 1:5. 83 Job 11:7. 84 Cf. Esther 8:6. 85 Lamentations 4:1. 86 Judges 16:16. 87 2 Chronicles 13:20. 88 1 Samuel 3:11. 89 The introduction to his commentary (Minat Yehudah) on the Ma‘areket ha-Elohut. See Boaz Huss, Ke-Zohar ha-raqia‘. Peraqim be-hitqabbelut ha-Zohar u-be-havanyyat ‘erko ha- semali ( Jerusalem: Machon Ben-Tzvi, 2008), 127. R. Berakiel Meshullam Kaufmann, author of the .כרכיאל The printed text reads 90 Lev Adam. See Tishby, “Sefer ha-Zohar,” 103; Busi, “Materiali,” 110–111. 91 Isaiah 3:3. 92 Genesis 30:38. 276 saverio campanini

אשר הבאיש ריחו ותעל צחנתו93 וכל זה לא שוה לו כי מפני ההפכה הזאת נסוגו אחור מרדוף אחרי המלאכה הבעלי כיסיס אשר נדבה רוחם להחזיק94 את ידו כדי שלא ליכנס בתגר זה. וכאשר שמע מלמדו אלופו ומיודעו חכם הרזים הגאון הנעלה כמהר"ר משה בסולה95 איש האלקים את מספר החלום ואת שברו וכי נבל נבלה ידבר96 נגד חכמת הקבלה והעוסקים בה קנא לאלקיו ולתורתו קנאה גדולה ויתר לו וכתב הדברים האלה עלי עשור ועלי נבל97 אשר הישרה יעקשו98 ודברי הדרת כבודו הנם כתובים על זה הספר הישר בראשו. ודעו כי להשקיט התלהבות והמיית ההמון ולשכך תלנות בני ישראל99 מעליו עשתנתיו נזרו אחור100 וכחותיו זרו מתאותם ופצה פיו לבלתי הדפיס עוד ספרי קבלה ובכן שלח ידו והדפיס ספר לוית חן101 שחבר על דקדוק הלשון. וכאשר ראה הקשר אמיץ כי ראשי האנשים אשר היו בעכריו החזיקו ידי אחרים לעבוד עבודתו אשר אמר לעשות למען לא יחרך דמיה צידו102 אזר כגבר חלציו ואמ' כי לא נופל הוא מהם והעתקותיו מהעתקותיהם ודרכיו מדרכיהם ומחשבותיו ממחשבותיהם וצרכו להחיות נפשות בניו ובנותיו מצרכיהם ויעש גם הוא מטעמים ותעלומה יוציא אור כנחלים נטיו103 עלי נהר תקוני האלקי רשב"י זצ"ל אשר יזהירו כזהר הרקיע.104 וספר המערכת עם פי' ר' יהודה חייט זצ"ל ורב פי' זולתו ויצא פרח ויצץ ציץ105 מורה מקום העסוקים איש על ידו ויגמל שקדים106 הגהות וחדושים חדשם וסדרם או רוחו הוא קבצם במלקט שבלים בין בעמרים אחרי הקוצרים משדדים עמקים אחרי חכמת הקבלה. ועתה י"י אלקים כאשר עמדת לימין אביון להושיעו משפטי נפשו107 כן תאזרהו חיל לעצר כח להשלים דברו הטוב אשר דבר ותשפיל שנאיו מטה מטה ותכריע קמיו ורגלי יורדי עמו לחייו תמיד המעד שפך עליהם זעמך וחרון אפך ישיגם108 כי שכר רדפוהו עזרהו. ואהביו וסומכי ידיו יהיו כצאת השמש בגבורתו109 דשנים ורעננים יהיו להגיד כי ישר י"י110 ית' שמו לעולם אמן ואמן. תם ונשלם יום ג' לחדש כסלו שנת והוכן בחסד כסא ויש"ב עליו באמת באהל דוד שפט ודרש111 וגו' פה מנטובה על יד יעקב כהן בכמ"ר נפתלי הכהן זצ"ל מגאזולו המחוקק ספרים.

93 Joel 2:20. .להחויק The printed text reads 94 95 cf. Abraham David, In Zion and in Jerusalem. The Itinerary of Rabbi Moses Basola (1521–1523) ( Jerusalem: Bar Ilan University, 1999). 96 Isaiah 32:6. 97 Psalms 92:4. 98 micha 3:9. 99 numbers 14:27; 17:20. 100 Isaiah 1:4. 101 mantua 1557. 102 Proverbs 12:27. 103 numbers 24:6. 104 daniel 12:3. 105 numbers 17:23a. 106 numbers 17:23b. 107 cf. Psalms 109:31. 108 Psalms 69:24–25. 109 Judges 5:31. 110 Psalms 92:15–16. 111 Isaiah 16:5. the editio princeps of the sefer yeirah 277

Appendix II 112

אמרו המדפיסים מי חכם ויבן הקושי העצום אשר השיגנו בהדפסת הספר הנכבד הזה לחלוף הנוסחאו' הנמצאות ממנו כי רב הוא אם בכמות ואם באיכות ומזה נמשך חלוף אינו מועט בין מפרשי דבריו אם כסדור הבבות ממנו בקדימה ובאיחור. ואם בלשון איש ואיש, אשר לזה קשה היה לזווגם, נבון וידע כי לא חסרנו מאומה מתת לו השלמות האפשרי לנו עם היותנו אנחנו המתחילים במלאכה וזה יצא ראשונה בדפוס ומעט אשר היו לפנינו מהעתקות המפרשים אשר על כן אמצנו זרועותינו לחקוק בעט ברזל ועופרת113 מבחר המפרשים ממנו ה"ה פירוש הגאון רבינו סעדיה, ופירוש ר' אליעזר מגרמישא, ופירוש הרמב"ן, ופירוש הרבא"ד, ועם פירוש הר"ם בוטאריל"ו זכר צדיקים לברכה. ואם בקצתם הצבנו לבד חלק מהם, לא סרנו מהעלות על ספר החלק ההוא אשר אנה י"י לידינו. להועיל למעיינים במה שיראו ממנו וישישו כי ימצאו דברי חכמים כדרבונות, ולהקל מעליהם משאת חלוף הנסחאות הוספנו שנית ידינו להדפיס דברי הספר כפי החלוף הנמצא ממנו למען ירוץ הקורא בו וישכיל ממוצא דבר. נשירה לאלדי ישענו אשר נתן לנו כח להמציא המרגלית הטובה הזאת אשר היתה תלויה בצוארו של אברהם אבינו ע"ה. כה יעשה וכה יוסיף לתת לנו עוז ותעצומות לעשות ספרים הרבה אין קץ כאשר עם לבבנו להגדיל תורה ולהאדיר אמן / אמרו המדפיסים ראינו להעלות הנה זכרון שמות החכמים אשר נשאו על שפתם מפרשי ספר יצירה אשר כתבנו ושמות מבחר ספריהם אשר חברו בחכמת הקבלה אשר בתוכם בארו מדברי הספר הזה החתום. למען114 דעת מה עצמו ראשי מאמריו115 בעיני שלמים וכן רבים,116 ולמען ימלאו ידיהם הבאים אחרינו להוציא לאור תעלומותיהם איש איש מן הבא לידו ומלאה הארץ דעה את י"י.117 הר"ר אברהם ב"ר יצחק מרמון ספרד חבר ספר הברית רבינו סעדיה חבר ספר האמונות, וספר אבן הפלוסופים. רבינו אהרן המקובל הגדול ראש ישיבת בבל חבר ספר הנקרא ספר הנקוד וספר הפרדס בקבלה. הרב המקובל הגדול118 ר' אליהו חבר ספר נקרא זה השער לי"י הרב המקובל רבינו יום טוב חבר ספר נקרא כתם פז וכן ר' יצחק ב"ר שמואל חבר גם הוא ספר אחד וקראו כך. הר"ר יעקב בן ראובן חבר ספר היכל י"י הר"ר עזריאל בן הקדוש ר' מנחם חבר ספר המלואים. הרב ר' מאיר בן טודרוס מטוליטלה חבר ספר לפני ולפנים. ר' יהודה ב"ר שמריה המקובל הגדול חבר ספר מקוה ישראל. הר"ר אליעזר הקליר חבר ספר הנקרא כבוד השם.

112 Sefer Yeirah, Mantua 1562, 108r–v. 113 Job 19:24. .The printed text reads למעת 114 115 cf. Psalms 139:17. 116 cf. Nahum 1:12. 117 Isaiah 11:9. .הגדולו The printed text reads 118 278 saverio campanini

הר"ר בחיי חבר בספר הקבלה אוהל מועד. ספר האמונה. ספר העשיריה, ספר העיון, סוד י"י. ר' נטרונאי חבר ספר נקרא ספר התרשיש. הרמב"ן חבר בספר הקבלה ספר הרימון, ואוצר החיים, ועדן גן אלדים. הרב ר' ברוך המקובל הגדול חשן המשפט. רבינו האי גאון ז"ל חבר ספר הקמיצה, וספר קול י"י בכח הר"ר שבתאי המקובל חבר ספר נקרא תבנות המשכן. ר' ראובן הספרדי ספר השלחן, וספר הבלימה הר"ר יעקב בן מאיר ממדינת גיאן בן הישיש הר"ר ניסים דר בפיס חבר ספר נקרא צניף מלוכה. הר"ר משה בן הר"ר יצחק חבר ספר נקרא הכרת המדות הר"ר יוסף האשכנזי חבר ספר הנקרא כתר תורה. רבינו מאיר מרוטנבורק ז"ל חבר ספר קבלה נקרא באר מים חיים. הר"ר מנחם אביו של ר' עזריאל חבר ספר נקרא אורים ותומים. י"י ברחמיו יזכנו לאורים ותומים אכי"ר.119 ותשלם כל המלאכה ביום ו' ערב שבת פרשת שקלים כ"ד שבט שכ"ב לפ"ק.

.אמן כן יהי רצון 119 14. The Italian Translation of the Psalms by Judah Sommo

Alessandro Guetta

Italian Translations of Hebrew Literature: An Overview

Between 1898 and 1899, Moritz Steinschneider published a series of articles in the Monatschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums on the “Italian Literature of the Jews” in which he drew up a list of all the Italian texts, both printed and in manuscript, written by Ital- ian Jews during the second half of the sixteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth century.1 In these articles, an enormous mass of data was supplied to the reader, though not always in a strictly precise form. Steinschneider knew all the existing catalogues of the main European libraries perfectly, but, of course, he could not check each item. Besides, he often relied on his visual memory, and sometimes he candidly admitted that he did not remember where he had read or seen a certain text. In spite of their obvious gaps—explainable by their pioneering character—these articles are still extremely useful after more than one hundred years due to the wealth of information they contain as well as the insights of the author, who does not refrain from offering personal evaluations of his corpus and thus manifests a strong interpretative attitude. His presentation is actually a very sympathetic description of Italian Jewish culture, not surprising for a German author who adhered to the intellectual orientation of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. This Italian Jewish culture was, according to Steinschneider, not at all unfamiliar within its national context, but on the contrary contributed to its formation. Italian was not a foreign language for the Italian Jews of that time, writes Steinschneider; they lived what he defines a “sprachliches Amphibienleben,” a linguistic, amphibious situation.

