The Hebrew Bible in Fifteenth-Century Spain Études Sur Le Judaïsme Médiéval

The Hebrew Bible in Fifteenth-Century Spain Études sur le Judaïsme Médiéval

Fondées par Georges Vajda

Dirigées par Paul B. Fenton

TOME LIV

The titles published in this series are listed at www.brill.nl/ejm The Hebrew Bible in Fifteenth-Century Spain

Exegesis, Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts

Edited by Jonathan Decter and Arturo Prats

Leiden • BOSTOn 2012 This project has been made possible by the project Inteleg: The Intellectual and Material Legacies of Late Medieval Sephardic Judaism (principal investigator Esperanza Alfonso, CSIC), funded by the European Research Council.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Hebrew Bible in fifteenth-century Spain : exegesis, literature, philosophy, and the arts / edited by Jonathan Decter and Arturo Prats. p. cm. — (Études sur le judaïsme médiéval ; t. 54) Proceedings of a conference held in Oct. 2008 in Madrid, Spain. Includes index. ISBN 978-90-04-23248-8 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-23249-5 (e-book) 1. Bible. O.T.—Influence—Congresses. 2. Spain—Civilization—711–1516—Congresses. 3. Spain—Civilization—Jewish influences—Congresses. 4. Portugal—Civilization— To 1500—Congresses. 5. Iberian peninsula—Religion—Congresses. I. Decter, Jonathan P., 1971– II. Prats Oliván, Arturo.

BS538.7.H43 2012 221.0946’09024—dc23

2012013367

ISSN 0169 815X ISBN 978 90 04 23248 8 (hardback) ISBN 978 90 04 23249 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 and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

This book is printed on acid-free paper. CONTENTS

Introduction ...... 1

I. Literature and Art

Weeping Over Rachel’s Tomb: Literary Reelaborations of a Midrashic Motif in Medieval and Early Modern Spain ...... 13 Luis M. Girón-Negrón

The First Murder: Picturing Polemic c. 1391 ...... 41 Tom Nickson

Sephardic Illuminated Bibles: Jewish Patrons and Fifteenth-Century Christian Ateliers ...... 61 Andreina Contessa

II. Jewish Exegesis

Abarbanel’s Exegetical Subversion of Maimonides’ ʿAqedah: Transforming a Knight of Intellectual Virtue into a Knight of Existential Faith ...... 75 James A. Diamond

“From My Flesh I Envision God”: Shem Ṭov Ibn Shaprut’ṣ Exegesis of Job 19:25–27 ...... 101 Libby Garshowitz

Messianic Interpretation of the Song of Songs in Late-Medieval Iberia ...... 117 Maud Kozodoy vi contents

III. CONVERSION AND THE USES OF BIBLICAL EXEGESIS

Pro-Converso Apologetics and Biblical Exegesis ...... 151 Claude B. Stuczynski

A Father’s Bequest: Augustinian Typology and Personal Testimony in the Conversion Narrative of Solomon Halevi/ Pablo de Santa María ...... 177 Ryan Szpiech

IV. Liturgy and Translation

The Liturgy of Portuguese Conversos ...... 201 Asher Salah

The Relationship between Ladino Liturgical Texts and Spanish Bibles ...... 223 Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald

Translation and the Invention of Renaissance Jewish Culture: The Case of Judah Messer Leon and Judah Abravanel ...... 245 Aaron W. Hughes

Index ...... 267

Appendix: Illustrations ...... 277 INTRODUCTION

The present volume is one piece of a multi-year international research project: Inteleg: The Intellectual and Material Legacies of Late Medieval Sephardic Judaism (principal investigator Esperanza Alfonso, CSIC), which takes as its object of study Iberian Jewish culture between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. In particular, the cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary scope of the project takes the Hebrew Bible as its point of focus in that the sacred text intersected with virtually all aspects of late medieval Sephardic culture: its languages of expression, its material and artistic production, and its intellectual output in literary, philosophical, exegetic, scientific, and polemical spheres. Issues in the reading of the Bible were prominent in internal Jewish debates over such subjects as leadership, theology, and conversion, were pivotal in inter-religious debates, and played a central role in the fashion- ing of Christian theology and identity. The articles included in this volume grew out of an international conference, which was held at the Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (CCHS) of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Madrid in October, 2009. The purpose of the conference was to investigate the relationship between the Bible and the cultural production of Iberian societies during the fifteenth century. We were interested in exploring the centrality of the Bible as a cultural referent for Christian and Jewish societies during this turbulent and transform ative century. In order to explore how the Bible served as a focal point for the evolution of the Jewish tradition and the encounters, both positive and negative, between Jews and Christians, we brought together scholars of Hebrew and vernacular literature, exegesis, philosophy, polemics, and art history. Papers addressed the ways in which textual and visual works that invoke the Bible refract social reality and the ways in which discourse surrounding the Bible participated in and created that reality. As the fruit of this first conference, which set the stage for subsequent work of the project, this volume brings together articles on subjects over a diverse spectrum (including messianic Jewish interpretations of the Song of Songs, polemical elements of texts and images, 2 introduction the liturgy of the conversos, translation, the conversion narrative of a prominent Jewish convert to Christianity, etc.) and employs a broad range of methodological approaches (from classical philology to Derridian analysis). The unifying elements of the volume are twofold: all of the articles present instantiations of the Hebrew Bible’s deployment in textual and visual forms and share a focus on a specific period, the fifteenth century. Although several articles at least touch on preceding and subsequent periods (which is natural given that the designation of a century is somewhat arbitrary),1 they all shed light on the years between the anti-Jewish riots that swept through the Iberian Peninsula in 1391 and the mass Expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492. Our purpose in highlighting this period is not to portray late medieval Iberian Jewry as moribund or spiraling downward toward an ineluctable and bitter end, nor is it to uncover the causes of the Expulsion itself. Rather, the selec- tion of this period is simply to emphasize that there was something unique about the post-1391 environment owed to the radical remaking of Iberia’s social makeup in the wake of mass conversion and that this reorganization had an impact on, and was affected by, the range of works that touch upon the Hebrew Bible. The volume engages the dialectic between the ways in which events informed biblical readings and how exegetic strategies (pre-figuration, literality, allegory, etc.) opened up ways of presenting, and hence remaking, society and history. At the broadest levels, the fifteenth century saw great changes in the Iberian political framework due to the increased centralization of government and the amassing of power by a new nobility that often tried to limit the influence of Jews and conversos. The experience of the illustrious Jewish courtier and intellectual Don Isaac Abravanel (who

1 The tendency of the scholarly community to divide and isolate the Late Middle Ages from preceding periods and from the beginning of the Modern period which came after it is now an outdated historiographic framework or chronological classification. The term “Late Middle Ages” remains an expedient category for the dating of historical events, but it does not reflect the existence of a self-explanatory “closed historical period”. Several processes can be glimpsed for the first time in the fifteenth century, such as the birth of national identities in the European Mediterranean regions, or the appearance of technologies and discoveries that changed the face of the world such as the printing press, or the discovery of America and the subsequent opening of new trade routes. Yet these phenomena cannot be explained solely within the chronological framework of the fifteenth century; neither can they be circumscribed to only one region of the Mediterranean. Hence the present volume does not adhere strictly to the chronological or geographical boundaries indicated in the title. introduction 3 features prominently within these pages) was atypical, whether or not one subscribes to Benzion Netanyahu’s description of late-medieval Spain as a “Land of Persecution.”2 The Crown also continued the trend of expanding its control over the Jewish aljamas that had begun in the thirteenth century. The mass conversions that began in 1391 led, as David Nirenberg has argued, to a “violent destabilization of traditional categories of religious identity” in which genealogy took on new prominence.3 We can name many other events that complicated and recalibrated the contours of society during the period: the voluntary conversions of prominent Jewish figures; the forced Jewish attendance of conversionary sermons; the Tortosa Disputations of 1412–13; the anti-Jewish and conversionary pressure applied by the papal-spon- sored preacher Vicente Ferrer; the anti-Jewish riots of Lisbon in 1449; the anti-converso riots and legislation of Toledo in 1449; local expulsions; the establishment of the Inquisition; and of course, the Expulsion itself.4 Again, these events are not cited here in order to conjure up a lachrymose image of the century or to suggest that the Expulsion was either predictable or inevitable. Indeed, the convincing revision of Mark D. Meyerson yields evidence that the fifteenth century could be stable and prosperous for Jews in a given locale, perhaps even amount- ing to a “Renaissance” of sorts.5 Moreover, evidence from throughout the Peninsula reveals that Jews participated in the intellectual trends of non-Jewish culture and sometimes worked collaboratively with Christians on specific projects (some of these are discussed in the present volume). Nevertheless, it is difficult not to see 1391 as a turning point, one that constituted radical change if not outright demise.

2 See Benzion Netanyahu, Don Isaac Abravanel: Statesman and Philosopher (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1953), 33; see also the critique by Eric Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance Toward Tradition: Defense, Dissent, and Dialogue (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 16. 3 David Nirenberg, “Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain”, Past and Present 174 (2002): 3–41 (quotation p. 6). 4 For an overview article that takes 1391 as a turning point, see Benjamin Gampel, “Letter to a Wayward Teacher: the Transformations of Sephardic Culture in Christian Iberia”, in Cultures of the Jews, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken, 2002), 389– 441. 5 Mark. D. Meyerson, A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). Compare with the classic presentation of the fifteenth century by Yitzhaq Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain 2 vols., trans. Louis Schiffman (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1961–66). 4 introduction

Many of the events above figure explicitly or implicitly throughout the essays in this volume (in addition to the brief comments here, each article will be described further below): the inter-confessional circulation of Jewish interpretive motifs and Christian modes of manuscript illumination toward polemical and non-polemical ends reveal the complex dynamics among Iberian religious communities (Giron, Nickson, Contessa); the backdrop of a persecuting society may have fueled Jewish meditations over Messianism (Kozodoy); the pressing situation of the conversos and Christian ideals of martyrdom and religious fortitude may have informed Isaac Abravanel’s portrayal of Abraham and Isaac in the Binding of Isaac (Diamond); Shem Tov Ibn Shaprut’s treatment of theodicy in the Job narrative may reflect the plight-inflected state of fifteenth-century Jewry (Garshowitz); the circumstances of post-Expulsion conversos, consisting of a degree of continuity with pre-Expulsion Iberia and webs of relations in a Jewish/ converso diaspora, had an impact on the linguistic and formal elements of the converso liturgy (Salah, Schwarzwald). As important as actual historical events are the intellectual shifts that remade the world of biblical interpretation by the fifteenth century, which in turn affected understandings of historical processes and even notions of the self. During the high Middle Ages, the Bible underwent a transition from being a preacher’s handbook and an object of moral contemplation to become a sort of textbook within the higher schools, including the universities, which became the main centers of biblical exegesis. The period was marked by the inclusion of rationalist philosophy in the scholastic curriculum and a turn toward literalist methods of interpretation (taking privileged place among the fourfold division of exegetic methods: literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogic). The focus on literalism stemmed, in part, from the place that the Bible occupied in Jewish-Christian disputations as Christian disputants sought to confront Judaism on the grounds of its own scripture in its plain sense and to demonstrate Christian truth claims from this starting point. Literalism was also a key point of theoretical hermeneutics, notably in the work of Nicholas de Lyra, whose notion of a “double literal sense” (by which something can refer to itself and figuratively to something else without depriving either sense of the claim to literality) would have a powerful legacy in the fifteenth century. Another defining aspect of late medieval exegesis, exemplified again by de Lyra’s exegetic ouvre, is the selective appropriation of the Jewish commentary tradition for polemical but also for non-polemical purposes. Finally, introduction 5 the fifteenth century is understood, within both Christian and Jewish traditions, as a transitional period when medieval exegetic techniques met the introduction of Renaissance aesthetic, historical, and philosophical categories.6 The exegetic trends of the high Middle Ages and the early Renaissance feature prominently in several essays of this volume. In addition to articles on exegesis discussed above, we mention here the following: the introduction of Renaissance categories of thought and rhetoric led, among Jewish authors, to a re-reading of the Bible and a re-inscription of Judaism into a vision of history (Hughes); the experience of the (voluntary) convert Pablo de Santa María was presented autobio- graphically in exegetical terms whereby the convert’s interior transformation mirrored Christianity’s theological and scriptural claims of supersession over Judaism (Szpiech); Paulinian shifts in late-medieval Christian biblical exegesis opened up methods of pro-converso advocacy (Stuczynski). These articles demonstrate not only that biblical exegesis reflects historical circumstances but also that approaches to the biblical text could mediate or play a determinative role in the very unfolding of history.

We have organized the volume into four sections: 1) Literature and Art; 2) Jewish Exegesis; 3) Conversion and the Uses of Biblical Exegesis; and 4) Liturgy and Translation.

I. Literature and Art

Luis Giron’s article traces the long and complex literary life of the extra-biblical motif of Joseph weeping at the tomb of his mother Rachel throughout the literatures of medieval and early modern Iberia

6 For some general essays and further bibliography, see Karlfried Froehlich, “Christian Interpretation of the Old Testament in the High Middle Ages,” In Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: the History of its Interpretation, ed. Magne Sæbø (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996) 1,2:496–558; Günter Stemberger, “Elements of Biblical Interpretation in Medieval Jewish-Christian Disputation” In Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament 1,2:578–590; Lesley Smith, “Nicholas of Lyra and Old Testament Interpretation,” In Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, 2:49–63; Deeana Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers: Nicholas of Lyra and Christian Reading of Jewish Text in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Eric Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance Toward Tradition. 6 introduction in its various languages and corpora—Hebrew, Arabic, Judeo-Spanish, Aljamiado, Castilian, and Catalan. The article forces us to reflect upon the chronological and cultural boundaries often imposed upon studies of medieval literature by demonstrating that the rigid separation assumed to exist between religio-cultural communities gives way to the image of a rich, complex culture full of interferences and hybrid elements. The motif of Joseph weeping at the tomb of his mother as he is taken to Egypt becomes a universal motif of human pain deployed as a paradigm of elegiac mourning. Yet beyond imagining the literatures as presenting an idyllic convivencia, the successive iterations of the motif are said to have spoken “to the communal hopes of changing audiences with evocative power and cathartic promise.” Tom Nickson’s article also focuses on elaborations of a biblical scene, Cain’s murder of his brother Abel, now in visual works. In particular, the article treats related images of the elder brother sinking his bare teeth into his victim’s neck in two pieces, the choir screen relief of the Toledo Cathedral and an illustration from the so-called Alba Bible, commissioned by don Luis González de Guzmán, Grand Master of the Order of Calatrava, with the participation of a local rabbi Moses Arragel. Nickson explores how this particularly brutal motif, probably Jewish in origin, may have circulated in the intra-confessional atmosphere of fifteenth-century Toledo and came to be reused for polemical effect, attending especially to the anxieties surrounding Jews and conversos. Andreina Contessa also tackles the complex dynamics of Christian- Jewish cultural iterations as read through biblical iconography. In her article she defines a corpus of fifteenth-century Sephardic Bibles that were produced in Spain and taken to Italy after the Expulsion (some of the Bibles were completed in Italy). These Bibles were produced through the collaboration of “Christian ateliers, Jewish scribes and book owners” and display features which cast light on Christian-Jewish relations of the period. A list of corresponding chapters between the Vulgate text and the Imola Hebrew Bible was likely intended for engaging with Christian disputants in polemical arguments. The Sephardic Bibles also make selective use of Christian iconographic motifs but also avoid and modify them in order to create theological distance. introduction 7

II. Jewish Exegesis

James A. Diamond’s article on Abravanel and Maimonides’ contrasting interpretations of the ‘Aqedah (Binding of Isaac) is a detailed and nuanced textual analysis executed with the skills of an intellectual historian who nonetheless attends to historic specificity. Abravanel (15th century) understands Abraham’s merit as residing in his supra-rational obedience to God, thus veering from or overturning Maimonides’ representation of Abraham as a consummate rationalist whose comprehension of God was detached from the ritual of post-Sinaitic Judaism. For Abravanel, ritual itself remained central while a purely inward, philosophical approach to the divine seemed untenable and dangerous. He likewise concentrated on Isaac’s perfection as a physical, genetic inheritance from his father. Diamond argues that Abravanel’s reading might be linked to the pressing situation of conversos in the fifteenth century; while the Maimonidean ideal of comprehending and loving God inwardly might have been compatible with converso existence, such an emphasis was problematic, according to Abravanel, whose attitude toward conversos was a “complex amalgam of empathy and disdain.” Another article that links historical context with biblical exegesis is that contributed by Libby Garshowitz concerning the interpretation of the Job story in Shem Tov Ibn Shaprut’s Even Bohan (Touchstone), a “fifteenth-century polemic tract composed primarily to stem the tide of conversion among his fellow Jews.” Although the problem of divine providence so poignantly explored in the Job narrative is time- less, it naturally took on a certain urgency in Iberia after 1391, when many Jews may have felt hopeless and abandoned by God. Garshowitz suggests, among other things, that Ibn Shaprut used Job’s hope for a “redeemer” to offer comfort for the witnesses of the 1391 riots and that he wove polemical arguments into his reading. Relief from the adversity of historical circumstance is also at the heart of the rich and suggestive contribution by Maud Kozodoy. After a concise review of exegetical trends in the interpretation of the Song of Songs through the Middle Ages—through which an initial historical-allegorical reading gave way, following Maimonides, to indi- vidualist intellectualist ones—Kozodoy presents a renewed interest in messianic elements in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Iberian commentaries by Joshua Ibn Shueib, Abraham ben Isaac ha-Levi, and Isaac 8 introduction

Arama. Attending to changes in hermeneutic method (including the appropriation of scholastic techniques), shifting ideas concerning the notion of allegory, as well as dominant interpretations of the Song among Christian exegetes, Kozodoy argues that late medieval Iberian Jewish commentaries are imbued with a sense of historical contemporaneity and, in some cases, imminent messianic expectation.

III. Conversion and the Uses of Biblical Exegesis

Claude Stuczynski’s article explores pro-converso tracts by several fifteenth-century authors including the Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, the Hieronymite General Alonso de Oropesa, the convert Pablo de Santa María (formerly Solomon ha-Levi de Burgos), and Pablo’s son Alonso de Cartagena. Stuczynski emphasizes the writings’ varied interpretations and applications of Paulinian theology—including uphold- ing the benefits of Jewish heritage and physicality, the possibility of integrating diverse ethnic stocks within a single “mystical body”, or the erasure of ethnic divisions within the sacraments of the Church— while highlighting their shared political thrust. By presenting readings of specific passages from the Hebrew Bible, the article goes on to illustrate the place and reconfiguration of Paulinian exegetic concepts within pro-converso writings that gave honored place to literal interpretation (including Nicolas de Lyra’s concept of double literality). The conversionary narrative of Pablo de Santa María that surfaces in Stuczynski’s article is the focal point of the article by Ryan Szpiech. Through the close reading of highly charged turns of phrase, Szpiech argues that conversion, as presented by Pablo, was not “an event” but “a new kind of understanding” whose primary element was exegetical. Just as Christian supersessionist theology was grounded in the figurative reinterpretation of the Hebrew Bible, so the act of rereading is located within Pablo’s report of interior transformation. While the narrative evokes the rhetoric of a Pauline “calling” in numerous respects, Szpiech argues that Pablo’s conversionary model was essentially Augustinian in that it presented interior transformation in exegetical terms, as a fulfillment of prophecy, and gave privileged place to the subject of “memory.” Szpiech concludes that Pablo’s use of Augustine was at its core polemical, expressing a vision of his trajectory in conversion that mirrored the history of Christian supersession of Judaism. introduction 9

IV. Liturgy and Translation

Taking debates over the origins of the converso liturgy as a point of departure, Asher Salah’s article argues that the extant prayers of the Portuguese conversos constitute a coherent poetic corpus with distinct formal and thematic features. These, he argues, derive from the cultural and spiritual context of post-Tridentine baroque Europe and its atmosphere of spiritual innovation. The author also highlights the corpus’ high dependence on the Psalms and its predilection for certain biblical themes such as the Binding of Isaac, which communicated the twin motifs of martyrdom and steadfast obedience. These features are shown to be held in common with other liturgical corpora of the period, both Jewish and Christian. Finally, the author posits, based on increasing circumstantial evidence, that Jewish liturgical materials may have reached conversos through personal contact between Portuguese conversos and Jews from outside the Iberian Peninsula. Using the time-honored method of painstaking philological analysis, Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald compares biblical citations in post- Expulsion Ladino manuscripts (Ethics of the Fathers, the Passover Haggadah) with medieval Spanish Bibles. Through all of the detail on such matters as the variant spellings of names (for God, places, and people), lexical variations, and the rendering of Hebrew tenses, the author reaches some interesting conclusions that pertain to the continuity (or lack thereof) of pre- and post-Expulsion Sephardic Jewry, the “Hispanicity” of Sephardic Jews, and linkages throughout the Sephardic Diaspora.7 The most striking point is that pre-exilic texts exhibit great diversity while the post-exilic texts, despite their varying prov- enances, offer relative uniformity. Schwarzwald challenges claims for the dependence of Ladino Bible translations on medieval antecedents and maintains that the post-exilic translations were based directly on the Hebrew Bible and on oral transmission. In the final contribution, the subject of translation is approached from an entirely different perspective by Aaron W. Hughes. Recognizing that the act of translation, whether in the plain sense of transferring a

7 On the “Hispanicity” of Sephardic Jews and questions regarding the coherence of a Sephardi Diaspora, see Eleazar Gutwirth, “On the Hispanicity of Sephardi Jewry,” Revue des Etudes Juives 145,3–4 (1986) 347–357; Jonathan Ray, “New Approaches to the Jewish Diaspora: The Sephardim as a Sub-Ethnic Group,” Jewish Social Studies 15 (2008): 10–31. 10 introduction text from one language to another or through the integration of novel concepts into the reading of an old text (such as the Bible), entails the negotiation of boundaries between cultures, the article focuses on works by Judah Messer Leon and Judah Abravanel, both of whom “translated” the Hebrew Bible “into Renaissance categories and vice versa.” Each read the Bible through the aesthetic and philosophical categories of the Renaissance even as he maintained that the Bible, and hence Judaism, already presented and prefigured the key innovations of Renaissance culture, an argument with a clear apologetic valence. Hughes asks the question, “If the Bible . . . can only be made sense of using the standards of non-Jews, if biblical language and categories can only be glimpsed through the veil of other languages and cultures, what, if anything, defines Jewish culture at any particular historical or geographical moment?” The article argues that even as translation opens up the Bible to other cultures, the process paradoxically erects boundaries that delineate the opposing categories “Judaic” and “non- Judaic;” that is, the binary Judaic/non-Judaic emerges through the process of translation itself. I. Literature and Art

WEEPING OVER RACHEL’S TOMB: LITERARY REELABORATIONS OF A MIDRASHIC MOTIF IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN1

Luis M. Girón-Negrón In memory of my beloved uncle Gonzalo Hernández

Inserted in the late medieval Coplas de Yosef—a Hispano-Jewish retelling of the Joseph story in Old Spanish cuaderna vía—there is an extra- biblical scene in which Joseph confronts Judah and his other siblings over the cruel deception of their father. Still unrecognized by his brothers, Joseph berates them for making Jacob think that a wild beast had devoured their lost sibling by bringing back Joseph’s tunic, dipped in the blood of a slaughtered goat, so that Jacob would infer the worst, as depicted in Gen 37:31–33.2 The poet, of course, is simply putting in Joseph’s mouth an account of an episode already retold at the appropriate place towards the beginning of the poem: a faithful translation of its biblical source in Old Spanish narrative verse. Joseph’s retelling in the poem (stanzas 198–199) adds, however, a subtle, non-biblical detail to the original Genesis story. Joseph claims that the tunic was

1 a note of gratitude to Jonathan Decter and Arturo Prats Oliván for their gracious invitation to present this paper at the congress that they co-hosted at the CSIC in Madrid (October 5th–6th, 2009) and to Esperanza Alfonso and Javier del Barco for their exquisite hospitality. Thanks also to Bernard Septimus and Ángel Sáenz-Badillos, as ever two generous founts of wisdom, for both suggestions and opportune correc- tions to my treatment of Jewish exegetical sources. My deepest appreciation as well to Francis X Clooney SJ, the new director of Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions, for the opportunity to discuss this essay with other Harvard religionists in the context of an ongoing Faculty Colloquium on “comparative studies” co-hosted with Jonathan Schofer (September 27th, 2010). I am deeply grateful to the colleagues and students who participated for all of their perceptive comments. Finally, a special thanks to Kimberley Patton, another dear colleague and Colloquium participant who has written with such brilliance on weeping and religion, for her thoughtful suggestions on how to explore the meaning and reception of “stylized” weeping in the shared Joseph narratives examined here. 2 “Y [. . .] en mientes todas vuestras feguras: / oí como fezistes unas buenas pinturas / el día que pintastes las bermejas tinturas, / cuando ensangrentastes la aljuba de Yosef. // Esa aljuva apuesta al viejo fue mostrada, / él la vido sangrienta y bien acuchillada, / vuestro padre de cuent[a] lloró esa vegada, / cuando vido vestimienta dixo: ‘¡Fijo mío, Yosef!’”: Coplas de Yosef 198–199—Luis M. Girón-Negrón and Laura Minervini, Las Coplas de Yosef: entre la Biblia y el Midrash en la poesía judeoespañola (Madrid: Gredos, 2006), 169. 14 luis m. girón-negrón not simply bloodied but “acuchillada”: i.e. rent apart with gashes and tears made with a blade (“cuchillo”). The reader, no doubt, could immediately intuit a narrative context for such an extra-biblical addition: i.e. that the tunic had been deliberately torn to simulate the bite marks of a beast, most likely with the same knife used to slaughter the goat. For the Jewish poet, there was, however, another authoritative justification to deviate from the biblical script. Gen 37:31–32 reads: וַּיִקְחּואֶת-ּכְ תֹנֶ תיֹוסֵ ףוַּיִׁשְחֲ טּוׂשְ עִ ירעִ ּזִ יםוַּיִטְּבְ לּואֶת-הַּכֻ תּתֹנֶ ּבַּדָ ם:וַיְׁשַ ּלְ חּו אֶת-ּכְתֹנֶ תהַּפַּסִ יםוַּיָבִ יאּו אֶל-אֲבִיהֶ םוַ ּיֹאמְ רּוזֹאת מָצָ אנּו הַּכֶ אר-נָ הַּכְ תֹנֶ ת ּבִ נְ ָך הִ וא אִ ם-לֹא Then they took Joseph’s tunic, slaughtered a kid, and dipped the tunic in the blood. They had the ornamented tunic taken to their father, and they said, ‘We found this. Please examine it; is it your son’s tunic or not?’ Some Jewish paštanim, pondering perhaps the apparent redundancy of claiming that the brothers both “sent” the tunic to Jacob and “brought it over” to him (yәšallәḥu; yabi̠ ʾu),3 reinterpreted the first verb as meaning “to tear apart with a blade” (a reading based on the .šelaḥ” for sword—cf“ ׁשֶ לַ ח first verb’s shared root with the Hebrew Job 36:12). Both Naḥmanides and David Qimḥi, in their commentaries ad locum, invoke this interpretation of the Hebrew word to suggest that the brothers had indeed simulated animal bites with the bloodied knife, an exegetical twist that poignantly underscored the cunning and cruelty of these cowardly liars.4 Some of the Hispano-Jewish romanceamientos of the Hebrew Bible also reflect this reading of the verb in their Spanish translation: cf. Gen 37:32: E3 and Ajuda “E acochillaron el aljuba de seda”; E19 “E acochillaron la alcandora de

3 Literally “they sent (yәšallәḥu) the ornamented tunic and brought it over (yabiʾu) to their father,” both verbs (the piel šillaḥ and the hiphil hebiʿ) jointly rendered in the 1985 JPS translation quoted above as “taken to” (“They had the ornamented tunic taken to their father . . .”). 4 Cf. Naḥmanides ad locum: ויש מפרשים וַיְׁשַ ּלְ חּו שתקעו בה השלח לקרעה במקומות רבים כדמות שיני חיות מלשון ּבְׁשֶ לַ חיַעֲ בֹורּו )איוב לו יב( David Qimḥi ad locum: וַיְׁשַּלְ חּו שלחוה ביד מקצתם, ויש מפרשים: מן "ּבְׁשֶ לַ ח יַעֲ ברּו" )איוב לו יב( שפירושו: חרב, כלומר: כרתוה בדמות כריתת שיני חיה Cf. also Lorenzo Amigo, El Pentateuco de Constantinopla y la Biblia medieval romanceada judeoespañola. Criterios y fuentes de traducción (Salamanca: Publicaciones Universidad Pontificia, 1983), 193. weeping over rachel’s tomb 15 seda”; Ferrara “E acuchillaron la túnica de las sedas”; E7 “E rompieron la vestidura de seda”; PC “Y acochillaron a tonga de los pedaços.”5 The poet’s subtle recourse to this interpretation is just a minor example of how exegetical traditions weigh on medieval Jewish reelaborations of biblical material, down even to textual minutiae. It reminds Hispanists in particular that they must be attentive to the exegetical filtering of Scripture in Old Spanish works of Jewish authorship, not merely as an exercise in Quellenforschungen but even for the precise resolution of knotty philological quandaries (such interpolations are, after all, seamlessly interwoven in their textual fabric). The literary impact of Jewish exegesis in medieval Spanish belles-lettres and beyond was not confined, however, to such picayune allusions and traces. Some Rabbinic aggadot, those extra-biblical narratives conjured by Jewish scholars as exegetical glosses on Hebrew textual conundrums, also took on a life of their own in Spanish literary history. The Bible in premodern times is always an interpreted Bible.6 As biblical tales are retold—as they are disseminated—they carry along a cumulative tradition of interpretations, exegetical addenda some of which crystal- lize in compelling narrative pericopes of poetic complexity. These epi- sodic fragments travel, in turn, as complex narrative motifs woven not only by Jewish but also Christian and Muslim authors into the literary retelling of their Scriptural frame stories, be they biblical or quranic.

5 The Spanish Bibles quoted here can be consulted in the following editions: E3, cf. Moshe Lazar, Biblia ladinada: Escorial I.j.3 (Madison: HSMS, 1995), 45; E7, cf. Mark Littlefield, Escorial Bible I.j.7 (Madison: HSMS, 1996), 22; E19, cf. Mark Littlefield, Biblia romanceada I.j.19 (Madison: HSMS, 1992), 27; Ferrara, cf. Moshe Lazar, Biblia de Ferrara (Madrid: Fundación Juan Antonio de Castro, 2004), 99; Constantinople Pentateuch, cf. Moshe Lazar, Ladino Pentateuch (Constantinopla, 1547) (Culver City, CA.: Labyrinthos, 1988), 95–96. They can also be consulted in Andrés Enrique-Arias’s online corpus of the medieval Spanish Bibles (www.bibliamedieval.es), which includes the still unpublished Biblia de Ajuda. The other extant Bibles translate the Hebrew more literally as “they sent” (cf. Enrique-Arias’ site): Fazienda de Ultramar “E וַיְׁשַ ּלְ חּו embiáronla a so padre”; E4 “E embiaron la túnica de los pedaços”; Arragel “E embiaron el roquete escacado”—also General Estoria. [Primera Parte]. Génesis, Libro VIII, Cap. I (Alfonso X El Sabio, General Estoria. [Primera parte]. Génesis, ed. Pedro Sánchez- Prieto Borja (Madrid: Castro, 2001), 402): “e enviáronla a su padre”. 6 For an authoritative overview of Jewish midrashim, see the seminal studies by Kugel: James Kugel, “Two Introductions to Midrash,” in Midrash and Literature, ed. Geoffrey Hartmann and Sanford Budick, 77–103 (New Haven: Yale UP, 1986), and In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1994). 16 luis m. girón-negrón

The rest of this paper is devoted to four Ibero-Romance reelaborations of such a midrashic motif (albeit one with a complicated history across Jewish and Muslim sources—cf. note 11), also from the Joseph story. The motif can be succinctly described as “Joseph’s lament over Rachel’s tomb.” Its point of insertion in the biblical pericope is the selling of Joseph into slavery in Gen 37:28. As Joseph is being brought to Egypt by the Midianite traders who bought him from his brothers, a midrashic tradition suggests that they passed by the site where Jacob had buried his wife Rachel on the road to Ephrath (Gen 35:20–21).7 When Joseph sees her tomb, he throws himself upon it and weeps inconsolably, clamoring for help. Moved to pity, Rachel herself admon- ishes her son from beyond the grave not to fear and assures him that God would look after him during his Egyptian sojourn.8 An elaborate version of this aggadah—and the only one of which I am aware in a Hebrew exegetical source—is found in the midrashic anthology Sefer ha-Yašar:9

7 “But as she breathed her last—for she was dying—she named him Ben-oni; but his father called him Benjamin. Thus Rachel died. She was buried on the road to Ephrath—now Bethlehem. Over her grave Jacob set up a pillar; it is the pillar at Rachel’s grave to this day.” All English quotations from the Hebrew Bible are from the 1985 JPS English translation. 8 Cf. the motif E323 “Dead mother’s friendly return” in Stith Thompson, Motif- Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books and Local Legends (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1955–1958). 9 dan, Sefer ha-Yašar, 192–193: “The men went on their way and they passed by the road to Efrat where Rachel was buried. When Joseph saw his mother’s grave he ran towards it impulsively, threw himself upon the tomb and wept, wailing as he said: ‘Mother! Mother! You who gave birth to me, wake up! Rise and see your son, how he has been sold as a slave, with no one to pity him! Rise up and look at your son, look at him and see the tears in his eyes, running down his cheeks! Mother! Mother! Wake up, arise and see your son! Weep with him, feel his anguish. Take a look at the heart of my brothers, oh so cruel! Wake up, mother, arise from your sleep, stand up and prepare to fight with my brothers! Oh, how they took off my tunic and twice sold me as a slave, taking me away from my father with no pity. Wake up, make your charges against them before God, see whom does He justify in His sentence and whom does He condemn. Rise up, mother, rise up! Arise from your sleep and look at my father, how his heart and his soul are set upon me! Have pity on him, console him!’ He kept saying things like this, as he bitterly wept and cried at his mother’s grave. He stopped talking and fell silent over the tomb like a stone, full of bitterness in his heart. Then Joseph heard a voice that spoke to him from under the earth and it answered him with a bitter heart and plaintive voice with these words: ‘Joseph my son, my son, I have heard your voice amidst your weeping, your voice bent in supplication! I have seen your tears and I know your anguish, oh my son. I share in your anguish and your grief so great joins mine. But now, my son, wait in the Lord and find your rescue in Him! Have no fear for the Lord is with you, He will deliver you from all anguish. Stand up, weeping over rachel’s tomb 17

וילכו האנשים בדרך, ויעברו מדרך אפרת אשר עם קבורת רחל. ויגע יוסף עד קבר אמו, וימהר וירץ יוסף אל קבר אמו ויפול על הקבר ויבכה. ויצעק יוסף על קבר אמו ויאמר: אמי, אמי יולדתני, עורי נא וקומי וראי את בנך איך נמכר לעבד ואין מרחם, קומי וראה בנך והביטי אליו וראה את דמעות עיני הנוזלות על לחיי. אמי, אמי, עורי והקיצה, קומי וראה את בנך ובכי עמו על צרתו, וראה את לב אחי האכזרי. עורי אמי, עורי והקיצה משנתיך, עמדי וערכי מלחמותיך נגד אחי, איכה שלחו אותי מכתנתי, וימכרו אותי לעבד זה פעמים, ויפרידו אותי מאבי ואין מרחם. עורי וערכי את טענותיך נגדם לפני האלהים, וראי את מי יצדיק האלהים במשפט ואת מי ירשיע. קומי אמי, קומי והקיצה משנתיך וראי את אבי, איכה נפשו ולבו עלי ביום הזה עמדי, ונחמהו ודבר על לבו. ויוסף עוד לדבר כדברים האלה, ויצעק ויבך יוסף בכי גדול על קבר אמו. ויכל לדבר וידום כאבן על הקבר ממר לבו. וישמע יוסף את קול מדבר אליו מתחת הארץ, ויענהו בלב מר ובקול בכי ותחינה כדברים האלה: בני בני יוסף, שמעתי את קול בכייתך ואת קול צעקותיך, ראיתי את דמעותיך, ידעתי את צרתך בני ויצר לי עליך, ותוסף לי יגון רב על יגוני. ועתה בני חכה את ה' והתחולל לו, ואל תירא כי ה' עמך, הוא יציל אותך מכל צרה. קום בני ולך לך מצרימה עם אדוניך, ואל תירא, כי האלוהים עמך בני. ותוסף לדבר אל יוסף כדברים האלה ותדום. וישמע יוסף את הדבר הזה ויתמה מאד מזה, ויוסף עוד לבכות. וירא אותו אחרי כן אחד מהישמעאלים ההם צועק ובוכה על הקבר, ויחר אפו עליו ויגרשהו משם, ויכהו ויקללהו. ויאמר יוסף אל האנשים: אמצא חן בעיניכם אשר תשיבוני בית אבי, והוא יעשיר אתכם עושר רב. ויענוהו לאמר: הלא עבד אתה, איפה אביך, ואם יש לך אביך, לא תמכר לעבד במעט מחיר זה פעמים. ויחר אפם עליו עוד ויוסיפו להכותו ולייסרו עוד, ויבך יוסף בכי גדול. This Josephine aggadah, documented as well in Islamic commentar- ial literature, seems, in turn, ultimately built upon another exegetical rumination as to why Jacob buried her outside Bethlehem, as stated in Gen 48:7 and 35:20. In Jeremiah 31:15–17, we are told: Thus said the Lord: A cry is heard in Ramah—wailing, bitter wailing— Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, who are gone. Thus said the Lord: Restrain your voice from weeping, your eyes from shedding tears; for there is a reward for your labor—declares the Lord: They shall return from the enemy’s land. And my son and go, go to Egypt with your master but do not fear, for God is with you, my son!’ She said other such things to him and then fell silent. When Joseph heard this, he was very astonished and began to cry anew. At this point, one of the Ishmaelites saw him crying and weeping at the grave and became furious. He pulled him away from there, beating him and lashing insults against him. Joseph said to these men: ‘Please, let me find favor in your eyes and return me to my father’s house, for he will recompense you lavishly and make you rich.’ But they replied: ‘Aren’t you a servant? Where is your father? And if you have a father, were you not sold twice as a slave for a small price?’ They once again became angry with him and started to beat him and insult him anew and Joseph wept bitterly.” 18 luis m. girón-negrón

there is hope for your future—declares the Lord: Your children shall return to their country. Based on this passage, a midrash affirms that God himself in apro- phetic vision told Jacob to lay her to rest on that spot, so that, after the destruction of the Temple, when the Jewish exiles would pass by her tomb, Rachel, moved to tears, would intercede on their behalf and plead for God’s mercy on account of her grief.10 The precise history of the Josephine lament and even its origin (Jewish or Islamic?) remain an open question.11 But once it becomes

10 Cf. Berešit Rabbah 82:10: ותמת רחל ותקבר בדרך אפרת. מה ראה אבינו יעקב לקבור את רחל בדרך אפרת אלא צפה יעקב אבינו שהגליות עתידות לעבור שם לפיכך קברה שם בדי שתהא מבקשת עליהם רחמים. הה"ד )ירמיה לא טו( קֹול ּבְרָ מָ ה ענִׁשְמָ ינְהִ ּבְכִ י תַמְרּורִ ים רָחֵ ל המְבַּכָ עַל-ּבָ נֶיהָ Also Raši on Gen 48:7: וָאֶקְּבְרֶ הָ ּׁשָ ם לא הולכתיה אפלו לבית לחם להכניסה לארץ. וידעתי שיש בלבך עלי, אבל דע לך שעל פי הדבור קברתיה שם, שתהא לעזרה לבניה. כשיגלה אותם נבוזראדן והיו עוברים דרך שם, יצאת רחל על קברה ובוכה ומבקשת עליהם רחמים, שנאמר: קול ברמה נשמע וגו' רחל מבכה על בניה וגו'. והקב"ה משיבה: יש שכר לפעלתך נאם ה' וגו' ושבו בנים לגבולם. For other sources, Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, trans. Henrietta Szold and Paul Radin (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1998), 1:415 and note 310 in 5:319; also 4:310 and note 39 in 6:397–399. 11 tracing the evolution of our Josephine midrash out of the earlier Rabbinic sources on Rachel is complicated by at least two issues: (a) the vexing question of its sources’ dating and (b) the possible raison d’être of the Arabo-Islamic versions. On the one hand, Joseph’s lament does not appear in the classical Rabbinic sources and the Jewish versions of which I am aware are much later than its Arabo-Islamic counter- parts. For example, scholars do not agree on the precise dating of Sefer ha-Yašar, our only Hebrew source, although it was “composed in biblical Hebrew style probably no earlier than the thirteenth century”—James Kugel, Traditions of the Bible. A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1998), 939. In his edition, Joseph Dan—Joseph Dan, ed., Sefer ha-Yašar (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1986), 7–17—even suggests that it could have been written as late as the end of the fifteenth century through the mid–1500s, but not all scholars agree (cf. a brief summary of this debate in Girón-Negrón and Minervini, Las Coplas de Yosef, 43, n. 65; see n. 2). Of the other Jewish versions mentioned in this paper, Abraham Toledo’s Sephardic Coplas is much later (1st edition: 1732: most scholars traditionally place the author in the eighteenth century, albeit Perez—Abraham Toledo. Las Coplas de Yosef Ha-Tsadik, ed. Avner Perez (Jerusalem, 2005)—has recently argued that Toledo’s Coplas were composed at least a century earlier) and the date of composition of the Judeo-Arabic Qisṣ aṭ sayyidnā Yūsuf is-ṣ iddīq̣ , translated by Bernstein from nineteenth century Egyptian manuscripts, is also unknown—Marc Bernstein, Stories of Joseph. Narrative Migrations between Judaism and Islam (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006), 47. The only certifiably pre-modern versions are in Shāhīn-i Shīrāzī’s Judeo-Persian Bereshit-nāma (14th century) and the Old Spanish Coplas de Yosef (quoted below), which was written no later than the beginning of the weeping over rachel’s tomb 19 part of the Jewish exegetical tradition, its relationship to the earlier midrashim on Rachel is not hard to ascertain. As cipher of all future exiles in the Jewish imagination, Joseph’s midrashic tears also evince God’s compassion and reassurance in the spectral voice of his mother. Rachel’s tears in Jeremiah are, in turn, effectively intermingled with his own, as Yosef ha-Saddiq̣ becomes Joseph the holy weeper and his aggadic self assumes Rachel’s own bitter wailing—her refusal to be comforted—with its concomitant powers of intercession. Both sets of tears are vehicles of prayer that evoke from God a promise of restoration. Joseph’s anguished lament over his immediate plight is thus folded typologically onto his exemplary role as both an emblem of hope for all of Rachel’s children and a midrashic ‘figura’ of the latter.12

fifteenth century, most probably in the second half of the fourteenth century. However the Arabo-Islamic sources discussed below are much earlier: e.g. the Qisāṣ ̣ al-anbiyāʾ by al-Thaʿlabī (who died in 1035) and al-Kisāʾī (its oldest manuscripts date from the thirteenth century—T. Nagel, “Al-Kisāʾī, Sāḥ ̣ib Kiṣ āṣ ̣ al-anbiyā,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 5:176, col. 1); the Persian romance Yusof va Zoleikhā attributed to Firdawsī (11th century) also predates them. Moreover, as Bernard Septimus pointed out to me in an e-mail (October 21st, 2010), although there could have been a Jewish midrashic source behind the Islamic versions which is now lost, the Josephine motif could also have originated as an Islamic reelaboration that shifted God’s reassurance of Israel’s redemption via Rachel from Israel at large to Joseph the righteous prophet as its deserving recipient. In this case, such an Islamic reworking of the Rachel aggadah would have only found its way back into some Jewish sources at a much later time—cf. some broader reflections on “narrative migrations” between the Jewish and Muslim versions of the Joseph story in Bernstein, Stories of Joseph. I would only add one more note on the Ibero-Romance side. Whereas the Hispano-Muslim Poema de Yúçuf to be discussed is clearly indebted to Islamic prophetological sources, the anonymous author of the Hispano-Jewish Coplas de Yosef probably incorporated Joseph’s lament as an exegetical tradition already deemed of Jewish origin and not as a Jewish adaptation of an Islamic source. The absence of any clear, non-overlapping debts to Islamic Josephine traditions, and the fact that with the rarest of exceptions all his narrative deviations from the biblical text can be traced back to classical Jewish sources point in this direction. 12 On the meaning of weeping in Jewish sources, with some references to the Rachel motif, see Herbert Basser, “‘A Love for All Seasons’: Weeping in Jewish Sources,” in Holy Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination, ed. Kimberley Christine Patton and John Stratton Hawley (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 178–200. A more detailed study of Rachel’s tomb in the devotional life of Jewish women in Susan Starr, “Rachel’s Tomb: The Development of a Cult,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 2, no. 2 (1995): 103–148. Finally, for a pioneering, comparative inquiry into the religious significance of weeping, and its sundry cultural representations, both within and across religious traditions, see the superb anthology of essays edited by Patton and Hawley— Kimberley Christine Patton and John Stratton Hawley, eds., Holy Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination (Princeton University Press, 2005). 20 luis m. girón-negrón

Coming back to late medieval Spain, this moving narrative proved immensely attractive to Iberian writers—Jewish, Christian and Muslim alike—drawn to Joseph’s story. It was the subject of dramatic reelaborations inspired by its emotional resonance and structural affinity with the elegiac traditions of the Christian planctus and the Jewish qinah. Biblical and classical threnody provided venerable models for the medieval corpora of funeral laments, both secular and liturgical (including the Provenzal planh, the Galician-Portuguese pranto, the Catalan plany and the Castilian planto), to which Old Spanish writers such as Berceo, Juan Ruiz and Jorge Manrique made splendid, canonical contributions.13 Arabic marthiyah poetry played a similar role for the Hispano-Jewish qinot.14 Just in the Iberian Josephine tradition, Jacob’s outpouring of grief over the putative loss of his son had already inspired a series of heartrending, extra-biblical dirges.15 The Jeremiah locus, on the Christian side, was also typologically associated

13 For a comprehensive overview of the Old Spanish elegiac tradition, see María Emilia García Jiménez, La poesía elegíaca medieval en lengua castellana (Logroño: Gobierno de la Rioja; Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 1994). An earlier synoptic overview extending to modern Spanish belles-lettres in Eduardo Camacho, La elegía funeral en la literatura española (Madrid: Gredos, 1969). 14 an authoritative overview of medieval Hebrew elegies and their Arabic models, in Arie Schippers, Arabic Tradition & Hebrew Innovation. Arabic Themes in Hebrew Andalusian Poetry (University of Amsterdam, 1988), 290–338. Separate attention must be given to the Judeo-Spanish endechas of the Sephardic diaspora, an oral Jewish tradition deeply tied to Old Spanish poetry—cf. Manuel Alvar, Endechas judeo-españolas (Madrid: CSIC, 1969), on the endechas, oínas and saetas from the Moroccan Sephardic tradition in Tetuán and Larache, and Díaz-Mas’s unpublished Tésis de Licenciatura—Paloma Díaz-Mas, “Poesía luctuosa judeo-española” (tésis de Licenciatura, Universidad de Madrid, 1977)—on the Judeo-Spanish quinot, especially the elegiac poems on the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem recited in Tiša b’Av. On Arabic rithāʾ poetry, see Ignaz Goldziher, “Bemerkungen zur arabischen Trauerpoesie,” in Gesammelte Schriften (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964), 4:361–393, and J. A. Bellamy, “Some Observations on the Arabic rithāʾ in the Jahilīyah and Islam,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 13 (1990): 44–61. 15 Jacob’s heart-breaking lament was the subject of exquisite poetic reelaborations in Golden Age and Sephardic drama: e.g. Miguel de Carvajal, Tragedia Josephina, ed. Joseph Gillet (Princeton University Press, 1932), 56–71, vv. 1361–1784—an extensive dialogic planctus, punctuated by the failed efforts of his sons to console him; Lope de Vega’s Los trabajos de Jacob—Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, ed., Obras de Lope de Vega. Tomo III (Madrid: RAE, 1893), 242–244; and Isaac Matatías de Aboab’s El perseguido dichoso—Michael McGaha, Coat of Many Cultures. The Story of Joseph in Spanish Literature 1200–1492 (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1997), 252–254, and The Story of Joseph in Spanish Golden Age Drama (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1998). weeping over rachel’s tomb 21 with Herod’s massacre of the innocents in Matthew 2:17–18,16 which, in turn, introduced the Rachel lament motif into medieval Christian literature.17 Joseph’s midrashic lament over Rachel’s grave, once it entered the Ibero-Romance stream whether through Jewish or Muslim channels, was comparably ripe with dramatic and even cathartic potential across religious boundaries, as gauged from its Spanish and Catalan reelaborations

16 “Tunc adimpletum est quod dictum est per Ieremiam prophetam dicentem: Vox in Rama audita est, ploratus et ululates multus: Rachel plorans filios suos, et noluit consolari, quia non sunt.” 17 Cf. the Rachel and Leah motif in a haunting love poem of the Carmina Cantabrigiensia—The Cambridge Songs (Carmina Cantabrigiensia), ed. and trans. Jan Ziolkowski. Medieval and Renaissance Texts & Studies 192 (Tempe, Arizona: Arizona State University, 1998), 124–125, no. 47—that begins: Pulsat astra planctu magno rachel plorans pignora queriturque consolari, quos necauit improba. Dolet, plangit, crines scindit ob sororis crimina, -uxor sine macula, casta seruans uiscera. “Rachel, bewailing her children, entreats the stars with loud lamentation, and makes a plaint to be consoled for those whom a wicked woman killed. She grieves, mourns and tears out her hair for her sister’s crimes, a wife immaculate, preserving her chas- tity.” The typological opposition of rival sisters Rachel and Leah as allegories of the Church and the synagogue, respectively, also turned Rachel’s grief into a cherished motif in Christian martyrial laments (i.e. the grieving church weeping over the sufferings of Christian martyrs)—cf. Notker Balbulus’ De uno martyre virgo plorans or the Lamentatio Rachel sung in a late eleventh-century musical drama on the Massacre of the Holy Innocents (for a brief discussion and references, see Ziolkowski, The Cambridge Songs, 303–304). Rachel’s lament also left its mark in vernacular European literatures. A more disturbing redeployment of the Rachel motif figures, for example, in the final scene of the violent anti-Semitic legend refashioned by Chaucer as The Prioress’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales (VII 621–627): “This child with pitous lamentacioun / up taken was, syngynge his song always, / and with honour of greet processioun / they carien hym unto the nexte abbay. / His mooder swownynge by his beere lay; / unnethe myghte the peple that was there / this newe Rachel brynge fro his beere”—Larry Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 211. Finally, two examples from Old Spanish religious verse, both interlaced with the Gospel story of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents: Gonzalo de Berceo, Los loores de Nuestra Señora 38: “Quando los degollavan, qisqe lo pued veer, / el planto de las madres quant grand podrié seer; / como diz Jeremías que bien es de creer, / en Rama fue oído el planto de Rachel”—Gonzalo de Berceo, Obras completas. III. El duelo de la Virgen, Los himnos, Los loores de Nuestra Señora, Los signos del juicio final, ed. Brian Dutton (London: Tamesis, 1975), 80; fray Iñigo de Mendoza, Coplas de Vita Christi 358: “¡O! ¿Quién podrá recontar / un cuento tanto cruel? / ¡O! ¿Quién podrá sin llorar / blasonar el gran pesar / de aquella triste Rachel, / que con tan justa pasión / dio raviosos alaridos, / lastimó su coraçón / fizo gran lamentación / sobre sus hijos perdidos?”—Fray Íñigo de Mendoza, Cancionero, ed. Julio Rodríguez-Puértolas (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1968), 122. 22 luis m. girón-negrón in the late Middle Ages and through the sixteenth century to be considered below. The Coplas de Yosef themselves succinctly record the midrashic legend in nuce, two tight cuadernas (22–23) seamlessly incorporated into its versified retelling of the Josephine pericope (Girón-Negrón and Minervini, 2006:129; see n. 2) Yosef ya lo lebaban por carreras de Efratah, do estaba soterrada la so madre unrada, e ansí le dezía y ansí le hablaba: “¡Ay madre, al Dio ruegues por tu fijo Yosef!”

Dixo: “Fijo non temas ni tomes coidado, que allá donde te lleban tú serás bien onrado: los sueños se afirmarán que tú as soñado.” Loego se le bolbían sos colores a Yosef.18 This short passage captures the aggadic scene with verbal economy and emotional poignancy. Joseph’s plea in the Coplas boils down to a single verse; Rachel’s promise extends to three. A dignified Joseph simply prays for her intercession, with neither tears nor crying—so central to subsequent retellings—as he speaks to her (“ansí le dezía y ansí le hablaba”—only a hint of the pathos suggested by the parallelistic reiteration of synonymous clauses). Indeed, no indications of Joseph’s fear are given prior to verse 23d, when he regains his composure and courage with Rachel’s reassurance (it literally brings back color to his face—“loego se le bolbían sos colores”). Only then, the poem’s addressees are alerted to Joseph’s disturbed state of mind upon seeing her grave: an interesting contrast, for example, with the Hebrew version of the story in Sefer ha-Yašar (where Joseph breaks again into tears, bringing upon himself further insults from the Midianite merchants). The parallelistic doubling of the second verse of each stanza subtly reinforces, at the same time, the hopeful denouement of their altogether brisk exchange. Her tomb in Efratah is juxtaposed to Egypt,

18 McGaha’s English translation (McGaha, Coat of Many Cultures, 288; see n. 15): “Now they were leading Yosef on Ephratah’s highway / where in her sepulcher his honored mother lay, / and thus he spoke to her, and unto her did say: / ‘Oh, mother! Please pray to God for your son Yosef.’ // She replied, ‘Fear not my son, and cease to be in pain. / Where they are taking you, great honor you’ll obtain. / Your dreams will come true, for so God did foreordain.’ / Then its healthy color did regain the face of Yosef.” weeping over rachel’s tomb 23 where he is being brought against his will (“do estaba soterrada” / “que allá donde te lleban”), but just as she is worthy of praise (“la so madre unrada”)—a supernal intercessor on behalf of her children—Joseph’s prophetic dreams will also come to be fulfilled, making him “bien onrado.”19 In sum, a succinct but effective retelling of the midrashic tale, fully in line with the author’s artistic ability to rivet the attention of both his medieval contemporaries and their Sephardic heirs, especially those diasporic Jews who turned the Joseph story into a Purimic tale of Jewish survival for paraliturgical recitation.20 The Hispano-Muslimaljamiado “Poema de Yúçuf,” a late fourteenth / early fifteenth century retelling of the quranic Yūsuf story, also documents this elegiac moment, developed somewhat more leisurely over seven stanzas (45–51) in the vernacular cuaderna vía: Iba con g(a)ran xente aquel mercadero Alli iba Yuçuf, solo y sin compannero. Pasaban por un camino, por un fosal sennero, Do jazia la su madre açerca de un otero.

Dio salto del camello donde iba cabalgando. No lo sitio el negro que lo iba guardando. Fuese a la fuesa de su madre a pedirle perdon doblado. Yuçuf a la fuesa a tan a p(i)riesa llorando.

Dixiendo: “Madre, sennora, perdoneddos el Sennor. Madre, si me vidieses, de me abrias dolor. Voy con cadena al cuello, cativo con sennor, Vendido de mis ermanos, como si fuese t(a)raidor.

Ellos me an vendido, no teniendoles tuerto. Partieronme de mi padre, ante que fuese muerto. Con art y con falsia ellos me ovieron vuelto. Por mal p(e)reçio me an vendido, por do voy asado y cueito.”

Y volviose el negro en tala camella Rrequeriendo a Yuçuf, y no lo vido en ella; Y volviose por el camino, aguda su orella. Vidolo en el fosal, llorando, ques maravella.

19 On other structural parallelisms as a stylistic figure in the Coplas, see Girón- Negrón and Minervini, Las Coplas de Yosef, 53–58 (see n. 2). 20 On its paraliturgical features and Sephardic fate, see Girón-Negrón and Minervini, Las Coplas de Yosef, 67–81 (see n. 2). 24 luis m. girón-negrón

Y fuese alla el negro, y ovolo mal ferido; Y luego en aquella ora cayo amorteçido. Dixo: “Tu eres malo y ladron conp(i)lido; Ansi nos lo dixieron tus sennores, que te ovieron vendido.”

Dixxo Yuçuf: “No soy malo mi ladrron. Mas aqui xaze mi madre, y vengole a dar berdon. Rruego ad al Allah del çielo, y a el fago loaçión: Que si culpa no tengo, tenvies maldiçion.”21 Rachel is not mentioned by name—only alluded to—in the Qurʾān (4:23; 12:99–100).22 Moreover, in Surat Yūsuf Joseph’s mother comes

21 William W. Johnson, The “Poema de José”: A Transcription and Comparison of the Extant Manuscripts. Romance Monographs 6 (University, MS: University of Mississippi, 1974), 42–44. Johnson edited both extant versions of the poem—our cita- tion is from Ms. B. Cf. also Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Poema de Yúçuf. Materiales para su estudio (Universidad de Granada, 1952), 56–57 for a critical edition of Ms. A and the bibliography in Girón-Negrón and Minervini, Las Coplas de Yosef, 29, n. 39; see n. 2). Here is McGaha’s translation in monorhyme English verse (McGaha, Coat of Many Cultures, 241–242; see n. 15): “How great was that caravan! It went on and on; / but poor Yusuf in the midst of that crowd was alone. / A lone grave in the wilderness they soon came upon; / there next to a hill was his mother’s tombstone. // All in a flash from his camel he leapt, / without even disturbing his guard as he slept; / and dragging his chain, to the grave soft he crept, / where he called to his mother; and he wept and he wept. // He said: ‘Mother dear, may our Maker forgive you! / If you could see me, your heart would break in two! / I’m a slave, I am chained so I hardly can move. / My own brothers sold me. How can this be true? // They have done this to me, though I gave them no reason, / with falsehood and cunning they have done me this treason. / My dear father is taken from me out of season. / For a few worthless coins they have taken my freedom.’// At this the black slave on the camel stopped sleeping, / gone was Yusuf, whom the merchants had left in his keeping. / Back the way they had come he went swiftly leaping, / as he passed by the grave, he heard Yusuf weeping. // ‘You ras- cal!’ he cried then. ‘Have you no fear?’ / And Yusuf he beat until death he was near. / ‘You’re a runaway slave,’ he said. ‘It is quite clear / your masters weren’t lying when they sold you here.’ // ‘That’s a lie,’ Yusuf said. ‘I am not as you say. / I was honoring my mother in her grave where she lay. / But don’t listen to me; for to Allah I pray, / as I am innocent, that He make you pray.’” 22 Qurʾān 4:23: ُ ْ َ َ ُح ِّر َم ْت َع َل ْيك . . . َو َأ�ن َ ْت َم ُع ْوا بَ ْ َي ُأال ْخ َت ْ ِي ِإ� َّل َما َق ْد َس َل َف ِإ� َّن هللا ك َن َغ ُف ًورا َّر ِحميًا Forbidden to you . . . that you should take to you two sisters together, unless it be a thing of the past; God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate. Qurʾān 4:23 has been interpreted as an allusion to Jacob’s marriage to Rachel and Leah (on the Islamic debate over the meaning of this ayyah, see Heller, “Rāḥīl.”). Qurʾān 12:99–100: ُ َف َل َّما َد َخُل ْوا َع َل ُي ُوس َف َء َاوى ِإ�لَْي ِه َأ�بَ َوْي ِه َو َق َال ُا ْد ُخُل ْوا ِم ْ َص ِإ�ن َش�آ َء ُاهلل َءا ِم ِن َي َو َر َف َع َأ�بَ َوْي ِه َع َل ْال َع ْر ِش َو َخ ُّر ْوا َ ُل ُ َّس ًدا weeping over rachel’s tomb 25 to Egypt along with Jacob and Yūsuf places them both on his throne, whereas in the Bible she was already dead by the time that the Joseph story begins.23 However, exegetical debates as to the identity of Jacob’s companion (some commentators identified her as Leah, Joseph’s maternal aunt)24 also allowed this Josephine planctus to find its place among the Islamic reelaborations of Surat Yūsuf, both exegetical— e.g. Islamic prophetology, tafsīr literature—and belletristic—e.g. the Arabic, Persian and Turkish poems of unfulfilled desire about Joseph

So when they entered unto Joseph, he took his father and mother into his arms saying ‘Enter you into Egypt, if God will, in security.’ And he lifted his father and mother upon the throne; and the others fell down prostrate before him. English translations of quranic passages from Arberry’s The Koran Interpreted. 23 The apparent incompatibility of our aggadah with the quranic fate of Joseph’s mother in Surat Yūsuf has a suggestive counterpart in the Jewish exegetical tradition. When Joseph tells his second dream in Gen 37:9—i.e. how the sun, the moon and the stars prostrated themselves before him—Jacob berates him in the following verse (37:10): “‘What,’ he said to him, ‘is this dream you have dreamed? Are we to come, I and your mother and your brothers, and bow low to you to the ground?’” Jacob’s reply suggests that he deemed the moon an oneiric reference to Rachel, from which some midrašim deduce that Jacob was rebuking Joseph’s dream as absurd since she was already dead: e.g. Berešit Rabbah 84:11 (cf. Raši ad locum) and other sources in Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, 5:327, n. 18; see n. 10); in Berakhot 55a it is further noted that there are no dreams that do not contain some element of absurdity (cf. Raši and Qimḥi ad locum). Some Jewish exegetes, on the other hand, counter Jacob’s refutation as a misinterpretation of Joseph’s dream by arguing that it actually referred not to Rachel, his real mother, but Bilhah, who had raised him as if she were—cf. again Berešit Rabbah 84:11, also Raši and Ibn Ezra ad locum (refuted by Naḥmanides). A similar exegetical response is documented in Islamic prophetological literature (see below). 24 Cf. the opinions registered by al-Ṭabarī in Taʾrīkh al-rusūl wa-l-mulūk—Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Annales, ed. Michael Jan de Goeje and Jakob Barth (Leiden: Brill, 1879–1901), 1:410–411: فلام ان دخلوا مص رفع َابوْيه عل الرسير واجلسهام عليه, وقد اختلف ىف َالذلْين رفعهام يوسف عل العرش واجلسهام عليه, فقال بعضهم كن احدهام ابوه يعقوب والآخر ّامه راحيل وقال �آخرون بل كن الآخر خالته ليا وكنت ّامه راحيل قد كنت ماتت قبل ذكل This claim is also echoed by al-Thaʿlabī and al-Kisā’ī in their respective retellings of the Joseph story. Al-Thaʿlabī also records an alternative interpretation, according to which God had raised Rachel from the grave to confirm his dream that they would all prostrate before him (p. 123 in the Arabic edition quoted below): وقال احلسن نرش ّهللا راحيل أم �يوسف من قربها حىت سدت ل حتقيقا للرؤاي فذكل قول تعاىل —وخروا ل سدا— This alternative view was perhaps built upon another midrashic tradition according to which Jacob was convinced by Joseph’s prophetic dream about Rachel that he would witness in his lifetime the resurrection of the dead: cf. Berešit Rabbah 84:11. 26 luis m. girón-negrón and Zuleikha.25 The Poema de Yúçuf version in particular seems closest to the account of this episode in al-Thaʿlabī’s Qisāṣ ̣ al-anbiyāʾ:26

25 The motif is found, for example, in the eleventh century Persian romance Yusof va Zoleikhā attributed to Firdawsī, which was, in turn, a likely source for its redeployment by the fourteenth-century Judeo-Persian poet Shāhīn-i Shīrāzī in his Bereshit- nāma—Wilhelm Bacher, Zwei jüdisch-persische Dichter, Schahin und Imrani (Budapest, 1907–1908), 119 [“183(40). Joseph wirft sich vom Kameele und geht zum Grabe seiner Mutter, wo er klagt und jammert”]; B. Heller, “Rāḥīl,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E . Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 8:397, col. 1; Johannes T. P. de Bruijn, “Yūsuf and Zuleikhā: a popular story in mediaeval Islamic literature. 1. In Persian Literature,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 11:360–361; J. P. Asmussen, “Shāhīn-i Shīrāzī,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 9:211, col. 1. 26 The Arabic edition consulted is Abū Isḥāq Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Thaʿlabī, Qisāṣ ̣ al-anbiyāʾ: al-musamma bi-al-ʿarāʾis al-majālis (Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʾ al- Kutub al-ʿArabīya, 1960?), 103. It has been recently translated into English by William Brinner—Abū Isḥāq Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Thaʿlabī, Arāʾis al-majālis fī qisāṣ ̣ al-anbiyāʾ or Lives of the Prophets, trans. W. Brinner (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 195–196: “Mālik sat Joseph on a camel of his and began his journey to Egypt amid his companions. Their route passed by the grave of Joseph’s mother. When Joseph saw it, he could not control himself, but threw himself down from the camel to the grave, saying, ‘O my mother! O Rachel! Loosen yourself from the bond of perdition, and raise up your head from the ground, and look at your son Joseph and what distress has beset him since you have gone. Mother! If you had seen my weakness and humiliation, you would have pity on me. Mother! If you saw me when they tore my shirt off and bound me and cast me into the pit and slapped me on the cheek, stoned me, and had no pity on me. As one sells a slave they sold me, and as one carries off a prisoner they carried me.’ Then suddenly, as Kaʿb al-Aḥbār tells it, Joseph heard a herald behind him, saying ‘Be firm. But your firmness is from God alone.’ At that moment Mālik became aware that Joseph was no longer on the camel on which he had been before, but he could not find him. He shouted to the caravan, ‘Woe, the lad has returned to his people!’ The company went searching for Joseph, and found him. One of the men approached him and said, ‘Your masters have told us that you were a runaway, a thief, but we did not believe it until we saw you behave in this way.’ He said, ‘I swear by God, I did not run away! However, when you passed by my mother’s grave, I could not restrain myself and threw myself on the grave.’ Then Mālik b. Duʿar raised his hand and slapped Joseph in the face, then he dragged him and loaded him onto his camel. Some say he was brought into Egypt in chains.” A more succinct version of this legend is also documented by al-Kisāʾī—Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Kisāʾī, Qisāṣ ̣ al-ʿanbiyāʾ (Vita prophetarum, auctore Muḥammed ben ʿAbdallah al-Kisaʾi, ex codibus qui in Monaco, Bonna, Lugd. Batav., Lipsia et Gothana asservantur), ed. Isaac Eisenberg (Leiden: Brill, 1922–1923), 160–161: فق ّيده واركبه عل ابهل وساروا حىت بلغوا موضع قرب راحيل ّيوسف امفمل يامتكل يوسف حىت رىم بنفسه عل قربها وجعل يبىك ويذكر فعل اخوته فافتقده ماكل ورجع ىف طلبه فوجده مطروحا عل وجه الارض ويبىك فلطم وهجه وساقه بي يديه سوقا عنيفا وصال القافةل اركبه البعري وساروا حىت دخلوا مص English translation by Wheeler Thackston—Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Kisāʾī, Tales of the Prophets (Qisāṣ ̣ al-anbiyāʾ), trans. Wheeler Thackston (Chicago: KAZI weeping over rachel’s tomb 27 حفمهل ماكل عل انقة ل وساروا به اىل مص وكن طريقهم عل قرب أ�مه, فلام أر�ى قرب أ�مه مل يامتكل ان رىم نفسه عن النافة اىل القرب وهو يقول اي أ�ىم اي راحيل حل عنك عقدة الردى وارفعى أر�سك من الرثى وانظرى اىل ودلك يوسف وما لقى بعدك من البالء, اي أ�ماه لو أر�يت ضعفى وذىل لرمحتيىن, اي أ�ماه لو أر�يتيىن وقد نزعوا يىصمق وشدوىن وىف اجلب أ�لقوىن وعل حر وهج�ى لطموىن, وابحلجارة رمجوىن ومل يرمحوىن وكام تباع العبيد ابعوىن وكام حيمل أالسري محلوىن. قال كعب أالحبار: فسمع يوسف منادايمن خلفه وهو يقول اصرب وما صربك الا ّابهللا. قال فافتقده ماكل عل الناقة الىت كن علهيا فمل جيده فصاح ىف القافةل أ�ل ان الغالم قد رجع اىل أ�ههل فطلب القوم يوسف أفر�وه ف�أقبل يه علرجل مهنم فقال اي غالم قد خربان مواليك ب�أنك �بقآ سارق فمل نصدق حىت أر�يناك تفعل ذكل, فقال ّوهللا ما أ�بقت ولكنك مررمت عل قرب أ�ىم فمل أ�متاكل أ�ن رميت نفىس عل قربها. قال: فرفع ماكل بن دعر يده ولطم حر وهجه وجره حىت محهل عل انقته. ويروى أ�هنم قيدوه فذهبوا به حىت قدموا مص. Unlike both the midrashic and Arabo-Islamic versions, the Poema de Yúçuf, at least in the two fragmentary texts that have come down to us, records Joseph’s plea, but not Rachel’s intervention. However, the Hispano-Muslim poet still follows very closely the narrative contour of the Qisāṣ ̣ al-ʿanbiyāʾ versions, fleshing out more fully both the content of his prayer and Joseph’s impulsive reaction to finding her burial site. The poet invites his audience to imagine the lonesome captive, his heart stirred with emotion at the sight of her tomb, as he briskly jumps off his camel, avoiding capture, to weep over the cold stone and plead forgiveness. The plea itself, addressed to Rachel, is but an impas- sioned summary of his present plight—the brothers’ betrayal, his cruel enslavement and uncertain fate—an extended invitation to be stared at—to be pitied—before his captor notices his absence and violently retrieves him. The prayer is slightly retouched for poetic effect—e.g. the alliterating C- and V- in stanza 47 (“Voy con cadena al cuello, cativo con sennor / Vendido . . . como . . .”)—but by and large this passage

Publications, 1997), 172–173: “So he was bound and set on a camel, and the caravan moved until they reached the place where Joseph’s mother Rachel was buried. Unable to restrain himself, Joseph fell on her grave, weeping and mentioning his brothers’ deed. When Malik missed him, he returned in search of him and found him spread on the ground, weeping. He slapped his face and drove him harshly before him. On reaching the caravan, he put him on a mule and set out for Egypt.” It should be noted as well that al-Thaʿlabī is the earliest Arabic informant of this motif—indeed, the earliest on either the Jewish or Muslim sides—of which I am aware (al-Ṭabarī, for one, does not record it in his Taʾrīkh—cf. Al-Ṭabarī, Annales, 1:377–378; see n. 24). 28 luis m. girón-negrón is basically a faithful, unadorned rendition of al-Thaʿlabī’s extra- quranic legend in monorhyme alejandrino verses. Of course, the Hispano-Muslim fate of this Josephine legend in aljamiado did not end in the mudéjar period. This emotional scene took on a life of its own beyond the poet’s original reappropriation of al-Thaʿlabī as it became interpreted by morisco communities during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The cultural elite of the Castilian and Aragonese alfaquíes retransmitted a wealth of Islamic materials in their Romance vernaculars and Arabic script, including this extra-quranic expansion on the sufferings and tribulations of God’s faithful servant and revered prophet. There is a lengthier version of the lament in a prose aljamiado retelling of the Joseph story apparently from the sixteenth century, albeit of earlier origin.27 The Poema de

27 The extant text, first published by Guillén Robles—Francisco Guillén Robles and Juan Martín Figuerola, Leyendas de José, hijo de Jacob, y de Alejandro Magno (Zaragoza: Imprenta del Hospicio Provincial, 1888)—and recently edited by Klenk—Ursula Klenk, ed., La Leyenda de Yusuf: Ein Aljamiadotext (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1972)—is highly Castilianized but it seems to have been originally written in Aragonese. Here is its version of the lament itself (Klenk, La Leyenda de Yusuf, 21–22): “Iy-era šu kamino delloš por la fuweša de šu madre Raḥīl. puweš la ora ke š’aserko de la fuwesa de šu madre, no š’enšennore’o de lansarše kon ši mišmo dell-anāqa, i pušoše ke iba chure’ando šobre šuš chinolloš i šobre šuš piyedes fašta ke lego a la fuweša de šu madre Rraḥīl. i pušoše ke š’ešferegaba šobre la fuweša de šu madre Rraḥīl, y-el diziyendo: yā madre, yā Rraḥīl, ešliga de tu el nudo dell-arridā iy-alsa tu kabesa de la fuweša. yā mi madre, yā Rraḥīl, ši tu biyešeš la ğiknez de mi tiyenpo i lo ke me abe aka’esido enpuweš de tu del perdimiyento, polorariyaš šobre mi iy-apiyadart’iyaš de mi. yā mi madre, yā Rraḥīl, ši biyešeš a mi, ke no abe šobre la kara de l(a) tiyerra ninguno maš abiltado ke yo, polorariyaš šobre mi y-apiyadart’iyaš de mi. yā mi madre, yā Rraḥīl, ši beyešeš a tu fiğo Yūsuf, ya l’an ešpartido enter’el i šu padre Yaʿqub, polorariyaš šobre mi y-apiyadart’iyaš de mi. yā mi madre, yā Rraḥīl, ¡ši me biyešeš a mi! ya me an dešnudado mi kamiša de šobre mi i de miš ešpaldaš i dešnudo me an deššado, en ell-alchub me an lansado i kon laš piyedraš m’an echado i no an ubido piyadad de mi. yā mi madre Rraḥīl, šobre la maššila de mi kara me an pofete’ado. yā mi madre, yā Rraḥīl, ¡ši me ubiyešeš bišto! ya me deššaron šolo, algaribo, i no kataron ad-Allāh, taʿālā, en mi. yā mi madre, yā Rraḥīl, ¡ši šubiyešeš lo k’a še’ido bendido bendida d’eškalabo dešpuweš de šer ḥuro, engirillonado y-enkadenado šinše pekado! yā mi madre, yā Rraḥīl, ¡ši me biyešeš komo šoy lebado komo šon lebadoš loš eskalaboš i katiboš de billa en pilla! yā mi madre, yā Rraḥīl, anme bendido i kon el fiyerro me an engirillonado i llaš gorošeraš de laš rropaš m’an beštido, fašta ke an rronpido miš espaldaš. diššo Kaʿbu: i oyo Yusuf un giritante ke deziya: sufri, ke no eš tu suferensiya šino kon Allāh, taʿālā . . .” (English translation in McGaha, Coat of Many Cultures, 177–178; see n. 15). This moving retelling, with its mournful litany of elegiac apostrophes, fully overlaps with the qisāṣ ̣ al-ʿanbiyāʾ sources, but it is followed by a dramatic addition found neither in al-Thaʿlabī nor al-Kisāʾī (an addition here attributed to the seventh century Yemenite Jewish convert to Islam, Kaʿb al-Aḥbār). In this aljamiado version, God visits a series of natural calamities upon Malik and his companions—a menacing storm, a terrifying darkness, seismic tremors—all in punishment for his physical mistreatment of the young weeping over rachel’s tomb 29

Yúçuf also found a receptive audience in the besieged crypto-Muslim minority of early modern Spain.28 In his Historia de Josep, fill del gran Patriarcha Jacob (written around 1486), the Valencian Joan Roiç de Corella (1428?–1497), the author as well of a Marian planctus which Lapesa studied in a perceptive comparison to Berceo’s Duelo de la Virgen,29 moves further away from the exegetical backdrop of our aggadah in his pathos-laden reelaboration of Joseph’s lament: an arresting literary jewel of the Catalan elegiac tradition.30 The narrative mise en scene in Roiç de Corella’s planctus is already much more dramatic—it brims with more gestural language and visual detail—than either of the two aljamiado versions in Old Spanish cuaderna vía. The narrator fills in the background information on this extra-biblical story, along with an imagined (non-midrashic) depiction of the funeral monument and its Hebrew epitaph.

