Pierfrancesco Giambullari and Azariah De Rossi: a Note on the Hebrew Discourse of Me’Or Enayim, Chapter 571

Daniel STEIN KOKIN University of Greifswald

PIERFRANCESCO GIAMBULLARI AND AZARIAH DE ROSSI: A NOTE ON THE HEBREW DISCOURSE OF ME’OR ENAYIM, CHAPTER 571

RÉSUMÉ

Cette note intervient dans un débat érudit de longue date s’agissant d’établir à quel point le Me’or Enayim du polymathe italien Azariah de Rossi doit être regardé comme un défenseur polémique du judaïsme. La note le fait en se focalisant sur une petite partie de sa discussion de la langue hébraïque. En surface, il apparaît qu’au chapitre 57, Azariah emploie les arguments des érudits chrétiens à l’appui de sa thèse selon laquelle l’hébreu «est l’ancêtre et la source de toutes langues». Mais une étude approfondie de ce point du texte montre qu’en fait, Azariah lance ici une polémique subtile contre ses sources chrétiennes, et tout particulièrement, mais de manière implicite, contre l’argument selon lequel le dialecte toscan d’Italie provien- drait directement de l’hébreu ou de l’araméen. En effet, ce sont les érudits juifs qui se révèlent être les mieux à même de démontrer la prééminence de l’hébreu. Or les Toscans ne sauraient revendiquer un rapport particulier avec l’hébreu, comparé aux autres langues. Mon étude d’un petit extrait de ce texte énorme et difficile offre donc une preuve supplémentaire, quoique subtile, en faveur d’une interprétation polé- mique du Me’or Enayim.

ABSTRACT

This note intervenes in a long-standing scholarly debate concerning the degree to which the Italian polymath Azariah de Rossi’s Me’or Enayim should be regarded as a polemical defense of Judaism. It does so by focusing on a small section of his discussion of the Hebrew language. On the surface, Azariah appears in this portion of his text (chapter 57) to make use of the arguments of Christian scholars on behalf of his claim that Hebrew “is the antecedent and fount of all languages.” A closer examination of the structure of the discussion reveals, however, that Azariah is here subtly polemicizing against his Christian sources, in particular, albeit implicitly, against the claim that the Tuscan dialect of Italian derives directly from Hebrew or Aramaic. Indeed, it is Jewish scholars who turn out to be best equipped to demon- strate Hebrew’s preeminence; certainly, the Tuscans cannot claim any special rela- tionship with it as compared with other languages. My examination of this small

1. It is my pleasure to thank Bernard Dov Cooperman and Arthur Lesley for their kind support and encouragement with this piece.

Revue des études juives, 170 (1-2), janvier-juin 2011, pp. 285-291. doi: 10.2143/REJ.170.1.2126647

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section of a massive and challenging text provides additional, albeit subtle, evidence in favor a polemical interpretation of the Me’or Enayim.

In her 1987 article, “Azariah de Rossi and the Forgeries of Annius of Viterbo,” dean of Azariah de Rossi studies, Joanna Weinberg noted that the early modern Jewish polymath “utilized” the arguments of the Florentine linguist, historian, and court academician Pierfrancesco Giambullari (1495- 1555) in support of his view that Hebrew “is the antecedent and father of all languages.”2 And, indeed, this observation is undoubtedly correct, for in chapter 57 (“On the antiquity of the holy tongue and the use of the Aramaic language among our people”) of his magnum opus, the Me’or Enayim or Light unto the Eyes,3 Azariah deploys Giambullari’s 15464 Il Gello, albeit obliquely (its author is left unnamed), as the first in a series of sources which together highlight the foundational importance of the Hebrew tongue for the history of languages. Not unlike earlier works by the likes of Annius of Viterbo and especially Giambattista Gelli, Giambullari’s book argued that the Tuscan language derived from an ancient form of Aramaic that was highly similar to Hebrew: “… besides an infinity of words that are surely Aramaic,” he had written: “we still have modes and characteristics of speaking that are as Hebraic and Chaldean as these nations themselves.”5 Giambullari thus offered Azariah something most valuable: external proof for a claim central to Jewish pride. When the architecture of this section of this chapter is carefully consid- ered, however, it can be seen that while happy to benefit from Giambullari’s argument, Azariah at the same time engages in a subtle polemic against one of its central tenets, namely that of a unique and direct tie between Tuscan