1 moritz Steinschneider, Die italienische Litteratur der Juden (Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann, 1901). 280 alessandro guetta

After Steinschneider, in the 1930s Umberto Cassuto wrote some articles on the Italian translations of the ritual and of the Bible; but he was more interested in the so-called “giudeo-italiano,” the dialect spoken and sometimes written by the Jews of Italy, than he was in Ital- ian, the literary and national language based essentially on the Tuscan dialect, which reached its maturity and was widely accepted, after long and spirited polemics, in the second half of the sixteenth century.2 Nevertheless, Cassuto’s work was also extremely valuable for the Ital- ian translations, as it contains a great deal of information that has still to be fully exploited. Following these two giants of modern Jewish studies, Robert Bon- fil, in an important article published in 1994, drew the attention of scholars to the linguistic attitudes of the Italian Jews in the sixteenth century, or, as the author puts it, between “the periods of the Renais- sance and the Baroque.”3 Bonfil, probably influenced by French social historiography, focused more on the behavior of ordinary people than on a traditional history of the intellectual production. He was interested in the widespread phenomenon of a progressive abandoning of Hebrew as a written language, typical of the Jews of Italy; especially for non-religious matters and for private purposes, and by people who did not belong to the rabbinical or medical professional class. There- fore, in this article on the linguistic evolution of the Italian Jews in the early modern period, he did not deal (and if he did, it was only in brief hints) with the texts belonging to the sphere of “literature,” either in manuscript or printed form. In recent years, whereas considerable energy was expended in the study of the Judeo-Italian dialect, sometimes in its evolution towards a more literary and “modern” Italian,4 the “Italian literature of the Jews” was studied only when it did not imply a reference to Hebrew. In other words, Italian texts written by Jewish authors such as the

2 Umberto Cassuto, “Bibliografia delle traduzioni giudeo-italiane della Bibbia,” in Festschrift Armand Kaminka zum siebzigsten Geburtstage (Vienna: Maimonides-Institut, 1937): 129–141; idem., “Les traductions judéo-italiennes du Rituel,” Revue des études juives 89 (1930): 260–280; idem., “Saggi delle antiche traduzioni giudeo-italiane della Bibbia,” Annuario di Studi Ebraici 1 (1934): 101–132. 3 Robert Bonfil, “Changing Mentalities of Italian Jews between the Periods of the Renaissance and the Baroque,” Italia 11 (1994): 61–79. 4 see, for instance, Michael Ryzhik, “I cambiamenti nel giudeo-italiano nel corso del Cinquecento,” in Il mio cuore è a Oriente. Studi di linguistica storica, filologia e cultura ebraica dedicati a Maria Luisa Mayer Modena, ed. Francesco Aspesi et al. (Milan: Cisalpino, 2008), 527–545. the italian translation of the psalms 281 celebrated Dialoghi d’amore of Leone Ebreo ( Judah Abravanel) and the Italian theatrical plays or the theoretical treatises written by Leone Sommo for the court of Mantua have been widely read and studied, whereas the translations from Hebrew into Italian made by Jews in the sixteenth and seventeenth century have been almost totally neglected (the exceptions are a few, but noteworthy, linguistic studies that focus on the biblical translations). We can suppose that this lack of interest is due to the assumption that these texts were mere scholastic instruments, with no aesthetic or intellectual interest; neither would they be interesting from a linguistic point of view, being no longer testimonies of a peculiar Jewish language but of the national, literary language of the Italians. And yet, these translations sometimes have literary ambitions, their number is considerable, and, above all, they stand as eloquent proof of the necessity to build a bridge between two intellectual and linguistic worlds, a necessity that was felt in Italy long before other countries, such as the Germany of the Haskalah. These are good reasons to consider these translations as being a meaningful genre both for Jewish intellectual history and the history of Italian literature. In his passion- ate evocation of these works, Steinschneider went perhaps too far, but he was certainly right in indicating a general orientation. These translations can be divided into at least three categories, according to their contents: 1) The Bible, including the translations of the whole Bible, of some biblical books, and biblical dictionaries; 2) Poetry, including well-known liturgical compositions; 3) Philosophy and thought, including texts of rabbinical wisdom. Another classification could be made according to the intended readership of the translations: Christian or Jewish. Among Jewish readers, another sub- division is possible: were they school teachers and students, or ordinary readers moved by intellectual curiosity or in search of aesthetic pleasure? If we examine the categories derived from the contents of the translations—by far the least problematic method of classification—the first category, the Bible, is certainly the most common. It follows an ancient tradition of Judaeo-Italian translations, written for teaching purposes and without any literary ambition. The pupils learned the sacred text through a word-by-word version in Judaeo-Italian, despite the fact that the Italian syntax and even the agreement of genders, which faithfully followed the Hebrew original, were visibly affected. This field is, as we said, sufficiently studied; since the works of Cassuto, scholars have 282 alessandro guetta been publishing these texts and studying them particularly from a linguistic point of view: Judaeo-Italian was a dialect in evolution, as the biblical translations and other texts, such as the rabbinical sermons, clearly testify. But in the sixteenth century, the language used for these translations started to be literary Italian, as pointed out by some eminent linguists such as Max Berenblut (later, as an Israeli, Menahem Benitt), Benvenuto Terracini, and Luisa Ferretti Cuomo.5 A first analysis of the existing texts, both in manuscript and printed form, already shows some interesting features they have in common: they obviously differ from the Catholic translations, in that they are faithful to the Hebrew text and to Jewish exegetical tradition and exclude any Christological allusions or implicitly Christian interpretations. In doing so, these translators or compilers of biblical glossaries that actually contained a large portion of the biblical texts in a disguised form were, consciously or not, objectively closer to the intellectual world of the Reformation, if not in the final results—the Protestants did not refrain from finding Christological allusions in the haebraica veritas— then at least in the attitude vis-à-vis the reading of the original text. The writing and publishing of vernacular translations of biblical books at that time in the Catholic countries and in Italy in particular fell under the control and the prohibition (almost always) of the ecclesiastic authorities, and constituted de facto a sort of challenge.6 I will analyze later on the translation of the Psalms by the poet and playwright Leone (or Judah) Sommo of Mantua; here I would like only to note that the translation of Ecclesiastes by the physician David de Pomi, (published in Venice in 1571)7 is considered by historians to be the first printed version of a biblical book in which the original Hebrew appears facing the Italian translation.8 It was also the

5 max Berenblut, “A Comparative Study of Judaeo-Italian Translations of Isaiah” (Unpublished Dissertation New York: Columbia University, 1940); Benvenuto Ter- racini, Review of Berenblut’s Dissertation, Romance Philology 9 (1956–1957): 243–258; Luisa Ferretti Cuomo, “Rashi be-Italyah. Hede ha-parshanut ha-yehudit be-targume shir ha-shirim le-italqit u-le-italqit-yehudit bi-tequfat ha-renesans,” Peamim 83 (2000): 132–146. 6 my main reference for the Catholic censorship of biblical vernacular translations is Gigliola Fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo. La censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della Scrittura (1471–1605) (Bologna: II Mulino, 1997). 7 david de’ Pomi, L’Ecclesiaste di Salomone. Nuovamente dal testo hebreo tradotto e secondo il vero senso nel volgar idioma dichiarato (Venice: Giordano Ziletti e compagni, 1571). 8 edoardo Barbieri, Le Bibbie italiane del Quattrocento e del Cinquecento (Milan: Bibli- ografica, 1992), 140–141. the italian translation of the psalms 283 last translation published in Italy before a very long interval preceding the new, open attitude of the Church almost two centuries later.9 De Pomi’s book does not bear the authorization of the Inquisition, and this was apparently common for a book printed in Venice. But the surprising fact is that in a period when the vernacular versions of the Bible were prohibited, this translation (especially as it was written by a Jew), could be approved by the special Venetian committee in charge of pre-publication censorship. This committee was composed of three persons who intervened successively: an inquisitor, a public reader, and a ducal secretary.10 Besides, one of the dedicatees is the cardinal Giovanni Grimani, Patriarch of Aquileia (compared by the author with the Hebrew Patriarchs), whom the Inquisition had wanted to prose- cute for heresy. Grimani was finally acquitted by the Council of Trent after the intervention of the Republic of Venice. The other dedicatee is Margaret of Valois, the daughter of François I, King of France and wife of Emmanuel Philibert I, the duke of Savoy, a “femme savante” and patroness of arts, who protected the Waldenses and the Hugue- nots, upon whose death the well-known Jews Azariah de’ Rossi and Judah Moscato composed elegies. These details can be meaningful. As for a later translation of the book of Proverbs, published in Venice by Hezekiah Rieti in 1617,11 in spite of its intended Jewish readership—it is written in Hebrew letters and dedicated to the Jew Isaiah Massarani—it is easy to discover that it follows almost systematically the well-known Italian version of Antonio Brucioli, which was forbidden at that time. Brucioli was the first Italian translator of the Bible from Hebrew: a Florentine humanist, he was condemned by the Tribunal of the Inquisition for his proximity to some Protestant positions.12

9 fragnito, La Bibbia, 106. In 1757 Pope Benedict XIV authorized a new Italian translation of the Vulgate. 10 Paul F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press. 1540–1605 (Prince ton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 106. On the Inquisition and the Hebrew books in Venice, see Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini, “Il S. Uffizio di Venezia e il controllo della stampa ebraica nella seconda metà del ‘500,” in La censura libraria nell’Europa del secolo XVI, ed. Ugo Rozzo (Udine: Forum, 1997). 11 hezekiah Rieti, Mishle Shelomo (Venice: Pietro e Lorenzo Bragadin, 1617). 12 Giorgio Spini, Tra Rinascimento e Riforma. Antonio Brucioli (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1940); Andrea Del Col, “Il controllo della stampa a Venezia e i processi di Antonio Brucioli,” Critica storica 17 (1980): 457–510; Ibidem, “Appunti per un’indagine sulle traduzioni in volgare della Bibbia nel Cinquecento italiano,” in Libri, idee e senti- menti religiosi nel Cinquecento italiano, ed. Adriano Prosperi and Albano Biondi (Modena: 284 alessandro guetta