Hebrew slave: the divine threat only subsides when Joseph intercedes on their behalf at their desperate behest (Klenk, La Leyenda de Yusuf, 22–24; McGaha, Coat of Many Cultures, 178–179). The Judeo-Arabic text studied by Bernstein also appends this rare sequel to Joseph’s elegiac lament (Bernstein, Stories of Joseph, 72–75; see n. 11). 28 On the socio-cultural significance of retelling the Yūsuf story in cuaderna vía among the late medieval mudéjares and their morisco heirs, see Barletta’s perceptive analysis—Vincent Barletta, Covert Gestures. Crypto-Islamic Literature as Cultural Practice in Early Modern Spain (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 145–155. Other literary appreciations of the Poema, in Billy B. Thompson, “La poesía aljamiada y el Mester de clerecía: el Poema de José (Yúçuf) y el poema en alabanza de Mahoma,” in Literatura hispánica, Reyes Católicos y Descubrimiento. Actas del Congreso Internacional sobre Literatura hispánica en la época de los Reyes Católicos y del Descubrimiento, ed. Manuel Criado de Val (Barcelona: PPU, 1989), 164–170, and McGaha, Coat of Many Cultures, 228–235 (see n. 15); on its affinities with oral Josephine lore in Hispano-Muslim society see Gerard Wiegers, Islamic Literature in Spanish and Aljamiado. Yça of Segovia ( fl. 1450). His Antecedents and Successors (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 32–33. 29 See “Gonzalo de Berceo y Joan Roiç de Corella ante el Duelo de la Virgen,” in Rafael Lapesa, De Berceo a Jorge Guillén: Estudios Literarios (Madrid: Gredos, 1997), 9–20. His famous Oració is found in Josep Almiñana Vallés, ed., Joan Roiç de Corella. Obres (Valencia: Del Cenia al Segura, 1985), 2:821–822. 30 roiç de Corella has a particular affinity for elegiac threnody both in prose and verse, as evidenced by his Trojan-themed Plant doloros de la reyna Ecuba (Almiñana, Joan Roiç de Corella, 2:630–637; see n. 29), Hero’s planctus over Leander’s corpse at the end of his Historia de Leander i Hero (Almiñana, Joan Roiç de Corella, 2:668–681), the Ovidian mythological laments in Lo jardi d’Amor (Almiñana, Joan Roiç de Corella, 2:703–715) and the descriptive poem on La sepulture de sa enamorada (Almiñana, Joan Roiç de Corella, 2:824). The passage in his Historia de Josep to be discussed below is found in Almiñana, Joan Roiç de Corella, 2:643–644. 30 luis m. girón-negrón

A la ciutat de Betlem caminant se acostaven e, a la vista de Josef, de luny, se presentava de sa mare Rachel aquell alt entretallat sepulcre, lo qual Jacob, per memoria de honrada sepultura, a la muller que tant amava de maravellosa obra esculpit havia. Era morta Rachel del part de Benjamin, venint de servir Laban, son oncle. Estava en la pedra marbre que’l sepulcre cobria, de letres ebray- ques epitafi de semblant escriptura: Morta de part, / davall la pedra mabre Està Rachel, / per qui Jacob vivia.31 Then, as Joseph stumbles upon the grave, the author invokes the inef- fability trope, bemoaning the insufficiency of language to convey Joseph’s sorrow, which is rendered, instead, in the elaborate depiction of physical gestures for unmitigated grief—“the wailing, the sob- bing and sighing” (“plors, sanglots e sospirs mal pronunçiades”) that accompany the effusion of Joseph’s tears all over the dusty surface of his mother’s marble tomb: No basta estil de lengua humana, ni paraules de elegancia tan alta, descriure la dolor e miserable conplanyer que’l novell catiu damunt lo sepulcre de sa mare planyia; e, plorant ab lagremes que habundants de les fonts dels seus ulls corrien, los polsosos marbres del alt sepulcre lavant regava. E, legit l’adolorit titol de alta sepultura, ab paraules, per plors, sanglots e sospirs mal pronunçiades, lo seu cativeri en semblant manera planyia.32 Theplanctus itself is recast, likewise, not as a desperate plea for Rachel’s intercession on his behalf—the original midrashic motif—but as an entreaty addressed to Death personified that it may hasten the end so he can soon join his mother and find repose in her tomb.

31 McGaha’s English translation (McGaha, Coat of Many Cultures, 430; see n. 15): “As they traveled along, they approached the city of Bethlehem, and from afar Joseph glimpsed his mother’s tall, sculptured tomb, which Jacob, as an honored sepulcher in her memory had had carved with marvelous craftsmanship for the woman he so loved. Rachel had died while giving birth to Benjamin, as Jacob came from serving Laban, his uncle. On the marble stone that covered the tomb, the following epitaph was written in Hebrew letters: ‘Having died in childbirth, under this marble stone lies Rachel, for whom Jacob lived.’” 32 McGaha, Coat of Many Cultures, 430 (see n. 15): “No sort of human language, no words of the loftiest elegance could suffice to describe the grief and wretched complaint that the newly enslaved lad pronounced over his mother’s grave; and weeping with tears that flowed abundantly from his eyes, he wet and cleansed the dusty marble of the high tomb. And, having read the inscription on the high sepulcher, with words, weeping, sobs, and barely audible sighs, he lamented his captivity as follows . . .” weeping over rachel’s tomb 31

¡O mort, a Rachel benigne, qui los seus ulls has tancat perque de son fill no mires tanta miseria; hi ara, los meus no tancant, permets que, vivint catiu, la sua tomba ab tanta dolor mire! ¡A la mare tan benigne, al fill tan cruel, prometent-me en Egipte, apres deservitut miserable, peregrina sepultura! Ara es temps que la tua força en mi, jove, major se mostre; e, morint damunt lo sepulcre, seran contents los novells senyors, [que] dins en lo vas, ab lo cos de Rachel tingua sepultura; que si vivint mo [m’ho] comportaven, no reclamaria a tu, cruel iniqua; mas, ab força de dolor estrema rompent los marbres de l’alta sepultura, dins en lo vas la mia persona cansada descanssaria; e, mesclant la carn ab los seus ossos, o al seu cos la mia anima daria vida, o la sua mort prestament faria ma vida morta. Ni pendria espant del chich espay, ni de les tenebres de la tancada tomba, acostumat d’estar nou mesos en lo seu ventre.33 The tomb-as-womb motif—with its concomitant association of preg- nancy and corruption34—is redolent in all its intensity of an elegiac death-wish almost Freudian avant la letter—the desire to enter into her burial niche; the lack of fear at such a dark, sealed space; the latter’s analogy to his prenatal dwelling. But all of this plaintive excess clinches what is in essence an inversion of the Mater Dolorosa theme in Roiç de Corella’s Oració. The Virgin in the Oració, distraught over her Son’s refusal to let her die along with Him, also pleads to be buried alive in the same sepulchre as a final act of reciprocity for willingly giving Him shelter in her virginal womb (see n. 29, 2:821–822, vv. 28–35).

33 McGaha, Coat of Many Cultures, 430–431 (see n. 15): “Oh, death, you were kind to Rachel, for you have closed her eyes that she might not see the great misery of her son; but here now, by not closing my eyes, you allow me, living in slavery, to gaze upon her tomb with such sadness! So kind to the mother, so cruel to the son, promising me in Egypt, after a life of miserable slavery, a foreign burial! Now is the time to use your power on me, for since I’m young, it will seem even greater; and if I die upon this tomb, my new masters will be content to give me burial in an urn with Rachel’s corpse; if I found life bearable, I would not call upon you, oh cruel, wicked one; but as it is, breaking the marble of that high tomb with the force of my extreme sorrow, I would rest my weary person in an urn in there; and mixing my flesh with her bones, either my soul would give life to her body, or her death would swiftly slay my life. I would not fear that narrow space nor the darkness of the closed tomb, since I grew accustomed to them during nine months in her womb.” On the apostrophe to death in Old Spanish elegies, classically embodied in the Libro de buen amor 1520–1522, see Félix Lecoy, Recherches sur le “Libro de buen amor” (Paris: Droz, 1938), 200–212 and García Jiménez, La poesía elegiac medieval, 93–94 (see n. 13). 34 Per Kimberley Patton’s perceptive observation in our Faculty Colloquium (September 27th, 2010). 32 luis m. girón-negrón

¡O fill, tot meu! / hoyu a mi que us parle, Que’n lo dur pal / haveu hoyt lo ladre. Puix no voleu / que de present yo muyra, Estigua’b vos / tancada’n lo sepulcre. Yo us acullí / en lo meu verge ventre; Ara vos, fill, / rebeu-me dins la tomba. Que no’s pot fer / entre’ls vius yo converse, Puix que, vos mort, / es j ama vida morta. The mariological echo is unequivocal. Roiç de Corella’s morbid fascination with the theatrics of grieving culminates in a proto-novelistic parting shot: a disconsolate Joseph kisses the marble stone, awash with his tears, and as his captors violently wrest him away from her tomb, Joseph swiftly wipes his eyes dry with his bound hands, casting a final, longing glance at the maternal grave: No acabava lo adolorit catiu lo dol de tan entristit planyer, quant lo senyor, superbo, ab manaments de aspra senyoria, del plorat sepulcre l’apartava, ab plors e lagremes que, fins en la terra, per los banyats pits de Josef corrien; besant los marbres se partia, girant la plorosa vista a la desigada sepultura; la abundant aygua ab les mans, dels ligams catives, dels lagrimants ulls apartave, perque pogues, contemplant, mirar de la mare lo adolorit sepulcre.35 In Roiç de Corella’s version of this emotional scene, its exegetical backdrop almost completely recedes and the dramatic exploration of Joseph’s anguish, so vividly imagined, takes center stage with the same artistic ambition, the same “maestría capaz de elevar hasta lo sublime el artificio” already in anticipation of a Renaissance poetics that Lapesa rightly discerned in his haunting Stabat Mater. Of course, as Michael McGaha already noted (see n. 15, 421), it is very difficult to discern any explicit references to Christianity in his retelling of the Joseph story. We can only surmise, from a cautious effort at assessing his religious motivations and artistic choices, how contemporary Christian readers

35 McGaha, Coat of Many Cultures, 431 (see n. 15): “The sorrowful slave was unable to state the full burden of his sad complaint before his master, haughtily commanding him with harsh mastery, took him away from the tomb where he wept with laments and tears that ran right down to the ground, bathing Joseph’s own feet; he left there kissing the marble and looking back, with weeping on the longed-for tomb; with his bound hands he wiped the abundant water from his weeping eyes so that, contemplat- ing, he might gaze upon his mother’s sorrowful sepulcher.” weeping over rachel’s tomb 33 may have responded to this stylized depiction of Joseph’s visceral grief, whether cognizant or not of its non-Christian origin.36 The theatrical potential of this midrashic legend was not lost either in early modern Spain, as our fourth and final example so memo- rably shows. Sometime in the 1530s, the Spanish playwright Miguel de Carvajal belabored Joseph’s lament into a virtuosic, pathos-laden soliloquy of sixty octosyllables in his Tragedia Josephina: a Spanish auto-sacramental—a religious play for Corpus Christi—first published in 1535.37 Carvajal’s version, like Roiç de Corella’s, focuses exclusively on Joseph’s outpouring of sorrow at the unexpected sight of his mother’s grave. However the narrative setting is pared down with minimal indications of what transpires before Joseph launches into his soliloquy. Instead of a novelistic Sitz im Leben à la Roiç de Corella, we plunge directly into an expansive, carefully crafted poetic monologue (see n. 15, 46–48, vv. 1073–1136). Dios te salve sepultura mas benigna que cruel pues a mi madre Rachel libraste desta amargura. Ablándate piedra dura, mete dentro mis clamores, siente, madre, mis dolores, siente mi gran desventura.

36 although his proto-novelistic take—the earliest I am aware of by a Christian author—bears comparison to the more dramatic features in both the Islamic versions and Sefer ha-Yašar, Roiç de Corella’s immediate source (oral or written? Jewish or Muslim? an earlier Christianized adaptation of the lament no longer extant?) remains undetermined. 37 admired as one of the best religious plays in Golden Age drama of the sixteenth century, Carvajal’s Tragedia Josephina was first performed in his native Plasencia and was the subject of several editions that attest to its popularity, prior to its inclusion in the Inquisitorial Index of 1559—cf. Gillet’s comprehensive introductory study to his critical edition (Miguel de Carvajal, Tragedia Josephina, XI–LXIV; see n. 15) and McGaha’s prefatory overview to his English translation (McGaha, Coat of Many Cultures, 17–23; see n. 15); also David Gitlitz’s important essay on Carvajal’s sensibility as a possible converso—David Gitlitz, “Conversos and the Fusion of Worlds in Michael de Carvajal’s Tragedia Josephina,” HR, 40 (1972): 260–270—and Pérez Priego’s observations—Miguel Ángel Pérez Priego, “La Biblia y el teatro religioso medieval y renacentista,” in Judíos en la literatura española, ed. Iacob Hassan y Ricardo Izquierdo Benito (Cuenca: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2001), 126–130. An aljamiado version in Hebrew script was discovered as well in the Cairo Genizah, attesting to Carvajal’s popularity among Sephardic Jews—Eleazar Gutwirth, “The Hispanicity of Sephardic Jewry,” REJ, 145 (1986): 347–357. As with Roiç de Corella, Carvajal’s immediate source for the lament remains undetermined. 34 luis m. girón-negrón

La más dichosa tú fuiste de quantas madres han sido en no ver ansí vendido y empozado al que pariste, que si al que tu concebiste vieras en penas tamañas es cierto que tus entrañas oy se rompieran de triste.

Madre mía, madre mía cata aquí al que concebiste y al que en tu vientre traxiste tómale en tu compañía, que al que en tu vientre cabía bien cabrá en tu monumento: sólo basta tu aposento librarme desta agonía.

Un hijo tan desdichado di, madre, porque pariste pues nacido le ofreciste a tan miserable hado o quan bienaventurado me vieras sin embaraço si en naciendo en tu regaço tú me vieras sepultado.

A mis bozes doloridas porque madre no respondes que parece que te ascondes pues de ti no son oydas con angustias tan crecidas como quies madre que biva: no te muestres tan esquiva que a más dolor me conbidas.

Tu sepulcro tan cruel no te muestres oy tan fuerte: déxame antes de mi muerte ver a mi madre Rachel. Ábrete y no seas infiel, no des vida ya más larga a quien l’es muy más amarga que el acibar ni la hiel.

Porque madre mi aflición no te duele ni te aflige weeping over rachel’s tomb 35

pues que ves que no se rige por concierto ni razón: rompe ya tu coraçón mira el trago do me dexas pues de mi tanto te alexas oye mi lamentación.

Canta. Super flumina babilonis illic sedimus et flevimus: dum recordaremur tui Syon . . . [sic]

Si en tus huessos ay sentido siente el fin de mi regalo que como traydor y malo por esclavo soy vendido.

MER. Acaba ya dolorido no perdamos la jornada que esso es tanto como nada.

JOSEPH De ti madre me despido38 Carvajal’s auto-sacramental, as already noted by David Gitlitz (see note 37) subtly belabors the Patristic interpretation of the Joseph story to

38 McGaha’s translation (McGaha, Coat of Many Cultures, 40–41; see n. 15): JOSEPH: Hail, oh grave, more kind than cruel, since you spared my mother Rachel this bitterness! Oh hard stone, soften, so that my cries can penetrate you! Oh Mother, pity my pain and my great misfor- tune! You were lucky not to have seen your son thrown into a well and then sold as a slave. It would have broken your heart to see your child suffer like that! Mother, Mother: look down on the child whom you carried in your womb! Take me with you! If I could fit into your womb, surely there’s room for me in your grave. That’s the only thing that could free an unlucky son?I would have been much better off if I had died at birth. Mother, why don’t you answer my sad cries? You seem to be hiding from me, which only increases my sadness. Oh, cruel tomb: be not so strong! Before I die, let me see my mother Rachel! Open to me now, for my life is more bitter than gall! Oh, Mother: Why doesn’t my senseless affliction cause you pain? Your heart may well break now! Don’t leave me like this? Hear my lamentation! [He sings:] Super flumina Babylonis, illic sedimus et flevimus: cum recordaremur Sion. If there be any feeling left in your bones, pity me, for my life of luxury is over. Just as if I were a wicked traitor, they’ve sold me as a slave. MERCHANT: You, mourner, finish up. We can’t waste any more time. JOSEPH: Farewell, Mother! 36 luis m. girón-negrón fit the Corpus Christi’s Eucharistic paean. Joseph the innocent sufferer at his brothers’ hands—the one who forgives them and feeds them— becomes therein a Christological allegory, a typological prefiguration of the Crucified himself. His allegorical refiguration even extends to such details as his being sold into slavery not for twenty but thirty pieces of silver.39 And just as Joseph prefigures Christ, Rachel becomes a Marian figura and Joseph’s planctus, a Stabat Filius. The Virgin’s sorrow over Christ’s lifeless body40 is projected unto Joseph the grieving son wailing and seeking solace at his mother’s grave. Joseph seeks to evince her pity (“siente madre mis dolores, siente mi gran desventura”—vv. 1079–1080), as he imagines Rachel’s maternal anguish over her son’s betrayal at the hands of his brothers. In the process, Joseph becomes a double figura. He is not only a prefiguration of Christ but a recog- nizable cipher of all Christians that pray at the Virgin’s feet and seek her intercession. The mariological allusions interlaced in his lament reinforce this allegorical subtext. Anyone in the audience could easily discern the overt intertextual echoes of the Ave Maria prayer: i.e. his apostrophic salute to Rachel’s sepulcher (“Dios te salve sepultura”— v. 1073); Joseph’s encomium of her joyful motherhood (“La más dichosa tú fuiste de quantas madres han sido”—vv. 1081–1082); his demonstrative self-reference as the fruit of her womb (“Madre mía, madre mía / cata aquí al que concebiste / y al que en tu vientre traxiste”—vv. 1089–1091). The Filius Dolorosus motif also reconnects with the Christological refashioning of Joseph’s lament via a subtle biblical allusion. Joseph ponders aloud how much better it would have been if Rachel had given birth to a dead son (“o quan bienaventurado / me vieras sin embaraço / si en naciendo en tu regaço / tu me vieras sepultado”—vv. 1101–1104), a verbal echo of Job 3:11 which identifies the young Israelite with yet

39 See Matthew 27:3 and Gillet (Miguel de Carvajal. Tragedia Josephina, 42–43, vv. 973ff; see n. 15). 40 “O quam tristis et afflicta / fuit illa benedicta / Mater Unigeniti! // Que merebat et dolebat, / et tremebat, dum videbat / nati penas incliti” (the piercing evocation of this Marian theme in vv. 7–12 of the haunting Stabat Mater attributed by some scholars to Jacopone da Todi—cf. Manuel A. Marcos Casquero y José Oroz Reta, eds., Lírica latina medieval. II. Poesía religiosa (Madrid: BAC, 1997), 718–721. For a recent reading of the Stabat Mater, in a thought-provoking juxtaposition with a tantric devotional hymn to the Hindu goddess Devī (Saundarya Laharī), see Francis X. Clooney, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother. Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 181–185. weeping over rachel’s tomb 37 another Old Testamental figura of Christ as the paradigmatic man of sorrows.41 This scriptural intertext lends Jobian pathos to Carvajal’s elegiac reinterpretation of Joseph’s entreaty, a reinterpretation easily comparable to Roiç de Corella’s version of the lament. Both authors reimagine Joseph’s planctus as a grief-laden apostrophe not only to Rachel, but to her tomb (“Dios te salve sepultura /. . ./ Ablándate piedra dura / mete dentro mis clamores /. . ./ Tú, sepulcro tan cruel, / no te muestres oy tan fuerte /. . ./ Ábrete y no seas infiel . . .”—vv. 1077– 1078, 1113ff ), a burial site now deemed with longing as a welcome refuge from his tribulations. The supernatural element is mitigated as well. In both works, unlike their source, no disembodied voice comes to console him. The silent tomb remains so, apparently unmoved by his pleas.

Carvajal, however, closes this scene with a subtle twist, unique in Spanish Josephine works, that, whether knowingly or not, dovetails the midrashic legend. Joseph caps his mournful tribute by singing Psalm 136 [137], Super flumina Babylonis, the great hymn of consolation to Jewish exiles over the Babylonian destruction of the Jerusalem temple (6th century B.C.E.). In this anachronistic fantasy, Joseph is envisioned by the poet like sundry Jewish exiles after him, seeking comfort and hope in the face of suffering in this Psalmic picture of endurance. The midrashim on Rachel’s tears also connect Joseph’s Egyptian fate with that of the Jewish exiles in Babylonian captivity. Such an imaginative association could reinforce Gitlitz’s claim (see note 37) that Carvajal’s representation of Joseph may have been inflected by his sensibility for the social plight of New Christians as a possible converso himself. Be that as it may, it is a pity that Carvajal does not take a stab at a poetic translation of Super flumina Babylonis (thus joining such revered contemporaries as Luis de Camões, fray Luis de León or St. John of the Cross). But one can still try to imagine how haunting the recitation of this Psalm must have been as a para-liturgical performance: a moving intra-biblical gloss on Joseph’s Egyptian trial set against the dramatic backdrop of his aggadic dirge.

41 “Quare non in vulva mortuus sum egressus ex utero non statim perii.” 38 luis m. girón-negrón

In sum, the Ibero-Romance elegiac tradition was enriched by the literary reelaborations that this moving addendum to the Joseph story so often inspired. Joseph’s weeping at Rachel’s tomb was lovingly reimagined in successive iterations as it spoke to the communal hopes of changing audiences with evocative power and cathartic promise. It spoke to the plight of both medieval Spanish Jews and their Sephardic heirs in the Coplas de Yosef, for whom the Joseph story became a favored subject of para-liturgical performances on the feast of Purim. It also touched the hearts of Spanish Muslims living under Christian rule, whether mudéjares in the late Middle Ages or their morisco descendants in the sixteenth century, listening to the Poema de Yúçuf with the Inquisition upon their heels. Catalan-speaking Christians at the end of the 1400s could reflect on this moving aggadah as they perused Roiç de Corella’s proto-novelistic retelling in their own Romance vernacular. And in early modern Spain, a Christian playwright of Jewish descent could imbue the Joseph persona, already layered as a figura Christi, with the contemplative disposition of the Mater Dolorosa in a theatrical pageant for Corpus Christi. Of course, its literary potential was not exhausted with the Josephine plays of the Siglo de Oro. Long after Carvajal’s Tragedia, Joseph’s lament would be stirringly reenacted as a Judeo-Spanish qinah in Las hazañas de José: Abraham Toledo’s chef d’oeuvre and the undis- puted jewel of the Sephardic coplas tradition.42 But by Toledo’s time,

42 Here is the passage as transcribed by Lazar—Moshe Lazar, ed., Joseph and His Brethren: Three Ladino Versions. Poema de Yosef, Coplas de Yosef ha-Saddiq, Sefer ha-Yashar [Joseph’s Tale] (Culver City, CA: Labyrinthos, 1990), 194–199, stanzas 351–361: Por Bēyt Leḥem él pasando Vido el qebeṛ de la madre: “Madre mía,” va llorando “La querida de mi padre!”

Dixo: “Amo, el Dio te guadre, Asi seas vivo y sano! Quanto vó sovre mi madre, Que quero meter la mano.”

“Va y ven en dos tiradas, Y mira que vengas presto, Que te daré asotadas Que pasen mas de siento.” weeping over rachel’s tomb 39

Yōsēf fue sovre la fuesa, Lya era ora de tadre; Dándo se va la cavesa Sovre la fuesa de la madre:

Qīnāh; Muḥayyer “Para qué paristeš, madre, Un ijo tal desdichado, Que lo llevan atado En cadenas aprezado?

Roga a la altura Que no aze tortura, Quisas terné ventura Me traigas a tu lado.

Escucha lo que te digo: Enterrame con tigo, A un ijo [tan] amigo. Roga a el Abastado.

Si supiera mi pecado En que é revellado Por sueño que é soñado, Que nunca lo uviera contado.”

Moros: “Alto, digo, don vilano! De qué estás murmureando? Si tomo asote en mano, Asta la muerte te vo dando.”

Yōsēf: “Queda en buen ora, madre, Que lya es ora de tadre. Güay del viejo mi padre, Que me está esperando!”

Tornó Yosef a los Moros Con lloro y gran rešisto; Ataronlo con los [toros], Llevaronlo a Ayifto. A fuller discussion, with attendant bibliography, of the diasporic Josephine coplas and Toledo’s crowning achievement in Girón-Negrón and Minervini (Girón-Negrón, Las Coplas de Yosef, 71–76; see n. 2). The late Iacob Hassan, a leading authority on Toledo’s work, also devoted one of his many studies to its affinities with the elegiac tradition—Iacob Hassan, “Las Coplas de Yosef sefardíes de Abraham Toledo y la poesía luctuosa,” in Philologica Hispaniensia in honorem Manuel Alvar (Madrid: Gredos, 1986), 3:215–220, but did not elaborate on this particular lament. We may now add to the Coplas’s bibliography Avner Perez’s recent study and edition (Toledo, Las Coplas de Yosef; see n. 11) where he argues for an earlier date of composition for Toledo’s poem: cf. Joseph’s qinah over Rachel’s tomb in pp. 368–369 (lines 40 luis m. girón-negrón

Joseph’s threnody already belonged to a venerable poetic tradition. It had been ushered by all of its precursors through the aggadic gates of his tears.43

1433–1456); fuller text with qinah in context, side by side with a Hebrew translation, in pp. 480–483 (lines 1417–1460). Perez’s notes on its sources simply point to Sefer ha-Yašar (Toledo, Las Coplas de Yosef, 567). 43 albeit outside the historical scope of this paper, a parting coda on these coplas is also in order. Toledo’s zejel-like qinah (four quatrains, mostly octosyllables and heptasyllables with the rhyming scheme A-A-A-X) selectively weaves, along with its framing dialogue, different threads of the Josephine tradition that we have recon- noitered here. Unlike his impulsive precursors, Toledo’s Joseph, for example, seeks permission from his captors to approach his mother’s grave, but he then joins two of his Iberian avatars in wishing to die then and there and be buried in her tomb (Roiç de Corella’s and Carvajal’s). Then again, his entreaties are addressed neither to Death personified (Roiç de Corella) nor to Rachel’s grave (Carvajal) but to God Himself, “el Abastado” and an introspective mea culpa quickly follows over the “sin- ful” indiscretion that brought about his ordeal: i.e. revealing to his jealous brothers the prophetic nature of his dreams. This penitential gesture of humble self-recrimination leaves no space for voicing outrage or condemning their cruel betrayal (very different from, say, the Hebrew version in Sefer ha-Yašar or the Arabo-Islamic retelling in the aljamiado poem). As his captors summon him back, even amidst violent threats, he bids farewell to his mother and commiserates with his father, who at that late hour eagerly awaits the safe return of his son. In sum, Joseph’s pain in this qinah never precludes his compassion. The more convulsive expressions of Joseph’s midrashic grief are tempered, while reenacted, by contrapuntal moments of prayerful self-awareness, dignified self-composure and selfless sensitivity to others’ pain. By such a balancing act, his exemplary virtue is differently upheld: a thoughtful and poignant capstone to the Iberian fate of this legend. THE FIRST MURDER: PICTURING POLEMIC C. 1391

Tom Nickson*

A little known relief on Toledo cathedral’s late fourteenth-century choir screen presents an image of startling power (Fig. 1). The victim of a brutal assault has been pushed almost to the ground, as the attacker grabs his victim’s wrist and pulls at his long hair, bending down so that he can sink his teeth into the vulnerable neck. The subject only becomes clear when we look to either side: to its left, an extensive cycle of the Creation, terminating with the image of Adam tilling and Eve spinning. To the right, Cain tries to hide Abel’s body, whose head can nonetheless be spotted emerging from the ground. This, then, is a depiction of the first murder, rendered with an animal- istic, almost vampiric aggression that has no precedent in the art of medieval Europe.1 The narrative is clearer on folio 29v of the so-called Alba Bible, produced near Toledo in the 1420s (Fig. 2). In the upper register the offerings of an effeminate Abel are accepted by a Christlike figure of God. Below and to the left, Abel is attacked by his disgruntled brother. Once more, Cain bites Abel at the neck, from which we see a profusion of spurting blood. To the right, God rebukes Cain. The composition is rather different to that of Toledo’s choir screen relief, yet the iconography of Cain biting Abel is the same in both examples, and quite different from customary depictions of Cain killing Abel with a hoe, rock, axe or jawbone. In this essay I will consider these two exceptional images, and what they tell us about attitudes toward Toledo’s Jewish communities, the Hebrew Bible and Jewish scholarship. First I will address some basic issues of dates and patronage. I will then examine the relationship between the screen and the Alba

* I am especially grateful to Paul Crossley, Ángela Franco, Ryan Szpiech and Rosa Vidal for their help and advice with this research. 1 The most useful survey of Genesis iconography is Anna Ulrich, Kain und Abel in der Kunst: Untersuchungen zur Ikonographie und Auslegungsgeschichte (Bamberg: Universität Bamberg, 1981). See also Hans Martin von Erffa, Ikonologie der Genesis (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1989–1995). 42 tom nickson

Bible before finally analysing what these images reveal about Judaeo- Christian relations in the critical decades around 1391. Bristling with coloured columns, gilded capitals and sculpture, Toledo cathedral’s choir screen dominates the two eastern bays of its nave. The screen’s relatively unusual position west of the crossing was partly conditioned by Toledo cathedral’s short, two-bay eastern arm, and authorised a similar placement for dozens of peninsular churches.2 Its rich marble columns are probably spolia from the mosque that had served as Toledo’s cathedral after the city’s conquest in 1085, itself replaced by the extant gothic cathedral after 1226.3 The screen is open to the east so that the canons within can see the high altar, but its remaining three exterior façades support fifty-six Old Testament reliefs of about 67 × 118 cm, each divided by micro-architectural frames. It was G. E. Street who first called attention to the iconography of the screen in the 1860s, calling it “the most important work of the age in Spain”, but few scholars examined the screen in detail until Ángela Franco Mata published a key study in 1987.4 Franco showed that the cycle is unprecedented anywhere else in medieval European sculpture for the size and complexity of its narrative, which is summarised in Table 1.5 Based on Genesis and Exodus, many of the reliefs are indebted to

2 E. Carrero Santamaría, “‘Presbiterio y coro en la catedral de Toledo. En busca de unas circunstancias,” Hortus Artium Medievalium 15, no. 2 (2009): 315–328. 3 Clara Delgado Valero, Toledo Islámico: ciudad, arte e historia (Toledo: Caja de Ahorros, 1987), 266. For the preservation of the columns of Seville’s mosque in 1396, see Alfonso Jiménez Martín, “Las Fechas de las Formas,” in La Catedral Gótica de Sevilla. Fundación y fabrica de la obra nueva, ed. Alfonso Jiménez Martín (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2006), 40. 4 George Edmund Street, Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain (London: John Murray, 1865), 499; Ángela Franco Mata, “El Génesis y el Éxodo en la cerca exterior del coro de la catedral de Toledo,” Toletum: Boletín de la Real Academia Bellas Artes y Ciencias Históricas de Toledo 70, no. 21 (1987): 5–147. This has a complete set of photos of the reliefs. See also Luis Vázquez de Parga, “La leyenda de la muerte de Adán en la catedral de Toledo,” Archivo Español de Arte, 30 (1957): 21–28; Ángela Franco Mata, “Arte judío y arte cristiano desde sus orígenes. Aspectos sobre las relaciones artísticas en la Edad Media Hispánica,” in XXVIII Ruta Cicloturística del Románico Internacional, Poio, del 7 de febrero al 20 junio 2010 (Poio, 2010), 73–102. 5 See also Ángela Franco Mata, “Relaciones artísticas entre la Haggadah de Sarajevo y la cerca exterior del coro de la catedral de Toledo,” Espacio Tiempo y Forma. Serie 7: Historia del Arte 6 (1993): 65–80; Ángela Franco Mata, “Cuatro programas iconográ- ficos medievales paralelos,” in Miscellánia en homenatge a Joan Ainaud de Lasarte, ed. Eduard Carbonell and Xavier Barrier-i-Altet (Barcelona: Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, 1998), 283–86. the first murder: picturing polemic c. 1391 43 apocryphal stories that are based on the Pentateuch.6 Individually none of these reliefs or sequences is without precedent in Christian art, but taken together they form a unique programme that merits considerable scholarly attention. The first record of work on the screen comes in the earliest surviving account book from Toledo cathedral’s Obra y Fábrica, which catalogues the work of the otherwise unknown John of Valencia on the doors and stairs of a ‘pulpito’ in 1383.7 In 1388, the head chaplain left money ‘for the work of the pulpit’, and the screen was probably finished before the death of archbishop Pedro Tenorio in 1399, for his heraldry is found all over it.8 The screen forms just one part of an extraordinary group of images commissioned for the cathedral under Tenorio following the completion of construction on the cathedral fabric.9 This includes a vast new retable for the high altar (apparently never made), the construction of a new cloister and library, Tenorio’s own funerary chapel (the chapel of St. Blaise), and the funerary chapel of the Reyes Nuevos.10 Before discussing the choir screen in more detail, it will be beneficial to consider first the Alba Bible. Completed by 1433 at the latest, the bible was commissioned in 1422 by a Toledan nobleman, don Luis González de Guzmán, Grand Master of the Order of Calatrava.11 The

6 I have discussed other aspects of the screen in Tom Nickson, “Reframing the Bible: Genesis and Exodus on Toledo Cathedral’s Fourteenth-Century Choir Screen,” Gesta 50, no. 1 (2011), 71–89. 7 Archivo de la Catedral de Toledo, Obra y Fábrica 760, ff. 42v, 46v–47r, 49r, 53v. See Carmen Torroja Menéndez, Catálogo del Archivo de Obra y Fábrica de la Catedral de Toledo (Toledo: Publicaciones del Instituto Provincial de Investigaciones y Estudios Toledanos, 1977), 11. 8 ACT Z.4.C.5b12, 9 Aug. 1388. 9 For Tenorio’s patronage, see Ángela Franco Mata, “El arzobispo Pedro Tenorio: vida y obra. Su capilla funeraria en el claustro de la catedral de Toledo,” in La Idea y el sentimiento de la muerte en la historia y en el arte de la Edad Media (II): ciclo de conferencias celebrado del 15 al 19 de Abril de 1991, ed. Georges Duby (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1992), 73–94. For the completion of the cathedral’s fabric by the 1380s, see Tom Nickson, “La Catedral: su Historia Constructiva,” in La Catedral Primada de Toledo. Dieciocho siglos de historia, ed. Ramón Gonzálvez Ruiz (Toledo: Promecal, 2010), 148–61. 10 For the high altar project, see Tom Nickson, “Art and Belief in Medieval Castile,” in Spiritual Temporalities in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Michael Foster (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2011), 99–126. 11 See especially Carl Otto Nordström, The Duke of Alba’s Castilian Bible. A Study of the Rabbinical Features of the Miniatures. Figura Nova Series 5 (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1967); Jeremy Schonfield, La Biblia de Alba. An Illustrated Manuscript Bible in Castilian with Translation and Commentaries by Rabbi Moses 44 tom nickson bible preserves in its preface the correspondence between don Luis; Brother Arias de Encinas, superior of the Franciscan monastery in Toledo, who supervised the project; and Rabbi Moses Arragel, a local rabbi who was commissioned to provide a commentary on the biblical text and translate it into Castilian.12 Don Luis specified that Moses was to provide a more expansive and up-to-date commentary than that found in Nicholas of Lyra’s Postills, a gloss of great popularity in late medieval Castile.13 In response to Moses’ recorded anxieties about the use of images in the Bible, Brother Arias assured Moses that any illuminations could be added after the text was written, and that these would be done by Toledan artists based on “the bible in the sacristy of the cathedral which is very well historiated”.14 Although it is not provable, this historiated bible has often been related to the famous three-volume bible moralisée, the so-called ‘Saint Louis Bible’, which had been illuminated in France c. 1225–1235 and probably entered Toledo’s sacristy in the late thirteenth century.15 While it does indeed contain an extensive cycle of Old Testament illustrations, this bible has few formal or iconographical similarities with either the choir screen or the Alba Bible, and it anyway seems unlikely that this, the most carefully guarded of all Toledo’s books, would ever have found its way to an artist’s studio.16 In the Saint Louis Bible, for instance, Cain mur- ders Abel with the back of a sickle, and the composition is very different from the same scene in the choir screen or Alba Bible.17

Arragel (Madrid: Facsimile Editions & Fundación Amigos de Sefarad, 1992); Sonia Fellous, Histoire de la bible de Moïse Arragel, Tolède 1422–1433: quand un rabbin interprète la bible pour les chrétiens (Paris: Somogy, 2001); Carlos Sainz de la Maza, “Poder político y poder doctrinal en la creación de la Biblia de Alba,” e-Spania, 3 (2007), http://e-spania.revues.org (with full bibliography). 12 Published in Antonio Paz y Melia, Biblia (Antiguo Testamento), traducida del hebreo al castellano por Rabi Mosé Arragel de Guadalfajara, 1422–1433 (Madrid: Imprenta Artística, 1920), 1:1–15. 13 Teresa Laguna Paúl, Postillae in Vetus et Novum Testamentum de Nicolás de Lyra (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 1979); Klaus Reinhardt, “Das Werk des Nicolaus von Lyra im mittelalterlichen Spanien,” Traditio, 43 (1987): 321–58. 14 Paz y Melia, Biblia, 1:15 (see n. 12): “la biblia del sagrario de la egleja mayor, que es muy bien ystoriada.” 15 Ramón Gonzálvez Ruiz, “The Bible of Saint Louis of Toledo Cathedral,” in The Bible of Saint Louis, ed. Ramón Gonzálvez Ruiz (Barcelona: Moleiro, 2004), 93–97. 16 See Nordström, The Duke of Alba’s Castilian Bible, 18 (see n. 11). 17 See, however, John Lowden, “Inventing Biblical Narrative: The Kiss of Cain in the Bibles Moralisées,” in Image, Memory and Devotion. Album Amicorum Paul Crossley, ed. Zöe Opačić and Achim Timmerman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 35–54. the first murder: picturing polemic c. 1391 45

It is, in fact, almost impossible to find any other representations of Abel’s death that resemble those of the Alba Bible or Toledo cathedral’s choir screen. Only the Alba Bible’s striking image of Cain wrestling Abel to the ground finds a comparison that is even vaguely compelling: the Cain and Abel panel from the Salerno Ivories (Fig. 3), dating to the late eleventh century.18 On this panel the brothers wrestle in a fashion akin to that of the Alba Bible, and there are certain other similarities in the depiction of the bust-length figure of God in a half circle, and the disposition of Cain’s hands when rebuked by God. There is, however, nothing else to connect the Salerno Ivories with the Alba Bible, and no other representation of the wrestling brothers is known.19 One might conceivably postulate a common earlier source for both images, but this would require an improbable argument of great complexity,20 one that can be eschewed by acknowledging the ability of artists to invent iconographies directly from texts or by adapting other suitable images.21 Whatever the differences between the compositions of the two depictions of fratricide discussed here, their geographical proximity and the rarity of their iconography surely suggest that they are connected.22 Indeed, while there are no other clear iconographical or com- positional similarities between the choir screen and the Alba Bible, there are certain formal connections that prove the Toledan ambit of the bible’s illustrators, one that was explicitly stated in its preface.23 Folio 25v of the Alba Bible, for instance, shows the bible’s patron,

18 Robert P. Bergman, Salerno Ivories: Ars Sacra from Mediaeval Amalfi (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 23–24. 19 Ferdinando Bologna, L’enigma degli avori medievali da Amalfi a Salerno (Naples: Paparo, 2008), 2:284. 20 Such an argument would probably depend on Bergman’s comparison of the Salerno Ivories with ivory caskets in Spain: Bergman, Salerno Ivories, 89 (see n. 18). 21 See Joseph Gutmann, “Review: The Duke of Alba’s Castilian Bible, A Study of the Rabbinical Features of the Miniatures by Carl-Otto Nordström,” The Art Bulletin 51, no. 1 (1969): 94; Thérèse Metzger, “The ‘Alba Bible’ of Rabbi Moses Arragel,” Bulletin of the Institute of Jewish Studies, 3 (1975): 154; John Lowden, The Octateuchs. A Study in Byzantine Manuscript Illustration (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 94–104. 22 This is supported by the fact that the only other known representation of Cain biting Abel is found on the choir stalls of Burgos Cathedral, and of Belmonte (formerly in Cuenca Cathedral), which were carved by the Toledan master Egas Cueman in the 1450s. See Franco Mata, “Arte judío”, 82 (see n. 4). 23 Paz y Melía, Biblia, 15 (see n. 12): “los maestros pintores sean desta çibdat.” 46 tom nickson don Luis de Guzmán, seated on a complex architectural throne. Comparison with a relief of Pharaoh and Moses from the north wall of the choir screen reveals several features in common: both share a centrally-placed seated figure holding a diagonally-placed sword; in both this central figure sits below a raised gable with rich foliate decoration. The pierced, two-light openings that flank Luis’s throne match the micro-architectural frames of the choir screen’s reliefs, both articulated by multiple miniature pinnacles and a pseudo-balustrade of quatrefoils at the top. Similar features can also be found in a fresco of St. Peter enthroned, painted by a Pisan workshop in the late fourteenth century for Tenorio’s funerary chapel of St Blaise: the placement of the dome above Peter is especially similar to the Alba Bible image.24 If these similarities show that the artists of the Alba Bible were indeed aware of Toledo’s choir screen, and thus probably knew of its Cain and Abel relief, the question of origins must now be asked of the choir screen itself. Here, again, there are few convincing parallels. As already stated, there are no clear models for the Cain and Abel relief, and no Old Testament cycle in sculpted choir screens, façades or clois- ters matches Toledo’s choir screen’s extensive treatment of Genesis and Exodus.25 The best analogies—especially for the stories on the choir screen that are most rarely found in medieval sculpture—are found, rather surprisingly, in thirteenth-century Parisian manuscripts: not so much in Toledo’s own Saint Louis Bible, but rather in the so- called Morgan Picture Bible, produced c. 1244–1254 and now held by the Pierpoint Morgan Library in New York.26 The relatively unusual scene of the Fall of the Rebel Angels on the west face of Toledo’s choir screen, for instance, strongly recalls the composition of the same scene

24 See especially Franco Mata, El arzobispo (see n. 9); “La capilla de San Blas de la Catedral de Toledo,” Cuadernos de Restauración de Iberdrola XI (2005), 10; Nickson, “Art and Belief ” (see n. 10). 25 Nickson, “Reframing the Bible” (see n. 6). 26 Morgan Pierpoint Library, New York, Ms. M. 638. For the miniatures see Sydney Carlyle Cockerell and John Plummer, Old Testament Miniatures. A Medieval Picture Book with 283 Paintings from the Creation to the Story of David (London: Phaidon Press, 1969). See also Harvey Stahl, “Old Testament Illustration During the Reign of St Louis: the Morgan Picture Book and the New Biblical Cycles,” in Il medio ori- ente e l’occidente nell’arte del xiii secolo, ed. Hans Belting. Atti del XXIV Congresso Internazionale di Storia dell’Arte, Bologna, 1979. Vol. 2 (Bologna: CLUEB, 1982); Charles Griffith Mann, “Picturing the Bible in the Thirteenth Century,” in The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library’s Medieval Picture Bible, ed. William Noel and Daniel H. Weiss (London: Third Millennium Publishers, 2002), 38–59. the first murder: picturing polemic c. 1391 47 on folio 1r of the Morgan Picture Bible, where a large, central figure of God is flanked by two tiers of figures: above, the loyal angels; below, the rebel angels, tumbling head first.27 In another instance, a plague scene in the Morgan Picture Bible (folio 8r) resembles the aforementioned relief of Pharaoh and Moses: in both, Pharaoh is seated frontally on a throne with figures to either side, whereas other fourteenth-century depictions of this scene from the peninsula usually show Pharaoh to one side.28 Once again, however, it is unclear how the carvers of the choir screen could have known of the Morgan Picture Bible’s illustrations. Even if they did have access to some sort of model book with related iconographies and compositions—and Katrin Kogman Appel has suggested such a book may have been used by the artists of fourteenth-century Catalan Haggadot—we are still without a model for the representation of Abel’s death, for the Morgan Picture Bible shows him killed with a hatchet (folio 2r).29 We return, then, to the idea of artistic invention on the basis of texts, themselves presumably communicated orally to the artist(s) by some scholarly deviser.30 Although Moses’ own glosses on the Cain and Abel passage make no reference to the unusual iconography that accompanies them, earlier scholarship on the Alba Bible points to possible Jewish textual sources.31 Unaware of the Toledan relief, Carl Nordström connected the illustration of Abel’s murder in the Alba Bible to a passage from the Sefer ha-Zohar (I, 54b), written by Moses of León in the 1280s, in which Moses describes a dream of Eve where she saw Cain’s mouth flowing with blood because Cain ‘bit him [Abel] with his teeth like a serpent’.32 In the pioneering article that first connected the two images under discussion, Ángela Franco also suggested that this account from the Sefer ha-Zohar was combined

27 See Fellous, Histoire, 171 (see n. 11); Nickson, “Reframing the Bible” (see n. 6). 28 Katrin Kogman-Appel, Illuminated Haggadot from Medieval Spain: Biblical Imagery and the Passover Holiday (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 111–12. 29 Ibid., 62–64. 30 On the problem of artists and texts, see Michael Camille, “Seeing and Reading: Some Visual Implications of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy,” Art History 8, no. 1 (1985): 24–49. 31 Fellous, Histoire, 322 (see n. 11). 32 The Zohar, ed. Daniel Matt, vol. 1 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 306, n. 1487; Nordström, The Duke of Alba’s Castilian Bible, 59 (see n. 11); Franco Mata, “Génesis”, 68–78 (see n. 4). 48 tom nickson with another from the popular compilation of commentaries known as the Genesis Rabbah, which describes ‘the point at which he [Cain] killed him [Abel], namely at the throat and its vital organs’.33 These Jewish interpretations of Abel’s murder answer two basic needs. First, they emphasise the horror of Cain’s crime, directly linking him to the serpentine protagonist of the Fall, and Abel to sacrificial victims.34 Second, they explain how Abel could have been killed in an era before swords, a problem of some concern to commentators.35 How then, could these texts come to be pictured on Toledo’s choir screen and in the Alba Bible? In the case of the latter, the iconography of Abel’s murder is just one of many elements in the bible’s Old Testament illustrations that are specifically indebted to midrashic scholarship, inserted, it seems, at the instigation of Moses, whose involvement must have been far more extensive than admitted in the bible’s preface.36 On folio 58v of the bible instructions in Moses’ own hand describe what the artists should draw, clearly indicating that Moses did indeed direct illustration to some extent; these instructions are only visible because in the end there was no room for an illustration.37 Moses’ relationship with the artists was clearly a complicated one, however, for in one instance, Moses explains that his interpretation differs from the artist’s, so his gloss must come after the illustration.38 On the folio illustrating Abel’s murder the commentaries wrap around the images, suggesting that they were written after the images were painted, and yet the strongly anthropomorphic image of God the Father (shown as Christ) partially conceals the biblical passages, suggesting it belongs to a later phase of revision according to a specifically Christian agenda.39 There is still much debate as to the nature of Moses’ involvement in devising the illustrations of the Alba Bible, the extent to which they

33 Jacob Neusner, Genesis Rabbah. The Judaic Commentary on the Book of Genesis. A New American Translation (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 1:248 (XXII, 8, ii). 34 A. A. Barb, “Cain’s Murder-Weapon and Samson’s Jawbone of an Ass,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 35 (1972): 386–89, notes that the Hebrew verb ‘to kill’ (hrg) “generally means to kill or slaughter, applied to both humans and animals”. 35 H. Norman Strickman and Arthur M. Silver, eds., Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Pentateuch. Genesis (Bereshit) (New York: Menorah Publishing Company, 1988), 83. 36 Nordström, The Duke of Alba’s Castilian Bible, 40–45, 214 (see n. 11); Fellous, Histoire, 247–255 (see n. 11). 37 Nordström, The Duke of Alba’s Castilian Bible, 35 (see n. 11). 38 Ibid., 33. 39 Ibid., 215; Fellous, Histoire, 120 (see n. 11). the first murder: picturing polemic c. 1391 49 were newly invented, and the possibility that they refer to far more ancient Jewish artistic traditions. For the purposes of this essay, however, the relationship with the choir screen relief is rather less question- able, and raises different problems. For if Moses’ involvement in the Alba Bible’s illuminations explains the presence therein of midrashic features, how can we explain the presence of such features on the choir screen of Spain’s primatial cathedral? While the Alba Bible and fourteenth-century Haggadot demonstrate that Iberia’s Jewish communities were not always opposed to painted representations, it is certain that no Jewish adviser or artist would ever have permitted himself to be associated with sculpted scenes, especially ones with such overtly anthropomorphic images of God as those on Toledo’s choir screen.40 The insistently aniconic nature of Toledan Hebrew Bibles moreover suggests that Toledo’s Sephardic community was more sympathetic to the iconophobic traditions of Islam than were the Ashkenazi Jews of Catalonia: no Haggadot have ever been traced to Toledo, for example.41 Alternatively, and perhaps more logi- cally, we can postulate the existence of a Christian adviser. He may have been a converso, perhaps one of those known to have converted in the late fourteenth century, such as Juan el Viejo, or Pedro, archbishop Tenorio’s physician.42 Or he may have had access to rabbinical writings in the cathedral library, possibly some acquired in recent auctions of Jewish goods: the same phenomenon has been found in England following the 1291 expulsions.43 It is important here to state that this context of conversions and polemics does not pre-suppose that the choir screen’s iconographic programme was only devised after

40 See, for instance, Marc Saperstein, Decoding the Rabbis: a Thirteenth-Century Commentary on the Aggadah (Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 1980), 13. 41 See Gabrielle Sed-Rajna, “Hebrew Manuscripts from Toledo to Tudela: Creation or Transmission?,” in Abraham Ibn Ezra y su tiempo, ed. F. D. Esteban (Madrid: Asociación Española de Orientalistas, 1990), 301–07; Katrin Kogman-Appel, “Hebrew Manuscript Painting in Late Medieval Spain. Signs of a Culture in Transition,” Art Bulletin 84, no. 2 (2002): 248; Katrin Kogman-Appel, “Jewish and non-Jewish Culture: the Dynamics of Artistic Borrowing in Medieval Hebrew Manuscript Illumination,” Jewish History, 15 (2001): 192–99; Vivian Mann, Jewish Texts on the Visual Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 49. 42 Juan el Viejo: José Amador de los Ríos, Estudios históricos, políticos y literarios sobre los judíos de España (Madrid: D. M. Díaz y Comp, 1848), 430–34. Pedro: Pilar León Tello, Judíos de Toledo (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1979), 1:180, and no. 38; 2: no. 621 and 636. 43 Lucy Freeman Sandler, “Christian Hebraism and the Ramsey Abbey Psalter,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 35 (1972): 133. 50 tom nickson the mass conversions of 1391.44 We have already seen that the choir screen was planned from at least 1383, but the tumultuous history of Toledo’s community throughout the fourteenth century provided ample possibilities for confiscations and conversions.45 Equally possible is that the deviser of the choir screen’s iconography knew of rabbinical interpretations through the polemical writings of Christian scholars that used Jewish scholarship to support their own arguments.46 Many Jewish interpretations had already slipped into Christian art and scholarship prior to the sixth century, and especially from the twelfth century onwards, through the writings of scholars such as Saint Jerome, Petrus Alfonsi, and Petrus Comestor.47 Contemporary interest in this genre of literature is proven by Archbishop Tenorio’s acquisition in 1383 of Nicholas of Lyra’s Postills—a text deeply indebted to the scholarship of Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki (Rashi)—though it should be emphasised that the Postills make no mention of this specific tradition about Abel’s murder.48 We can trace, however, three instances

44 Key for the events of 1391 is Emilio Mitre Fernández, Los judíos de Castilla en tiempo de Enrique III. El pogrom de 1391. Estudios de Historia Medieval (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1994). 45 See especially León Tello, Judíos, vol. 2, ns 441–63 (see n. 42); Julio Valdeón Baruque, “La judería toledana en la guerra civil de Pedro I y Enrique II,” in Toledo Judaico. Papers Presented at the 2nd Medieval Symposium (Madrid: Centro Universitario de Toledo, 1973), 107–31; Yolanda Moreno Koch, ed., Dos Crónicas Hispanohebreas del siglo XV (Barcelona: Riopiedras, 1992), 58–100. 46 See especially Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: the Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (London: Cornell University Press, 1982); Robert Chazan, “From Friar Paul to Friar Raymond: the Development of Missionizing Argument,” Harvard Theological Review, 76 (1983): 289–306; Robert Chazan, “Maestre Alfonso of Valladolid, the New Missionizing,” Revue des Etudes Juives, 143 (1984): 83–94; David Berger, “Jewish-Christian Polemics,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 389–95. Laurence Brugger has argued for something similar for the sculpture of the west façade of Bourges cathedral in France: Laurence Brugger, La façade de Saint-Étienne de Bourges: le ‘Midrash’ comme fondement du message chré- tien. Civilisation medieval 9 (Poitiers: Universite de Poitiers, 2000). 47 There is a vast literature on midrashic elements in Christian scholarship, but especially relevant here are Vigdor Aptowitzer, Kain und Abel in der Agada, den Apokryphen, der hellenistischen, christlichen und muhammedanischen Literatur (Vienna and Leipzig, 1922), 44–52; Gilbert Dahan, “L’exegèse de l’histoire de Caïn et Abel du XIIe au XIVe siècle en Occident,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 49–50 (1982–3): 21–89; Gilbert Dahan, Les intellectuels chrétiens et les juifs au Moyen Âge (Paris: Cerf, 1990), 134–35. 48 Herman Hailperin, Rashi and the Christian Scholars (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963). For Toledo’s copy of the Postills, see Ramón Gonzálvez Ruiz and Klaus Reinhardt, Catálogo de códices bíblicos de la Catedral de Toledo (Madrid: Fundación Ramón Areces, 1990), 227–33. Tenorio also donated several books to the the first murder: picturing polemic c. 1391 51 in which this interpretation of Abel’s death had entered Christian thought before the screen was carved. First, in early legends of Adam and Eve, notably those found in Armenia, in which Eve’s dream of Cain’s bloody mouth is described.49 These legends also contain some of the unusual stories found elsewhere on Toledo’s screen and were partially pictured at other sites in medieval Europe, though to date only one Adam and Eve legend is known to have existed in medieval Spain, and this makes no reference to Cain biting Abel.50 Evidence for knowledge of this apocryphal account of Abel’s murder is also found on the altar of Nicholas of Verdun, begun in 1181. Here an enamel plaque added in 1329 shows Cain killing Abel with a hoe, yet the inscription around the plaque describes how ‘Vipereo more cain abel perimit ore’ (in the manner of a viper Cain slays Abel with his mouth), thus typologically relating the story to the enamel showing Judas’s kiss that is directly above the Cain and Abel plaque.51 Helmut Buschhausen has shown how many of the inscriptions on Nicholas’ altar derive from Easter sequences associated with Adam of St Victor, but none of these includes reference to Cain biting Abel, and the textual source of this inscription remains unknown.52 The third Christian precedent for our unusual images is a group of Romanesque cloister capitals identified by Pamela Patton, where Cain slaughters Abel with

chapter at this date, including Peter the Chanter’s Summa Abel, Stephen Langton’s commentary on the Pentateuch, and Augustine’s commentary on the Psalms: Ramón Gonzálvez Ruiz, “La Biblioteca Capitular de Toledo en el siglo XIV,” Toletum: Boletín de la Real Academia Bellas Artes y Ciencias Históricas de Toledo, 6 (1993): 29–56. 49 Michael E. Stone, ed., The Penitence of Adam. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 430 (Leuven: E. Peeters, 1981), 7. 50 Andrew Robert Miller, “German and Dutch Versions of the Legend of the Wood of the Cross before Christ” (PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 1992), 1:129– 30; Brian Murdoch, The Medieval Popular Bible: Expansions of Genesis in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003), 48. See Nickson, “Reframing the Bible”, 74–75 (see n. 6). For other pictured versions see Meyer Schapiro, “Cain’s Jaw-Bone that did the First Murder,” Art Bulletin, 24 (1942): 205–12; George Henderson, “Cain’s Jaw-Bone,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 24 (1961): 108–14; Brian Murdoch, The Apocryphal Adam and Eve in Medieval Europe. Vernacular Translations and Adaptations of the Vita Adae et Evae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 239–51. 51 Helmut Buschhausen, Der Verduner Altar: das Emailwerk des Nikolaus von Verdun im Stift Klosterneuburg (Vienna: Tusch, 1980), 48–51. 52 Helmut Buschhausen, “The Klosterneuburg Altar of Nicholas of Verdun: Art, Theology and Politics,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 37 (1974): 13–18. 52 tom nickson a blade at the neck, in the manner of a sacrifice.53 These too are ultimately indebted to the Genesis Rabbah in emphasising that Abel was killed at the neck, but they do not show any biting, perhaps in part because they pre-date the Zohar (though the Zohar itself borrowed heavily from Christian polemical sources).54 What this implies is that it may not be possible to pinpoint an exact visual or textual source for the two images under discussion. For all their apparent polemical polarities, and with the important exception of those passages deemed to have Messianic, Trinitarian or Marian significance, the boundaries between Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Pentateuch were not all that clear in the late fourteenth century, especially in a city such as Toledo where there was a long tradition of inter-confessional exchange.55 It was, after all, Isaac Abarbanel, leader of Spanish Jewry at the time of the 1492 expulsion, who applauded Nicholas of Lyra as the Christians’ “most accomplished interpreter”.56 More fruitful, perhaps, is to consider how these interpretations and images were deployed. In the case of the choir screen, this unusual tradition must have been chosen because it emphasised the horror of Cain’s crime. For following virtually all biblical commentators, Cain here is to be understood as the prototypical Jew, the older brother who murdered his godly younger sibling, his vampiric attack on Abel a biblical pre-echo of the Crucifixion or the crimes of blood libel so often attributed to Iberia’s Jews in this period.57 Such an interpretation

53 Pamela Patton, “Cane’s Blade and the Question of Midrashic Sources in Medieval Spanish Art,” in Church, State, Vellum and Stone: Essays in Honor of John Williams, ed. Julie Harris and Therese Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 413–51. Barb, “Cain’s Murder-Weapon”, 386 (see n. 34), notes that references to the murder in the Greek New Testament (1 John iii, 12) use the word sphazain, “which basically means the sacrificial slaughtering of animals by cutting their throats.” 54 Yehuda Liebes, Studies in the Zohar (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 139–61. 55 For polemics see Daniel J. Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007) and n. 46 above. For crossovers see, e.g., Moshe Lazar, “Anti-Jewish and Anti- Converso Propaganda: Confutatio libri talmud and Alboraique,” in The Jews of Spain and the Expulsion of 1492, ed. Stephen Haliczer and Moshe Lazar (Lancaster, CA: Labyrintho, 1997), 153–236; Eric Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance Toward Tradition: Defense, Dissent, and Dialogue (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 250, no. 14. 56 Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance Toward Tradition, 199–200 (see n. 55). 57 Ruth Mellinkoff, “Cain and the Jews,” Journal of Jewish Art, 6 (1979): 16–38; Gilbert Dahan, “L’article ‘Iudei’ de la ‘Summa Abel’ de Pierre le Chantre,” Revues des études augustiniennes, 27 (1981): 107–15; Dahan, Les intellectuels, 295 (see n. 47); the first murder: picturing polemic c. 1391 53 could be found in the works of any number of writers commonly read in Toledo, including saints Isidore and Ildefonso, and was repeated by many Castilian scholars in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.58 This common strategy of tracing the division of races—at least in the Bible—is also prominent elsewhere on the screen, emphasised in the stories of the Fallen Angels, of Ham and his brothers, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, the Israelites and Egyptians, the Levites and those who worshipped the Golden Calf.59 With no adjacent New Testament scenes to clarify these parallels, it is primarily the horror of the crime that reveals Cain’s difference and essential Jewishness. The irony is that, as in the polemical writings of Raymond Martíor Nicholas of Lyra, rabbinical scholarship has here been co-opted in order to reinforce Christian polemics against the very communities from which that scholarship came in the first place.60 And although there is no space here to consider how the reliefs may have created a form of commentary on the liturgy performed before them, we can certainly imagine that their polemical resonance would have sounded

Toledo cathedral, ‘Saint Louis Bible’ (facsimile, ed. M. Moleiro, Barcelona 2004), vol. 1, f. 4v. Blood libel: Sanford Shepard, “The Present State of the Ritual Crime in Spain,” in The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes (Madison, Wis. and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 162–79; David Berger, “The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages,” in Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict: From Late Antiquity to the Reformation, ed. Jeremy Cohen (New York: New York University Press, 1991), 502; Dwayne Carpenter, “The Portrayal of the Jew in Alfonso the Learned’s Cantigas de Santa María,” in In Iberia and beyond: Hispanic Jews between Cultures, ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998), 19; Israel Jacob Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb. Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Barbara Harshav and Jonathan Chipman (Berkeley, etc.: University of California Press, 2006), 163–74; Elliott S. Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence. Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World (Princeton, N.J. and Woodstock: Princeton University Press, 2006), 172–78. 58 See Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, Ms. 10232 (a fourteenth-century mor- alised Bible with Castilian translations of Jerome), f. 12r; Bat-Sheva Albert, “Isidore of Seville: His Attitude towards Judaism and His Impact on Early Medieval Canon Law,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 80 (1990): 209; Norman Roth, Jews, Visigoths and Muslims in Medieval Spain: Cooperation and Conflict (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 20; Luis Fernández Gallardo, “La obra historiográfica de dos conversos ilustres, don Pablo de Santa María y don Alonso de Cartagena,” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie III: Historia Medieval, 6 (1993): 261. 59 See, e.g., Dahan, Les intellectuels, 395–400 (see n. 47). 60 Cohen, The Friars (see n. 46); Deeana Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers. Nicholas of Lyra and Christian Reading of Jewish Text in the Later Middle Ages (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 54 tom nickson very strongly when, for instance, Vincent Ferrer preached in front of the screen in 1412.61 Nor were such images limited to Christian and converso audiences: fourteenth-century legislation from Toledo shows evidence of repeated efforts to exclude Jews and Muslims from the cathedral interior, and even then this was only during mass.62 In the final section of this essay I wish to suggest something about the carver of the Toledan relief, about whom very little is known. The cathedral’s surviving account book of 1383 shows that Johnof Valencia was paid only one maravedí per day for working on the screen: given that the highest paid workers were paid five maravedies daily, it is unlikely that John played an important role in the screen’s creation, and it is probable that it was the responsibility of a large workshop.63 Ángela Franco rightly distinguished two stylistic phases in the screen’s carving.64 The earliest phase comprises the west and south faces (including the Cain and Abel reliefs), where the carving of the faces and drapery approaches the quality of the tympana of the tombs in the chapel of San Ildefonso at the east end of the Toledo cathedral, complete by 1372.65 The reliefs of the north face are later and somewhat cruder, their carving closer to the reliefs from the chapel of the Reyes Nuevos now in the cathedral cloister, which were carved with the arms of Catherine of Lancaster in the early fifteenth century.66 These similarities with local sculpture suggest a Toledan origin for the

61 Franco Mata, El Génesis (see n. 4), discussed the importance of the Easter Vigil in understanding the choir screen reliefs. I have developed her arguments in Nickson, “Reframing the Bible” (see n. 6). For Ferrer’s visit to Toledo in 1412, see Pedro M. Cátedra, “La predicación castellana de san Vicente Ferrer,” Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, 39 (1983–4): Appendix (f. 120v). 62 José Sánchez Herrero, Concilios provinciales y sínodos toledanos de los siglos XIV y XV: la religiosidad cristiana del clero y pueblo (La Laguna: Universidad de la Laguna, 1976), 37 and 182. 63 ACT, OyF 760, ff. 42v, 46v–47r, 49r, 53v (see n. 7). 64 Agustín Durán Sanpere and Juan Ainaud de Lasarte, Escultura gótica. Ars Hispaniae 8 (Madrid: Plus Ultra, 1956), 113; Franco Mata, El Genésis, 131–33 (see n. 4). 65 The best published account of this chapel is Fernando Marías Franco and Amadeo Serra, “La capilla Albornoz de la catedral de Toledo y los enterramientos monumen- tales de la España bajomedieval,” in Demeures d’Éternité. Églises et chapelles funéraires aux XVe et XVIe siècles, ed. Jean Guillaume (Paris: Picard, 2005), 33–48. 66 See Teresa Pérez Higuera, “Toledo,” in La España Gótica (Castilla—La Mancha), ed. Áurea de la Morena (Madrid: Encuentro, 1998), 53. the first murder: picturing polemic c. 1391 55 carver of this powerfully visceral image of Abel’s death, this ‘macabre, vampiric tango’.67 Given the absence of local precedents for illustrating this unusual interpretation of Abel’s death, this Toledan artist must have drawn on his imagination to devise a new iconography, refining and adapting other compositions as he felt appropriate. Thus it is striking that the depiction of Cain’s attack combines the pictorial conventions that Diane Wolfthal has associated with images of rape, in which the victims’ wrists are grabbed by their attackers, their hair pulled, and they are lifted or pushed to an unstable position.68 Such conventions do not, of course, amount to a strict formula signaling rape, but combined they help to distinguish sexual assault from other images of violence or consensual sexual relations. Antique sarcophagi with depictions of rape commonly contain one or more of these motifs and may possibly have provided a model for the Toledan relief.69 No specific example can be identified, but a similar pattern of reuse has been identified elsewhere.70 Serafín Moralejo demonstrated, for instance, that the striking pose of a figure in a series of late eleventh-century Spanish capitals is taken from a Roman sarcophagus that had been re-employed as a tomb in the church of Santa María de Husillos.71 And Francisco Prado-Vilar has recently argued that one of these capitals in the church of San Martín de Frómista represents the very same subject as the choir screen relief, albeit Cain does not bite Abel but stabs him.72 Stories of rape—so common in the Old Testament—were also frequently illustrated in medieval manuscripts.73 In Toledo’s own ‘Saint Louis Bible’, for instance,

67 The description is that of Luis Girón-Negrón, following my presentation of this paper at the conference that prompted this publication. 68 Diane Wolfthal, Images of Rape: the “Heroic” Tradition and its Alternatives (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 69 See, for instance, the second-century sarcophagus showing the Rape of Proserpina in the Palazzo Rospigliosi, Rome, or the Hadrianic sarcophagus showing the Rape of the Leucippids now in the Uffizi, Florence: Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists & Antique Sculpture: a Handbook of Sources (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), 9–10, 161. 70 No model for the choir screen relief is found, for example, in Antonio García y Bellido, Esculturas romanas de España y Portugal (Madrid: CSIC, 1949). 71 Serafín Moralejo Álvarez, “Sobre la formación del estilo escultórico de Frómista y Jaca,” in Actas del XXIII Congreso Internacional de Historia del Arte, 1973 (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1976), 427–34. 72 Francisco Prado-Vilar, “Saevum Facinus: estilo, genealogía y sacrificio en el arte románico español,” Goya, 323 (2008): 173–99. 73 Wolfthal, Images of Rape, 36–73 (see n. 68). 56 tom nickson the sons of Heli are shown assaulting the Temple women by grabbing their hair and wrists, and pushing their heads back (1 Kings 2:22); even if such depictions did not serve as direct models for the choir screen relief, they do suggest that these pictorial conventions would have been recognised in fourteenth-century Toledo.74 One further pertinent visual comparison can be made. As depicted on the choir screen, Cain’s bestial attack recalls images in contemporary bestiaries in which hyenas pull the dead from tombs, biting the near-recumbent bodies at the neck.75 Although bestiaries are largely a northern European phenomenon, with no illustrated examples surviving on the peninsula from this period, there is considerable evidence for the widespread diffusion of the contents of bestiaries in Iberian sermons, literature, and art.76 In virtually all such bestiaries hyenas were held to have male and female sexual organs, their duplicitous nature and sexual deviance invariably compared to Jews.77 Such comparisons reinforce the idea that the violence of Cain’s attack was underscored on the Toledan relief by suggestions of deviant sexual assault. Discussion of these comparisons does not, of course, establish some putative list of visual ingredients that, mixed appropriately, determines

74 Toledo cathedral sacristy, ‘Saint Louis Bible’, vol. 1, f. 50v. 75 For instance, Oxford, Bodleian, Ms. Bodley 64, f. 15, or Aberdeen University Library, Ms. 24, f. 11v. See Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries. Text, Image, Ideology. Res Monographs on Anthropology and Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 145–55. 76 Spurgeon Baldwin, The Medieval Castilian Bestiary: from Brunetto Latini’s Tesoro (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1982), xxi; Gerardo Boto Varela, Ornamento sin delito: los seres imaginarios del claustro de Silos y sus ecos en la escultura románica peninsular. Studia Silensia. Series maior (Santo Domingo de Silos, Burgos: Abadía Benedictina, 2001); Alan D. Deyermond, “Catro aves do bestiario na España medieval,” Revista Galega do Ensino, 34 (2002): 17; Jennifer Borland, “The Forested Frontier: Commentary in the Margins of the Alhambra Ceiling Paintings,” Medieval Encounters, 14 (2008): 307–10. 77 Of twenty five bestiaries reviewed by Hassig, only two did not make this connection. See also Willene B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts. The Second-Family Bestiary: Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 131–32. The same connection is made in Christian polemical texts. See Robert I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 35; Dahan, Les intellectuels, 405, 518–19 (see n. 47). A similar menacing sexuality was also a significant feature of the Alborayque, the hybrid chimerical steed that was compared to conversos in the fifteenth-century polemical tract of the same name, its origins closely associated with Toledo. See Lazar, “Anti- Jewish Propaganda” (see n. 55); David Nirenberg, “Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain,” Past and Present, 174 (2002): 26; Dwayne E. Carpenter, ed., Alborayque. La Biblioteca de Barcarrota 6 (Mérida: Editora Regional de Extremadura, 2005). the first murder: picturing polemic c. 1391 57 the unusual iconographies of the Toledan choir screen or the Alba Bible.78 But if we accept that Baxandall’s notion of a ‘period eye’ implies that these images might have prompted a set of visual and mental associations for medieval audiences, then it is the duty of the art historian to weave together the fragmentary evidence for such associations into ‘webs of significance’.79 In this case, these visual comparisons suggest that, consciously or not, the artist was harnessing the kind of anxieties around Jews and conversos that David Nirenberg has identified as blossoming at this important transitional time: fears of transgressive Jewish sexual proclivity,80 cannibalism,81 sodomy82 and even bestiality.83 If so, and Moses recognised these associations, then the baser resonances may explain the screen’s peculiar relationship with the Alba Bible’s illustration of Abel’s death. In his commentary on the dispute between Saul and Samuel (1 Samuel 15:27), Moses asserts that his interpretation of the passage differs from that of the accompanying illustration, which, in this instance, seems to have been added before Moses’ commentary.84 In other instances, as we have seen, it seems that Moses was closely involved in the choice of images.85 It is thus possible to imagine

78 For elegant critiques of this method, see Jonathan G. Alexander, “Iconography and Ideology: Uncovering Social Meanings in Western Medieval Christian Art,” Studies in Iconography, 15 (1993): 1–44; Michael Camille, “Mouths and Meaning: Towards an Anti-Iconography of Medieval Art,” in Iconography at the Crossroads, ed. Brendan Cassidy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 43–54. 79 Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972); Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England, 1170–1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), xi, citing Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (London: Fontana, 1973), 3. 80 David Nirenberg, “Conversion, Sex, and Segregation: Jews and Christians in Medieval Spain,” American Historical Review 107, no. 4 (2002): 1065–93; David Nirenberg, “Enmity and Assimilation. Jews, Christians, and Converts in Medieval Spain,” Common Knowledge 9, no. 1 (2003): 140–42. 81 David Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon vetus. Judaica, Texts and Translations 4 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979), 54 and 229. 82 Stanley Rose, “Anti-Semitism in the ‘Cancioneros’ of the Fifteenth Century: The Accusation of Sexual Indiscretions,” Hispanófila, 78 (1983): 3–5; Yom Tov Assis, “Sexual Behaviour in Mediaeval Hispano-Jewish Society,” in Jewish History: Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein (London: Halban, 1988), 50; Adeline Rucquoi, Aimer dans l’Espagne médiévale: plai- sirs licites et illicites. Realia (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2008), 91–107. 83 Hyam Maccoby, ed., Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages. The Littman library of Jewish Civilization (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982), 165. 84 Nordström, The Duke of Alba’s Castilian Bible, 33 (see n. 11). 85 Ibid., 40, 210; Fellous, Histoire, 23 and 251–55 (see n. 11). 58 tom nickson a scenario whereby Moses recognised the rabbinical orthodoxy of the Toledan relief, and yet had it reformulated into a composition devoid of any offensive sexual resonances. Katrin Kogman-Appel has pro- posed a similar process for the creation of contemporary Haggadot, the artists of which based their compositions on Christian images that were deliberately purged of Christological meaning, of which Jewish scholars were well aware.86 Much remains to be said about Toledo’s choir screen, but by focusing on the depictions of Abel’s murder on the screen and in the Alba Bible, I have sought to examine the mechanics of negotiation between Jewish and Christian textual and visual traditions at a time when the relationship between those two confessions was itself being radically redefined.87 Nowhere was this relationship more fraught than in Toledo, and it is significant that it was in that ancient city where enmity towards conversos would first explode with such violence in 1449.88 On that occasion the rebels sought authority from the Visigothic councils and writers who were so closely associated with Judaeo-Christian relations in Toledo’s own history, and one of the major complaints about conversos centred on their attitudes to images.89 Half a century earlier the situation is somewhat murkier, and in the reliefs on Toledo’s choir screen that emphasise the division of Old Testament peoples we find recourse to a rather traditional argument, epitomised by the story of Cain, the jealous older brother who murdered his blessed younger sibling. This desire to patrol, maintain and emphasise boundaries between Jew and Christian was doubtless provoked by the anxiety that followed mass conversion and the consequent breakdown of traditional boundaries between the confessions.90 If anxieties of a cruder, more visceral nature have slipped into the depiction of Abel’s murder on Toledo’s choir screen, then we see in the Alba Bible a step back, a return to the literal text and its tale of sibling rivalry and fratricide.