2. J. WEINBERG, “Azariah de Rossi and the Forgeries of Annius of Viterbo,” in D. B. RUDER- MAN (ed.), Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (New York, 1992), p. 266. On Giambullari, see M. CRISTOFANI, “Linee di una storia del ‘Revival’ Etrusco in Toscana nel XVI secolo,” in Università di Siena: Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filoso- fia, vol. II, 1981; P. FIORELLI, “Pierfrancesco Giambullari e la Riforma dell’Alfabeto,” in Studi di Filologia Italiana: Bulletino dell’Accademia della Crusca, vol. XIV, 1956, pp. 177- 210; G. CIPRIANI, Il mito etrusco nel Rinascimento fiorentino (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1980). 3. A. de ROSSI, The Light of the Eyes, trans. J. WEINBERG (New Haven, 2001). 4. P. GIAMBULLARI, Il Gello (Florence, 1546). This title evokes G. Gelli’s 1544 Dell’Origine di Firenze and reflects the fact that Gelli is a major interlocutor in Giambullari’s dialogue. The work was later slightly modified and reprinted as Origine della lingua fiorentina altri- menti Il Gello (Florence, 1549), (Origin of the Florentine Language, or alternatively ‘The Gello’), and thereafter as De la lingua che si parla e scrive in Firenza (Florence, 1551). 5. GIAMBULLARI, p. 110 (“… oltra una infinità di voci, che schiettamente sono Aramee, noi ci abbiamo ancora i modi et le proprietà del dire, tanto Hebraiche et tanto Caldee, che quelle genti stesse non l’hanno maggiori.”).

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and Hebrew. For immediately after repeating a number of Tuscan words closely related by Giambullari to Aramaic and Hebrew (and offered in proof of his argument), Azariah proceeds to quote the 1527 Chaldaica grammatica (Aramaic grammar) of the noted German Hebrew and Aramaic scholar Sebastian Münster (1488-1552), in fact an important source for Giambullari, on the post-Babel confusion of the tongues. In contrast to these Tuscans’ suggestion of a direct parallel between Hebrew and the ancient Etruscan tongue (Giambullari himself referred to Hebrew as the “sister language” of Etrurian, contemporary Tuscan’s presumed ancestor6), Münster instead articulates in this work what can be styled a concentric account of the rela- tionship of the world’s languages to Hebrew. It is Near Eastern languages adjacent to the purported scene of the dispersion, such as Aramaic and Ara- bic, which bear the greatest similarity with Hebrew, while “the languages of the more remote countries, such as Germany and the other western regions (and one presumes these would include Italy as well–DSK), were correspondingly more dissimilar.”7 After citing the southern French/Catalonian Jewish scholar Profiat Duran (c. 1350-c.1415) in confirmation of Münster’s claims, Azariah then turns to his fellow Italian Jewish scholar, Rabbi David Provenzali, who in his now lost Dor ha-Pelagah (Generation of the Division of the Tongues) apparently recorded “more than two thousand Hebrew words, some of which were scattered among the Latin language, others into Greek, Italian, and other languages.”8 As if to drive home the point that no special connection between Hebrew and Tuscan abides, he implicitly responds to Giambullari’s or “Flower פרח עז ”Hebraic etymology for Firenze (Florence) as “Perah Ez of the Strong”9 by describing his fellow Mantuan Provenzali as hailing from the city “of the good manna,” deriving the name Mantua from the Hebrew good”).10 Thus, if for the likes of“) טובה ”manna”) and “tova“) מן man

