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

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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 994323_REJ_2011-1-2_11_Kokin.indd4323_REJ_2011-1-2_11_Kokin.indd 285285 331/08/111/08/11 114:004:00 286 A NOTE ON THE HEBREW DISCOURSE OF ME’OR ENAYIM 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.”). 994323_REJ_2011-1-2_11_Kokin.indd4323_REJ_2011-1-2_11_Kokin.indd 286286 331/08/111/08/11 114:004:00 A NOTE ON THE HEBREW DISCOURSE OF ME’OR ENAYIM 287 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- 994323_REJ_2011-1-2_11_Kokin.indd4323_REJ_2011-1-2_11_Kokin.indd 287287 331/08/111/08/11 114:004:00 288 A NOTE ON THE HEBREW DISCOURSE OF ME’OR ENAYIM 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.
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