86 See Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate(see n. 81); Šelomoh ibn Verga and María José Cano, La Vara de Yehudah. Biblioteca Nueva Sefarad 16 (Barcelona: Riopiedras, 1991), 39 and 287; Kogman-Appel, Illuminated Haggadot (see n. 41). 87 For a recent study of the polemical texts produced soon after 1391, see Ryan Szpiech, “Scrutinizing History: Polemic and Exegesis in Pablo de Santa María’s Siete edades del mundo,” Medieval Encounters, 16 (2010): 96–142. 88 See Eloy Benito Ruano, Los orígenes del problema converso (Barcelona: El Albir, 1976). 89 Albert, “Isidore”, 209–15 (see n. 58); Benjamin Netanyahu, Toward the Inquisition: Essays on Jewish and Converso History in Late Medieval Spain (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 76–98. 90 See especially Nirenberg, “Mass Conversion” (see n. 77). the first murder: picturing polemic c. 1391 59

Appendix: Table

The reliefs of Toledo cathedral’s choir screen (nos 8 and 9 are speculative, as this part of the screen was reformed in the sixteenth century) west face south face north face 1. Separation of light and 17. Lamech kills Cain 38. Plague: frogs dark 18. Adam prays to God 39. Plague 2. Separation of water 19. Adam sends Seth to 40. Plague and sky Paradise 41. Plague: Hail—death of 3. Creation of birds 20. Seth and the livestock 4. Creation of the sun, Archangel Michael at 42. Plague: Hail— stars and moon the gate of Paradise destruction of crops 5. Creation of the angels 21. Burial of Adam 43. Plague 6. Fall of the rebel angels 22. Tree grows on the 44. Marking the houses 7. Creation of Adam tomb of Adam 45. Consummation of the 8. Creation of Eve? (lost) 23. Noah builds the Ark lamb 9. Temptation? (lost) 24. Ark on the waters 46. Killing of the First Born 10. God with Adam and 25. Drunkenness of Noah 47. Crossing of the Red Sea Eve (covered) 26. Abraham destroys the 48. Pharaoh drowns in the 11. God with Adam and Idols Red Sea Eve (naked) 27. 3 Angels at Mamre 49. Striking of the Rock 12. Expulsion 28. Sacrifice of Isaac 50. The Israelites tempt 13. Eve and baby; Adam 29. Sacrifice of the ram God tilling 30. Rebecca counsels 51. Manna from Heaven 14. Cain kills Abel Jacob 52. God descends on 15. Cain hides Abel’s body 31. Jacob receives Isaac’s Mount Sinai 16. God rebukes Cain blessing 53. The Golden Calf 32. Esau before Isaac 54. Destruction of the 33. Jacob’s dream tablets 34. Jacob wrestling with 55. Destruction of the Calf the angel 56. Killing of the idolaters 35. Sale of Joseph 57. New tablets of the Law 36. Joseph’s brothers 58. Adoration of the before Jacob Wilderness Tabernacle 37. Joseph is recognised by his brothers

SEPHARDIC ILLUMINATED BIBLES: JEWISH PATRONS AND FIFTEENTH-CENTURY CHRISTIAN ATELIERS

Andreina Contessa

In the last fifty years, research on Sephardic Bibles has focused on early manuscripts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Fifteenth- century Sephardic Bibles have been neglected by scholars or relegated to the role of comparison with their more famous antecedents.1 Recent research on several fifteenth-century Bibles—most of them in the holdings of Italian libraries—has shown that reconsideration and study of this family of manuscripts is essential for knowledge of the fifteenth-century Sephardic cultural word.2 All of the codices in this group are lavishly decorated and may be ascribed to scriptoria that were active in Spain about a decade before the expulsion from Spain and Portugal. The Bibles were probably brought to Italy by Sephardic families who had escaped from Castile and Aragon after the edict of

1 C. O. Nordstrom, “Some Miniatures in Hebrew Bibles,” in Synthronon. Art et archéologie de la fin de l’Antiquité et du Moyen Age. Recueil d’études (Paris, 1968), 89–105; M.-Th. Metzger, “Les objets du culte, le sanctuaire du Désert et le Temple de Jérusalem dans les Bibles hébraïques médiévales enluminées en Orient et en Espagne,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 52 (1969): 163–82; E. Revel-Neher, Le témoignage de l’absence. Les objets du Sanctuaire à Byzance et dans l’art juif du XIe au XVe siècles (Paris, 1998). Bezalel Narkiss sees the production of Hebrew illuminated manuscripts in late fifteenth–century Castile as influenced by the Portuguese School; see B. Narkiss, in collaboration with A. Cohen-Mushlin and A. Tcherikover, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts in the British Isles. The Spanish and Portuguese Manuscripts (Jerusalem and London, 1982), 137–141. In Kogman-Appel’s recent comprehensive study of the decoration of Sephardic Bibles, fifteenth–century codices are relegated to the last few pages; see Katrin Kogman-Appel, Jewish Book Art between Islam and Christianity. The Decoration of Hebrew Bibles in Medieval Spain (Leiden and Boston, 2004). 2 My research was supported by a fellowship from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. The first results are the following essays: A. Contessa, “Christian Artists for a Jewish Patron: The Fifteenth-Century Imola Bible and its Illustrators,” in Bezalel Narkiss Memorial Volume, ed. Aliza Cohen-Mushlin (forthcoming); idem, “Jewish Book Collection and Patronage in Renaissance Italy,” in Proceedings of the Italia Judaica Jubilee Conference, 2010 (forthcoming); idem, “The Decorative Scheme of an Unknown Fifteenth-Century Sephardic Bible: Jeselsohn Ms. 5” (forthcoming in a monographic volume on this codex to be published by Magnes Press). 62 andreina contessa expulsion of 1492. They share the same format, mise-en-page, textual content, and elegant floral ornamentation. Their small size and wide format is typical of codices that were meant to be used in the synagogue and at home.3 Some of these Bibles also preserve the original binding in leather with Mudejar decoration, and contain the depiction of the Temple implements. One of the most interesting among these manuscripts is the Imola Bible, a mid-fifteenth century Sephardic manuscript now in the holdings of the Municipal Library of Imola (Northern Italy). It is an elegant small-dimension codex that is written in Sephardic square script and conserves the original leather binding with Mudejar decorations. The codex contains the complete Hebrew Bible, Masorah parva and magna; masoretic differences on the Pentateuch between Ben Asher and Ben Naftali, Alpha beta me-otiot gedolot and ze‘irot, and numerous calendar tables among other texts.4 The decoration program of the Imola Bible includes initial-letter, rectangular panels at the beginning and the end of the biblical books, parashah signs, ornamental micrography for the masorah, arches that enclose the columns listing the differences between the masoretic versions, rich decorative marginal floral compositions, and finally two exceptional carpet-page miniatures with the Temple implements (figs. 1–3). Records of sale attest that the Bible was purchased in Naples in 1493. We do not know how the manuscript reached Northern Italy, where thriving Jewish communities lived. The new owners belonged to the Yehudah Arié da Fano family, who possessed the codex for two centuries, as confirmed by registers of birth and death of the Fano family, written by various hands on three blank pages at the beginning

3 See Mss. Manchester, John Rylands Library, Ms. Heb., 36; Cambridge, University Library Ms. Add. 468, Narkiss, Cohen-Mushlin and Tcherikover, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts in the British Isles, n. 49, figs. 487–488; n. 50, figs. 496–497. 4 Imola, Biblioteca Comunale Ms. 77, Castile, mid-fifteenth century; V. Antonioli– Martelli and L. Mortara-Ottolenghi, Manoscritti biblici ebraici decorati provenienti da biblioteche italiane pubbliche e private (Milan, 1966), n. 42; M. Perani, “La Bibbia Ebraica della Biblioteca Comunale di Imola,” in La comunità ebraica di Imola dal XIV al XVI secolo. Copisti, mercanti e banchieri, ed. A. Ferri and M. Giberti, with two essays by C. Ravanelli-Guidotti and M. Perani. Storia dell’Ebraismo in Italia, Studi e testi XXIV (Florence, 2006), 395–440; M. Perani, “Bibbia ebraica, sec. XV, seconda metà, Ms. 77 (Galli 14). Bim 15 A 3 23,” in Miniature nella Biblioteca comunale di Imola, ed. M. Baruzzi and S. Mirri, catalogue by F. Lollini (Imola, 2006), 101–127; A. Contessa, “An Uncommon Representation of the Temple’s Implements In a Fifteenth Century Sephardic Bible”, Ars Judaica 5 (2009): 37–58. sephardic illuminated bibles 63 of the manuscript. In 1798 the Bible is already listed in the catalogue of the Municipal Library of Imola.5 There is no colophon in the Imola Bible, but dating and origin may be deduced by comparison with other Sephardic codices that may have reached Italy in the same period. In fact, the impagination, the textual content, and the floral ornamentation are also shared by other Sephardic Bibles: a Bible actually kept in the Genoa University Library6 and two other codices of the Palatina Library in Parma (Mss. 2018 and 1994). The Genoa Bible is provided with a long colophon attesting that the codex was written in Toledo in 1481 by Isaac ben David ben Kimḥi in honor of Don Baruch son of the illustrious Rabbi Yosef Albo. The Palatina codex 2018 was written in 1484 by Josef for Moses ben Samuel Altortos (fig. 4).7 The other Palatina Bible, Ms. 1994–5, has no colophon, but like the Imola Bible it includes a register of births of Solomon Fano’s family during the years 1645–46 (fig. 5).8 A similar format and decorative scheme are shared by an almost unknown Bible produced in Castile (La Coruña?), in 1477, whose two volumes now belong to private individuals: the first volume, which scholars had thought to be lost,9 was recently acquired for the Jeselsohn Collection and recognized as the missing section of the Bible.10 The second volume has been in the Sassoon Collection since 1930

5 Perani, “Bibbia ebraica,” 111. 6 Genova, Biblioteca Universitaria, Ms. D.IX.31. Toledo, Spain, 1481. Antonioli- Martelli and Mortara-Ottolenghi, Manoscritti biblici ebraici, n. 44; Contessa, “An Uncommon Representation”, 37–58, fig. 8. 7 Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Ms. 2018, Spain, 1484. Antonioli-Martelli and Mortara- Ottolenghi, Manoscritti biblici ebraici, n. 48; B. Richler ed., Hebrew Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma (Jerusalem, 2001), n. 151, 36; K. Kogman-Appel, Jewish Book, 218; Contessa, “An Uncommon Representation”, 37–58, figs. 7, 9. 8 Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Ms. 1994–5 (2 vols.) Spain, mid-fifteenth century. Antonioli-Martelli and Mortara-Ottolenghi, Manoscritti biblici ebraici, n. 45–46; the genealogy of Benjamin Fano during the years 1635–91 (fols. 192–93) is added. Richler, Hebrew Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Palatina, n. 11; Kogman-Appel, Jewish Book, 219; Contessa, “An Uncommon Representation”, 37–58, fig. 10. 9 B. Richler, “The Scribe Moses ben Jacob Ibn Zabara of Spain: A Moroccan Saint?,” Jewish Art 18 (1992): 141 (140–147), n. 5. 10 Dr. David Jeselsohn acquired a manuscript from the Benayahu collection, now Ms. Zurich, Jeselsohn 5. On this manuscript see A. Contessa, “The Decorative Scheme of an Unknown Fifteenth-Century Sephardic Bible: Jeselsohn Ms. 5” (forthcoming in a monograph on the codex, to be published by Magnes Press). 64 andreina contessa

(MS 1209).11 A colophon in this volume attests that the text was completed in 1477 by Moses b. Jacob Ibn Zabara (figs. 6–7).12 Typical of fifteenth-century Sephardic Bibles, the decorative scheme of this manuscript combines micrography and painted foliate ornamentation that forms panels in which the incipits of the biblical books are written in burnished gold. The panels are surrounded by marginal decoration composed of scrolls of large acanthus leaves, ciliated gold dots, carnations, and graceful flowers on vines, along with dragons and birds, notably peacocks.

These manuscripts are lavishly illuminated. Their ornamentation mingles two unrelated formal languages and two diverse decorative schemes, combining micrography (an ancient tradition in Hebrew books)13 with painted foliate decoration that emulates contemporary Castilian Latin illumination. The micrography was executed by the scribe himself; it reflects the old Sephardic tradition, influenced by Islamic art, which integrated standard features such as micrographic flora or abstract linear patterns. The foliate decoration reflects the late- Gothic style, influenced by contemporary Christian illumination, with acanthus scrolls inhabited by animals, birds, and drolleries. Christian illuminators, or Jewish masters working in Christian ateliers, may have been responsible for the decorated border. The characteristics of these codices may shed light on the production of Hebrew Renaissance manuscripts, which stems from a long- established tradition of Hebrew book manufacture: the codices were

11 Ms. Sassoon 1209 (acquired at a Sotheby’s auction on December 2, 1930), includes the Latter Prophets and Hagiographa; scribe: Moses b. Don Jacob Zabara, who completed the codex on 15 Sivan [5]237, i.e., May 27, 1477. See Sotheby’s Seventy- six Important Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts from the library of the late David Solomon Sassoon Sold by Order of the Trustees, London, Tuesday 21st June 1994, lot. 45, figs. 88–89, 92. The manuscript is not described in D. S. Sassoon, Ohel David, Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library (London, 1932). The miniatures are on fols. v1 , 76, 167v, pp. 245, 409, 410, 451, 486, 491, 497, 509, 516, 529, 555, 577. 12 On the text of this codex, see Jordan S. Penkower, “Copying and Correcting a Bible Manuscript: Moses Ibn Zabara and Menahem di Lonzano” (forthcoming in a monograph on the codex, to be published by Magnes Press). 13 On micrography, see: C. Sirat, “La lettre hébraïque et sa signification,” in Micrography as Art, ed. L. Avrin (Paris, 1981); Katrin Kogman-Appel, Jewish Book, 60–61, 98–130 and 141–146; D. R. Halperin, “Illuminating in Micrography—between Script and Brush: ‘The Catalan Micrography Mahzor’ Ms. Hebrew 8*6527 in the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem,” Ph.D. dissertation (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2008), XXIV–XXXV. sephardic illuminated bibles 65 copied by excellent Hebrew professional scribes who maintained old traditional decorative habits and adopted new practices in the spirit of their time and possibly of a market orientation. One of these practices consisted of leaving a blank space awaiting decoration at the head of a book, as occurred in Latin Bibles that accommodate illuminated panels, initials and floral border ornamentation. The composition of the page layout and the arrangement of the decoration attest that both micrographic and floral frames were planned, thus avoiding interference with the integrity of the text or disruption with the flow of reading.14 Such collaborative authorship between the scribe and the illuminator may explain why fifteenth-century Sephardic Bibles present an eclectic ornamentation that mingles dissimilar aesthetic traditions. Collaborations between Christian ateliers, Jewish scribes and book owners may shed new light on the relation between the two communities in the years immediately before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. That the margins of fifteenth-century Sephardic Bibles were executed by Christian ateliers is indicated by the style of the floral decoration, which is typical of contemporary Castilian illumination. In the mid-fifteenth century, Flemish influences begin to replace the French and Italian inspiration that shaped Castilian illumination at the beginning of the century. New popular motifs were used in the margins, including stemless flowers, strawberries, and birds, displayed in a lush acanthus leaf, from which tiny human figures, monkeys, and other drolleries peep out. These motifs appear in the marginal ornamentation of Castilian and Catalan miniatures of the second half of the fifteenth century.15 Particularly analogous to the miniatures of

14 M. Beit–Arié, Unveiled Faces of Medieval Hebrew Books. The Evolution of Manuscript Production—Progression or Regression? (Jerusalem, 2003), 21–26. 15 Such as the translation into Castilian of the Phedon for the Marquise of Santillana, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, Ms. V. 16; J. Domínguez Bordona, Ars Hispaniae: Historia universal del arte hispánico, vol. 18: Miniatura (Madrid, 1962), 195, fig. 251 and idem, Exposición de códices miniados españoles (Madrid, 1929), 208. The miniatures may be influenced by the painter Jorge Inglés (active ca. 1445–75). See a book on the life of the philosophers from 1473, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, Ms. V. 19–14 (T. 9), the Tratado de la Monteria (Treatise on the Hunt) from Seville (Madrid, Biblioteca de Palacio, with no number). See also Domínguez Bordona, Exposición de códices miniados, 196–197, n. LXXVI and 203, fig. 258; J. Domínguez Bordona,Spanish Illumination, vol. 2 (Florence and Paris, 1930; New York, 1969), 54–66; Historia ilustrada del libro español: Los manuscritos, ed. Hipólito Escolar (Madrid, 1993), 204–19 and 265–71. See 66 andreina contessa the Genoa Bible are decorations signed by Cano de Aranda in liturgical books executed for Archbishop Carrillo in the second half of the fifteenth century. Aranda’s illumination is characterized by gold bars decorated with acanthus tendrils that separate the text from the border, and sometimes even the interstice between the two columns of text. The content of the borders included the popular marginalia motifs of the epoch: putti, animals, monkeys, birds with disembodied heads, and gold dots.16 A particular feature that occurs in the Imola Bible as well as in the Genoa and Parma Bibles mentioned before, shows an unmistakable Christian influence: at the beginning of the book of Genesis the letter “bet” is enhanced in gold and enclosed in a square frame with fine gold decoration on a dark-blue or magenta background (figs. 4, 8).17 Whereas the use of an ornamented initial letter is common in Latin codices, it is rare in Hebrew manuscripts, which usually emphasize the entire opening word. In addition, the first text-column of the Imola Bible is flanked on the right by a composition of three vertical decorated medallions, highlighted by gold-pen embellishments. These three medallions recall the letter “I” of In principio, which opens numerous Latin Bible decorations of the book of Genesis and which often contains the main hexameral episodes in a series of figured medallions, each one illustrating a day. This is an ancient Western tradition, already found inmany Romanesque Bibles, which is ubiquitous in Gothic illuminations of

also, for comparison, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ms. Esp. 555, fol. 13, dated 1486, and the codices attributed to Juan de Carrion active in Avila during the 1470s (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ms. Lat. 1064, Ms. Esp. 36); Domínguez Bordona, Ars Hispaniae, vol. 18, figs. 255–257; François Avril et al., Manuscrits enluminés de la Péninsule Iberique (Paris, 1983), 138, n. 153, pl. 83; 133–35, n. 151, pl. 82 and P; 135–137, n. 152, pls. 84–87 and Q. See also a Book of Hours attributed to the Master of the Liber Instrumentorum (Castile, second half of the fifteenth century), at the British Library, Ms. Egerton 2653; J. Backhouse, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library (London, 1997), n. 164; J. Backhouse, Illumination from Books of Hours (London, 2004), fig. 101. 16 Lynette M. F. Bosch, Art, Liturgy, and Legend in Renaissance Toledo: The Mendoza and the Iglesia Primada (University Park, PA, 2000), 115–126 and 140–161, figs. 54, 68–70, pl. VII; see the Missal Res 4 of the Toledo Cathedral Archive, and the Missale Mixtum Mozarabicum, BL Ms. Add. 38.037. Another comparison is a Breviary (use of Toledo) at the British Library, Henry Davis Collection Ms. 656, Toledo, second half of the fifteenth century. 17 Contessa, “An Uncommon Representation”, 37–58, figs. 8–11. sephardic illuminated bibles 67 the book of Genesis. An early example is a mid-eleventh century Latin Bible, produced in the Catalan monastery of Ripoll, where a haloed bust of God blessing and holding a book emerges from a clipeus at the top of the grand initial ‘I’,18 a feature that recalls the initial ‘I’ at the opening of Carolingian Gospel books.19 Much elaborated initials are depicted in later Romanesque Bibles, such as the twelfth and early thirteenth century Sauvigny, Corbie, Pontigny and Arundel Bibles,20 which present historiated initials containing the single episodes of the creation of the world and the fall of Adam and Eve (fig. 9).21 The initial ‘I’ with roundels portraying scenes of the hexameral narrative was omnipresent in Gothic Bibles from the thirteenth century on and was widespread all over in Europe until the fifteenth.22 In these Bibles the upright of the ‘I’, which in many cases occupies the full height of the page, illustrates the story of Creation up to the fall in a series of seven or eight distinct fields. A magnificent development of this kind

18 Ripoll Bible, Vatican Library, Ms. lat. 5729, fol. 7. A. Contessa, “Facta sunt coe- lum, maria [et] terrae. La creazione nelle Bibbie Catalane di Ripoll e Roda”, Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae, 12, 2005/1: 115–117 (83–156), pl. 3; see also Contessa, “Between Art, Faith and Science. The concept of Creation in the Ripoll and Roda Romanesque Bibles,” Iconographica (2007): 19–43, fig. 11. Monographic studies on this codex are: W. Neuss, Die Katalanische Bibelillustration um die Wende des ersten Jahrtausends und die altspanische Buchmalerei (Leipzig, 1922); A. M. Mundó, Les Biblies de Ripoll, Estudi del Mss. Vaticà, lat. 5729 i Parìs, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 6, Studi e testi 408 (Vatican City, 2002). 19 This feature recalls the initial ‘I’ at the opening of Carolingian Gospel books. See for example the Gospel-book of Soisson, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ms. lat. 8850, fol. 82. 20 Corbie Bible, Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, Ms. 36, fol. 6; Sauvigny Bible, Moulins, Bibliothèque Municipale, Ms. 1, fol. 4v; Pontigny Bible, France, late 12th century, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 8823, fol. 1; W. Cahn, Romanesque Bible Illumination (Ithaca, NY, 1982), 70–80, figs. 136, 140, 137. 21 Arundel Bible, London, British Library Ms. Arundel 250, England, (Norwich?); second quarter of the 13th century, fol. 6v. Many examples of Romanesque initials are in W. Cahn, Romanesque Bible Illumination (Ithaca, NY, 1982), 70–80, figs. 84, 88–93 and 136–140; see also H. Toubert, “La mise en page de l’illustration”, in Mise en page et mise en text du Livre manuscrit, ed. H. J. Martin and J. Vezin (Paris, 1990), 387–391. 22 See for example British Library, Ms. Yates Thompson 1 France, Central (Paris) 13th century, fol. 4v, Creation; British Library, Ms. Egerton 1526 (Catalonia, 1465); fol. 3, historiated initial with God in Majesty, and roundels of the days of Creation in the margins. See also the Krems Bible, Lower Austria, late thirteenth century, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Ms. 1170–1174, fol. 9; and the Korczek Bible, Prague, 1400–1410, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Ms. 1169, fol. 4. A. Fingernagel and C. Gastgeber, In the Beginning was the Word: The Power and Glory of Illuminated Bibles (Köln, 2003), 110–113 and 132–135. 68 andreina contessa of initial may be seen in late extraordinarily sumptuous manuscripts, such as a Neapolitan luxury Bible (1330–65),23 the Wenceslas Bible24 (Prague 1389–95), or the rich Bible by Ulrich Schreier (Salzburg, 1472).25 In the Imola Bible the image within the medallions is a very abstract rendering of the hexameral account, where only the creation of heavens and earth on the first day may be clearly detected through the depiction of a starry sky upon a grey earth. The choice to shorten the number of medallions and to fill them with abstract figurations is possibly a means of distancing from Christian illustration, where the figure of the Logos as creative divine Word appears as the author of creation.26 A further proof that the illustrator followed and reinterpreted a well-known iconographical pattern is represented by the presence of a tree with a serpent coiled on its trunk, depicted at the bottom of the page as blooming out of the marginal foliated decoration (fig. 10). The tree with the serpent is not flanked by Adam and Eve; by so doing the illustrator evokes the episode of the temptation by the serpent to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but avoids the depiction of a scene that has heavy Christian connotations in art. The image of the fall in fact can refer in Christian tradition to the wider theological inferences for all humankind as a consequence of Eve and Adam’s original sin. Fall corrupted the entire natural world, including human nature, causing a state from which humanity cannot attain eternal life without the gracious intervention of God. The figure of Christ-Logos in Christian art evokes the divine creating Word but also the redemption from the sin that will be operated by Christ. Nevertheless, in the Imola Bible, as occurs in many late-Gothic Latin manuscripts, the scene is emphasized and detached from those in the medallions, a practice that occurs for example in the Utrecht Bible

23 The Bible was produced in the workshop of Cristoforo Orimina (active around 1330–1365); Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Ms. 1191, fol. 4; Fingernagel and Gastgeber, In the Beginning, 142–145. 24 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Ms. 2759, fol. 2v; Fingernagel and Gastgeber, In the Beginning, 118–123. 25 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Ms. 1194, fol. 4; Fingernagel and Gastgeber, In the Beginning, 164–167. See also the Genesis medallions in the illuminated Catalan version of the Bible at the British Library, Ms. Egerton 1526, folio 3; Catalonia, 1465. 26 See the examples in notes 20–25. sephardic illuminated bibles 69

(1430),27 and in the History Bible of Evert van Soudenbalch (1460) (fig. 11).28 A further feature shared by the Imola Bible and by many Gothic Christian manuscripts is the depiction of the serpent with a woman’s head (figs. 10, 12). The motif of the female-headed serpent characterizes Christian biblical and spiritual collections such as the Biblia pauperum,29 and the Speculum Humanae Salvationis,30 but is known also in Jewish manuscripts.31

A different element that shows certain knowledge of Christian Bibles is confirmed in the Imola Bible by the unusual comparative list of the chapters of the Vulgate text in correspondence with the pages in the codex.32 This part is titled Capitulis (or capitulish) me-arba-ve-‘esrim le-ḥeshbon ha-goyim (chapters from the 24 [biblical books] according to the count of the Gentiles). It is not clear who would have considered such a table useful.33 Perhaps the patron needed the tables to locate quotations during disputae with Christians. This is confirmed by a similar table of the Christian division of the Hebrew Bible found in a few codices. The most interesting is a fourteenth-century Sephardi Bible in the Cambridge University Library, where the list, drawn up at a later date, is accompanied by a brief introduction explaining that

27 Utrecht Bible Netherlands 1430, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Ms. 1199–1200, fol. 5; Fingernagel and Gastgeber, In the Beginning, 172–177. 28 History Bible of Evert van Soudenbach, Utrecth, Northern Netherlands, 1460, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Ms. 2771, fol. 10; Fingernagel and Gastgeber, In the Beginning, 284–293. 29 Biblia Pauperum, Krumau Picture Bible, Southern Bohemia, 1350, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Ms. 370, fol. 9; Fingernagel and Gastgeber, In the Beginning, 310–315. 30 Speculum Humanae Salvationis (Mirror of human salvation) Lake Constance Region 1336 c. 31 For example the London Miscellany, France 1280, London BL, Ms. Add. 11639, fol 520v; and the Kaufmann Mishneh Torah, Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Ms. a77/I–IV, fol. 70. For an interpretation of the occurrence of this motif in Jewish art, see S. Laderman, “Two Faces of Eve: Polemics and Controversies Viewed Through Pictorial Motifs,” Images 2/1 (2008): 1–20. 32 Antonioli–Martelli and Mortara-Ottolenghi, Manoscritti biblici ebraici, n. 42; Perani, “La Bibbia Ebraica della Biblioteca Comunale di Imola,” 395–440. 33 N. Pasternak, “Hebrew Hand-written Books as Testimonies to Christian– Jewish Contacts in Quattrocento Florence,” in L’interculturalità dell’Ebraismo. Atti del Convegno internazionale Bertinoro–Ravenna, 26–28 Maggio 2003, ed. M. Perani (Ravenna, 2004), 161–171. A similar practice occurs in some Hebrew codices that were produced in Italy in the fifteenth century for illustrious Christian owners, who were humanist, Hebraist, and fine—books collectors. 70 andreina contessa it was written by R. Solomon b. Ishmael to provide a quick answer to any question the Gentiles might ask.34 Many of the Sephardic Bibles analyzed here have an unfinished character and present blank folios and spaces left for miniatures that were never executed. The most outstanding case is the Imola Bible (fig. 13). Its refined Castilian artist left the Bible unfinished, as demonstrated by the blank pages and spaces left at the end of the biblical books. The reason is unknown; we only know that the Bible was unfinished when the owners of the codex had to leave Spain abruptly, and the illustration was completed later, in Italy under the patronage of the new owner, most likely by a Christian illuminator, who was asked to add marginal panels, to depict the coat of arms and the missing components in the Temple implements double page: the ark, the altar of sacrifices, and the showbread table. As I have shown elsewhere, the additional miniatures of the Imola Bible were added in Northern Italy, at the very end of the fifteenth century by an artist influenced by the Ferrara school. This is evident if we compare the style and palette of primary blue-red opposed colors of these miniatures with ornamental borders of the Ferrarese school.35 The miniatures of the Temple implements are placed at the end of the book of Chronicles in an independent quire. The page originally executed in Castile does not present any uncommon element: it shows the usual ornamental, flat representation of the menorah and other sacred objects enhanced in gold, and reflects an old Sephardic

34 Cambridge University Library Ms. Add. 465, fols. 245v–246, see Stefan C. Reif, Hebrew Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library (Cambridge 1997), ns. 25, 54. The list is also included in a sixteenth-century codex: Bibliothèque Nationale de France Ms. heb. 263, fols. 105–111v (H. Zotenberg, Catalogue des manuscrits hébreux et samaritains de la Bibliothèque impériale [Paris, 1866]) and in Oxford, Bodleian Library Ms. Heb.g.1 (Adolf Neubauer and Arthur E. Cowley, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and in the College Libraries of Oxford [. . .], vol. 2: Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library [Oxford, 1906], 203–204, cat. n. 2792, with no indication of dating and origin). An Italian fifteenth-century handwritten siddur also contains the list: Zurich, Zentralbibliothek Ms. Heid. 136, fols. 130v–141. 35 G. Mariani Canova, La miniatura veneta del Rinascimento, 1450–1500 (Venice, 1969), 130–136; J. J. G. Alexander, J. H. Marrow and L. Freeman Sandler, The Splendor of the Word: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the New York Public Library (London and Turnhout, 2005), 241–244, n. 50. The miniature may be compared with those of a manuscript made for the Doge of Venice in 1471, New York, New York Public Library, Spencer Collection 040, Part 1, fols. 1–34v, parchment; Veneto, Venice, 1471. The Painted Page. Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450–1550, ed. J. J. G. Alexander (London, 1994), 84–85; Alexander, Marrow and Freeman-Sandler, The Splendor of the Word, 25–28, n. 1. sephardic illuminated bibles 71 tradition. The page executed in Italy shows an unconventional full- page depiction of the showbread table and the sacrificial altar, characterized by unusual narrative additions: the priestly figure of Aaron, an animal burning upon a monumental altar, and two red imposing cherubim with human faces hovering upon the altar. If we compare this illustration with those of many other Sephardic Bibles we see that the image does not follow the widespread iconography of the Temple implements that started in thirteenth-century Castile. The image of the Imola Bibles presents several evident problems: the misplaced occurrence of the cherubim upon the altar of sacrifices, the curious depiction of the burning victim, the improper feature of this altar and of the showbread table, the unusual presence of a human figure in the space of the sacred objects, and the remarkable absence of the Ark of the Covenant. The different approach of the two pages concerns both the aspect and the meaning. The traditional pictures of the Sanctuary and Temple vessels that illustrate dozens of Sephardic Bibles are not text illustrations but kinds of non-narrative icon of messianic expectation.36 This trait is absolutely absent from the second page executed in Italy. Does this mean that the Jewish Italian patron was more tolerant than the Spaniard vis-à-vis artistic license, or was he less connected to an ancient tradition of Bible illustration? The altar-ark with cherubim of the Imola Bible may be explained by the presence of similar illustrations in the art with which the Italian master was familiar.37 In an interesting miniature of the Bible created for Federico of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino (1476–78) we find a hybrid representation of an altar with a burning sacrifice, surmounted by the Ark of the Covenant with the cherubim, which resembles that of the Imola Bible.38 The image illustrates King Josiah celebrating Passover. The illuminator of the Imola Bible probably drew his models

36 On the multifaceted meaning of these images, see E. Frojmovic, “Messianic Politics in Re-Christianized Spain: Images of the Sanctuary in Hebrew Bible Manuscripts,” in Imagining the Self, Imagining the Other: Visual Representation and Jewish–Christian Dynamics in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, ed. Eva Frojmovic (Leiden, 2002), 91–128. 37 Contessa, “An Uncommon Representation,” 37–58. 38 Vatican Library, Codici Urbinati Latini 1–2. A. Garzelli, La Bibbia di Federico da Montefeltro. Un’officina libraria fiorentina 1476–1478 (Rome, 1977), 45–85. An analogous fusion of various Temple vessels appears also in an illustration of the Book of Chronicles, (II Chr. 1:6). The Bible was written by Ugo Comminelli of Mézières and decorated in Florence in the space of two years (1477–1478) by Francesco di Antonio del Chierico, Attavante, Francesco Rosselli and probably Davide Ghirlandaio, brother 72 andreina contessa from the influential miniatures of the Urbino Bible or other famous illuminated codices of that time, such as the Bible of Borso d’Este, commissioned by the Duke of Ferrara (1455), which includes similar devices.39 Both codices exerted enormous influence on the world of illuminated manuscripts and were taken as models by major and minor artists of the epoch. The presence in a Jewish Bible of such an image, in marked contrast with the facing-page of traditional Sephardic illustration, attests to the open-mindedness of the Italian Jewish patron in artistic matters, to his acquaintance with the leading fashionable trend, and to his acceptance of the artist’s creation. His tolerance, however, was not unlimited. If we compare the representations of the Christian Bibles and that of the Imola codex we immediately see an important difference. The presence of the divine figure, always depicted in Christian works, is omit- ted in our Bible. In depictions from the early Renaissance this presence takes a new form, that of the heavenly Father, the first person of the Trinity, who was rarely depicted in medieval works of art.40 As occurs in the illustration to the book of Genesis, ordered in Spain by a Jewish owner, certain omissions were demanded of the Christian artists by the Italian patron, those concerning the figure of God. Avoiding all depiction of the presence of God seems to be the common trait of these illustrations executed in different places and periods, by different Christian masters. Notwithstanding the high level of acculturation in manuscript making and artistic fashion demonstrated by fifteenth-century Jewish owners, who appropriated local trends, customs, and styles, it is evident that they exercised fidelity toward a typically Jewish visual reticence concerning the image God. Discretion and reserve about the evocation of the figure of God seem to be the main common trait of Jewish illustration as opposed to the Christian explicit rendering of the divine image. The Jewish character of its illustration is apparently better exemplified by what is absent than by what is depicted.

of the better known Domenico. Garzelli, La Bibbia di Federico, 144–156 and 176–177, plates XIV–XV. Comparisons in: Contessa, “An Uncommon Representation,” 37–58. 39 Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Ms. VG 12 (Lat. 422). La Bibbia di Borso d’Este, ed. G. Treccani degli Alfieri and A. Venturi (Milan, 1937), vol. 1, fols. 40and88v. Comparisons in Contessa, “An Uncommon Representation,” 37–58. 40 On the representation of the divine figure in Christian medieval tradition, see A. Contessa, “Imaging the Invisible God: Theophanies and Prophetic visions in the Ripoll and Roda Bibles.” Cahiers Archéologiques (2009): 79–97. II. JEWISH EXEGESIS

ABARBANEL’S EXEGETICAL SUBVERSION OF MAIMONIDES’ ‘AQEDAH: TRANSFORMING A KNIGHT OF INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE INTO A KNIGHT OF EXISTENTIAL FAITH

James A. Diamond

Introduction: Abarbanel vs. Maimonides: Continuum or Subversive Rupture?

The fifteenth-century Iberian Jewish political, cultural, and intellectual landscape in which Isaac Abarbanel1 (1437–1508) lived, taught, and wrote most of his life was vastly different from that of twelfth-century Egypt, which nurtured Moses Maimonides’ (1138–1205) oeuvre for much of his scholarly career. Not the least of those factors contribut- ing to the changed intellectual environment were centuries of raging controversies in the interim incited by Maimonides’ works, in particular the Guide of the Perplexed, over whether the rationalist approach to religious belief in its deference to the Graeco-Arabic philosophical tradition reinforced or undermined Jewish faith and practice.2 Abarbanel’s thought resonates negatively with both the aftershocks of these religiously bitter and socially divisive debates and positively with Maimonides’ formidable theological, philosophical, and rabbinic legacy from which there was no escape for any Jewish philosopher, exegete, or rabbinic thinker. The theoretical ideological impact of these near schismatic disputes was compounded by the communal trauma of pogroms, dislocation, and forcible, and indeed in some cases voluntary, conversions to Christianity such as those that devastated Jewish Castilian life in 1391–2. Abarbanel’s personal pedigree mirrored such trauma in that his grandfather Samuel along with a number of uncles

1 For the variant spellings of his name see S. Z. Leiman, “Abarbanel and the Censor,” Journal of Jewish Studies 19 (1968): 49, note 1 (49–61). 2 For a good account of the height of the controversies surrounding Maimonides’ thought in the thirteenth century, see Daniel J. Silver, Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy, 1180–1240, (Leiden, 1965). For the shape of the controversy over Maimonides and the inclusion of philosophy within the Jewish curriculum, see Moshe Halbertal, Between Torah and Wisdom: Rabbi Menachem ha-Meiri and the Maimonidean Halakhists in Provence (Jerusalem, 2001) (Hebrew), esp. ch. 5. 76 james a. diamond were baptized. Isaac more than likely would not have recalled Samuel, alias Juan Sanchez de Sevilla, with any great sense of pride. Reverence for Maimonides and horror at the existential consequences of radical rationalist positions vie with each other throughout Abarbanel’s thought, which reflects an “intense and ambivalent attitude toward Maimonides.”3 Such ambivalence is succinctly captured in his reputed proviso during one of his lectures on the Guide that a likely theologically noxious passage he had just explicated “is the intention of our master Moses, not the intention of Moses our master.” The subversion of the popular adage “from Moses unto Moses none arose such as Moses” within the context of a class dedicated to Maimonides’ thought reflects Abarbanel’s passionately conflicted engagement with it insofar as it treads a precarious tightrope walk between a continuum and a rupture with the Sinaitic revelation.4 While expounding his arguments and defending Maimonides from attack, Abarbanel also sharply distinguished himself from his prede- cessor on issues critical for Jewish faith. What I develop here is that an apparent endorsement of Maimonidean biblical exegesis rendered in the course of his own exegetical discourse, may actually amount to a sustained subversive attack once the overall interpretation is considered. This study will focus on Abarbanel’s extended exegetical treatment of the binding of Isaac narrative, referred to as the ‘Aqedah (Gen. 22), also cross referenced with his Guide commentary, as paradigmatic of this feature in his formal biblical commentary. Though Abarbanel’s thought has been richly mined in contemporary scholarship, as Eric Lawee pointed out in his 2000 bibliographic study of Abarbanel, “studies of Abarbanel’s biblical exegesis during the last

3 Colette Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: 1985) p. 395. See also L. Rabinowitz, “Abravanel as Exegete,” in Isaac Abravanel: Six Lectures, eds., J. B. Trend, H. Loewe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937) pp. 77–92 who observes that although Abarbanel’s “reverence for Maimonides is extreme, he does not hesitate vigorously to attack him when his predilection for squaring Divine Revelation with Aristotelian philosophy leads him astray . . .” at p. 80. 4 In Isaac Barzilay’s book length study of anti-rationalism in thirteenth- to seventeenth-century Italy, the chapter on Isaac Abarbanel concludes with the sober observation that Abarbanel’s “anti-rationalism seems to have been of a mere literary nature, and must least of all be identified with a negative attitude toward secular learning.” See Between Reason and Faith: Anti-Rationalism in Italian Jewish Thought 1250–1650 (The Hague, 1967), 131. See also Eric Lawee’s description of a lifelong struggle “to strike a balance between appropriate fidelity to Maimonidean teachings and critical distance from them,” in his Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance Toward Tradition: Defense, Dissent, and Dialogue (Albany, 2001), 33. abarbanel’s exegetical subversion of maimonides’ ‘aqedah 77 half-century have been meager by comparison”,5 and so my intent here is also to contribute toward diminishing the extent of this lacuna. The ‘Aqedah is a central biblical narrative for him which warrants more scrutiny than other biblical passages since it is Israel’s principal and merit before their Father in heaven and therefore it is fluent in our mouths, in our prayers all day and because of this it is appropriate to subject it to intense analysis more than other passages. הפרשה הזאת היא כל קרן ישראל וזכותם לפני אביהם שבשמים ולכן היא שגורה בפינו בתפלתנו כל היום ומפני זה ראוי להפליג בה העיון והחקירה יותר מבשאר הפרשיות . . . (1:473) On a basic level, while Maimonides addresses its overall message where attention turns to only those details that might corroborate that message, Abarbanel is far more concerned than Maimonides with how each particular detail contributes to a cohesive narrative structure (peshat). More importantly, the ‘Aqedah is uniquely instructive since it cuts across a wide swath of theological issues from the nature of Adam’s sin, to prophecy, to the significance of circumcision, angels, the precise definition of fear of God and the rationale for commandments undermining much of Maimonides’ philosophical edifice. His positions on these last two are particularly striking in their divergence from his exegesis, despite a deferential nod to Maimonides. Abarbanel’s cultural/historical milieu which demanded concrete existential sacrifice for the preservation of one’s faith along with the disappointing failure to withstand a challenge to faith in his own family background and beyond in the general community may have informed his exegetical divergence in this instance and throughout. Biblical exegesis in fifteenth-century Iberia charts a different path fuelled by a ‘fear of

5 See “Isaac Abarbanel’s Intellectual Achievement and Literary Legacy in Modern Scholarship: A Retrospective and Opportunity,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature III, eds. Isadore Twersky and Jay Harris (Boston, MA, 2000), 218 and the studies cited on p. 240, n. 49. Jolene Kellner has updated the bibliography for studies on Abarbanel since Lawee’s in “Academic Studies on and New Editions of Works by Isaac Abravanel: 2000–2008,” Jewish History 23:3 (2009): 313–17, but the paucity of studies on Abarbanel’s exegesis remains largely the case. For a good overview of twentieth-century scholarship on Abarbanel which also notes a serious lacuna on the study of his autobiographical rhetoric in his literary corpus see Cedric Cohen Skalli, “Discovering Isaac Abravanel’s Humanistic Rhetoric,” JQR 97:1 (2007): 67–99. For the most recent bibliography and survey of Abarbanel’s exegesis see Eric Lawee, “Isaac Abarbanel: From Medieval to Renaissance Jewish Biblical Scholarship,” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of its Interpretation, ed. Magne Saebo (Gottingen, 2008), 190–214. 78 james a. diamond

God’ that in the end entails absolute submission rather than reasoned obeisance to divine command.

Bound vs. Unbound Reason

Abarbanel’s dichotomous embrace crystallizes in his general introduction to the biblical account of Abraham’s life, which constitutes the most important of three foundational moments in the evolution of the Jewish nation after Adam and Noah, providing by analogy the “human והיה ערכו אצל האומה (intellecting form for the rational being” (1:328 Each and every of the 6.בערך הצורה האנושית המשכלת לחי מדבר first eight of the ten phases that constitute Abraham’s spiritual biography demonstrates the supremacy of theoretical intellect over all other facets of man commencing with the command to “leave your homeland, the place of your birth” which, reading homeland (eretz) literally as “earth”, steers the directional course of Abraham’s life away from material concerns. Abraham’s two wives, Hagar and Sarah, respectively represent the practical (ma‘asi) and theoretical (‘iyuni) components of the intellect which are embodied in the two distinct progeny of Ishmael and Isaac. This realizes itself in the divine guarantee that “Only through Isaac will your progeny be considered” (Gen. 21:12),7 which, in turn, translates into the proposition that Only the theoretical intellect qualifies for immortality and perpetually gratifying life while the practical intellect, the child of the maidservant, does not qualify for immortality at all but rather disappears with man. כי כן השכל העיוני הוא לבד יורש הנצחיו' והחיים המתמידי' המאושרי'. אמנם השכל המעשי בן האמה לא יירש נצחיות כלל כי יפסד בהפסד האיש (1:329)8

6 All references to Abarbanel’s pentateuchal commentary are by volume and page number to the Hebrew Perush Abarbanel ‘al HaTorah, ed. Yehudah Shaviv (Jerusalem, 2008). All translations are my own. 7 This verse determines for Maimonides that only the line of descendants stem- ming from Isaac are obligated to perform circumcision. See Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings, 10:7. All references to this work are to the Shabse Frankel edition (Bnei Brak, Israel, 1975–2001), hereinafter referred to as MT. Isaac is the one who carries on in the tradition of Abraham’s “religion and virtuous ways.” See also MT, Oaths, 9:21. In his Letter to Yemen 2, Maimonides cites this verse as a response to the fact that, even though Muslims vastly outnumber Jews, only the Jews will be known for carrying on in the virtuous tradition of Abraham. 8 For Maimonides, see Guide of the Perplexed, I:41 on the term “soul” (nefesh) as “denoting the rational soul, I mean the form of man . . . the thing that remains of man abarbanel’s exegetical subversion of maimonides’ ‘aqedah 79

Until this juncture, from a philosophical perspective, one could easily substitute Maimonides for Abarbanel as an advocate of a general philosophical tendency that values intellectual virtue above all else.9 However, the ‘Aqedah, in its penultimate representation of Abraham’s evolving persona, marks an abrupt shift away from that tendency. As an act of submission to a divine imperative its sublime moral is in the event his thoughts and reasonings divert him from the way of the Torah and its beliefs, man must bind them on the altar of God and subjugate them in order to accept his Torah and his belief. וכן השכל העיוני כאשר במחשבותיו והקשיו יטה מדרך התורה ואמונותי' יעקוד אותו אדם על גבי מזבח השם ויכניעהו לקבל תורתו ואמונתו (1:329) Abarbanel does not characterize the reason at play here as faulty but rather contemplates a conflict between reason and religion or what has come to be referred to in modern scholarship as Athens vs. Jerusalem. Reason must be reined in when it clashes with the Torah and the lesson of the ‘Aqedah follows in that reason must sacrifice itself to the dictates of revelation. For Maimonides such a clash can only be an apparent one and the Maimonidean Abraham is paradigmatic of a pre-Sinaitic journey toward God fuelled solely by reason.10 Abraham’s reasoned beliefs are synonymous with those conveyed in an adulterated form at Sinai (“Torah speaks in the language of human beings”). One of the motivations in penning the Guide was to remedy precisely what the ‘Aqedah for Abarbanel commends when confronted by a conflict between Torah and reason—“. . . not to let himself be drawn on together with his intellect, rather turning his back on it and moving away from it . . .” (Guide, Introd., p. 6). Abarbanel’s virtuous “binding” or restraint of reason would provoke for Maimonides the unceasing “heartache and great perplexity” (Ibid.) he suggests would be symptomatic of potential readers who betray their own intellects for the sake of preserving their faith. That restraint carries through into

after death.” All references to the Guide of the Perplexed are to the edition translated by Shlomo Pines (Chicago, 1963) hereinafter referred to as GP. References to Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation of the Guide is to Moreh Nevukhim with Commentaries by Efodi, Shem Tov, Crescas, Abravanel (Jerusalem, 1960), repr. from 1904 edition (MN). 9 For but one Maimonidean source that would accord with Abarbanel, for example, see his account of the four perfections where the ultimate is “acquisition of the rational virtues” as opposed to material, physical, and moral perfections (GP, III:634–35). 10 Mishneh Torah, Laws of Idolatry, 1:3. 80 james a. diamond the ultimate stage of arranging Isaac’s marriage which Abraham stipu- lates is to be conducted only with familial relatives. Taking ‘family’ as a signifier for internal wisdom or Torah and ‘strangers’ as representa- tive of foreign wisdom, Abarbanel interprets this as a metaphor for curbing ultimate confidence in the latter, which is “in truth a source of -Gen 26:35) for the divine Torah like the daugh) (מורת רוח) bitterness וכן ראוי שהשכל העיוני לא ישים תכלית עיונו ,”ters of the Canaanites בחכמות חצוניות שהם באמת מורת רוח לתור' האלהית כבנות הכנעני )1:329(. This approach could not be more strikingly at odds with Maimonides’ abiding counsel to “seek wisdom from whatever source it emanates.”11 Abraham’s life for Abarbanel can be charted along a graph of ever-increasing supremacy of reason which climaxes in an about turn, in a sobering curtailment of it by subduing both it and its field of inquiry. As its foundational mooring, Israel is anchored in reason constrained by Torah. For Maimonides, rather than a blueprint for Sinai, Abraham represents an idyllic state whose theological and philosophical mandates are pared down to the “primary intentions” of reason uninhibited by anthropomorphic language or extraneous ritual that comprises the “secondary intentions” of Mosaic Torah. The latter, a prime example of which is the command to worship God through the complex sacrificial cult stipulated in the Bible, is designed as ancil- lary to the primary task of apprehending God’s existence and unity and is sanctioned “only for the sake of the realization of this fundamental principle” (GP, III:32, p. 530). Maimonides’ Abraham poses a model that far more approximates the midrashically envisioned revelation at the waters of Marah prior to Sinai which was free of ritu- alistic “secondary intentions” in that it exclusively addressed “correct beliefs” and “the abolition of mutual wrongdoing among men” (GP, III:32, p. 531), or philosophy and ethics.12 Abraham’s Abarbenelian

11 What Abarbanel expresses here is consistent with regrets he articulated in a letter later in life over having spent too much time with “the books of the Greeks and children of strangers (Isa. 2:6)”. See Sheelot lehehakham Shaul HaKohen shaal me’et Yitshaq Abarbanel (Venice, 1574) and Eric Lawee’s discussion of it as an admission by Abarbanel that “Maimonides notwithstanding, philosophy’s ways are indeed in some fundamental way ‘foreign to our Law.’” in his “‘The Good We Accept and the Bad We Do Not’: Aspects of Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance Towards Maimonides,” in Beerot Yitzhak: Studies in Memory of Isadore Twersky, ed. Jay Harris (Cambridge, 2005), 131–133. 12 Abarbanel rejects the manner in which Maimonides adopts this midrashic rendering of the Marah revelation to explain the apparent difficulty of Jer. 7:21 that asserts abarbanel’s exegetical subversion of maimonides’ ‘aqedah 81 future, as symbolized by Isaac’s binding and marriage, to the contrary, turns its back on reason and anticipates Torah ritual. The midrashic image of Isaac as a “perfect burnt offering”13 represents for Abarbanel his “acquisition of perfection through the power of the ‘Aqedah,” יצחק היה דוגמת השכל הנקנה ולכן היה עולה תמימה ונאמר לו אל and, though he תרד מצרימה והוא קנה השלמות בכח העקדה )1:330( symbolizes the “acquired intellect” (sekhel haniqneh), it is an intellect shaped by an act of acknowledgement of its own inferiority.

The ‘Aqedah: Genetic Reinforcement vs. Behavioural Intellectual Model

At the core of Abarbanel’s general introduction to his discussion proper of the ‘Aqedah, where he identifies its overarching purpose, lie essential ontological notions of Abraham’s progeny, Isaac and the nation of Israel, which immediately steer his analysis in a decidedly non-Maimonidean direction. Leaving aside for the moment what perfection consists of, because the test aims at constructing Israel’s most perfect biological antecedents its target could not be Abraham since he was genetically tainted by wicked parentage and therefore was “not אחר .”naturally born into perfection being a saint, the son of a sinner שלא היה בעת הלידה מוטבע בשלמות ההוא כי היה צדיק בן רשע )1:474(. What Abarbanel considers inherently deficient is precisely Abraham’s prime virtue for Maimonides since his greatness consists in arriving at the universal truth of a creator God in spite of his upbring- ing and familial background. Since Abraham had “no one to teach him

no commands regarding sacrifices were issued upon the Egyptian exodus. Abarbanel does continue to explain that the sacrifices were a corrective to the sin of the golden calf whereas initially commands concerned only “matters of belief and praiseworthy deeds.” However, what is pertinent for our study is that he rejects Maimonides’ classification of mitzvot into “primary and secondary intentions,” sacrifices being within the second category, for “the sacrifices are divine commandments (mitzvah elohit) regardless of whether they were commanded first, second, or third.” See Commentary to Jeremiah 7:21 (CLP, p. 328). For Maimonides the sacrifices are a psychologically necessary means to a higher end while for Abarbanel, although they post-date those commands Maimonides would classify under “primary intentions”, they are of intrinsic worth in themselves. 13 Bereshit Rabbah 64:3. 82 james a. diamond and no one to instruct him in anything”14 he contemplated and labori- ously demonstrated his way to the truth sui generis, which is the only authentic way according to Maimonides of truly knowing something. In his case he overcame erroneous knowledge obtained by authority or tradition in favour of true self-gained knowledge. Conversely Isaac is chosen as the subject of the test for his natural perfections. His father is righteous, his birth is miraculous “not by natural means but by divine act,” and he is engendered “in holiness and purity,” due to the fortu- itously timed “godly design that Abraham undergo circumcision prior לכן גזרה החכמה האלהית שימול אברהם קודם) (.to Isaac’s birth.” (Ibid ,For Maimonides .(לידת יצחק באופן שיולד יצחק בקדושה ובטהרה circumcision is a purely functional ritual that graphically asserts the strength of one’s commitment to a monotheistic community and is pragmatically useful in diminishing the sexual appetite, a cause of dis- traction from humanity’s true mandate of a reasoned life.15 In his account of Isaac’s perfections Abarbanel alludes to Maimonides, though not by name, with a direct quote that transforms its original intent by its new context. Isaac’s perfection due to his filial connection to Abraham is attributed to the fact that “children draw from the father’s condition for the nature of the quarry ought to be present in כי טבע המקור ראוי שיהיה נמצא במה שיחצב) what is hewn from it Maimonides also uses this to describe Abraham’s descendants .”(ממנו but only as a natural impetus to focus on Abraham as a practical model that will inspire one to “tread therefore in his footsteps, adhere to his על כן לכו בדרכיו והאמינו בתורתו) ”religion, and acquire his character

14 MT, Idolatry, 1:3. For parallel passages regarding Abraham’s auspicious beginnings in the Guide (see GP II:39, p. 379; III:29, p. 516). 15 For Maimonides, as opposed to others, circumcision, unlike baptism, is merely another commandment without which the Jew remains a Jew albeit a transgressor. See Shaye Cohen’s recent discussion of Maimonides’ position in chapters six and seven of his Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised: Gender and Covenant in Judaism, (Berkeley, Ca., 2005). Like Abarbanel, even such a staunch adherent of Maimonidean teachings such as R. David Kimhi was averse to this thoroughly functional view of circumcision and expressed some ambivalence on it. At the start of his comments to Gen. 17:1 he offers the following rationale for the timing of Abraham’s circumcision: “. . . and he was commanded to undergo circumcision prior to conceiving Isaac in order that Isaac should originate from a seed that is more kasher . . .” Abraham ibn Ezra expresses the same view (Gen. 17:5) and is cited by Abarbanel in support of the “holy birth” of Isaac. On Maimonides’ alternative rationalizations of circumcision, see Josef Stern’s classification of it as a “parabolic commandment” consisting of tripartite levels of vulgar, external, and internal meaning in ch. 5 of Problems and Parables of Law: Maimonides and Nahmanides on Reasons for the Commandments (Albany, NY, 1998). abarbanel’s exegetical subversion of maimonides’ ‘aqedah 83

,Abraham is a spiritual/ethical model for posterity 16.(והתנהגו במדותיו not a contributor to a perfect gene pool. Abarbanel’s combination of it with the other factors of miraculous and holy birth consciously subvert its natural Maimonidean sense into an ontological one where Isaac physically assimilates his father’s nature to compound his essential perfection, something which of course was not available to Abraham. In an age when many of his religious compatriots faced a dire challenge to their Jewish identities it is noteworthy that Abarbanel launched his analysis of supreme sacrifice that is the ‘Aqedah with an excursus on perfect Jewishness in the person of Isaac. That perfection consists of circumcision, the most prominent physical sign of Jewishness perma- nently etched in one’s body, and ancestry or a life that constantly proclaims one’s roots. A marrano existence might be compatible with a Maimonidean sense of authenticity that emphasizes internal thought and external ethics but would be an affront to Abarbanel’s Isaacian model of Jewishness. Although Abarbanel’s attitude toward conversos was a complex amalgam of empathy and disdain,17 his distinctly anti-Maimonidean exegesis may have been spurred by what he viewed in part as the conversos’ traitorous behaviour, for they “abandoned their religion and chose to become like the gentiles . . . and the name of Israel would no longer be represented by them.”18 According to B. Netanyahu, Abarbanel considered the conversos’ ultimate goal to have been “a state of complete gentilehood . . . which means also ethnic fusion with the non-Jews to the point of total disappearance.”19 In a sense the willingness of Abraham and Isaac to “disappear”, the latter literally and the former in the obliteration of the future, in order to preserve their Jewishness in their fealty to God offers a formidable antipode to the conversos’ exchange of their identities. The assimilationist trend of the conversos reverses the effects of the ‘Aqedah in another sense. According to Abarbanel its paramount goal did not concern God or Abraham but was:

16 GP, I:16, p. 42. 17 For the most recent study on this issue see Ram Ben-Shalom, “The Typology of the Converso in Isaac Abravanel’s Exegesis,” Jewish History 23:3 (2009): 281–92, who detects a more sympathetic attitude that viewed the conversos as remaining part of the Jewish collective with an important role in messianic redemption through their eventual reintegration. For the debate see the literature cited in footnote 1 therein. 18 Commentary on the Latter Prophets, (CLP) (Jerusalem, 1948), Ezek. 20:32, p. 519. 19 The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain (New York, 1995), 929. 84 james a. diamond

For the benefit of our nation as a whole for because of it they would be a holy seed and escape the control of the heavenly powers and come under the direct providence and guidance of God alone . . . תועלת העקדה לצרכה לא בבחינת האל ית' ולא בבחינת אברהם אלא בעבור תועלת כלל אומתנו אשר בעבורה יהיו זרע קדש ויצאו מתחת ממשלת הכחות השממיות ויהיו מושגחים ומונהגים מהש"י לבדו (1:475).20 The ‘Aqedah privileges the future corporate body of Israel with divine governance and protection that transcends others who are caught within the ambit of astrological forces.21 Just prior to positing this cat- egorical promise of the ‘Aqedah, Abarbanel argues that Isaac’s transformation into a sacrifice is tantamount to sacrificing the material body for the intellect, or that which is eternal and grants “true perfection”. Its spiritual legacy is a quintessentially Maimonidean one: That divine providence is proportionate to intellect rather than governance by nature or heavenly forces for the link and conjunction between man and God is conduct in accord with the intellect. להיות ההשגחה כפי שכלו לא שיהיה מונהג מצד הטבע ומצד כחות הגרמים השממיים כי הקשר והדבקות אשר באדם עם השם הוא בהתנהגו כפי שכלו (1:474).22 However, in the same vein that his Maimonidean biography of Abraham sustained itself until the last two phases in which its Maimonidean strain was seriously compromised, so with the legacy of the ‘Aqedah which is at once Maimonidean in its promotion of intellect as the sole channel of divine providence and anti-Maimonidean in its inherited quality that becomes nationally ingrained. Nowhere does Maimonides distinguish between Jewish providence and gentile providence, treating

20 See also 1:740 where Abarbanel reiterates the link between the historical transition to direct divine governance and Isaac’s circumcision and binding, “for after Isaac was circumcised and bound the transcendent providence bonded with his descendants so that God would be their elohim and they would be His nation.” 21 Abarbanel’s position that Israel uniquely falls under the direct control of the divine umbrella as opposed to other nations that are confined within the astrological ambit of their heavenly hosts is diffused throughout his writings. See for example his comments to Deut. 4:15; Ateret Zekenim, chs. 11,12; Nahlat Avot, 3:19. See also Seymour Feldman’s discussion of Israel’s “special status” among the nations and its companion notion of the special status of the land of Israel in his Philosophy in a Time of Crisis: Don Isaac Abravanel, Defender of the Faith (London, 2003), 134–140. 22 See GP, III:17, for Maimonides’ theory of providence summed up in the assertion that “providence is consequent upon the intellect and attached to it” (p. 474). abarbanel’s exegetical subversion of maimonides’ ‘aqedah 85 the human qua human in the link to God via intellect.23 Experience dictated this philosophy to Abarbanel as a feeble bulwark against the onslaught of Christian oppression and inquisition and so a kernel of Maimonidean intellectualism to which he was attracted is preserved along with the kabbalistic essentialism of Israel’s, and Israel’s alone, unique relationship with God.24

A Future Sacrificed is a Future Gained vs. Reward in Itself

As Abarbanel continues to resolve his customary lengthy list of problems posed by the passage, he cites approvingly the two key pedagogical lessons Maimonides considered the ‘Aqedah narrative to convey in chapter III:24 of his Guide.25 The first is that Abraham’s willingness to comply with the command to slaughter his son, despite his deep attachment to a child that was born to him late in life, demonstrates “to what point love and fear of God reaches.” Second is the absolute confidence prophets have in the veracity of their revelations whose “nature to them is identical to things they grasp with their senses.”

23 A critical source for Maimonides’ universalism outside the Guide is in MT, Laws of Sabbatical and Jubilee Years, 13:13 which considers all human beings capable of aspiring to a state of “holy of holies.” For a book length argument demonstrating this non-essentialist view of Maimonides see Menachem Kellner, Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People (Albany, 1991). Especially pertinent to my argument here is his discussion of Maimonidean providence at pp. 23–26, which he concludes is framed “in terms of human beings (“Adamites”), not in terms of Jews” (p. 25). 24 For an excellent discussion of kabbalah’s ontic distinction betwen Jews and non- Jews, see the first chapter of Elliot Wolfson’s Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (Oxford, 2006), 17–128. Especially pertinent to this study is his observation that kabbalistic ethnocentrism was so pervasive to the point of co-opting the universalistic Maimonidean taxonomy of reason as the essence of humankind to apply specifically to Jews on p. 52. 25 For detailed studies of Maimonides’ understanding of the ‘Aqedah see H. Kasher, “Sufferings without Sin. Meaning of Trial in the Moreh” (Hebrew), Daat 26 (1991): 35–41; Seymour Feldman, “The Binding of Isaac: A Test Case of Divine Foreknowledge,” and the response by J. Cohen, “Philosophical Exegesis in Historical Perspective: The Case of the Binding of Isaac,” in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence, ed. Tamar Rudavsky (Dordrecht, 1985), 109–112; 135–142; A. Nuriel, “Maimonides on Parables Not Explicitly Defined as Such” (Hebrew), Daat 25 (1990): 85–91; James A. Diamond, “Trial as an Esoteric Preface in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed: A Case Study in the Interplay of Text and Prooftext,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 7:1 (1997): 1–30. For a comparative analysis, see A. Van der Heide, “Maimonides and Nahmanides on the Concept of Trial,” in Sobre la Vida y Obra de Maimónides, ed. Jesús Paláez del Rosal (Córdoba, 1991), 305–314. 86 james a. diamond

No greater proof .היה דינו אצלם כדין הענינים המושגים לחושי )1:476( of this can be offered than the willingness of Abraham to “slaughter his cherished son whom he loved as his own life.” His commendation of Maimonides’ analysis of the ‘Aqedah’s objectives is buttressed by applying to it Ecclesiastes’ praise a wise man’s talk brings him favour (10:12) ostensibly accentuating his support for it. However he then introduces a third teaching that “is appropriate to add to them” which, on close examination, undermines the full thrust of Maimonides’ position—the “belief in the immortality of the soul and its spiritual וראוי להוסיף עליהם עוד למוד שלישי יורה עליו ענין עקיד' ”.reward Abarbanel reasons .והוא אמונ' השארו' הנפש ושכרה הרוחני )1:477( that Abraham’s decision to slaughter his son, an act tantamount to erasing his future, would be irrational without a firm anticipation on his part Of the reward due his soul posthumously in return for offering his son as a sacrifice, for because of it he would be privileged with the light of eternal life that is a greater good than children. אבל הית' תקותו בלבד שכר נפשו שיגיע אליו אחרי מותו בשכר שיעלה בנו עולה כי בעבורו יזכה באור החיים הנצחיי שהוא טוב מבנים ומבנות .(1:477) What is apparently presented as a natural extension of Maimonides’ rationale for the ‘Aqedah is in truth an attenuation of its philosophical implications considered dangerous by Abarbanel. By pivoting the ‘Aqedah on the limits of love of God and certitude of prophetic reception Maimonides thoroughly intellectualized the trial. The latter is clear in its vivid endorsement of the credibility of what is essentially an internal noetic process of filtering information through the intellect and the imagination. A Maimonidean love of God is primarily a function of intellect as it is formulated both halakhically and philosophically. Though the topic is a broad one, suffice it for our purposes to cite but a few of those formulations. For instance in his listing of the mitzvot, the precept of loving God, for which Abraham is the outstanding archetype, is defined in terms of understanding in that it consists of “our understanding and apprehending His commandments and actions to the point where we attain supreme pleasure in His apprehension,” and “through intellecting apprehension will be established and pleasure and love will necessarily ensue.”26 His Mishneh Torah

26 Sefer HaMitzvot, ed. Chayim Heller (Jerusalem and New York, 1946), 35. abarbanel’s exegetical subversion of maimonides’ ‘aqedah 87 defines it in terms of knowledge of God’s creation and explicitly draws a direct correlation between love and knowledge, “love is proportional to knowledge, if a little then little and if a lot then a lot.”27 Finally these halakhic definitions are wholly congruent with those in the Guide and self-referenced as “valid only through the apprehension of the whole of being as it is and through the consideration of His wisdom as it is manifested in it.”28 Wary of a thoroughly intellectualized ‘Aqedah, Abarbanel introduces the prospect of reward and afterlife to detract from its Maimonidean abstraction and divert attention toward a more concrete aspect of it that would provide enhanced motivation for the performance of commandments rather than promoting a Judaism that could be perfected by an inner contemplative life. Abarbanel rules out exactly the same fear of the wrath of God as Maimonides, of “being -as a pos ,(מפחד השם שיהרגהו או ירוששהו) ”killed or impoverished sible motivation for Abraham’s compliance, but, where Maimonides’ emphasis is on its absolute altruism, Abarbanel introduces the expectation of a reward, albeit in the afterlife. Abarbanel’s supplemental third teaching reinvents Maimonides’ dual pronged teachings particularly since Maimonides does not only exclude the fear of impoverishment or death as incentives for Abraham’s obedience but also “any hope of a כי אברהם אבינו לא מהר לשחוט יצחק לפחדו מהשם שיהרגהו ”.reward או ירוששהו, אבל כדי שיתפרסם לבני אדם מה ראוי לעשותו בשביל .(GP, III:24, p. 501) אהבת הש"י ויראתו לא לתקות גמול ולא לפחד עונש In fact the very essence of love is its selfless intellectual devotion to God, and, as Maimonides states it in his Mishneh Torah, entails “the pursuit of the truth simply because it is the truth and the good will inevitably ensue.”29 Furthermore Maimonides specifically disqualifies as lovers of God those who act out of the hope of earning “life in the world to come,” or, alternatively, to relieve the angst of being excised from that life.30 Abarbanel subtly preserves the link between simple obedience and eternal life in the guise of augmenting a Maimonidean teaching when in fact it subverts its very advocacy of intellectual

27 MT, Yesodei HaTorah, 2:2; Repentance, 10:6. 28 See GP, III:28, p. 512 and all the references to Maimonides and secondary literature cited by Schwartz in his Hebrew edition of the Guide, p. 519, n. 8. For but one thorough review of the place of love in Maimonides’ oeuvre see ch. 7 of Howard Kreisel, Maimonides’ Political Thought; Studies in Ethics, Law, and the Human Ideal, (Albany, 1999), where he demonstrates that both the MT and the Guide combine in a seamless continuum on the integral connection between love and intellect. 29 MT, Repentance, 9:2. 30 Ibid., 9:1, 4. 88 james a. diamond perfection as an end in itself and the sine qua non of survival in the coming world.

‘Trial:’ An Accomplishment of Reasoned Reflection vs. Emotional Restraint

Abarabanel rationalizes why the divine fiat of the ‘Aqedah alone is designated a “trial” out of all the other trials considered by the Rabbis to have comprised much of Abraham’s latter years. Each can be dually qualified according to the respective vantage points of the commander and the commanded. Though from Abraham’s perspective a command such as the initial Leave your country (Gen. 12:1) launching his biblical career, is a trial in the sense of the word as “banner” or model of commitment and dedication, its primary goal from the divine perspective was not the demonstration of Abraham’s virtues but rather as prepa- ratory to “entering the holy land and establishing possession of it.” (1:478). Only the ‘Aqedah served no other purpose except to “promote Abraham as a banner and model of whom the nations shall inquire.” (Ibid., based on Isa. 11:8). On this particular facet of the ‘Aqedah he surmises that he has honed in on Maimonides’ understanding of it “and I believe this is the opinion of the master the guide (harav hamoreh) זהו דעת הרב המור' בענין העקדה כשיובן) ”.when understood correctly -Ibid.). Although not inconsistent with Maimonides’ dis) (על אמתתו section of the ‘Aqedah, its noted distinction from Abraham’s previous trials shifts the focus away from its Maimonidean intellectualist fulcrum to one of simple unadulterated obedience, thus laying the groundwork for a final assault on its Maimonidean trappings. By distinguishing God’s demand to sacrifice Isaac as a pure nisayon (trial) divorced from any intrinsic telos of prior divine directives which are instrumental in accomplishing certain goals, and absolutely free of any pragmatic use, Abarabanel has subtly incorporated the rabbinic categories of rational mitzvot, or mishpatim,31 and those classified as ḥuqim which have no

31 See for example his comments on Deut. 4:1 and Lev. 25 (p. 155 at bottom of old edition), where he states “when one subdues his psyche to perform the chukim whose rationale is unknown and therefore difficult intellectually, then without a doubt they will observe my mishpatim which are the laws whose rationale human minds can grasp.” For a classic treatment of Abarbanel’s position on the rationale for commandments, see Yitzhaq Heinemann, The Reasons for the Commandments in Jewish Literature (Hebrew), vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 1949), 117–124. abarbanel’s exegetical subversion of maimonides’ ‘aqedah 89 rationale. Maimonides in his Guide categorically repudiates this traditional categorization of the commandments.32 The trials endured by Abraham leading up to the ‘Aqedah are distinguished from it in their purposefulness and their instrumentality in achieving some concrete goal thus mirroring the nature of mishpatim. The ‘Aqedah however lacks this intrinsic rationale requiring an absolute submission of all Abraham’s human capacities, be they emotional or intellectual, to the divine will.33 This critical fault line between Abarbanel and Maimonides can be detected in the subtly nuanced reformulation of the narrative role Maimonides assigned to the three-day journey to Mount Moriah as a cooling off period between the actual command and its performance. That temporal hiatus is the crux of Maimonides’ conception ofthe ‘Aqedah in its near exclusive dedication to reasoned deliberation on Abraham’s part. Without this rather lengthy interregnum between divine command and human compliance, Abraham’s act, as a model response to God’s will, would have appeared impulsive and rash and would have been perceived as “an act of stupefaction and disturbance היה פעולת) (in the absence of exhaustive reflection” (GP, III:24, p. 501 I stress these last words (which in Abarbanel’s .(בהלה בבלתי השתכלות since ,(בבלתי השתכלות Hebrew version of the Guide would have been they convey what Maimonides considered to have been the ‘Aqedah’s essential pedagogical message captured by the literary detail of a three- day journey, an otherwise apparently superfluous detail of its account. That “exhaustive reflection” is broken down further into pensive components that are all imbued with cognitive connotations which inform Abraham’s act with “thought, correct understanding, consideration of the truth of His command, may He be exalted, love of Him, and

32 See GP III:26, pp. 506–510 where this classification of commandments is determined by “those whose utility is clear to the multitude . . . and those whose utility is not clear to the multitude.” If a commandment seems to be purposeless it is due to “a deficiency [that] resides in your apprehension” (p. 507). 33 Though I see this position and others as primarily directed against Maimonidean ones, Solomon Gaon has also argued for the direct influence of Christian theologians as well, and in particular Alfonso Tostado. On this issue for example of obedience to the Law, Gaon claims that Abravanel was responding to Tostado’s Maimonidean-like position in his commentary to Lev. 19 arguing that “while the observance of these laws might be prompted by our natural instincts, we must only keep them because of our love for God and our allegiance to Him.” See The Influence of the Catholic Theologian Alfonso Tostado on the Pentateuch Commentary of Isaac Abravanel (Hoboken, NJ, 1993), 64. 90 james a. diamond

Ibn) במחשבה, ובהשתכלות אמיתי, ובחינת חק מצותו ”.fear of Him Tibbon, part 3, p. 37). Abarbanel’s description of Abraham’s internal thought processes radically undermines Maimonides’ intellectualized account of them by voiding that aspect entirely and replacing reasoned reflection with psychological and emotional accommodation to God’s command that belies any hint of shock induced behaviour. Abraham conducted himself “with patience and great calm for three days with- 34.במתון ובנחת ג' ימים בלי חרטה (out any second thoughts” (1:48 Calmness and patience do not however imply immediate and unflinchingly resolute acceptance of God’s will. Otherwise, for Abarabanel, the three-day timeframe would indeed be otiose. During that period Abraham patiently wrestled with the unfathomable emotional turmoil that must have been elicited by a command to obliterate that which he loved and treasured more than anything else in life. Rather than grapple with the command’s rational credibility, Abraham required the time to combat and subdue the whirl of emotions, including love, empathy, and compassion that are characteristic of father/ (כבש רחמיו) child relationships and so “he suppressed his compassion during those days by various activities without regret or retreat” (1:480) Abarbanel also offers an illustration of this phenomenon where a rash decision with catastrophic consequences was deferred and averted by allowing compassion to surface and overwhelm anger. In that case the exemplar is God who twice expresses the desire to obliterate Israel “in שלא יתאפקו רחמיו לעשות) an instant” but then thinks better of it Abarbanel’s choice here of a paradigm which involves 35.(בהמשך זמן the divine exercise of emotional, rather than intellectual, control further targets the Maimonidean construct of an ‘Aqedah that is anchored in reason. For Maimonides, the one thing that man and God might have in common is intellectual apprehension and it is “because of the divine intellect conjoined in man that it is said of the latter that he is

34 This calm premeditated conduct of the ‘Aqedah carries through even to the climactic moments of the actual binding where the narrative details of building the altar and arranging the wood (Gen. 22:9) again indicate “that his actions were not done in confusion but rather he built the altar and arranged the wood with equanim- and in a pleasing manner as if he had completely resigned himself to (ישוב דעת) ity There is a total commitment of the whole person in his .לבו מיושב עליו )it” )1:484 combined resignation of lev and daat. 35 Exod. 33:5; Num. 15:21. It is noteworthy that the ‘Aqedah is a recurrent liturgical theme that develops for the Jewish New Year where Abraham becomes a model for God who is lobbied to recall how Abraham “overcame his compassion to resolutely carry out your will so should your compassion overcome your anger at us . . .” abarbanel’s exegetical subversion of maimonides’ ‘aqedah 91 in the image of God and in His likeness” (GP, I:1, p. 23). By introduc- ing this temperamental God as a precedent for Abraham’s conduct at such a crucial juncture in Maimonides’ intellectualist reconstruction of the narrative, Abarbanel once again undermines the entire intellectual tenor of the ‘Aqedah by radically shifting the Maimonidean shared ground between man and God to the ethical/emotional realm.