6. Ibid., “la lingua Etrusca… l’Hebrea sua sorella.”. 7. WEINBERG, The Light of the Eyes, p. 677. Hebrew citations from Sefer Me’or Enayim le-Rav Azariah min ha-Adumim (Jerusalem, 1969), vol. 2, p. 456. ואחד בלי שם מחכמיהם … כתב כי בעת הפלגה נשארו כמה מלות מן הלשון הקדוש פזורות ומשובשות ברוב הלשונות המחודשים ואיך אותם שנמצאו קרוב למקום הפלגה נשאר לשונם קרוב ללשון הקדש כגון הארמי והערבי והעמים הגלוים אליהם בקצות המזרח, וכל אשר יספו להתרחק כאשכנז ויתר גלילות המערב יסף לשונם להתרחק ממנו …״ ״גם הר״ר דוד פרווינצ״אלי העומד לנס תורה בעיר מ״ן טו״בה בין חבוריו המחוכמים העלה ,.Ibid .8 על ספר קראו דור הפלגה יתר מאלפים מלות עבריות המפוזרות קצתם בלשון רומי וקצתם ביוני ואיטלקי וזולתם …״ 9. GIAMBULLARI, p. 153. 10. WEINBERG, The Light of the Eyes, p. 677, n. 42, reads this as “of goodness,” reading as “min,” (“from,”) instead of “man,” (“manna”). But the Hebraicization of Mantua as מן meaning “good manna” was a commonplace of the time (and has recently even been com-

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Giambullari, the Hebraic valence of the name “Firenze” constituted a sine qua non of contemporary Tuscany’s links to ancient Etruscan civilization, and through this to the ancient Levant, the manner in which Azariah evokes his native Duchy suggests that for him such connections were hardly unique.11 In short, Azariah’s apparent “utilization” of Giambullari is at least as much, if not more, a response and abuse thereof. Let us now explore in greater detail the course of Azariah’s discussion and its implicit argument. In particular, we shall do so in order to engage Weinberg’s claim that “de Rossi does [not] indicate any awareness of the political nature of the linguistic problem treated by Giambullari.”12 As already noted, after quoting from Giambullari, Azariah straightaway turns to Sebastian Münster, in fact to the very introduction to the German schol- ar’s Aramaic grammar. Azariah does not offer any reason for this shift, but a closer examination of the relevant section of Giambullari’s Origine can guide us toward an explanation. Indeed, when we return to Giambullari, we discover that immediately after offering “about a hundred examples of words in that language [Tuscan] which derive from the holy tongue,”13 our Florentine author also turns to Münster, among others, for further proof. The problem concerns the alleged Aramaic status of the Tuscan words presented by Giambullari. How, our author asks via his interlocutors (the Origine is written as a dialogue), can it be shown “that all these words are Aramaic?”14 The immediate response: “the very Chaldean and Hebrew dic- tionaries that are today available in published form, and have been com-

memorated in a volume of essays published in honor of the twentieth-century Mantuan Jewish scholar Vittore Colorni) and is therefore the more likely reading. See M. PERANI (ed.), Una manna buona per Mantova = Man Tov le-Man Tovah: studi in onore di Vittore Colorni per il suo 92. compleanno (Firenze, 2004). On pp. xiii-xiv, Perani offers some examples of this playful Hebraic rendering of Mantua from the fifteenth century. 11. And this is in fact the case, as further examples from the period are also attested. The noted Cardinal and Christian Kabbalist Egidio da Viterbo interpreted the name of the city of Rome hebraically as meaning “high,” or “exalted.” See, for example, F. SECRET, Scechina e Libellus de Litteris Hebraicis (Rome, 1959), vol. I, fol. 40, p. 50, where Egidio notes that in not“ ,(ארוממך Psalm 145, which commences with “I will exalt you, O Lord,” (Aromimkha Jerusalem but the name of Rome resounds.” And Italian Jews were wont as well to refer to the peninsula as a whole as the “Island of the Dew of the Lord,” (I-tal-ya), in what seems as well to have been a response to the traditional exegesis of Isaac’s blessing of Esav in Genesis 27:39 (“See, of the fatness of the earth shall your home be and of the dew of heaven on high”) which interpreted the “earth” as referring to Italy and “heaven” as Beit Guvrin or Judaea. On this, see Genesis Rabbah 67:6. I am grateful to Piero Capelli for sharing these insights on the I-tal-ya pun with me and to Francesca Bregoli for putting us in touch. 12. WEINBERG, “Azariah de Rossi,” p. 266. 13. AZARIAH, The Light of the Eyes, p. 676. See p. 120 in the 1549 edition of the Origine. 14. GIAMBULLARI, Il Gello, p. 122 (sic 112), “è egli però vero che tutte queste voci siano Aramee?”