The same can be said, based on a close, quantitative analysis, of three biblical glossaries written by Italian Jews at the end of the sixteenth century, especially the most important of them, the Turgeman by Jedidia ben Moshe of Recanati:13 they are nothing but a Jewish adaptation of Brucioli’s version. These biblical dictionaries can be included in the category of biblical translations. They are more than simple dictionaries, in that some of them dissimulate the translation of large excerpts of the Bible and, in so doing, they escape the ecclesiastic prohibition. The number of words taken into account and their nature show that a reader with an elementary knowledge of Hebrew was able, by consulting this book, to understand the whole text. I assume that the authors of these works acted consciously; the prohibition of vernacular translations of the Bible was too important an issue to be ignored. But either the Christian censor was unaware of this, or, probably, he thought that the Hebrew characters were a sufficient obstacle for the ordinary reader, who was therefore preserved from the infection of heresy. It cannot be said that these Jewish authors had an intentional “Prot- estant” orientation; rather, circumstances brought Jews and Protestants nearer to one another, as both were opponents of the exclusivism of the Catholic Church. I tried to show in an article on Leone Modena, some years ago, that this proximity was evident when it comes to some important theological issues.14 The same holds, in my view, for

Panini, 1987), 457–510; Élise Boillet, ed., Antonio Brucioli, humanisme et évangélisme entre Réforme et Contre-Réforme (Paris: Honoré Champion Editions, 2008). 13 on Jedidia ben Moshe of Recanati (or Jedidia Rimini), see Gustavo Sacerdote, “Una versione italiana inedita del Moreh nevukhim di Moshe ben Maimon,” in Rendiconti della Reale academia dei Lincei. Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche (Rome: Tipografia dell’Accademia, 1892), 308–325; David Kaufmann, “Jedidiah of Rimini; or, Amadeo di Moise de Recanati,” Jewish Quarterly Review 11 (1898): 662–670; Alessandro Guetta, “La traduzione italiana cinquecentesca del Moreh nevukhim di Maimonide, in Percorsi di storia ebraica, ed. Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini (Udine: Forum, 2005), 281–303; Milka Ventura, “Un glossario giudeo-italiano composto a Pisa nel 1563,” in Gli ebrei di Pisa (secoli IX–XX), ed. Michele Luzzati (Pisa: Ospedaletto, 1998), 69–87; Cuomo, Rashi; eadem “Il Turgeman di Yedidiah Recanati da Rimini nella tradizione delle traduzioni italiane della Bibbia” (Unpublished lecture; I would like to thank Prof. Cuomo for giving me the written version of her lecture). I am preparing a study of this glossary. 14 “Leone Modena’s Magen wa-erev as an Anti-Catholic Apologia,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 7 (2000): 296–318; Hebrew, enlarged version: “Anti-Catholic Apologetics in Leon Modena’s Magen wa-erev: A Comparative Reading,” in The Lion shall Roar. Leone Modena and His World, Conference Supplement Series n. 1 of Italia, ed. Robert Bonfil and David Malkiel ( Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2003), 69–89. the italian translation of the psalms 285 a Jewish translator of the Bible into Italian such as De Pomi, who embraced the notion of a Jewish religion open to other cultural attitudes and was not entrenched in any particular posture. On the other hand, the crypto-Protestant Brucioli, who served as a reference for the Jewish translators, was possibly inspired by the tradition of Judaeo- Italian versions. These privileged a literal rendering of the original text using a more elegant and fluent syntax, in accord with the teaching of the grammarian, lexicographer, poet, and translator, Elijah Levita.15 The problem is therefore complex, a good example of reciprocal influence on a central issue of Christian and Jewish culture. As we shall see, there were other interesting cases of a back-and-forth movement between Italian and Hebrew, having more aesthetic (poetic) than religious implications. The texts belonging to what I called the second category, the poetic translations, are particularly interesting because they seem to respond not to a didactic aim but to a genuine artistic or spiritual need. I will deal later with the question of the purpose and the potential readership of all these versions. Of initial interest is the choice of the Hebrew poems to be translated. In my view, the common denominator is a certain form of spirituality, based on the feeling of human inadequacy in front of God, imbued with the certainty of human sin and of God’s great justice. The fatality of physical decay is also stressed, alongside the longing for an eternal life after death. One can see how this choice ran parallel to the Catholic devotional literature of the so-called Counter-Reformation. In any case, the translated texts do not deal with the election of Israel nor with the Torah or other notions related to the particularity of the Jewish people, but have a potentially universal meaning. This can be said about the most significant versions of the Bible mentioned above, which concerned the sapiential books

15 In the introduction to the 1532 edition of his translation, Brucioli acknowledges his debt to Eliyah Levita, “by far the best Hebrew grammarian of our time.” Even Sante Pagnini, the author of the important Latin translation of the Bible—who certainly inspired Brucioli—was possibly influenced by Levita’s teaching: the lexicon Tishbi has been found in his library. See Élodie Attia, “Le manuscrits n. 3–4 de la bibliothèque municipale de Lyon au regard des autres versions manuscrites du Sefer Ha-zirkhonoth [sic, au lieu de zikhronoth]: nouveaux éléments,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 72/3 (2010): 575–592. On Pagnini see Anna Morisi Guerra, “Sante Pagnini traducteur de la Bible,” in Théorie et pratique de l’exégèse, ed. Irena Backus and Francis Higman (Genève: Droz, 1990), 191–198. 286 alessandro guetta and could therefore be read as universal, religious texts, devoid of all reference to Israel. Cassuto lists thirty-nine biblical dictionaries and complete or incomplete translations of the Bible. This bibliography must be updated and modified in light of recent studies. But their number shows the importance of this literary genre and the difficulty of the task facing the researcher. Jewish thought, the third category of texts, is represented by the translation of the Guide for the Perplexed (in Italian: Erudizione dei confusi), made by the already mentioned Jedidiah ben Moses of Recanati, and by several excerpts from rabbinical literature. David de’ Pomi translated some passages of the Pirqe Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) and appended them to a moral-philosophic volume that accompanied his version of Ecclesiastes.16 Leone Modena also quoted the difficult expressions of Pirqe Avot at the end of his biblical dictionary Pi ha-Ariyeh,17 as well as some Talmudic expressions and, quite remarkably, a series of Hebrew philosophical terms that would give the reader the minimum skill required to read the philosophic classics, namely Judah Halevi’s Kuzari and Maimonides’ Guide, of course in their Hebrew versions. What motivated these authors to translate into Italian? Some texts plainly explain the author’s reasons. The translator of the Guide for the Perplexed, for instance, declared explicitly that his work was intended for students who had difficulties in understanding the numerous theological and scientific terms of that treatise, and who could therefore ask the experts, supplied by the Italian words. The context suggests that the students Jedidiah was thinking of were Jewish, and the experts were Christians. The second declared motivation of this Italian translation is that, to the surprise of the translator Jedidiah, given the many scholars better suited than him, such work had not yet been done, and he therefore wanted to fill the gap. Yet why did that gap have to be filled? Why would a Jew consider it necessary to translate a classic of his culture into Italian, in Hebrew characters? Was it for didactic purposes? A student who wanted to read the Guide for the Perplexed still had to be familiar with Hebrew, because an understanding of the Guide required a good deal of knowledge of Bible, exegesis, Talmud, and

16 emilio Teza, “Delle operette minori di David De’ Pomi,” in Atti del R. Istituto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Tomo VI, Serie VII (Venice: Segreteria dell’istituto, 1895), 965. 17 Venice: Giovanni Colleoni, 1640. the italian translation of the psalms 287

Jewish law. Besides, even if this work was, as he claimed, the product of his teaching activity (a possibility that cannot be excluded), the declared goal of Jedidiah was to “fill a gap,” in other words to make a monument of his Jewish tradition available to his other linguistic and cultural world, that of Italy.

Judah Sommo’s Translation of the Psalms

Let us recall Steinschneider’s comment about the “amphibious, linguistic life” of the Italian Jews and turn to another extremely interesting text: the Italian poetical translation of thirty-three Psalms18 made by the well-known playwright Leone Sommo (1527–1592).19 This is a text still in manuscript, not dated, and recently restored after the fire of 1904, which devastated a wing of the National Library in Turin.20 The translation of a biblical text by a Jew raises a particular set of questions. I would like to focus on the reasons underlying these translations, placing them in a comparative perspective. What are the questions to be asked about an Italian translation into Hebrew of a biblical text, done in the late Renaissance? Would these questions be different if the author were a Jew? More specifically: an “ordinary” translation, meaning the work of a Christian author, does not necessarily raise the fundamental question of why. For what reasons was such a literary enterprise undertaken, and for what sort of readership? Quite naturally, the biblical books were translated, whether from their haebraica veritas or from the Latin version, just to be understood by a common reader. The Christian

18 The extant translated Psalms are the following: 3, 8, 16, 18, 22, 32, 34, 49, 52, 56, 57, 58, 59 (60 for the Jewish tradition, as it is noted in Hebrew on the MS), 61, 67, 72, 74, 79, 83, 90, 91, 94, 95, 101, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 128, 139, 144, Psalm 8 is translated twice, in the patterns of “ottava” and of “canzone.” By the indication of the number of the Psalms, a few Hebrew words of the first verse (or the second, if the first is the “title” with the name of the author) are written. 19 on Sommo, see David Yonah, “Yehudah Sommo. Bibliography” (Hebrew), Ita- lia 16 (2005): 59–72. 20 see Cristina Dal Molin, “Recovery of Some Unedited Manuscripts by Leone de’ Sommi at the National Library in Turin,” in Leone de’ Sommi and the Performing Arts, ed. Ahuva Belkin (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1997), 101–117. I intend to publish this translation together with Ilaria Scola, the author of a book dealing inter alia with this text, Interdiscorsività nell’opera di Leone Sommi. Tra giudaismo, classicismo e umanesimo (Ravenna: Angelo Longo Editore, 2008). I would like to thank Mrs. Scola, who drew my attention to this text and made a useful transcription of it. 288 alessandro guetta

Reform emphasized the need to understand the sacred text. Yet Cath- olic authors, before and after the Council of Trent, also produced a large number of translations into various vernacular languages.21 So are these questions more pertinent if the translator was a Jew? As we have seen, the Judaeo-Italian translations of the Bible, mainly in Hebrew characters, were commonly used among Italian Jews for didactic purposes, as Umberto Cassuto, Giuseppe Sermoneta,22 Luisa Cuomo,23 and many other scholars have clearly demonstrated. Cecil Roth, in his article “Un Hymne sabbatique du XVIe siècle en Judéo- Italien”24 on the peculiar phenomenon of Italian texts (in this case, a text written by the Emilian rabbi Mordecai Dato) written by the Jews in Hebrew characters, proposed a series of reasons for this tradition.25 Giulio Busi elaborates on the subject in his study on a text for Purim written by the same author.26 But the sixteenth-century translation of forty-five psalms by Judah Sommo was written neither in Judaeo-Italian dialect nor in Hebrew letters: it was in literary Italian, followed the Italian model of ottava rima (except for two Canzoni that open and close Sommo’s work), and was written in Latin characters. In this case, both the questions and answers obviously differ from those raised by the Judaeo-Italian translations, for the reasons we have just indicated.