The ‘Aqedah as Mitzvah: A Model of Reason vs. The Surrender of Reason

Abarbanel’s shaping of the three-day journey sharply veers his exegesis in another direction from that of Maimonides toward its decidedly anti-rationalist climax in the definition of the fear of God Abraham demonstrated when finally raising the knife to slaughter his son. Virtually every explication of this “fear” can be viewed as a strategic attack on the fundamental premises of the Maimonidean project to rationalize the commandments. This particular command, which is paradigmatic of the divine command structure as a whole, is thoroughly imbued with the aura of incomprehensibility that reeks with a senselessness regardless of any vantage point from which it is examined, be it commander or commanded. In the case of God, it is a cruel self-defeating order that offends God’s apparent design from both universal and particular perspectives. Firstly, it calls for the eradication of what He previously promoted as an “image of God” and secondly, in this circumstance, for the murder of a human being that He miracu- lously brought into existence. Paralleling its divine illogic, in the case of Abraham, it enjoins the emotional devastation of murdering a son, the love for whom is compounded by his extraordinary biologically defiant birth. Despite its surreal absurdity, “Abraham agreed toper- form the act he was commanded along with all its strangeness and he did not second guess God’s command to investigate and determine why and for what, for it is the way of an authentic worshipper not to inquire about the reasons for mitzvot of his master other than His will that He wills it . . .” והנה אברהם הסכים לעשות זה הפועל המצוה אליו עם כל זרותו ולא הרהר אחר מצות הש' לחקור ולידע למה זה ועל מה זה לפי שמדר' העובד האמתי שלא יבקש טעם למצות אדוניו זולת רצונו שהוא רוצה בכך (1:488) Abarbanel then defines the ideal “fear” of God precisely in terms of its irrationality for this fear would not qualify as its apogee if there were 92 james a. diamond something stronger in the world that could challenge it. Therefore true fear necessarily entails no questioning of God’s character and demands something inimical to the intellect, one should do it out of fear . . . and this applies to the ‘Aqedah, an act that is foreign to the intellect which Abraham agreed to perform without adjudging whether it was appropriate or not. לא תהיה אותה היראה בתכלית מה שאפשר אחר שיש דבר בעולם יותר חזק מן היראה מנגד לה ולכן היה מן ההכרח שהירא אלהים האמיתי לא יהרהר אחר מדותיו כלל ואם יאמר לו הש"י לעשות דבר שהוא זר לשכל מאד יעשהו עכ"פ מצד היראה . . . ומזה הצד שהיה פעל העקד' זר אצל השכל שישחוט האב הזקן את הבן היחיד אשר לו הסכים אברהם עכ"פ לשחטו מאין פנות אם הדבר ראוי או בלתי ראוי. Abarbanel deconstructs and then reconstructs the Maimonidean Abraham whose fear of God is informed by “thought, correct understanding, consideration of the truth of His command”, into its consummate obverse of one “very foreign to the intellect” devoid of any reflection whatsoever as to truth. Abraham’s meteoric rise asthe founding father of Judaism may have been initially stimulated by reason and his rational discovery of a unified deity but it culminates in reason’s defeat and its surrender to an inscrutable transcendent will. For Maimonides, in contradistinction, Abraham’s career is consistently propelled by intellect, anchored at its inception in reason and propagating its conclusions by teaching and maturing into a physical instantiation of those teachings for Just as they followed his correct and useful opinions, namely those that were heard from him, so ought one to follow the opinions deriving from his actions and especially from this action . . . (GP, III:24, p. 502) Abarbanel presents the ‘Aqedah as a kind of practical analogue to the Christian credo quia absurdum where one submits to God’s will not despite but because of its irrationality. His elevation of it as an archetype for the ultimate service of God which is “the purpose of the entire הנה להיות מעלת היראה ”,Torah and the very apex of human perfection אמתית תכלית כל התורה ותכלית מה שאפשר לאדם להשיגו מן השלמות כאמרו ועתה ישראל מה ה' אלהיך שואל מעמך כי אם ליראה )1:488( inverts the Maimonidean perfection defined in terms of the intellect “which consists in the acquisition of the rational virtues” (GP, III:54, p. 635). Here Abarbanel delivers his fatal salvo to the Maimonidean project by citing a biblical prooftext, a strategy exquisitely endemic to Jewish philosophy and theology, that Maimonides adopted as an abarbanel’s exegetical subversion of maimonides’ ‘aqedah 93 anchor text of his enterprise to rationalize the mitzvot. What Abraham accomplished with the ‘Aqedah according to Abarbanel was to set the precedent, the existential model, that concretizes for all of Jewish history what God expects of a Jew—And now Israel, what does God demand of you but fear (Deut. 10:12). Both citations of this verse in the Guide forge an identity between fear inspired worship and that grounded in reason. It first appears within the context of a discussion regarding the equibalance of the mitzvot and an allusion to its full explication to come when the Guide will fully examine the reasons for the commandments. At this point it suffices for Maimonides’ purposes to fault those who consider mitzvot as “burdensome” with “an .(Tibbon 2:83b טעות בהתבוננות) (error in considering them” (II:39 The verse regarding the demand of fear is then cited to corroborate the ease of performing the mitzvot—i.e. God asks of you nothing more than fear—an ease and comfort that can only ensue from a correct understanding of their rationale. Its second appearance is in a preface to the section in the Guide dealing with the reasons for the commandments where it conveys the same message following the proposition of the “utility of every commandment” in inculcating proper beliefs leading to love and fear of God. Again God’s demand in Deut. 10:12 is depicted as all He requires of you is mere fear, that is, once the commandments’ rationale is discerned, compliance is not “fraught with any hardship whatever” (GP, III:29, p. 518). Abarbanel co-opts a verse which underpins Maimonides’ normative rationalism to capture the irrational essence of the ‘Aqedah as a model for all mitzvot thus drain- ing it of its Maimonidean connotations and injecting the vacuum with their exact antithesis. Abarbanel’s exegesis displaces the Maimonidean ease of observing purposeful and rational commands for the onerous and angst-ridden intellectual and emotional submission to pure Will. Although Maimonides is far less consistent on his definition of fear as intellectually based than he is on love, fluctuating in his writings between fear as intellectual awe on the one hand and as dread of divine retribution on the other,36 as Howard Kreisel has noted, his discussion of its role in the ‘Aqedah over all others, especially lends

36 See Howard Kreisel’s comprehensive discussion of this in Maimonides’ Political Thought, supra, especially pp. 258–266. A striking example of this inconsistency is the divergent formulations he offers of it as a commandment between his Book of Commandments, pos #4 and the beginning of MT, 2:2. 94 james a. diamond itself as an endorsement of its intellectual moorings.37 Abarabanel, I believe, discerned this and, given the centrality of the ‘Aqedah in his thought for Jewish history, identity, chosenness, and command structure, he mounted a sustained assault which sought to reverse the current of fear and love from intellect to submission.38 As a component of that assault Abarbanel, in his lengthy discussion proper of fear of God in Deut. 10:12, draws a parallel between Abraham’s obedience at the ‘Aqedah and Moses’ at the burning bush, the other passage in the Guide that advocates most a notion of fear as intellectual awe. For Maimonides, Moses’ hiding of his face for fear of gazing at God (Exod. 3:6) is a symbolic gesture of supreme intellectual humility during the arduous process of acquiring knowledge which at times requires pause and a herculean restraint from prematurely advancing toward its goals. Proper and systematic investigation averts jumping to conclusions, a method which Moses adopts by hiding his face signifying that he did not “strain and impel his thoughts toward the apprehension of the deity,” but instead elegantly posed an existential model that one “should rather feel awe and refrain and hold back until he gradually elevates himself ” (I:5, p. 29). Fear in this case consists of Moses’ subdued approach to intellectual progress and is cast as an essential component of intellectual achievement and understanding God rather than bowing to an inscrutable will. It is therefore by design that Abarbanel cites Moses’ physical gesture together with Abraham’s

37 Kreisel, Maimonides’ Political Thought, 26: “some passages in the Guide may certainly be interpreted as alluding to the notion of fear as intellectual awe, especially Maimonides’ discussion of the binding of Isaac.” Admittedly however, as is endemic to Maimonides’ oeuvre on the whole, even this is not explicit and is subject to interpretation. 38 It is this theological position regarding the mitzvot that underlies Abarbanel’s disagreement with Maimonides’ essentialization of Judaism to thirteen dogmatic principles. His anti-philosophical stand on the Law prevented him from accepting such a reduction of Jewish faith and practice to these thirteen alone. See Abarbanel’s Rosh Amanah, translated by Menachem Kellner (Rutherford, 1983), ch. 24. As Menachem Kellner argues, “His fundamentally critical stance toward philosophy led him to ele- vate every teaching of the Torah to the status of dogma, making philosophical speculation dangerous since mistakes in such speculation might very well cost one his share in the world to come.” See his Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought: From Maimonides to Abravanel (Oxford, 1986), 194–195. Leo Strauss considers Abarbanel’s erasure of any distinctions between fundamental and non-fundamental precepts to be subver- sively anti-philosophical in the extreme that “actually undermines the whole structure of the philosophy of the Jewish law which was built up by Maimonides,” in his “On Abravanel’s Philosophical Tendency and Political Teaching,” in Isaac Abravanel: Six Lectures, supra, 104. abarbanel’s exegetical subversion of maimonides’ ‘aqedah 95 enactment of the ‘Aqedah to illustrate a notion of fear that is motivated by pure loyalty to divine command and terror of estrangement and ’Moses .(כדי שלא לעבור על דברי ולהקציף אותי) eliciting divine anger reticence in hiding his face is not the assumption of an independent intellectual posture but a compliant response to God’s command in the previous verse (“Do not come close” (3:5)), “for he feared looking at Him in reaction to the command so that he should not anger במשה נאמר ויסתר משה פניו כי ירא מהביט אל האלהים כי) ”.Him בעבור שצוהו אל תקרב הלום. ירא מהביט אליו כנגד הצוואה שצוהו לבל -In old edition vol. 3, p. 107).39 Abarbanel’s fear of anger) (יקצוף עליו ing God here is clearly distinguished from fear of punishment, which is an inferior mode of worship. Rather it is simply a fear of offend- ing Him without consideration of material repercussions (p. 108). By combining the ‘Aqedah and Moses at the burning bush, the two most prominent examples in the Guide of fear as intellectual awe, Abarbanel has radically shifted its orientation from reason to simple obedience and opened the door to interpreting the roles of love and fear in Maimonides’ ‘Aqedah in its vein.

‘Aqedah’s Angel: Vision vs. Encounter

Understanding Abarbanel’s lengthy excursus on the ‘Aqedah as a systematic subversion of the Maimonidean ‘Aqedah sheds increasing light האופן) ”on the rationale of offering what he calls a “second approach to the problems posed for God’s omniscience by the apparently (השני illuminating discovery expressed in the divine declaration Now I know that you fear God. Rather than a divine pronouncement, Abarbanel proposes the alternative solution that it is an actual angel addressing Abraham for “they are the words of the angel who is speaking for himself and not on God’s behalf.” As angels according to him can acquire new knowledge, the problem raised with respect to deficiency in divine knowledge disappears. Ingeniously, though syntactically

39 Although Abarbanel vehemently rejects Maimonides’ view of prophecy as a product of natural perfection (see Ibn Tibbon 2:69), when discussing this passage in his commentary on Exodus he manages to at least trace it to one position of a rabbinic debate on the matter which focuses on the merits of Moses’ hiding his face (2:28). See Lawee’s discussion of this as an example of finding “a ‘traditional home’ for Maimonidean views that he strongly disputes.” Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance, 121–122. 96 james a. diamond

in the eureka (ממני) awkward, Abarbanel reads the phrase from me expressed by Now I know that you fear God since you have not with- held your son, your favored one, from me (Gen. 22:12) as apposite the first phrase Now I know that you fear God rendering it “Now I know that you fear God more than me” (1:489). Abarbanel’s alternative solution to the statement’s theological conundrum is far more than simply an extension of any dispute between Abarbanel and Maimonides on the existence of angels as actual living entities. It forms another prong of attack in the stripping away of the ‘Aqedah’s Maimonidean intellectual overlay by targeting what Maimonides considers the peak of natural perfection in the prophetic experience. Within the Maimonidean hierarchy of prophetic aptitude the address of the angel to Abraham in the ‘Aqedah occupies its very summit as The highest of the degrees of the prophets whose states are attested by the prophetic books after the perfection of the rational faculties of the individual considered as necessary by speculation has been established. (GP, II:45, p. 402; emphasis mine) Rationally constituted, this angelic revelation is the culmination of an intellectual process arrived at “after the perfection of the rational faculties” and therefore presents an exemplar, paradigmatic as no other, of Maimonidean naturalistic prophetology. This angel, in Maimonides’ prophetic topography reduces to a metaphor for the inevitable result, barring any unnatural divine interference arresting it, of natural cognitive achievement. As such it is supremely antithetical to Abarbanel’s critique of and antagonism to Maimonides’ theory and his advocacy of prophecy as a supernatural phenomenon that is ultimately contingent on God’s will.40 This second approach which anthropomorphizes the angel as some ontological entity both complements his non-intellectual appreciation of Abraham’s fear and love of God explicated thus far and directly targets another major component of Maimonides’ intellectual

40 For a concise overview of the debate on this issue between Abarbanel and Maimonides see Seymour Feldman, Philosophy in a Time of Crisis, ch. 7, 83–99. See also Alvin Reines, Maimonides and Abrabanel on Prophecy (Cincinnati, 1970). Reines considers Abarbanel’s prophetology the “cornerstone” of his entire thought thereby explaining the passionate tenor of his critique of Maimonides on this issue since he felt that should Maimonides’ naturalism gain dominance, “the system of Judaism sub- scribed to by Abrabanel’s fifteenth-century community, as well as Abrabanel’s personal vision of this system, would stand refuted” (p. lxviii). abarbanel’s exegetical subversion of maimonides’ ‘aqedah 97 construct of the ‘Aqedah.41 It also acts as a buffer against a school of Maimonidean interpreters, which he vigorously opposes as “heresy” (apiqorsut) and a “disgusting opinion most distant from [Maimonides’ intent]” (4:485),42 that views the ‘Aqedah as a vision rather than a historical occurrence precisely because of these angelic intrusions which, for Maimonides, are restricted solely to dream-like psychic states.43

The ‘‘Aqedah’ as Foundation of the Temple: Blind Loyalty vs. Reasoned Obedience

Abarbanel consummates his sustained critique of the Maimonidean ‘Aqedah with his interpretation of the verse traditionally understood to be a dedication by Abraham of the mountain on which the ‘Aqedah

41 This is consistent with Abarbanel’s edorsement of a far greater role the sensual plays than Maimonides allows within prophecies. See Isaac Barzilay’s discussion of Abarbanel’s “sensualized” (nevuah muḥeshet) notion of prophecies in his Between Reason and Faith: Anti-Rationalism in Italian Jewish Thought 1250–1650, supra, 103–109, and especially the list of prophetic signs which Abarbanel takes literally as opposed to Maimonides on p. 108. As he concludes, Abarbanel adopts this position for “To relegate all such acts to the category of the fictitious is to render meaningless an important characteristic of prophetic behaviour.” The ‘Aqedah would be a prime example of this critical distinction between Abarbanel’s and Maimonides’ prophetology. 42 MN, 2:88a; 2:93a. See Reines, Maimonides and Abrabanel on Prophecy, for his translation of Abarbanel’s comments pertinent to the ‘Aqedah at pp. 176–178; 216– 217. Abarbanel’s applies his philological ingenuity to read Maimonides as a proponent of the ‘Aqedah’s historicity interrupted by prophetic visions signified by the angels since Maimonides illustrates the eleventh degree of prophecy with the address of an angel “as Abraham at the time of the ‘Aqedah.” This is interpreted to mean only at the time of the angel’s address as opposed to the other times of the narrative. Similarly Abarbanel sees a commingling of the sensory and the visionary in Abraham’s encounter with the three angels in Elonei Mamre (Gen. 18:3). For an analysis of Abarbanel’s view of Maimonides on this episode as well as the ‘Aqedah see Shaul Regev’s “The Level of Abraham’s Prophecy According to Maimonides, Abravanel, and R. Eliezer Ashkenazi” (Hebrew), in The Faith of Abraham in the Light of Interpretation Throughout the Ages (Hebrew), eds. M. Hallamish, H. Kasher and Y. Silman (Ramat Gan, Isreal, 2002), 182–185. 43 See for example Nuriel, supra, who convincingly argues that Maimonides viewed the entire ‘Aqedah as a prophetic experience rather than an actual historical event. In general for the implications of Maimonides’ prophetology on this issue see Oliver Leaman, “Maimonides, Imagination, and the Objectivity of Prophecy,” Religion 18 (1988): 69–89, who concludes that with respect to prophecy, “We can defuse much of the literalist critique and regard the question ‘but did it really happen?’ as beside the point,” on p. 79. See also Abarbanel’s derisive attack on those who deny the historicity of the ‘Aqedah, in this case specifically Joseph ibn Kaspi, with the stinging rebuke, “I have no idea from what womb this preposterous belief issued,” in MN 1:25b. 98 james a. diamond took place as the future site of the Temple: And Abraham named that site Adonai Yireh whence the present saying “on the mount of the Lord ויקרא אברהם שם המקום ההוא יקוק) (there is vision” (Gen. 22:14 As an attractive alternative 44.(יראה אשר יאמר היום בהר יקוק יראה Abarbanel partially adopts the Aramaic Targum Onkelos’ rendering of the first part of the verse as recording a prayer offered by Abraham there (sham) rather than a declaration of a name (shem), transforming it into And Abraham petitioned there. He then abandons Onkelos’ translation of the remaining part of the verse, here future generations will worship, differing on the precise content of Abraham’s supplication. Rather than an allusion to the future Temple, Abarbanel understands the prayer as a plea to God “not to restrain him from sacrificing Isaac even after the ram, otherwise His design for his devotion will היה תכלית תפלתו ותחנתו שלא ימנענו) (not be established” (1:491 מהעלות את יצחק גם אחר האיל כי לולי זה לא תאמן כונתו ורצונו A syntactically distorted verse emerges which has Abraham .(בעבודתו appealing to God to take note (Adonai Yireh) of what will be seen by others to have transpired on the mountain (on the mount of the Lord it will be seen) “that I did not actually bind my son and my original שיאמרו היום הזה) ”intentions will be perceived as vain and deceptive מכל בני אדם והוא שלא עקדתי את בני ושכל כוונתי הית' שוא ודבר For Abarbanel, Abraham’s prayer on the mountain is the vocal .(כזב expression of the formidable commitment to God’s will demonstrated by his resolute conduct toward the physical binding of Isaac though the liturgical motivation has altered somewhat. His dedication is inde- fatigable to the point where, even once God has relieved him of this horrific responsibility, his prayer reflects an overwhelmingly obsessive concern for God’s honour whose integrity might be compromised by aborting the ‘Aqedah’s coup de grace. Abarbanel’s deference to Onkelos in its allusion to Maimonides’ own endorsement of Onkelos’ version of this verse is a final component in the methodical debilitation and rehabilitation of Maimonides’ intellectualist reconstruction of the ‘Aqedah. As a preface to his rationale for that class of commandments concerned with the Temple, Maimonides offers a historical account which traces the origins of the Temple to this liturgical stage of the ‘Aqedah where Abraham reoriented the direction of prayer toward the West as a graphic rejection

44 See for example b Berakhot 62b; Sifrei, Deut. 28; Rashi on the verse and, for Abarbanel himself elsewhere, see Yeshuot Meshiho II: Iyun 3, ch. 4. abarbanel’s exegetical subversion of maimonides’ ‘aqedah 99 of its primary pagan cultic focus of the Sun in the East. Maimonides then cites the same Onkelos in support of the originating moment of the Temple location, For Abraham had recommended to them that that place should be a house of worship, just as the translator sets forth when he says: Abraham worshipped and prayed in that place and said before the Lord: Here will worship the generations . . . (GP, III:45, p. 575) Underpinning Abraham’s establishment of the locus of monotheistic prayer is what informs the entire Judaic sacrificial cult which is the extirpation of idolatry by a radical subversion of its ritual and ideology. Abraham’s pioneering prayer at the ‘Aqedah imbues all the mitzvot relating to sacrifices and Temple with their overarching rationale since Those laws concerning sacrifices and repairing to the Temple were given only for the sake of the realization of this fundamental principle [“apprehending Me and not worshipping someone other than Me”]. It is for the sake of that principle that I transferred these modes of worship to My name so that the trace of idolatry be effaced and the fundamental principle of My unity be established. (GP, III:32, p. 530) In keeping with his methodical displacement of Maimonides’ reason- anchored ‘Aqedah for a reason-subordinated one Abarbanel radically subverts its final portrait of Abraham as founder of the future Temple shaped by the pragmatic goal of uprooting idolatry and inculcating monotheism in its place. Abarbanel’s appropriation of this Aramaic exegesis disengages Abraham’s sacrifice from its rationalist foundations in Maimonides in favor of a sacrifice undertaken as a gesture of pure unadulterated fealty and subservience to an inscrutable will. Abarbanel instantiates Abraham’s life in its alternative dimensions of obeisance to God’s will as the precursor of the formalized normative theological jurisdiction his posterity will be subject to in its summa- tion as conditioned by my charges, my commandments, my laws, and -Gen. 26:5). Abarbanel clas) שמרתי מצותי חקותי ותורתי my teaching sifies various aspects of Abraham’s religious life and compliance with God’s dictates under these different headings synchronizing the Torah to these facets of Abraham’s biography: וישמור משמרתי ששמר משמר' אמונתו בהיותו קורא בשם י"י ומפרסם אמונתו לעיני העמים. ואמר מצוותי על המילה ומה שצוה שיגרש את ישמעאל. ואמר חקותי על העקדה שעקד את יצחק ואחר כך עקד את האיל במקומו שהיה אצלו כל זה חקים וגזרת מלך (1:538). 100 james a. diamond

The theological divide between him and Maimonides expresses itself immediately with the partitioning of my charges as encompassing those acts which declare the name of God and publicize belief in Him throughout the world. What Maimonides considers the overarching rationale of the entire Torah, and indeed Abraham’s declaring the name of God is his epigraphic motto for many of his works, Abarbanel relegates to but one facet of Abraham’s relationship with God. He then cements further all the theological implications his conception of the ‘Aqedah has for Jewish observance in the bifurcation of commandments (mitzvot) and laws (ḥuqim) along the traditional lines of rationality. The former refer to circumcision and the expulsion of Ishmael, each of which are directed toward some utilitarian goal while the latter refer to “the ‘Aqedah when he bound first Isaac and then the ram in his place since for him these were all ḥuqim and royal decrees.” It is noteworthy that Abarbanel relates the plural of ḥuqim to both the binding of Isaac and of his animal replacement for it portends the non-rationality of the entire cultic system to be instituted at Sinai. Abarbanel’s osten- sive defence of Maimonides’ historical rationale for sacrifices else- where45 must therefore be read in light of this integral link between the ‘Aqedah and the sacrificial system and tempered somewhat by it. For Abarbanel the very apogee of religious devotion as represented by the ‘Aqedah consists of pure obedience stripped of any rationalization while, for Maimonides, the normative ideal is captured by that which preceded Sinai in both Abraham’s life and in pre-Sinaitic revelation for “in the first legislation given to us there was nothing at all concerning burnt-offerings and sacrifices” (GP III:32, p. 530). Abarbanel’s declared interpretative stance vis-à-vis Maimonides of “the good we accept and the bad we do not”46 includes also the strategy of accepting good, but a good that is so revamped as to be liberated of all that theologically offends without explicit rejection of the bad.

45 See his Commentary, Introduction to Leviticus. 46 Letter to Saul HaKohen, 11v. “FROM MY FLESH I ENVISION GOD”: SHEM ṬOV IBN SHAPRUṬ’S EXEGESIS OF JOB 19:25–27

Libby Garshowitz

The interpretation of Job 19:25–27 poses contextual, historical, theological, philosophical and exegetical problems to scholars of different faiths. At issue are the difficulties in the interpretation of key words and phrases in these verses, “from my flesh I envision, or imagine, (ʾeḥezeh) God . . . my redeemer/advocate lives” (goʾali ḥai), as well as the overall context of these verses. Job, despite his emaciated physical state and mental turmoil throughout most of the chapters of the book bearing his name, maintains his blamelessness in the face of his accus- ers’ verbal attacks. He blames God for all that has befallen him and his supposed friends for stressing that there is no punishment without sin, that God is just and that eventually everyone, both good and bad, receives his just reward.1 This has been the wisdom of the ages. Yet throughout, while maintaining his innocence and God’s injustice, Job proclaims that “from my flesh I envision, or imagine, God”, reflecting, inter alia, his continuous hope for some type of future personal advocate who will vindicate him and proclaim him “just” and “innocent”. Job wants to summon God to a “trial” (mishpat)̣ 2 where he can interrogate Him for his, in Job’s opinion, undeserved ills, yet he knows instinctively that God will not answer. Some medieval Jewish exegetes (Rashi, Targum, Naḥmanides, Gersonides),3 ascribe the term “redeemer” or advocate (goʾel) to God, others (Saadia, Ibn Ezra),4 to a

1 See Job 15:17–18; 19:6–11. 2 Job 9:15. 3 Rashi’s (1040–1105) interpretation is somewhat cryptic, saying . . . va-ʾani yadaʿti goʾali ḥai li-paraʿ mimmeni ve-hu yitqayem ve-yaʿamod, leaving open the possibility that Job is anticipating a human saviour; however, commentators agree that Rashi appears to support the explanation that God will be Job’s advocate. Targum: u-mi-bis- ri ʾeḥmi tuv ʾelaha; Gersonides (1288–1344) at Job 19:29: ve-yadaʿti haʾaḥaron ʾasher ʿal ʿafar ve-hu ha-shem yitbarakh, that is, God is Job’s advocate. 4 For God as goʾel see, for example, Psalms 19:15; 119:154. On the meaning of the term goʾel in biblical commentaries and literature, see Saadia (882–942): “favoured of God” in Lenn E. Goodman, The Book of Theodicy: Translation and Commentary on the Book of Job by Saadiah Ben Joseph Al-Fayyumi (New Haven and London, 1988), 288 102 libby garshowitz human figure; some Christian exegetes (Jerome, Ambrose) viewed Job as the prototype of God’s incarnation in Jesus and even understood these verses as prefiguring immortality, salvation and resurrection. Jerome (ca 347–420),5 on the basis of the Septuagint (LXX), adum- brates the figure of Job in Jesus,6 as does Clement of Rome (80–140) in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter 26.7 The later Abner of Burgos (ca 1270–1347)8 who, after his apostasy took the name of Alfonso of Valladolid, also attributed the persona of Job in Job 19:26 to Jesus, saying: “God will clothe himself in flesh but the wicked will flay his body,” a not so oblique reference to the Jews’ punishment of Jesus, which they deserved for their failure to recognize Jesus as savior and messiah.9 This paper examines Shem ̣ovT ben Isaac Ibn Shaprut’ṣ reading of Job 19:25–27. Ibn Shaprut ̣(ca 1340–after 1405) examines Job’s plight in chapters six and fifteen of his ʾEven Boḥan, The Touchstone, a polemic tract composed primarily to stem the tide of conversion among his fellow Jews by inculcating in them the teachings of Judaism.10 According to the biblical text of Job 19, Job wants justice (mishpat),̣ with the aid of an advocate (goʾel) who will plead his innocence in a court of law. For Jewish exegetes, such as Ibn Shaprut,̣ Jesus was not

and 291; Ibn Ezra: “I truly wish to know that my ‘redeemer’ who speaks favourably on my behalf lives today or will be the last who will arise.” See also the article, James K. Zink, “Impatient Job: An Interpretation of Job 19:25–27”, JBL 84 (1965): 147–152. 5 See Jerome, PL 26, col. 619: Job . . . figuram Christi portavit; LXX: “He bore the figure of the messiah (Christ)”. See also Robert Eisen, The Book of Job in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Oxford, 2004), 40–41, who notes that Job’s sufferings are indeed a test that will bring future reward although Job is not aware of this. 6 LXX: “For I know that he is eternal, who is about to dissolve me on earth, to raise again this skin of mine which draws up these things. For from the Lord those things have been done to me, and no other; and which have all been done to me in my bosom.” 7 See 1 Corinthians 15:12–20. See also Epistle to the Corinthians 26:2, 3 in Clément de Rome, Épître aux Corinthiens, Introduction, Texte, Traduction, Notes et Index par Annie Jaubert (Paris, 1971), 144–145; Andreas Lindemann, Die Clemensbriefe. Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 17. Die apostolischen Väter (Tübingen, 1992), 85 and 90. 8 Abner of Burgos, Mostrador de Justicia, ed. Walter Mettmann, Band II (Kapitel VI–X), 178v, n. 203. Abner, rabbi, physician, who was also schooled in qabbalistic and philosophical studies, wrote several diatribes against his former fellow Jews. After his conversion he became a minor sacristan in the Christian church. 9 EB 15:2, around n. 34. 10 Chapter fifteen was appended to the work some years after the completion of the original text. This paper is based on Ms. Plut.2.17. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. The publication of this edited manuscript is forthcoming. “from my flesh i envision god” 103 the Jews’ advocate, redeemer or even a viable candidate for messiah. For our author, humanity can be redeemed by right-doing,11 not belief in Jesus, whose advent had brought nothing but wars, extended exile, misery and suffering for Jews. For Jews, Jesus was human, not divine; therefore, Job’s words in Job 4:17, “can humans be more righteous than God,”12 lends credence to Ibn Shaprut’ṣ contention that Jesus was human, not divine.13 According to Ibn Shaprut’ṣ reading of Job’s words in 4:20, “from morn until evening they are crushed; without anyone paying attention, they perish forever” (mi-boqer la-ʿerev yukattu, mi- beli mesim la-nesaḥ ̣ yoʾvedu) this verse signals that humanity’s perdition is eternal (nisḥ ̣i), thus repudiating Christian belief in Jesus’ endless powers of deliverance, as well as hinting to Jewish would-be apostates that this new belief of theirs for eternal salvation in Christianity is for naught. Furthermore, “can humans be more righteous than God” is Job’s reply to Eliphaz’s taunts: “Just recall, did an innocent person ever die?”14 In this way Ibn Shaprut,̣ despite the deteriorating state of the Spanish Jewish communities, reiterates his firm belief that God is a righteous judge (dayyan ʾemet); it is we humans who are deficient in understanding his ways in this world. Our author does not seem to question the accuracy of this statement. Meanwhile, Job is completely unaware, as are his acquaintances, that his actual adversary has been the Satan (ha-sataṇ ), with God’s permission.15 God had ordered the Satan, during the latter’s verbal jousts with him about Job’s gratuitous (ḥinnam) piety and God’s thus far enduring, all-encompassing protection, “just preserve [Job’s] nefesh, ‘life’ or ‘soul’ (akh et nafsho shemor).”16 Neither being a party to, nor knowledgeable about, the wager between God and the Satan, Job had no choice but to maintain his innocence as one who, during his lifetime, championed the poor, worshiped God and led, in his opinion, a blameless life, which his friends indeed acknowledged. In the depths

11 See EB, 6:1 and n. 8: ha-saddiq̣ yivashaʿ be-sidqọ . 12 Job 4:17: ha-ʾenosh me-ʾeloah yisdaq̣ ? I read this verse in this comparative manner rather than “can humans be acquitted by God?” This comparative reading suits Ibn Shaprut’ṣ understanding of Jesus as human, rather than divine and expects a negative reply to this rhetorical question. 13 EB, 6:1 and n. 8. 14 Job 4:7. 15 Job 1:12: raq ʾelav ʿal tishlaḥ yadekha, God’s first injunction to the Satan forbid- ding him to do any physical harm to Job. See also the next note. 16 Job 2:6. 104 libby garshowitz of his emotional despair and his physical afflictions to the point of death, estranged from remaining family, friends, servants and even strangers,17 Job believed that someday he would see justice done: “I know for certain my vindicator (goʾali) lives.” That vindicator, for Ibn Shaprut,̣ at the end of days, is God.18 Our author cites as proof the following verses: “They will perish but you [God] stand [eternally]!”19 And, “On that day God alone will be exalted!”20 It is as though Job insists, “No matter what mortal will arise in the future, claiming to be a vindicator, I have no vindicator but God, despite his unjustified attacks on me.” Job’s complaints revolve around God’s (in)justice and his own, as well as all humankind’s, inability to fathom God’s ways, beyond human comprehension. Nevertheless, despite his perfunctory performance of sacrifices for his own sake and for that of his family, in case they have forgotten to do so, Job does acknowledge God’s both destructive and creative powers: “He alone has stretched out the heavens and trod on the waves of the sea . . . performing limitless deeds.”21 In recognizing God’s wonders, wisdom and might Job acknowledged his own helplessness and lack of understanding. Throughout the centuries scholars have dealt with the book of Job in different ways—in the context of God’s actions in the universe, whether they are just or unjust, the significance of divine providence, the speculative notions of the success of the sinner and the pain of the pious,22 and the source and meaning of evil, among others. Although Job does not know that it is not God who has instigated all the evil actions that have deprived him of his wealth and his children but the machinations of the Satan, his subsequent criticism of God’s actions is

17 See, for example, Job 19:13–19. 18 Such is the understanding of contemporary commentators. See, for example, Robert Gordis, The Book of God and Man: A Study of Job (Chicago and London, 1965), 262–263. 19 Psalms 102:27: hemah [the world] yoʾvedu ve-ʾatta taʿamod. David Qimhi (Radaq, 1160–1235) interprets this verse: ve-ʾatta qayyam le-ʿolam: You [God] exist eternally. 20 Isaiah 2:11: ve-nisgav YHWH levado ba-yom ha-hu. 21 Job 9:8, 10: noteh shamayim levado ve-dorekh ʿal bamotei yam . . . ʿoseh gedolot ʿad-ʾeyn ḥeqer. 22 See bBerakhot 7a; Mishnah ʿAvot, 4:15 in Pirke Aboth, The Ethics of the Talmud: Sayings of the Fathers, ed. R. Travers Herford (1962); Moses ben Naḥman (Naḥmanides, 1190–1274), Commentary on the Book of Job (Hebrew), in Kitevei Ramban, ed. Hayyim Dov Chavel, vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 1963), 19–128, esp. 19–28. On different interpretations of the Book of Job see, for example, Robert Gordis, The Book of God and Man: A Study of Job (Chicago and London, 1965) and Eisen, The Book of Job in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. “from my flesh i envision god” 105 nevertheless astonishing. His criticism is rather candid for a suppos- edly pious believer who had daily performed religious rituals, if somewhat perfunctorily and mechanically, even arranging family feasts for his children. Rationalists interpreted verses 19:25–27 rather differently from previous Jewish and Christian exegetes.23 One of the intentions of Moses Maimonides (1138–1204) and his followers, among them Ibn Shaprut,̣ is to teach that humanity’s purpose in this world is not merely to perform faith-based commandments (misvoṭ ) mechanically, although such performance may bring health, welfare, and material goods (as they did for Job initially), but rather to know God intellectually and to reflect upon issues (e.g. mircacles and creation, individual and collective providence, etc.) with cogency and rigor. According to rationalists, humanity’s purpose in this world, ultimately, is to know oneself (Ar., nafs; Heb, nefesh). All of these connotations denoting the word nefesh signify that humankind has the capability to intellectualize God, to know that He is, for humankind, invisible, indivisible and unknowable, the creator of the world and its wonders—omniscient and omnipotent. Yet humankind is not freed of the obligation to try to know this unknowable divinity. It is Ibn Shaprut’ṣ arguments throughout his ʾEven Boḥan that the wonders of creation testify to God’s existence. Knowledge of God, the pursuit of good and the eschewing of evil would lead to observance of the commandments, the ability to discern the meaning and attainment of divine providence and hence, inter alia, the prospects of suitable rewards. Most importantly, it is Ibn Shaprut’ṣ intent to further the relationship and understanding between the human and the divine, as was attempted in the book of Job. Job’s question of his supposed comforters, often alluded to in Ibn Shaprut’ṣ chapters on the book of Job: ʿad ana togiun nafshi,24 “how long will you continue to torment me,” leaves his readers with the impression that Job so despairs of his life (nefesh) that he is prepared for the imminent death for which he had prayed earlier.25 Ibn Shaprut,̣ however, accepts Maimonides’ explanation that Job’s nefesh, life, essence, soul, was indeed “touched”, positively though, equating

23 See “Impatient Job,” JBL 84. See also, for example, the excellent expositions of these rationalists in Robert Eisen’s The Book of Job in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. 24 Job 19:2. 25 Job 3:1–11. 106 libby garshowitz

“nefesh,” with self, with the acquisition of some measure of self-knowledge, or essence, as we shall see. Job is described in the prologue as being “honest, upright, God- fearing and eschewing from evil” (ʾish tam ve-yashar vi-yireʾ ʾelohim ve-sar me-raʿ), thus lacking the characteristics that later rationalists would want displayed: knowledge or erudition in the customs of the world and, specifically, knowledge of God which ought to lead to correct beliefs and right-doing. It is only in Job chapters 38–39 when God speaks directly to Job out of the whirlwind (seʿara) and asks Job where was he when [God] laid the foundations of the world, “do you know?”26 that Job realizes the limitations of his own knowledge and understanding. It is only when God decries Job’s lack of perception (bina), skill or wisdom (ḥokhma),27 and intellect (daʿat) as God lays out in a powerful, beautiful eulogy the awesomeness of creation and nature that Job realizes that his knowledge of God’s power—and the potent, divine forces marshaled in creating the world—was deficient, if not completely lacking. Job finally admits that up until now he had no correct knowledge of God28 but now, “I know that you are omnipotent” (ki khol-tukhal). Unfortunately, God’s rhetorical questions fail to answer Job’s plaints of injustice through undeserved cruelties. But the omission of Job’s original charges against God only increases Job’s, and his companions’, incomprehension and serves to enhance God’s inscrutable nature. Job, however, appears to be assuaged by God’s mastery over the universe and nature. The various verb and noun forms of bina, daʿat and shemaʿ, as in the phrase, “I have heard about you (le-shemaʿ ozen shemaʿtikha) but now I see you” (atta ʿeini raʾatekha) . . . “therefore I recant and repent in humility (lit. dust and ashes)” (ʿal ken ʾemʾas ve-niḥamti ʿal ʿafar ve-ʾefer)29 allow Job’s readers to know that indeed Job has changed from a naïf whom we encountered in the prologue to someone who

26 Job 38:4. 27 Job 38:18, 20, 21, 33 and throughout this chapter. Ironically, in Job 4:21 it is Eliphaz who states: “their tent cord pulled up, they die without wisdom,” implying perhaps that humanity’s lifespan is too short to acquire the wisdom necessary to know what it is that they must eschew in order to garner a pain-free life. 28 Job 42:1–2. 29 Job 42:5–6. For this translation for ‘dust and ashes’ see the suggestion and examples in Norman Whybray, Job (Sheffield, England, 1998), 171. “from my flesh i envision god” 107 finally comprehends that he does not comprehend!30 Job realizes that he has been mistaken in whatever concepts he had about God or himself. Ironically, however, it is Bildad who has previously stated that “surely these are the dwellings of the wicked, and this is the place of one who knows not God,”31 implying that Job is evil because he does not comprehend God or his ways. It is interesting that it is Bildad who has equated evil with lack of knowledge of God since his is the traditional point of view that the wicked are punished whereas the innocent are rewarded. But Job has taken ownership of his own problems: in 19:4–5 he states: “If indeed I have erred (shagiti), then the error is mine (meshugati),” acknowledging, perhaps, that he may not be as innocent as he believes; he is utterly confused as to what is happening to him and why, as well as depressed at his acquaintances’ ongoing sniping and finger-pointing. In describing Job’s lack of knowledge about God, Ibn Shaprut ̣ is aware that attaining self-knowledge as a means of “knowing” God and his ways underlies the concept that self-knowledge is necessary to achieve harmony of body and soul and subsequent harmony between man and God, a truth that Job initially lacked throughout his mental and physical anguish. “To know,” according to Maimonides, is to let others know about God’s might and his teachings. As well, Maimonides had used God’s “testing” of the Israelites in the Sinai wilderness to determine whether they would follow God’s teachings and instructions despite their travails;32 similarly God, through the Satan, “tests” Job: will Job be able to withstand the cruel indignities to his person, to the point of death, and yet remain faithful, optimistic and true to God as before? The ultimate test for Maimonides is God’s “testing” of Abraham and concludes that there is no end to the testing of humankind,33 Maimonides states: “Pleasure blunts courage.”34

30 Compare “tam ʾani, loʾeda nafshi . . . ʾemʾas ḥayyai,” “I’m a tam, simple, (rather than ‘innocent or honest’ as earlier translated) person, I don’t even know myself, I lament my life” (9:21). 31 Job 18:21. According to Maimonides in Guide of the Perplexed (MN) 3:23 Bildad represents the Mu’tazilite point of view, i.e., that the wicked are punished for their wrongdoing. 32 Deuteronomy 8:16, for example, the ‘manna’ that descended from heaven. 33 Genesis 22: the story of the ʿAqeda. See Maimonides, MN, 3:24 where he declares that there is no limit to how love and reverence for God and obedience to him can be measured. 34 Maimonides, MN, 3:24. See also Eisen, The Book of Job in Medieval Jewish Philosophy, 44–48 and 72–77, wherein Eisen analyzes Maimonides’ reading in his MN, 108 libby garshowitz

One of Ibn Shaprut’ṣ explications of Job’s words in the verse, u-mi- besari ʾeḥezeh ʾeloah,35 “from my flesh I envision, or imagine, God,” leads him to explore the meaning of the Delphic oracle, “Know thyself and know thy God,” or, “he who knows himself knows his God.”36 According to Ibn Shaprut,̣ we humans are unable to fathom God’s attributes (toʾarei ha-ʾel) unless we liken and compare ourselves to him, first, by perfecting our personal qualities since our nefesh, soul, or essence, or life is a microcosm (luaḥ mequsṣ aṛ ):37 its traits are universal. By knowing our own nefesh-soul, we can eventually know and understand all that the acquisition of intellectual knowledge enables us to know, as our Sages stated:38 . . . the soul is comparable to God: God fills the entire world, as the soul fills the body; God is invisible, as is the soul, God is pure, as is the soul; God dwells in the inner sanctum, (be-ḥaderei hadarim) as does the soul.” Human beings are composed of mortal body and immortal soul. Harmony of body and soul is absolutely necessary for humanity to know, through study, reflection and introspection, its own perfections and imperfections, which it must correct; both body and soul are mutually inclusive: they influence each other. Then a person, whose soul and body are wholly integrated and one, can come to know the magnificence of God’s creation, as Job does eventually. Such is the thread that Ibn Shaprut ̣ weaves throughout his ʾEven Boḥan: the more perfect one’s knowledge of self, the more capable he is of gaining knowledge and comprehension of God’s activities in the universe. Ibn Shaprut ̣ states: “out of the perfect arrangement of one’s body and limbs, it is easier to understand and apprehend God’s cosmos.” Deficiency is humanity’s dilemma, not God’s. Is there a problem with equating the harmony of mortal body and immortal soul with an immortal deity?39 The idea of God becoming incarnate in Jesus, according to some Christian and apostate

3:17–18, 51, his discussion of providence and the difficulties encountered when one reads Job on an exoteric, not esoteric, level; Hannah Kasher, “The Image and Views of Job in the Guide of the Perplexed” (Hebrew), Daʾat 15 (1985): 81–89. 35 Job 19:26. 36 See Alexander Altmann, “The Delphic Maxim in Medieval Islam and Judaism” in Studies in Religious Philosophy and Mysticism (Ithaca, NY, 1969): 1–40, esp. 1–10. 37 EB 1:6 and n. 26. 38 bBerakhot 10a. 39 Throughout this work Ibn Shaprut ̣ disparages Jesus and Christianity as displacement of the Jewish people, the Torah and divine protection. “from my flesh i envision god” 109 exegesis,40 was repugnant to Ibn Shaprut.̣ Throughout his ʾEven Boḥan, he disputes both the divinity and messiahship of Jesus. He includes a Christian reading and refutation of Eliphaz’s “thoughts and night visions (be-seʿipim me-ḥezyonot lyela), a wind (ruaḥ) passed by me . . . it stood, I didn’t recognize its appearance (marʾehu), [I beheld] a “shape” (temuna), silence, then I heard a still quiet voice,”41 which the Christian interlocutor reads as a reference to Jesus and the Holy Spirit.42 Point, counterpoint! Ibn Shaprut ̣ retorts with an equally cryptic passage: “Great is the power of the prophets. As did they, we must liken the living being or form (surạ ) to its creator (yoserọ ).43 By lik- ening God’s creations to the Creator Ibn Shaprut ̣ nullifies Eliphaz’s mysterious “night apparitions” as auguring Jesus’ divinity with concrete text-based evidence of God’s and humankind’s interrelationship, unequal as it may be. Following one of Maimonides’ explanations of prophecy44 (nevuʾa), Ibn Shaprut ̣ states that Eliphaz saw no form, neither God revealed nor God concealed, incarnate in Jesus; rather, he heard voices, as in a prophetic vision. Ibn Shaprut ̣ neither allows nor implies that physicality can be attributed to God, either in the person of Jesus according to apostates’ exegesis or under any circumstance: the image (demut) and apparitions (marʾeh)45 Eliphaz saw are just those, images and apparitions similar to what the prophet Ezekiel had envisioned, or imagined, seated on the heavenly throne.46 Imagination is what one conjures up in one’s mind and can be false or misleading;47 knowledge, on the other

40 On the various arguments regarding the monophysite and dual nature of Jesus see, for example, Jaroslav Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700) (Chicago and London, 1974), 37–90. 41 Job 4:12–14. 42 Job 4:16; EB, 6:1, around n. 15. The biblical text reads: “It stood, but I did not recognize its appearance, an image (temuna) [appeared] before my eyes.” Jerome, PL 26, col. 619: Job . . . figuram Christi portavit. See Maimonides, MN, 2:44 where he explicates that prophecy occurs in a ‘vision’ (marʾeh) or ‘envisioning’ (ḥazon) a parable (mashal) in which the prophet converses with God. Such was the Christian’s use of Eliphaz’s vision: he heard the still small voice, without seeing any surạ (form). 43 EB, 6:1 and n. 28 on Bereshit Rabba, 27:1. See also Maimonides, MN, 1:46 on Ezekiel 1:26: “all forms which the prophets envisioned are created by God.” 44 MN 2:44. 45 Psalms 102:27. 46 Ezekiel 1:26. Demut kisse, ʿveʿal demut ha-kisse demut ke-marʾeh ʾadam ʿalav mi-le-maʿalah. 47 In EB 1:4 and n. 35. Ibn Shaprut, following Maimonides, describes the phantas- magoria that the imagination or the imaginative faculty can play, such as a “an impos- sibly large flying horse, inlaid with onyx (shoham) and half topaz” (tarshish). 110 libby garshowitz hand, is accessible through profound study of God’s ways and attributes. Humans, in their helplessness, are unable to fathom completely the relationship between envisioning God’s image and knowledge of the mysteries of creation unless they can internalize and understand through their essences (nefesh) God’s traits, which are the basis of this passage; hence, “great is the vision of the prophets who liken the (created) form to its Creator.” According to Ibn Shaprut,̣ Job’s parable (mashal)—“envisioning” or “imagining” God through the makeup of his own wasted body, flesh and limbs may allow him to comprehend the incomprehensible: the power of the divine and his creation. Returning to the problem of Job’s need for an advocate (goʾel) to clear his name and restore him, if possible, to his former prosperous state, Ibn Shaprut,̣ too, needs to assuage his readers’ fears in the face of the disasters that had befallen them. As previously stated, in chapter 6 of ʾEven Boḥan, Ibn Shaprut ̣ identifies this advocate as God, a righteous judge . . . “who will rise48 . . . and be exalted.”49 Moreover, out of the depths of his despair Job is able to say: “even now, in the heavens, is my witness, and my signatory—in the skies” (gam ʿatta hinneh va-shamayim ʿedi ve-sahadi ba-meromim), still hoping for vindication and justice, hopefully from God himself, before whom Job weeps in despair, knowing though that his death is imminent.50 However, in ʾEven Boḥan chapter fifteen, written to countermand Abner’s Sefer Neʾasot (Book of Invectives),51 it seems rather strange that Ibn Shaprut ̣ continues to blame God, through Job and his ostensible “companions,” for ongoing persecutions of him, his fellow professing Jews and future generations. But just as Job appeared to be of two minds in his relationship to God, both blaming him while hoping for future vindication, Ibn Shaprut ̣ seems to display a rather similar ambivalence to the situation in his and other Spanish communities, the loci of Jews’ persecutions. It is possible that Ibn Shaprut ̣ now blames God’s “hiding his counte- nance” (hastarat panav) or care from the Jewish people, as he had from

48 Whereas Saadia and Ibn Ezra believed the goʿel to be a human figure in contrast to Rashi who believes the advocate is God. 49 Isaiah 2:11. 50 Job 16:19–20. 51 As far as is known this work is no longer extant. Abner himself, in this work cited by Ibn Shaprut,̣ admits that these explanations are allegorical (naʾasim be-derekh derash) . . . not literal (peshatha-ketuviṃ ); nevertheless, although these passages are to be understood allegorically, Abner interprets them christologically. “from my flesh i envision god” 111

Job due to adverse astrological configurations at the time of Job’s birth, saying:52 ʾeres ̣ nitnah be-yad rashaʿ, penei shofetehạ yekhaseh, “the land is controlled by evil people, (t)he(y) are blind, lacking impartiality,”53 in opposition to Eliphaz’s statement,54 “only to the wise alone has the earth been given.” Similarly, there no longer seemed to be providence, either individual or collective, for the Jewish people in Spain, a stipu- lation which Ibn Shaprut ̣ had been advocating throughout his ʾEven Boḥan for those who continue to adhere to Jewish teachings and faithfulness to God. The millennium-long existence of Jewish life in Spain was coming to an ignominious end. Gone were the Jewish advocates in the royal Spanish courts. Now the Jews were persecuted by both Church and State as well as by their apostate former coreligionists, many of whom had assumed powerful roles both in the courts and the Church and were composing vile polemic tracts against the Jews, castigating them and their beliefs. Throughout his ʾEven Boḥan, Ibn Shaprut ̣ maintains that there is divine intervention or providence, both individual and collective, the former dependent on an individual’s perfected intellect, the latter on the community’s observance of the commandments and loyalty to God and Judaism. Nevertheless, in ʾEven Boḥan, chapter fifteen, Ibn Shaprut ̣ again draws attention to Job’s alleged friends’ persecution because they believed he was a wrong-doer, an evil person. Ibn Shaprut ̣ repeats Job’s phrase, “how long and how often will you continue to torment me with your profuse and perverse words?”55 Job is obsessed with an appropriate verdict (din)56 in a court of law but realizes it will be justice delayed, most likely unavailable to him during his lifetime. Job, therefore, wants to tell his story, that it, and his

52 Job 9:24. On the removal of God’s providence from Job (bitṭ uḷ ha-shemira), see Nahmanides, Commentary to Job 19:2, 69. For Job’s own comments on “providence” and the providence of the wicked, see 21:7–16. On the other hand, for Bildad’s comments on the wicked’s improvidence see 18:5–21. Ibn Shaprut ̣ writes about providence and the effects of astral configurations on one’s birth in EB 1:6. 53 Job 19:24. See Gersonides at Job 19:29: Gersonides believes “that there will be judgment” (shadoun, ʾasher yesh din). Gersonides derives this meaning from the formation of this strange Hebrew word, shadoun (qere), shadin (ketiv). 54 Job 15:19. The verbs in the Hebrew text are in the singular; however my translation indicates the calamitous situations prevalent in the Spanish Jewish communities. 55 Job 19:2–3. 56 Job 36:17. Cf. Job 9:19, where he uses the term mishpat,̣ justice. 112 libby garshowitz innocence, be recorded, indelibly, and preserved for eternity.57 And so it has—in verse, in stone, and in his wasted flesh: be-ʿori u-vi-vesari daveqa ʿasmị , “my bones cling to my skin and flesh.”58 Job is barely alive yet continues to hold on to hope and to some semblance of existence, despite his withered physical state. Job has accused his erstwhile friends of pursuing him, like God, “not even satisfied with my flesh.”59 But from the same flesh and skin that are shrunken and wasted Job somehow has acquired harmony of body and soul and some knowledge of God and his world: “I know my vindicator lives and will rescue me from your persecution (harda- fatkhem), states Ibn Shapruṭ.” Ibn Shaprut,̣ through Job, contends that justice, for Jews, eventually will be meted out. Future generations of Jews must believe that justice will emerge at some time as yet unknown. This is our author’s contention throughout his ʾEven Boḥan. And it is these future generations who will testify that, like Job, they too were innocent of wrongdoing, caught up in the realpolitik of their day. In the meantime, they must remain loyal to Judaism and God. Moral standards as embodied in Torah must prevail, as will eventually justice. Since the young Ibn Shaprut ̣ composed this treatise, as he states in his introduction, to correct the untruths, lies if you will, of those Jews who have abandoned Judaism, persecute their former coreligionists to ingratiate themselves with Christians by forcing them to debate the verities of Christianity and Judaism,60 it is possible to posit and project that Job’s persecutors, and the Jews of his and future generations, represent, for Ibn Shaprut,̣ those apostate Jews who are one of the main sources of Ibn Shaprut’ṣ and his coreligionists’ hounding and the cause of their host nation’s cruel persecution—physically, politically and economically. Is it possible, however, that just as Job appeared to despair of seeing justice in his lifetime (Job 19:7) and hoped that he would be vindicated at the end of days, so does Ibn Shaprut?̣ Does Ibn Shaprut ̣ appear to be wavering between his earlier beliefs that redemption will take place at some time in the future through God or through the labors

57 Job 19:23–24. This desire for preserving events for posterity can be found also, for example, in Isaiah 30:8, Ezekiel 37:15, 16, although the medium in these verses is ‘wood.’ 58 Job 19:20. 59 Job 19:22: lamma tirdefuni kemo ʾel u-mi-besari lo tisbaʿu. 60 EB Introduction, nn. 2–5. “from my flesh i envision god” 113 of a human messiah who will deliver the Jews from their lengthy exile and consequent suffering as he states in his introduction? He too was sufficiently realistic, as was Job, to know that redemption wasnot immediate. In the Talmud Rabbi Samuel ben Naḥmani states: “Job never was, never existed, but served as an allegory or paradigm.61 Ibn Shaprut,̣ however, uses the parable of Job’s wasted body and emotional distress to instill in those of his readers who were still loyal to Judaism that ultimately justice will triumph, perhaps through God, who will mirac- ulously strike down (niqqaf )62 the wicked as he struck down the trees, representing, figuratively, the Assyrians, during their siege of northern Israel in the eighth century B.C.E.: “On that day God will chop down the trees with an ax (barzel).”63 And indeed, the first Assyrian invasion was repelled.64 I offer this as a tentative, if somewhat speculative, explanation of the verse, vel-aḥar ʿori niqqefu zot,65 “even though my skin is stripped away I and no other will envision God. I have witnessed this.” Ibn Shaprut’ṣ rather cryptic explanation of the Isaiah passage which appears to predict national redemption, freedom from foreign oppression and hope seems to anticipate a better future.66 Perhaps, for Ibn Shaprut,̣ “it is a parable of people striking, harmlessly, strangers’ bodies,”67 that is, whatever our author’s contemporaries are planning to do to save themselves, it is of no avail, thus playing on the words of Job in 19:13–29,68 shunned as he is by family and strangers alike. In my

61 bBaba Batra 15a: lo haya, lo nivraʾ, raq haya le-mashal. 62 The various commentators on this form of the verb understand itas binyan nifʾal (Rashi) or binyan piʾel (Ibn Ezra and David Qimhi). Nevertheless, the meaning inferred by all is ‘destruction.’ 63 Isaiah 10:34: ve-niqqaf sivekhei ha-yaʾar ba-barzel. 64 On the destruction of the Assyrian army according to biblical sources see Isaiah 10:5–12:6; 2 Kings 19:35. On the Assyrian victory in the northern kingdom in 722–721 B.C.E. by Sargon II see 2 Kings 15:29 where Tiglath-Pileser is cited as defeating Peqah, king of Israel and exiling many of the population to Assyria. For the mention of Sargon, see Isaiah 20:1. See also K. Lawson Younger, Jr., “Recent Study on Sargon II, King of Assyria: Implications for Biblical Studies,” in Mesopotamia and the Bible: Comparative Explorations, ed. M. W. Chavalas and K. L. Younger, Jr. (Ada, MI, 2002), 288–329. 65 Job 19:26. 66 Isaiah 10:34. 67 EB, 15:2 and n. 46. 68 EB, 15:2 around n. 43. Job 19:13–19 where Job decries his abandonment by, and estrangement from, family, acquaintances, household resident aliens, servants, and even his wife. He is foreign (nokhri) and strange (zar) to them. 114 libby garshowitz opinion, this could be a possible interpretation of Ibn Shaprut’ṣ words: “Whatever the Jews do post-1391 riots, they will not succeed.” They await a redeemer, a messiah who will deliver them from their travails, whether God or a human being (ha-ʾaḥaron). As for the equally daunting and taunting words, u-mi-besari ’eḥezeh ’eloah, “from what has happened to my wasted body I envision or imagine God, I can somehow find the hope that I will visualize God even though deprived of my earthly (mi-besari) body.”69 It is possible that in this dream state Job will receive some revelation from God, as Elihu later states:70 “In a dream, a night vision, when deep sleep falls upon humankind . . . then [God] communicates [mysterious goings-on] to them and through discipline forewarns and seals (their fate).” For the hemistich, ve-aḥar ʿori niqqefu zot, “since all this has been beaten into my withered skin, it is I who will be able to judge God’s actions, whether they are right or wrong . . . But now my deepest thoughts are completed” (kalu khilyotai be-ḥeqi), literally, “my innards are consumed within me.” I’m done! The rest is up to my advocate! Perhaps the self-knowledge and the knowledge of God that Ibn Shaprut ̣ advocated throughout his ʾEven Boḥan years earlier had given way to the realities of the day: anarchical relations between Church and State and chaotic conditions for Spain’s venerable Jewish communities.71 Knowledge of God through rational studies, the observance of the Torah and loyalty to Judaism, despite the adversities Spanish Jewish communities were facing, were the Jews’ highest goals but ultimately God, his actions and his providence, were called into question. Like the bewildered Job, who was tested by God and ultimately grasped his lack of comprehension, could Spanish Jewry, tested by their present circumstances, withstand these calamitous times and remain faithful to Judaism? Like Job, could Spanish Jewry remain attached to God despite the circumstances they were facing: collapse of their social structure, economy, religious beliefs and the insidious onslaught by their enemies? Ibn Shaprut ̣ persists in acknowledging God’s eternity and his redemption despite his recognition that persecution of Jews may last for generations but eventually the truth will win out—Job

69 Reading the particle mi- as privative. 70 Job 33:15–16: ba-ḥalom ḥezyon layla bi -nefol tardema ʿal -ʾanashim . . . ʾaz yigleh ʾozen ʾanashim u-ve-mosaram yaḥtom. 71 For the history of this period see, for example, Benzion Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain (New York, 1995). “from my flesh i envision god” 115 was innocent and so are the author’s contemporary and future faithful Jews.72 God had asked Job:73 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations, speak if you have any insight.” And earlier Eliphaz had asked Job:74 “Are you privy to God’s counsel or have you acquired for yourself [divine] wisdom” (ha-ve-sod ʾeloah tishmaʿ ve-tigraʿ ʾelekha ḥokhma)? Job was not, and neither is Ibn Shaprut.̣ The paradigm of Job’s sufferings and their irresolution now served as Ibn Shaprut’ṣ and his coreligionists’, thousands of years later.

72 EB, 15:2, around n. 43. 73 Job 38:4. 74 Job 15:8.

MESSIANIC INTERPRETATION OF THE SONG OF SONGS IN LATE-MEDIEVAL IBERIA

Maud Kozodoy

The Song of Songs offers its readers a confusing and sometimes opaque dialogue between a female lover or bride and a male lover or bridegroom. Medieval exegetes, both Jewish and Christian, perceived that it was a love story.1 Nearly all agreed, however, that it was not a story of love between two merely human individuals; there was a deeper meaning to the narrative. Allegorical, symbolic, and moral readings of the Song of Songs were thus the rule throughout the medieval period, though they varied strikingly both in their content and in their approach to the “plain” meaning of the text.2 For Christians, for example, beginning with Origen in the third century, the female lover was commonly taken to represent the Church and the male lover God, in particular in his incarnation as Jesus.3 Among rabbinic Jews, however, in line with the imagery favored by the biblical Prophets, the central line of interpretation held that the female lover represented the people of Israel and the male lover represented God. The Song was also associated from early on with the spring Passover season and with the specific themes of the holiday itself, a central one being messianic redemption. In early rabbinic messianic thought, the Exodus functioned as a type of divine redemption,

1 It is impossible to give a comprehensive listing of scholarship on either the medieval interpretations of the Song of Songs or the history of Jewish messianism here, so I will only refer readers to the most relevant literature. 2 For a bibliography of medieval Hebrew commentaries, see Barry D. Walfish, “Annotated Bibliography of Medieval Jewish Commentaries on the Song of Songs,” in Ha-Miqra’ bi-Re’i Mefarashav: The Sarah Kamin Memorial Volume (Jerusalem, 1994), 518–571. 3 For Christian interpretations, see Jocelyn McWhirter, The Bridegroom Messiah and the People of God: Marriage in the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge, UK, 2006); Denys Turner, Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo, 1995); Ann Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (Ithaca NY, 1990) (although on this, see the critical review by Bernard McGinn, “With ‘the Kisses of the Mouth’: Recent Works on the Song of Songs,” The Journal of Religion 72 (1992): 269–275); E. Ann Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia, 1992). 118 maud kozodoy a model of all previous ones and certainly of the final future one.4 By assimilation, then, the Song emerges as the allegorical depiction of redemption. An example is the early Pesikta de Rav Kahana (5th or 6th c.),5 in which homilies for the beginning of Nisan weave together the Exodus from Egypt with the future redemption by means of verses from the Song. Whether as cause or as effect, the homiletic identifica- tion of the Exodus with the messianic redemption, and of the Song as a symbol-bed of both, formed part of the eventual theological justification for the public reading of this text on the Passover holiday, the festival of redemption.6 Beginning with strands drawn from classical rabbinic literature and liturgical poetry, a consistent reading of the Song as a figurative narrative of the ongoing historical relationship between the Jews and their God was consolidated by the time of the seventh-century Ara- maic Targum, which has itself been called a “profoundly messianic document.”7 From there (and from the many disconnected pieces of this interpretation that appear in the Talmud and midrashim), this reading was established as the traditional (called the “midrashic” or “of our rabbis”) interpretation among Jews of the medieval period. It is in

4 David Berger, “Three Typological Themes in Early Jewish Messianism: Messiah Son of Joseph, Rabbinic Calculations, and the Figure of Armilus,” AJS Review 10 (1985): 141–164. Quite explicit is the statement in the later version, Pesikta Rabbati (9th c.)—by R. Berekhia in the name of R. Levi: like the first redeemer, so the last redeemer. Pesikta Rabbati 5.8. 5 In Pesikta de Rav Kahana, by far the most intensive use of Song of Songs verses appears in piska 5, meant for Shabbat ha-ḥodesh, which centers on the verse beginning “ha-ḥodesh ha-zeh” (Exodus 12.2). 6 It is not known at what point the Song of Songs came to be recited in synagogue during the holiday of Passover, or how common it was. Among the Palestinian piyyutim composed around the Song, not all were associated with Passover, and even where they were, as Günter Stemberger has emphasized, this would not necessarily imply a synagogue setting for a reading of the book itself. Günter Stemberger, “Die Megillot als Festlesungen der jüdischen Liturgie,” Jahrbuch für Biblische Theologie 18 (2003): 261–276. I thank Clemens Leonhard for alerting me to this article and for sharing his thoughts on this subject with me. In the Diaspora, the first attestation of this practice occurs in the tractate Soferim, which states that the Song is to be read on the last two days of Passover. But the date of that work is unclear and the relevant part may have been composed at a later time in Europe. The first quotations from Soferim are found in eleventh-century Ashkenaz and none appear in Iberian literature until the fourteenth century; no fragments of it are found in the geniza material. See Debra Reed Blank, “It’s Time to Take Another Look at ‘Our Little Sister’ Soferim: A Bibliographical Essay,” Jewish Quarterly Review 90 (1999): 1–26. Maḥzor Vitry, from around 1200, also testifies to the custom of reciting Song of Songs during Passover, but specifies a different setting for its recitation than appears in Soferim. 7 Philip S. Alexander, trans., The Targum of Canticles (Collegeville, MN, 2003), 56. messianic interpretation of the song of songs 119 this “traditional” reading of the Song—as the story of God’s love affair with Israel—that the lines of Jewish-Christian religious debate seem to emerge most naturally: over such themes as the validity of Jewish vs. Christian claims to God’s love,8 the arrival vs. non-arrival of the Messiah, and the respective relationship of the two faiths to the shared scripture of the “Old Testament.” With the flowering of Jewish culture in the lands of Islam came the beginnings of a new kind of exegesis, influenced by Arabic philological and philosophical learning and characterized by an interest in Hebrew grammar and in the realia of the biblical world.9 The commentaries of Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1164) are a late but highly influential example of this trend. Also significant was the lavish use in secular Hebrew poetry of biblical allusions of all kinds, but especially to the Song. In the secular poetry of Golden Age Jewish al-Andalus, the language of the Song was reclaimed from its already conventional national-allegorical meaning and rehabilitated as, simply, a language of human love. Or not so simply—for this newly charged biblical language made its way in turn into explicitly religious poems, where the longing for national redemption might be expressed in terms of physical desire, where Israel is evoked in highly eroticized terms as a beautiful woman, and where God appears as her youthful, handsome lover. In twelfth- and thirteenth-century Christian Europe, new, more personal readings began to emerge among both Jews and Christians. Bernard of Clairvaux and others produced interpretations of the Song as a dialogue between the individual soul and Jesus, while numerous Jewish philosophers suggested the female lover represented some aspect of the human soul and the male beloved a divine source of intellectual illumination, such as the Agent Intellect. Maimonides did not formally comment on the Song of Songs, but a few allusions in

8 See Michael A. Signer, “God’s Love for Israel: Apologetic and Hermeneutical Strategies in Twelfth-Century Biblical Exegesis,” in Jews and Christians in Twelfth- Century Europe, eds. Michael A. Signer and John Van Engen (Notre Dame, IN, 2001), 123–149, where he shows that Rashi constructs counter-narratives to Christian trium- phalism, including in his commentary on Song of Songs, in which God’s love for Israel is still perfect, and God, despite any misbehavior by Israel, would remain faithful. 9 See Mordechai Z. Cohen, “Rabbanite Judeo-Arabic Bible Exegesis,” in Encyclope- dia of Jews in the Islamic World, ed. Norman Stillman et al. (Leiden, 2010), I: 442–457, and his forthcoming “Jewish Bible Exegesis in Muslim Lands in the Middle Ages,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, ed. Marina Rustow, vol. 5 (New York). I thank him for permitting me to read a pre-publication draft of the latter. 120 maud kozodoy the Mishneh Torah and in the Guide of the Perplexed indicate that he considered it to be exclusively an allegory not of Jewish national history but of the human soul’s love of God. This approach became widely adopted, especially among his philosophical followers.10 In the thirteenth century, for example, Moses Ibn Tibbon composed a complete commentary on the Song in the “Maimonidean” mode, as did Immanuel ha-Romi and—in the fourteenth century—Gersonides.11 Partly in response to widespread interest in the individualistic approach, and, it has been argued, partly in response to Christian readings of the Song as a dialogue between the Virgin Mary and her Son, Kabbalists in the late thirteenth century began to picture the female lover as the soul yearning for union with the divine, or as the shekhinah attempting to reunite with the upper sefirot.12 Both these strands of interpretation, in replacing the historical allegory with one featuring the soul or intellect, focused the hope for redemption away from the fate of the Jewish people toward individual salvation through intellectual apprehension of the divine.13 Neither the philosophical nor the kabbalistic interpretive traditions will thus feature largely in this essay.14

10 For Jewish philosophical readings, see Shalom Rosenberg, “Philosophical Herme- neutics on the Song of Songs: Introductory Remarks” (Hebrew), Tarbitz 59 (1990): 133–151. 11 Moses Ibn Tibbon, Moses Ibn Tibbons Kommentar Zum Hohenlied und Sein Poetologisch-Philosophisches Programm, ed. Otfried Fraisse (Berlin, 2004); Immanuel ha-Romi, Commentary to the Song of Songs: the Philosophical Part, ed. Y. Ravitzky (Jerusalem, 1970); Gersonides, Commentary on the Song of Songs, trans. M. Kellner (New Haven, 1998). See now Menachem Kellner, Torah in the Observatory: Gerson- ides, Maimonides, Song of Songs (Brighton, MA, 2010). 12 For mystical and kabbalistic readings, see Arthur Green, “The Song of Songs in Early Jewish Mysticism,” Orim: A Jewish Journal at Yale 2 (1987); his “Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary, and the Song of Songs: Reflections on a Kabbalistic Symbol in its His- torical Context” AJS Review 26 (2002): 1–52 (and especially the literature cited in the extensive footnotes); Elliot Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York, 2005), 333–371. 13 The second kabbalistic interpretation noted, in which the shekhinah yearns for her beloved counterpart in the divine realms, does have the potential to convey a messianic theme. Indeed, even the first allows for a messianic conception. Wolfson, for example, suggests that thirteenth-century kabbalistic readings of the Song as erotic unity move from the idea of “carnal intercourse in an effort to facilitate the sacred union above” to that of an ascetic Torah study thought to encourage a messianic unification, an “eschatological Sabbath.” Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 371. Space constraints do not permit a full exploration of this line of investigation here. 14 For the Jewish-Christian debate in Song exegesis: for the early period, see Eliza- beth A. Clark, “Origen, the Jews, and the Song of Songs: Allegory and Polemic in Christian Antiquity,” in Perspectives on the Song of Songs, ed. Anselm Hagedorn messianic interpretation of the song of songs 121

Messianic interpretation in fact fits most commonly within a consistently historical allegorization of the Song, since such a reading leads easily to a view of the final chapters as depicting the advent of the Messiah or the messianic era itself. This article will reflect on the life (and death) of one particular form of a Jewish messianic reading of the Song of Songs, and then explore messianic elements in three national- historical narrative readings from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Iberia (by Joshua Ibn Shueib, Abraham ben Isaac ha-Levi, and Isaac Arama) in light of the Jewish-Christian polemic.

Messianic Interpretation and the Trope of the Beloved as Messiah

As noted above, the traditional consensus is generally that the two characters in the Song are God and Israel. God is the beloved male (the dod) and Israel is the female lover. But among the multifarious interpretations that appear in classical rabbinic literature, there was a line of exegesis that saw the beloved as the hoped-for Messiah.15 In the Pesikta de Rav Kahana, Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah (6th–8th c.), Pesikta Rabbati,16 and Aggadat Shir ha-Shirim (9th–10th c.), although many localized comments allegorize the two lovers as Israel and God, others cite verses said to allude to the Messiah.17 It has in fact recently been argued that an early reading of the Song viewed the beloved as a youthful messianic figure (an “angelic youth”), and that this reading

(Berlin, 2005), 274–293, and the bibliography there; for the medieval period, see, for example, the collected articles in Sarah Kamin, Jews and Christians Interpret the Bible (Jerusalem, 2008) and Jeremy Cohen, “ ‘Synagoga conversa’: Honorius Augustodun- ensis, the Song of Songs, and Christianity’s ‘Eschatological Jew,’ ” Speculum 79 (2004): 309–340. 15 See Jacob Neusner, “Messianic Themes in Formative Judaism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 52 (1984): 357–374. 16 Much of the material found in Pesikta de Rav Kahana (piska 5–piska 11) is found in the same order in Pesikta Rabbati (piska 15–piska 17). 17 R. Yudan taught in the name of R. Eliezer ben R. Jose the Galilean and R. Huna -that is the King Mes :קול דודי הנה זה בא :taught in the name of Eliezer ben Jacob siah. When he comes and says to Israel, “you shall be redeemed in this month,” they say to him, “our master, king Messiah, how can we be redeemed . . .” Pesikta de Rav Kahana 5.7. In Pesikta Rabbati, Moses as redeemer is conflated with the Messiah in successive interpretations of “my beloved is like a gazelle.” Pesikta Rabbati 15.10. See also Aggadat Shir ha-Shirim 4.11, 6.10, 7.12; 2.8–12; Shir ha-Shirim R. 2.19. 122 maud kozodoy was then suppressed in the Shi‘ur Qoma texts at around the first or second centuries.18 Already in the Targum (7th or 8th c.), Raphael Loewe has argued, where the national-historical reading is presented in a far more systematic way, the role of the Messiah is played down as part of an anti-Christian polemic.19 Still, the work as a whole is indeed highly messianic, and elements of the beloved-as-Messiah motif remain. For the Targum, which is not so much a translation as a paraphrastic trans- mutation of the biblical text into another story entirely, the unfolding events of the Song represent symbolically the unfolding events of Jew- ish history through three redemptions: the first by Moses from Egypt, the second by Cyrus from captivity in Babylonia, and the third, from Edom, by the King Messiah. This third and, for the Targum, imminent redemption is enacted in the Song’s final section, where God and Israel address the Messiah. God informs His appointed one of the approaching messianic “kingdom.” The Targum renders the tender words of הדודאים נתנו ריח ועל פתחינו כל מגדים חדשים גם ישנים :Song 7.14 The balsam has given forth scent. At our doors are all“) דודי צפנתי לך manner of precious fruits both new and old. My beloved, I have laid them up for you”) as follows: וכד יהא רעוא מן קדם יי למפרק ית עמיה מן גלותא יתאמר למלכא משיחא כבר שלים קץ גלותא וזכות צדיקיא אתבסם קדמי כריח בלסמון וחכימי דריא קביען על תרעי מדרשא עסקין בפתגמי ספריא ופתגמי אוריתא כען קום קבל מלכותא די גנזית לך When it shall be the good pleasure of the Lord to redeem His people from exile, He will say to the King Messiah: The term of the exile is already completed, and the merit of the righteous has become as fragrant before me as the scent of balsam. The sages of the generation are fixed at the doors of the schools, diligently studying the words of the scribes and the words of the Torah. Arise now, and receive the kingdom that I have stored up for you.20

18 Christopher R. A. Morray-Jones, “The Body of the Glory: Approaching the New Testament from the Perspective of the Shiur Koma Traditions,” in The Mystery of God: Early Jewish Mysticism and the New Testament, ed. Christopher Rowland and Christo- pher R. A. Morray-Jones (Leiden, 2009), 501–611, see esp. pp. 518–533, 539–542. 19 Raphael Loewe, “Apologetic Motifs in the Targum to the Song of Songs,” in Bib- lical Motifs, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, MA, 1966), 163–69, and 180. And Morray-Jones suggests that there is evidence of beloved-as-messiah readings having been removed from the Targum. Morray-Jones, “The Body of the Glory,” 540–541. 20 The Targum of Canticles, trans. Philip S. Alexander, 188. messianic interpretation of the song of songs 123

Israel then invites the dod/Messiah to accompany her to the Temple for the messianic banquet. The interpretation of the last part of the Song as depicting the arrival of the Messiah was evidently not particularly problematic for the author of the Targum, despite Origen’s influential reading of the dod as the Christian Messiah; this may reflect the work’s composition within a milieu where issues of competing Jewish- Christian interpretation were less urgent—a subject we will return to below.