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posed by northern Europeans (lit. oltramontani), who do not know our language.”15 To be sure, Giambullari does not here furnish any names (i.e. Münster himself is not explicitly mentioned), yet any knowledgeable reader at the time confronted by this statement would have immediately thought of Sebastian Münster, an identification further encouraged by Giambullari’s subsequent explicit references to him. Münster had in fact published his grammar of the Aramaic language, “a task never before attempted by any- one,” in 1527.16 Angelo Canini’s own Aramaic grammar appeared in Paris in 1554, but no one would have referred to this Italian-born scholar as “oltramontano.”17 In short, eager to shore up any doubts in his reader as to the truly Aramaic quality of the Tuscan words he brings forward, Giambul- lari invokes the authority of the leading contemporary Hebraicist and Ara- maicist, a figure whose very ignorance of Tuscan ensures his reliability. To return now to The Light of the Eyes: considered against the backdrop of Giambullari’s own turn to Münster and his fellow northern scholars, Aza- riah’s similar move now reads, I suggest, somewhat differently. For his invocation of the great German scholar serves not specifically to strengthen or even build upon Giambullari’s specific position, but in fact largely to undercut it. The geographical aspect of Münster’s argument, that is the link between territorial proximity to “the scene of the dispersion” and linguistic similarity to Hebrew, as outlined in the introduction to, of all texts, his above-mentioned Aramaic grammar, could in fact only undermine the argu- ments of the likes of Giambullari. But is all the foregoing not simply much ado about nothing? Amid all the furrows and secluded places of Azariah de Rossi magnum opus, why concern ourselves with the one implicit reference to Giambullari, hardly the leading scholar of the sixteenth century? The reason has to do with the critical question of the scholarly vs. polemical character of this book, a ques- tion that has excited interest and provoked debate among a number of recent scholars.18 On the surface, the section we have explored of Azariah’s

15. Ibid., “I Dizionarii stessi Caldei et Hebrei che si trovano oggi stampati: et sono com- posti da oltramontani, che non sanno la lingua nostra”. 16. “… a nemine antehac attentata.” Cited from Münster’s Grammatica Chaldaica by J. WEINBERG, “A Sixteenth-Century Hebraic Approach to the New Testament,” in C. R. LIGOTA and J.-L. QUANTIN (eds.), History of Scholarship: A Selection of Papers from the Seminar on the History of Scholarship Held Annualy at the Warburg Institute (Oxford, 2006), p. 234. 17. Ibid., p. 241. Canini was born in Anghiari, near Arezzo. 18. The two major players in this drama have been Weinberg herself and R. Bonfil. See, for example, J. WEINBERG, “Translator’s Introduction,” in The Light of the Eyes, pp. xxix-xxx; ibid., “The Beautiful Soul,” in D. B. RUDERMAN and G. VELTRI (eds.), Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern Italy (Philadelphia, 2004), pp. 109-126 and R. BONFIL, “Expressions of the Uniqueness of the Nation of Israel in Italy in the Renaissance Period,”