21 lino Leonardi, ed., La Bibbia in Italiano tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Florence: Sis- mel, 1998); Andrea Bernardelli, “Semiotica e storia della traduzione. La traduzione biblica nei secoli XV–XVI come parte di una storia della semiotica,” Versus. Quaderni di studi semiotici 82 (1999): 47–60; Gijsbert J. Siertsema, “Translation and genre in the European Renaissance: Psalms,” in Übersetzung / Translation / Traduction, An international Encyclopedia of Translation Studies / Encyclopédie internationale de la recherche sur la traduction / Ein internationales Handbuch zur Übersetzungsforschung, ed. Harald Kittel et alii (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2007), vol. 2: 1454–1459; Giovanni Rizzi, Le versioni italiane della Bibbia (Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 2010). 22 Giuseppe B. Sermoneta, “La traduzione giudeo-italiana dei Salmi e i suoi rapporti con le antiche versioni latine,” in Scritti in memoria di Umberto Nahon. Saggi sull’ebraismo italiano, ed. Robert Bonfil et al. ( Jerusalem: Fondazione Sally Mayer, 1978), 196–239. 23 luisa Ferretti Cuomo, “Traduzioni bibliche giudeo-italiane ed umanistiche,” Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 111/2 (1995): 206–243. 24 Revue des Études Juives 80 (1925): 60–80, 182–206; 81 (1926): 55–78. 25 see also Alan Freedman, Italian Texts in Hebrew Characters. Problems of Interpretation (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1972). 26 Giulio Busi, La Istoria de Purim io ve racconto . . . Il libro di Ester secondo un rabbino emiliano del Cinquecento (Rimini: Luisè editore, 1987). On the same text, see also Deborah Ten- nen, “Megillat Ester in Ottava Rima: Mordecai Dato’s Poetry,” Renaissance Studies 22 (2008): 507–541. Another Italian version of two Psalms has been made by Juda ayyim Carpi of Casale Monferrato in 1612, also in “ottava rima” but in Hebrew characters. See Moscow, Russian State Library, Ms. Guenzburg 669, 40r–42v. the italian translation of the psalms 289

A Jewish scholar in the Renaissance was supposed to master Hebrew perfectly. I would describe his relation with Hebrew as one of intimacy; Hebrew lived in him and nourished his religious, intellectual, and aesthetic creativity. That kind of scholar certainly did not need an Italian translation to understand the Bible, which constituted the main source of his Hebrew linguistic knowledge and the stylistic example to be followed. We need but recall Judah ben Jeiel’s (called Messer Leon) attempt in his Nofet ufim (The Honeycomb Flow, 1474),27 a few decades before Sommo, to find in the biblical texts the arche- type of rhetoric (a discipline absolutely central in the period of the so-called Renaissance). As for Sommo, this author mastered Hebrew to the point of producing in Hebrew the first known comedy, aut bediuta de-qiddushin (The Comedy of Betrothal), where he plays with biblical and Talmudic references with a virtuosity rare even for a Jewish- Italian scholar.28 Incidentally, if we can believe the introduction to the comedy, this Hebrew work was intended only to show the potentiali- ties of the sacred tongue, a comment that points up Sommo’s relation to Hebrew. A further element that will help us to better understand Sommo’s relationship to the two languages, Hebrew and Italian, is provided by a long bilingual poem, Magen Nashim (Defender of Women, ca. 1555), conceived as an intervention in a poetic dispute on the nature of women.29 This poem, which is not unique in its pattern,30 is composed of fifty octaves, each with four Hebrew lines and four Italian lines, according to the scheme H/I/H/I/I/H/H/I.31 The composition is flowing and pleasant to an ear capable of understanding the two languages, that are perfectly interwoven. Thus, if a Jewish scholar in the Renaissance tried his hand at an Italian translation of portions of the Bible, he probably had in mind a non-Jewish audience. As far as Sommo is concerned, nothing is more

27 Judah Messer Leon, The Book of the Honeycomb Flow, translation and notes by Isaac Rabinowitz (Cornell: University Press, 1983). 28 ayyim Schirmann, ed., The First Hebrew Play. The Comedy of Betrothal by Yehuda Sommo (1527–1592) (Leone Sommo da Portaleone). Edited from Three Mss. with an Introduction, Notes and Appendices (Hebrew), (Tel Aviv: Tarshish, 1965). 29 Magen Nashim, in The First Hebrew Play, 121, 145 30 see for instance Sandra De Benedetti-Stow, “Due poesie bilingui inedite contro le donne di Semu’el da Castiglione (1553),” Italia 2 (1982): 7–64. 31 As for the rhyme, the first two Hebrew verses are rhymed with each other and so are the second two; the first three Italian verses are rhymed with each other and the last, Italian verse of every stanza has the same rhyme, -ia. 290 alessandro guetta probable: the bulk of his literary activity, his comedies and his treatise Four Dialogues on the Art of Staging Plays, were written in Italian,32 and were intended for the Christian audience of Mantua. Bonfil analyzes the social and intellectual personality of Sommo, arguing that his marginal role both in the Jewish community, as a man of theatre, not belonging to the rabbinic elite, and in the Christian world—as a Jew, even a particularly successful one—contributed to his role of mediator.33 But if this was the case, what could one expect from a translation made by a Jew? Let us recall that the translations of the Psalms into Italian were not at all rare in those years: they even represented an important “sub-genre” within the genre of biblical translations that enjoyed a sort of autonomous life and likewise offered the possibility of producing a poetic version. The liturgical use of the Psalms to be sung, therefore, with a melody especially composed for the purpose (in vernacular translations, both by Lutherans and Calvinists), contributed to their importance. In her book La Bibbia. Edizioni del XVI secolo, Antonella Lumini draws up a list of thirty-one Italian editions of the Psalms in Italian from 1505 to 1588, including twenty-one authors, all of them Christians (mostly Catholics, but also some Calvinists). Some of them were celebrated poets, such as Girolamo Benivieni and Luigi Alamanni; there is even an attribution of an Italian translation of the seven penitential psalms (a sub-group extremely important for Chris- tian devotions) to Dante and Petrarch. The manuscripts, including among them Sommo’s versions, (partly published by Ilaria Scola), are not listed in this bibliography.34 What are the main features of these Christian translations? Inter- est in Jewish literature and history was certainly growing in the age of Humanism. Yet at the same time, a clear attempt to “de-Judaize” the Bible, especially through translation with a special orientation, was also present. In many Italian printed, poetical versions I have examined, comparable to Sommo’s for the year of their publication, this element of specific Christian orientation is explicitly stated. One

32 ferruccio Marotti, ed., Quattro dialoghi in materia di rappresentazioni sceniche (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1968). 33 Roberto Bonfil, “Lo spazio culturale degli ebrei d’Italia fra Rinascimento ed Età barocca,” in Storia d’Italia. Annali 11. Gli ebrei in Italia, ed. Corrado Vivanti (Torino: Einaudi, 1996), esp. 457–472. 34 sommo did not translate any of these seven psalms. the italian translation of the psalms 291 of their authors, Innocenzo Ringhieri from Bologna (1555), writes “Every psalm encloses some mysteries of our Redeemer, which are best understood through these spiritual texts.”35 This translator is in fact a writer in his own right, as he invents Ital- ian lines absent in the original to justify this affirmation. The average reader, of course, was unable to check; the representative of the pope and the “venerable father Inquisitor” not only gave his authorization but encouraged the publication, as the frontispiece shows: “di volontà del reverendissimo Monsignor L. Lenci Vicelegato, et del Reverendo Padre Inquisitore.” A Jew was probably expected not to write a rendition of Psalm 16 like the following: Del tuo valor tutta sicura, armata, da gente niquitosa combattuta, quasi in pugna vital schiera ordinata la Chiesa mia; che tua franchezza aiuta immobil sia qual torre in ciel fondata, illustre, et bella heredita compiuta36 Nice verses, where the strength of the Church was exalted (“an army, almost drawn up in a vital battle order, attacked by wicked enemies”); verses probably conceived as a weapon in the war against the Refor- mation, that saw this biblical book as a central text of religious inspiration. However, it was really difficult to find these lines in the original text, as this stanza simply does not exist and was invented entirely by the author. Ringhieri’s version is not only tendentious; it is also unfair from a mere literary point of view, in that (when it translates) it does not remain close to the text but prefers to paraphrase it. Incidentally, this Catholic rewriting did not prevent the Congregations of the Holy Office and of the Index from banning it soon after publication,37 in the general veto against vernacular translations of the Bible. Another eloquent example, after Sommo, of an authorized Catho- lic translation at a time of severe censorship is perhaps the one published in 1587 by the prestigious preacher Francesco Panigarola, a

35 Il psaltero di David in ottava rima tradotto per M. Innocenzo Ringhieri gentiluomo Bolognese (Bologna: Pellegrino Bonardo, 1555). 36 Ibidem, 46. 37 fragnito, La Bibbia, 306. 292 alessandro guetta member of the order of the Friars Minor, Bishop of Asti.38 We must look at just two verses, the first two of Psalm 23, whose literal translation is “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside quiet waters.” Panigarola translates, “If Christ is my shepherd, I shall be in want of nothing; He could not put me in a better place than in the very happy pasture of his Holy Church, among so many sacraments and doctrines.” Even if one is unwilling to consider this book a true translation, but rather an intentional paraphrase with the right meaning disclosed to the reader (a member of the Holy Office called it “a Catholic paraphrase”),39 the very fact that this was the kind of biblical version in Italian that was authorized and widespread in those years shows how interesting the poetic work of Leone Sommo and the Jewish translations in general were in their attempts to get closer to the original text. Many other versions bear Christological allusions, freely modify- ing the Hebrew texts; others distance themselves from the original, sometimes paraphrasing it, sometimes rewriting it, for poetic reasons. The well-known Luigi Alamanni considers the original (the Vulgate, in his case) as a mere pretext to write religious poetry with very tenu- ous references to the psalm but with explicit Christological allusions.40 The most faithful translation I could find, by Francesco Trivigi from the Vulgate, concludes for instance the well-known Psalm 109 (“De profundis”) with three verses completely invented, a paraphrase of the prayer “Gloria”: “Al Padre Gloria, al Figlio e al Santo Spirito / Com’hera nel principio et hora et sempre; / et né future secoli de’ secoli. Et cosi sia.”41 Sommo’s version has 30 percent fewer lines than Ringhieri’s and is shorter than practically all the consulted versions; this technical feature substantiates one of the main features of his translation: its honesty. The Jewish author makes the effort to translate every single word of the Hebrew, almost never adding new ones. “Sommo’s additions are in the main adjectives” or modal expressions.