Influence of the Peshat Reading of the Song on the Beloved-as-Messiah Trope In northern France, we see the emergence in the eleventh and twelfth centuries of a school of exegesis prominently associated with Rashi and devoted to the plain meaning, or peshat. But, as has been noted by several scholars, Rashi in his exegesis of the Song reverts often to the national-historical allegorical meaning, which even seems to color his understanding of the peshat. In his conception, the Song is made up of words spoken by a “bound woman . . . longing for her husband” who “in the future will return to her”—that is, this is a sorrowful story of past marital and domestic love, expressed in terms of nostalgic memory and wistful hope for the future, not the glorious celebration of successful (if briefly thwarted) passion that the simple meaning might appear to be. For Rashi, the Song of Songs illustrates the current situation and feelings of the Jewish people more than it looks forward to the future. He sets the latter part of the narrative in his own time, devoting space to descriptions of synagogues, study houses, and Torah scholars, the commandments being observed, the faithful placing their trust in the Lord. Just prior to the end, the coming redemption receives a single mention, the purpose of which is to stipulate that the time has not yet arrived. [We have a little sister] who has no breasts: as it was said concerning the Egyptian exile ‘breasts fashioned’ (Ezek. 16.7) [refers to] when the time of redemption arrives, but this one [in the Song] has no breasts yet. Her time has not yet arrived at the time of loving.21

ושדים אין לה כעניין שנאמר בגלות מצרים שדים נכונו בהגיע Rashi on Song 8.8 21 A similar argument ;עת הגאולה אבל זו שדים אין לה עדיין לא הגיע עתה לעת דודים 124 maud kozodoy

For Rashi the song as a whole may be a promise of a future redemption, a promise that the Jewish people in their exile has not been cast away, but his reading gives little hint of imminent redemption. The merit of the people, their intensive Torah study and faithful observance of the commandments are shown to parallel (if not to surpass) the merit of the people during previous exiles, and so implicitly—if one is going by merit—the exile should soon end. But the little sister is not yet mature enough for love. The appointed time has therefore not yet come, and more waiting must be patiently endured. Only in explicating the very last verse does Rashi register a prayer for redemption: Flee, my beloved from this exile and redeem us from among them. And liken yourself to a gazelle: to hasten the redemption and to cause your shekhinah to rest on the spice mountains. This is mount Moriah and the Temple, may it be built speedily and in our days, amen.22 While it has been convincingly argued that Rashi takes his national- historical scheme from the Targum—the “plot” is “about the Exodus from Egypt and about the giving of the Torah, the Tabernacle, the entry to the land, the Temple, the Babylonian exile, and the coming of the Second Temple and its destruction” (Rashi on Song 2.7)—he removes the few remaining traces of the beloved-as-Messiah interpretation. Part of this is likely methodological. In the Targum’s scheme of successive redemptions, the protagonists in the Song shift their allegorical personas according to time and place—e.g. the “dod” may be God in one place, Moses or Cyrus in another, and the Messiah elsewhere still. Rashi, by contrast, attempts to sustain consistent allegorical referents for the two lovers, namely Israel and God. Another member of this school of exegesis was Rashi’s grandson Rashbam (c.1085–c.1174). Even more committed than his grandfather to the plain sense of the text, he too breaks his usual rule when it comes to the Song. His commentary (recently published in a critical edition by Sara Yafet) follows Rashi’s lead in reading the peshat and historical allegory in parallel, and in positing a woman remembering her lover and longing for his return, although he elevates the woman

can be found in the sermon given in Narbonne in the late thirteenth century and analyzed by Robert Chazan in his “Confrontation in the Synagogue of Narbonne: Chris- tian Sermon and Jewish Reply,” Harvard Theological Review 67 (1964): 437–457. ברח דודי מן הגולה הזאת ופדינו מביניהם ודמה לך לצבי למהר הגאולה והשרה 22 שכינתך על הרי בשמים הוא הר המוריה ובית המקדש שיבנה במהרה בימינו. messianic interpretation of the song of songs 125 from Rashi’s “woman bound in living widowhood” to a beautiful prin- cess of good lineage.23 In particular, Rashbam focuses on the past glo- ries of the Temple and its sacrifices and the sins that caused their loss. Throughout, however, the commentary issues calls for shortening the exile, and in the final portion (from 7.12 on) dwells at some length on the future redemption and the restoration of what once was. In strikingly graphic terms, Rashbam depicts Israel thinking back on her days of intimacy with God in His sanctuary, the loving couple entwined as man and woman between the cherubs.24 Through repeated references to the grief of the Jews in exile and the pressures upon them to forswear their fidelity to an absconded lover,25 Rashbam means to encourage the Jewish community of his time to resist the seductive lure of conversion to Christianity. Where Rashi rallies his readers to religious observance as a way of hastening the messianic arrival, Rashbam seems more concerned with simply holding out against conversionary pressures. (He is also less interested in conforming to the historical narrative inherited from the Targum.) Here too no mention is made of the Messiah figure, though the commentary as a whole is a powerful plea to God to redeem His people.26

23 Rashbam, The Commentary of Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) on theSong ואעפ"כ נאוה אני ובת מלכים ויש לי :of Songs, ed. Sara Japhet (Jerusalem, 2008), 236 זכות אבות. 24 Rashbam, Commentary on Song of Songs, 242: השרה הק' את שכינתו בתוך המשכן בין שני הכרובים באהבתו את ישר' אהבת עולם כחיבת זכר ונקבה..ושם נתרצו ונתפייסו יחד כאילו שניהם נחבקים ונדבקים על מיטה אחת באהבת נעורים; Rashbam, Commentary on Song of Songs, 276: והוא ישכון בתוכה כאז במשכן אשר צימצם שכינת כבודו בין הכרובים האהבת זכר ונקבה. 25 See especially Rashbam, Commentary on Song of Songs, 250 and 277. 26 As Avraham Grossman has noted, the literal school of exegesis did not flourish for long; for later French and German Jewry, including the Hasidei Ashkenaz and French Jewry after the time of Eliezer of Beaugency, the approach held little interest. Instead, Ashkenazi exegesis increasingly displayed a turn toward midrash and numerological techniques like gematria. (Avraham Grossman, “The School of Literal Exegesis in Northern France,” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Inter- pretation. Volume I. From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages (Until 1300). Part 2: The Middle Ages, ed. M. Saebo (Gottingen, 2000), 321–371.) These characteristics are fully in evidence in the thirteenth-century commentaries on the Song by Eleazar of Worms, treated by Ivan Marcus (Ivan Marcus, “The Song of Songs in German Hasid- ism and the School of Rashi: A Preliminary Comparison,” in Frank Talmage Memorial Volume, ed. Barry Walfish, vol. 1 (Haifa, 1993), 181–189, and by Avigdor ben Elijah ha-Cohen of Vienna). Here, despite the lack of a consistent allegorical narrative, there are a number of messianic glosses. Despite the absence of God’s name anywhere in this book of “desire and love,” Avigdor invests the text with almost magical significance: “there is no verse in the Song of Songs from which the Name [of God] does not 126 maud kozodoy

For Rashi, then, the Song tells the ongoing story of his own people up to a barely enunciated redemption, while for Rashbam, who couches the interactions between Israel and other nations in terms of seduction and unfaithfulness, the Song is not only a message of consolation but also an expression of hope for a future consummation of divine love. For these peshat readers of the Song, the need to retain a coherent narrative line means that the male lover has to remain identified with God throughout the story, and this in turn all but excludes a role for the Messiah as an actual character in the drama. It is likely, however, that a negative pressure operated as well, in the form of the insistent Christian reading of the dod as Jesus. This pressure would only have increased as the medieval period progressed. The passionate overtures to Jesus in the sermons of Bernard of Clairvaux, the image of Jesus as the epitome of the courtly lover in Latin and vernacular song, and the appropriation and application to Jesus of love language from the Vulgate translation of the Song of Songs, may have sufficed to discourage Jews from associating the dod with the Messiah, or from deviating significantly from their passionate concentration on the One God of the Exodus, of Sinai, of the Temple in Jerusalem, and of the final redemption. For, outside the Christian milieu, this particular form of the messianic reading seems to have retained some foothold. Indeed, there is evidence, although secondary, that more thoroughgoing Jewish messianic interpretations were composed during the tenth century in Islamic lands.

Jewish Messianism in an Islamic Context

Except for some scattered quotations, Saadia’s commentary on the Song of Songs has been lost.27 The tenth-century Judeo-Arabic commentary emerge.” Avigdor introduces some parts of the national-historical reading, glossing a number of verses as featuring the Messiah. For example, Song 2.10: “my beloved answered and said to me, arise, my friend, my beautiful one and come away.” (Perush Rabbenu Avigdor Katz le-Shir ha-Shirim, ed. S. A. Wertheimer (Jerusalem, 1981), 20.) Here the beloved is the Messiah speaking to Israel in the future “to strengthen their hands with good deeds.” And in Avigdor’s gloss on Song 7.12, “Come my beloved let us go forth to the field, let us lodge among the villages,” (Perush Rabbenu Avigdor Katz le-Shir ha-Shirim, 38) the words are attributed to the Messiah in announcing the redemption. 27 For contemporary Karaite interpretations, see Daniel Frank, “Karaite Interpreta- tions of the Song of Songs from Tenth-Century Jerusalem,” in With Reverence for the messianic interpretation of the song of songs 127 long attributed to him, however, specifically objects to those who interpret the Song as being “about the days of the Messiah, or the exile and the Messiah, for see, they say that ‘my beloved (dodi)’ is the Messiah, and the bride is the Torah.”28 This, the author states acerbi- cally, is completely wrong and a source of kefirah (denial, or better, heresy), since such lofty descriptions belong properly only to God the Creator. Despite the Islamic background, this assertion seems likely to have been aimed—at least in part—at Christian interpretations of the Song in which the dod was taken to refer to Jesus. In fact, pseudo-Saadia himself views the final chapter of the book as a sort of compressed eschatology, with, for example, the verse “who is this that arises?” interpreted with reference to the events that take place before the redemption: [. . .] And the expulsion of the people to the wildernesses, and the difficult sorrows that come upon them there, hunger and thirst, . . . and the fall of Messiah ben Joseph at the hands of Armilus, of the kingdom of Rum, and the revelation of the beloved ( yedid) of the Lord, Messiah son of David, after the gathering of the people to her tribes from the exiles, and the miracles that will be seen in that wilderness, and the rise of the people clinging to God.29 As in the Targum, the Messiah appears as a character in the story as it unfolds in Song of Songs, but the difference is that here he plays the role of only a minor character, not the lead. Another approach to the problem of the beloved as the Messiah is that of intentional ambiguity. A series of short, famously enigmatic liturgical verses written by Solomon Ibn Gabirol in eleventh-century Muslim al-Andalus30 takes this direction.31 Not all of the poems involve a messianic figure, but all refer to redemption in terms taken

Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, eds. Jane D. McAuliffe, Barry D. Walfish, and Joseph W. Goering (Oxford and New York, 2003), 51–69. 28 Hamesh megillot ’im perushim ‘atiqim, ed. Joseph Kafiḥ (Jerusalem, 1961–62), 26. 29 Hamesh megillot ’im perushim ‘atiqim, 118. 30 Recent work has demonstrated that “messianic language was . . . prevalent both in everyday language and in literary texts throughout the tenth and the eleventh centuries among Andalusi Jews.” Esperanza Alfonso, Islamic Culture through Jewish Eyes: al-Andalus from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century (Abingdon, UK, and New York, 2008), 89, especially the fourth chapter, “Waiting for the Messiah: Self and Other in the Journey Toward the End of Time,” 83–110. 31 Among others, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Shire ha-qodesh le-rabi Shelomoh Ibn Gabi- rol, ed. Dov Jarden (Jerusalem, 1972), #95, 96, 131, 133, 144. 128 maud kozodoy from the Song of Songs.32 Throughout, winter serves as an emblem of the current state of exile, while spring appears as a sign of coming redemption. Raymond P. Scheindlin has translated and analyzed three of these poems;33 a fourth, in theme and language consistent with the other three, is the following: “O you who dwell in the field with the tents of Kushan, stand on the top of Carmel, look out to the mountain of Bashan. Raise your eyes, bride, to the garden that once lay stripped, and behold your garden bed, for it is filled with lilies.” “What is it to you, handsome one, for you have left my garden to pasture in the garden of Jokshan under the trees of Dishan?” “Come, descend to the garden, you will eat precious fruits there, and you will dwell in the bosom of the handsome one, and slumber.”34 In this dialogue, the gaze of Israel, the bride figure, is directed to her now-flowering garden—an image, in this context, of redemption. The speaker may be God himself, a reading encouraged by the response of the woman, who accuses him of having abandoned her for the garden of Jokshan, a figure traditionally understood as a child of Hagar and standing in here for the Ishmaelites/Muslims, or the trees of Dishan, biblically a child of Seir and thus intended for Edom/Christians. But the girl addresses her interlocutor as yefat ‘einayim, a phrase closely connected with David (I Sam. 16.12), and the final line strengthens

32 One in particular interprets the repeated adjuration not to awaken love until it please as referring to the redemption: ׁשָלֹוםלְָך יּדֹודִ הַּצַ ח וְהָאַדְ מֹון /ׁשָ לֹום לְ ָךמֵאֵ ת הרַּקָ ּכְ מֹו רִ ּמֹון // לִקְרַ את אֲחֹותַ ְך רּוץצֵנָאלְהֹוׁשִ יעָ ּה/ ּוצְלַ ח ּכְבֶ ן ייִּׁשַ רַ ּבַ ת ּבְ נֵ יעַ ּמֹון //מַ ה ּלָ ְך יְפֵה-פִ ּיָה יּכִ תְעֹורְרִ י אַהֲבָה/ּותְ צַלְצְלִ י קֹולֵ ְך ּכִמְעִ ילּבְ קֹולּפַעֲ מֹון// הָעֵ ת אֲׁשֶ רּתַחְ ּפֹץאַהֲבָ האֲחִיׁשֶ ּנָ ה / עִּתָ ּה וְעָלַ יְִךאֵרֵ ד לּכְטַ חֶרְ מֹון. “Greetings to you my beloved, white and ruddy (Song 5.10)/ Greetings to you from [one with] a temple like a pomegranate (Song 4.3; 6.7)! // Toward your sister, run, please go, to save her/ And succeed like the son of Jesse, [did] with Rabbah of the children of Ammon (II Sam. 10–11).” // “How now, lovely girl, for you awaken love / and your voice tinkles like a robe with the sound of bells? // The time (Ez. 7.12) that love desires, I will hasten (Is. 60.22) /her time (Is. 13.22) and upon you (Is. 60.2) I will descend like the dew of Hermon (Ps. 133.3).” Here too the identity of Israel’s interlocutor shifts from God (“white and ruddy”) to the David/Messiah figure (“son of Jesse”) and back again (the redemption language applied by the prophets to God, in the last lines). 33 Raymond P. Scheindlin, The Gazelle: Medieval Hebrew Poems on God, Israel, and the Soul (Philadelphia, 1991), 90–103. ׁשֹוכַנְּתְ הּבַּׂשָדֶ םעִ אֹהֳ לֵ י כּוׁשָ ן/עִמְדִ י לְ רֹאׁש ּכַרְ למֶ צַּפִ ילְהַ רּבָׁשָ ן// ןלַּגַ אֲׁשֶ ר נֶחְמַ ס 34 ּכַּלָהׂשְאִיעֵינְֵך/ ּורְ אִ יעֲרּוגָתֵ ְך יּכִ נִמְ לְאָ ה ׁשֹוׁשָ ן//מַ ה ּלָ ְךיְפֵ ה עַ יִן ּכִ י תַ עֲ זֹוב ּגַּנִ י/ לִרְ עֹות ּבְגַיָקְׁשָ ן ּתַחַ תעֲצֵ י דִיׁשָ ן/הָבָ ה רְדָ ה ןלַּגַ לּתֹאכַ מְ גָדִ יםׁשָ ם// ּובְחֵ יק יְפַ תעַ יִן ּתִׁשְ ּכַ ב וְגַ םּתִיׁשַ ן messianic interpretation of the song of songs 129 this connection in language redolent of both the accusation against David of having taken Batsheva (Uriah’s only lamb that “dwelt in his bosom”) and the bringing of Avishag to “dwell in the bosom” of the aging king. Thus, by the end of the poem one comes to think of the speaker not as God but as David, and hence by genealogical association as the Messiah.35 Another product of Muslim al-Andalus, notwithstanding his peri- patetic career in Christian lands, was Abraham Ibn Ezra, who com- mented on the Song in three distinct layers of which one is the national-historical allegory.36 For Abraham Ibn Ezra, a predilection for the plain meaning of the Song is supported both by his interest in Hebrew grammar and by his appropriation of the Song’s love language in his own secular poetry. In the longer version of his commentary, written in Rouen between 1155 and 1157,37 messianic elements emerge in two places, some of which are individual glosses identifying the כשיעלו ישראל ממדברות העמים יאמרו :beloved as the Messiah himself when Israel arises from the wildernesses of the“) למשיח שהוא דודה nations they will say to the Messiah that he is her beloved”)38 and at one point Solomon (of Song 8.12) as the Messiah, “called Solomon because he [the Messiah] is his son, just as he is called David.”39 Aside from these two traces of the beloved-as-Messiah reading, Ibn Ezra’s symbolic reading of the text has its own messianic focus. As part of the historical schema, the last two chapters of the Song represent שובי שובי—זה לעתיד—בשוב ה' את שיבת :the coming redemption Return, return: this [refers to] the future [as in the phrase from“ ציון Psalms 126.2:] when the Lord will return the captives of Zion.”40 In particular, a group of messianic motifs cluster in a passage describing

35 This development parallels that described in the other poems by Scheindlin. Sim- ilar piyyutim influenced by secular love poetry continued to be composed throughout the medieval period, with spring and the return of the long-lost male lover symbol- izing redemption and the messianic return of the divine presence, though the lover is generally not the Messiah himself, but God. 36 Much has been written about Abraham Ibn Ezra’s commentary on the Song of Songs: see, in particular, Mordechai Z. Cohen, Three Approaches to Biblical Metaphor: from Abraham Ibn Ezra and Maimonides to David Kimhi (Leiden and Boston, 2003), esp. 263–265, and his “ ‘The Best of Poetry . . .’: Literary Approaches to the Bible in the Spanish Peshat Tradition,” Torah U-Madda 6 (1996): 15–57. 37 Shlomo Sela and Gad Freudenthal, “Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Scholarly Writings: A Chronological Listing,” Aleph 6 (2006): 20 (13–55). 38 Abraham Ibn Ezra on Song 8.5. 39 Abraham Ibn Ezra on Song 8.12. 40 Abraham Ibn Ezra on Song 7.1. 130 maud kozodoy successive parts of the “body” of the Shulamite (namely, Israel). These are identified by Ibn Ezra as various entities associated with the process of redemption, the female lover appearing embodied as a vision of that future event.41 Her body parts symbolize Torah and Talmud, your neck [represents] the“ ;צוארך—המלך המשיח) the King Messiah King Messiah”), prophets (past and future), the high priest, Nehemiah son of Hushiel (the so-called Messiah son of Joseph, who figures in the seventh-century Palestinian apocalyptic work Sefer Zerubbavel), Elijah (usually thought to announce the coming of the Messiah), and again מלך אסור ברהטים. הוא המשיח שהוא אסור כאשר) the King Messiah a king is bound in the“ ;העתיקו קדמונינו כי בידך שירבה ירושלים נולד tresses—[this represents] the Messiah who is bound, as our early sages transmitted that on the day Jerusalem was destroyed, he was born”),42 suggesting that the final, corporeal manifestation of the people of Israel lies in these future personalities and events. Another commentator writing in the Muslim world was Joseph Ibn Aqnin (d. 1226), of North Africa, whose Judeo-Arabic commentary also presents three levels of interpretation, including a version of our “traditional” reading (the interpretation of “our rabbis”). Ibn Aqnin וקול התור includes a reading of Song 2.12 from the midrash, in which the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land”) is“) נשמע בארצנו said to refer to the coming of the King Messiah.43 However, although redemption for Ibn Aqnin is the theme of the Song, his exegesis is notably schematic; as he writes: Whatever is expressed in terms of arrival and love refers to the ages of redemption, such as the Exodus from Egypt and others, and to what He will do for us in the messianic age; whatever is expressed in terms of flight indicates the periods of subjugation.44

41 The entire passage makes a logical and rhetorical counterpart to Ibn Ezra’s earlier reading of the male lover’s body in chapter five. There the members and organs are God’s, representing, in descending order, the throne of glory, the divine “eyes,” the angels, the ophanim, the sphere of the fixed stars, the matter (guf ) from which the universe was made, the six directions, and the earth. In short, the male lover figures forth as a fantastic vision of the divinely emanated universe, the corporeal and physical expression of God’s divinity. 42 Abraham Ibn Ezra on Song 7.1–12. 43 Joseph Ibn Aqnin, Hitgalut ha-sodot ve-hofa‘at ha-me’orot, ed. Abraham Halkin (Jerusalem, 1964), (f. 24a, ll. 26–27). However, Ibn Aqnin focuses his interest on the love story between the rational soul and the agent intellect. 44 Thus, the buds that appear in the land are the prophets announcing redemption, the time of singing is the prayer of the patriarchs, the voice of the turtledove is the cry messianic interpretation of the song of songs 131

But the details of the historical narrative and their symbolic congru- ence with the events depicted in the Song itself are not of profound concern. Neither particularly interested in the midrashic approach, nor an adherent of narrative continuity in exegesis, Ibn Aqnin fails to sustain an eschatological reading, even in the place where we might expect to find it, namely, the “traditional” portion. All of these exegeses make use of the specific reading of Messiah-as- beloved or beloved-as-Messiah, if sporadically and sometimes ambigu- ously. Partly, this free indulgence of the trope may be attributable to the Arabic cultural context in which the Jewish-Christian exegetical debate is less immediate and does not automatically exercise a veto on the practice. Another factor, however, may be the drive in the Ashke- nazi school of peshat interpretation to produce a strong and consistent narrative line. The messianic poems of Ibn Gabirol confirm this impression. The courtly image of the flowered, fragrant garden in spring is a symbol of redemption, and the arrival of the longed-for lover to his garden can be conflated with the coming of the Messiah and of God’s final redemption, but this appears to be unmoored from the specific events of history. It is in Abraham Ibn Ezra that, as we have seen, the narrative line of the allegory is strongest but messianic interpretations are also plentiful, and it is he who not only includes the beloved-as- Messiah element but makes the messianic redemption central to his reading of the body of the loved woman.

As noted above, in Christendom, the beloved-as-Messiah interpretation could indeed present a difficulty for Jewish exegetes, and all the more so in the later medieval period, when knowledge of Hebrew and of rabbinic writings increasingly became tools for conversionist activity. Nicholas of Lyra (c. 1270–c. 1349), whose interest in Jewish exegesis and the Hebrew text of the Bible led some to suspect him of a Jewish background, presents in the fourteenth century a reading of the Song of Songs that co-opts the Jewish historical allegory for anti- Jewish polemical purposes. He draws on the Targum in his Postilla on the Song:

of Israel in chains to God, and so forth. Joseph Ibn Aqnin, Hitgalut ha-sodot ve-hofa‘at ha-me’orot, f. 23a, ll. 10–19. 132 maud kozodoy

The bride sought to be free of . . . shameful actions when God would grant peace to his Church. So she asks, Who shall give thee to me for my brother, a reference to Christ according to his human nature, sucking the breasts of my mother, that is the Virgin Mary, who is called not only the mother of Christ, but also the mother of the whole Church. This passage refers literally to Christ, as is clear from the Chaldean translation, which the Hebrew scholars consider authentic. This text reads: “When the King, the Messiah, will reveal himself to the Church of Israel, the children of Israel will say to him, ‘you will be to us as a brother.’ Modern Jews expect this to happen in the future, though it already happened a long time ago.”45 Unusually for a Christian exegete, Nicholas interprets the Song historically and, as Sarah Kamin has shown, relies heavily on Rashi, not only for individual readings in which Rashi is either quoted directly or drawn on silently, but also for his reading of the overall structure of the Song, with the last two chapters representing the culmination of the story’s historical progression.46 In Rashi’s case, as we saw, those chapters represent the contemporary historical situation of the Jews, whereas for Nicholas of Lyra they symbolize the rise of the Church (with the preceding chapters tracing the history of the Jewish people until the coming of Jesus). Here is where Nicholas turns to the Tar- gum to find the desired Christological reading, for the Targum, as we noted earlier, despite “playing down” the role of the Messiah, does not purge the story of the beloved-as-Messiah motif.

Jewish Messianism in Late-Medieval Iberia

In fourteenth and fifteenth-century Iberia, relations between Jews and Christians, often difficult, became progressively strained and more complex. The former century was marked by famines, wars, and plague and, for Jews, by Christian accusations of well-poisoning and anti-Jewish violence. Expulsions from areas in France as well as other,

45 Nicholas of Lyra, The Postilla on the Song of Songs, ed. and trans. James G. Kiecker (Milwaukee, 1998), 110–111. 46 Sarah Kamin, “The Relation of Nicolas de Lyre to Rashi in his Commentary on Song of Songs” (Hebrew), in Jews and Christians Interpret the Bible, ed. Sarah Kamin (Jerusalem, 1991), 58–68; see also Edward Synan, “The Four ‘Senses’ and Four Exe- getes,” in With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Chris- tianity, and Islam, eds. Jane D. McAuliffe, Barry D. Walfish, and Joseph W. Goering (Oxford, 2003), 230 (225–236). messianic interpretation of the song of songs 133 local expulsions regularly sent Jewish refugees through northern Ibe- rian towns and cities, disrupting local economies and placing strains on host communities. Concurrently, anti-Jewish sermonizing by friars was a constant and demoralizing presence. In particular, the prominence of a few converted Jews in the Church and their participation in anti-Jewish polemics formed a disturbing backdrop to other missionizing activities.47 Abba Hillel Silver notes that “from the middle of the fourteenth century to the close of the fifteenth century . . . we have very few Mes- sianic calculations,” finding only one pseudo-Messiah and four works with projections of the Messiah’s arrival. Silver attributes this paucity to the failure of the Messiah to appear in 1358 or again in 1403, two dates that had been authoritatively predicted by leaders of the Jewish community. There is no doubt something to this,48 but a message of messianic import need not be tied to calculations of the future redemption. Obvious other approaches include calls for repentance, observance of the commandments, and renewal of religious loyalty as methods for inducing God to send His Messiah, as well as conveying rhetorically a sense of imminent redemption. We might note another pair of turning points for the Iberian Jewish communities: 1391 and the second decade of the fifteenth century. The mass forced conversion of a large number of Iberian Jews in 1391, and subsequent waves in the years following, were traumatizing events for many communities, some of which were completely dispersed. Those still flourishing, in Valencia and elsewhere, presented a continuing target of Christian conversionary efforts. In response to these pressures, Jewish commentators on the Song of Songs, although often highly sensitive to the ongoing Jewish-Christian debate, nevertheless offered markedly messianic interpretations of the work.

47 See, for example, Samuel Krauss, The Jewish-Christian Controversy. Vol. I. His- tory, ed. and rev. William Horbury (Tübingen, 1995), 90–101. 48 Abba Hillel Silver, A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel (Boston, 1927, 1959), 102. See also Gerson D. Cohen, “Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sep- hardim (Prior to Sabbethai Zevi),” in Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Cultures (Philadelphia, 1991), 271–297; David B. Ruderman, “Hope Against Hope: Jewish and Christian Messianic Expectations in the Late Middle Ages,” in Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, ed. David Ruderman (New York, 1992), 299–323. 134 maud kozodoy

Joshua Ibn Shueib

It is not known precisely when Joshua Ibn Shueib wrote his derashot, or even where, only that he is said to have taught in Navarre in the 1320s and 1330s49—that is, long before the events of 1391. Among them are sermons intended for the first and the last day of Passover. Both turn rhetorically on the Song, and the second in particular presents a coherent, sequential interpretation of the book. Ibn Shueib is strikingly free in speaking of the events of the messianic era and of the Messiah himself, combining kabbalistic and philosophical material with a strongly redemptive reading of the whole. His sources are often Abraham Ibn Ezra and the Targum, with much also taken from Rashi and Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah. Little is original, but the effect is powerful. In describing the culmination of the messianic period, Ibn Shueib adduces the presence of the shekhinah in the Temple and the renewal of Temple sacrifice, as well as the resurrection of the dead. The conjunction of the shekhinah with Israel is emphasized several times. O that thou wert as my brother: [This is] a hint at the conjunction of the shekhinah with us. I would lead thee, and bring thee . . . I would cause thee to drink: [this is] a hint at the sacrifices and offerings. I charge you: He warns us that even though it tells of the redemption and our elevation, we should not press the end until it please. It again says Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning: it says this about the resurrection of the dead that will take place in the time of the Messiah, that very many will come after the wars, and our kingdom will be established. I raised thee up under the apple tree: as it is written, “Then shalt thou say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these.” (Is. 49.21)50 Ibn Shueib’s reading of the Song is urgent in its message: if Jews in their synagogues and study houses will but pray with sufficient ardor,

49 See Carmi Horowitz, The Jewish Sermon in Fourteenth-Century Spain: The Derashot of R. Joshua Ibn Shueib (Cambridge, Mass., 1989). 50 Joshua Ibn Shueib, Derashot R”Y Ibn Shueib al ha-Torah u-Mo‘adei ha-Shanah (Jerusalem, 1992), 232–233: מי יתנך כאח לי רמז לדיבוק השכינה עמנו. אנהגך אביאך אשקך רמז לקרבנות ונסכים השבעתי אתכם מזהיר אותנו שאף על פי שהוא מספר גאולתינו ומעלתינו שלא נדחוק הקץ עד שתחפוץ ]חזר[ ואמר מי זאת עולה מן המדבר מתרפקת אמר זה על תחיית המתים שיהיה בזמן המשיח שיבואו המונים המונים אחר המלחמות ושתתישב מלכותינו. תחת התפוח עוררתיך כמו שכתו' ואמרת בלבבך מי ילד לי את אלה. messianic interpretation of the song of songs 135 the ministering angels will surely hear their plea and God will finally redeem them. Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the companions: this is the speech of the shekhinah speaking to Israel, who are in exile, telling them how to bring about and hasten the redemption. She says: thou that dwellest in the synagogues and in the houses of study, [. . .] the companions, the ministering angels, desire to hear your prayer and they hearken to thy voice: cause me to hear your prayer . . .51 But even before that great day, the people are not alone; the divine presence (the shekhinah) dwells together with them in exile. And the Assembly of Israel answers and prays, Flee, my beloved from this exile, for the shekhinah is with us in the exile, as it says that they went down to Egypt, the shekhinah with them, and it is written (Zech. 9.9): “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jeru- salem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee, etc.,” that is to say, He will hasten His return to the rebuilt Temple on mount Moriah, which is the mountain of myrrh . . .52 Ibn Shueib concludes his sermon with a prayerful statement of confidence: The Lord, for the sake of his compassion and his mercies, will hasten the coming of the redeemer, quickly, in our days, and He will restore His shekhinah to its place, and we will be happy and rejoice in his salvation, which is perfect happiness.53 He caps this with a quotation from Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah regarding the joy of redemption. Addressing himself to a popular audience, Ibn Shueib conveys his messianic promises in increasingly expressive language, beginning with verse 6.10, “who is this who arises like the dawn,”54 leading up

51 Joshua Ibn Shueib, Derashot, 234: היושבת בגנים חברים זה דבור השכינה שאומרת לישראל שהם בגלות היאך יעשו וימהרו הגאולה אמרה היושבת בבתי כנסיות ובבתי מדרשות . . . חברים מלאכי השרת מתאוים לשמוע תפלתך והם מקשיבים לקולך השמיעיני תפלתך. 52 Joshua Ibn Shueib, Derashot, 234: וכנסת ישראל משיבה ומתפללת ברח דודי מן הגלות הזה כי שכינה עמנו בגלות כמו שאמרו ירדו למצרים שכינה עמהן וכת' גילי מאד בת ציון הנה מלכך וגו' כלומר שימהר חזרתו לבית המקדש הנבנה בהר המוריה שהוא הר המור. 53 Joshua Ibn Shueib, Derashot, 234: השם למען רחמיו וחסדיו ימהר ביאת הגואל במהרה בימינו ויחזיר שכינתו למקומו ונגילה ונשמחה בישועתו שהיא השמחה השלימה. 54 Joshua Ibn Shueib, Derashot, 231. 136 maud kozodoy to an explicit invocation of the redemption and the awaited Messiah. Despite his caution that one must not “press the end,” the text concludes with an argument that the Messiah will arrive within the first 200 years of the sixth millennium: that is, sometime before 1440. Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra explained everyone for its fruit was to bring a thousand pieces of silver [as meaning] that 172 years after the destruction [of the Temple], the fourth millennium was completed, and it does not matter that the [allotted] thousand-year time was scanted. Thou, O Solo- mon, may have the thousand [means that] the sixth millennium [belongs to] the Messiah who will rule over Israel. And those that guard its fruit two hundred [means that] the resurrection of the dead will occur after the first two hundred years of the sixth millennium, when the wars have been completed, the people have been settled upon their land, and the guardians have arisen, for that is when the coming of the Messiah will take place, and it will not matter that the sixth millennium [has already begun].55 In the name of Abraham Ibn Ezra—though the remark does not appear in the printed commentary of Ibn Ezra on the Song of Songs—Joshua Ibn Shueib reasons that as it was not a difficulty that the Temple was destroyed 172 years before it was due to be (at the end of the fourth millennium), it will not be a difficulty if the messiah comes later than at the immediate inception of the sixth millennium (1240—the year 5000 of the Jewish calendar), which is supposed to mark the onset of the messianic period.56 For other things need to happen first, such as the wars (of Gog and Magog) and the return to the land of Israel. This variation on normal calculations of the messianic time line offers the possibility of redemption coming soon while also allowing for a generous period of delay and rescuing the apparently failed predictions of a messianic arrival in the year 1240.57 And that may be precisely the

55 Joshua Ibn Shueib, Derashot, 233: ור' אברהם בן עזרא פי' איש יביא בפריו אלף כסף כי קע"ב שנים אחר החורבן נשלמו ארבעת אלפים ולא חשש למיעוט האלף לך שלמה האלף הששי למשיח שימלוך על ישראל ומאתים לנוטרים את פריו כי לאחר מאתים שנים הראשונים מן האלף הששי יהיה תחיית המתים כשישתלמו המלחמות ויהיו על אדמתם ויקומו הנוטרים שיחלו ביאת המשיח ולא חשש למעט שיצאו מן האלף השישי. See Marc Saperstein, Your Voice Like a Ram’s Horn, 15. 56 bSanh. 97a. 57 On the messianic calculations around the year 1240, see Israel Jacob Yuval, “Jewish Messianic Expectations Toward the Year 1240 and Christian Reactions,” in Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco, eds. Peter Schäfer and Mark R. Cohen (Leiden, 1998), 105–121. messianic interpretation of the song of songs 137 point: in view of the long delay, it was simultaneously necessary to keep up the people’s spirit and to refrain from promising imminent relief.

Abraham ben Isaac ha-Levi

Abraham ha-Levi of Gerona seems to have died shortly before the winter of 1393, when Profiat Duran wrote a eulogy in his honor,58 and there are few concrete data regarding his life. His goal, ha-Levi states, is to write a commentary in which the plain meaning harmonizes with the words of the text, and the occult meaning harmonizes with the plain meaning. I in my humility have prepared my heart to establish the revealed [meaning] and to make it agree with the words and to connect its meanings one to the other. After that, I set my heart to the hidden [part], to make it agree with the allegory as my strength [allows].59 He follows a two-tier system, giving both a plain meaning and an occult or nistar interpretation. Although drawing on the work of previous commentators, he asserts that he follows his own path wherever opinions conflict with one another or with his own opinion, and his allegorical reading does diverge from that of his predecessors.60 What he calls the nigleh or revealed plot is a love story between a delicate black-haired maiden, owner of a few young goats, and her lover, a shepherd, whom she calls “king.” They are married with festivity and lie together, but the shepherd must return to his shepherding: the cause of several separations and of intense mutual yearning. Fundamentally, however, the Song for Abraham ha-Levi is about the redemption of the Jews. In its nistar meaning, the Song consists of Israel’s prayer to God to redeem her from exile, God’s promise that he will do so, and what that redemption will look like:

58 See the introduction by Leon A. Feldman to R. Abraham b. Isaac ha-Levi Tamakh, Commentary on the Song of Songs, ed. and trans. Leon A. Feldman (Assen, 1970), 3–25. 59 Abraham ha-Levi, Commentary on the Song of Songs, 50: ואני בעניי הכינתי את לבבי ליישב הנגלה ולהסכימו אל המלות ולקשור עניניו אחד באחד ואחרי כן אל נסתרו אשית לב להסכימו אל משלו ככחי. 60 See Abraham ha-Levi, Commentary on the Song of Songs, 53, note 2. 138 maud kozodoy

And I saw that this book is founded on the petition of our holy people to their Creator, may He be blessed, while she remains in this exile that we are in, to bring her out from it, and He promises to do so when she finds favor in His eyes and He, may He be blessed, promises her this and testifies to her that he will redeem her from it as He already redeemed her from the previous exiles. The story continues [with] these exiles, what they were like, and afterwards it is sweet with the flourishing of our redemption and its completion. This is the foundation of the book, upon which it is built.61 Like Ibn Shueib, Abraham ha-Levi regards Song 6:10 and onward as relating to the current period of exile. Most of the action is taken up by the prayer of Israel and God’s response to it. The divine response is pure optimism: the messianic redemption is imminent, and it will be the final one: no more failed restorations. The Jews having resisted the enticements of the nations, their excellence will increase instead of degenerating, there will be no backsliding into idolatry, all will join together, the Ark will be restored to the Temple, there will be true peace and security, their leaders will be trustworthy and their judges righteous, there will be no more poor, and prophecy will be restored not just to a few but to all.62 In his comments on the final verses of the Song, ha-Levi offers a highly compressed eschatological summary, seeing in the text the wars of Gog and Magog, the death of Messiah ben Joseph, the coming of the Messiah ben David, and the return of the ten lost tribes.63 The Song’s final line presents an occasion to beseech the abiding presence of God for however long the exile endures and to record the divine response: “God’s reply,” writes Abraham, “is that their deliverance will be as swift as the gazelle and the fawn.” Aside from his explicit description of the Song’s purpose, one of the more striking signs of Abraham ha-Levi’s messianic interest is his failure to follow the dominant reading (see Ibn Shueib above) of the repeated adjuration “do not awake love until it please” as a command not to “press the end,” i.e., not to hurry the final redemption before

61 Abraham ha-Levi, Commentary on the Song of Songs, 53: ואומר כי הספר הזה נוסד על תחנת אומתינו הקדושה לבוראה ית' והיא עומדת בגלות הזה אשר אנחנו בו להוציאה ממנו ושיישירנה לעשות כאשר תמצא חן בעיניו והוא ית' מיישיר אותה לזה ומיעד אותה שיגאלנה ממנו כמו שכבר גאל אותה מהגליות הקודמים והמשיך ספור הגאולות ההם איך היו ואחרי כן יערב בצמיחת גאלתינו והשלמתה זהו יסוד הספר אשר נבנה עליו. 62 On this last point, see Marc Saperstein, Your Voice Like a Ram’s Horn, 62–64. 63 Abraham ha-Levi, Commentary on the Song of Songs, 152–200. messianic interpretation of the song of songs 139 its time. For Abraham ha-Levi, the verse means nearly the opposite: to ולהיותם מוכנים) refrain from sinning and to be ready for redemption 64.(אל זה Another sign of ha-Levi’s messianism is his gloss on the little sister who has no breasts, again often interpreted as a sign that the redemption is far off. Now this figure is transformed into the younger sister of the Shulamite, long-married by now, who fears being shamed at her own wedding by her lack of breasts. In ha-Levi’s allegory, this younger sister represents a small, indefensible country, a city without towers. Interpreting the allegorical meaning in its turn, ha-Levi now specifies: the country is Judea, the city is Jerusalem, and the Shulamite (the Jews in the Diaspora) need not worry about the fate of her little sister (the Land of Israel) during the wars of Gog and Magog.65 The events unfolding in this commentary are presented with a sense of historical contemporaneity; and indeed, the Jewish community in Israel was not, so far as Abraham ha-Levi could tell, militarily prepared for the wars that the prophets predicted would begin the time of messianic deliverance. He notes, in fact, that he has seen the tower of David in Jerusalem and that it is indeed destroyed.66 In the background of this extended allegorical explanation appears to be a recognition on the part of Abraham ha-Levi that Jews in the Diaspora might regard his parable of a small beleaguered country as a sign that the redemption is not yet about to happen; hence, perhaps, his insistence that this circumstance should not cause despair in Diaspora communities.

Isaac Arama

Isaac Arama, thought to have been born in Zamora in northern Cas- tile around 1420, wrote a particularly sophisticated and intriguing interpretation of the Song of Songs, and a highly messianic one at that. A member of the rabbinic leadership in Christian Spain until the expulsion of 1492, Arama is believed to have served in Tarragona

64 Abraham ha-Levi, Commentary on the Song of Songs, on Song 8.4, p. 184. The interpretation of the previous occurrences are as follows: 2.10: the people adjure the upper and lower worlds; 3.5: the people adjure each other not to sin; 5.8: the people adjure each other to seek the Lord, to improve their deeds. 65 Abraham ha-Levi, Commentary on the Song of Songs, 188–192. 66 Abraham ha-Levi, Commentary on the Song of Songs, 166. 140 maud kozodoy and Fraga and later to have been named rabbi of Calatayud in Ara- gon. In 1492 he fled with his son, Meir, to Naples, where he died in approximately 1494. Just prior to Arama’s lifetime, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, a wave of conversions to Christianity further shocked the Jews of Castile and Aragon. A number of communities that seemed to have survived 1391 relatively unscathed collapsed at this time. The wave of conversions, perhaps as far-reaching in its effects as the conversions of 1391, has sometimes been associated with the preaching activities of Vincent Ferrer and sometimes with the disastrous Tortosa disputation of 1412–1415. An influential preacher himself, Arama was—as is evident from his biblical commentary Aqedat Yitzḥaq, as well as from his specifically polemical work, Ḥ azut Qasheh—deeply concerned with the moral education of his community, and in particular with combat- ing Christianity and preventing further conversions.67 Despite his anti-Christian purposes, Arama appreciated Christian modes of interpretation, and in his exegetical work (as on the book of Ruth) sometimes employed a “method of doubts”—i.e., the use of a series of problematizing questions subsequently and systematically answered—similar to that of the scholastics.68 He is also known for his strong opposition to “philosophers” whose rationalist attitudes undermined their loyalty to Judaism—although, as Hava Tirosh-Rothschild has observed, his criticism of philosophy is not wholesale but rather focused on “a certain interpretation of Maimonides according to which philosophy alone is salvific.”69 When it came to philosophy as a tool for the explication of scripture and law, Arama felt free to employ it, including in his commentary on the Song of Songs.70 In this lesser

67 See the description of his debate with a Christian preacher over predestination, Ram Ben-Shalom, “Between Official and Private Dispute: The Case of Christian Spain and Provence in the Late Middle Ages,” AJS Review 27 (2003): 23–71. 68 Marc Saperstein, “The Method of Doubts: Problematizing the Bible in Late Medi- eval Jewish Exegesis,” in With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Oxford and New York, 2003), 133–156. 69 Hava Tirosh Rothschild, “The Ultimate End of Human Life in Post-Expulsion Philosophical Literature,” in Crisis and Continuity in the Sephardic World: 1391–1648, ed. Benjamin R. Gampel (New York, 1997), 223–254, and note p. 359, n. 28. See also Menachem Kellner, “Gersonides and his Cultured Despisers: Arama and Abravanel,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 6 (1976): 269–99. 70 See for example, Sarah Heller-Wilensky, “Isaac Arama on the Creation and Structure of the World,” PAAJR 22 (1953): 131–150, and her The Philosophy of Isaac Arama (Hebrew) (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1956). messianic interpretation of the song of songs 141 known work, Arama at once continues in the paths of his predecessors and is wholly himself.71 Arama characterizes the Song as being uniquely susceptible of multiple interpretations—i.e., everyone interprets it from the perspective of his own discipline. The philosopher uses the tools of philosophy, the Kabbalist the tools of Kabbalah, the theologian the tools of theology. Each approach produces its own result and, Arama suggests, they may all be valid.72 Despite this generous opening, however, Arama cleverly dismisses the kabbalistic interpretations as being written only for initi- ates, using stereotypically kabbalistic language to do so: What is said about it by the sages of Kabbalah is closed and sealed, it serves only for the knower to make known to a knower who knows, nothing else, and a pearl is in their mouth, and the enlightened one will understand.73 The philosophical reading also comes in for a witty rejection, couched in suitably “philosophical” terms, as being unconnected to the text: the philosophers’ interpretation “is not in scripture, neither in potentia ,(חבור בפני עצמו) nor in actu”;74 what they are writing is a treatise not a commentary. In his introduction, Arama explicates the Song in terms of the four Aristotelian causes.75 Here we learn that the “material cause” is the

71 Marc Saperstein has suggested that there was a “common tradition, transmitted in the Spanish schools, of specific problems for each scriptural lesson, indeed for each scriptural passage, which individual writers could draw upon, supplement, and adapt to their own purpose.” He traces this Spanish tradition through Joel Ibn Shueib, Isaac Caro, Isaac Arama, and Isaac Abravanel. Saperstein, “The Method of Doubts”, 146. 72 Arama, Commentary on Song of Songs, in Aqedat Yitzḥak III (Pressburg, 1849), 162b: ובה יתהלל חכם בחכמתו מקובל בקבלתו ואלהי באלהותו כמו שנתפרסם מן פירושיהם. 73 Arama, Commentary on Song of Songs, 162b: מה שידובר בו מחכמי הקבלה בו סתום וחתום לא יועיל כי אם להודיע היודע ליודע שיודע לא זולת ומרגלא בפיהם והמשכיל יבין. איננו בכתובים לא בכח לא :Arama, Commentary on Song of Songs, 162b 74 בפועל. 75 “Since all existent things are known [properly] by their causes and the causes of each thing are four—material, formal, efficient, and final—therefore I have seen [fit] to preface the commentary to this scroll [with] the knowledge of its four causes and their explanation.” Arama, Commentary on the Song of Songs, 159a. He does the same in his commentary for each of the biblical megillot as well, but only here does he explain what he is doing, suggesting that his commentary on the Song was written before the other four. 142 maud kozodoy historical narrative of God and Israel. In Arama’s presentation, the Song is: The tale of the Assembly of Israel with her beloved God, mayHebe blessed, that He cast her away from before Him. [It is] a reminder of the virtues of conjunction with Him that were hers from days of old, and how she yearns to be again [with Him] in that [same] conjunction.76 Arama then explains this material cause by offering a running commentary on the text that explains the gist of each section consecutively. Besides being a reminder of Israel’s former “conjunction” with God, as Arama puts it, the Song is also a dialogue between the two—and Israel’s “answer to the nations of the world who mock her and her sorrows and her seeking her beloved.”77 Arama’s summary thus blends nostalgia for past union with yearning for its renewal, awareness of the imperfection of the Jewish people with pride in their faithfulness, bitter complaint at the ill treatment of the Jews at the hands of Christians with hope for the latter’s punishment: And the answer of the Lover to her [is . . .] how she bears the yoke of the exile and the sorrows through love of her beloved. And how the nations pursue her to [cause her to] lay aside her love of him and go to a people that will not save, to worship in alien service, and she answers them that it is impossible for her to love other gods [with] a love that [truly] desires, and that she trusts in her God, that surely the true Mes- siah will come since hark, my beloved, behold he comes. And since “not like our Rock is their rock” (Deut. 32.31), even in this bitter exile [He] watches over her always and suffers with each of their sorrows. And as He redeemed their fathers from the hand of Pharoh, king of Egypt, from a hard people, a hard king, so He will redeem us from their hand. And [the text] recounts by means of a parable the similarity of the future redemption to the redemption from Egypt. And how there will come first to her the birth pains of the Messiah to scour and to purify her people and her homeland. And there will be no peace then for the wicked of her nation, for they will be erased from the earth and her habitation.78

76 Arama, Commentary on Song of Songs, 159a. ותשובתה אל אומות העולם הלועגות :Arama, Commentary on Song of Songs, 160a 77 עליה ועל צרותיה. 78 Arama, Commentary on Song of Songs, 160a: ואיך סובלת עול הגלות והצרות מפני אהבת דודה. ואיך האומות רודפות אותה שתניח אהבתו ותלך אל גוי לא יושיע לעבוד עבודה נכריה והיא משיבה להם היות מהנמנע אצלה לאהוב אלהים אחרים אהבה שתחפץ ושבוטחת באלוהיה. שבא יבא משיח צדק כי קול דודי הנה זה בא וכי לא כצורנו צורם ואפילו בגלות המר הזה משגיח עליה תמיד ובכל צרתם לו צר. וכאשר גאל את אבותיהם מיד פרעה מלך מצרים מאומה קשה מלך קשה כן יגאלנו מידם. ומספר ע״ד משל messianic interpretation of the song of songs 143

[. . .] And the answer of the Assembly of Israel to her Beloved is that she chose Him and toward Him is her desire. And He will rule over her even if she is not perfect in her essence, for [compared with] the sinning nations she is good and upright, and [she tells] how she yearns to worship her Beloved and His commandments in public and not in secret and hidden as we do here now in our exile because of the mockery of the idol worshipers and [our] fear of them.79 After Arama’s summary of the love story, the remaining Aristotelian causes are explicated in their turn, but the effect is anti-climactic to say the least. The Song’s “formal cause” is said by Arama to be its divinely inspired words—but, following Maimonides who in Guide II.45 ranks the Song poorly in terms of its degree of philosophical conjunction with the divine, he places it at the second lowest level of inspiration. As for its “efficient cause,” namely its author, Arama breaks with long- standing tradition and, instead of Solomon, cites at great length a talmudic passage attributing the work to Hezekiah and his circle. In his presentation, then, not only is the work itself only barely touched by the divine, it was authored by committee—a long way from Akiva’s “holy of holies.” The “final cause” of the work, its ultimate purpose, remains the promise of redemption. As Arama concludes his introductory paragraphs: The Song of Songs, made by the holy spirit, lets us know that [when we fulfill] the commandment of repentance, God will hasten the end, and [it] promises us that even if the entire generation is culpable, our Mes- siah will come and the King to whom peace belongs will set his pavilion in the coming Temple and it will be eternal and lasting, not like the former Temples. May He in His mercy let us be worthy to see it.80 Isaac Arama, like Abraham ha-Levi and in similar words, expresses the desire to present a commentary that makes sense as a continuous narrative, suggesting that the lack (so far) of a skillful interpreter has

דמיון הגאולה העתידה לגאולת מצרים. ואיך יבאו קודם לה חבלי משיח למרק ולזכך עמה ומולדתה. ולא יהיה שלום אז לרשעים מאומתה כי ימחו מן הארץ ומעונתה. 79 Arama, Commentary on Song of Songs, 160b: ותשובת כנסת ישראל לדודה כי בחרה בו ואליו תשוקתה והוא ימשול בה ואף כי אינה שלימה בעצמה בערך האומות החוטאות היא טובה וישרה ואיך כוספת לעבוד עבודת דודה ומצותיו בפרהסיא ולא בסתר וטמון כאשר אנחנו עושים פה היום בגלותינו מפני לעג העכ"ום ופחדם. 80 Arama, Commentary on Song of Songs, in Aqedat Yitzḥak III (Pressburg, 1849), 162b. 144 maud kozodoy obscured the book’s ultimate goal: namely, the messianic promise to Israel. And we have not found yet [any commentator] who makes continuous the words of this book, either in the parable or in the allegory, a correct continuity [in which] each part is tied and bound one to the next as is proper according to its meanings. Therefore [the Song’s] purpose is neither recognized nor well-known.81 What interests Arama is constructing a convincing connection between the mashal and the nimshal, and to this end he chooses his “peshat” story to fit his national-historical reading. But of no lesser interest are the Song’s messianic promises. The two purposes are, in Arama’s presentation, closely tied to each other. In fact, and again like Abraham ha-Levi, Arama comes up with a novel and surprisingly detailed peshat reading of the Song as a love story between a king and a peasant maiden.82 The maiden wishes to become the lover of the king, so she speaks to a man who can act as her messenger. The messenger carries her words of praise and love to the king, who approaches her. She leaves the city to meet him. Each desires the other, but slanderers intervene and she leaves. Time passes, they return to each other, and are joined under the marriage canopy. They are again separated. (Arama is not at first sure whether the separation occurs in the interval between the marriage canopy and the consummation of their marriage or thereafter, but later settles for the former.) She becomes haughty and her groom turns away from her for a long time. She searches for her husband, and after many travails finds him. They are married once again, and this time the yiḥud (Uni- fication) is complete: And it further adds, regarding her, [verses] that increase knowledge of these hidden matters, from the point of view of the completion of

81 Arama, Commentary on Song of Songs, 163a: ולא ראינו עד הנה שימשיך דברי הספר הזה אם במשל ואם בנמשל המשך נכון קשור ומחובר קצתו בקצתו כאשר יאות לפי עניינו לכן לא נכר ולא נתפרסם תועלתו. 82 Meir of Narbonne too takes the beloved to be a king. See Robert Chazan, Fash- ioning Jewish Identity in Medieval Western Christendom, 213. Chazan identifies three different polemical strategies used by the Jews to combat the Christian assertion that God had turned away from the Jews to the New Israel, the Christians, namely: “to argue the verses adduced by Christian thinkers”; two, to argue “for the inevitability of redemption” no matter what the current situation seems; and 3, “to challenge the Christian sense of chosenness.” Chazan, 214. messianic interpretation of the song of songs 145

the coupling83 and the unification and their taking each other for the purpose of love and affection, such that it was established and accepted upon them to dwell together in comprehensive love and never, ever, to part again.84 The message of messianic consolation, and even of imminent redemption, is unmistakable here. As was also the case with the story of the shepherd and the shepherd girl in Abraham ha-Levi, the romantic tale of the king and the maiden mirrors so closely and so well the history of the enduring and unshakable love affair between God and Israel that it seems hardly to need an explanation. The final consummation of the marriage bed is easily and naturally identified with the joining of a loving God with his beloved people in the holy land, a recounting intended to inspire repentance and actually precipitate the final redemption.

Conclusion: Jewish-Christian Polemics, ‘peshat’, and the Messiah

One conclusion that might be drawn from these commentaries concerns the enduring vitality of historical allegorization. In part, the appeal of the messianic interpretation of the Song lay in its power to console and encourage Jews in straitened circumstances, and in particular to help them resist the seductions of a beckoning Christian- ity. That appeal was enhanced by picturing the relationship of Israel and God in terms of the passionate desire between a beautiful young woman and a ruddy young man, whether shepherd and shepherd girl or king and lovely maiden, or in terms of a woman’s faithful yearning for her absent lover-husband, or in terms of the budding springtime and verdant renewal of their triumphant union. All this was enabled through recourse to the tropes and the richly allusive language perfected and polished by so many Andalusian poets. Remarkably, even the most prominent and self-conscious practitio- ners of the form—Abraham Ibn Ezra, Rashi, Rashbam—embraced the

83 See Julia Schwartzmann, “Isaac Arama and His Theory of Two Matches (Ziv- vugim),” Jewish Studies Quarterly 13 (2006): 27–49. 84 Arama, Commentary on Song of Songs, 163b: ועוד נוסף עליה מה שניתוספה ידיעתו בהם בעניינים הנסתרים מצד גמרו הזווג וייחודו וקבלו זה את זה בתכלית האהבה והחבה עד שקיימו וקבלו עליהם לשבת יחד באהבה כלולה ולא יתפרד עוד לעולמי עד. 146 maud kozodoy national-historical allegory as an essential element in their commentaries on the Song. Their retention of the historical narrative cannot be regarded as mere window-dressing or camouflage for an otherwise daringly plain-sense reading. Rather, the allegorical narrative exerted its own compelling influence, a central component of which wasa messianic message. It has been suggested that in general the peshat interpretation of scripture functioned in the later medieval period as a weapon for the Jews in the Jewish-Christian competition over scripture, presumptively since an insistence on peshat “gave the Jews a polemical edge.”85 The polemicist Hayim Ibn Musa (ca. 1380–1460), in his Magen ve-Romaḥ, counseled would-be fellow disputants to rely on peshat only in debating with Christians. But when it came to the Song of Songs, peshat interpretation was of doubtful recourse, for it failed to engage the issues that made the Song so potent for Jews and Christians alike. It was, indeed, precisely the presence of an allegorical veil that rendered it so difficult to ground an argument for the truth of one religion over another in the plain-sense words of the Song itself. It is in this context that we may consider the way our three late-medieval commentators address both the peshat and allegorical levels of the text. While all three imbue the Song of Songs with a powerful messianic significance, on one point Abraham ha-Levi and Isaac Arama differ fundamentally from Joshua Ibn Shueib. The former are strikingly committed to crafting commentaries in which the peshat interpretation makes sense both with the “words” of the text and with the allegorical interpretation, and both construct unusually detailed and realistic peshat readings of the Song. Joshua Ibn Shueib, by contrast, instead of tying the peshat and the allegory closely together, dissolves the one into the other: while the Song contains secrets,86 the outer, exoteric meaning is that the groom is God and the bride is Israel.87 In his sermons, what we have been calling the peshat—namely, the love story—is simply subsumed into the national-historical allegory.88

85 Miriam Bodian, “Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: The Ambiguous Borders of Self-Definition,” Jewish Social Studies 15 (2008): 79 (65–80). 86 “its words are closed and sealed”—presumably the moral and mystical teachings that can be extracted from the text. 87 Joshua Ibn Shueib, Derashot, 224. 88 And in this context we may adduce the commentary on the Song by Gersonides, who explicitly scorned the midrashic interpretation in favor of what he called the peshat meaning: the successive steps of the rational soul, by means of the sciences, to messianic interpretation of the song of songs 147

But all three were facing and trying to solve the same difficulty. Any polemicist working with the Song of Songs had to confront the gap between the apparent meaning of the words and their “intent” as the polemicist wanted to show it. Abraham ha-Levi and Isaac Arama, in trying to bind peshat and drash ever more tightly together, and Joshua Ibn Shueib, in identifying them as one and the same, may have been equally seeking an interpretation that would satisfy not just at the literary level but also at the polemical. In other words, the pressures of the Jewish-Christian debate, present throughout the entire period under study here but exacerbated in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Iberia, seem to have played two roles in reading the Song. First, among those commentators with some sort of engagement in Jewish-Christian polemic, while all emphasize the redemptive message of the Song, and all draw freely and consistently from the classical midrash as well as the Targum, absent is the particular interpretive strand of the beloved-as-Messiah. Second, the Jewish-Christian debate, whatever its other ramifica- tions, had at its root the question of the Messiah: was Jesus indeed the anointed one prophesied by the Hebrew Bible? This question, and the different positions taken by one side or the other, infused medieval interpretations of the Song of Songs. Any meaningful dispute over the relevance of the words to the history of the Jews and/or the Church depended on a common authoritative tradition of interpretation—and no such common tradition existed. The closest one could come was to argue from the other side’s authorities, as Nicholas of Lyra did. This was precisely the sort of argument that Hayim Ibn Musa (and possibly some of our commentators as well) wanted to avoid. A way around it was to construct a polemical reading of the Song that tied the allegorical (and indeed the messianic) reading so closely to the peshat that the two became nearly or entirely identified. One might thereby base one’s polemical argument not on the shaky ground of “interpretation” but on a “plain meaning” so convincing that, though unlikely to sway one’s debating partner, might compel the grateful assent and buoy the flagging spirits of one’s own side.

knowledge of the agent intellect. Despite the different purpose and method of exegesis, Gersonides too identifies his allegorical reading as the peshat, the intended plain meaning of the author.

III. CONVERSION AND THE USES OF BIBLICAL EXEGESIS

PRO-CONVERSO APOLOGETICS AND BIBLICAL EXEGESIS

Claude B. Stuczynski

Conversos and Paulinism

Over three generations ago, French Hispanist Marcel Bataillon won- dered why so many Christians of Jewish descent were implicated in the Iberian Catholic renewal of the sixteenth century, adopting beliefs declared unorthodox by the establishment (such as alumbradismo) and joining movements considered to be bearers of quintessential Catholic orthodoxy (such as the first generations of Jesuits). Batail- lon’s answer was twofold. On the one hand, the continuing “purity of blood”-based social and ecclesiastical segregation compelled fervent conversos to explore avenues of Catholicity not yet closed to them. On the other hand, these movements were imbued with Paulinian themes. In a manner similar to St. Paul’s own life and teachings, Ibe- rian Catholic renewal movements legitimized creative manifestations of inner religiosity, coupled with a strong sense of evangelical calling (klesis, vocatio) that transcended their particular ethnical origins. The writings of Erasmus of Rotterdam attracted educated and sincere conversos precisely because they were replete with such Paulinian themes.1 Ongoing scholarship has shown that this phenomenon actually began more than a century earlier, corresponding to the emergence of the Converso phenomenon in the aftermath of the 1391 anti-Jewish riots.2 By the mid-fifteenth century, those who sought to integrate conversos and delegitimize Toledo’s 1449 anti-converso segregation laws often invoked St. Paul’s Epistles. In subsequent decades, Paulinism became a religious and pedagogical approach, offering an evangelical alternative

1 Marcel Bataillon, Érasme et l’Espagne, ed. Daniel Devoto (Genève, 1991), 195– 196, 510, 527, 846–847 (vol. 1), and 10 (vol. 2); idem, Les jésuites dans l’Espagne du XVIe siècle (Paris, 2009). 2 E.g. The pioneering study of Francisco Márquez Villanueva, Investigaciones sobre Juan Álvarez Gato. Contribución al conocimiento de la literatura castellana del siglo XV (Madrid, 1960); and the recent comprehensive study of Stefania Pastore, Un’Eresia Spagnola: Spiritualità Conversa, Alumbradismo e Inquisizione (1449–1559) (Florence, 2004). 152 claude b. stuczynski to the Inquisition’s emerging method of confronting heresy.3 Concom- itantly, fifteenth-century converso Paulinism continued to develop the importance of the spirituality of Christian life, along with sacraments and pious works. This was particularly true for converso women such as Teresa de Cartagena of the illustrious Santa María family. For her, the feminine condition impeded the expression of the most explicit political aspects of fifteenth-century Paulinism, such as were displayed by her uncle, Alonso de Cartagena.4 A more de-politicized version of Paulinism developed afterwards, during the first half of the sixteenth- century, even if criticism was still occasionally leveled against Inquisi- torial procedures and “purity of blood” laws.5 According to Bruce Rosenstock, fifteenth-century converso Paulin- ism was not merely a psycho-sociological and political response to suspicion, segregation or persecution. Rather, it signified an endorsement of a specific converso theology.6 This understanding has been criticized as excessively “narrow”, since fifteenth-century Paulinian converso theology was in accordance with “normative” Catholicism, and was occasionally heralded by kings and popes.7 Moreover, Old Christians of diverse backgrounds, positions, and opinions such as the popular preacher Fray Vicente Ferrer, the bishop of Cuenca Lope de Barrientos,8 or, later on, the young Ignacio de Loyola,9 shared certain converso theological convictions. Thus, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, Fray Vicente Ferrer strongly opposed a popular tendency to

3 Ben-Zion Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain (New York, 1995); Eloy Benito Ruano, Los orígenes del problema converso (Madrid, 2001); Albert A. Sicroff, Los estatutos de limpieza de sangre. Controversias entre los siglos XV y XVII (Newark, Delaware, 2010). 4 María Laura Giordano, Apologetas de la fe. Élites conversas entre Inquisición y patronazgo en España (siglos XV y XVI) (Madrid, 2004). 5 Stefania Pastore, Il Vangelo e la spada. L’Inquisizione di Castiglia e I suoi critici (1460–1598) (Roma, 2003). 6 Bruce Rosenstock, ‘New Men’, Conversos, Christian Theology and Society in Fifteenth-Century Castile (London, 2002). 7 Vicente Beltrán de Heredia, “Las bulas de Nicolás V acerca de los conversos de Castilla”, Sefarad 21 (1961): 22–47; Jeremy N. H. Lawrance, “Alfonso de Cartagena y los conversos”, in Actas del primer congreso anglo-hispano, II: literatura, ed. Alan Deyermond and Ralph Penny (Madrid, 1993), 103, 120; Maurice Kriegel, “Autour de Pablo de Santa María et d’Alonso de Cartagena: alignement culturel et originalité converse”, Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 41, no. 2 (1994): 197–205. 8 Ángel Martínez Casado, “La situación jurídica de los conversos según Lope de Barrientos”, Archivo Dominicano 17 (1996): 25–62. 9 Robert A. Maryks, The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ances- try and Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus (Leiden, 2010). pro-converso apologetics and biblical exegesis 153 despise newly baptized individuals on the basis of their Jewish origins. His criticism was grounded in a major “converso theological” leit- motiv: “because Jesus Christ was a Jew and before being a Christian the Virgin Mary was a Jewess.”10 Some scholars prefer to place these expressions of inner and inclusive Christianity in the broader context of pre- or early Iberian humanism that evolved into a “letrado” ideology. This phenomenon included conversos as well as other “new men” integrated into the Iberian elites. The double dimension of fifteenth- century Spanish Paulinism, the political and the spiritual, included a reflection on the converso condition integral to the “letrado” movement.11 That said, a specific converso theology might well have developed within pre- or early humanist and “letrado” Spanish Catholicism, not so much through its theological contents as through the highlighting of the significant and positive role played by Christians of Jewish origin. Therefore, even if fifteenth-century Paulinism was not exclusive to conversos, it afforded a frame for the particular Judeo-Christian identities of sincere and fervent New Christians.12 Probably, more so than “letrados” and pre- or early humanists of their time, some conversos felt the need to further advance their own integration. Paulinism was an important means of attaining this goal. However, by grounding their Christian identity in St Paul’s life, concepts and ideas, it was claimed that conversos became an important accelerator in the course of the development of Spanish Christian spirituality. According to Maria Laura Giordano, Erasmian Paulinism flourished in Spain during the first half of the sixteenth century because it was “grafted” onto

10 “Molts Christians folls son que non han consolació, quells menyspreau perque son stats juheus, e no u deveu fer, car Jesu Christ juheu fo e la Verge Maria aban fo juhia que christiana” (José María Millás Vallicrosa, “San Vicente Ferrer y el antisemitismo”, Sefarad 10 (1950): 184). 11 Helen Nader, The Mendoza Family in the Spanish Renaissance, 1350 to 1550 (New Brunswick, 1979); Jeremy N. H. Lawrence, “Humanism in the Iberian Penin- sula”, in The Impact of Humanism on Western Europe, ed. Anthony Goodman and Angus MacKay (London, 1990), 220–258; Lu Ann Homza, Religious Authority in the Spanish Renaissance (Baltimore and London, 2000); Francisco Márquez Villanueva, “Conversos y cargos consejiles en el siglo XV”, in De la España judeoconversa. Doce estudios, ed. F. Márquez Villanueva (Barcelona, 2006), 137–174. 12 Dayle Seidenspinner-Núñez, “Prelude to the Inquisition: The Discourse of Per- secution, the Toledan Rebellion of 1449, and the Contest for Orthodoxy”, in Strate- gies of Medieval Communal Identity: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, ed. Wout J. van Bekkum and Paul M. Cobb (Paris, 2004), 47–74; María Laura Giordano, “La ciudad de nuestra conciencia: los conversos y la construcción de la identidad judeocristiana (1449–1556)”, Hispania Sacra 62 (2010): 43–91. 154 claude b. stuczynski an already existing fifteenth-century Paulinism.13 The use of the verb “grafting” (of Paulinian flavor) in this context is illuminating because it reveals trends of both continuity and change between the two forms of Paulinism. The present article is a preliminary exploration of fifteenth-century biblical exegesis, as expressed in pro-converso apologetical tracts by notorious or alleged conversos: Pablo de Santa María (1351–1435) and his son, Alonso de Cartagena (1384–1456), both bishops of Burgos; the Cardinal Juan de Torquemada (1388–1468); the Hieronymite Gen- eral Alonso de Oropesa (?–1468); and finally, de Oropesa’s possible relative Hernando de Talavera (1428–1507), a Hieronymite fryar, confessor of Queen Isabel, bishop of Ávila and first archbishop of Gran- ada. First, I will offer a brief summary of fifteenth-century Christian Paulininism articulated in these pro-converso tracts. Second, I will explore what I identify as a common biblical exegetical tendency in those tracts toward a certain type of Christological literality. Finally, I will suggest that fifteenth-century pro-converso Paulinism was strongly related to that specific way of interpreting the Bible. This interde- pendence between content and exegesis could be explained on the basis of genealogy. On the one hand, these authors were close either to the Dominican or the Hieronymite exegetical traditions. On the other hand, a genealogical concatenation of these writings may also explain the commonalities. The pro-converso views expressed in Santa María’s Scrutinium scripturarum influenced Cartagena’s Defensorium unitatis christianae. Cartagena’s tract, in turn, inspired Torquemada’s Tractatus contra Madianitas et Ismaelitas and later on Oropesa’s Lumen ad revelationem gentium. Oropesa then influenced Talavera’s evangelical policies toward conversos, including his Católica impug- nación.14 However, there were substantial differences between these pro-converso tracts, particularly between those written before and after the 1450’s. For instance, the social segregation of conversos from Old Christian circles was characterized by Cartagena during the first half

13 Giordano, “La ciudad de nuestra conciencia,” 46–47. 14 Javier Martínez de Bedoya, La segunda parte del “Scrutinium scripturarum” de Pablo de Santa María: “El diálogo catequético” (Roma, 2002); Alonso de Carta- gena, Defensorium Unitatis Christianae, ed. P. Manuel Alonso (Madrid, 1943); Juan de Toquemada, Tratado contra los madianitas e ismaelitas, de Juan de Torquemada (contra la discriminación de los conversos), ed. Carlos de Valle Rodríguez (Madrid, 2002); Alonso de Oropesa, Luz para conocimiento de los gentiles, ed. Luis A. Díaz y Díaz (Madrid, 1979); Fray Hernando de Talavera, Católica impugnación, ed. Francisco Márquez (Barcelona, 1961). pro-converso apologetics and biblical exegesis 155 of the century as a reversion to ancient “paganism”, employing the verb “paganizare” as a response to the instrumental use of the Paulin- ian term “iudaizare” (Galatians 2:14) to denote converso unchristian behavior.15 A decade later Oropesa described anti-converso segregation as “judaization” (iudaizare), conceived by him as an appropriation of the ancient “Jewish” sense of exclusivism.16 Moreover, from Pablo de Santa María on, the celebration of Christ’s Jewishness became central to pro-converso discourse. However both Oropesa and Talavera attempted to neutralize much of the benefit of Jewish carnality. These examples show that pro-converso apologetics were diverse and at times, antagonistic. And yet they shared a common grounded (but not identical) approach toward the interpretation of the Bible. My hypothesis is that this exegetical continuity reflects the outcome of the common denominator of fifteenth-century pro-converso apologetics—its overtly political character.