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57th chapter certainly appears highly scholarly and hardly polemical if at all: here de Rossi seems simply to note and enjoy the happy conjunction of traditional (if hardly uncontested) Jewish thinking about the place of Hebrew among the languages with the humanist discourse of the Christian Hebraists. But, as we have tried to show, as one reads between the lines—or more precisely, if one reads with Azariah’s sources open on one’s desk, as one can well imagine he would have—what emerges is a subtle, yet unmistak- ably different picture: a carefully planned and rather brilliantly executed attempt to (re-)assert Jewish linguistic pride and to maintain a certain dis- tance (a scholarly buffer-zone we may call it) from the contemporary Latin and Italian voices that threatened to usurp and drown out their Hebrew corollaries. It is hardly accidental here, I submit, that both Giambullari and Mün- ster’s names are left unmentioned,19 while the Jewish grammarian Elijah Levita in his common Hebrew designation as Bahur (from whom, Azariah is keen to inform us, Münster stole the idea of writing such an Aramaic grammar), Profiat Duran via his nickname Efodi and the afore-mentioned David Provenzali are explicitly cited. The turn here to Provenzali is par- ticularly apropos, for in referring to his Dor ha-Pelagah–an entire work dedicated to the subject of the dispersion briefly addressed by the unnamed Münster in his grammar–Azariah now implies that it his Jewish colleague who is the true expert on this pivotal event. Not by chance does Azariah for the first time in this section refer both to an author and the title of his book. But it is not, we must make clear, simply a question of leaving non-Jewish sources unattributed. Shortly therafter, for example, Azariah sees fit to refer directly to both Dante and Aquinas.20 My suggestion is that Azariah here specifically forbears to mention by name contemporary Christian scholars, precisely that community whose connections with Azariah the more scholarly (as opposed to polemical) reading of his book wishes to

Sinai 76 (1975), pp. 36-46, esp. 39 (Hebrew); “Some Reflections on the Place of Azariah de Rossi’s Me’or Enayim in the Cultural Milieu of Italian Renaissance Jewry,” in B. D. COOPER- MAN (ed.), Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 23-43, esp. pp. 37-43; “How Golden was the Age of the Renaissance in Jewish Historiography,” in A. RAPOPORT-ALBERT (ed.), Essays in Jewish Historiography (Wesleyan, CT: History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History 27, 1988), pp. 78-102, esp. pp. 96-102. See also S. W. BARON, “Azariah de Rossi’s Historical Method,” in ibid., History and Jewish Histori- ans (Philadelphia, 1964), pp. 205-239, esp. pp. 225 ff. 19. With regard to Münster’s elision, Weinberg correctly notes that contemporary censor- ship legislation stipulated that as a heretic (alas, Münster was a Protestant) his works “could be cited, but only anonymously” (The Light of the Eyes, p. 677, n. 38). Yet in light of Giam- bullari’s similar effacement, this can constitute but a partial explanation. 20. The Light of the Eyes, p. 678.

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stress.21 In other words, by implicitly deploying Münster to undermine Giambullari, then immediately thereafter invoking Levita to delegitimize Münster, so as in the end to cite David Provenzali alone as the key and critical authority on the question of Hebrew etymologies (a progression from non-Jewish to Jewish authors which nicely parallels the geographic argument simultaneously advanced), Azariah leaves the careful reader with little doubt as to where the true mastery of Hebrew, its history, and its legacy among the languages of the world resides. And if the matter of the confusion of the tongues needs to be considered geographically, so does the question of contemporary knowledge thereof. By this measure, it is de Rossi’s native Mantua that lies at the center of the universe.22

Daniel STEIN KOKIN [email protected]

21. In emphasizing here how at least in this specific context Azariah demonstrated a strong preference for Jewish over (at least contemporary) Christian scholars, I also intend partially to challenge (and complicate) Bonfil’s assertion that “de Rossi’s heavy reliance upon gentile authors was essentially an expression of his conviction that Judaism could be defended more efficiently by using non-Jewish sources” (BONFIL, “Some Reflections,” p. 41). This principle may apply to many subjects, but not to this one. 22. There may well be a measure of Italian civic pride at work here as well, particularly with regard to the Mantuan Azariah’s undermining of Giambullari’s Tuscan thesis.

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