38 Dichiaratione de i Salmi di David fatta da Monsignor Reverendiss. Panigarola (Rome: Heredi di Gio. Gigliotto, 1587). 39 fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo, 308. 40 Salmi penitenziali di diversi eccellenti autori con alcune rime spirituali di diversi illustri cardi- nali, di Reverendissimi Vescovi & d’altre persone Ecclesiastiche scelti dal reverendo P. Francesco da Trivigi Carmelitano, (Venice: Gabriel Giolito, 1568), 63–64. 41 Ibidem, 98. the italian translation of the psalms 293

Here are some representative examples (the underlined words are added in the translation):

16, 9: af besary yishkon laveta = e sta il corpo intrepido et invitto 18, 24: wa-eshtammer me-‘awony = dal peccato fuggo, oscuro e bieco Ibid., 35: we naatah keshet neushah = un arco spesso d’acciaio ho rotto e fesso 34, 4: u-neromemah shemo yadaw = sua lode insieme alziam, con voci altere Ibid., 16: ‘ene Adonai el addiqim / we-oznaiw el shaw‘atam = Dio, con grati occhi i giusti suol mirare, / e l’orecchi al lor grido, ha tuttavia 52, 4: awwot tashov leshonekha = pravità scorre tua lingua pungente

We can note that the rare meaningful additions—to distinguish them from the ones with a simple metrical value—tend to emphasize the spiritualization of the text, i.e., the contempt of the body, the exalta- tion of the spirit, and the suggested idea of the immortality of the soul. See, for example, Psalm 34:13: mi ha-ish he-afe ayyim = chiunque ha di salute eterna brama. Or Psalm 57:13: rumah ‘al ha-shamayim elohim = alzati al cielo, oh Dio, cui l’alma adora. Psalm 49 is interpreted in the context of eternal punishment in the afterlife. See verse 8: a lo fado ifdeh ish / lo yitten le-elohim kofro = mirino che un fratel salvar non vale / l’altro ne’l puo’ con prezzo ricomprare, né prometter a Dio, per la dannata alma / un riscatto ond’ella fia salvata. Verse 18 of the same psalm emphasizes in the translation the fragility of life and the terrible condition of the punishment: ky lo be-moto yikka ha-kol / lo yered aaraw kevodo = che nel morir, non puo’ seco portare / la transitoria sua ricchezza frale / né puo’ sperar, che nell’oscura fossa, / suo momentaneo honor, seguire il possa These are ideas found in the contemporary religious literature of Catholics, shared, as we have seen, in the poetical choices of other Jewish translators. Almost always, the Hebrew verses correspond to the Italian ones; the cases of overflowing verses and enjambment are very rare. To be faithful to the original and, at the same time, to obtain a poetic result in which the meter and the rhyme are always respected and the expressions flow without giving the impression of being forced into 294 alessandro guetta an artificial construction is a literary tour de force and a noteworthy achievement. Let us look at one example of Sommo’s skills, quoting his translation of the first stanzas of the same Psalm 16: Custodisci me, Dio, del mio riposo Conservami, o mio Dio, che in te sperai, Dissi al signor, Dio mio, Dio glorioso, che debito hai tu a farmi il ben che fai? De santi de la terra, io son bramoso, Et a possenti il mio desir fermai; Cresca il duol, di chi essalta idoli strani, ch’io aborro, i lor sanguigni culti, insani. Non servo a i culti lor di sangue, e morte, Ne il lor nome, unque fia, da me nomato, per che tu mio signor, sei la mia sorte, tu sostenti, o mio Dio, sempre il mio fato dolce hò da te, ciò che mi cade in sorte, e di quel, che posseggo, ho piacer grato. Benedisco il Signor che mi consiglia, e la notte i discorsi m’assottiglia. Ho per oggetto, il mio signore eterno, Tal, ch’io non posso errar dal cammin dritto, Per questo ho lieto il cor: lo spirto interno Goda: e stà il corpo, intrepido, et invitto Ché non mi lascerai l’alma a l’inferno, Ne pur vedrà il tuo servo, il regno afflitto. Mostrami tu la via, d’eterna vita Ch’io satio goda, tua grazia, infinita. A Jewish translator is also expected to know the Jewish commentators and read the text according to their interpretation. I started an analysis of Sommo’s texts taking into account the Jewish medieval commentaries and the Vulgate for passages of dubious interpretation. The first finding is that Sommo follows Rashi and the other classical Jewish commentators (the Targum, Avraham Ibn Ezra, David Kimhi) often but not systematically; but when he does not, he does not follow the Vulgate either. Brucioli’s version does not seem to have been a decisive influence either for the interpretation or for the choice of words, with a few significant exceptions.42 Verse 17 of Psalm 22, object

42 a thorough examination of Sommo’s exegesis will appear in the forthcoming edition of the text. the italian translation of the psalms 295 of a scriptural controversy between Jews and Christians, is not translated according to the Christian reading (from the Vulgate to Brucioli). However, it does not follow the Jewish exegetes either.43 To sum up: Sommo was much more faithful to the Hebrew texts than the Christian translators, without damaging the poetic result. Even a faithful and talented translator such as the Calvinist Giovanni Diodati, who had translated the whole Bible, when he came to the poetic rendering of the Psalms, did not refrain from taking a great deal of poetic license that Sommo never allowed to himself.44 Another good example of good translation is Psalm 144. Let us look at the first stanza: Benedetto il Signor, ch’è mia fortezza, E le mie mani addestra a guerreggiare, Che le mie dita, a la militia avezza, E meco, suol misericordia usare. Ch’è mia rocca, mio scampo, e mia salvezza, Mio scudo, e nel qual sol, debbo sperare. Che sottopone ond’io l’adoro e inchino, Il mio popolo tutto al mio dominio. Here, every single Hebrew word is translated, the only addition being the sentence “ond’io l’adoro e inchino,” not very meaningful indeed. Let us go back to the question: why did a Jewish author such as Judah Sommo translate a biblical book? Ilaria Scola asks this question at the beginning of her study, and gives the following answer: the reasons for the translation are essentially literary; de’ Sommi used the Psalms to write poetry and to express his artistic conception that associates the sacred and the profane, the Bible and the poetic Italian tradition.45 I think that this statement is correct. Sommo was at home both in Hebrew and in Italian; he did not belong to those Italian Jews that

43 In this difficult verse, which probably lacks or implies a word, the Jews read ka-ari (as a lion) and the Christians, karu (they pierced, understood as an allusion to the crucifixion). The Targum fills the gap with the word nahtin (they bite) and Sommo translates as follows: “come leon famelico, severi, / ver me, le mani, e i pie m’hanno legati.” Possibly, Sommo gave a translation acceptable to both Christians and Jews. 44 diodati appended his poetic rendering of the Psalms to his biblical translation published in Geneva, 1631, then in 1641. On this author, see Milka Ventura Avan- zinelli, “Giovanni Diodati, traduttore della Bibbia,” in La Sacra Bibbia tradotta in lingua italiana e commentata da Giovanni Diodati (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1999), XLI–CXLV, esp. LXXX–XC (“La questione dell’ebraistica degli ebrei”). 45 Ilaria Scola, Interdiscorsività, 17. 296 alessandro guetta

Leone Modena would call several decades later, in the introduction of his biblical glossary, “peregrini abitanti”—inhabitants of a linguistic country who remained foreigners in it. I do not know why and for whom he wrote his translation, but I suggest that we should not neglect the subjective need of a man living in two linguistic and therefore cultural worlds. For him, translating could mean making the link, forging a linguistic bridge, between these two worlds, as well as reducing biblical poetry to the ideals of the Renaissance, meaning elegance built on rules and regularity. His friend and fellow-citizen, Azariah de’ Rossi, noted in his The Light of the Eyes: I questioned many of the scholars of our time as to whether they could detect any measure and meter in the [poetic biblical] texts, and they were unable to provide me with a response. However, everybody admitted that they were conscious of a poetic melodiousness while reciting them and that their cantillation differed from that of the rest of the Pen- tateuch, Prophets, and Hagiographa. But nobody knew how to appraise them. I grew more preoccupied in my desire to resolve these views and to discover something of what I was looking for. My heart told me that the songs of the Holy Scripture do undoubtedly have measures and structures, but they do not depend on the number of long or short vow- els, as is the norm with poems of our times.46 So biblical poetry was certainly poetry—the reader was conscious of it—but its measure and meter remained unknown or at least difficult to establish. Through this version, and in spite of Dante’s ancient warning about the poetic impoverishment of the Psalms, transferred from the original to Greek and then to other languages,47 Sommo gave “a measure and meter” to biblical poetry. To conclude, I wish to suggest a hypothesis that is a tentative answer to the question asked before: “Why this translation?” I believe that by this metric translation of forty-five psalms, Judah Sommo finally

46 azariah de’ Rossi, The Light of the Eyes, ed. and trans. Joanna Weinberg (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 712–713. 47 dante Alighieri, Convivio I, 7 (trans. R. Lansing, 1998): “Everyone should know that nothing harmonized according to the rules of poetry can be translated from its native tongue into another without destroying all its sweetness and harmony. This is the reason why Homer has not been translated from Greek into Latin as have been other writings we have of theirs. And this is the reason why the verses of the Psalter lack the sweetness of music and harmony; for they were translated from Hebrew into Greek and from Greek into Latin, and in the first translation all their sweetness was lost.” Online: http://dante.ilt.columbia.edu/books/convivi/convivio.html#01 (retrieved July 6th, 2011). the italian translation of the psalms 297 imbued the biblical poetry with the poetic sounds that an Italian ear expected to hear. In a way, by doing so, he not only built a bridge between two worlds but brought the Hebrew text closer to him, bringing it to the linguistic and cultural world in which his creativity was most at home and vital, and that resounded in his everyday life. If the Vulgate was considered by the Christians as a sort of “Latin voice of God,” an Italian translation made by a Jew could represent an attempt to “domesticate” the Haebraica veritas, taking it to the “Italian home,” his second linguistic world. A similar statement can be applied, though in a more limited way, to all the Jewish translators active during those decades. Even if their contribution to the history of Italian literature and to the shaping of the Italian language was probably less important than Steinschneider thought, the fact of their belonging to two linguistic and cultural worlds, in a period when any deviation from the mainstream was regarded with suspicion, is in itself an interesting issue for the intellectual history of Italy in the Early Modern Era. 15. Savants and Scholars in Jewish Mantua: A Reassessment