Textual Paulinism and pro-converso theology

Salomon Halevi/Pablo de Burgos or Santa María, associated the conversion of the Jews with the archetypal Christian convert: St. Paul. In the first part of his anti-rabbinic dialogical Scrutinium scripturarum, he named the fictional Jewish character Saul, after Saul of Tarsus, and his Christian counterpart Paul, after St. Paul.17 However, it was not the Apostle’s sudden conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3–9) which drew Santa María, but his method of preaching to the Dama- scene Jews in the aftermath of his experience.18 The second part of

15 “Sicut ergo illi qui fide recepta ritus iudaycos exercere presumunt, iudayzare dicuntur, sic et illi qui baptismatis gurgite loti et in unum populum cum aliis effecti divisionem aliquam revivificare volunt, paganizare dicentur, cum christianam unitate scindere et alios ab aliis dividere prout paganitatis vifentis fiebat temporibus, temptant” (Cartagena, Defensorium Unitatis Christianae, 270). 16 “Intra Ecclesiam vero omnes debebant semper recipi uniformiter, quandocumque ad fidem venirent, et equali ordine haberi, quia contrarium facere esset secundum illum veterem statum iudaizare” (Oropesa, Luz para conocimiento de los gentiles, 339). 17 Michael Glatzer suggested that Saul/Paul could be a projection of Salomon/Pablo personal conversion experience (Michael Glatzer, “Crisis de fe judía en España a fines del siglo XIV y principios del siglo XV”, in Judíos, Sefarditas, Conversos: la expulsión de 1492 y sus consecuencias, ed. Ángel Alcalá (Valladolid, 1995), 62). 18 “Catholicum verso sub nomine Pauli volo esse cognominatum . . . magis invalesce- bat et confundebat iudeos qui habitabant damasci . . .” (Pablo de Santa María, Incipit dyalogus qui vocatur Scrutiniu[m] scripturarum (Argentorati, ca. 1474), fol. 3). 156 claude b. stuczynski the Scrutinium scripturarum contains a dialogue between a teacher of Christian religion (magister) and a convert disciple (discipulus). It demonstrates that for Pablo de Santa María conversion is not merely an abrupt illumination, but a process of progressive engagement through an analysis of the Holy Scriptures. In the introduction to his own biblical commentary, the Additiones to Nicholas of Lyra’s Postilla, Pablo entreated his son, Alonso de Cartagena, to continue studying the Holy Scriptures. He reminded Alonso that his own conversion followed a prolonged inquiry. It transformed his initial “perfidious” readings into “humble” ones and led him to a Christological understanding of the Bible. The narrative of his own textual conversion was based on a framework of words and images adopted primarily from St. Paul’s conversation with Ananias of Damascus after three days of blindness (Acts 9:13–19).19 Indeed, the very title of the book: Scrutinium scripturarum, was derived from the Evangelical biblical principle: “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me” (John 5:39).20 Pablo de Santa María previously elaborated on the path of textual conversion in a Hebrew letter to Joshua Halorki, the future convert and polemicist Jerónimo de Santa Fe. There, Pablo acknowledged that his personal inquiry into the nature of the Messiah led him to pen- .(מסורת הברית) ”etrate what he termed: “the tradition of the covenant This expression reflects the notion of an organic continuum between Judaism and Christianity.21 It probably underlies his preference for the model of progressive conversion, as inferred from the conversation between St. Paul and Ananias, even as in the case of St. Paul. A previous dramatic spiritual shift is needed in order to accept mysteries, such as Christ’s divinity and Mary’s virginity.22 He applied the concept

19 “Cum vero placuit illi cujus misericordias mensuram non habet, me a tenebris ad lucem, a caliginosa turbine ad serenum aerem revocare: ceciderunt quodammodos qua- mae de oculis mentis meae; et coepi Scripturam sacram aliquanto studiosius relegere, et jam non perfide, sed humiliter veritatem inquirere . . . Sicque factum est ut catholicae fidei desiderium in mente mea de die in diem fortius incandesceret” (Patrologia Latina 113, 35). 20 “Scrutamini scripturas quia vos putatis in ipsis vitam aeternam habere et illae sunt quae testimonium perhibent de me”. I employ here the King James Version of the Bible. 21 Judith Gale Krieger, Pablo de Santa María: His Epoch, Life and Hebrew and Span- ish Literary Productions (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1988), 310–311. 22 Martínez de Bedoya, La segunda parte del “Scrutinium scripturarum” de Pablo de Santa María, distinctio 1–2. pro-converso apologetics and biblical exegesis 157 of theological continuity to the discontinuity inherent in conversion, when he wrote in signing: A word from your brother, Israel, the former Levite, who because of having renounced the first, seeks a second priestliness . . . [f]ormerly in Israel, without knowledge of God, Salomon Halevi, and now that his eyes see God, he calls himself Paulus de Burgos.23 Pablo de Santa María reminded his son, Alonso de Cartagena, that just as they had been chosen to serve God as noble Levites under the Old Law, they continue to serve him now as priests in the Church.24 Other conversos, especially in later generations, found it more difficult to articulate such transitional autographical discourses. Alonso de Cartagena and other members of his family continued to elaborate on the idea of their noble lineage, heralding the Virgin Mary as their quintessential Levite ancestor.25 Most mid-fifteenth-century pro- converso apologues shifted from kinship to the group, emphasizing the Jewish origins of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, the Apostles and other celebrated Christians. They held that the Jews as a group were the noblest people until the Passion, because they were chosen by God. In some cases, these arguments were clearly responses to anti- converso discourse regarding the purported vileness of Christians of Jewish descent. Writing to the Old Christian bishop of Cuenca against the anti-converso riots in Toledo, converso Courtier Fernán Díaz de Toledo, invoked St. Paul (Romans, 1:16, 2:10), arguing that conversos were as much a part of the Hebrews as was Jesus Christ (“del linaje de Nuestro Señor Jesu Christo, según la carne”). Therefore: Not only it is forbidden to despise them, but they must to be honored according to the words of the Apostle our relative (“nuestro pariente”): first the Jew and afterwards the Greek (“Judeo primum et Graeco”).26

“נאם אחיך ישראל אחר לוי משום פסולו של ראשון ודורש ללויה שניה . . . לפנים 23 בישראל לא ישע אל שלמה לוי ועתה כי עיניו יחזו את האלוהים יקרא פוילו די בורגוש” (Krieger, Pablo de Santa María, 316–317). 24 “. . . nobis ex Levitico sanguine descendentibus aliquantulum demonstratum fuisse quod ante tot secula scriptum est: ‘Tribui Levi non fuisse datam possessionem, quia Dominus est possesio ejus’ ” (Patrologia Latina 113, 35). 25 Francisco Cantera Burgos, Alvar García de Santa María y su familia de conversos. Historia de la judería de Burgos y de sus conversos más egregios (Miranda de Ebro, 2007), 280–285. On Levite’s Christian continuities, see Cartagena, Defensorium Uni- tatis Christianae, 131–136. 26 Cartagena, Defensorium Unitatis Christianae, 341 and 345. 158 claude b. stuczynski

Similarly, Cartagena conferred an historical prerogative to Christians of Jewish descent over Christians of Gentile decent, on the basis of the Paulinian dictum “Judeo primum et Graeco”: For while the former is invited to know properly what he already knew in some way or another, the latter is invited to listen to previously unheard messages.27 Apparently, the attitude toward the Paulinian model of conversion was transformed between Pablo de Santa María and the generation of Alonso de Cartagena. The autobiographical became sociological and the eschatological became more political. Thus, interest in St. Paul shifted from his biography to the way he described the group of Jew- ish Christ believers. David Nirenberg argued that these expressions reflect a broader and complex “genealogical turn” occurring in fifteenth-century Spain. It was accelerated by the destabilization of traditional categories of religious identity as a result of the mass conversions of Jews as well as the rise of new aristocracies and elites.28 Nevertheless, it should be remembered that these pro-converso genealogies supported a powerful theological argument. They emphasized theological continuity over supersessionism. The deicidal accusations were diluted, attributing the crucifixion of Christ to both the Jews and the Romans, being displaced of some of its theological centrality. It was replaced by the salutary implications brought by the Passion.29 As part of a divine plan for human redemption, pro-converso apologues insisted on reconciliation with the Jews through conversion. That is why Romans 11 became central to “converso theology.”30 In his Scrutinium scripturarum, Santa María encapsulated this idea, stating that:

27 Cartagena, Defensorium Unitatis Christianae, 124–125. 28 David Nirenberg, “Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain”, Past and Present 174 (2002): 3–41. 29 Cartagena, Defensorium Unitatis Christianae, 142–144. Cf. Alisa Meyuhas Ginio, “La opción desaprovechada: Alonso de Cartagena y su obra Defensorium unitatis christianae”, in Movimientos migratorios y expulsiones en la diáspora occidental: terce- ros encuentros judaicos en Tudela, 14–17 de julio de 1998, ed. Fermín Miranda García (Pamplona, 2000), 79–94. 30 Rosenstock, ‘New Men’, Conversos, Christian Theology and Society in Fifteenth- Century Castile; John H. Edwards, “New Light on the ‘Converso’ Debate? The Jewish Christianity of Alfonso de Cartagena and Juan de Torquemada”, in Cross, Crescent and Conversion. Studies on Medieval Spain and Christendom in Memory of Richard Fletcher, ed. Simon Barton and Peter Linehan (Leiden, 2008), 311–326. pro-converso apologetics and biblical exegesis 159

In the most important times of the History of the Church, at its beginning and at its end, when Jesus was and will be, those who descended from the Israelites were and will be the most distinguished among them, and at the end of the times all the Israelites will adhere to Christ firmly.31 This idea was similar though not identical to the prophecies of Joachim of Fiore, concerning the conversion of the Jews. As with Joachimism, fifteenth-century pro-converso Christian theology substituted the perception of the Jew as the devil’s ally and the converso as a “fifth column” within Christianity, with the perception of the conversion of the Jews as humanity’s greatest fulfillment on earth.32 As we shall see, the biblical interpretations of Pablo de Santa María and other fifteenth-century converso theologians were not based on Joachim of Fiore, but on more consensual mainstream theologians and exegetes such as Thomas of Aquinas and Nicholas of Lyra. However, none of them endorsed such a “philosemitic” reading of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Hence, Santa María added an historical immanency to his enthusiastic call for the conversion of the Jews, an approach absent from the writings of the former and neutralized in the writings of the latter.33

Like his father, Alonso de Cartagena adjudicated a pivotal role to the conversion of the Jews, that of heralds and bringers of the final Salvation.34 However, mid-fifteenth-century pro-converso apologues such as Cartagena and Juan de Torquemada were less concerned with teleology and eschatology than with jurisprudence and ecclesiol- ogy. That is why they emphasized another kind of Paulinian claim, a theological-political one, according to which Jewish Christ believers are full members of the body of Christ—the mystical body—along

31 “Nam, in potissimis temporibus Eccleasiae, scilicet in eius exordio et fine, in quibus Christus fuit et erit praesens, de stipe Israelictica descendentes principaliores fuerunt, et erunt: nam in fine mundum totus genus Israeliticum Christo firmissime adhaerebit” (Santa María, Scrutinium Scripturarum, pars. II, distinctio VI, cap. XIII). 32 Robert E. Lerner, The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews (Philadelphia, 2001), 31. 33 John Y. B. Hood, Aquinas and the Jews (Philadelphia, 1995); Philip D. Krey, “Many Readers but Few Followers: The Fate of Nicholas of Lyra’s Apocalypse Com- mentary in the Hands of His Late-Medieval Admirers”, Church History 64 (1995): 185–201; idem, “‘The Old Law Prohibits the Hand and Not the Spirit’. The Law and the Jews in Nicholas of Lyra’s Commentary of 1329”, in Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture, ed. Philip D. Krey and Lesley Smith (Leiden, 2000), 263. 34 “Quanto ergo crebior et habundantior infidelium israeliatrum conversio sit, tanto verisimilius est iudicii universalis diem appropinquare” (Cartagena, Defensorium Uni- tatis Christianae, 127). 160 claude b. stuczynski with Gentile Christ believers. In his Defensorium Unitatis Christianae, Cartagena expanded on that idea, invoking, among other passages, 1 Corinthians 12:13: “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles.” Cartagena based his efforts to promote converso integration on this Paulinian metaphor while maintaining the social hierarchies of class, gender and skills (e.g. between nobles and plebeians) drawn from the same chapter: But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where would the body be? But now they are many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you . . . He argued that: Inside the unified body of the Church, even if someone deserves more respect than others . . . concerning the right to be a part of that body . . . everyone is equal. In the same way that the eye cannot tell the foot, “You are not a part of my body,” notwithstanding its high function, inside the Body of the Church . . . every believer from any origin is entirely a part of it.35 Cardinal Juan de Torquemada also used that Paulinian metaphor when he discussed the problem of converso integration. However, writing from the Papal Curia he was even more concerned with its ecclesiological aspects than with its social and juridical implications. Both Cartagena and Torquemada argued that distinguishing between Christians on ethnic grounds contravened the “catholic” nature of Christianity. They deemed it to be a schismatic initiative challenging the very unity of the Church and heretical to its teachings. As a trained theologian, Torquemada identified the core of the “mystical body” in the cyclical participation of Christians in the sacrament of the Eucha- rist, through which they literally became part of Christ’s body. There- fore, he reminded his readers that it was the same body and blood offered during the Mass that was historically incarnated into a Jewish body, quoting John 6:55–56: For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eat- eth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.

35 Cartagena, Defensorium Unitatis Christianae, 148–150. pro-converso apologetics and biblical exegesis 161

Condemning the Jewish “race” (“genus Iudaeorum”) would be tantamount to a rejection of Christ himself, whose flesh and “precious blood” assumed the same ethnic origin (“de genere illo assumpta”).36 By integrating conversos into the “mystical body”, Cartagena and Torquemada contested attempts to secularize this concept by identifying it with corporate society.37 Their efforts, however, “synchronically” highlighted the “diachronic” tension revealed by Pablo de Santa María between integrating conversos within the Church and maintaining distinct “Jewish” traits. In Cartagena’s case, some of this tension stemmed perhaps from (Christian) Aristotelian anthropological conceptions. In Torquemada’s case, it may reflect a desire to protect the ecclesiological “mystical body” concept while rejecting its more secular implications. It seems to me that these tensions were also the outcome of a common theological agenda of continuity and reconciliation between two covenants: Jewish and Christian. These tensions may help to explain Alonso de Oropesa and Hernando de Talavera’s efforts to neutralize what they considered to be an overestimation of Jewishness within Christianity. Oropesa’s Lumen ad revelationem gentium has been described as a contrapuntal voice to the Franciscan Fray Alonso de Espina’s contemporaneous Fortalitium Fidei. Oropesa supported the integration and evangelization of conversos by calling for a parsimonious and moder- ate Episcopal Inquisition to deal with crypto-Jewish heresy. Espina’s fierce anti-Jewish and anti-converso demonization endorsed the expulsion of the former and the establishment of a rigorous and centralized Inquisition for the latter.38 By then, the Hieronimyte Order, of which Oropesa became a general, accepted candidates of different ethnic backgrounds, including conversos, of whom it required isolation and spiritual contemplation.39 The title of Oropesa’s book was explicitly

36 Torquemada, Tratado contra los madianitas e ismaelitas, chap. 4, p. 158. 37 Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Politi- cal Theology (Princeton, N.J., 1997), chap. 5–6. Claude B. Stuczynski, “From Polemics and Apologetics to Theology and Politics: Alonso de Cartagena and the Conversos within the ‘Mystical Body’ ”, in Conflict and Conversation: Religious Encounters in Latin Christendom, ed. Ram Ben-Shalom and Israel Yuval (Leuven, in press). 38 Alisa Meyuhas Ginio, La forteresse de la foi: la vision du monde d’Alonso de Espina, moine espagnol (?–1466) (Paris, 1998). 39 J. R. Highfield, “The Jeronimites in Spain, their Patrons and Success, 1373–1516”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 4 (1983): 513–533; Gretchen D. Starr-LeBeau, In the Shadow of the Virgin: Inquisitors, Friars, and Conversos in Guadalupe, Spain (Prince ton, 2003). 162 claude b. stuczynski integrative, being a quotation from Luke 2:32: “A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel”. According to the historian of the Hieronymite Order, Fray José de Sigüenza (1544–1606), precisely that verse was chosen to be sung at the consecration of the first Monastery of the Order in Spain in 1374.40 Oropesa’s Lumen ad revelationem gentium represents much of the Paulinian spirit of his Order. Oropesa confessed that his treatise was a reaction to the “great schism” that occurred in the Monastery of Guadalupe, where he was a novice. Some of the monastery’s monks opposed treating conversos equally. Invoking St. Paul’s suspicion of neophytes of Jewish origin (perhaps, an interpretation of Titus, chapter 1), they argued that: They could neither give nor receive the honors and dignities of the people of God equally with those Gentile converts which, as can be read, were those who principally constituted the Church.41 In contrast, Oropesa argued that the campaign to defend Gospel purity actually betrayed one of its fundamental messages: fraternity. In line with other pro-converso apologetics, Oropesa relied heavily on St. Paul’s epistles, especially Romans, chapters 9–11 and 1 Corinthi- ans, chapters 1–3.42 That said, his views were not identical to other pro-converso apologies. On one hand, contrary to Cartagena and Torquemada, he held that anti-conversos behaved as Jews when they endorsed the Old Law’s ethnic exclusivity and inner hierarchies.43 He stated that “Believers in Christ” (“fideles Christi”) were those who, like St. Paul, enthusiastically embraced the Gospel’s universality, forsak- ing their ethnic particularities (chapters 28–37). Contrary to earlier pro-converso apologues, Oropesa elaborated little on the Jew’s pivotal role in the history of Salvation (chapters 10–12) but instead favored the theme of equality among all believers in Christ (chapters 21–22). Consequently, his book centered on the sacraments’ inclusiveness and the Church’s integrative history (chapters 38–61). Oropesa followed Thomas of Aquinas to argue that even if God chose the Jewish People and gave them a clearer sense of truth than to the Gentiles, their laws

40 Quoted by Marcel Édouard Bataillon, Les jésuites dans l’Espagne du XVIe siècle (París, 2009), 240. 41 Oropesa, Luz para conocimiento de los gentiles, 47. 42 Oropesa, Luz para conocimiento de los gentiles, 28. 43 Oropesa, Luz para conocimiento de los gentiles, 339. pro-converso apologetics and biblical exegesis 163 were still obscure and very imperfect, suited to that stubborn and carnal community (chapters 14, 19, 21, 28).44 On the other hand, as Moisés Orfali has demonstrated, Oropesa used strong anti-Jewish discourses. To Cartagena’s advocacy for imposing “apostolic servitude” upon Jews, Oropesa added imprecations and diatribes imbibed with St. John Chrysostom’s vitriolic anti-Jewish sermons (chapters 23–26).45 Therefore, it seems to me, that rather than being merely influenced by the Defensorium Unitatis Christianae,46 Oropesa rejected some of Cartegena’s pro-converso argumentation. By deemphasizing the organic evolution from Judaism to Christianity while emphasizing radical change and spiritual improvement, Oropesa undermined the notion of a positive Christian Jewishness. Thus, despite his fierce opposition to anti-converso segregation in the name of St. Paul, he remained radically anti-Jewish in the broader sense, similar to future Erasmus of Rotterdam’s anti-Judaism.47 Oropesa’s “middle way”, between Espina and Cartagena, was based on a clearer distinction between flesh (associated with Judaism) and spirit (Christianity). Christian rituals were an exception, because they were conceived by Oropesa as a strict expression of religious interiority and as a way to install through the cult peace and harmony within humankind. In this sense, Albert Sicroff was right: Oropesa was one of the first Spanish pre-Erasmians.48

The Lumen ad revelationem gentium does not explicitly mention the judaizing movement among converso Hieronymite monks uncovered after his death (1468). However, an analysis of this tract, his activities in the Court as well as other primary sources, indicates that Oropesa

44 On Thomas of Aquinas’ ambivalence toward the Mosaic Law, see Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley, 1999), chap. 9. 45 Cartagena, Defensorium Unitatis Christianae, 172–181; Moisés Orfali, “The Jew- ish People in the Writings of Fray Alonso de Oropesa” (Hebrew), Zion 51 (1986): 411–433. Cf. Maurice Kriegel, “Alonso de Oropesa devant la question des conversos: une stratégie d’intégration hiéronymite?”, in “Qu’un sang impur . . .”: les Conversos et le pouvoir en Espagne à la fin du moyen âge, ed. Jeanne Battesti Pelegrin (Aix-en- Provence, 1997), 9–18. 46 Oropesa, Luz para conocimiento de los gentiles, 23–24. 47 Cf. Shimon Markish, Erasmus and the Jews (Chicago, 1986). 48 Albert A. Sicroff, “Anticipaciones del erasmismo español en el Lumen ad revelationem gentium de Alonso de Oropesa”, Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 30, no. 2 (1981): 315–333. 164 claude b. stuczynski was probably well aware of the existence of converso Judaizers within and beyond the Order.49 From later Inquisitorial evidence it is possible to establish that many converso Hieronymite monks accused of “Judaic heresy” shared a positive attachment to Mosaic Law, pride in their ancestry, and criticism against Catholicism. They spiritualized the meaning of some Christian beliefs and rituals and tended toward literal interpretations of the Bible.50 Thus, the converso Hieronymite Fray Diego de Logrosán was accused of believing that the Old Law was not invalidated by the New Testament because it too was given by God.51 Fray Diego de Burgos was pleased “to come from Jewish lineage, the same of our Lord Jesus Christ, rather than from the Devil’s lineage, from which came the Gentiles”.52 Hieronymite converso friars purportedly circulated a prophecy that the Church will fall under the rule or the government of those of the Hebrew stock (“del linaje de los hebreos”), already being accomplished, since many priests and cardinals were from that lineage, including priors of our Order.53 I will suggest that Oropesa’s pro-converso argumentative shift reflects a conceptual transformation: he came to believe that conversos could only become full Christians through evangelization. Oropesa felt that attaching any level of positivity to the Judeo-Christian theological continuum could impede the process as it might justify the practice of the Mosaic Law within Christianity. Indeed, the Italian Rabbi Abra- ham Farissol wrote of such a case at the beginning of the sixteenth century: One of the sages described his faith in the following manner . . . one should take heed to keep all the practices enjoined . . . in the Mosaic Law . . . while

49 Starr-LeBeau, In the Shadow of the Virgin, 113–120. 50 Albert A. Sicroff, “Clandestine Judaism in the Hieronymite Monastery of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe”, in Studies in Honor of M. J. Benardete, ed. Izaak A. Lang- nas and Barton Sholod. Essays in Hispanic and Sephardic Culture (New York, 1965), 89–125; idem, “El caso del judaizante jerónimo Fray Diego de Marchena”, in Hom- enaje a Antonio Rodríguez-Moñino, vol. 2 (Madrid, 1966), 227–233. Haim Beinart, “The Judaizing Movement in the Order of San Jerónimo in Castile”, Scripta Hiero- solymitana 7 (1961): 167–192. 51 Sicroff, “Clandestine Judaism in the Hieronymite Monastery of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe”, 110. 52 Sicroff, “Clandestine Judaism in the Hieronymite Monastery of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe”, 113. 53 Sicroff, “Clandestine Judaism in the Hieronymite Monastery of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe”, 125. pro-converso apologetics and biblical exegesis 165

remaining faithful to the mystery and prefiguration that is alluded to or ordained in the new teaching of Jesus . . ..54 But in the Spain of the second half of the fifteenth century it seems to have been a broader social phenomenon. It was precisely against this that the Hieronymite Fray Hernando de Talavera, heavily influenced by Oropesa, wrote his 1481 Católica impugnación. Fray Talavera, by then confessor of Queen Isabel of Castile, advocated Christianizing conversos through moderation and education. He explained before the Queen that Jews and Gentile Christ believers were the two walls of the Church. At the same time, both were diluted into the same mystical body.55 In 1478, as an alternative to the emerging Inquisition, he predicated in Seville the caducity of the Mosaic Law, invoking St Paul’s addresses to the Romans and the Hebrews. However, he came to believe that Christian spiritual fervor was insufficient; conversos would have to adopt the external rites of Catholicism as well.56 When an anonymous “Old Christian Churchman” criticized his preaching, Talavera published the Católica impugnación. Talavera’s treatise allows us to reconstruct the arguments of the anonymous author, whom Talavera identified as a heretical “Jew” in disguise, behaving as a Judeo-Christian “Ebionite” (chapters 1, 20).57 Whereas Jesus Christ stipulated that Mosaic Law must be upheld (e.g. chapters: 12, 12bis, 13, 15), Christians have adopted pagan customs (chapters 27, 53, 54, 57). Therefore, Judeo-Christians are the true keepers of the tradition (chapter 14), for they believe in Christ and observe the “Father’s Law” (“Ley del Padre”) (chapters 15, 31, 46, 47, 48). In answer, Talavera demonstrated the conformity of Catholic rites and customs, especially regarding the cult of images, to monotheistic principles and the Bible.58 Talavera then went on to argue that his polemist misrepresented the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. Following in the footsteps of Oropesa, he stated that not only had Jesus modified much

54 Jerome Friedman, The Most Ancient Testimony: Sixteenth-Century Christian- Hebraica in the Age of Renaissance Nostalgia (Athens, OH., 1983), 188. 55 Felipe Pereda, Las imágenes de la Discordia: política y poética de la imagen sagrada en la España del 400 (Mardid, 2007), 259. 56 Pastore, Un’Eresia Spagnola, 29–36; Isabella Ianuzzi, El poder de la palabra en el siglo XV: Fray Hernando de Talavera (Valladolid, 2009), esp. 337–351. 57 “Y, aunque este malvado se finge y dice aquí cristiano viejo, pero yo más creo que no fuese cristiano viejo, ni nuevo, sino obstinado y malicioso judío . . .” (Talavera, Católica impugnación, 75). 58 Pereda, Las imágenes de la Discordia, 29–31 and 62–73. 166 claude b. stuczynski of the Mosaic Law during his lifetime but that it was completely abro- gated after His coming such that it became completely irrelevant to the attainment of salvation (chapters 18, 26). Catholic sacraments and rituals did not originate from ancient Jewish norms and customs (chapters 21–23, 25). Moreover, the Christian cult of images was a sort of concession toward past pagan mentalities, proving that Chris- tianity also emerged from Gentility (chapter 27). Talavera also echoed Oropesa when he argued that even if the Jews had been God’s chosen people, the congregation of the divinely elected also included Gentiles (such as Job and his family, Jethro, Rehab, etc.) who were chosen for their piety and observance of the natural Law (chapter 73). Talavera also minimized the Jewishness of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, enhanc- ing hybridism and cosmopolitanism (chapter 11).59 He invoked St. Paul’s conception of the “true” Israel perceived as a group consisting of both Jews and Gentiles united by a common belief in Christ (chapter 31). He argued moreover that: “the Jewish people (‘el pueblo judi- ego’) were not wiser or more clever than other nations by nature, nor were their descendants . . . the people converted from Judaism” (chapter 33). Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all surpassed the Hebrews in science and sophistication. Tavalera repeatedly returned to St Paul’s ethnic inclusivity: “neither Jew nor Greek”—believers in Christ are one and united in a single mystical body. These are the central principles of Christianity. Therefore, he stated that even if his anonymous polemist claimed to be guided by literal interpretations of biblical prophecies, only Satan could be the master of such mistaken and noxious scriptural inquiries (chapter 4).

Literal Ambivalences of Pro-Converso Biblical Exegesis

In his biblical commentaries, Pablo de Santa María adopted Nicholas of Lyra’s hermeneutical principle of the double literal sense according to which the Bible contains worthy literal historical messages encapsulat- ing spiritual meanings. Lyra’s interest in the historical-literal meaning of the Scriptures led him to include rabbinical interpretations of the

59 These arguments, already mentioned by Alonso de Cartagena (Bruce Rosenstock, “Alonso de Cartagena: Nation, Miscegenation, and the Jew in Late-Medieval Castile”, Exemplaria 12, no. 1 (2000): 185–204), were elaborated more explicitly and radically by Talavera who claimed that Jesus Christ, being mankind’s savior, was also identified as a Samaritan and thus transcended ethnical boundaries and filiations. pro-converso apologetics and biblical exegesis 167

Bible, particularly those of Rashi, in his Christian commentaries.60 Santa María’s rabbinical background enabled him to expand upon this approach, marking him as a precursor of Christian Hebraism. The integration of the spiritual within literal senses was related to Aristot- le’s final causalities. The Paulinian term “figura” was used to introduce Aristotelian teleology to Christian biblical literal interpretation. Santa María was also influenced by Christian Aristotelian finalist hermeneutics through the biblical commentaries of Thomas of Aquinas, adding symbolism to his literal interpretation.61 In the Additiones, Santa María acknowledged the superiority of the spiritual over the literal exegetics, quoting St. Paul: “for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (2 Galatians 3:6). Nevertheless, he opined that uncovering its proper meaning requires an examination of the biblical language, content, context and rhetoric: “for whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning” (“quaecunque scripta sunt, ad nostram doctrinam scripta sunt” (Romans 15:4).62 Thus, on the basis of Aqui- nas and Lyra’s valorization of biblical literality, Santa María reduced the allegedly Paulinian dichotomy between the negative-literal and the positive-spiritual approach, promoting instead interdependency between the two senses. In his Scrutinium scripturarum, he defended literality on narrower grounds, arguing that it is best suited to convince the Jews. In addition, he explained, literality was the Apostles’ preferred hermeneutical method.63 However, sometimes he criticized Lyra, either for his inadequate command of the Hebrew language, or for failing to follow his own exegetical principles.64

60 In his Additiones ad Postillam Magistri Nicolai de Lira, Paul of Burgos also criti- cizes Nicholas of Lyra’s omissions of Thomas of Aquinas: “Pluries videtur impugnare irrationabiliter sanctum Thomam, quandoque expresse, quandoque tacite” (Patrologia Latina 123, 46). Cf. Lesley Smith, “Nicholas of Lyra and Old Testament Interpreta- tion”, in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 2, ed. Magne Sæbø (Götingen, 2008), 49–63; Deeana Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers: Nicholas of Lyra and Christian Reading of Jewish Text in the Later Middle Ages (Phila- delphia, 2007), chap. 2. 61 Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 380 ss. 62 Patrologia Latina 123, 38 and 48. “Studium sacrae scripturae incipit ab intellectu sensus literalis ipsius primarie sumpto, et terminator in his quae in eadem sacra scriptura traduntur vel deducuntur ex eis modo praedicto. Caetera autem quae ad sensum spiritualem pertinent fundari habent in praedictis, ut dictum est” (Santa María, Incipit dyalogus qui vocatur Scrutinium scripturarum, fol. 7r). 63 Idem, fols. 1–2. 64 Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers, 148, n. 50. Pablo’s criticism led the Francis- can Matthias Thoring to accuse him of being too literal as a characteristic of Jewish blindness. “‘Spiritus vitae erat in rotis’: haec est enim vera vita, quam Verbum vitae 168 claude b. stuczynski

It has been argued that Pablo de Santa María’s commentary occasionally deviated from its course. One example of this is his interpretation of Rehab’s profession. Rehab, Jesus’ female ancestor (Matthew 1:5) who assisted the Israelites in the capture of Jericho (Joshua 2:1–7) was Lyra adopted the .(זונה) described in the Old Testament as a zonah rabbinic understanding of zonah as “food-seller”; the converted rabbi opted for Jerome’s “meretrix”, prostitute. According to Deeana Klep- per, Santa María’s surprising preference reflected his sympathy for Rehab the penitent woman and forbearer of the son of God, mirroring his own journey as a penitent/converted Jew who became a renowned bishop.65 I think that this explanation is highly improbable. Hebrew linguistic considerations and Christian biblical traditions (including the Septuaginta “πορνη”, James 2:25 and Hebrews 11:35) suggest that Santa María’s interpretation actually reflects Lyra’s principle of the double literal sense. Rather, I argue that Santa María’s hermeneutical approach stemmed from theological concerns regarding Judeo-Chris- tian continuities. However, as with other fifteenth-century Spanish Paulinians, it is difficult to determine whether Santa María’s exegetics reflect his convert condition or represents pre- or early humanistic “letrado”. One such example is Rabbi Moses of Arragel’s contemporaneous translation of the Bible, produced at the behest of the Grand Master of the Order of Calatrava and Maecenas of the “letrado” movement, D. Luis de Guzmán. It was a literal translation of the Hebrew Bible which sought to conciliate between rabbinic and Christian interpretations. Some scholars have opined that the “Bible of Arragel” (the Alba Bible) was “a kind of postilla in imitation of Lyra’s but with the rabbinical portions emphasized even more strongly”.66 That was precisely one of the things that Santa María included in his Additiones to Lyra’s Postilla. As with Rabbi Moses of Arragel and other Jews and conversos of his time, Santa María’s Jewish origins aroused expectations caecitati Judaicae preaedicavit cum dixit: ‘Scrutamini scripturas’ ” (Patrologia Latina 123, 50–51). Was this a satirical reference to Pablo’s Scrutinium scripturarum? Cf. Henri de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale. Les quatre sens de l’écriture, seconde partie II (Paris, 1964), 355–359; Nicolás López Martínez, “Pablo de Santa María y el sentido literal bíblico en las controversias con los judíos”, in Biblia, exégesis y cultura. Estu- dios en honor del Prof. D. José María Casciaro, ed. G. Aranda et al. (Pamplona, 1994), 480–481. 65 Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers, 46. 66 Carl-Otto Nordström, The Duke of Alba’s Castilian Bible (Uppsala, 1967), 231– 232. Cf. Sonia Fellous, Histoire de la Bible de Moïse Arragel: Tolède 1422–1433: quand un rabbin interprète la Bible pour les chrétiens (Paris, 2001), 63 and 76–77. pro-converso apologetics and biblical exegesis 169 regarding his natural predispositions towards biblical literality.67 He elaborated on these identifications, as far as they pertained to Christo- logical finalities. Thus, similarly to other pro-converso authors, he interpreted St. Paul’s mystery: “And so all Israel shall be saved” (Romans 11:26) as a prophecy concerning the complete conversion of the Jews at the end of time.68 However, instead of relating this idea to St. Paul’s subsequent quotation of Isaiah 59:20 (“. . . as it is written: There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob”), he chose to interpret it in light of Hosea 3:4–5: For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and [without] teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days. On the basis of the Aramaic rabbinical translation/interpretation “Tar- gum Jonathan” of that excerpt,69 Santa María depicted the particular conditions by which the Jews will attain final salvation. Accordingly, Santa María stated that Hosea attributed the exile of the Jews to their denial of Christ. Because, in contrast to the First Temple destroyed by the Babylonians, the Second Temple had yet to be reconstructed (“without ephod”). Unlike previous exiles however, this time the Jews did not lapse into idolatry but remained pious (“without . . . teraphim”). Moreover, on the basis of the Targum, Santa María identified Hosea’s “latter days” with messianic times when the Jews will: “obey the Anointed One, son of David their king”, i.e. Jesus Christ. Santa María disregarded passages of the Targum which did not fit easily into his Christological interpretation (“the people of Israel will return and seek the worship of the Lord . . . And they will follow eagerly the worship of the Lord . . .”).70 This is of little consequence, since he preferred Hosea over Isaiah primarily because of the idea embedded in his prophecy,

67 Eleazar Gutwirth, “Gender, History and the Judeo-Christian Polemic”, in Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics Between Christians and Jews, ed. Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa (Tübingen, 1996), 257–278. 68 Jeremy Cohen, “The Mystery of Israel’s Salvation: Romans 11:25–26 in Patristic and Medieval Exegesis”, Harvard Theological Review 98, no. 3 (2005): 247–281. 69 Martínez de Bedoya, La segunda parte del Scrutinium Scripturarum de Pablo de Santa María, appendix, 164–165. 70 Kevin J. Cathcart and Robert P. Gordon, The Targum of the Minor Prophets, Translated, with a Critical Introduction, Apparatus, and Notes. The Aramaic Bible 14 (Edinburgh, 1989), 35–36. 170 claude b. stuczynski that the Jews would embrace Christ of their own accord, as Santa María did himself. Concomitantly, he quoted passages from the New Testament that affirmed his ideas regarding the nobility of converted Jews. Thus, he invoked Matthew 19:28 to prove that baptism would restore Jewish primacy, which the Jews had lost in the past by rejecting the savior: And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.71 The double literal principle applied with pro-converso empathy facilitated his efforts to establish theological continuities. Pablo de Santa María was profoundly influenced by Thomas of Aquinas’ theological and exegetical conceptions regarding the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. For instance, he extolled the historical-literal appropriateness of Mosaic Law prior to the incarnation of the Christ as a positive byproduct of that time (“pro tempore illo”, “perfectum secundum tempus”). However, he rejected Thomistic views that Judaism became a conscious evil choice of infidelity following the arrival of Christ. Rather, he chose Aquinas’ interpretation of Romans 11, according to which (converted) Jews played a fundamental and positive role.72 On the one hand, this became possible through an elaboration on Nicholas of Lyra’s principle of the double literal sense; for while Aquinas added symbolism to literality, Lyra imbued it with spiritual Christology. Thus, he neutralized the need to vilify Judaism in order to justify Christianity. On the other hand, he framed these exegetical views within Augustinian teleology, conceiving Juda- ism as part of God’s positive plan for salvation.73 Through his biblical commentaries, Santa María facilitated the creation of a specific pro- converso Christian theology.

71 “Ex quibus tanta excellentia huic nationi Israelitica attribuenda est, quod opro- bium exaecationis supraedictae sufficientter ab eis tollitur” (Martínez de Bedoya, La segunda parte del Scrutinium Scripturarum de Pablo de Santa María, 163). 72 Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 386–389; Hood, Aquinas and the Jews, 76–77; Steven C. Boguslawski, Thomas Aquinas on the Jews. Insights into His Commentary on Romans 9–11 (Mahwah, N.J., 2008). 73 Cf. Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York, 2008). pro-converso apologetics and biblical exegesis 171

Unlike his father, Alonso de Cartagena was not a (proto-) Hebra- ist. His biblical translations, commentaries, and paraphrases were grounded in Christian and Latin cultures, never in Judaism.74 Carta- gena’s Defensorium Unitatis Christianae was primarily a juridical tract. That is why it revolved around interpretations of civil and canonic law concerning baptized Jews (like those of the Sixth Council of Toledo), along with biblical and Patristic quotations (particularly from Augus- tine), the Glossa, the Postilla, and Thomas of Aquinas.75 But Cartagena too demonstrated a preference for literality. It not only confirmed his views regarding the proper translation of classical texts,76 but was a continuation of many of the exegetical principles heralded by his father. He emphasized: Even if in the Sacred Scriptures there may be accepted many senses that are true, useful, and profitable to our salvation, the best, the more solid and memorable, is the literal one, being like a root from which come the others.77 However, his biblical literality was intended to legitimize Christol- ogy, viz. applying the term “Israelite” to all Christian believers, being from Jewish or Gentile origin, as inferred from: John 1:47, 2 Corin- thians 11:22, Isaiah 41:8, and Matthew 3:9. Moreover, he criticized the forceful conversion of Jews by the Visigoth King Sisebut, arguing that it stemmed from a superficial and overly enthusiastic interpretation of St. Paul’s call for evangelization.78 The same claims were

74 Fernando Díaz Esteban, “Psalms Translations in the Spanish Tradition: The Case of the ‘Converso’ Alonso de Cartagena (XVth Century)”, in Rashi, 1040–1990: hommage à Ephraïm E. Urbach, ed. Gabrielle Sed-Rajna (Paris, 1993), 663–676; idem, “Alfonso de Cartagena, literato y político (siglo XV)”, in Xudeus e conversos na história, vol. 1, ed. Carlos Barros (Santiago de Compostela, 1994), 277; Santiago García-Jalón de la Lama, “Las citas de la Sagrada Escritura en el Defensorium unitatis christianae”, Helmántica 139–141 (1995): 177–182. 75 Cf. Bat-Sheva Albert, “The 65th canon of the IVth Council of Toledo (633) in Christian legislation and its interpretation in the ‘converso’ polemics in XVth century Spain” (Hebrew), in Proceedings of the (eighth) VIII World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, August 16–21, 1981, vol. 2, ed. World Union of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, 1982), 43–48. 76 A. Birkenmajer, “Der Streit des Alonso von Cartagena mit Leonardo Bruni Are- tino”, in Vermischte Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Philosophie, ed. Clemens Baeumker (Münster, 1922), 128–211. 77 Cartagena, Defensorium Unitatis Christianae, 98–99. 78 “Tal vez anduvo tan sobrado de zelo quan falto de prudencia, porque no alca- nzando el misterio, ni penetrando la inteligencia verdadera de aquellas palabras de San Pablo que dize, sea Christo publicado a las gentes, o por occasion o por verdad en eso tengo y tender librada la consolación de mi espíritu. Engañado con la superficie y 172 claude b. stuczynski made by Cartagena against “Marquillos” contemporaneous anti-converso interpretation of laws, for understanding ethnical (“carnalem”) Judaism whereas civil and canonical law referred to religious choices (“mentem”).79 Cartagena believed that misguided policies toward Jews and conversos resulted often from mistaken hermeneutics.

Juan José Llamedo González has already noted that Juan de Torquema- da’s Tractatus contra Madianitas et Ismaelitas was an unpolished book in comparison with his other theological and ecclesiological works. He used more freely biblical and canonical quotations in order to respond poignantly to aggressive anti-converso argumentation. Torquemada, however, was consistent in his biblical exegesis, this time avoiding the use of “catenae” hermeneutics.80 He argued that baptism surpassed circumcision, relying on a double literal interpretation of Ezekiel 36:25: Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. Since, according to Romans 6:11 (“And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised . . .”) circumcision merely confirms a previous virtue, while baptism affords a state of total purification.81 He also stressed the importance of biblical contextualization. For instance, he asserted that damning all Israelites for their sins on the basis of Deuteronomy 32:20 is a misinterpretation: And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end [shall be]: for they [are] a very froward generation, children in whom [is] no faith.

primeros visos destas palabras obligaba a todos los judíos de su Reyno ha que reciuieran las aguas de la fee y tomasen la marca del christianismo . . .” (quoted by Díaz Esteban, “Alfonso de Cartagena, literato y político (siglo XV)”, 287, n. 26). 79 “Audi, marche carissime, et non cortici littere per livorem invidie prava interpre- tatione intellecte, sed radici et vero ac sano eius intellectui mentem appone . . .” (Carta- gena, Defensorium Unitatis Christianae, 225 and 235–236. 80 Juan José Llamedo González, “Juan de Torquemada: apuntes sobre su vida, su obra y su pensamiento”, in Toquemada, Tratado contra los madianitas e ismaelitas, de Juan de Torquemada, 107; Emilia Fernández Tejero and Natalio Fernández Marcos, “Scriptural Interpretation in Renaissance Spain”, in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 2, ed. Magne Sæbø (Göttingen, 2008), 233. 81 González, “Juan de Torquemada: apuntes sobre su vida, su obra y su pensamiento”, 146–147. pro-converso apologetics and biblical exegesis 173

Relying on Nicholas of Lyra, Torquemada explained that this passage refers to the wicked rather than to the entire Jewish people. Especially since a later passage indicates that the Jews remained the chosen people: “Rejoice, O ye nations, [with] his people . . .” (32:43).82 He was similarly critical of the call to segregate New Christians of Jewish descent on the basis of the Titus 1:10 (“For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision”). Torque- mada opined that anti-conversos corrupted the Scriptures (“falsarii Sacrae Scripturae”) by failing to admit that in that epistle St. Paul only reproached Cretan Christ believing Judaizers. How could the “Apostle of the Gentiles”, himself a circumcised Jew, asked Torquemada, hold such beliefs?83 Perhaps even more than Cartagena, Torquemada confronted the notion that the Jewish traits which remained after baptism were noxious. In contrast he argued that these traits represented positive aspects of Jewishness.84 As a response to anti-converso argumentation, the double literal sense became a most accurate means of rendering Jewish tangibility Christian and worthy of respect and appreciation. A radical shift in pro-converso argumentation occurred with the publication of Oropesa’s Lumen ad revelationem gentium. Juridical claims (chapter 51) were minimized in favor of evangelical calls for fraternity. Also, the double literal sense was significantly devaluated though not completely abandoned. Indeed, Oropesa relied on Augus- tine’s figurative hermeneutics, even quoting Marcion to emphasize the superiority of meaning (“sensu”) over the letter (“verbis”) and of the marrow (“medulla”) over the surface (“superficie”) of the Scriptures.85 In chapter 47, however, Oropesa reduced much of Marcion’s antinomic far-reaching implications, by offering three basic rules for appropriate Bible interpretation: to read the Scriptures with charity (i.e. humility, purity, good intentions, etc.) keeping in harmony with the principles of the Christian Faith, and endorsing the church’s opinions. The first and the third exegetical rules were influenced by Hieronymite principles of

82 González, “Juan de Torquemada: apuntes sobre su vida, su obra y su pensamiento”, 179–180. 83 González, “Juan de Torquemada: apuntes sobre su vida, su obra y su pensamiento”, 184–184. 84 Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain, 1110–1121. 85 Quoted by Sicroff, (“Anticipaciones del erasmismo español en el Lumen ad revelationem gentium de Alonso de Oropesa”, 320, n. 11), while (un?)surprisingly ignored by the modern Spanish translator of Oropesa’s book. 174 claude b. stuczynski simplicity and humility. It was within the second principle that Oropesa applied the double literal sense, claiming that messages inferred from the Sacred Scriptures have pre-eminence over other Patristic or Eccle- siastical writings.86 One example concerns St. Peter’s revelation. For St. Peter, the revelation “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” was a reaffirmation of biblical prophecies (2 Peter 1:17–19), probably echoing Psalm 2:7: “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee”. According to Oropesa, St. Peter’s need of the biblical text was tailored to reinforce the faith among newly converted Jews who were familiar with the Old Testament. Since they were in a rapid and necessary process of integration into a unique and ethnically mixed Church, that explanation could not suffice. That is why Oropesa suggested that Peter’s unexpected behavior must be explained as an exercise of exegetical prudence. For the Hieronymite General, the double literary principle served primarily to reaffirm faith, piety and religion rather than as a means for understanding Scripture (chapter 50). He believed that a literal examination of the Bible was dangerous, an act of intellectual pride, an expression of “amor sui” for which conversos were despised by arrogant Old Christians. Hermeneutical literality, he argued, represented a materialist perception of religion, an unwelcome “Jewish” characteristic. Oropesa’s last point of exegetical criticism stood at the center of the dispute between Talavera and his anonymous Sevillian “converso Ebionite”. Talavera accused his anonymous opponent of failing to distinguish between the literal and mystical senses of Scripture (chapter 86). He believed that a literal and self-contained interpretation of the Bible is both wrong and harmful due to the inherent connection between the Old and the New Testaments, which are in effect “a wheel in the middle of a wheel” (Ezekiel 1:16).87 Paul’s hermeneutical figurative (“haec autem in figura facta sunt”: “[n]ow these things were our examples”, 1 Corinthians 10:6) and finalist principles (“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth”, Romans 10:4) are always to be kept in mind.88 Moreover, a double literal interpretation of Joel 3:2:

86 Oropesa, Lumen ad revelationem gentium, 747–748. 87 Talavera, Católica impugnación, 80. 88 Talavera, Católica impugnación, 76 and 238. pro-converso apologetics and biblical exegesis 175

I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and [for] my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land. was needed to understand that this prophecy concerned the final Judg- ment (Acts 2).89 Talavera rejected out of hand his polemist’s notion of a purely literal interpretation. There is always some need of glossing it in order to understand biblical words and texts, sometimes turning to excerpts in order to understand others or conciliate between seemingly contra- dictory passages.90 As with Oropesa, Talavera’s evangelism promoted spiritual over literal biblical interpretations. For he had to confront not only a single “converso Ebionite” but also another ramification of biblical literality, namely the difficulty of justifying the suppression of the Old Law’s ceremonial precepts after Christ. However, precisely because Oropesa and Talavera believed that evangelization would ensure converso integration, they had to elaborate, on the basis of the double exegetical principle, against those Old and New Christian biblical misinterpretations, showing that beyond obvious discontinuities between the Old and the New “Law” there was room for filiations. According to Albert A. Sicroff, Oropesa’s Paulinian spirituality was similar though not identical to ulterior Spanish Erasmian Christianity. More radically than Cartagena, Oropesa perceived the mystical body metaphor as ethnically inclusive and an egalitarian sum of its indistinct Jewish and Gentile “organs”. Erasmus’ concept of the “corpus mysti- cum” was even more amorphous, albeit with a very distinct head: the Christ. This difference could be attributed to Oropesa’s deeper political efforts on behalf of converso integration. He could not suppress the “organs” while a public and fierce debate on the very contours of the “mystical body” was at stake.91 Sicroff ’s penetrating insight supports

89 Talavera, Católica impugnación, 229. 90 “Si no dime, cómo se acuerdan que venga Dios y castiga los pecados del padre en los hijos hasta la tercera y cuarta generación, y que el hijo no penara por el pecado del padre? Iten, cómo se acuerdan que ve a Dios Moisén manifiestamente y no como en espejo y que habla con Él cara a cara, como con amigo y después que no puede hombre ver a Dios y vivir? Iten, lo que en Ezequiel profeta dice en un mesmo capitulo: que dió nuestro Señor a su pueblo Buenos mandamientos y juicios, y que haciendolos vivía en ellos y que le dió mandamientos no Buenos en que no viva. Glosa es necesaria para lo concordar” (idem, p. 239). 91 Sicroff, “Anticipaciones del erasmismo español en el Lumen ad revelationem gentium de Alonso de Oropesa”. 176 claude b. stuczynski two additional complementary claims. First, that Oropesa, Talavera and most obviously, Torquemada, Cartagena and Santa María’s pro- converso involvement may account for the dual nature of their Pau- linism: spiritual and literal, ecclesiological and communal, theological and political. Second, their pro-converso Paulinism explains a common reliance on the double literary exegetical principle, even while each administered it with a different intensity and emphasis. Fifteenth- century Spanish pro-converso authors shared what Christopher Ocker labeled: “a textual attitude” toward the Scriptures, namely: “an association of spiritual or ultimate meaning with literal sense”, elevating “history and language, along with the mundane world, toward revelation”.92 However, all of them were confronted with a very specific outcome of pro-converso biblical textual attitudes: the emergence of a positive sense of Christian Jewishness. None of them aimed to systematize nor completely spiritualize the concept of positive Christian Jewishness. They sought to counterbalance in a dialectical way biblical literality and spirituality, Judeo-Christian theological continuity and supersession. For, beyond differences, they were guided by a common political cause: the defense of conversos as full and accepted Christians.

92 Christopher Ocker, Bibilcal Poetics Before Humanism and Reformation (Cam- bridge, 2002), 142–149, 216 and 218. A FATHER’S BEQUEST: AUGUSTINIAN TYPOLOGY AND PERSONAL TESTIMONY IN THE CONVERSION NARRATIVE OF SOLOMON HALEVI/PABLO DE SANTA MARÍA

Ryan Szpiech

In the early summer of 1391, Ferrant Martínez, the archdeacon of Écija, near Seville, gave a series of sermons not unlike those he had been giving regularly for over a decade. These sermons, however, unlike those of the 1380s, were destined to impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and change the fabric of Iberian society. As he had done in his sermons since 1378, he endorsed violence and hatred against Jews in the parishes around Seville, even prompting local Jews to petition king Juan I of Castile to order Martínez to tame his rhetoric. Things began to change in 1390, however. Following the deaths of king Juan and the archbishop of Seville in that year, Martínez had been charged with administration of the diocese and the eleven- year-old heir apparent Enrique III was powerless to control him as his father had. In June, 1391, Martínez, acting with impunity, preached sermons that inspired masses of people to attack the Jewish quarter, converting two local synagogues into churches. This was the first salvo in an outbreak of mob attacks that spread across much of Castile and Aragon over the following months, killing scores of Jews and forcing thousands of others to accept baptism. The riots of 1391 represent the moment of the largest forced mass conversion in Iberian history. The deep and lasting impact of these events would be felt for many decades after, and the year 1391 has, for better or worse, come to serve as a historiographical fault-line dividing the converso society of the fifteenth century from all that came before.1

1 For an overview of the events of 1391, see Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961), 2:95–117; Emilio Mitre Fernández, Los judíos de Castilla en el tiempo de Enrique III. El pogrom de 1391 (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1994); and Benzion Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain (New York: Random House, 1995), 127–167. Jonathan Boyarin, The Unconverted Self: Jews, Indians, and the Identity of Christian Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 8–9, 17–18, 178 ryan szpiech

Among the many sizeable Jewish communities that suffered from these attacks was that of Burgos, where polemical writer Abner of Burgos/Alfonso of Valladolid had caused a stir with his public conversion earlier in the century. Around the time of the pogroms—1390– 1391—one prominent Jew from the Burgos community, Solomon Halevi, converted and changed his name to Pablo de Santa María. After Abner/Alfonso, Pablo was Burgos’ most infamous convert, and he rose in the ranks of Castilian society to become a close ally to Pedro de Luna (d. 1423), who later became the Avignon Papal contender Benedict XIII. Pablo was appointed tutor to the infant King Juan II of Castile, was named bishop of Cartagena, and eventually became bishop of Burgos itself. Although he wrote two Castilian historiographical works highlighting the Castilian monarchy, he also penned two Latin texts for which he would be best known, a polemical dialogue between a Jew and a Christian (significantly called “Saul” and “Paul” in the text) entitled Scrutiny of Scriptures (Scrutinium Scripturarum)2 from 1432, and from only a few years earlier, the Additions (Additiones), which were glosses appended to the immensely popular biblical commentary of fourteenth-century Franciscan Nicholas of Lyra. Lyra’s glosses, accompanied by Pablo’s Additiones, were widely printed and read for over three centuries. Over twenty-five manuscript copies of Pablo’s Additiones survive and the text was published with Lyra’s commentary in at least that many editions before 1650. As Deeana Klepper observes, the two together “[found their] way into hundreds of libraries across the Continent in scholastic, monastic, cathedral, and courtly settings.”3

offers some useful reflections on the limitations of taking 1492 as a standard historical dividing point. 2 Pablo de Santa María, Scrutinium Scripturarum (Burgos, 1591). 3 Deeana Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers: Nicholas of Lyra and Christian Reading of Jewish Text in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 6. For a partial listing of manuscripts and printed editions of the Additions, see Klaus Reinhardt and Horacio Santiago-Otero, Biblioteca bíblica ibérica medieval (Madrid: CSIC, Centro de Estudios Históricos, 1986), 241–244. For a full list of print- ings of Lyra’s Postillae, to which Pablo’s Additions were frequently attached, see E. A. Gosselin, “A Listing of the Printed Editions of Nicolaus de Lyra,” Traditio, 26 (1970): 399–426. Pablo’s and Lyra’s prologues to their commentaries are available along with the Glossa Ordinaria in Patrologia Cursus Completus, Series Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris: Apud Garnier, 1844–1855) [hereafter “PL”], 113: 35–60. References here to Lyra’s Postilla and Pablo’s Additions are from Biblia Latina, cum postillis Nicolai de Lyra (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1497) [hereafter “Biblia”]. a father’s bequest 179

Pablo is a remarkable figure, not only because of his political and ecclesiastical prominence in fifteenth-century Castile, but also because he is one of the few people converted around 1391 who represents his conversion in narrative form. It is perhaps not surprising that the forced conversions of 1391 by and large did not give way to many conversion narratives by new Christians. The theological and allegorical function of narrating a conversion seems to have been far removed from the harsh reality of the forced mass conversions of 1391. Pablo’s conversion, however, does not follow the pattern of other converted Jews from the late fourteenth century, precisely because his conversion was, by all accounts and indications, voluntary and not forced, and because he is one of the few from that generation in Christian Iberia to incorporate the narrative story of this voluntary conversion into his larger corpus of exegetical and polemical writing. In his Scrutinium, Pablo names figures such as Abner of Burgos/ Alfonso of Valladolid and clearly follows his predecessors’ models by composing his polemical dialogue as a debate between Christian and Jew (and after the Jew’s conversion at the end of part one of the text, as a debate between “master” and “disciple”) and also by incorporating post-biblical, talmudic, and midrashic material as part of his argumentative proof. Unlike Abner/Alfonso, who opens his Hebrew anti-Jew- ish Teacher of Righteousness (Moreh Zedek, now surviving only in a Castilian translation as Mostrador de justicia) with his own first-person conversion narrative, Pablo does not recount his personal conversion story in his polemical opus, the Scrutinium. The absence of any conversion story in the introduction to the Scrutinium makes his work more closely resemble a typical theological polemic of the Christian Adversus Iudaeos tradition—a resemblance reinforced by the fact that the text was written in Latin and not Castilian or Hebrew—rather than a rhetorically complex first-person polemic like those written by the convert Petrus Alfonsi in the twelfth century or Abner/Alfonso in the fourteenth. Even though Pablo did not frame his polemical dialogue in the Scrutinium with a conversion narrative, he did write a short narrative of conversion, inserting it in an even more conspicuous place: at the very opening to his exegetical glosses on Nicholas of Lyra. Because Lyra’s text was copied and published so frequently, Pablo’s dedicatory prologue containing his conversion narrative became, serendipitously, among the most widely disseminated medieval accounts of conversion 180 ryan szpiech in the early-modern world. Even Martin Luther read his conversion narrative along with his glosses and directly credited Pablo, known in early-medieval theology as Burgensis, as a source of his knowledge of Jewish exegesis.4 Given its wide circulation, it is thus all the more remarkable that Pablo’s text has been largely overlooked in modern scholarship.5 This essay considers Pablo’s conversion narrative found in the introduction to his Latin Additiones. It argues that Pablo’s account follows a traditional Augustinian paradigm of conversion as an exegetical act in which individual experience reflects a supersessionist vision of history. In tracing out the strands of that Augustinian paradigm, however, we will see how Pablo also expresses a particular vision of conversion in which Christians of Jewish origin, like himself and his son, Alonso de Cartagena, can be seen as the fullest embodiment of Christian identity. In constructing his conversion story as both an exegetical prologue and a personal letter to his son, Pablo “presents” his Christian converso identity as a gift of great worth, a precious legacy that he bequeaths to his beloved heir. The conversionary prologue is unique in many ways. Written in 1429–30, only a few years before the author’s death, the text is one of the last known conversion accounts in Iberia before the decisive shift in the political and literary significance of conversion that took place in the wake of the anti-converso riots and legislation of Toledo in 1449. The riots broke out over an unpopular tax imposed bythe constable Álvaro de Luna, to be collected by the treasurer Alfonso

4 Martin Luther, Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann (Saint Louis: Concordia, etc., 1955–86), 4: 99, 138, 156; 47: 138, 180, etc. In On the Jews and their Lies, Luther cites Pablo’s Additions as the work of “one of their very learned rabbis” (47: 228) and names Lyra and Pablo “those two excellent men” (47: 138), both “truth- ful and honest” (217). 5 Discussion of his conversion is not lacking, even if such sources completely ignore his own narrative of the events. Sources on Pablo’s conversion include Luciano Serrano, Los conversos D. Pablo de Santa María y D. Alfonso de Cartagena (Madrid: C. Bermejo, 1942), 21–22; Francisco Cantera Burgos, La conversión del célebre tal- mudista Solomón Leví (Santander, 1933); idem, Alvar García de Santa María y su familia de conversos. Historia de la judería de Burgos y de sus conversos más egregios Madrid: C. Bermejo, 1952), 304–320; Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, 2:139–150 (see n. 1); Nicolás López Martínez, “Nota sobre la conversión de Pablo de Santa María, el Burgense,” Burgense, 13 (1972): 581–87; Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition, 168–171, 1260 no. 9, 1306 no. 11 (see n. 1); and Michael Glatzer, “Pablo de Santa María on the Events of 1391,” in Antisemitism Through the Ages, ed. Shmuel Almog, trans. Nathan H. Reisner (New York: Pergamon Press, 1988), 127–137. a father’s bequest 181

Cota, a converso. In protest against the tax, mobs sacked the houses of numerous conversos and imprisoned or expelled their owners. Not long after, the Toledan public figure Pero Sarmiento penned atext known as the Sentencia-Estatuto, barring converts from Jewish families from holding public office in Toledo. In what can be characterized as the last gasp of medieval papal doctrines of protection of Jews that derived ultimately from Augustine’s theological doctrine of witness, Sarmiento proffered what would later develop into the concept of “purity of blood” (limpieza de sangre), of such central importance for the Spanish Inquisition.6 Pablo’s conversion narrative, which appeared before these events, would have looked very different if it had appeared twenty years later than it did. We know that his son Alonso, whose own conversion at a young age along with his father is mentioned in the narrative, would later militate as Bishop of Burgos against the increasing demonization of conversion as it underwent this decisive sea change. We also know that Alonso was largely unsuccessful in these efforts and that a history of conversion from Judaism, whether voluntary or forced, became a stigma of a very dangerous sort in the later fifteenth century and after.7 Although Pablo may not have foreseen the massive changes afoot, at least not in all their frightening severity, he was all the same responding to another upheaval in the concept of conversion. While his narrative seems on the surface like a thoroughly conventional account that reflects an inveterate tradition of representing conversion that stretched back many centuries, its tropes and imagery reflect an already changing tradition in which writers like him struggled to balance traditional imagery of conversion inherited from the Bible and the Patristic Fathers with new philosophical arguments and extra-biblical textual sources that came to occupy an increasingly important place in polemical writing after the twelfth century. As an embodiment of both traditional imagery and a changing polemical vocabulary, Pablo’s

6 The Sententia and Memorial have been published by Eloy Benito Ruano, in Eloy Benito Ruano, Toledo en el siglo XV: vida política (Madrid: CSIC, 1961). 7 On the rise in “genealogical mentalities” and the possible backfiring of personal testimonies of conversion into accusations of “Judaizing,” see David Nirenberg, “Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain,” Past and Present, 174 (2002): 3–41. On the intersection of this “mentality” with Pablo de Santa María and his theory of history, see Ryan Szpiech, “Scrutinizing History: Polemic and Exegesis in Pablo de Santa María’s Siete edades del mundo,” Medieval Encounters, 16 (2010): 96–142. 182 ryan szpiech short conversion account offers a unique window into the history of the representation of conversion in Christian tradition in the wake of one important shift and on the eve of an even more climacteric and permanent upheaval. Pablo’s narrative of his conversion in the prologue to his Additiones not only mentions his son Alonso but is, in fact, dedicated to him. He begins by referring to his advanced age and thoughts on his legacy: What do you want me to give you now, my dearest son, while I am still alive? What bequest [should I bequeath] to you after I am gone? [Nothing] except whatever brings knowledge of Holy Scripture and steadies your steps with a real ardor for the Catholic truth. For this is what I bear in my heart and profess with my lips, about which I think it has been written: “The father will make the truth known to his children.” (Isaiah 38:19) [Quid tibi vis ut vivens donem, dilectissime fili: aut successionis titulo post vitam relinquam? nisi quod ad sacrarum Scripturarum notitiam conferat, et gressus tuos in catholicae veritatis solidissimo fervore con- firmet. Haec est enim quam corde gesto ac ore profiteor, et de qua puto scriptum fuisse: Pater filiis notam faciet veritatem [s]uam.] (Biblia, 1:16r)8 He frames the exegetical glosses that follow with this promise to Alonso to give him “his truth” within the context of passing on his own inheritance.9 He then uses this opening promise to affirm that part of what he will pass on is the truth he discovered through conversion: Since I had not received this [truth] in my boyhood, but [rather] was born under the perfidy of Jewish blindness, I had not learned sacred letters from holy teachers but I appropriated erroneous meanings from erroneous teachers, always busy to enwrap imprudently the correct letters with incorrect sophistries, like the other mavens of that perfidy. But, truly, when it pleased Him whose mercy knows no measure to recall me from darkness to light, from the murky whirlpool to the clear air: somehow the scales fell from the eyes of my mind, and I began to reread Holy Scripture somewhat more assiduously, [and I began] to seek after the truth, not faithlessly any longer, but humbly.

8 Also in PL 113: 35B (see n. 3), with my correction to “veritatem suam.” 9 Although Pablo’s personal manuscript copy of the Postillae of Lyra is now lost, there are indications that Pablo’s Additions were based on his own glosses to that very text made during his years in Paris, shortly after his conversion. See Szpiech, “Scrutinizing History,” 104–5, no. 17 (see n. 7). a father’s bequest 183

[Cum ab ineunte aetate non recepissem, sed sub Judaicae caecitatis per- fidia natus, sacras litteras non a sacris doctoribus didicissem: ab erroneis magistris erroneos sensus trahebam, litteram rectam non rectis cavil- lationibus, ut caeteri illius perfidiae duces, temerarie involvere satagens. Cum vero placuit illi cujus misericordia mensuram non habet, me a tenebris ad lucem, a caliginosa turbine ad serenum aerem revocare: ceciderunt quodammodo squamae de oculis mentis meae; et coepi Scripturam sacram aliquanto studiosius relegere, et jam non perfide, sed humiliter veritatem inquirere.] (Biblia, 1:16r)10 Pablo here directly blends Paul’s own language in the Epistle to Galatians 1:13–15 (“You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism . . . But when God . . . was pleased to reveal his Son to me . . .”) with the representation of Paul in Acts of the Apostles 9:18 (“Immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored”). At the same time, Pablo seems to introduce an element not in Galatians: rather than offering a “revelation” of Christ, God chooses to “recall” Pablo from his error. Conversion is, in this representation, not an event but an understanding, not an experience in the world but a subjective realignment within the soul. Rather than characterizing his conversion as a prophetic “calling” (a calling of the prophet), like Paul characterizes his turn to Christ, he evokes it in terms of the Gospels as a turning back to God through repentance (a calling by the prophet). This interiorization of the Pauline paradigm that recasts conversion as a hermeneutic rather than cosmic, mystical, or emotional change is further evident in Pablo’s expansion of the Pauline image of blindness and restored sight—understood both literally and symbolically—into an explicit mention of “Jewish” blindness and mental “sight” after “scales fall” from his eyes and he beholds the new truth that leads him to convert to Christianity. In such images, we begin to see the confluence of various biblical paradigms into a single, hermeneutical model in which conversion is no longer simply a revelation or a moral turning, but a new kind of understanding. This trajectory, putting increasing emphasis on the hermeneutical transformation wrought by conversion, continues even more clearly in the rest of Pablo’s narrative as he “waited night and day for His help”:

10 Also in PL, 113: 35B (see n. 3). 184 ryan szpiech

So it happened that the desire for the Catholic faith was more strongly enkindled in my mind from day to day, until I professed publicly that very faith I was carrying in my heart; and at about the same age as you are now, I received the sacrament of baptism in the holy font of this church, taking the name of Paul. . . . But before this time, applying myself to the study of Scripture, I gave attention to the reading of both Testaments, sometimes by hearing from living teachers, often by rereading the works of the holy Doctors and of other eminent men who have passed from this life. Through the gift of divine clemency, I, who had formerly been a teacher of error, was now made a student of the truth. [Sicque factum est ut catholicae fidei desiderium in mente mea de die in diem fortius incandesceret; quoad ipsam fidem, quam corde gerebam, publice profiterer; et ea fere aetate qua tu nunc es, baptismi sacramentum in hujus ecclesiae sacro fonte suscepi, Pauli nomen assu- mens . . . Praecedente vero tempore sacrarum litterarum studio insistens, utriusque Testamenti lectioni operam dedi; et interdum a magistris viventibus audiendo saepe sanctorum doctorum aliorumque insignium virorum, qui ab hac vita transierunt, opera relegendo, divina donante clementia, qui prius fueram magister erroris, factus sum discipulus veritatis.] (Biblia, 1:16r)11 In many details, Pablo casts his conversion in biblical terms and reflects the multiple models contained within the biblical canon itself. Like the biblical Paul, he experiences an “enantiodromia,” or inversion of his identity into its opposite, thus turning from “teacher of error” to “student of the truth.” Like other conversions patterned on the narrative model of Paul’s conversion in Acts, Pablo’s happened “through divine grace” rather than the strength of will. At first blush, the language with which he describes his transformation seems to depict a climactic moment of insight rather than admonitory homiletic depicting a will to reform the self. Pablo does not say that he recognized himself as fallen and in need of a moral or spiritual reform, but instead paints himself, in very Pauline terms, as an object of God’s own action. It was only “when it truly pleased him whose mercy knows no measure to recall me” that he is converted, suggesting that Pablo saw his conversion as the result of God’s decision rather than his own. Despite such similarities, there are even more important differences. Although Pablo’s language is deeply Pauline—Pablo’s choice of baptismal name is, of course, not fortuitous—his text also betrays a new, subjective understanding in which conversion is not premised on

11 Also in PL, 113: 35B–D (see n. 3). a father’s bequest 185 the singular revelation of a truth, not on a sudden thunderbolt from without, but on a progressive, even gradual, alteration of inner understanding. Pablo claims that his baptism is only a final detail in his transformation already underway within his soul. He began reading both Testaments before his baptism, and claims to have both studied with Christian teachers and read Christian works. When God “recalled” him “from a misty whirlwind to serene air,” he “began to reread sacred scripture” and “to search for truth.” His conversion “begins” with God’s call, but is only realized through rereading and a gradual alteration in understanding. Pablo holds this new, burgeoning truth “in my heart,” dissimulating his faith while the truth “was more strongly enkindled in my mind from day to day.” In a linear narrative, Pablo characterizes his change as both a dialectical ascent “from darkness to light” and as a return to the text based on “rereading” rather than an abandonment of his earlier knowledge. The action of “returning” to the biblical text through rereading is reflected back into his own narrative in the form of a narrative retelling. Even more importantly, by framing his biblical exegesis in the Additiones with his own personal conversion narrative in its prologue, Pablo draws a parallel between his hermeneutic conversion and the rereadings he presents in his exegesis throughout the rest of the text. He not only casts his image as a Christian and a bishop against the backdrop of his former life as a Jew, but also casts his Christian exegesis, the keystone of his conversion, as a translation of Hebrew sources into Latin Scriptures and a transformation of the Old Testament into the New. Because his exegesis involves not only abundant material from the Hebrew Bible, but also frequent references to Talmud, Jewish midrashim, later Jewish thinkers such as Rashi (d. 1105) and Maimonides (d. 1204), Pablo’s narrative of transformation cannot simply remain “an inversion” of all he formerly believed. Both his identity as a convert from Judaism and his reading of Scripture must address more precisely the relationship between old and new, Jew and Christian, the law of Moses and the law of Christ. Does the new replace and destroy the old, or is the old the necessary foundation of the new? What place does the old self and its authoritative texts have in the voice and teaching of the new? Because Pablo chooses not to “forget what lies behind” as Paul claims to do in Philippians 3:13, but instead builds his conversion and his exegetical commentary on the Bible on a return to his past—a rereading, a retelling, a recollection—so his hermeneutic turn must also confront the tensions 186 ryan szpiech inherent within the biblical models he cites. At the same time, because he also includes post-biblical material alongside his biblical sources, Pablo must address the meaning of the historical survival of the Jews after the death and resurrection of Christ. The key way in which Pablo addresses this question of the value of the past—the Jewish past, the preconversion self, the Old Testament—is by connecting his recounting of his conversion story with a call to his son to “remember” the action of God throughout history, even up to the point of their own births within Jewish families. Pablo “narrate[s] this” so that his son, and with him the many readers of his exegesis, should “hand down to memory” his reading to future generations “lest they forget” (ne obliviscantur). In the context of Pablo’s anti-Jewish agenda, this call not to forget is not only an evocation of Psalm 78 and Deuteronomy 6, but of one of the central verses of medieval Christian writing about Jews, Psalm 59:11, “Do not kill them, or my people may forget” (nequando obliviscantur). In Christian tradition, this verse, perhaps more than any other, came to represent the Christian stance on the role of Jews in God’s divine plan.12 Pablo fits himself and his conversion squarely within this tradition by depicting his conversion narrative as a call to preserve Christian memory of their own inheritance of the status of True Israel. That Pablo is evoking this tradition as part of his call to his son to remember the past becomes even more evident when we consider his exegetical comments on this verse later within the same text of the Additiones. In his gloss on Psalm 59, he explains: Slay them not . . . so that they be moved to conversion and so they do not forget your holy books, which reside originally with them . . . Scatter them . . . that is, may they be scattered among all the nations, so there be a witness of the sacred scripture that is among them. [“Ne occidas eos . . . ut ad conversionem provocentur, scilicet ne obliviscantur sacrarum librarum tuarum, quod apud eos originaliter resident . . . Disperge illos . . . id est per omnes gentes dispergantur ut testimonia sacre scripture quod apud eos sit.”] (Biblia, 2:154)13

12 On this verse and its place in Augustine’s formulation, see Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 33–41 and throughout; and Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 324–331. 13 Addition to Psalm 59:11 (listed as Psalm 58). It is telling that in this long addition to Lyra’s brief gloss, Pablo not only evokes the Augustinian exegesis of this passage, a father’s bequest 187

Through such comments, he thus includes the exegetical commentary that follows his narrative as well as his identity as a converted Jewish priest as part of his own bequest to his son. His conversion represents both a revelation and a return, both a fulfillment of Scripture and a narrative recollection in which he depicts himself as a witness to that Scripture’s true meaning. As convert, exegete, and priest, he becomes an epitome both of history and text, a figure to be interpreted just like the text on which he comments, a new “testament” to its own hidden truth. He himself says as much: This is, my son, my last testament, these are my codicils. From them know that this has been bequeathed beforehand, ‘that your will may rest in the law of the Lord and that you may meditate on His law day and night.’ Truly, by rereading these and similar things, you will in fact make your meditating purer and sweeter. [“Hoc est ergo, fili mi, testamentum meum, hi sunt codicilli mei, hoc ex illis praelegatum agnosce, ut in lege Domini sit voluntas tua, et in lege ejus mediteris die ac nocte. Meditationem vero tuam, haec et similia relegendo, puriorem profecto et suaviorem efficies.”] (Biblia, 1:16v)14 As such passages make clear, Pablo, like most medieval Christians speaking about the value of the past, and especially of the Old Testament, regularly employed the language of prefiguration and fulfillment that he drew from Augustine. For him, the Old Testament was divine Scripture in which the one and only God, the God of both Christians and Jews, revealed himself and established a covenant through Moses. It describes God’s love of the Jews above all other nations. God has not changed his covenant with Israel, but rather has fulfilled it by extending its truth to all nations through Jesus. Jesus, moreover, was the Messiah awaited throughout Jewish history, and prophecies about his future coming saturate the Hebrew Bible. Christians, as the only faithful followers of God’s commandments and revelation, have become God’s chosen people. The New Israel has replaced the Old and this is, for Pablo, nowhere more in evidence than in the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Old Testament in the teachings of the New. The Old

but also names Moses/Petrus Alfonsi and Abner de Burgos/Alfonso de Valladolid. Pablo’s reading of Jews as “witnesses” in Augustinian terms picks up a chain of exegesis that is not simply part of anti-Jewish polemic, but pertains specifically to that polemic in the works of converts who, like Pablo, introduced their ideas with conversion narratives. 14 Also in PL, 113: 37C–D (see n. 3). 188 ryan szpiech

Testament is still the true, revealed word of God, but its understanding is incomplete without the fulfillment of its prophecy depicted in the New. Although Pablo evokes the name of Paul as his model, the language and imagery by which he represents this typological understanding of history go far beyond the Pauline model, both as it is theo- rized in Paul’s own Epistles and as it is represented in narrative telling and retelling in Acts. In fact, in the exegetical discussion that constitutes the bulk of the prologue to the Additiones, the name he cites more than any other—twice as often as that of Paul—is Augustine of Hippo. Augustine’s representation of conversion in the Confessions, which was at the same time a reflection on time and narrative and a polemical defense of the exegetical interpretation of the past, was the dominant paradigm of conversion in the Middle Ages. Its deep and lasting impact derived from its underlying exegetical framework in which it interpreted individual salvation as a parallel reflection of the history of the Church and of the evolution of Scripture. Part of its appeal came from its attempt to resolve the tensions within the Pauline tradition of conversion concerning the value of the past (the old self, the Old Testament, Jewish Law). It did this by elaborating a typological—or “figural”—model of time in which the past does not only precede the present and future, but prophesies its later unfolding and fulfillment. In Augustine’s mature view, in which Scripture can be understood entirely “historically” and, at the same time, as a form of figural prophecy, he constructs a comprehensive sense of history that includes past, present, and future in a single, self-affirming temporal scheme. This model, which applied equally to Christian understanding of Scripture (Old Testament and New Testament), the self (old self and new self), and history (Jews and the Christians, “Old Israel” and “New Israel”),15

15 For an overview of the development of Augustine’s theory of figural language, see David Dawson, “Figure, Allegory,” in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald and John Cavadini (Grand Rapids: Eermans, 1999), 364– 68; Michael Cameron, “The Christological Substructure of Augustine’s Figurative Exegesis,” in Augustine and the Bible, ed. Anne-Marie La Bonnardière and Pamela Bright (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1999), 74–103; and the classic discussion in Erich Auerbach, “Figura,” in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984 [1959]), 37–43. For a more general introduction to medieval typological thinking, see Kathleen Biddick, The Typological Imaginary. Circumcision, Technology, History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), especially the opening observations in pp. 1–8. a father’s bequest 189 used the logic of exegesis to fuse profane and personal history with sacred time into a single, figural web of Salvation History, a dialectical Heilsgeschichte. Moreover, and most importantly, this use of Paul’s own conception of “figural” thinking as the key to his struggle with the question of grace on all three levels of expression (not merely on the level of selfhood or interiority) provided Augustine with a narrative template for his own conversion. Narrative was an apposite form to embody a figural model of salvation history and of exegesis because it allowed him to represent time as a unified fabric in which the past looks proleptically tothe future through prefiguration and foreshadowing and the present looks analeptically (in a narratological sense) to the past in flashback and fulfillment. Thinking “figurally” in narrative, Augustine’s historical reading of Acts became a circular, not merely linear, dialectic, a spiraling gyre that casts Paul’s conversion as a process of transformation in which the old self, like the “Old Testament,” is not rejected but super- seded and incorporated within the new through a diachronic relation of potential and actualization. By reading the theology of grace in the Epistles along a historical framework but through the particular lens of a figural understanding, Augustine was able to harness Paul’s manifold thinking on the Law, but also affirm the canonical unity of the New Testament as embodied by the narrative structure of Acts. The exegetical model that guided his thinking on Judaism applied equally to Augustine’s narrative, in which the events of his life fit together in a single fabric of meaning that reflected the dialectic between God’s unremitting grace and his own embattled and dilatory response. By thinking in this personal way about history, as Brian Stock explains, Augustine likewise “learned to think of the past, present, and future of his life as if he were interpreting a text.”16 Within the texture of his narrative, his life becomes a reflection of the same rule of prophecy he uncovered by his reading of Romans through the lens of Acts: that all of time is singularly present to God’s omniscience, and what to human perception moves in a line from past to future exists for God as a single web of eternal meaning. As he states in book eleven of the Confessions:

16 Brian Stock, Augustine the Reader. Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 74. 190 ryan szpiech

In your transcendent present state of eternity, you are before all past time and after all future time . . . eternity is your today. [“Praecedis omnia praeterita celsitudine semper praesentis aeternitatis et superas omnia futura . . . hodiernus tuus aeternitas.”]17 The centrality of narration as the principal mode of representing conversion in book eight of the Confessions, as well as his meditations on time and memory in books ten and eleven and his exegesis of Genesis in twelve and thirteen, all derive from Augustine’s alignment of scripture, self, and history as parallel expressions of God’s comprehensive grace. Together, they preserve the salvific value of the past and yet still affirm the inexorable validity of Christian supersession in the present and future.