Shlomo Simonsohn1

Alas, half a century has passed since the appearance of my History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua. It was written in the post-war years, in the early 1950s. Since then numerous publications, books, and articles have appeared on the Jews in Mantua, their lives, and their achievements. I flatter myself that my own book had at least a little to do with that although, naturally, I have no claim to the discovery of Jewish Mantua and its place in Jewish history, particularly in Italy. That accolade should be awarded to Vittore Colorni, my dear and lamented friend, scion of an old Mantuan family and custodian of its heritage. The present conference is the latest link in the continuing interest of scholars in the history of Jewish Mantua. So it is only fit- ting that I attempt a summing up of some aspects of the achievements of the last fifty years or so and, obviously, this has to be selective, not comprehensive. I also propose to deal with one or two problems and make several comments.2 At this point, I should like to underline something that struck me fifty years ago and has lost nothing of its force in the meantime. On the contrary, I am more convinced than ever that Jewish Mantua’s contribution to learning and the arts, to the sciences and literature and to most other fields of cultural interest, was overwhelming in comparison to that of most other Jewish communities in the Later Middle Ages and Early Modern times, even if I set aside my personal fondness for this subject. I am not sure that most people are aware that during the heyday of Mantuan Jewry and its culture, which lasted for some three centuries, the number of Jews in the capital never exceeded two

1 this text constitutes the version of the lecture delivered at the symposium with only a small number of essential notes. The reader is referred to the complete list of publications of the author. 2 See my History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua, 2 vols. ( Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer, 1962–4) (English edition. New York: Ktav, 1977) and the six annotated bibliographies published between 1954 and 2007 by Attilio Milano, Aldo Luzzato, Moshe Moldavi, Daniele Carpi, Manuela Consonni, and the present writer. 300 shlomo simonsohn thousand or so, and in the Mantovano a few hundred. For most of the time, the numbers were smaller. If we leave out the early history of Jewish Mantua in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the first two or three generations of Jewish resettlement of Mantua by the bankers starting late in the fourteenth century, then the beginnings of Jewish Mantua as a cultural center go back to the second half of the fifteenth century. Yet in 1500, the number of Jews in the capital was still only 150–200, reaching its maximum of just over two thousand in 1612. Compared to other Jewish Italian communities, the contrast is striking. Sicilian Jewry, which numbered between 25,000 and 30,000 on the eve of the expulsion, or twenty to thirty times the figure for Mantua, did not produce over the millennium of its existence a fraction of the cultural treasure that Mantuan Jewry did. Even if set against the achievements of Italian communities from Rome to the North—Rome itself, Florence, Bologna, Ferrara, and Venice—Mantua’s share is stupendous. Of the 1,000–2000 Mantuan Jews, half were women who, in that age, played a minor role in a male society (although there were a few noteworthy exceptions, such as Madama Europa). So the active Jewish element in any of the branches of learning and creative art consisted of a relatively large percentage of the total, perhaps one of the largest ever. Even many of those who were not themselves creators or originators participated in some of the activities set in motion by the latter. The theatre companies of the community are as good an example as any.3 So what is the explanation? Admittedly, there was the melting pot syndrome. Meeting at a kind of confluence in Mantua were two of the three Jewish migratory currents that flowed through central and northern Italy at the end of the Middle Ages: Italians moving north from Rome, and the German current from across the Alps (there were also a few French Jews and fewer Spaniards). But that explanation does not appear good enough, at least to my mind. Take again the Sicilian parallel, which (as pointed out) did not produce anything comparable to the Mantuan achievements despite the much greater size of its Jewry. Jews from all over the Mediterranean flocked there, chiefly from mainland Italy, Spain, North Africa, and so forth. In Sicily, there

3 Simonsohn, History of the Jews, 190f. On Vittore Volorni, see Una Manna Buona per Mantova. Man ov le-Man ovah. Studi in onore di Vittore Colorni per il suo 92o compleanno, ed. Mauro Perani (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2004). savants and scholars in jewish mantua: a reassessment 301 was no substantial effect on the sciences, scholarship, or the arts. What made a German Jew such as Mose Sachs da Castellazzo turn into a painter of some renown on coming to Italy? He and his sons, all bankers in Goito in the Mantovano, obtained a copyright licence from Marquis Federico II to publish a Bible decorated by them with hundreds of illustrations. A manuscipt copy of the edition was about to be published recently, but regrettably was stolen before the attempt came to fruition. The notion that in his native Germany any such attempt would have been nipped in the bud would appear to be insufficient as an explanation. Or take Abramo Colorni, practical scientist, engineer, inventor, and amateur of Jewish mysticism. He was, perhaps intentionally, a mysterious individual during his lifetime. Where and how he was trained and what made him choose an atypical profession for a Jew of his times is as yet also a mystery. What was his role at the court of Rudolph II in Prague in the company of John Kepler? Much has been written about him, but no explanation has been forthcoming for his unusual tendencies as a Jew of his age and the conditions which sustained them.4 There are also other aspects of the history of the Jews in Man- tua and its cultural flourishing that call for further study. Take, for instance, the periodization of that history. The heyday of Jewish Man- tua, its achievements and claim to fame, occurred in the second half of the sixteenth century and beginning of the seventeenth, before the fencing in of the Jews behind ghetto walls and the havoc wrought by the War of Succession, which destroyed much of it. Much but not all. The “golden” years have been described as an integral part of the Italian Renaissance. While that is true to a degree, at least as far as some aspects of the Renaissance are concerned, the term does not fit the beginning of the seventeenth century. Stretching the term Renais- sance beyond the first years of that century would be even less apt. So how does a figure like Mose Zacut fit into this time frame? His poetry, which has just been published, could easily have been written a century earlier. His attempts at reviving the histrionic activities of Mantuan Jews also seem to recall times long since past. Besides, given the doubtful value of periodizations such as the Middle Ages,

4 See my Jewish Italy. The Melting Pot of Mediterranean Jews (forthcoming), and Ser- gio DellaPergola, “La popolazione ebraica in Italia nel contesto ebraico globale,” in: Storia d’Italia, Annali 11. Gli ebrei in Italia, ed. Corrada Vivanti, 2 vols. (Turin: Einaudi, 1997), 897f. 302 shlomo simonsohn

Renaissance, and the like, their validity for Jewish history is even more problematic, and Mantuan Jewish history is no exception. Here too a new approach is called for.5 Let us now take a look at the impressive crop of research and publications on the Jews of Mantua in the course of the past half century. My “Jews in the Duchy of Mantua” was based on most of the documentary evidence available to me at the time. Unfortunately, some of the documents then available in the archives of the Jewish community have since disappeared. Yet more and more new historical records have been explored and, I suspect, many more await discovery and investigation. To cite only two immediate examples: the paper presented yesterday by Gianfranco Miletto, “New Biographical Details on Judah Moscato,”6 and the recent volume on the Jewish cemeteries in the Mantovano. Earlier publications are legion and I am unable to take you on a complete tour of them.7 Let us start with some of those of Vittore Colorni. In addition to his numerous papers and chapters in books on Italian Jewish history and on that of Mantua in particular, he wrote a number of articles on the scholars and savants of Mantua. Among them are members of his own family, the Finzi, and so forth. Of these I would like to mention a lesser-known paper of his on the physician Abraham di Salomone Conat, the first in a long line of printers of Hebrew books in Mantua. I have always been intrigued by the images of Abraham, his wife Estel lina, and their assistants of Tarascon and Cologna, bent over their pioneering typesetting and printing apparatus in the Clock Tower (Torre dell’Orologio) overlooking the Piazza Erbe, producing some of the fin- est Hebrew incunabula. Conat published seven books. Significantly, there is only one rabbinical text among them: ’Ora ayyim, the first part of Jacob ben Asher’s Sefer ha-urim. The others are two historical volumes: Sefer Yosippon, the medieval rendering of Josephus Flavius, and the Epistle of Eldad ha-Dani; the Tables of Mordecai Finzi on the length of the days; Messer Leon’s Nofet ufim on rhetoric; and Levi ben Gershom’s Commentary on the Pentateuch. This diversity was emulated by

5 On Zacuto, see Devora Bregman, “I Raise my Heart.” Poems by Moses Zacuto ( Jeru- salem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2009). 6 See the contribution by Miletto in this volume. 7 Such as Gli ebrei a Castel Goffredo. Con uno studio sulla Bibbia Soncino di Brescia del 1494, eds. Mauro Perani and Daniele Montanari (Florence: La Giuntina, 1998); Il “giardino” degli ebrei. Cimiteri ebraici del Mantovano, ed. Annamaria Mortari and Claudia Bonora Previdi (Florence: La Giuntina, 2008). savants and scholars in jewish mantua: a reassessment 303 his successors at the Hebrew printing presses of Mantua for centuries. One may assume, I think, that the diffusion of the texts issuing from the printing presses of Mantua formed an essential portion of the education of Mantua’s Jewish youth. Conat’s arrival in Mantua in or before 1457 coincided with the growth there of a Jewish cultural center. He himself came to Man- tua under the patronage of the grammarian, lexicographer, and poet Joseph Zarq, like himself a refugee and protégé of other savants, particularly the brothers Isaac and Mordechai (Angelo) Finzi, sons of Abraham, bankers in Mantua, the Mantovano (especially Viadana), and elsewhere. The latter was the renowned mathematician, astronomer, and physician. The background to the link and the role of bankers and merchants, who often were at the same time scientists and scholars, particularly physicians, is yet another of many areas still to be explored. To come back to the melting pot: significantly, Zarq was a Spaniard, Conat a Frenchman, and the Finzi Germans.8 Rabbinical studies also began to flourish in Mantua at this time. Their two major exponents were Rabbi Judah Messer Leon and Rabbi Joseph Colon. I never found any documentary support for the famous dispute allegedly having taken place between the two and their subsequent expulsion by Marquis Lodovico. The only source for the story is Gedalya Ibn Yaya’s chronicle, which has been denigrated, justly I think, and re-labelled the “Chain of Lies.” There is also a measure of exaggeration in regarding the two savants as exponents of fiercly contrasting cultural currents among Mantuan Jews: the allegedly “lib- eral” ones, exponents of “Japhet dwelling in the tents of Shem,” and the “conservative” opponents of “Greek wisdom.” That is largely due to nineteenth-century attitudes to Jewish history. Mantua saw Azariah de’ Rossi publish his Me’or ‘Enayim (1573/4) without hindrance, yet some of his contemporaries rejected his critical approach to Jewish traditions on antiquity. His critics included the contemporary Mantuan savants Mose Provenzali, Judah Moscato, and Judah (Leone) Sommo. They and some of their contemporaries disagreed with de’ Rossi’s cal- culations on Jewish chronology and other matters. But the opposition to Me’or ‘Enayim was fiercer in Italy outside Mantua, especially that of the rabbis and communal leaders of Venice, Pesaro, Cremona, Padua,