Paula Fredriksen has observed that Augustine’s reading of Paul had two major effects in subsequent Christian tradition: it made Paul’s conversion the byword to Pauline thinking (thus making Luke’s account in Acts central to subsequent understanding of Paul’s ideas in the Epistles); and it made “the inner life of man . . . the sovereign arena of God’s work of redemption.”18 Augustine’s highly original polemical rendition of the Pauline tradition proved to be the dominant paradigm on which were based virtually all medieval Christian conversion narratives over the subsequent millennium, including that of Pablo. Pablo’s first-person presentation of his conversion experience in exegetical terms as well as his explicit connection of his conversion and subsequent exegetical model in the Additiones with anti-Jewish polemical argument both depend directly on an Augustinian reading of the Pauline paradigm of conversion. In particular, three elements stand out as decidedly Augustinian in Pablo’s account—the importance of memory (through retelling, rereading, and repeating to future generations); the explicit representation of the transformation of the former self into the present one in exegetical terms as a fulfillment of a former prophecy; and the direct connection of memory to a recognition of the testimonial role of Jews and Judaism in Christianity. In all of these aspects, Pablo shows us that the model of his conversion

17 Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, ed. James J. O’Donnell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 1:153–4, 11.13.16—trans. Garry Wills (New York: Penguin, 2006), 266. 18 Paula Fredriksen, “Paul and Augustine: Conversion Narratives, Orthodox Traditions, and the Retrospective Self,” Journal of Theological Studies, 37 (1986): 27. a father’s bequest 191 narrative, like that of his exegesis and his anti-Jewish polemic, is Augustine, not Paul. Not only is Pablo’s narrative patterned on Augustine in most of its narrative details—his protracted struggle, his “mistaken” education, his use of his conversion narrative as a preamble to his exegesis, his change of faith “in his heart” before his baptism, his mention of his son’s baptism along with him, etc. It also rehearses Augustine’s particular reading of a Pauline theology of grace. His conversion, like Augustine’s, came about only “when it pleased Him whose mercy is measureless to call me back,” only when God “would deign to implant in my heart whatever might be most healthful for my soul.” Pablo, like Augustine, is unable to even begin to turn to God without God’s prior action of grace.19 At the same time, his theory of grace is fused, like Augustine’s, with an exegetical vision of his own conversion. His focus on rereading as part of the action of his transformation imitates Augustine’s constant evocation of reading and rereading as the catalyst of his own development. Pablo’s journey “from darkness to light” is hermeneutic rather than cosmic or physical; the “scales fall,” but they do so figuratively, “from the eyes of my mind.” Pablo’s retrospective emphasis on retelling as a kind of exegesis of the self is modeled on Augustine’s representation of retelling as one of the primary vehicles of the enactment and fulfillment of conversion. Also, Pablo’s emphasis on the growth of the self as a vector of the fulfillment of scripture and history is pattered on Augustine’s own presentation of his narrative of self in the Confessions as an expression of time that ran parallel to that of the Old Testament exegesis of Genesis. This defense of a narrative return to the past leads Pablo to explain in more detail his characterization of the relationship between past and present. The presentation of the self in terms of prefiguration and fulfillment involves Pablo’s double vindication of both the preconversion self and the pre-Christian Jew as valuable and necessary components of the historical unfolding of God’s salvific plan. Pablo follows Augustine in linking his conversion narrative with his own polemical arguments, and like Augustine, he does not simply repeat the tropes

19 Of the many sources treating Augustine’s theory of grace, see in particular Gerald Bonner, Freedom and Necessity. St. Augustine’s Teaching on Divine Power and Human Freedom (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2007); and Pierre- Marie Hombert, Gloria Gratiae. Se glorifier en Dieu, principe et fin de la théologie augustinienne de la grâce (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1996). 192 ryan szpiech of anti-Jewish writing found in earlier sources. Pablo’s strong valua- tion of the old “Jewish self ” as part of the prefiguration of the new “Christian self ” elaborates Augustine’s use of Pauline language as the basis of his doctrine of Jewish witness. His theory of typological reading—what he passes on as his bequest to his son—is part of his polemical characterization of the role of Jews and Judaism in Christian history. Pablo recounts his narrative to future generations “lest they forget,” casting the narrative memory of his former Jewish self as an eternal witness to the triumph of Christianity. Like Augustine, Pablo values the past and all it represents—the Old Testament, the old law, the former Jewish self—as part of a circuitous web of time in which unfolds the gratuitous and inscrutable salvific plan of God’s grace. In Pablo’s writing, we begin to see how the strong currents within the Pauline paradigm were harnessed together in Augustine’s rendition into a single vision of Christian identity. This typological structure is further represented by Pablo’s distinction between “public” confession and private belief “in my heart,” a distinction that mirrors his Christian exegetical perspective that distinguishes between the “outer” and “inner” meaning of Scripture, the “flesh” and the “spirit” of the believer. This inner/outer distinction is combined with a past/present distinction in which Christianity ful- fills the inner potential of God’s covenant in the Bible while Judaism merely preserves its outer form. Just as Pablo “who was previously a teacher of error was made a disciple of the truth,” so the authoritative proofs on which he based his exegesis were converted, within his new exegetical perspective, from being erroneous teaching to correct doctrine. Just as the Hebrew Bible itself offered typological proof of the New Testament, so Pablo’s conversion narrative represents in miniature, emblematic form the Christian idea of the transformation of all Jews into believing Christians. In his opening narrative, conversion represents both a turning of his own belief as well as a turning of his sources from Jewish authorities into Christian prooftexts and, even more broadly, of the translation of the Hebrew Bible into the Latin Vulgate. It both dramatizes the logic of exegetical typology in which Jewish Scriptures come to be fulfilled in Christian revelations and also establishes his own authority in invoking post-biblical sources in defense of Christianity. By framing his whole exegetical project with his brief narrative of transformation, he makes Christian figurative reading, the “scrutiny of Scripture,” an extension of the process of conversion itself. At the same time, he makes the narration of a father’s bequest 193 conversion a fulfillment of the promise given in the event narrated. Experience itself, expressed through the cipher of typological reading, becomes a prophecy to be fulfilled in its retelling. Man and text, ret- rospection and rereading, reinforce one another as parallel axes of transformation. Even as Pablo’s story recapitulates the core elements of the Augustinian model of a “narrative” conversion, it also contains elements that are extraneous to Augustine’s formulation, reflecting the evolution of his ideas about conversion and Judaism as they had evolved over the preceding millennium. Pablo blends his conversion narrative and his biblical exegesis with a heavy dose of post-biblical sources from Rabbinic tradition, turning not only to the Bible but also to the Talmud, and not only to the writing of Christian exegetes, but to that of Jewish exegetes as well (above all Rashi, whom he names along with other medieval Jewish writers in the introduction to his exegesis immediately following his conversion narrative). Similarly, he makes regular recourse to Aristotle and his medieval interpreters, both Jewish and Christian (and occasionally Muslim).20 Although Augustine is the first Christian writer (after Paul) mentioned by Pablo in his introduction, he is immediately followed by Aristotle. Yet it is very telling that the citations from Augustine’s Literal Commentary on Genesis as well as those from Aristotle are in fact derived second-hand, like much of the prologue itself, from Thomas Aquinas.21

20 On Pablo’s use of Hebrew sources in the Additiones, see Herman Hailperin, Rashi and the Christian Scholars (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963), 341, no. 584, and elsewhere; Ch. Merchavia, “The Talmud in the Additiones of Paul of Burgos,” The Journal of Jewish Studies 16, no. 3–4 (1965): 115–134; and the partial index of Wolfgang Bunte, Rabbinische Traditionen bei Nikolaus von Lyra: ein Beitrag zur Schriftauslegung des Spätmittelalters (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1994). 21 For example, Pablo’s characteristically Scholastic phrase “Furthermore, according to the Philosopher in Posterior Analytics I, that, on account of which a thing is [in a certain way], it is itself more [that very way]” [“Praeterea, secundum Philosophum I Posterior. Propter aliud unumquodque et illud magis”] (Biblia 1: 16v, and Cf. PL, 113: 38; see n. 3) is found constantly throughout the Summa Theologica (e.g. 1.16.1.3, 1.87.2.3, 1.88.3.2, 1–2.71.3, 1–2.109.3; 2–2.26.3, 3.2.7.3, etc.). Similarly, Pablo states, “And thus [says] Augustine on the literal meaning of Genesis: Since divine Scripture can be explained in multiple ways, one should not adhere to any particular explanation, since if certain reason should establish it as false that someone should presume to claim that sense of Scripture. From this, Scripture is derided by infidels, and the way of belief is closed off to them.” [“Et ideo Augustinus super Genesi ad litteram: Cum Scriptura divina multipliciter exponi possit, nulli expositioni ita praecise aliqu- isita inhaereat, quod si certa ratione constiterit hoc esse falsum, quod aliquis sensum Scripture hunc asserere praesumat. Ex hoc enim Scriptura ab infidelibus derideretur, 194 ryan szpiech

Both of these strains of thought—post-biblical writing and Aristotle filtered through Jewish and Christian philosophy—were recent arriv- als in Christian exegesis and polemic, appearing only in the twelfth century and after. Both, moreover, presented formidable challenges to the Augustinian paradigm of conversion, challenges to which Pablo is heir. Just as Pablo read Paul through Augustine, so he read Augustine through the exegesis and polemic of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Much of this polemic, moreover, was marked by an attempt to blend the traditional Augustinian paradigm with philosophical arguments derived from Aristotle and with non-Christian citations drawn from post-biblical Jewish and Islamic writing. As anti-Jewish polemical texts of the period—the Dialogus contra Iudaeos of Petrus Alfonsi, the Opusculum de conversione sua of Herman, the Mostrador de justicia of Abner de Burgos/Alfonso de Valladolid—all attest, one of the ways that authors sought to mitigate the tension that came of this blending of traditions was to include a story of conversion to “testify” to the truth of one’s sources and the unity of one’s polemical vision.22 Pablo’s first-person narrative in the Additiones plays a similar role in balancing the tradition received from Augustine with the argumentation drawn from non-biblical writing. Pablo’s account, however, takes this strategy of first-person testimony one step further by dedicating it to his son. Pablo’s conversion narrative thus becomes more than a simple recapitulation of Augustinian figuralism through a late-medieval textual understanding. It is also an expression of his belief that both he and his son, through their conversion from Judaism to Christianity, are themselves expressions

et eis praecluderetur via credendi”] (Biblia 1: 17r; Cf. PL, 113: 40A–B). This passage is itself only loosely based on Augustine’s Literal commentary on Genesis (I.18.36–7, 19.38–9, 21.41), and is rather taken directly from Summa Theologica, I.68.1c. Also, Pablo’s statement, “Augustine says on Genesis 2, In any [passage], only the literal sense is to be sought” [“Dicit enim Augustinus II super Gen. In quibusdam solus sensus litteralis quaerendus est”] (Biblia, 1: 17r; CF PL, 40B) is taken from Aquinas’s Quodlibet vii. q6.a2.arg5. 22 On this use of the conversion narrative in the context of Christian polemical writing, see Ryan Szpiech, “Polemical Strategy and the Rhetoric of Authority in Abner of Burgos / Alfonso of Valladolid,” in Late Medieval Jewish Identities. Iberia and Beyond, ed. by María Esperanza Alfonso and Carmen Caballero-Navas (New York: Palgrave- Macmillan, 2010), 55–76. For a reading of Herman’s account that works to broaden the frame within which it is interpreted, see Jean-Claude Schmitt, The Conversion of Herman the Jew. Autobiography, History, and Fiction in the Twelfth Century, trans. Alex J. Novikoff (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). a father’s bequest 195 of divine will and that their own personal stories embody and help fulfill the unfolding of Christian supersessionist history.23 Thus part of Pablo’s text includes a justification of his own retelling of his conversion as a teaching tool for younger generations. In this, he characterizes memory as a didactic tool of ongoing tradition. I gladly tell you these things, so that . . . you might commit them to memory and . . . explain them to younger people who perhaps did not hear of them, so that they in turn should tell [them] to their sons, so that ‘they do not forget the works of God, but investigate his law.’ [Tibi autem . . . haec libenter enarro, ut . . . memoriae tradas, juniori- busque, qui forsan non audierunt . . . ut illi enarrent filiis suis, ne obliviscantur operum Domini, sed legem ejus exquirant.] (Biblia, 1:16v)24 As noted, Pablo here evokes Psalm 78:5–7 and Deuteronomy 6:7, in which fathers teach sons who teach their sons, “lest they forget” the Lord. He stresses both the importance of remembering God in each generation and the ongoing continuity of God’s teaching as an inheritance given from father to son. When Pablo characterizes the teaching of father to son in personal terms, he is moved to depict his own conversion narrative as a vehicle for revealing the very same typological fulfillment of the Old Testament by the New. He sees his own conversion not only as a personal narrative of transformation and faith, but also as a symbol of God’s own providential plan, prophesied in Scripture and fulfilled in Pablo himself. In this light, he stresses the historic and prophetic importance of his and his son’s own former name, Halevi. Pablo’s legacy to his son is a converted identity that represents a fulfillment of God’s plan as described in Jewish scripture. Just as God decreed that the sons of Levi should have no inheritance because of their sacerdotal role, so Pablo, writing as Bishop of Burgos, describes the fruit of his conversion as the “possession” that he passes on to Alfonso as an “inheritance.” (Biblia, 1:16v).25

23 For an exploration of the notion of “converso” identity in both Pablo and his son, see Maurice Kriegel, “Autour de Pablo de Santa María et d’Alfonso de Cartagena: alignement culturel et originalité ‘converso’,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 41, no. 2 (1994): 197–205. 24 Also in PL, 113: 36C (see n. 3). 25 Also in PL, 113: 36B–C. 196 ryan szpiech

Thus, the dedication of this text to his son is not gratuitous. Just as the stories of conversion of Paul and the early apostles in Acts serve as the foundational narratives of the Church itself, so Pablo presents his narrative as the opening of his multi-volume commentary on the entire corpus of Old and New Testaments and as the foundation of his own story of worldly success and his rise to ecclesiastical prominence, which he mentions directly.26 By showing that through his transformation from Jew to Christian, “worldly things were added to ecclesiastical ones,” Pablo draws a direct parallel between his own foundational fiction and the founding narrative of the Church itself. Through his use of narrative as the basis of both his biblical exegesis and his polemical attack on Judaism, he blends the passage of Saul into Paul and Hebrew Scripture into Christian Scripture with his own conversion from Solomon to Pablo. By casting his text and his name as a bequest, he expands this appeal to the past as prefiguration of the present and future by drawing parallels between Pablo’s experience and that of his son. He invokes prophecy about the tribe of Levi and stresses his own name change upon “assuming the name of Paul,” and in this way Pablo presents his conversion as the fulfillment of an earlier Jewish prophecy, a fulfillment that continues by passing on his sacerdotal name to Alonso. Significantly, Alonso literally followed his father as “inheritor” of the bishopric of Burgos upon Pablo’s death in 1434, just as his brother had become Bishop of Plasencia in 1423. By mentioning “these successes, which common men call the events of fortune,” Pablo explicitly reminds his son that their “inheritance” has been as much material as spiritual. Through his narrative, he both literally and figuratively bequeaths his conversion to his son, and his legacy is one of both letter and spirit, the prophecy of the old self and its fulfillment in the new. The typological reading of history, both public and private, reflects and frames the exegetical approach in the subsequent glosses to Nicholas of Lyra. Pablo in fact directly follows his conversion story

26 “And yet neither were those successes lacking which the vulgar call prosperous. For divine grace has raised me, though completely undeserving, to no mean level of ecclesiastical authority. In fact, at first promoted to the see of Cartagena and then to this of Burgos, I have been sustained by the abundant favors of God’s Church.” [“Nec tamen hi, quos prosperos vulgus appellat, successus defuerunt. Nam me . . . non ad parvum Ecclesiae gradum divina gratia sublevavit. Primo enim ad Carthaginensem, deinde ad hanc Burgensem sedem promotus, amplissimis Ecclesiae Dei favoribus sum nutritus.”] (Biblia, 1: 16v. Also in PL, 113: 36A–B; see n. 3). a father’s bequest 197 with a detailed description in the rest of the prologue of his approach to Scripture, stressing the importance preserving the literal meaning of Scripture while at the same time understanding its figurative and typological meaning.27 He implies a parallel between himself and the text of Scripture when he applies an exegetical model to his own biography. Just as he was converted from wrong to right interpretation, “recalled” from “shadows to light,” so the biblical testimonia he invokes were “transformed,” through proper reading, from Jewish Scriptures into proofs of Christian doctrine. Just as in his conversion “the scales fell from the eyes of my mind, and I began to reread sacred scripture,” so through his “additions” (in the exegetical Additiones that follow his narrative) and “scrutiny” of Scripture (in his Scrutinium a few years later), his rereading rescued his own sources from the literal “perfidy” in which they had lain prisoner. His sources, like his own name, can be read “not faithlessly any longer,” but correctly as authoritative proofs of Christianity. In his exegetical turn to Augustine as the keynote of his bequest to his son, Pablo is able to invoke, in what is perhaps among the last such characterizations by a medieval writer, the coherent unity of individual identity combined with an exegetical vision of God’s unfolding plan through the action of the Catholic Church. Given the solemn historical moment in which it appeared, Pablo’s conversion narrative in fact became an important vehicle for the transmission of Augustine’s reading of Paul and it enjoyed a wide dissemination in the late-medieval and early-modern world. It is at once a précis of the distinctly Augustinian combination of self, text, history, and church in the context of exegetical polemic and also a response to the changes in that synthesis through its exposure to non-Christian philosophical and religious sources. It is, however, more than this, adding onto the combination of exegesis, polemic, and individual testimony the even more personal dedication to his son to whom he offers his “converted” status and name as a valuable legacy. Writing shortly before the final breakdown of the long-eroded Augustinian doctrine of Jewish Witness

27 As Henri de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale. Les quatre sens de l’écriture. Second Partie (Paris: Aubier, 1959–64), 2:281, and Ceslas Spicq, Esquisse d’une histoire de l’exégèse latine au moyen âge (Paris: J. Vrin, 1944), 277, no. 1, both observe, Pablo was among the first to develop the notion of multiple literal senses in Christian exegesis. For example, Biblia, 1: 17v–18r. Also in PL, 113: 43–5 (see n. 3). On his theory, see also Szpiech, “Scrutinizing History,” 114–116 (see n. 7). 198 ryan szpiech in Iberia—only two decades before the anti-converso riots of 1449 that so deeply scarred his son’s final years—Pablo’s personal conversion narrative and the exegesis that followed it are at once the last vestiges of a waning idea and the portentous harbingers of radical, irreversible change. IV. Liturgy and Translation

THE LITURGY OF PORTUGUESE CONVERSOS

Asher Salah

Introduction

At the beginning of the twentieth century, in the wake of the discovery of crypto-Jewish communities in Portugal, many of the first scholars who devoted themselves to the collection of Marrano prayers and to their interpretation questioned the origin of the New Christian liturgical corpus. Were these the remains of an ancient rabbinic liturgy or were these rather the testimonies of what Hobsbawm would have called an “invented tradition”?1 Among the supporters of the former view—i.e. the substantial antiquity of Marrano prayers—we should mention Samuel Schwarz, Nahum Slousch, the captain Barros Basto and his pupil Amílcar Paulo, who were moved by their admiration for the extraordinary loyalty to the ancestral faith shown by these survivors of centuries of persecution. Samuel Schwarz, a Polish engineer considered the “discoverer” of the Marranos in the twentieth century, argued that the Marrano prayers he collected in the region of Beiras derived directly from the Rabbinic prayer book, being nothing else than a Portuguese version of texts written originally in the sacred language: Començaram então a ser traduzidas as oracões hebraicas em língua portuguesa, e essas traduccões, feitas sempre a ocultas em épocas e lugares diferentes, apresentam por esta razão divêrgencias de forma, segundo as localidades, conservando, no entanto, a mesma essência, que denuncia a sua origem judaica comum.2 Among the defenders of the second thesis—i.e. the novelty of the converso liturgy—there are those who, following the important studies by António José Saraiva, are inclined to negate the plausibility of a survival of forms of Jewish religiosity among the Portuguese New

1 E. Hobsbawm & T. Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1990). 2 s. Schwarz, Os Cristãos Novos em Portugal no Século XX (Lisboa, 1925), 25. 202 asher salah

Christians in the aftermath of the forced conversion of 1497. Herman Prins Salomon is certainly one of the most vehement champions of the hypothesis that the liturgy of the Marranos is nothing but a tradition invented after the dismantling of the Inquisition in 1821: It is possible to prove that all the published ‘remnants’ and ‘relics’ of ‘Jewish’ liturgical material among the ‘Marranos’ of northeastern Portu- gal either are just as ‘Christian’ as they are ‘Jewish’ or were introduced after the extinction of the Inquisition.3 A third way has been explored by other scholars claiming that the ritual of new and old Christians goes back to an old and common poetical and liturgical substrate that existed long before the Inquisi- tion was established in the late Middle Ages. Following Jaume Riera i Sans’ pioneering studies, scholars like Manuel da Costa Fontes and José Manuel Pedrosa, pointed to the common aspects of Christian and Marrano prayers, known from oral traditions preserved to this day and from testimonies in Inquisition trials.4 To explain why identical prayers were used by Jews and Christians alike, these scholars suggest the theory that they both drew from a common Iberian oral tradition, most probably going back as far as pagan times and with roots in Mediterranean mythology.5 The ongoing debate over the origins of the liturgy of the Marranos is reminiscent of the controversy over the origins of the Romance, with Agustín Durán, Ferdinand Wolf, Carolina Michaelis, Julio Cejador on the side of those who claimed the antiquity of the Romance as the first expression of a Spanish national poetry, preceding the chansons

3 Herman Prins Salomon, “The Captain, the Abade and 20th Century ‘Marranism’ in Portugal”, Arquivos do Centro Cultural Português (1976): 631–642. 4 Jaume Riera i Sans, “Oracions en català dels conversos jueus. Notes bibli- ografiques i textos”, AdF 1 (1975): 345–367; M. da Costa Fontes, “Orações criptojudias na tradição oral portuguesa”, Hispania 74/3 (1991): 511–518; Idem, “Mais orações criptojudias de Rebordelo”, Revista da Universidade de Coimbra 37 (1991): 457–469; Idem, “Four Portuguese Crypto-Jewish Prayers and their Inquisitorial Counterpart”, Mediterranean Language Review VI–VII (1993): 67–104; Idem, “O justo Juiz Cristão e a Inquisição em duas orações criptojudaicas de Rebordelo”, Hispania 80 (1997): 1–8; José Manuel Pedrosa, “Correspondencias cristianas y judías de la oración de Las cuatro esquinas”, Brigantia 12 (1992): 19–39; Idem, “La bendición del día y Dios delante y yo detrás: correspondencias cristianas y judías de dos oraciones hispanoportuguesas”, Romanistisches Jahrbuch 45 (1994): 262–270. 5 Pedrosa, “La bendición del día”, 268, affirms that Christian and Jewish prayers widespread in Iberic oral tradition until nowadays “guarden apreciables similitudes con formulas religiosas documentadas en tradiciones paganas precristianas o en la tradición fuertemente paganizada de los primeros tiempos del cristianismo”. the liturgy of portuguese conversos 203 de geste and going back to late Latin poetry, and those like Menén- dez Pelayo and Menéndez Pidal who attributed the formation of the Romances to the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century.6 In any case, before supporting one of these contrasting theses, one should not underestimate the fact that it is legitimate to speak of a liturgical corpus of the Marranos only in correspondence with the appearance of the crypto-Jewish phenomenon, i.e. after the mass conversions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This corpus was selected and elaborated within circles of conversos compelled to live their faith clandestinely, with functional characteristics which appear only through a synchronic and contextual analysis of the prayers. Although most of the Marrano prayers cannot be dated with certainty, the strong similarities of the oral traditions collected in the last cen- tury7 with the poetic material discovered in the Inquisition files allows us to believe that the ritual of the Marranos had reached in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the maturity and the form in which they are known to us.

6 a summary of this debate can be found in Mario Garvin, Scripta manent. Hacia una edición crítica del romancero impreso (siglo XVI) (Madrid/Frankfurt, 2007). 7 Besides those of Schwarz and the aforementioned researches conducted by Man- uel da Costa Fontes in Rebordelo in 1980, the main collection of crypto-Jewish oral traditions, mostly constituted by prayers, are those by: Artur Carlos de Barros Bastos, “Tradições cripto-judaicas: o manuscrito de Rebordelo”, HaLapid (abril, 1928): 6–8; (mayo, 1928): 6–8; (junio, 1928): 4–6; Idem, “Tradições cripto-judaicas: O manuscrito de Perpetua da Costa”, HaLapid (março-abril, 1929): 4–6; (julio-agosto, 1929): 6–8; (setembro, 1929): 6–8; Samuel Rodriguez, “Tradições Cripto-Judaicas: orações de Pinhel”, HaLapid (dezembro, 1932): 2–4; Casimiro de Morais Machado, “Mogadouro: Os Marranos de Vilarinho dos Galegos”, Douro Litoral (1952): 17–49; José Leite de Vasconcellos, Etnografia Portuguesa, vol. 4 (Lisboa, 1958), 153–255; Amílcar Paulo, Romanceiro cripto-judaico: subsidios para o estudo do folclore Marrano (Bragança, 1969); Idem, Os Cripto-Judeos (Porto, 1978); Idem, Os Judeos Secretos em Portugal (Porto, 1985); David Augusto Canelo, Criptojudaismo em Belmonte: orações inéditas depois de Schwarz (Belmonte, 1985). Other prayers and some different versions of well-known oral traditions can be found in more general works such as F. M. Alves, “Os Judeos”, in Memorias Arqueologico-Historicas do Distreito de Bragança (Bragança, 1920), 88; Antonio Baião, Episódios dramáticos da Inquisição Portuguesa, vol. 2 (Porto and Rio de Janeiro, 1919–1924), 270–272 and in the book by the Portuguese anti- semite Mário Saa, A invasão dos Judeos (Lisboa, 1925), 232s. Still lacking a coherent collection of prayers included in the Inquisition records, though some of them have been analyzed in studies concerning the faith of the crypto-Jews. An anthology of such prayers can be found in the chapters dedicated to the crypto-Jewish liturgy in D. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit (Philadelphia, 1996). 204 asher salah

This paper does not intend to settle the question of the origins of Marrano prayers, nor does it wish to confront the problem of whether crypto-judaic ritual constitutes a proof of conversos’ assimilation into the surrounding religious culture, or is instead a testimonial to what Cecil Roth defines as the “Religion of the Marranos” and Israel Salva- dor Revah as “l’hérésie marrane” with its own syncretic characteristics, or finally demonstrates the quintessential Jewishness of their faith as Schwarz claimed.8 I would like rather to examine if and how the extant prayers of the Marranos constitute a coherent poetic corpus, with its own characteristics, and not only a jumble of texts produced in different contexts. In order to do this and to be able to go beyond the genealogical perspective shared by most of Marranos liturgy’s scholarship, I believe it necessary to consider the phenomenon of crypto-Jewish spirituality in the wider context of the revolution of the devotional practices that took place in Europe in the sixteenth century. In the last decades extensive research has been done on the extraordinary blossoming of sacred Christian poetry from the end of the sixteenth century and throughout the seventeenth.9 According to these studies, in the age of Baroque Jewish and Christian religious poetry is characterized by a strong predilection for particular poetic forms, inspired by the Psalter, a book which enjoyed unprecedented popularity at the time of the Counter-Reformation. The crypto-Jewish prayers seem in fact to share many features of the religious lyric of European Baroque, and particularly striking are the similitudes with the paraliturgical compositions that were written in Hebrew in Italy at the turn of the sixteenth century. I will therefore deal briefly with their most relevant formal, thematic and functional similarities, before trying to assess how such a

8 see the classic study by Cecil Roth, “The Religion of the Marranos”, Jewish Quar- terly Review 22 (1931–1932): 1–33 and I. S. Revah, “L’hérésie marrane dans l’Europe catholique du 15 au 18 siècle”, in Hérésies et sociétés dans l’Europe préindustrielle, 11e–18e siècles (Paris-La Haye, 1968), 327–337, whose conclusions continue to inspire authors such as David Augusto Canelo, Os últimos criptojudeos em Portugal (Bel- monte, 1987). 9 g. Fallani, La letteratura religiosa in Italia (Napoli, 1973); for bibliography, see A. Quondam, Il naso di Laura. Lingua e poesia lirica nella tradizione del classicismo (Modena, 1991); S. Ussia, Il Sacro Parnaso, il Lauro e la Croce (Catanzaro, 1993); Idem, Le muse sacre. Poesia religiosa dei secoli XVI e XVII (Borgomanero, 1999); F. Nomi, Santuario. Poesie Sacre. Un calendario liturgico in versi di fine ‘600 (Roma, 1996). As for Jewish religious poetry revival in the same span of time we can now refer to the excellent monograph by Michela Andreatta, Poesia religiosa ebraica di età barocca. L’innario della confraternita Shomerim LaBoqer, Mantova, 1612 (Padova, 2007). the liturgy of portuguese conversos 205 comparison can contribute to a better understanding of the particular religious drive expressed by the Marranos in their prayers.

Formal and Thematic Analysis

The first and foremost characteristic of crypto-Judaic liturgy isits strong intertextual relationship with the Psalter. The recitation of the penitential psalms, including in particular those which in Hebrew are called Shirei Hama‘alot or “Songs of Ascent”, is in many ways the most striking expression of Marrano religiosity.10 The predominance of the model of the Psalms, to the detriment of any other biblical source, is so strong that this element alone suffices to distinguish the crypto-Jewish liturgy from, for instance, the poems of Gonçalo Eanes, Bandarra, or the “sapateiro de Trancoso”, composed around 1540 and filled with eschatological allusions to prophetic texts, which we know were used rarely by the Marranos. Their poetry shows instead more points of contact with the genre of the lauda in Italy and to the one of the Cantigas in Spain, genres which, after a first appearance in the fourteenth century and a period of decline in the fifteenth century, had an extraordinary reemergence during the Counter-Reformation, with the end of the great millennial visions that marked Renaissance religious poetry (from the sermons of Savonarola to the Spiritual Canticle of Juan de la Cruz).11 This does not mean that Marrano poetry lacks a strong messianic yearning, but that we have to distinguish between millenaristic messianism, where the image of the apocalyptic end of time and the expectation of doom prevails, typical once again of the trovas de Bandarra, the poems of Pedro Frias or those of the friar João de Rocacelsa, and the aspiration of an earthly and political redemption, as can be seen in the numerous references of returning to the “Santa Terra da Promissão” contained in the liturgy of the Marranos.12

10 as noted by Stuczynski concerning the communities of Judaizers in Northern Portugal: “the reading of Psalms was a strong expression of the religiosity of many of Bragança’s converso community”. Cf. C. Stuczynski, “Bein HaQaiam LaNigzar”, in Sifriot VeOsfei Sefarim: The 24th Conference on History (Jerusalem, 2006), 181. 11 to the revival of the lauda see Giancarlo Rostirolla, Danilo Zardin & Oscar Mischiati, La lauda spirituale tra Cinque e Seicento. Poesie e canti devozionali nell’Italia della Controriforma (Roma, 2001). 12 Bandarra’s trovas widely circulated among new Christians and were read well into the seventeenth century as testified in the conversation of two conversos in Bra- gança quoted by Stuczynski, “Bein HaQaiam LaNigzar”, 178. 206 asher salah

Crypto-Jewish liturgy most probably included also, together with the recitation of prayers composed by Marranos themselves, the direct reading of Psalms. This can be deduced from some of the prayers such as the Nr. 11 in Schwarz’s collection where we can read a description of the context in which the Psalms were read “Levantei-me de manhã, de manhã ao alvor, a cantar e a rezar os santos psalmos do Senhor.” But even the “original” Marrano prayers—i.e. those which are not a copy of any known text—are often nothing more than poetic paraphrases of some Davidic psalms, such as the “cantico de louvor a Deus” (Nr. 33) that follows the lines of Psalm 148 or the short prayer Nr. 27 that is a free paraphrase of Psalm 128. In other prayers, verses from different Psalms are bound together, with a technique similar to that of the Shibbus ̣ Miqra’i (collage of biblical verses), used in the Sephardic poetry. For instance in prayer Nr. 11, we find the insertion of an entire paragraph from Psalm 113, prayer Nr. 42 includes a verse from Psalm 118 and in the “Oração Forte” (Nr. 40), verses from Psalms 115 and 118 appear intertwined. The preference of the paraphrases over more or less literal translations is a widespread phenomenon in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries probably as a result of the suspicion against vernacular translations of biblical texts.13 In fact religious poetry during the Baroque, from 1570 onwards and in clear contrast with Renaissance practice, was based on what Michèle Clément defines as “un art poétique apoc- ryphe” where “l’intertextualité fonctionne comme le principe même de la création.”14 It is interesting to note that among the psalms the Marrano prayers show a strong predilection for the penitential ones. The atonement of sins is the central theme of prayers Nr. 25, 29, 36, 42, 45 in the Schwarz collection. A closely related subgenre can be found in the confession of sins as in Nr. 29 and in Nr. 47. In many ways we could define these compositions as forms of seliḥot. The seliḥah genre is certainly not restricted to the period of our interest, but its remarkable success among the Marranos seems to be correlated to some specific

13 From the research by María Wenceslada de Diego Lobejón, Los Salmos en la literatura española (Madrid, 1996), we learn that a conspicuous number of vernacular translations of some Psalms continued to be printed in Spain during the Counter- Reformation, though they are by far outnumbered by the more popular paraphrases in verse. 14 Michèle Clement, Une poétique de crise: Poètes baroques et mystiques (1570–1660) (Paris, 1996), 227. the liturgy of portuguese conversos 207 liturgical uses that were being renewed, from the second half of the sixteenth century and were particularly popular among European Jews of the time. The Marrano liturgy bears strong similarities to the poetic compositions printed for the prayer brotherhoods, which were established in central and northern Italy from the end of sixteenth century. In them, the paraphrastic variations on the Psalms of penitence have a central, though not exclusive, position. In the compilation of hymns of the Shomerim LaBoqer printed in Mantua in 1612, for instance, on a total of about one hundred, more than half are Psalms of penitence, while most of the rest, original texts written ad hoc by contemporary writers, can be ascribed to the Seliḥa genre.15 The composition of new seliḥot, with a strong intertextual relation with the Psalms, is in fact one of the main features of devotional books printed in Italy. The central position in these prayers of the admonishment against sins and the exhortation to repent, are means to enhance the feeling of moral deficiency of the orator in front of God. As a consequence of the absolute disparity between man and his Creator, separated by an infinite abyss, the only possible attitude is the acknowledgment of one’s own imperfection; hence the emphasis on the confession of sins and the urgency of their expiation by invoking divine mercy and protection. Prayer can only include laudation of divine omnipotence or petition for mercy for one’s own inadequacy. One of the main differences with preexistent seliḥot written in the Middle Ages is that the crypto-Judaic prayer is characterized by a dramatic sense of loneli- ness before the infinite majesty of God, showing the desire to uncover the most hidden aspects of the self, a desire that can be linked to the rediscovery of interiority current for instance in the spiritual exer- cises of the Jesuits.16 Another sign of this new attitude can be seen in the fact that most of the Marrano religious poems are written in the first person singular17 even though these prayers were, most probably, recited in groups or small congregations. Like all Baroque religious

15 Michela Andreatta, Poesia religiosa ebraica di età barocca (Padova, 2007), 101. 16 “The emphasis on repentance and sorrow over sin was in keeping with the greater importance placed by the Jesuits on the interior, emotional experience of Christian- ity”, cf. Thomas Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, 1977), 197. 17 of the 80 prayers collected by Schwarz 51 are written in the first person singular, while 22 in the first person plural. Nr. 8 and Nr. 76 are extant in two almost identical versions with the only difference being that one is in the singular and the other in the plural. 208 asher salah poetry, even the prayers which emerged in a New Christian context seek to express feelings more than ideas. That religious exaltation can be attained only through the exaggeration of pathos can be seen clearly in the function attributed to tears in crypto-Judaic prayers.18 Emotion prevails over reason to the point that we could say that in the circles of Iberian Judaizers, like in those of Jews in other parts of Europe between the sixteenth and eighteenth century, prayer becomes a substitute for study as the main goal of the believer longing to connect with the Almighty. The predilection of the Marranos for devotional rituals mustbe attributed not only to the secret practice of their faith and the difficulty of having access to the texts of rabbinic Judaism, but can also be understood in the context of the sharp decline in the study of the Tal- mud, noted, for instance, by Bonfil concerning late sixteenth-century Italy, and of the emergence of new liturgical practices, popular and less elitist, influenced by the diffusion of the theurgic Kabbalah elaborated in Lurianic circles.19 The longing for redemption and the conviction that prayer has an influence on divine plans were widespread in Christian environments also and are expressed in poetic creations in circles near the devotio moderna and the alumbradismo. The emphasis on confession recalls the atonement compositions in the so called Sidrei Viddui, which were used by the brotherhoods in care of the dying and were extremely popular in Italy and elsewhere.20 Moreover, Marrano poetry bears striking similarities with poems included in Taḥanunim and Tiqunim, books widespread in the Jewish world from the sixteenth century on, composed by a confession of sins followed by requests for grace and the reading of a Psalm of Penitence

18 as in the exhortation of prayer Nr. 31 “Chorae, filhos d’Israel, chorae o vosso pecado com todo o vosso coração”, or Nr. 47 “pequei Senhor, contra vós, eu ja choro o meu pecado”, and especially in the repetition of the theme of the tears in the confession in Spanish of a Judaizer in the Lerena Auto da Fe in 1661, published by Schwarz in his aforementiond book at page 89, “Yo te he de desenojar con lagrimas de mis ojos, recibe ya los despojos de mi triste corazon . . . Noche y dia he de llorar para que aquestos dos rios de los triste ojos mios vayan a ese mar clemente . . . Aqui llorando he de estar a tus pies, Señor, asido, que quien te ha tanto ofendido que ha de hazer sino llorar . . . Ya Señor mis tristes ojos non son ojos sino fuentes . . .”. 19 roberto Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley, 1994), 230–232. 20 This phenomenon has been studied among others by Bracha Rivlin, Avriel Bar Levav and Elliott Horowitz in the last two decades. the liturgy of portuguese conversos 209 with additional piyutim that may change from one community to another.21 The collection of prayers collected by Schwarz appears in many ways as a Sefer Taḥanunim to be read on special occasions, such as the hymnal of the Jewish Confraternity in Mantua, the Ayelet HaShaḥar, published in 1612. Another formal similarity between these new hymnals and the Marrano prayers can be found in the common strophic structure of the Pizmon and of the Piyut Mein Ezori, attested since the early Mid- dle Ages, but that, in the post-Renaissance religious poetry, becomes the most pervasive poetic form, which allows the abandoning of the metrical structure of the verse while using at length refrains, corresponding to the popular and less elitist nature of this kind of poem conceived for devotional practices open to all the congregation and often sung with musical accompaniment. The simplicity of language of these poems is not only evidence of their popular character but also of their modernity. Indeed, as convincingly demonstrated by the French scholar Michèle Clément, religious poetry in the Baroque period, contrary to a still far-flung prejudice, is distinguished from Renaissance poetry by its abandonment of excessive ornament and its freeing of emotion from the burdens of rhetoric in order to be attainable to a wider public of readers.22 Pagis also, in his studies, stresses the fact that sacred Hebrew poetry of the time is more likely to use free verse and avoid the rhetorical devices common in profane poetry.23 Another feature shared by Marrano liturgy and contemporary European religious poetry, Jewish and Christian, is a particular predilection for certain biblical episodes such as the sacrifice of Isaac.24 The topical figure of the Aqeda enjoyed considerable vogue among

21 Jacqueline Genot-Bismuth, “Recherche sur les fonctions de la prière individuelle en milieu marrane aux alentours de 1492: prière et salut”, in Prière, Mystique et Juda- ïsme (Paris, 1987), 166. 22 Clément, Une poétique de crise, 96–97: “on voudrait maintenant porter un coup à ce préjugé qui veut que les textes baroques soient décadents, affecté par des excès, des préciosités, des marques d’asianisme . . . au contraire, les textes dont on se préoccupe— ceux de Sponde, D’Aubigné, Chassignet, Pierre de Croix, etc.—sont plus dépouillés en matière d’ornement que les textes de la Pléiade”. 23 dan Pagis, HaShir Davur Al Ofanav. Meḥqarim Umassot BaShirah HaIvrit Shel Yemei HaBeinaim (Jerusalem, 1993), 271–276. 24 Which appears for instance in the prayers Nr. 320. On this subject see M. da Costa Fontes, “O sacrificio de Isaac in the Portuguese Oral Tradition”, Journal of Folk- lore Research 21 (1994): 57–96. 210 asher salah

Counter-Reformation poets because it combined two central themes of the doctrine of post-Tridentine church: the exaltation of the martyr of the faith as embodied by the figure of Isaac and the glorification of the Miles Christianus whose mighty arm fears no mission, as represented by Abraham grasping the sacrificial knife without hesitation. In Jewish and crypto-Jewish circles the symbol of the Aqeda expresses the drive, in a related yet opposite direction from that in the Chris- tian milieu, to use their own martyrology in order to call for revenge against the enemies of the faith. The militant and strongly ideological context of these references, which are not alien to the fury of the ecclesia triumphans imaginary warrior of the new religious orders, primarily the company of Jesus, appears in the centrality of the divine attribute of Hashem Sebaot, Lord of Hosts (for instance prayers Nr. 26 and 40) and in the many expressions drawn from the military lexicon (especially in the prayers 76 and 76bis). Concerning the crypto-Jewish prayers, it can be said that they are “theodidactic”, to use Clément’s term, insofar as they are meant to instill faith and fear of God through the incantatory use of words and spells against enemies and infidels. The clearest example is the plea “Fogo de Samuà, tome-o-là!” (prayers Nr. 50bis and 53), that seems to indicate a neo-Gnostic spirituality, typical of the Counter-Reformation, and the repeating of ‘Amen’ and the holy name in Hebrew to obtain His protection in many of the crypto-Judaic prayers.25 To grasp the novelty of the phenomenon represented by the renewed religious fervor in poetry from the second half of sixteenth century, it is necessary to take into account not only the contents and formal aspects of the prayers, but also their different contextual function.

Contexts of Use of Crypto-Judaic Liturgy

We have too scant information to understand fully the context in which crypto-Jewish prayer was recited or read. However, some clues suggest that the Marrano liturgy was born within religious brotherhoods who

25 on the Gnostic figure ofS amua identifiable withS amael, see Joseph Dan, “Samael and the Problem of Jewish Gnosticism”, in Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mystic (Amsterdam, 1998), 257–276. the liturgy of portuguese conversos 211 gathered around charismatic figures. One of these is certainly the one named after the martyr Frei Diogo de Assunção, headed by Antonio Homem in Coimbra and in which it is likely that hymns and poems were read to honor the memory of the victims of the Inquisition.26 Brotherhoods with a popular character and headed by spiritual guides in order to recite religious hymns begin being attested in the Iberian Peninsula on the eve of the Expulsion at the end of fifteenth century.27 Literary and devotional groups of this kind are a well-documented phenomenon, known in both Christian and Jewish society, where hundreds of academies were created between the late-sixteenth and the eighteenth century everywhere in Europe. Taking into account the necessary secrecy of the Marrano’s gatherings, these crypto-Judaic brotherhoods must have had structures similar to those that spread in Europe from 1630, under the mysterious acronym AA, a sort of secret society without central organization or public or ecclesiastical authorization. Such organizations consisted of small groups with strong ties to one another with a wide territorial spread whose goal was the moral perfection of their members.28 Not attached to any sort of institution, the AA were bound together by a common reference to the Jesuits Order spirit, which reveals noteworthy affinities with the crypto-Jew- ish liturgy in emphasizing sin and redemption. But if the known documents do not reveal much about the character of such gatherings among the New Christians, internal references in Marrano prayers tell us much more about the occasions for which they were composed. We have many prayers that were meant to be recited while awakening in the early hours of the morning (Nr. 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 in the Schwarz collection), others that were composed for the night before going to sleep (Nr. 18, 19, 20, 21, 57). This kind of composition recalls the books of Horas de Nossa Senhora, texts rooted in the Middle Ages, but that met with a renewed success in the second half of the sixteenth century. Following the invention of print and

26 Cf. A. Teixeira, Antonio Homem e a Inquisição (Coimbra, 1895); J. M. de Almeida Saraiva de Carvalho, “The Fellowship of St. Diogo: New Christian Judaisers in Coim- bra in the Early Seventeenth Century” (Leeds, Ph.D. thesis, 1990); J. M. Andreade, Confraria de S. Diogo: Judeos secretos na Coimbra do século XVII (Lisboa, 1999). 27 a. Blasco Martínez, “Instituciones socio-religiosas judías de Zaragoza (siglos XIV–XVI): sinagogas, cofradías, hospitales”, Sefarad 50 (1990): 3–46. 28 John Mcmanners, Church and Society in 18th century France: The Clerical Estab- lishment and its Social Ramification (Oxford, 1999), 181 ss. 212 asher salah the appearance of cult forms inspired by a pietistic spirituality, new psalms and paraliturgical texts were added to these Books of Hours, much appreciated by the New Christians, to the point that the Inquisi- tion desired, in some cases, to have them censored.29 These devotional practices bear close similarities to the ascetic leaning of European Judaism starting from the sixteenth century with the diffusion, for example, of dawn vigils and fasts, also outside the traditional dates, such as the 9 of the month of Av or the day of Yom Kip- pur. The practice of staying awake in the middle of the night reciting seliḥot and Psalms on a daily basis (and not only during the month of Elul) was extraordinarily popular both among Sephardim and Ashke- nazim.30 Such diffusion forced the different vigil brotherhoods (known by the Hebrew names of Me’irei Shaḥar, Meqis ̣ Nirdamim, Shomerim LaBoqer, who gathered in order to recite various Tiqunim (including the very popular Tiqun Ḥ asoṭ at midnight) to create new hymns specifically for these circumstances, allowing authors a great margin of poetic freedom and resulting in the introduction of new paraliturgical original compositions. Therefore there is a religious legitimacy in shaping highly personalized prayer books. It should be stressed again that the individualization of prayer among Iberian Marranos, as can be found for instance in the trovas of the physician António Vaz,31 was not only the result of the underground conditions in which they were composed and the difficulty with disposing of printed or manuscript texts, but also a new form of spirituality that allowed and encouraged this kind of free and autonomous religiosity. It is not to be ruled out that the importance given to dawn prayers were, for Marranos as for the praying brotherhoods in the rest of Mediterranean area, a prefiguration of Israel’s redemption, symbolized by the first hours of morning following the messianic labor pains and preceding the messianic arrival, which the Jewish mystical tradition situates in the darkness of night. Two characteristics of crypto-Judaic prayers need to be stressed: their popular nature, as shown by syntactic simplicity, a

29 stuczynski, “Bein HaQaiam LaNigzar”, 181. 30 E. Horowitz, “Night Vigils in Jewish Tradition: Between Popular Culture and Official Religion”, in Studies in the History of Popular Culture (Jerusalem, 1996), 209–224. 31 E. Cuhna de Azevedo Mea, “Orações judaicas na Inquisição”, in Jews and Conversos: Studies in Society and the Inquisition (Jerusalem, 1985), 176 and also the collection by Antonio Baião, “Trovas dos cristãos novos no séc. XVI”, Revista Lusa 43–44 (1918–1919): 147. the liturgy of portuguese conversos 213 register devoid of rhetorical figures, and the theurgic nature of many prayers. One could say that they form a collective testimonial of a religiosity that emphasized the quest for holiness, obtained through ritual and prayer and by encouraging an attitude marked by the devequt (dedication) towards the divinity on a daily basis. Hence the fasting and dissemination of new devotional practices, far from being a sign of ignorance of the traditional ones, are the expression of a new form of spirituality, and this not only in the “lands of idolatry” subject to the tyranny of the Inquisition, but also in those where the Jews were free of external conditioning and where Christians also were affected by the widespread diffusion of fasts and new religious practices, as in the Protestant world where such practices were officially recognized and encouraged by the Synod of Dordrecht in 1619. It seems therefore possible to argue that the extant prayers of the Marranos are in fact testimonies of real paraliturgical hymnals not dissimilar to those so popular among Jewish brotherhoods in Italy and across Europe. They remind one of the Sedarim (orders) and Mishma- rot (vigils) accompanying ascetic practices of atonement and of personal and collective poems of redemption that were recited together by the members of the brotherhoods and were occasionally written down in different versions, changing according to the preferences and the traditions of each group. Their heterogeneous character and the different versions that we know of many prayers, are not the result of centuries of corruption in the chain of transmission, but correspond to the typology and even to the order of paraliturgical anthologies, used in the land of Israel, in Italy and elsewhere. What at first sight can appear as a form of syncretic liturgy, consisting of heterogeneous and poetic materials mixed together by chance and distorted in centuries of secret and haphazard transmission, in reality is much more consistent when placed in the context of a material conceived as a source of religious meditation, of specific devotional practices that had both in the Christian and in the Jewish world in the Baroque era well-defined educational goals of socialization.32

32 This is the reason why, organizing—as Gitliz did—the crypto-Judaic prayers according to the order adopted in the normative Jewish liturgy, constitutes the application of a model the crypto-Jews did not refer to, while Schwarz’s arrangement, that distinguishes between daily and festive prayers, seems to me to conform better with the liturgical order of the Tiqunim of this time and with devotional books such as the Ayelet HaShaḥar (Mantua, 1612). 214 asher salah

Causes

To explain these surprising similitudes it seems natural to suggest either a possible penetration of the influence of Lurianic mysticism in Portugal,33 or a manifestation of Counter-Reformation spirituality among the Marranos. If the first assumption is hard to 34prove, the second demands a comparative and in-depth study, between the para liturgical Portuguese poetry in the early modern and the Marrano one, a study that has yet to be undertaken. In any case, it appears that some Judaizers in the Iberian peninsula had access to Jewish liturgical material. For instance in the trial of the Judaizer Brites Nunes, whose prayers were published in Schwarz’s study in support of the antiquity of crypto-Judaic liturgy, it results that she had inherited from her grandfather a book, most probably containing prayers, that was read at the turn of the sixteenth century in front of groups of Marranos that gathered in private houses in Bragança.35 The testimonies from David Reubeni’s diary and from Salomon Molho’s, alias Diogo Pires, tragic spiritual adventure, hint to the strong predisposition to receiving messianic and salvific messages of kabbalistic nature among Portuguese New Christians, belonging to the first and second generation after the forced conversions. Until the establishment of the Inquisition court in May 1536, Portuguese Conversos had some privileges that gave them a certain freedom of action and organization. The Inquisition’s might was not always nor everywhere felt with the same intensity. According to Elvira Cunha de Azevedo Mea for instance: Entre 1547–1567 podemos considerar que na generalidade a Inquisição permanece sem grande atividade, na medida em que grande parte da sua ação se centra em travar uma nova onda de restrições que paulati- namente a Curia vai emanando.

33 as Catherine Swietlicki, Spanish Christian Cabala (Missouri, 1986) tried to demonstrate. 34 see the convincing critiques to this thesis in Moshe Idel’s review of Swietlicki book in Jewish Quarterly Review, 78 (1988): 310–313. 35 stuczynski, “Bein HaQaiam LaNigzar”, 179. the liturgy of portuguese conversos 215

This means that under particular circumstances it was possible for New Christians to leave the country more or less freely and sometimes even to come back to their homeland.36 Moreover Azevedo Mea points to the noteworthy fact that only after 1570 do numerous testimonies of Marrano prayers start appearing. She ascribes this partly to the renewed severity and centralization of the Inquisition, but we cannot be surprised at the coincidence that only after this date, just as happens in Italy, the tendency towards creating paraliturgical prayers develops. From this point on, the popularity of penitential Psalms is easily noticeable. This applies in particular to prayers connected to night and dawn, which exhibit an obsession for purification and asceticism. Something very similar to the tiqun ḥasoṭ appears in the trials described by Gitliz.37 In the Violante Rodrigues di Vila Flor trial, for instance, it is said that the culprit “chorava muito quando dezia estas cousas.”38 The tears can be attributed to the stress- ful condition of the interrogation but let us not forget the importance of these external expressions of devotion while reciting the prayers that are to be found also among Jews who did not face such risks and threats in keeping their religion, such as those in Italy, and even among Christians of all classes and conditions in the same period. The main problem is that the collection of Marrano liturgical material during the last hundred years, by recording the surviving oral traditions, does not allow us to date precisely the year in which the prayer in question was composed. The extant testimonies concern a span of time encompassing the long period of crypto-Judaism in Por- tugal, from the end of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth. As Stuczynski rightly writes: Together with the difficulty of multiple sources comes also often the problem of the dating of prayers: only seldom is it possible to establish a precise date for their composition. A good example of this can be found in the water prayer. Parallels to it were found in the “romances” of Jews of Spain, preserved in the Oriental communities, and the hypothesis has

36 E. Cuhna de Azevedo Mea, “Oraçoes judaicas na Inquisição”, in Jews and Con- versos: Studies in Society and the Inquisition (Jerusalem, 1985), 154. 37 d. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit (Philadelphia, 1996), 450: “In 1647 in Mexico, Tomas Trevino de Sobremonte was charged of getting up in his undergarments, wrap- ping in a cape and buckling on his shoes, to pray at midnight”. 38 Cuhna de Azevedo Mea, “Orações judaicas na Inquisição”, 165. 216 asher salah

been made that the Marrano version preceded the Sephardic one. Nev- ertheless, the fact that the first source known of this prayer is in the Sid- dur printed in Venice at the beginning of the eighteenth century, makes the contrary more plausible: that the water prayer originates from the Sephardic Diaspora and was introduced into Marrano liturgy at a later stage (the stress is mine).39 The fact that the testimonies of the prayers are scattered among people of every social and intellectual condition is maybe a proof of the ‘democratic’ and ‘popular’ character of these devotional practices, in the spirit of Lurianic Kabbalah, that spread penitential and purification rituals, previously restricted to religious elites, among a large and culturally differentiated public. It is probably an impossible task to ascertain the degree of influence Lurianic Kabbalah had upon the religiosity of the crypto-Jews, since very little can be known about practices that had to be kept secret. Nevertheless clandestinity did not necessarily mean isolation.40 New Christians, inside and outside the Iberian Peninsula, kept strong ties, which were not completely severed by the repression of the Inquisi- tion.41 In this network of relationships information must have circulated widely also on matters related to religious observance. It has already been pointed out on this subject that a certain number of forbidden or clearly Jewish works were introduced into Portugal from abroad and even from Spain, where the Inquisition’s censor- ship was less rigid than in Portugal.42 Many studies prove that the New Christian’s isolation in the Iberian Peninsula was far from being absolute. Information on the Jewish world was available in Judaizing circles of Spain and Portugal through Jewish traders who came to the peninsula for commercial reasons.43 Merchants of New Christian

39 C. Stuczynski in the introduction to the Hebrew edition of the book by Samuel Schwarz, HaNosriṃ HaHadashiṃ BePortugal BaMeah HaʾEsrim (Jerusalem, 2005), 70. 40 Cecil Roth, “The Religion of the Marranos”, Jewish Quarterly Review (1931): 1–33, was among the first to warn against a perception of Marranism as pertaining to a closed and isolated world. 41 Pedrosa, “La bendición del día”, 263 stresses the fact that the beginning of the prayer reported by Brites Enriques in 1674 to the Lisbon Inquisition was a translation from Spanish “sugiere complejos contactos—de ida y vuelta—entre el criptojudaísmo portugués y el español de la época”. See also Familia, religión y negocio. El Sefard- ismo en las relaciones entre el mundo ibérico y los Países Bajos, ed. Jaime Contreras, B. J. García García and I. Pulido (Madrid, 2002). 42 stuczynski, “Bein HaQaiam LaNigzar”, 185. 43 y. H. Yerushalmi, “Re-education of Marranos in Seventeenth Century”, in The Third Annual Rabbi Louis Feinberg Memorial Lecture in Judaic Studies (Cincinnati, the liturgy of portuguese conversos 217 origin traveled often from Amsterdam to Portugal, probably bringing not only news but also writings that fed and updated the Conversos on most recent trends in Judaism. It was not an exceptional phenomenon, but a confirmed trend during various centuries and on a large scale. Kaplan writes: In fact, during the whole seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth there was no lack of Spanish-Portuguese Jews who first settled in Amsterdam, openly joining the Jewish community, and later returning to the ‘lands of idolatry.’44 According to calculations by Kaplan himself, most members of Amsterdam’s community known to have returned to Portugal and Spain, did so during a period between 1645 and 1660, not surprisingly at the peak time of the commercial ties between Amsterdam and the Iberian Peninsula. The Jewish communities of Iberian origin in the Ottoman Empire had also kept relations with their countries of origin and the same happened for the Sephardim in southern France, as in Bordeaux, Bayonne, St. Jean de Luz, and in Italy, mostly in Leghorn and Venice.45 Many testimonies of Inquisition trials show these travelers’ contacts not being solely of a commercial character but also of a religious one. Emblematic in this respect is Leonor Coutinho de Vila Flor’s deposi- tion declaring to have known: Huma certa pessoa que veo da terra dos judeos a tirar esmola para o azeite das sinagogas e de lhe dizer a dita pessoa os dias em que caiao os jejuns dos judeos.46

1980), 2, 6–7; idem, “Professing Jews in Post-Expulsion Spain and Portugal”, in Salo Baron Jubilee Volume, vol. 2 (New York, 1974), 1023–1058. 44 y. Kaplan, “The Travels of Portuguese Jews from Amsterdam to the ‘Lands of Idolatry’ (1644–1724)”, in Jews and Conversos: Studies in Society and the Inquisition (Jerusalem, 1985), 197–224. 45 Z. Szajkowski, “Trade Relations of Marranos in France with the Iberian Penin- sula in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”, Jewish Quarterly Review 50 (1960): 69–78. Also Stuczynski, “Bein HaQaiam LaNigzar”, 186 mentions some cases of Hebrew and Jewish books introduced from France. A general study on the commercial networks between Sephardic centers in Italy and in Spain is still lacking, though they must have been extremely dense. Cf. Renzo Toaff, La nazione ebrea a Livorno e a Pisa (1591–1700) (Firenze, 1990), and more recently Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven, CT, 2008). 46 E. Cuhna de Azevedo Mea, “Sentencas da Inquisição de Coímbra em metro- politanos de D. Frei Bartolomeu dos Mártires (1567–1582)”, Arquivo Histórico 218 asher salah

In some cases, among the people condemned by the Inquisition, there were some who seemed to have been brought intentionally from abroad in order to act as spiritual guides for the crypto-Jewish communities, such as Fernando Gomez, alias Daniel Franco, rabbi of Salonica, who was burned alive in Evora in 1608, guilty of having taught the “Ley de Moisés”47 or as the mohel Isac Farque that went in 1635 from Amster- dam to Madrid under the alias of Antonio de Aguiar.48 The judaizing elements of the Iberian peninsula and from the overseas colonies were actively informed of news concerning the Sabbatean heresy, as can be deduced from the arrest of 4 New Christians in 1666 under suspicion that they wanted to board a boat to join the false prophet.49 Portu- guese New Christians could easily come into contact with Moroccan or Indian Jews50 often used in diplomatic missions and in possession of safe-conducts that enabled them to move freely in Spain and Por- tugal, without having to conceal their own identities. In certain cases, such as that of Jacob Cansino between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Madrid, they were permitted to contact all classes of people, including those suspected in religious matters.51 Many of these books can be assumed to have been devotional hymns that were in circulation in the Jewish brotherhoods at the end of the sixteenth century. And so it was not surprising to find in Luis Mendez Chaves’ library, in the New World, six liturgical books in Spanish published in Amsterdam between 1617 and 1645.52 Francesca Trivellato

Dominicano Portugués 17 (1981): 219. Cit. in D. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit (Philadel- phia, 1996), 444. 47 Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition in Spain, vol. 3 (New York, 1906–1907), 308; Lucio D’Azevedo, Historia dos Cristãos Novos Portugueses (Lisboa, 1921), 306 and 374 ss; Haim Beinart, “A Jew of Salonica in Spain in the 17th century”, Sefunot 12 (1971–1978): 189–197. Other cases of New Christians who returned to the Iberic peninsula after having judaized abroad are mentioned by C. Roth, “The Religion of the Marranos”, Jewish Quarterly Review 22 (1931–1932): 2. 48 J. Caro Baroja, Judíos en la España Moderna, vol. 1 (Madrid, 1978), 421. 49 Lea, A History of the Inquisition in Spain, vol. 3, 303. 50 Cf. José Alberto Rodriguez da Silva Tavim, Os judeos na expansão portuguesa em Marrocos durante o seculo XVI: origems e actividades duma comunidade (Braga, 1997). 51 yerushalmi, “Professing Jews in Post-Expulsion Spain and Portugal”, 1041. 52 Cf. Miriam Bodian, Dying in the Law of Moses (Bloomington, 2008), 37 who quotes Lucía García de Proodian, Los judíos en América: sus actividades en los Vir- reinatos de Nueva Castilla y Nueva Granada (Madrid, 1966), 478. These were prayer books intended for the fast days in the Jewish liturgical calendar. the liturgy of portuguese conversos 219 mentions the case of a new Christian in Malaga who was found in possession of a book in Hebrew printed in Leghorn.53

Conclusions

Although more examples would have been required in order to stress unequivocally not only the common features between Marrano liturgical poetry and Italian Jewish baroque compositions but also the discontinuity between intertextual practices in the fourteenth and those which emerge in the late seventeenth century, what can be gained from this kind of comparative survey of liturgical poetry from such distant geographical and cultural realities? This article intended:

1. to challenge the assumption that Judaizers in Portugal lived in total isolation from other Jewish centers. It is tempting to consider that the striking similarity of style, content and function between devotional books such as Ayelet Hashaḥar, Mantua, 1612 and the liturgical corpus of the Marranos, is not only the result of a shared common Counter-Reformation Zeitgeist. Further, it is not improbable to suggest a possible influence of Lurianic mysticism mediated by Italian Judaism on New Christians in Portugal, a group of per- sons which recent studies have shown to be far less isolated from other Diaspora communities than previously believed. 2. to challenge the prejudice of the substantial passivity of Marrano communities, which tried to remain faithful to their ancestral religion while progressively losing their knowledge of it under the strictures of the Inquisition. In fact, their liturgical corpus should be viewed as a creative response to the new changes imposed on Jewish communities around the world, sometimes even indepen- dently of the greater or lesser degree of freedom the Jews enjoyed in different political contexts. Marrano liturgy shows a greater dyna- mism than Schwarz was ready to accept. 3. as a corollary of the former point it should be necessary to recon- sider the belief in the fundamentally oral character of the liturgical corpus of the Marranos. There are many reasons to believe instead

53 trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers, 58. 220 asher salah

that the prayers that have reached us orally were in fact composed by skilled and learned authors and were transmitted in manuscripts, some of which have survived until the present among New Chris- tians in the Beiras and Trás-os-Montes. 4. regarding the vexata questio of the origin of this literary corpus, and regardless of the extremely interesting and convincing studies by scholars in the last decades, such as Jaume Riera i Sans, Manuel da Costa Fontes and José Manuel Pedrosa, which have tried to trace the origins of these prayers to a common pagan substratum in ancient Iberian mythologies,54 the synchronic similarities with other poetic productions in other geographical areas seem to prove that most of the prayers are the result of a creative process which reached its zenith at the turn of the sixteenth century. 5. to demonstrate that the prayers of the Marranos constitute a textual corpus characterized by a stronger coherence than was previously supposed and that these should be studied as an example of the extraordinary renewal of religious poetry in Europe in the early modern period. 6. Lastly, this comparative analysis should challenge the argument (among others by Jacqueline Genot)55 that the eschatological Mar- rano religiosity resulted from a kind of Converso neurosis, torn between the conversionary pressure of the Christian authorities and a desire to remain faithful to the religion of their fathers. Although we cannot exclude that the psychological condition of the Marranos contributed to their Messianic predisposition, we must not forget the context of generalized eschatological turmoil in Europe during the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, a climate of religious anxiety shared by Jews, Christians, and of course Marranos.

I hope to have clarified and expanded the scant information available concerning the liturgy of the Marranos through a contextual analysis of religious poetry in early modern Europe. This should foster the

54 references above in n. 3. 55 Jacqueline Genot-Bismuth, “Recherche sur les fonctions de la prière individuelle en milieu marrane aux alentours de 1492”, in Prière, Mystique et Judaïsme (Paris, 1987), 160 : “Le marrane, de par l’effet névrosant de sa condition objective, aspire pathologiquement à un apaisement radical qui ne peut apparaitre que dans un bou- leversement eschatologique”. the liturgy of portuguese conversos 221 preparation of a critical edition of texts that have not always been collected and published according to acceptable philological and academic standards. A critical edition of these texts must take into account their intertextual strategies, the dynamic aspects of their creativity,56 their connections with other poetic productions and their novelty with respect to previous liturgical models.

56 In line with the thesis by Andrea Zanardo, “Il criptogiudaismo portoghese: un’ipotesi antropologica”, in L’identità dissimulata: giudaizzanti iberici nell’Europa cristiana dell’Età moderna (Firenze, 2000).

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LADINO LITURGICAL TEXTS AND SPANISH BIBLEs

Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald

Introduction

The genre of Hebrew Jewish liturgical texts consists of the Bible and various prayer books. The Bible is recited in synagogue throughout the year: a portion of the Pentateuch is read each Saturday (and addition- ally on Mondays and Thursdays), and the Haftara, selected chapters from the Prophets, is also read out loud each Saturday. In addition, the five scrolls (Megillot) are read on specific holidays throughout the year: Ecclesiastes on Sukkoth (Tabernacles), Esther on Purim, The Song of Songs on Passover, Ruth on Pentecost, and Lamentations on the ninth of Av. Psalms were also read on mourners’ days and when people were sick. There are two types of Jewish prayer books, the regular daily prayer book (Siddur), and special prayer books for each of the major festi- vals (Maḥzors). All prayer books consist of blessings and prayers composed during both Rabbinical and medieval times. Most Maḥzorim also include Pirke Avot ‘Ethics of the Fathers’ and the Passover Haggadah. Pirke Avot, a collection of wise sayings from rabbinical times, is customarily read in Sephardic Jewish communities between Passover and Pentecost—a chapter each week, totaling six chapters. The Hag- gadah, read on the first night of Passover (on the first two nights in the Diaspora), includes the story of the Exodus from Egypt along with rabbinical interpretations, praises to God, dietary commandments and instructions for special rituals. Both Pirke Avot and the Haggadah are abundant with biblical citations. Because of their popularity, Pirke Avot and the Passover Haggadah have traditionally also been published as separate booklets. These liturgical texts were translated into Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish calque type language, by Sephardic communities after the expulsion from Spain in 1492, and, depending on the communities to which they were targeted, were printed using either Hebrew or Latin characters: the 224 ora (rodrigue) schwarzwald expelled Jews used the Hebrew character set whereas the converted communities that returned to Judaism used Latin letters.1 This paper will focus on biblical citations that can be found in the Haggadah (H1–5) and Pirke Avot (PA1–4). Citations from them and from the 1547 Constantinople translation of the Pentateuch, other biblical texts from Constantinople and Salonika (C, written in Hebrew letters),2 and the 1553 Ferrara Bible (F, written in Latin letters)3 will be compared with the medieval Romaneceadas Biblias known as Escorial 3, 4, 7, 19, etc., the Alba Bible and other pre-exilic translations.4 Addi- tionally, the biblical citations will be compared to Pirke Avot in Sēfer Tešubāḥ (ST, a pre-exilic manuscript from the end of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century written in Latin letters)5 and Pirke Avot and the Haggadah from the Ferrara Maḥzor (also written in Latin letters).6 Three sets of verses from Pirke Avot and the Haggadah will be compared below. The first paragraph is taken from Pirke Avot 3:6 (1). Since the citations in Pirke Avot are shorter than the ones from the Hag- gadah and one biblical verse is actually divided into two fragments in Pirke Avot, I have also chosen another paragraph from Pirke Avot, the beginning verse from Sanhedrin 10:1 (2), which is recited before

1 Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald, The Ladino Translations of Pirke Aboth. Eda VeLashon 13 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1989); idem, A Dictionary of the Ladino Haggadot. Eda VeLashon 27 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008). 2 Moshe Lazar, ed., The Ladino Scriptures: Constantinople—Salonica [1540–1572] (Lancaster, CA.: Labyrinthos, 2000). 3 Moshe Lazar, ed., The Ladino Bible of Ferrara [1553] (Culver City: Labyrinthos, 1992). 4 Andrés Enrique-Arias and Mark Davies, Biblia Medieval, http://view.byu.edu/ bibles. See also: Oliver H. Hauptmann, ed., Escorial Bible I.j.4 (Philadelphia: Univer- sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1953), vol. 1; Oliver H. Hauptmann and Mark G. Littlefield, eds., Escorial Bible I.j.4. Spanish Series 34 (Madison: HSMS, 1987); Mark G. Littlefield, ed., Escorial Bible I.ii.19 (Madison: The Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1992), and idem, Escorial Bible I.i.7 (Madison: The Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1996); Antonio Paz y Meliá, ed., La Biblia de la Casa de Alba (Madrid: Imprenta Artís- tica, 1920–1922). There are other comparisons of some paragraphs from the Bible: Margherita Morreale, “Las antiguas Biblias hebreas españolas en el pasaje del Cántico de Moisés” Sefarad, 23 (1963): 3–21, compared Ferrara to the Romaneceadas Biblias; Lazar made some other comparisons in the introduction to Ij3. See Moshe Lazar, ed., Biblia Ladinada: Escorial I.j.3 (Madison: The Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1995). 5 Moshe Lazar, ed., Sēfer Tešubāh:̣ A Ladino Compendium of Jewish Law and Ethics (Culver City: Labyrinthos, 1993), 63–81. 6 Moshe Lazar, ed., The Ladino Maḥzōr of Ferrara [1553] (Culver City: Labyrinthos, 1993). ladino liturgical texts and spanish bibles 225 reading each of the six chapters from Pirke Avot. The third paragraph is taken from the Haggadah—the section from Maggid that starts with Tse Ulmad (3). After presenting the text examples, a comparison of the given verses will be classified according to a few special features. The comparison will show that unlike the post-exilic translations, not only do pre-exilic translations differ considerably from one another but they also differ from the post-exilic translations (both lexically and grammatically). The explanation as to why there are differences between pre- and post-exilic translations and between the Ladino translations themselves will conclude that the key to these differences is the target population for which the translations were created. In the discussion section I will refute the assumption that the Jewish Ladino translations were based on the Spanish medieval texts and claim that it was the practice of orally transmitting texts that led to the formation of the post-exilic translations.

The Texts

The first example, fromPirke Avot, suggests not only that Torah should be studied at any place where people are gathered, but also that anyone studying Jewish tradition is blessed. The second text from Sanhedrin outlines the purpose of the maxims included in Pirke Avot (i.e. that their study prepares Jews for the world to come, as it makes them more righteous).7 The third example is taken from the Haggadah as part of a rabbinical discussion regarding the history of the Israelites and the role of two evil personalities, Laban from Aram (Mesopotamia) and Pharaoh, who wanted to eradicate the Israelites. Most of the discussion in this text is an interpretation of the first recited biblical verse.

7 This is the reason that Pirke Avot is studied among Sephardic Jews between Passover and Pentecost, the holiday which celebrates the acceptance of Jewish law. Shavuoth “Pentecost” is also called Ḥ ag Matan Torah “the holiday in which the Torah was given to the Israelites in the desert.” In the Ashkenazi tradition Pirke Avot is studied between Passover and the High Holidays (Rosh HaShana “the Jewish new year” and Yom Kippur “the day of repentance”) for the same reason, i.e. to purify the heart. 226 ora (rodrigue) schwarzwald

(1) Mishna, Pirke Avot 3:6: Rabi Ḥ alafta ben Dosa ’iš kefar ̣ ananiaH ’omer: ‘aśara šeyošvin ve‘osqin batora šəkhina šəruya benehem, šene’emar: “ɛ̆lōhīm nisṣ ạ̊ b̄ ̠ baʿădat̠ -̠ ʾēl” (Psalms 82:1; 1a). uminayin ʾafilu ̣amiša,h šeneʾemar: “waʾăguddå̄ t̄ ō̠ ʿal- ʾɛrɛs ̣ yəsåd̄ å̠ h”̄ (Amos 9:6; 1b). uminayin ʾafilu šəloša, šeneʾemar: “bəqɛrɛb̠ ʾɛ̆lōhīm yišpōt”̣ (Psalms 82:1; 1a). uminayin ʾafilu šnayim, šeneʾemar: “ʾåz̄ nidb̠ ərū yirʾē YHWH ʾīš ʾɛt-rē̠ ʿēhū wayyaqšēb̠ YHWH wayyišmåʿ̄ ” (Malachi 3:16; 1c). uminayin ʾafilu ʾeḥad, šeneʾemar: “bək̠ål-hammå̄ qōm̄ ʾăšɛr ʾazkīr ʾɛt-š̠ əmī ʾåb̄ ̠ō ʾēlɛk̠å ̄ ūb̠ērak̠tīk̠å”̄ (Exodus 20:20; 1d). ‘Rabbi Ḥ alafta Ben Dosa of the villagẹ ofHanania says: When ten people sit together and study the Bible, the presence of God is among them as it is said: “God stands in a congregation of the Almighty” (Psalms 82:1; 1a). How do we know that this applies even to five? Because it is said: “He has founded his band upon the earth” (Amos 9:6; 1b). How do we know that this applies even to three? Because it is said: “He judges in the midst of judges” (Psalms 82:1; 1a). How do we know that it applies even to two? Because it is said: “Then those who feared God spoke one with another and God listened and heard” (Malachi 3:16; 1c). How do we know that it also applies even to one? Because it is said: “In every place where I have my name remembered, I will come to you and bless you” (Exodus 20:24; 1d).

(2) Mishna, Sanhedrin 10:1: Kol Yiśraʾel yeš lahem ḥeleq laʿolam haba, šeneʾemar: “wəʿammēk̠ kullåm̄ saddīqīṃ ləʿōlåm̄ yīršū ʾår̄ ɛs ̣ nēṣɛr matṭ ạ̊ ʿ̄ ay maʿăśē d̄yå ay̠ ləhitpå̠ ʾ̄ ēr” (Isaiah 60:21; 2). All Israel have a share in the world to come, as it is said: “And all your people will be righteous; they will inherit the land forever, they are my plants, the work of my hands, wherein I glory” (Isaiah 60:21).8

(3) Passover Haggadah, from Magid: Sẹ ulmad ma biqeš lavan haʾarami laʿaśot ləyaʿaqov ʾavino. Šeparʿo lo gazar ʾela ʿal hazekharim velavan biqeš laʿaqor hakol, šeneʾemar:

8 The translations are adapted from Avrohom Davis, Pirke Avot: The Wisdom of the Fathers (New York: Metsudah, 1979), 3 and 88. ladino liturgical texts and spanish bibles 227

“ʾărammī ʾōb̠ēd ̠ ʾåb̄ ̠ī wayyērɛd ̠ misraymạ̊ ̄ wayyåḡ å̄ r̄ šåm̄ bimtē̠ məʿåt̄ ̣ wayhī-šåm̄ ləgōȳ gåd̄ ōl̠ ʿås̄ ūṃ wårå̄ b̄ ̠” (Deuteronomy 26:5; 3a). “wayyērɛd ̠ misraymạ̊ ”̄ ʾanus ʿal pi hadibur. wayyåḡ å̄ r̄ šåm,̄ melamed šelo yarad yaʿaqov ʾavinu lehištaqeaʿ bemisrayiṃ ʾela lagur šam. Šeneʾemar: “wayyōmrū ʾɛl-parʿō låḡ ūr̄ båʾ̄ år̄ ɛs ̣ bånū̄ kī-ʾēn mirʿɛ lasṣ ōṇ ʾăšɛr laʿăb̠åd̄ ̠ɛk̠å ̄ kī-k̠åb̄ ̠ēd ̠ hårå̄ ʿ̄ åb̄ ̠ bəʾɛrɛs ̣ kənåʿ̄ an wəʿattå ̄ yēšb̠ū-nå ̄ ʿăb̠åd̄ ̠ɛk̠å ̄ bəʾɛrɛs ̣ gōšɛn” (Genesis 47:4; 3b). “bimtē̠ məʿåt̄ ”,̣ kema šeneʾemar: “bəšib̠ʿīm nɛp̄ɛš yår̄ ədū̠ ʾăbōt̠ ̠ɛk̠å ̄ misrạ̊ ymå̄ ̄ wəʿattå ̄ śåmk̄ ̠å ̄ YHWH ʾɛ̆lōhɛk̠å ̄ kək̠ōk̠bē̠ haššåmayim̄ lårōb̄ ̠” (Deuteronomy 10:22; 3c). “wayhī-šåm̄ ləgōy”,̄ melamed šehayu yiśraʾel mesuyaniṃ šam. “gåd̄ ōl̠ ʿås̄ ūm”,̣ kema šeneʾemar:” ūb̠nē yiśråʾ̄ ēl pårū̄ wayyišrəsụ̄ wayyirbū wayyaʿasmụ̄ bimʾōd ̠ məʾōd ̠ wattimmålē̄ håʾ̄ år̄ ɛs ̣ ʾōtå̠ m̄ (Exo- dus 1:7; 3d). “wårå̄ b̄ ”̠ , kema šeneʾemar: rəbå̠ b̄ å̠ ̄ kəṣɛmaḥ haśśåd̄ ̠ɛ nətattīk̠ ̠ wattirbī wattigd̄ əlī wattåb̄ ō̠ ʾī baʿădī̠ ʿădå̠ yīm̄ šåd̄ ayim̠ nåk̄ ̠ōnū ūśʿårēk̄ ̠ simmēaḥ ̣ wəʾat ʿērōm wəʿɛryå ̄ (Ezekiel 16:7; 3e). ‘Go forth and learn what Laban the Aramean wanted to do to our father Jacob. Pharaoh had issued a decree against the male children only, but Laban wanted to uproot everyone. As it is said: “An Aramean sought to destroy my father; and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; and he became there a nation—great and mighty and numerous” (Deuteronomy 26:5; 3a). “And he went down to Egypt” compelled by Divine decree. “And he sojourned there”—this teaches that Jacob our father did not go down to Egypt to settle, but only to live there temporarily. As it is said, “They said to Pharaoh: We have come to sojourn in the land, for there is no pasture for your servants’ flocks because the famine is severe in the land of Canaan; and now, please, let your servants dwell in the land of Goshen” (Genesis 47:4; 3b). “Few in number” as it is said: “Your fathers went down to Egypt with seventy souls, and now, the Lord, your God, has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven” (Deuteronomy 10:12; 3c). “And he became there a nation” this teaches that the Israelites achieved distinction there. “Great, mighty,” as it is said: “And the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, and multiplied and became very, very mighty, and the land became filled with them” (Exodus 1:7; 3d). “And numerous,” as it is said: “I caused you to thrive like the plants of the field, and you increased and grew and became very beautiful, 228 ora (rodrigue) schwarzwald your breasts formed and your hair grown long, but you were naked and bare”9 (Ezekiel 16:7; 3e).