8 vittore Colorni, Judaica Minora. Saggi sulla storia dell’ Ebraismo italiano dall’ Antichità all’ età moderna, 2 vols. (Milan: A. Guiffrè, 1983, 1991). 304 shlomo simonsohn

Verona, Roma, Ferrara, and Siena. The last banned the possession of the Me’or ‘Enayim by individual Jews unless sanctioned by the rabbis of their town. The rabbis of Palestine (including R. Joseph Caro) and Germany were even fiercer in their opposition. Significantly, the Mantuans did not join the ban. But the Mantuan rabbis of the ghetto era, such as Aviad Sar Shalom Basilea, were much more censorious than their peers in the sixteenth century. Earlier generations also held similar views, such as those expressed by Jacob ben David Proven- zali in his letter to David, the son of Judah Messer Leon. In recent years, much light has been thrown on Mantuan rabbis, their works and views. Me’or Enayim was not the only opus that aroused controversy among contemporary Mantuans. So did, for instance, the sermons of Eliezer David del Bene (me-ha-ov). Del Bene’s “sin” consisted of his enthusiasm for the Greek and Roman heroes of antiquity. That led him to speak of “holy Diana”9 in the synagogue, for instance, and to quote in his sermons from Italian literature. While the sermons were apparently popular among a wide audience in the Mantuan synagogue, Rabbi Nissim Sforno felt that Diana and her kin had no business there. He urged his brother, Israel, rabbi in Modena and Viadana, to start a campaign against Del Bene. That Del Bene had enthusiastic followers among the Mantuans is evident from a quotation from Nissim’s letter in Israel’s communication to his son to enlist the support of Rabbi Menahem Azaria da Fano against del Bene. But the sermons aroused the opposition of another group, who supposedly “hid their faces in shame” at Del Bene’s sermons. We do not know what became of Isra- el’s campaign. According to Judah Asa’el del Bene, Eliezer David’s son, it was the influence of Judah Moscato on his father which made him wax enthusiastic over the wisdom of Japhet. Judah Asa’el also reports that Del Bene dampened his enthusiasm for the classics, went to study with da Fano, and became rabbi in Ferrara. So homiletics and homilies were popular in Mantua from the days of Judah Messer Leon, through Judah Moscato and David del Bene and beyond. Homilies in the synagogue have a long history in Judaism. The midrashic literature of antiquity has deep roots in the ritual, the interpretation of Scripture, the propagation of ideas and philosophies, and so forth. Sermons continued to be written without interruption in

9 But see the contribution of Daniel Jütte in this volume. savants and scholars in jewish mantua: a reassessment 305 the medieval diaspora. The dimension that Italian preachers added to this literary branch was that the derasha, the sermon, again became alive as it were, and became once again a performance in front of an audience, rather than an abstract written discourse. Live rhetoric was once more an essential part of the homiletic act. Judah Moscato’s sermons, for instance, were influenced by Greek and Roman models, in form and in content. Even Giordano Bruno is said to have esteemed Moscato’s sermons. Messer Leon in his Nofet ufim tried to demonstrate that biblical rhetoric was based on the rules of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. He himself preached in public, as did his younger contemporary Abra- ham Farissol, scholar, scribe, and musician in Mantua and Sermide, though chiefly in Ferrara. Farissol was not only a preacher but taught the theory and practice of the art to his students. Moscato’s sermons (and not only his) were delivered in vernacular Italian, but published in Hebrew (Nefuot Yehudah); and so were those of his fellow preachers. It has been pointed out that the adherence to Cicero’s rules (as handed down by Judah Messer Leon) made them artificial to a degree, but that does not seem to have diminished their popularity. Moscato quoted freely from Jewish sources and from Plato and Aristotle, Philo and Josephus, Ovid and Quintilian, Cicero, Seneca, and Galen, as well as from later generations, including even Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Like his Christian contemporaries, mutatis mutandis, he emphasized that his quotations from pagan and other non-Jewish sources served only to strengthen the Jewish faith. Del Bene was not as circumspect. In Man- tua the art continued to flourish in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The preachers were the rabbis Mose Zacut, Judah Briel, David Finzi, Jacob Saraval, and others.10 This was the environment in which the youth of Mantua grew up. They were exposed to the arts, music, dancing, and the theatre, and to the sciences, philosophy, and literature. The sermons in the synagogue, the performances of their artists, and the output of their presses created an atmosphere unparalleled in Jewish society before modern times. Of course, there was opposition to some of the overenthusi- astic adherents of this cultural trend. The ghetto period made further inroads into its manifestation, but it did not disappear altogether. Abraham Portaleone is cited as one of the initiators of the movement

10 Simonsohn, History of the Jews, 624f. 306 shlomo simonsohn opposed to it. But his sudden outbreak of piety was due to a paralyzing stroke, which forced him into immobility and impelled him to raise his eyes to heaven and reject some of his erstwhile inclinations and pursuits—albeit not convincingly so if one reads his Shile Ha-Gibborim attentively. Another insight into the intellectual world of Mantuan Jewry may be gleaned from the contents of their libraries. The purpose for which the books possessed by the Jews of Mantua in 1595 and 1605 were listed was obscurantist. The censorship introduced by the Counter- Reformation had no intention of glorifying Jewish scholarship or encouraging the Jews of Mantua to further educate themselves. But it offers us an unexpected and unusual insight into the intellectual interests of Mantuan Jews. The lists of 1595 contain over twenty thousand books. Many, of course, were more than one copy of the same opus. Of these, nearly five hundred were written in languages other than Hebrew and included some works that one would not expect to find in the library of an Orthodox Jew in our own days.11 Our information on the education of Jewish children in Mantua is as yet still limited. Some of it is obtained only by analogy to non- Mantuan sources, though we have reason to believe that they are indicative of conditions obtaining there. I gained the impression that the spirit of the Renaissance left its imprint upon Jewish education in Italy and that the fundamentals of traditional Jewish teaching were blended with some secular elements, at least as far as the boys were concerned. In northern Italy, teaching was often entrusted to private teachers, especially in the homes of the rich, particularly the bankers. Schools were slow in developing and flourished mainly in the ghetto period. Elsewhere I have dwelt at length on the curricula of Jewish schooling during the Renaissance. We still do not know whether in Mantua the children of immigrants from Germany learned the Scrip- tures in Italian and the Oral Law in the Ashkenazi tongue. Some may -and not Yid בלשון אשכנזי have done so. Please note that the text has as applied to טייטש dish. I doubt whether the term Yiddish rather than

11 Zipora Baruchson, The Private Libraries of North Italian Jews at the Close of the Renais- sance (PhD thesis, Bar-Ilan University 1985); Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Censorship, Edit- ing and the Text. Catholic Censorship and Hebrew Literature in the Sixteenth Century ( Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2005). savants and scholars in jewish mantua: a reassessment 307 early forms of Judaeo-German is appropriate and I think that there is more to this than mere terminology.12 Mantua also produced an atmosphere that was conducive to further or higher education. While there is little doubt that yeshivot existed there (one, an Ashkenazi yeshiva, was headed by R. Jacob Reiner and other rabbis, and there was another, an Italian one), there are references to additional institutions of higher learning in the town. Not surprisingly, it was Judah Messer Leon whose name is linked to a school that taught philosophy and aroused the ire of a Spanish refugee who had been employed by Messer Leon in the school, became disillu- sioned with it or with its principal, and was dismissed. He then turned round and bit the hand that had fed him, calling forth a counter-attack by Messer Leon. The curriculum proposed by R. David Provenzali for his university (1564) was an attempt at combining Jewish and non-Jewish studies. The purpose was to train doctors in a Jewish intellectual environment, thus avoiding the need to send aspiring Jewish doctoral students to non-Christian universities. In many of them, Jews were not welcome

12 We prefer the designation Judaeo-German to Yiddish, which we find more appropriate. The term Yiddish was coined in the US in the nineteenth century and is now commonly employed, but is an anachronism if applied to earlier periods. That inap- propriateness is not improved by the use of such terms as Western Yiddish and the like to describe the dialect in Germany or in Italy. The documentation on the language spoken by the Jews of Germany during the Middle Ages goes back to the thirteenth century or thereabouts, but it is probably older. The mediaeval references use such Teutsch). The) טייטש German), and) ,לשון אשכנז ,(our language) לשוננו terms as Jews of Germany continued to make use of this dialect right down to the nineteenth century and there it contained only Germanic and Hebrew elements, no Slavonic or other local ones. On Mantua, see my History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua, index, s.v. yeshiva. The book lists that the Jews in Mantua and environs presented to the censors in 1595 and 1605 contained a number of books and manuscripts in Judaeo- German, some of them not known from other sources. See ibid., pp. 685f.; and my article, “Books and Libraries of the Jews of Mantua 1595,” Kiryat Sepher 37 (1962): 103f. (Hebrew). See also Chone Schmeruk, “The Beginning of Narrative Prose in Yiddish and its Centre in Italy,” in Scritti in Memoria di Sally Mayer, ed. Umberto Nahon ( Jerusalem: Fondazione Sally Mayer, 1967), Hebr. Sect., pp. 118f., based on my lists. He also listed some 35 printed publications in Judaeo-German in Italy between 1545 and 1663. See his “Yiddish prints in Italy,” Italia 3 (1982), Hebr. Sect., pp. 112f. The literature on Judaeo-German has been growing in recent years. See Erika Timm, Graphische und phonische Struktur des Westjiddischen (Tübingen: De Gruyter, 1987); Chava Turniansky, “La letteratura Yiddish nell’Italia del Cinquecento,” La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 62 (1996): 61f. On Judaeo-German prints and manuscripts in Italy, see Chava Turniansky and Erika Timm, with the collaboration of Claudia Rosenzweig, Yiddish in Italia: Yiddish Manuscripts and Printed Books from the 15th Century to the 17th Century (Milan: Associazione Italiana Amici dell’Università di Gerusalemme, 2003). 308 shlomo simonsohn and none of them offered a Jewish education. It would appear that the proposed project remained on the planning board, as did the proposed studium of the Jews in Sicily. All the same, Mantuan students of medicine managed to combine the two disciplines. A typical example is the course of studies described by the physician Abraham Portaleone, in his epilogue to Shile ha-Gibborim, on whom David Provenzali practiced some of his educational principles. As for the education of girls in Mantua, even less information has been forthcoming. Estellina Conat must have been literate. Pazienza Pontremoli, a Mantuan Jewish girl at the beginning of the sixteenth century, refused the request of Isabella d’Ests, the wife of Marquis Francesco, who asked her to convert to Christianity and marry a Christian who had fallen in love with her. The two women quoted from Hebrew and non-Hebrew literature in support of their arguments. Jewish women in Mantua received permission to act as ritual slaughterers. To pass the relevant examination they had to be conver- sant with Jewish ritual law. We know of at least several teaching manuals, in addition to standard texts used by Mantuan Jewry in the sixteenth century. One was Or Lustro for the teaching of Italian at the elementary level. One edition was printed in Mantua and another in Sabbioneta. R. Moses Provenzali wrote a book “for educating boys in the discipline of grammar,” printed in Venice. Leqa ov by Abraham Yagel Gallico was a kind of catechism for the education of the young and was also printed in Venice. The Jews of Mantua made use of Christian textbooks and collections of model letters. In the ghetto period, Jewish schools and schooling flourished. At times, that also included vocational training. Permanent schools were established, full-time teachers appointed, and detailed curricula drawn up. At first the system was intended for the poor but eventually most— if not all—Jewish children frequented the communal school. The Mantuan schooling system continued to flourish right down to the emancipation and modernity.13 Finally, I would like to mention that many texts of the Jews in Mantua and the Mantuan environment have been published in recent years. These include the Responsa of R. Joseph Colon, R. Azriel Diena and R. Moses Provenzali; Ge’ izzayon (Valley of Vision) by Abraham

13 Simonsohn, History of the Jews, 581f. savants and scholars in jewish mantua: a reassessment 309

Yagel, Gallico of Monselice in Luzzara and elsewhere, and the commentary on the Pentateuch Minat Shay by Yedidyah Shlomo Rafael Norsa, to name but a few.14 In conclusion, I think that the time is ripe for a revised and enlarged edition of the History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua and for an attempt to find answers to some of the questions I have asked and some that I have not. The new edition will also have to take into account the challenges of the Italian historical literature written over the course of the last two generations.

14 Supra and Norzi (Norsa), Jedidiah Shlomo Raphael, Minat Shay on the Torah. Criti- cal Edition, ed. Zwi Betser and Yosef Ofer ( Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2005); David B. Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew. The Life and Thought of Abraham ben Mordechai Farissol (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1981); Abraham Yagel-Gallico, Sefer Ge’ izzayon, ed. David B. Ruderman ( Jerusalem: 1997). Responsa of Rabbi Azriel Diena, ed. Yacov Boksenboim, 2 vols. (Tel Aviv: 1977–1979); Responsa Mattanot Ba-Adam, ed. Yacov Boksenboim (Tel Aviv: 1983). Bibliography

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Abravanel, Isaac, 43, 67, 69, 114 dell’Arpa, Abramo, 162–172, 194 Abulafia, Abraham, 60, 66ff, 257, 264 dell’Arpa, Daniel, 170–172 Aegidius of Viterbo, 230 Doubt, the method of, 44f Albelda, Moses ben Jacob, 90, 92 Albo, Joseph, 17, 25n, 46 Ebreo, Leone, 66, 281 Alemanno, Johanan, 60, 62, 66f, 69 Eleazar of Worms, 63, 262 Alkabez, Solomon Halevi, 65 Elijah of Genazzano, 60 Antiquarianism, 113–118 Eulogy, 37–54, 85; questions about, 38; Arama, Isaac, 46 theoretical and personal content, 50–54 Aristotle, 46, 68, 96, 99f, 103, 125, 129, 266, 305 Fano, Menahem Azariah of, 65f Ashkenazi, Eliyahu ben Asher haLevi Foa, Isaac, 40f (Elia Levita/Elye Bokher), 230, 232, 235, 242f, 246, 285 Gara, Giovanni di, 123 Ashkenazi, Joseph ben Shalom, 63, 65, Gematria, 41 269 Gerosolimitano, Domenico, 235 ‘Aqedah, 43 Ghetto, 157, 305 Gonzaga, 5–10, 12n, 106, 162; archives, Bibago, Abraham, 46 145–150, 152–159, 200, 205, 208, Bomberg, Daniel, 126, 260 212, 218f, 219 Boner, Ulrich, 241 Great Chain of Being, 69, 71f Botany, 110–114 Guilandino, Melchior, 110 Botarel, Moshe, 64, 266–272 Gumprecht of Szczebrszyn, 233, 236f, Bovo d’Antona, 230f, 233 245f

Caro, Joseph, 65 Halevy (Halevi), Judah, 15, 17, 19, 57f, Cases, Samuel, 39–42, 50, 52, 85 60f, 68, 72f, 121f, 133, 286 Cassono da li Signi, 147 Haman, 233–237, 45 Catalano, Abraham, 105, 109 Hayyat, Judah, 62f, 67, 69, 71ff Chancellery, 146, 148–155, 157 Hebraism, 111, 136, 230, 258 Cividali, Agvidor and Raphael, 97 Hekhalot, 58, 71 Civitates orbis terrarium, 199–206 Heraclitus, 19, 25f, 32 Community, 3–6, 11, 70, 85, 94, 97f, Heretics, 5 105, 109, 165, 203, 220f, 224f, 230f, Hermeticism, 79, 101 233, 251, 290, 300, 302 Herrera, Abraham Cohen, 74, 76 Cordovero, Moses, 65, 69, 76 “Holy Diana” controversy, 251, 304 Crescas, Hasdai, 12, 17 Homiletics, 80, 89, 105, 108, 111, 119 Cross, 235ff Host desecration, 220 Crusades, 232 Human sciences (also the Seven sciences), 21, 23, 26, 30 delectare, ix De Sommi, Leone, xii, 287f, 295 Ibn Gabbai, Meir, 49, 73 Diaspora, 17, 65, 305 Ibn Latif, Isaac ben Abraham, 59, 62f, Dioscorides, 110f, 113, 115 67, 72 D’Antan, Aaron, 16 Ibn Paquda, Bahya, 46, 48 dell’Arpa, Arbamino, 7ff, 172–186, 192, Incense (biblical), 105–110 194f Inquisition, 5, 126, 180, 185, 283 316 subject index

Jacob (ben Naftali ha-Kohen) of Parenzo, Asher ben Jacob, 91ff Gazzuolo, 259ff, 268, 270, 273 Pesiqta Rabbati, 136 Judeo-Italian, 227, 280ff, 288 Pesiqtah Zutarta o rabbata, 135f Pfefferkorn, Johannes, 258 Kabbalah, 59–77, 82, 125, 247, Philo of Alexandria, 76, 125 255–258, 262, 266f, 273 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 62, 68, Katzenellenbogen, Samuel Judah, 37, 125, 257, 262, 264, 305 40, 50, 92, 99f Pitom qetoret, 105, 109 Kinnor also lyre also arpa, 186–195 Plague, 105, 109, 113, 248 Küh-bukh, 239–244 Platonists, 41, 46, 52n Portaleone, Abraham, 105–110, Lattes, Isaac de, 37, 86 112–119, 126, 129f, 188, 306 Lemlein, Asher, 69 Printing, 123, 132f, 229 Leqah Tov (midrash), 135 Prisca theologia, 75 Luria, Isaac, 65f, 69f, 76 prodesse, ix Lusitanus, Amatus, 106n, 107, 109–114, Provenzali, David, 304,307f 118 Provenzali, Moses, 40ff, 45, 48n, 50n, Luzzato, Rabbi Simha (Simone), 17ff, 52, 54, 308f 27f, 30–35 Qafman, Berakhiel Job, 59–63, 66f, 69, Ma’amar, 43, 52 72f Maimon (Maimonides), Salomon, 16, Qohelet (Kohelet), 16, 21f 17, 28f, 29n, 46, 58, 60, 71f, 95, 116, Qohelet Rabbah, 20, 21n, 23 122, 126, 286 Qol Yehudah, 13, 57ff, 61n, 66f, 70ff, 93, Mantua, 3–11, 19f, 39f, 59f, 63f, 67, 97, 121, 122n, 124, 129–136 71, 81, 83–85, 88, 93, 97, 104, 110, 119, 123, 126f, 146ff, 156, 163, 192, Reuchlin, Johannes, 138, 257, 262f, 199–216, 218–225, 228f, 248, 261, 270 271, 281, 299ff Revelation, 17f, 27, 29 Marranos, 5 Ritual murder, 217f, 220 Mashal (parable, analogy), 47f Romilli, Samuel, 40f, 46 Mayse, 228, 237, 238n, 239–245 Rossi, Azariah de, 19, 75f, 125f, 129f, Medigo, Elijah del, 75 135ff, 296, 303 Messer Leon, Judah, 129, 289, 302, Rossi, Salamone, 194 304f, 307 Messiah, 17, 239, 244 addiqim, 70 Metaphysics, 20, 23f Sant’Angelo, Abraham, 37, 51n Midrash, 125, 132–139, 186–188, 190, Santa Maria della Vittoria (church), 194, 236 209–218, 225 Modena, Leon, 37, 38n, 48, 75f, 94, Saraval, Judah, 97 284, 286, 296 Sefer ha-Kuzari, 13, 44n, 45f, 57–61, 67f, Moneylending, 247–50 71, 93, 97, 121–124, 127, 131, 286 Morteira, Saul Levi, 38n, 49n Sefer Yeirah, 57f, 61, 63f, 253, 258f, 261–271 Nahmanides, 72, 108 Shalom, Abraham, 72 Nefusot Yehudah, 3, 9n, 12, 41n, 57, 59, Shekhinah, 72 62, 73, 75, 79, 80n, 85–96, 100, 102, Shem Tov ben Shem Tov, 60 108, 123f, 136, 305 Skepticism, 15f, 19, 26ff Nietzsche, Friedrich, 16, 36 Socrates, 30–33, 46f Norsa, Daniele da, 208, 212–213, 218ff Solomon, 23, 26, 112, 114f Norsa Madonna, 206, 208, 212–216, 219f, Space, 200, 203–206, 216–220, 224f 220, 224f, 225 Spinoza, Baruch, 27, 35 Nose’, 42ff, 52, 53n; allegorical exegesis Steinschneider, Moritz, 234n, 272, of, 42ff 279ff, 287, 297 subject index 317

Synagogue, 8, 18, 38f, 81f, 85, 109, Wall, city walls, 203–205, 220 123, 157, 165, 247, 304 Yagel, Abraham, 4, 65f, 105, 109, 113, Temple, 112f, 116, 118, 161 119, 247–252, 308f, 247–252 Tuvia ben Eliezer, 135f Yalqu Shim‘oni, 133f Tzarfati, Reuven, 63 Yiddish, 227–235, 237–246, 306

Ugolino, Blasio, 135 Zohar, 53, 64, 66, 69–75, 138, 254ff, 258ff, 271 Veneto, Francesco Giorgio, 257 Zunz, Leopold, 271f Figure 6. Rebab, a two-string short-necked fiddle, and, to the right, a lute, here as an ‘ud with nine strings. Miniature from the Cantigas de Santa María (1250–1280). El Escorial, MS b. I.2, fol. 162r. Courtesy, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio del Escorial, Patrimonio Nacional.