Comparison

In the following paragraphs I will compare the pre- and post-exilic translations of the same biblical verses. The findings will be classified into the following categories: names for God; names of people and places; the translations of the Hebrew present tense; nominal sentences; the connective particle; lexical variations and syntactic phraseology.10 In the comparisons given below, pre-exilic translations are followed by post-exilic ones. Where there is no reference to any specific version, all the translations are the same. Where most of the translations are the same, the examples which are exceptions will be indicated first.

A. God’s Names The name of God appears in the Bible as ʾɛ̆lōhīm, ’el and YHWH. The translations show the following distribution: (4a) ʾɛ̆lōhīm 1 (1a)—dios (E3), Eloym (E5/E7), Elohjm (EV), el Dio (ST), el Señor in the pre-exilic translations. – dio (PA1), el dio in the post-exilic translations. (4b) ʾɛ̆lōhīm 2 (1a)—los juezes (E3, E5/E7), medias (EV), los dioses (BNM, Alba, ST), ellos (E4). – juezes. (4c) ʾɛ̆lōhɛk̠å ̄ (3c)—tu señor (E19), tu dios. – tu dio. (5) ’el (1a)—los dioses (E4), el señor (Alba), el dio (ST), dios. – dio (F, FM), fuertes (PA1), juezes. (6a) YHWH1 (1c×2)—dios (E6/E8), el señor. – H’ (PA4), A. (F, FM, PA2), YY [all pronounced Adonay].

9 The English translation is adapted from the Sephardic Haggadah from Seattle— Passover Agada (Agada de Pesah): Hebrew, Ladino and English, According to the Cus- tom of the Seattle Sephardic Community (Seattle: Washington, 2004)—and on the following translation: http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/1737/ jewish/Maggid.htm. 10 Some of the findings strengthen the previously observed phenomena found in comparing pre- and post-Bible translations—Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald, “On the Jewish Nature of Medieval Spanish Biblical Translations: Linguistic Differences between Medieval and Post-Exilic Spanish Translations of the Bible,” Sefarad 70 (2010): 117–140. ladino liturgical texts and spanish bibles 229

(6b) YHWH2 (3c)—adonay (E3, AJ, Alba), dios (E19), el señor (E5/E7). – H’ (PA4), A. (F, FM, PA2), YY [all pronounced Adonay]. The examples clearly demonstrate the variety of ways to which God is referred in the different translations. Except for examples (4b) and (5), all the post-exilic translations use the same translations: The name Adonay is spelled as an abbreviation in order to avoid profanation in (6a–b) for YHWH and (el) Dio for Elohim (a, 4c). While two of the pre-exilic translations use the word Elohim in (4a) and Adonay is used once in three pre-exilic translations in (6b), the words Dios or El Señor are more frequently used in the pre-exilic translations. Only ST uses el Dio in the pre-exilic translations in (4a) and (5). El Dio is the most commonly used in Judeo-Spanish to translate Elohim as is reflected in all the translations.11 The use of Dioses appears in post-exilic translations only in reference to idols or other deities, never God (cf. los dioses in ST in 4b). The translation in (4b) shows that all the translators pondered the double occurrence of the word Elohim in the verse and did not translate it literally in the second occurrence. The post-exilic translators unanimously utilized the word juezes (indefinite), while the pre-exilic ones either replaced it (medias, ellos), chose los juezes (with the definite article), or employed los dioses, a choice that could not have been used in the post-exilic translations. The use of juezes is determined by the Hebrew word yišpot ̣ ‘will judge’: God judges in the presence of other judges.12 The translation in (5) is the only one in which the post-exilic translations vary more than the pre-exilic ones: C and most of PA translations use juezes, parallel to the translation of (4b). F and FM use dio, and only Venice 1601 utilizes fuertes (based perhaps on the Aramaic taqqifin ‘strong’ translation of the verse). To sum up: the three occurrences of divinity in one verse is the main reason for the variety of translations. Nevertheless, pre-exilic versions use Dios, Dioses, and el Señor for the names of God. The post-exilic translations use el Dio for God and Adonay for YHWH. ST is the only text found in pre-exilic translation that at times uses el Dio (as is common in post-exilic translations). Some of the pre-exilic translations are

11 One of the explanations for the lack of s in Dios in the Judeo-Spanish name is the misinterpretation of the final s as indicating plurality, contrary to the Jewish belief. 12 The traditional interpretation is that God judges among the angels who are assigned to judging. 230 ora (rodrigue) schwarzwald also based on the traditional interpretation that the second occurrence of Elohim in (4b) refers to judges.

B. Person and Place Names (7) ʾărammī (3a)—Siro (E6/E8), el haramj (E3), el aramj (AJ, E5/E7), lauan el aramj (E19), el aramita (E4), laban el armenjco [el de siria] (Alba). – El syro (F), asirio (FM), arami. (8a) misraymạ̊ 1̄ (3a)—a egipto, a egibto (E19, E5/E7). – A Misrayiṃ (C), a Egypto (F, FM), a aibto (H1), a ağifto (H2), a ayifto. (8b) misraymạ̊ 2̄ (3c)—a egipto, a egibto (E19, E5/E7). – A Misrayiṃ (C), a Egypto (F, FM),—(H1), a ağifto (H2), a ayifto. (9) parʿō (3b)—(E3, AJ, Alba), a faron (E19), a faraon (E5/E7, E4). – Parho (F), parhoh (FM), par’o. (10) kənåʿ̄ an (3b)—canaan. – Kenahan (F, FM), kena‘an. (11) gōšɛn (3b)—gozem (E4),—(AJ), gosen. – Gossen (F, FM), gošen. Examples (9–11) show that post-exilic translations retain the traditional Hebrew pronunciation of these names, unlike the pre-exilic translations that use Spanish equivalents. The use of h to represent the Hebrew Ayin in (9) and (10) is a well known convention used in the Latin script Ladino translations. The Hebrew script translations copy and vocalize these names as they appear in Hebrew. The names Arami (7) and Misrayiṃ (8a-b) deserve a special discussion: Arami is copied in the Hebrew script post-exilic translations, just like in (9–11). Only the Ferrara Bible and Maḥzor use el syro or asirio, and thus resemble some of the pre-exilic translations.13 Some of the pre-exilic translations also copy the Hebrew name, but add the definite article to it, which is missing in Hebrew, i.e. el haramj, el aramj. Others add proper name of this gentilic noun, e.g. lauan el aramj, laban el armenjco [el de siria], or use the Spanish adjectival forms, el

13 The fact that both versions came from Ferrara and show different translations is not surprising as it has been found that there were variations even among Ferrara Bibles. See Uriel Macías Kapón, “La Biblia de Ferrara en bibliotecas y bibliografías españolas,” in Introducción a la Biblia de Ferrara: actas del Simposio Internacional sobre la Biblia de Ferrara: Sevilla, 25–28 de noviembre de 1991, ed. Iacob M. Hassán and Ángel Berenguer Amador (Madrid: Comisión Nacional Quinto Centenario, 1994), 473–502. ladino liturgical texts and spanish bibles 231 aramita and el armenjco. It is clear that there is a greater variety of translations of this single name in pre-exilic translations than exist in the post-exilic ones. Unlike the former cases, the word Misrayiṃ , ‘Egypt’, shows greater variety in post-exilic translations in (8a–b): C copied the name in the translation as in the other cases, while the other translations vary according to eastern and western traditions. The versions from Italy, F, FM, H2 and H3 use the Spanish name, whereas the versions from the Ottoman Empire in Salonika and Belgrade use the old Judeo-Spanish tradition of pronouncing the name, Ayifto.14 The Italian versions of the Haggadah tend to retain more standardized Spanish forms than the eastern versions, and the use of Ağifto is a sign for it.15 The pre-exilic translations use the Spanish name of the country, Egipto. Regarding the use of personal names and place names, the pre- exilic translations are more faithful to the Spanish tradition whereas the post-exilic translations adhere to the Hebrew names except for the name Egypt. The Ferrara texts resemble the pre-exilic texts in the translations of two names, and the Italian tradition also follows suit but only in the name for Egypt. Otherwise, it resembles traditional pronunciation of the Hebrew names.16

C. The Translation of the Hebrew Present (Participle) Form (12) nisṣ ạ̊ b̄ ̠ (1a)—esta (E3, Alba, ST), se para (E5/E7), estudo (E4), estuuo (BNM). – parado (PA3, PA4), están. (13) ʾōbēd̠ ̠ (3a)—siguraua (E6/E8), quiso estroyr (E3, AJ), quiso deperder (E19), cuydo deperder (E5/E7), quiso perder (E4), quiso distruyr (Alba). – deperdio (C), deperdiente (F), quiso deperder (FM, H1), deperdién (H2, H3), quižo depedrer (H4), quižo deperder (H5).

14 Joseph Nehama, Dicctionaire du Judeo-Espagnol (Madrid: CSIC, 1977). 15 Note that the name is not exactly Egipto as in the Ferrara versions. The examples here do not demonstrate more cases of the unique Italian versions. For more details see Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald, “Linguistic Variations among Ladino Translations as Determined by Geographical, Temporal and Textual Factors,” Folia Lingüística Histórica, 17 (1996): 57–72. 16 These findings are further supported in Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald, “Proper Names in Ladino Translations: Origin and Jewish Identity,” Pe‘amim, 84 (2000): 66–77, and A Dictionary of the Ladino Haggadot (see n. 1). 232 ora (rodrigue) schwarzwald

Although both Hebrew forms take the participle present tense, they are not necessarily perceived as such in the translations. In (12) pre-exilic translations use present tense forms or the past tense, and perhaps an adjectival form (estudo?). In (13) they use past tense forms. The post- exilic translations use the adjectival or participle form in (12) and past or participle forms in (13). Only in the post-exilic translation is the apocopated present participle form presented as in están (12) and deperdién (next to deperdiente) in (13). The post-exilic translations use only the verb deperder in (13), whereas a variety of verbs are used in the pre-exilic translations: sigurar, estruir, deperder, perder, and destruir. In spite of the existing varieties among the post-exilic translations, it is clear that they resemble each other more than the pre-exilic ones.

D. Nominal Sentences (14) kī-ʾēn mirʿɛ lasṣ ōṇ (3b)—que non han pasto las ovejas (E3), que non han [. . .] (AJ), por que non oujmos logar do paçiesen el ganado (E19), ca non ay pasto para los ganados (E5/E7), que no ay pasto al Ganado (E4), ca non podiamos fallar pasto para nuestro Ganado (Alba). – que no pasto a las ouejas (F, FM), que no(n) pasto alas obeǰas. (15) kī-k̠åb̄ ēd̠ ̠ hårå̄ ʿ̄ åb̄ ̠ (3b)—que es muy grande la fanbre (E3, E19), que es muy grande la *an** (AJ), por quanto es grandela fanbre (E5/E7), que es graue la fanbre (E4), por la grand fanbre que es (Alba). – que pesgada la hamre (C), que graue la hanbre (F), que graue la fambre (FM), que pezgada la fambre (H2, H3), que pezgada la ambre/anbre (H4, H5). (16) wəʿammēk̠ kullåm̄ saddīqīṃ —(2) e el to pueblo: todos iustos (E6/ E8), Mas el tu pueblo todos derecheros (GE), & tu pueblo todos son justos (E3), E el tu pueblo todos seran justos (E5/E7, E4, RAH), E tu pueblo todos seran justos (BNM), & el tu pueblo vniuersal mente iustos seran (Alba). – Y tu pueblo todos ellos ǰustos/justos. In all three examples (14–16), there is no copulative verb in the post- exilic translations. The existence of the copula is very common in pre-exilic translations: han, oujmos, ay, podiamos fallar, es, son, seran. Only in (16) is the copula missing in some of the pre-exilic examples. This lack of copulative verbs in the post-exilic translations is an exact reflection of the Hebrew structure of nominal sentences. There is no need in Hebrew for a verbal copula when the predicate is a noun, an adjective, an adverb, or a prepositional phrase in the present tense. The ladino liturgical texts and spanish bibles 233 post-exilic translations copy this structure, thus ignoring the Spanish syntactic structure. It should also be noted here that only in the post-exilic translations is the word kullåm ‘all of them’ translated as todos ellos following the Hebrew structure, a translation that does not appear in any of the pre-exilic ones.

E. Connective Particle The connective particle ise (&) in the pre-exilic translations and always y [i] in the post-exilic ones, as in Judeo‑Spanish.

F. Lexical Variations and Syntactic Phraseology The set of examples below shows distinct linguistic variation among the translations. I will discuss each of them separately and then sum- marize the differences. (17) waʾăguddå̄ t̄ ō̠ (1b)—e . . . su faceziello (E6/E8), & su ayuntamjento (E3), & la su ocupilaçion (E5/E7), & la su acopilaçion (E4), & su mano (BNM, RAH), e su colaçion (ST). – y su ayuntamiento (F, FM), y su ajuntamiento (PA2), y su manoǰo. Only the Latin script post-exilic translations resemble E3 in the use of ajuntamiento. All the Hebrew script post-exilic translations constantly use manoǰo, including C, which none of the pre-exilic translations uti- lize. In addition the pre-exilic translations use a variety of words to express Hebrew ’ăgudda ‘association, bundle’: faceziello, ocupilaçion, acopilaçion, mano, and colaçion. In this example ST translates similarly to the other pre-exilic translations. (18) wayyaqšēb ̠ YHWH wayyišmåʿ̄ (1c)—E dios touo mientes e escucho (E8/E6), & escucho el señor & oyolo (E3), & escucha el señor & oye (E5/E7), & onrran al su nonbre (E4), & escucholo el señor & oyolo (BNM, RAH), e escuchán el Señor e oyén (ST). – y escucho YY/A/H’ y oyo. The post-exilic translations use the past tense forms and do not add any direct objects to the verbs, as in Hebrew. The pre-exilic translations use a variety of tenses and some of them add the direct object to the verbs. Most of them use the verbs escuchar and oír, as in the post- exilic ones, but not always as the translations of E6/E8 and E4 show. 234 ora (rodrigue) schwarzwald

(19) nēṣɛr matṭ ạ̊ ʿ̄ ay (2)—engendramiento de lo que yo plante (E6/E8), engendramjento del mjo llantamjento (GE), rramo de mj plantamjento (E3), reyes dela mj planta (E5/E7), rrayz dela mj planta (E4), ramo de mjs plantas (BNM), rramas de las mjs plantas (RAH), la rama delas mis plantas (Alba). – ramo de mis plantas (C, F, FM, PA2), rama de mis plantas (PA1, PA3, PA4). The post-exilic translations use ramo or rama in the singular, and plantas in the plural, as in Hebrew, and follow the Hebrew construct state expressed by “X of my Y” with no definite article. The pre-exilic translations use a variety of words for neseṛ ‘stem’: engendramiento, reyes, rrayz as well as ramo, rama, and even rramas in the plural form. The word matṭ å’aỵ ‘my plantation’ is translated by lo que yo plante, llantamjento, plantamjento, planta, and plantas, in the singular or in the plural. The addition of the definite article is also noticeable in a few of the pre-exilic translations. (20) bimtē̠ məʿåt̄ ̣ (3a)—con muy poca companna (E6/E8), con poca gente (E3, AJ), con omnes pocos (E19), con varones pocos (E5/E7, E4), con pocos varones (Alba). – con varones pocos (C, F, H1, H4, H5), con gente poca (FM, H2, H3). Even when some of the lexical choices are identical in the translations, as varones-gente, the syntax is different: whereas in post-exilic translations the adjective always follows the noun (as in Hebrew), in pre-exilic translations the adjective sometimes comes first. (21) låḡ ūr̄ (3b)—para morar (E3), para mo*** (AJ), morar (E19, Alba), a morir (!) (E5/E7), amorar (E4). – por morar (C, F, H4, H5), para peregrinar (FM), por pelegrinar (H2, H3). The pre-exilic translations use the verb morar, except for E5/E7 which uses morir, probably a typographical error. The post-exilic translations use morar or peregrinar/pelegrinar. The biblical Hebrew root g-w-r is the source for the noun ger ‘a non-permanent inhabitant’ and the verb lågur ‘to dwell temporarily in a certain location’. This is the meaning carried in this verse which led some of the post-exilic translations’ choice of peregrinar/pelegrinar.17

17 In post-biblical Hebrew ger means ‘convert’ and lagur means ‘to live, to dwell.’ ladino liturgical texts and spanish bibles 235

(22) yēšbū̠ (3b)—esten (E3), moren (E19, E4), pueblen (E5/E7), asentemos (Alba). – esten. The post-exilic translations translateyeš bu ‘(they) will sit’ unanimously as esten, while the pre-exilic ones translate the word by asentemos ‘we will sit’, or by moren, pueblen, and esten in (22). (23) b əšib̠ʿīm nɛp̄ɛš (3c)—setanta almas (E6/E8), con setenta personas (E3, AJ, E5/E7, E4), con setenta almas (E19, Alba). – con setenta almas. Four pre-exilic translations translate nἑfεš ‘soul’ freely into personas ‘people’, while all the others (including the post-exilic examples) translate it literally with the word almas. (24) bimʾōd ̠ məʾōd ̠ (3d)—muy mucho (E3, E19, E5/E7), mucho mucho (E4), mucho ademas (Alba). – en mucho mucho (F, FM), en lo mucho mucho. The intensifying expression bim’od mə’od is interpreted by the pre- exilic translations in (24): muy mucho or mucho ademas, and repeats the word mucho in E4. None of these translations however relate to the particle b- ‘in’ which occurs in Hebrew. The post-exilic translations use the preposition en in all the versions and they all double the word mucho thus copying the Hebrew structure. (25) r əbå̠ b̄ å̠ ̄ kəṣɛmaḥ haśśåd̄ ̠ɛ (3e)—dite amuchiguada assi como yerba de campo (E6/E8), grande commo lo que cresçe enel canpo (E3), multiplicaras como la yerua del canpo (E5/E7), commo la yerua del canpo (E4), multiplicada como/commo los arboles del campo (BNM, RAH), multiplicada quasy yerua del canpo (Alba). – milaria como ermollo/hermollo/ermoyo del/de el canpo/campo te di. Only the word campo is common to all the translations. The post- exilic translations are unique in the use of both milaria and hermollo/ ermollo/ermoyo, Judeo-Spanish words that are non-existent in Span- ish.18 The pre-exilic translations prefer yerba/yerva (

18 Joan Corominas and José Pascual, Diccionario crítico etimológico Castellano e Hispánico (Madrid: Gredos, 1981–1991), relate the latter to armuelle, and indicate that ermollir, hermollecer and hermollo are old Judeo-Spanish forms attested already in the fourteenth century. 236 ora (rodrigue) schwarzwald and multiplicada. The syntax of the expressions also varies among the pre-exilic translations.

The last set of examples (17–25) clearly shows that the pre-exilic translations demonstrate more lexical variability than the post-exilic ones. Also, their syntax shows greater inconsistency and many more free translations than the post-exilic ones that are word for word translations. At times, the pre- and post-exilic translations show some resemblance, e.g. the post-exilic translations are similar to E3 in (17) and (22), to BNM in (19), to E5/E7 and E4 in (20), and to E19 and Alba in (23); however, they differ from them in all the other examples. Even when the lexical choices are similar in some translations, as in (20), the syntax is different.

Discussion

As previously noted, the Ladino translation genre is noted for its inflexibility on the one hand, and for its archaic nature on the other.19 It reflects various Hebrew syntactic structures while retaining many grammatical and lexical linguistic features typical of medieval Spanish. The post-exilic texts represent these Ladino translations. The comparison of the texts above proves that there is a great distinction between the pre- and post-exilic translations of biblical verses. The texts differ in the lexical choices of God’s names, personal names and place names and other content words, in the use of the conjunc- tive particle, in the syntactic translation of nominal sentences and other phrases, and in the translation of participle forms. One outstanding finding is that there is more variation among the medieval texts than among the post-exilic ones. Considering time and

19 Moshe Lazar, “Bible Translations in Ladino from after the Expulsion,” Sefunot, 8 (1964): 337–75; Israel S. Revah, “Hispanisme et judaïsme des langues parlées et écrites par les Sefardim,” in Actas del primer Simposio de Estudios Sefardíes, ed. Iacob M. Hassán (Madrid: Instituto Arias Montano, 1970), 233–241; Haïm-Vidal Sephiha, Le Ladino: Deutéronome (Paris: Centre de Recherches Hispaniques, 1973), and Le Ladino (Judéo-Espagnol Calque) (Paris: Association Vidas Largas, 1979); Schwarzwald, Pirke Aboth (see n. 1); David M. Bunis, “Translating from the Head and from the Heart: The Essentially Oral Nature of the Ladino Bible-Translation Tradition,” in Hommage á Haïm Vidal Sephiha, ed. Winfried Busse and Marie-Christine Varol-Bornes (Berne: Peter Lang, 1996), 337–357. ladino liturgical texts and spanish bibles 237 location, the divergence between the pre- and post-exilic texts is even more impressive: the pre-exilic texts were all written in Spain within a range of about 200–300 years. The post-exilic texts were published in various countries (Italy, Turkey, and the Balkans [Greece, Yugosla- via]) between 154020 and the twentieth century. The question arises as to why there is such diversity among the pre-exilic texts and such similarity among the post-exilic ones. The following discussion will consider this phenomenon and question whether the medieval texts served as sources for the Ladino translations. As stated above, whereas the post-exilic translations reveal Ladino rigid translation from Hebrew to (Judeo-)Spanish, the pre-exilic translations reflect exactly the opposite. When the translations are free, much more variability can be found in the translations. This explains the inconsistencies of the pre-exilic translations. Two explanations can be given regarding the restricted choice of lexical items in the post-exilic translations:

1. Academic literature in linguistics proves that there is less variation in dying languages than in living ones.21 Since Judeo-Spanish had been cut off from its Spanish source, the number of words used by the speakers decreased. This is the reason for fewer lexical variations in the post-exilic translations. 2. Because the liturgical texts had sacred value for the Jews, the translators tried to be as accurate and as faithful to the original Hebrew text as possible. The precision could be accomplished by a careful choice of words that fit the meanings and structures of Hebrew. This is the reason for limited variations in the lexical choices in combination with a rigid syntactic structure.

The first explanation given above, however, cannot be supported because the first post-biblical translations were published shortly after the expulsion from Spain. The language could not have been

20 The first publication of Psalms in Ladino in Hebrew letters. 21 See David Crystal, Language Death (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine, Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World’s Languages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Hans-Jürgen Sasse, Theory of Language Death, and Language Decay and Contact-induced Change: Simi- larities and Differences. Arbeitspapier 12 (Köln: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Uni- versität zu Köln, 1990). 238 ora (rodrigue) schwarzwald impoverished in such a short period of time.22 The lexical choices do not reveal poor vocabulary but rather a restricted one. Both the Bible, the Maḥzor, Pirke Avot and the Haggadah translations show a rich vocabulary, with many archaic features that either exist in Judeo-Span- ish or reflect old medieval Spanish no longer in use. Moreover, other texts published at the same time in Judeo-Spanish clearly demonstrate the lexical richness of the language and the regular use of Spanish syntactic structures.23 Pirke Avot in Sēfer Tešubāḥ , a pre-exilic translation, resembles the post-exilic translations in two features: 1. In the use of (el) Dio in (4a) and in (5), instead of Dios and el Señor; 2. In the use of the apocopated participle forms escuchán and oyén in (18). Apparently, the latter feature could be considered appropriate according to the Ladino translations (cf. Section 3.3), but it is in fact exceptional in this context because it translates Hebrew past tense forms with equivalent present participle ones, unlike the post-exilic translation in this example. In all its other features ST resembles the pre-exilic translations. ST is a compendium of texts that was probably written for the Converso community in Spain in order to explain the Jewish law. The converted Jews in Spain tried to assimilate into Spanish society and hid their ties to Judaism; therefore, their language showed no signs of Jewish tradition. The author of ST used the Latin script that was in use among the Conversos and the standard Spanish of his time. In spite of the effort to mimic the Jewish texts by the use of the above mentioned features, ST does not seem to get closer to the Jewish tradition; its inconsistency in the first feature and the inappropriateness of the second feature as well as its resemblance to the other pre-exilic translations reveal that his usage was not the traditional Jewish one. Could ST have served as the source for the post-exilic translations of Pirke Avot? The answer is definitely not. ST deviates from them in too many linguistic features. On the contrary, it seems to be influenced by an old Jewish translation tradition that it did not follow entirely.

22 In fact, discourse concerning Judeo-Spanish decline really emerged only toward the end of the twentieth century. See for instance Tracy K. Harris, Death of a Language: The History of Judeo-Spanish (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994). 23 See David M. Bunis, “Distinctive Characteristics of Jewish Ibero-Romance, Circa 1492,” Hispania Judaica Bulletin, 4 (2004): 105–137; Laura Minervini, “La formación de la Koiné Judeo-española en el siglo XVI,” Revue de Linguistique Romane, 263–264 (2002): 497–512; John Zemke, Moshe ben Bariķ Almosnino’s “Regimiento de la vida” and “Tratado de los sueños” (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renais- sance Studies, 2004); Haïm-Vidal Sephiha, Le Judéo-Espagnol (Paris: Entente, 1986). ladino liturgical texts and spanish bibles 239

The Ferrara Maḥzor (FM) and Bible (F), although published only one year apart (1552–1553) differ from each other in the spelling of Parho—Parhoh in (9), and hanbre—fambre in (15) and in the four following cases: 1. el syro—asirio in (7); 2. deperdiente—quiso deperder in (13); 3. con varones pocos—con gente poca in (20); 4. morar—peregrinar in (21). All these differences except 1 do not form an exceptional edition, because they match the other post-exilic translations. As proven by Macías, even the Ferrara Bible itself has been published several times with minor variations in translation.24 The same observation can be assumed to be the source of the differences in F and FM. The variations are very rare and all correspond to the well established other Ladino translations. As for el syro—asirio in (7), it should be noted that only el syro (F) resembles Siro in E6/E8. Can this constitute proof that F was influenced by this pre-exilic translation? Perhaps, although the rest of the examples show that there is hardly any resemblance between the pre-exilic translations and the Ferrara ones. One cannot rely on one linguistic instance for the proof of origin (cf. the discussion at the end of section 3.6). The Jewish nature of the pre-exilic Spanish translations is primarily assumed by the authorship of the Jewish translators. In many cases, some of the pre-exilic Bibles are based on the Hebrew Bible rather than on the Vulgate: they follow the order of the books of the Hebrew Bible, and also the division of the Parashot (weekly portions read in the synagogue) in the Pentateuch.25 The occasional use of Adonay for YHWH (and in our examples Elohim as well) have also been put forward to support the Judaic nature of the texts. Moreover, some translations fit the Massoretic and rabbinical interpretations of the biblical texts (not particularly apparent in our examples apart from the verse in 1a). Lazar claims that the Ladino translations of Constantinople, Ferrara and Salonika were derived from surviving medieval translations of the Bible.26 He even draws a chart to indicate the relationship among the translations in which he argues that the post-exilic translations are

24 Macías Kapón, “La Biblia de Ferrara” (see n. 13). 25 See the tables of comparison in Lazar, Biblia Ladinada, xv, xvii (see n. 4). 26 Moshe Lazar, “Ladinando la Biblia entre los sefardíes mediterráneos: Italia, Imperio Otomano y Viena,” in Introducción a la Biblia de Ferrara: actas del Simpo- sio Internacional sobre la Biblia de Ferrara: Sevilla, 25–28 de noviembre de 1991, ed. Iacob M. Hassán and Ángel Berenguer Amador (Madrid: Comisión Nacional Quinto Centenario, 1994), 355, and Biblia Ladinada, xiii (see n. 4). 240 ora (rodrigue) schwarzwald descendents of the E3 “family” of translations. This family includes Alba and portions of E19, with some influences from biblical glossa- ries and rabbinical exegesis. It would be expedient to show a direct linkage between the pre-exilic to the post-exilic translations, but the linguistic data simply cannot support this claim. The similarities between the pre- and post-exilic translations are sporadic, unsystematic and inconsistent, whereas the similarities among the post-exilic texts are remarkable. The occasional rare use of Adonay (versus its systematic use in the post-exilic translations) or Elohim (never found in the post-exilic translations), the order of the books in the Bible, and even the occasional concordance of the translations with traditional Jewish interpretation of the biblical verses, cannot prove that the pre-exilic translations served as the source for the development of the post-exilic ones. The same sources were available to the post-exilic translators as well. It is certain that all the translations were based on the Hebrew Bible, but to what extent are they linked to each other? The analysis above proves beyond doubt that the pre-exilic translations are very different from the post-exilic ones. Although some of the Spanish translations were written by (or with the help of ) Jews and based on the Hebrew Masoretic text, they were fashioned for Christian patrons and were thus probably intended for non-Jewish readers, contrary to some claims made disputing this.27 The translator of the Alba Bible, Rabbi Moses Arragel, claims in his commentaries (and also to his patron Don Luis de Guzmán) that he has not followed the Jewish tradition of translating the Bible.28 This suggests that there was a Jewish tradition of translating the Bible which was not adopted by the translators who were writing for a Christian readership. The target audience of pre-exilic translations prevented the translators from using a more traditional Jewish style. Syntactic structure is the key feature that prevents us from considering pre-exilic translations as the primary source for the post-exilic ones. How is it possible that all the post-exilic texts translate Hebrew

27 José Llamas, “La Antigua Biblia castellana de los judíos españoles,” Sefarad, 4 (1944): 219‑244; Littlefield (Escorial Bible I.ii.19, viii–xiii; see n. 4) claims that E19 was intended for Jewish readers, whereas E4 and E7 for Christian ones, and E3 and Alba for both Christian and Jewish use. 28 See Shifra Sznol, “ ‘La bendición de Yaakov’ (Génesis 49) en lengua griega y en lengua laaz a la luz del Pentateuco de Constantinopla (1547)” (paper, Fifteenth World Congress for Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, 5th August 2009). ladino liturgical texts and spanish bibles 241 word for word whereas the pre-exilic ones implement free translation? How realistic is it to consider that various translators in a variety of different locations all systematically chose the same method of word for word translations? Considering the fact that the oral Jewish tradition of word for word Bible transmission existed in Spain prior to the composition of any translations,29 it seems that the pre-exilic Spanish translators took it upon themselves to turn the biblical text, perhaps even the Ladino oral translations, into a standardized comprehensible Spanish text. The grammar and the lexicon used seem to be independent of the literal Jewish tradition; therefore, the claim that these translations served as the source of the post-exilic ones cannot be supported. The way in which proper names and names for God are used proves beyond doubt that the Spanish translations were written for the benefit of a non-Jewish readership (i.e. Christians).30 The Hebrew texts of Pirke Avot and the Haggadah are written in rabbinical, post-biblical style, known as Mishnaic Hebrew, which is significantly different from the biblical style. Nevertheless, the biblical citations they contain are translated in a similar manner to the biblical translations of C and F, and it is clear that these have not been influenced by rabbinical style. On the contrary, the entire texts, the citations, as well as the rabbinical texts, follow the same rigid norms of translation that typified the Bible translations from Constantinople- Salonika and Ferrara. How, then, can the post-exilic texts be so similar in spite of the fact that they were written at different times and in different locations? One explanation stems from the spread of printed books. Very soon after the books were printed, Ladino translations would have reached Sephardic Jewish communities throughout Italy, the Ottoman Empire, and other settlements of converted Jews who returned to Judaism (in Italy, the Netherlands, and England). These communities would have

29 Eliezer Gutwirth, “Religión, Historia y las biblias romanceadas,” Revista Catalana de Teología, 13 (1988): 115–34; David M. Bunis, “Tres formas de ladinar la Biblia en Italia en los siglos XVI–XVII,” in Introducción a la Biblia de Ferrara: actas del Simpo- sio Internacional sobre la Biblia de Ferrara: Sevilla, 25–28 de noviembre de 1991, ed. Iacob M. Hassán and Ángel Berenguer Amador (Madrid: Comisión Nacional Quinto Centenario, 1994, 315–345, and “Translating from the Head and from the Heart” (see n. 19). 30 In the Ladino Bibles there is an extensive use of Jewish terms as well, like šabat ‘Saturday’ rather than sábado, which did not occur in our current examples. 242 ora (rodrigue) schwarzwald abridged the existing versions and slightly modified them according to their dialects; hence the minor variations among the post-exilic translations. Nevertheless, the fact that within five years (1547–1552) two monumental translations, the Constantinople Pentateuch and the Ferrara Bible, were published in different locations using two distinct scripts but which resemble each other in most linguistic features suggests that they both stemmed from the same oral tradition. As stated above, in addition to reading from the Bible every week, and repeatedly year after year according to the Jewish annual cycle, Jews also pray daily from prayer books which contain many biblical citations. It is therefore not surprising that Ladino translations were memorized by many individuals and that as a result, the various versions of the same text did not fluctuate greatly over a significant period of time. Finally, I would like to add an anecdote from my own experience: while researching Pirke Avot, I wanted to record the way in which Ladino texts are chanted when read. One informant was a Jew from Salonika who used to serve as a Ba’al Tefila (prayer leader) in the synagogue. Shoshana Weich-Shahak, a musicologist, and I met with him and asked him to chant the Ladino version of the text. Without the Ladino translations (although he did have the Hebrew text with him), this man was able to recite the entire Ladino text orally from beginning to end. His oral transmission was amazingly similar to the Salo- nika Ladino translations of Pirke Avot. This anecdote further supports the claim that texts can be preserved by oral repeated transmission. From all the discussion above, the argument that Ladino post-exilic Jewish translations are descendents of the Spanish pre-exilic biblical translations is untenable.31

31 Support can be found in Amigo Espada’s arguments as well. See Lorenzo Amigo Espada, “Una aproximación al Pentateuco de Constantinopla (1547),” Estudios Bíbli- cos, 43 (1990): 81–111. ladino liturgical texts and spanish bibles 243

Appendix

Abbreviations These are the abbreviations of the texts: the first translations in each comparison are taken from the Spanish Bibles (Enrique-Arias and Davies): XIII, E6-E8, E3 (also Lazar, Biblia Ladinada), AJ, E19, E5-E7, EV, E4, BNM, RAH, Alba, XV. For each verse equivalents are found only in some of the Bibles, but not in all of them. The Ladino Bibles include:

C = Constantinople-Salonica Bible (Lazar, The Ladino Scriptures), in Hebrew script. F = Ferrara Bible 1553 (Lazar, The Ladino Bible of Ferrara), in Latin script.

The following versions are compared in Pirke Avot:32

ST = Sēfer Tešubāḥ (Lazar, Sēfer Tešubāḥ , 69), in Latin script (irrelevant for (2) and (3) below), a pre-exilic text. FM = Ferrara Maḥzōr 1552 (Lazar, The Ladino ̣Mahzōr of Ferrara, 193), in Latin script. PA1 = Venice 1601, in Hebrew vocalized script. PA2 = Amsterdam 1664, in Latin script. PA3 = Firenze 1749 in Hebrew vocalized script. PA4 = Jerusalem 1901 in Hebrew non-vocalized script.

The following versions are compared in the Haggadah:

FM = Ferrara Maḥzōr 1552 (Lazar, The Ladino ̣Mahzōr of Ferrara, 166), in Latin script. H1 = Salonika 1565, in Hebrew vocalized script, as part of a Siddur for women (parts of the text are missing in it). H2 = Venice 1609, in Hebrew vocalized script. H3 = Livorno 1794, in Hebrew vocalized script. H4 = Salonika 1822, in Hebrew vocalized script. H5 = Belgrade 1841, in Hebrew Rashi, non-vocalized script.

32 The description of FM and PA1, PA2, PA3, PA4 can be found in Schwarzwald, Pirke Aboth, 20–36 (see n. 1). H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 are described in Schwarzwald, A Dictionary of the Ladino Haggadot, 9–16 (see n. 1).

TRANSLATION AND THE INVENTION OF RENAISSANCE JEWISH CULTURE: THE CASE OF JUDAH MESSER LEON AND JUDAH ABRAVANEL1

Aaron W. Hughes

Introduction

The history of Jewish philosophy—indeed, the history of Judaism— is a series of engagements with the biblical narrative. Because these engagements take place in distinct historical contexts, various literary and aesthetic expectations govern them. The Bible is simultaneously read and translated, imagined and invented, by each generation’s gaze. Biblical translation, whether literally into a new vernacular or con- ceptually into a different idiom, seeks to make the old language “old” again; or, framed from a somewhat different angle, to make the new language “old.” Since any innovation must be seen to emerge naturally from the biblical text, Bible translations reveal to us something of the struggles over assimilation, integration, and separation that constantly confronted Jews as minorities. The translative act becomes one of the primary causal factors or agents that facilitate and power the struggle for a perceived core of Jewish identity that can, paradoxically, be read into and subsequently teased out of the biblical fabric. To explore this dialectic between old and new, tradition and innovation, this essay focuses on two important fifteenth-century figures, Judah Messer Leon (ca. 1420–ca. 1498) and his younger contemporary Judah Abravanel (ca. 1465–after 1521), also known as Leone Hebreo. These two individuals were responsible for translating the biblical narrative into Renaissance categories and vice versa.2 Caught between biblical tradition and the intellectual currents of fifteenth century Italy,

1 An earlier version of this paper was given at the Center for Medieval and Renais- sance Studies at UCLA. I would like to thank those in attendance for their comments, especially Moshe Idel, Arthur M. Lesley, and Brian Copenhaver. 2 Jakob Burckhardt first coined the term “Renaissance” (Rinascimento) in his The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1867). It is, like any term imposed retroac- tively on a period, extremely problematic and potentially misleading. Accordingly, it is necessary to exercise caution when using this and cognate terms (e.g., “Humanism”). 246 aaron w. hughes these two individuals—in their very different ways—sought to reconcile or integrate these two worldviews through the act of translation, which enabled them both to find hidden within the biblical narrative the best that contemporaneous non-Jewish literary and aesthetic achievements had to offer. Moreover, the Bible’s divine authorship permitted them both to make the further claim that such achievements existed most pristinely and most beautifully in Judaism. This apologetical argument ultimately aided the invention of what we now call “Renaissance Jew- ish culture.”3

Translation and the Reclamation of a Birthright

The multiplicity of languages, to use the words of Derrida, “exhibits an incompletion, the impossibility of finishing, of totalizing, of saturat- ing, of completing something on the order of edification, architectural construction, system and architectonics.”4 Because of this multiplicity, there is a need for translation: to build nexuses between cultures, between languages, between texts, between ideas, and between peoples. Prior to Saadya Gaon (ca. 882–942), when the superiority of Juda- ism was discussed, it tended to be done on theological grounds. With Saadya, however, literary and aesthetic dimensions begin to feature highly in such claims.5 If the Torah is the font of all wisdom, according to Saadya, then its language must both anticipate and surpass those (non-Jewish) canons used to define literary elegance.6 The perceived

See, for example, the corrective in Christopher Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin’s Legacy (Baltimore, MD, 2004). 3 For historiographical overviews of the topic, see David B. Ruderman, “Italian Renaissance and Jewish Thought,” in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, edited by Albert Rabil, Jr., vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1988), 382–433; Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, “Jewish Culture in Renaissance Italy: A Methodological Survey,” Italia 9, 1–2 (1990): 63–96. 4 Jacques Derrida, “Des Tours de Babel,” trans. by Joseph F. Graham, in Psyche: Inventions of the Other, vol. 1, edited by Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stan- ford, CA, 2007), 191. 5 See my “Precursorship and the Forgetting of History: Franz Rosenzweig and Saadya Gaon on the Memory of Translation,” in New Directions in Jewish Philosophy, edited by Aaron W. Hughes and Elliot R. Wolfson (Bloomington, IN, 2010), 52–84, esp. 70–77. 6 This trope of the purity of the Hebrew language is articulated well in the Hebrew introduction to his Egron, where he writes, for example, that: the case of judah messer leon and judah abravanel 247 eternality of the Torah’s language and the elegance of its mode of expression signaled the superiority of Jewish culture, the desire to make Jewish texts conform to non-Jewish standards, and the eventual active Jewish participation in these standards. The natural outcome of this activity is that the Bible was now analyzable using the same critical tools and models used to explore any other piece of literature regardless of provenance or authorship.7 Invested in the translative enterprise was the attempt to make the Bible a part of and as something superior to the great works of literature produced in the cultures in which Jews found themselves.8 Certainly, on one level at least, the reasons behind this translative project are easy enough to understand: the Bible had to be made to conform to philosophy, also referred to as “foreign” wisdom, and vice versa, if Jews were to engage in its practice. However, this desire to posit conformity does not necessarily prepare us for the ingenious ways that many Jewish philosophers argued that philosophy—of

We did not speak the language [of our neighbors] Or worship their gods. From Sinai our God spoke to us the words of purity In the mouth of His servant, Moses, a man of God. He spoke laws and judgments [ḥuqim u-mishpatim] From atop Mt. Horeb. For generations we lived in the land of our heritage [Our language] used by our kings Heard in the songs of the Levites and in the hymn of priests Spoken by our prophets, defining their vision. See his ha-Egron: Kitâb usûl al shʿîr al-ʿibrânî, critical edition with introduction and commentary by Nehemya Allony (Jerusalem, 1969), Hebrew introduction, 157. On the relationship between the Hebrew and Arabic introductions, see Rina Drory, Mod- els and Contexts: Arabic Literature and Its Impact on Medieval Jewish Culture (Leiden, 2000), 178–190. 7 See my The Invention of Jewish Culture: Bible, Philosophy, and the Art of Transla- tion (Bloomington, IN, 2010), esp. 68–92. 8 In stating this I disagree with Jonathan Sheehan, who writes that “The Bible has not always been understood, read, appreciated, and venerated as a piece of Western ‘culture.’ [. . .] if for no other reason that this ideal of the Bible and this ideal of culture were invented at a particular time, in a particular place, and for particular reasons.” See his The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton, 2005), x. I do not disagree with Sheehan’s notion that the term “culture” is an invented one and that the various ways that the Bible has been imagined is bound up with this construction. However, I would certainly point out, as indeed I shall throughout this study, that this did not originate in the Enlightenment period. On the contrary, the translation of the Bible has always been defined by what is seen to be constitutive of “culture” in any particular time, be it Arabophone, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Modern, and Postmodern. 248 aaron w. hughes any variety: Platonic, Aristotelian, Alfarabian, Averroist, Scholastic, Humanist, Kantian, post-Kantian—existed deep within the biblical narrative and that it accordingly only needed to be unlocked. The Bible, when read across the longue durée of Jewish philosophical writing, has been perceived to contain within itself, in potentia, all of the intellectual, literary, and aesthetic standards of the larger cultures in which Jews found themselves. A question we could ask ourselves is: What does this mean for the formation of Jewish cultures? If the Bible, according to these elite philosophers, can only be made sense of using the standards of non-Jews, if biblical language and categories can only be glimpsed through the veil of other languages and cultures, what, if anything, defines Jewish culture at any particular historical or geographical moment? How is the “Jewish” created (or invented) and untangled from the “non-Jewish,” and vice versa, in the quest for some sort of illusive or always just-out-of-reach authenticity. The perceived superiority of the biblical narrative—understood as embodying all literary graces and rhetorical elegance—was, as I have suggested, rediscovered and recalibrated by each philosopher’s gaze. And each gaze, not surprisingly, was defined by the aesthetic and artistic contexts in which each philosopher lived: ancient Alex- andria; medieval Baghdad or Cordoba; Renaissance Rome; Weimar Berlin—to name but a few. The translation of the Bible accordingly became intertwined with the act—part political, part ideological, and part apologetic—of uncovering an ancient literary tradition that was paradoxically always a modern claim predetermined by contemporaneous aesthetic standards. Instead of focusing on the philological mechanisms of translation, my concern is with how translation invests in itself the creation of numerous cultural, political, literary, and religious identities. Translation was an activity or process that opened the Bible up to other cultures. How- ever, rather than simply facilitating border crossings between cultures, translation—I suggest—actually impedes such movement owing to its ability to articulate a category called the “Judaic” that, paradoxically, can only be defined and subsequently differentiated using the language and categories of the so-called “non-Judaic.”9

9 Or, perhaps to rephrase this in the language of Robert Bonfil: “The task that I set for myself was to show how it is possible to read the history of the Jews of the Renais- sance in a modern perspective—that of the complex question of the definition of an identity in the context of a nascent awareness of the Self as organically interrelated the case of judah messer leon and judah abravanel 249

Jewish Philosophy in Italy on the Eve of Modernity

Let me now move from the theoretical to the particular and provide a historical overview of the two thinkers who are the subjects of this study, Judah Messer Leon and Judah Abravanel. In histories of Jew- ish philosophy, the fifteenth century is generally regarded as a time of transition from the so-called medieval to the so-called modern period.10 As in the earlier Arabophone world, Jewish elites throughout the Mediterranean continued to study philosophy and its cognates, including the liberal arts and natural sciences. Jewish philosophers, for the most part, still employed the theoretical framework of Aristo- telianism, although they were more engaged in polemics—with both Christianity and Jewish critics of philosophy—than their predecessors, and increasingly they began, as non-Jews did, to study the corpus of Plato.11 On account of the specific needs of the Italian economy and the almost constant state of warfare among the various city-states, there existed a general tolerance of Jewish moneylenders by popes, princes, and republican governments.12 Despite their marginal status, based as it was on short-term residential permits (condotte), many of these moneylenders thrived financially and began to model themselves and their tastes on paradigms supplied by the Italian nobility.13 In so doing, they cultivated a Hebrew and Jewish version of the Renaissance man, the so-called uomo universalis, what they now hebraicized as the ḥakham kolel.14 with the Other, without for all that becoming confused with the Other, and still less annihilated by it.” See his Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy, trans. by A. Oldcorn (Berke- ley, 1994), 286. 10 See, for example, Colette Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Cambridge and Paris, 1990), 345–350. 11 An excellent overview of the period may be found in Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, “Jewish Philosophy on the Eve of Modernity,” in History of Jewish Philosophy, edited by Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman (London and New York, 1997), 499–573. Much of this paragraph and the following one rely on her overview. 12 For a social history of Italian Jewries in this period, see Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy. 13 It is also important to be aware of Robert Bonfil’s caveat that we need to ask ourselves, among other things, just how liberal or tolerant the “Renaissance” was to Jews. See, for example, his “The Historian’s Perception of the Jew in the Italian Renaissance: Toward a Reappraisal,” Revue des Études Juives 143 (1984): 59–82. 14 See, for example, Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, Between Worlds: The Life and Times of Rabbi David ben Judah Messer Leon (Albany, NY, 1991), 11–33. For further study on the educational curriculum of these individuals, see David B. Ruderman, The World of 250 aaron w. hughes

Many wealthy Jews became patrons of rabbinic scholars, belletrists, philosophers, and poets. They educated their children using traditional models of learning such as Torah and gemara, in addition to the scholastic curriculum of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy), including the emphasis on eloquent speech in both Latin and Italian.15 Although imitating the manners and curriculum of non-Jews, many of these elite Jews were either aware or made to be aware of their “otherness.” Rather than whole-heartedly adopt the “Renaissance” lifestyle, they adapted its literary, aesthetic, and cultural norms. The flipside of this interest in non-Jewish intellectual currents was a profound sense of pride in the Jewish past that, in many ways, seems to have been aided by the perceived antiquity of the Kabbalah.16 The deep mystical currents of this tradition, it will be recalled, were cur- rently in vogue among Christian thinkers who employed Jews to teach them its secret doctrines.17 This produced a certain apologetic tenor among Jewish thinkers who used the antiquity of Judaism to articulate a position of Jewish superiority over the literary and aesthetic products of non-Jewish culture. Whereas Christians, including the intellectual luminaries of fifteenth century Italy, copied the findings of earlier cultures—such as the Greeks, Romans, and even the Jews—Jews, so the argument went, possessed all wisdom in their Torah and, as a result, had little or no need for other cultures. However, the great paradox of this argument is that non-Jewish categories were used as the criteria for this judgment and, as a result, had to be read into the Bible as a way to show its ostensible superiority. We get a glimpse at this hermeneutic in the words of Abraham ben Mordechai Farissol, one of the earliest Jewish thinkers to begin framing Judaism and Jewish ideas in the categories of the Renaissance and vice versa: And if, in these times, because of our sins, we are exiled from our land, behold only to us God spoke and showed us his natural and supernatural portents and signs in Egypt, and also at our wondrous station on Mount Sinai, He crowned us in the perfect Torah—including all the

a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham ben Mordechai Farissol (Cincin- nati, 1981), 21–32. 15 Tirosh-Rothschild, Between Worlds, 44–51. 16 See Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew, 76–77. 17 See the insightful study in Chaim Wirszubski, Pico dell Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (Cambridge, MA, 1989). the case of judah messer leon and judah abravanel 251

natural, speculative, divine, legal, and political wisdom from which all the world drank . . .18 For Farissol, the Torah represents all perfection in this world. And the Jews, as the sole recipients of the Torah, possess unique access to its teachings. However, simultaneous with the Jewish possession of the Torah is the propensity for sin and the current state of exile. This dis- crepancy—for Farissol, for Messer Leon, for Judah Abravanel, indeed for pretty much every other Jewish thinker of the Renaissance—gave way to the argument that the aesthetic products of the Renaissance lie hidden in the biblical text and must be brought to the surface by first reading non-Jewish texts. As if to atone for their sins, in other words, these non-Jewish texts now appear to be superior to the Torah. It is important not to overlook the tensions inherent to this type of argument, an argument that is omnipresent in much Jewish apologetics throughout the ages. I refer, in particular, to this sense of pride in the Torah and the ancient traditions associated with the Kabbalah on the one hand, coupled with the acknowledged accomplishments of the various non-Jewish cultures in which Jews found themselves and their perceived lack in Jewish cultures.19 Does this mean that Jewish elites thought of themselves as inferior to non-Jewish elites? On the most obvious level, probably not. However, on other levels, I wish to suggest that the complex intersection between Jewish and non-Jewish ideas and cultures produced if not an outright sense of inferiority then at least a set of tensions, of which the apologetics described below functioned as an outlet. In order to explore these repercussions in greater detail, I focus on two individuals who were surprisingly at home in the various intellectual and aesthetic trajectories associated with fifteenth-century Italy and were instrumental in defining something that we today signify as

18 Quoted in Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew, 76–77. 19 When I first presented a version of this paper, Moshe Idel took me to task for my claim that Jewish thinkers had a sense of inferiority to non-Jewish thought. He argued that, in possession of the Kabbalah, Jewish thinkers always thought themselves superior. I am still not convinced by this argument. Obviously we cannot get into the minds of these thinkers; however, the fact that—as I trust will become clear in this paper—the fifteenth century thinkers that I examine here constantly needed to defend Judaism and to do so using the intellectual categories produced by non-Jews reveals a real sense of tension, if not inferiority. Moreover, I think one could make the claim, alluded to in the present discussion if not worked out fully, that this tension was what facilitated and subsequently enabled these thinkers to construct Kabbalah as superior to anything produced by non-Jews. 252 aaron w. hughes

“Renaissance Jewish culture,” realizing, of course, that all three of the terms in quotations are highly unstable. Judah Messer Leon and Judah Abravanel represent among two of the earliest responses of Jews to the intellectual culture of the Renaissance. Whereas the former wrote in Hebrew, the latter did so in Italian. Whereas the latter resented Kab- balah as inferior to Aristotelianism,20 the latter regarded Kabbalah as an authentic expression of Judaism and sought to reconcile it with the teachings of Aristotle. Finally, whereas the former wrote for Jews, the latter cast his net much wider and wrote, it seems, for a predominantly non-Jewish audience. Despite these differences, however, both had a similar goal: to show points of contact between fifteenth-century, non-Jewish, intellectual trends and the Bible’s antiquity. This contact was both precipitated by the desire on the part of both individuals to project onto and then subsequently discover deep within the biblical narrative many of the themes, tropes, and categories that they felt defined Renaissance culture. However, they both argued that these themes and categories existed within the Bible in a more pure, ancient, and pristine fashion. We could also make the point that both Messer Leon and Judah Abravanel make the same case, but for different audiences. Since he wrote in Hebrew, Messer Leon’s goal was to convince Jews that the intellectual culture of the Renaissance was not to be feared but was, in fact, their birthright. And since he wrote also presumably in Ital- ian, Judah Abravanel makes the same case, albeit for non-Jews and, perhaps because of this, more subtly. If Judah Messer Leon is interested in showing, point-by-point, the minute connections between biblical terms and fifteenth century rhetorical categories (e.g., metaphor as ha-hityaḥasut), Abravanel is unin- terested in demonstrating how Judaism and Jewish sources must be so interpreted. Perhaps this is because someone like Judah Messer Leon is first required to develop the groundwork or frames of reference necessary for subsequent thinkers, such as Judah Abravanel, to engage in a more creative or synthetic enterprise.

20 Tirosh-Rothschild, Between Worlds, 40–45. the case of judah messer leon and judah abravanel 253

Judah Messer Leon

Judah ben Yehiel Messer Leon (ca. 1420–ca. 1498) was born in Mon- tecchio Maggiore, now in the Italian province in Vicenza, located in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy. We know, however, very little about his life and career.21 He travelled around a great deal and we do know that he found himself in some of the major centers of Renaissance culture, including Padua, Venice, Bologna, and Naples. By 1454 he had been ordained as a rabbi and functioned as the head of a yeshiva in Ancona. This yeshiva is significant because in itstu- dents were trained in traditional Jewish matters in addition to secular sciences necessary for higher study in the humanities, philosophy, and medicine. Many of his works—Libnat ha-Sappir (“The Pavement of Sapphire), Miklal Yofi (“The Perfection of Beauty”), and Nofet Sufiṃ (“The Honeycomb’s Flow”)—functioned as textbooks designed for the use of students in his academy and these books were all calibrated to show the series of intersections between Renaissance and Jewish cultures. We also know that as Messer Leon moved around Italy, he took his yeshiva or academy with him. Messer Leon was also an accomplished physician and seems to have taught the discipline at the University of Padua. In 1469, to quote Rab- inowitz, “the emperor bestowed upon him what must surely rank as the most extraordinary writ of privilege ever accorded to an individual Jewish academician: not only a double doctorate, in medicine and the liberal arts, but also the right to confer such doctorates upon other Jews of proved and demonstrated worthiness.”22 We also know that Messer Leon wrote other works, particularly commentaries, on the works of Aristotle. Moreover, he was highly critical of the writings of Gersonides and even put the latter’s commentary on the Torah under a ban.

21 The best biographical account of Messer Leon can be found in the introductory matter to his The Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow (Sefer Nopheth Suphim), a critical edition and translation by Isaac Rabinowitz (Ithaca, NY, 1983), esp. xvii–xxxi. 22 Ibid., xxv. We do know, for example, that he awarded at least two such degrees, to Yohanan Alemanno, himself a relatively well-known thinker and philosopher, and Benedict of Parma. On the former, see Arthur M. Lesley, “The Song of Solomon’s Ascents by Yohanan Alemanno: Love and Human Perfection According to a Jewish Colleague of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,” (PhD diss., University of California, 1976). 254 aaron w. hughes

Messer Leon is usually referred to as a ḥakham kolel, the Hebrew equivalent of a uomo universalis. He was a rabbi, teacher, physician, philosopher, and more generally a scholar who was widely regarded as excelling in both so-called “secular” and “religious” topics—realizing, of course, that these terms most likely did not mean in the fifteenth century what they mean today. Perhaps more than anyone, Messer Leon sought to translate the Bible, and thus Judaism, using the intellectual categories of the fifteenth century. Around 1480, Messer Leon—along with his academy—settled in Naples, then under the largely tolerant rule of Ferdinand II. It was to Naples that the Abravanel family moved following the decree of expulsion in 1492. Both the Abravanels and the Messer Leons remained in Naples until the French took over in 1495. The goal of this essay is not to dwell on the relationship between Judah Messer Leon and his academy to the newly arrived Judah Abravanel—a relationship that, as far as I can tell is understudied on account of the paucity of evidence, but a relationship that must have existed, if only informally. For Judah Messer Leon, the radical differences between the cultures of fifteenth century Italy and that of traditional Judaism—one trying to break with the authority of the past, the other firmly grounded in it; one stressing the virtues of the uomo universalis, the other apparently critical of such virtues—existed only on the surface. Once one penetrated the depths of the Bible, the conceptual differences between these two cultures shattered. One of Judah Messer Leon’s most important works—Sefer Nofet Sufiṃ or “The Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow”—represents one of the earliest attempts to show a set of correspondences between rhetoric and the Hebrew Bible. Although written in Hebrew, the work sets as its goal the translation of Hebrew terms into Renaissance categories and, by extension, the “discovery” of a “Renaissance” literary tradition within or behind the Bible. This results in what I want to call the beginnings of the invention of a Renaissance Jewish literary tradition. Messer Leon writes, for example: Every science [kol ḥokhmah], every rationally apprehended truth that any treatise may contain, is present in our holy Torah and in the books of those who speak by the Holy Spirit [ba-ruaḥ ha-qodesh], present, that is, for those who thoroughly understand the subjects involved, and for whom the Lord has enlightened the eyes . . . In the days of prophecy, indeed in the months of old, when out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shined forth, we used to know from the Holy Torah all the the case of judah messer leon and judah abravanel 255

sciences and truths of reason, including all that were humanly attained, for everything is already latent therein, or plainly stated. What other peoples possessed of these sciences and truths was, by comparison with us, very little . . .23 Reminiscent of the tenth-century Saadya Gaon’s truncated history of the Hebrew language in the introduction to his Egron—another work seeking to “translate” the Bible, albeit into Arabic—Messer Leon next turns his attention to the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E and the subsequent exile.24 Like Saadya, he pairs destruction and exile with forgetting. For in exile, which he locates as the end result of Israel’s transgressions and iniquities, Jews slowly lost their scientific and artistic birthright. He continues: Thus the matter has come to be in reverse [ha-ʿinyan bi-hofekh]; for if, after we have come to know all the sciences, or some part of them, we study the words of the Torah, then the eyes of our understanding open up to the fact that the sciences are included in the Torah’s words, and we wonder how we could have failed to realize this from the Torah itself to begin with. Such has frequently been our own experience, especially in the science of Rhetoric [ḥokhmat ha-halisaḥ ]. For when I examined the words of the Torah in the way now common among most people, I had no idea that the science of Rhetoric or any part of it was included therein. But once I had studied and investigated Rhetoric, searched for her as for hidden treasures out of the treatises written by men of nations other than our own, and afterwards came back to see what is said about it in the Torah and the Holy Scriptures, then the eyes of my understanding were opened, and I saw that it was the Torah which was the giver . . .25 The goal of Messer Leon is to reconnect individuals to the Bible. The way he—like so many of the Jewish philosophers, Judah Abravanel included—chooses to do this however is by appeals to external literature as opposed to internal modes of reading. Paradoxically, but perhaps not surprisingly, Jewish superiority is defined and articulated by means of non-Jewish contexts. Messer Leon is not interested in translating the entire biblical narrative into a contemporaneous literary vernacular. His concern is to

23 Messer Leon, Sefer Nofet Sufiṃ , 143. 24 See my comments in The Invention of Jewish Identity: Bible, Philosophy, and the Art of Translation (Bloomington, IN, 2010), 32–39. 25 Messer Leon, Sefer Nofet Sufiṃ , 145. 256 aaron w. hughes show points of contact between the Bible and fifteenth-century intellectual currents, especially the latter’s use of the classical rhetorical tradition as developed by the likes of Cicero and Quintillian. One of Messer Leon’s most original contributions to this is his substitution of examples taken from the Bible for those taken from Latin authors in non-Jewish Renaissance treatises devoted to the topic.26 Messer Leon’s interest is in the conceptual translation of select words and phrases and thereby the illumination of the Bible’s anticipation of and conformity to classical rhetoric. But surely this is an apologetical program. Implicit in this argument is the divine status of the Bible and thus the superiority of Juda- ism. Although it possesses all of the literary and aesthetic features of the larger intellectual culture in which Jews found themselves, it does so latently and, by extension, more purely and eternally. The biblical narrative in many ways functions as a palimpsest, upon which was inscribed any number of types and kinds of cultural writings. Messer Leon implies that if in the biblical period all sciences naturally flowed from the Torah’s wellsprings, in his own time “the matter has come to be in reverse.” One must consequently read these sciences amongst the other nations and only then come back to the Torah to find them. For him, the biblical narrative—at least when read properly—could connect elite Jews to Renaissance culture because in it was Renaissance culture, only in a better version. Messer Leon demonstrates the beauty of the biblical narrative by both situating it against a larger literary and rhetorical backdrop, and by going so far as to say that in the Bible one encounters both the origins and most forceful expressions of these themes. Implicit in his argument is that it is in this reconstituted biblical narrative that one truly and authentically encounters not simply the Jewish response to non-Jewish literature, but the most beautiful expressions of non- Jewish ideas and, by extension, of Judaism. An invented or imagined Jewish culture that exhibits all of the characteristics and qualities that defined what he, and others, considered true culture to be.

26 Robert Bonfil, “The Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow by Judah Messer Leon: The Rhetorical Dimension of Jewish Humanism in Fifteenth Century Italy,” Jewish His- tory 6, 1–2 (1992): 24. the case of judah messer leon and judah abravanel 257

Judah Messer Leon’s desire is to discover or uncover the rhetorical currents flowing deep within the Hebrew Bible. In the opening of the fourth section of Nofet Sufiṃ , for example, he writes: In the course of the preceding treatment of the subjects with which the present work is concerned, we entered their villages . . . and their encamp- ments, and searched out the inner chamber of the pronouncements made by both ancient and more recent rhetoricians [divrei ha-melisạ ha- qedumim ve-ha-ḥadashim] . . . For most of what we shall say herein, we shall draw upon Book IV of the [New] Rhetoric by Tully, and upon the account given by the Philosopher in Book III of his Rhetoric. The illustrations [ha-meshalim] I have taken from our holy and beautiful house, from the words of prophecy and the divinely inspired narratives that sit first in the kingdom of agreeableness and elegance, that are sweeter than honey, that cannot be gotten for gold . . .27 Judah Messer Leon here clearly states his goal of illumining the rhetorical dimension of the Bible. If classical motifs and themes can be discovered in the biblical narrative—which predates the likes of Cicero, Tully, and Quintillian—then Messer Leon, according to his own agenda, will have succeeded in demonstrating that these motifs first existed in the Bible. The language of the above passage confirms this. Using the words of Genesis 25:16 (“their villages . . . and their encamp- ments”), he describes the need to read works on rhetoric composed by non-Jews and to enter their “inner chamber” (2Kings 9:2). Yet as the closing lines reveal, these features “sit first in the kingdom” (Esther 1:4) of the Bible. Even though he must ultimately go to non-Jewish texts to discover the defining elements and the important features of rhetoric and thus of Judaism, he then perceives these definitions and features to sit most beautifully in the Bible. For it is there that these features reside most purely, most pristinely, and, to use language that conjures up the translation project of Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber centuries later, most archaically.28 Following the chapter wherein the aforementioned quotation is located, the reader encounters eighty-two chapters, all of which reveal in intricate detail the numerous rhetorical terms, concepts and tropes, their definitions, including examples of how they are used within the biblical narrative. For example, concerning the trope of metaphor (ha-hityaḥasut), Messer Leon writes:

27 Messer Leon, Sefer Nofet Sufiṃ , 417. 28 See my The Invention of Jewish Culture, 22–32. 258 aaron w. hughes

Metaphor is diction in which certain words are taken as parables and in a transferred sense, because some resemblance obtains between the literal and transferred meanings which allows this appropriately to be done. For example “The wilderness and the parched land will be glad; and the desert will rejoice, and blossom as the rose” [Is 35:1]. Gladness is properly attributable only to humans, but appears here through resemblance; for the bringing forth of the flowers is indicative of great good in the case of a desert and parched land, just as gladness is an indication of man’s good . . . The aim in using metaphor is sometimes conciseness [ha-qisuṛ ]. . . . Sometimes the aim is decency of language [neqiyut ha- lashon] . . . Sometimes the intention is to magnify a matter. . . . Sometimes it is meant to minimize . . . And sometimes its sole purpose is elegance: “That put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” [Is 5:20]. This figure should be fashioned with understanding and awareness, in such a way that the resemblance will not seem bizarre.29 This passage is significant for several reasons. First is that Hebrew does not literally possess a word for “metaphor”; for this Judah must use the Hebrew term that connotes “relation,” “relationship” or “ascription.” Secondly, despite the non-existence of a Hebrew technical term he implies that the actual concept possesses a rich history in the biblical narrative, something that the chapter goes on to recount in intricate detail. Thirdly, the small gap that opens between the Hebrew term and the concept ultimately gives way in the Nofet Sufiṃ to a chasm between biblical rhetoric and all other forms of (non-Jewish) rhetoric. This chasm exists because, unlike classical and renaissance rhetoric that are the product of human hands, the biblical narrative reveals its divine literary and rhetorical artistry. As Messer Leon himself claims “the statutes and ordinances of Rhetoric that are included within the Holy Scriptures, and all of the like that all the other nations possess, the difference is so striking that to compare them is like comparing the hyssop in the wall with the cedar of Lebanon.”30 Despite Messer Leon’s attempt to reorient Jewish intellectual life in Italy, he met with only limited success. Moreover, despite his ban on the commentary of Gersonides, the latter’s influence increased, most likely owing to the influx of Spanish and Provençal immigrants.31 More- over many of his students—including the aforementioned Yohanan

29 Messer Leon, Sefer Nofet Sufiṃ , 511–513. 30 Messer Leon, Sefer Nofet Sufiṃ , 145. 31 Tirosh-Rothschild, “Jewish Philosophy on the Eve of Modernity,” 515. the case of judah messer leon and judah abravanel 259

Alemanno and even his own son David ben Judah—were not as interested in Aristotelianism and began to gravitate towards Platonism and the Kabbalah. It is these subject matters that would also attract the attention of Judah Abravanel, to whom I now turn.

Judah Abravanel

An examination of Judah Messer Leon’s attempt to read fifteenth-century intellectual culture into the Bible and vice versa inevitably leads us to the enigmatic Judah Abravanel (ca. 1465–after 1521). Born in Lisbon, Abravanel was the firstborn of Don Isaac Abravanel (1437– 1508), himself a highly-connected financier and diplomat, in addition to being an important biblical commentator and philosopher.32 Despite the conservative tendencies in the thought of his father, Don Isaac insured that his children received educations that included both Jewish and non-Jewish subjects.33 By profession, Judah was a doctor, one who had a very good reputa- tion and who served the royal court. After the edict of expulsion had been issued, Ferdinand and Isabel requested that he remain in Spain. Like many of those Jews who refused to convert, Judah and his immediate family, including his father, made their way to Naples. There, Ferdinand II of Aragon, the king of Naples, warmly welcomed the Abravanel family, owing to its many contacts in international trade. In 1495, however, the French took control of Naples, and Judah was again forced to flee, first to Genoa, then to Barletta, and subsequently to Venice. It seems that he also traveled around Tuscany, and there is some debate as to whether or not he actually met the famous Floren- tine humanist, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (it seems unlikely that he did). In 1501, after the defeat of the French in Naples, he was invited back to be the personal physician of the Viceroy of Naples, Fernández de Córdoba. Among all of these peregrinations, Judah found the time to write (but not publish) his magnum opus, the Dialoghi d’amore.34

32 More generally, see Eric Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance Toward Tradition: Defense, Dissent, Dialogue (Albany, NY, 2001), 9–26. 33 For an examination of the typical education curriculum of an elite Jew at this time, see Moshe Idel, “The Study Program of R. Yohanan Alemmano” (Hebrew), Tar- biz 48 (1979), 303–30. 34 Mariano Lenzi published the Dialoghi in 1535 in Rome after Abravanel’s death. On the debates about the original language of the work, see the insightful article by 260 aaron w. hughes

Other than these basic facts, we know very little of the life of Judah Abravanel.35 Abravanel is part of a larger trend among Jewish authors in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-centuries who increasingly resorted to Romance vernaculars in order to attract a Jewish audience (including conversos and ex-conversos), which no longer understood Hebrew. Judah Abra- vanel becomes an important transitional thinker in the encounter between Judaism and the Italian Renaissance. Whereas his father, Don Isaac, and even his older contemporary, Judah Messer Leon, could still adapt humanistic themes to their Hebrew writings, which were still primarily in conversation with medieval thought, increasingly in Judah’s generation the only way to engage in a full-scale examination of the universal tendencies associated with Renaissance was to write in the vernacular. Even the very genre of the Dialoghi, that of the trattato d’amore (“treatise on love”), was the product of the Italian vernacular of the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries. When, for example, Judah discusses the concept of love as a universal or cosmic principle he draws upon, as will be clearer below, a particular vocabulary and set of concepts that only make sense when contextualized within this already existing discourse.36 Despite Abravanel’s embrace of larger Italian literary and aesthetic trends, he also seems to have had an uneasy relationship to the larger culture in which he found himself. This uneasiness does not so much appear in his Italian magnum opus as it does in his moving autobiographical Hebrew poem entitled Telunah ʿal ha-zeman (“A Complaint Against Time”) that he seems to have composed in the year 1503, after he wrote his universalist Dialoghi. In this poem he laments the fate of his first-born son who was kidnapped by his enemies in Portugal and converted to Christianity. He writes, for example:

Barbara Garvin, “The Language of Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’Amore,” Italia 13–15 (2001): 181–210. 35 This brief biographical description relies on my “Judah Abrabanel” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, online at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abrabanel/ index.html#note-4. 36 For a good analysis of where and how Judah’s work fits into the Renaissance genre of the trattato d’amore (“treatise on love”), see John Charles Nelson, Renais- sance Theory of Love: The Context of Giordano Bruno’s Eroici furori (New York, 1958), 67–162. the case of judah messer leon and judah abravanel 261

For you, my son, my heart is thirsting, burning; In you I quell my hunger and my thirst. My splendid skills are yours by right, my knowledge, And the science that has gotten fame for me. Some of it my mentor, my own father bequeathed to me— A scholar’s scholar he. The rest I gained by struggling on my own, subduing wisdom With my bow and sword, plumbing it with my mind. Christian scholars are grasshoppers next to me; I’ve seen their college—they’ve no one who can best me in the duel of words.37 In this poem, Abravanel expresses his complete lack of respect for “Christian scholars” and their universities. The bitterness that he exhibits towards these individuals would certainly seem to belie his Dialoghi, a work designed to show the points of correspondence between Juda- ism and the Renaissance. However, the bitterness of the poem may well manifest itself in the Dialoghi as apologetics, the desire to show to as large an audience as possible that Judaism and the Jewish people are all superior to the best that “Christian scholars” can produce.38 When read on this level, the Dialoghi begins to reveal an apologetical intent, one no less so than what we witness in Judah Messer Leon’s Sefer Nofet Sufim.̣ In a relatively well-known example, Judah Abravanel discusses the “androgyne” in Book Three of the Dialoghi d’Amore. In explaining the origins of Love, Philo recounts Aristophanes’ version of the myth as recounted in Plato’s Symposium. After Sophia insists that there must be great philosophical import to the myth because the great Plato himself composed it, Philo counters with the claim that Plato did not in fact create this myth, but actually stole it from the Bible. He claims: The fable comes from a tradition that was referred by an author more ancient than the Greeks, that is, the sacred history of Moses concerning the creation of the first parents, Adam and Eve.39 Sophia replies that she had “never heard that Moses [had] made this into a fable.” To which Philo retorts:

37 The translation comes from Raymond P. Scheindlin, “Judah Abravanel toHis Son,” Judaism 41 (1992): 198. 38 This is my argument in The Art of Dialogue in Jewish Philosophy (Bloomington, IN, 2008), 132–37. 39 Leone Ebreo, Dialogues of Love, ed. and trans. by Damian Bacich and Rossella Pescatori (Toronto, 2009), 274. 262 aaron w. hughes

He did not tell this as a fable with such specific details, but he declared the substance of the fable in a succinct way; and it was from him that Plato took his fable, amplifying and adorning it after the manner of Greek oratory, thus creating a disordered and confused version of the Hebrew material.40 Here Philo/Abravanel takes us back to a recurring trope in the history of Jewish philosophy, that of the Greek theft of ideas that were originally Hebrew. But note the difference with Messer Leon: Whereas the latter had implied that the relative simplicity of the Bible conformed to Renaissance categories, Abravanel argues that simplicity of the biblical narrative is better than anything that Greeks and, by extension, fifteenth-century Italians, could create. Indeed, Abravanel’s argument is even more apologetical than Messer Leon’s (perhaps because it was written in Italian?). First, he makes the simplicity of the biblical narrative conform to “foreign” categories or aesthetic standards. Then, paradoxically, he holds this reconfigured biblical account up, with its newly invented or imagined categories and standards, and puts it in counterpoint with texts that are now perceived to be “disordered and confused” plagiarisms. Another example occurs in the second dialogue—“On the Univer- sality of Love”—where Philo again explains to Sophia a biblical myth that is “more ancient, learned, and wiser” than that found among the ancients.41 In this passage, Philo uses the biblical myth of creation to spiritualize the Greek myth of Latona’s birth of Apollo and Diana on the Island of Delos, an Island, according to the myth that does not touch the ocean floor. According to Philo: Moses writes that when God was creating the higher, heavenly world and the lower, terrestrial world and breathed his divine spirit upon the waters of the abyss, He produced light. This is what the fable of Latona’s delivery means. She is the heavenly substance with whom Jupiter was in love. He impregnated her with the luminous bodies, mainly the sun and the moon, because Juno resisted.42 In this passage, Abravanel interprets Juno not as the jealous wife who seeks to punish her philandering husband, but as the sphere of the elements in a state of confusion. As in the previous example, he again

40 Ibid., 275. 41 Ibid., 130. 42 Ibid., 130. the case of judah messer leon and judah abravanel 263 tries to show that Greek myth—the raw material that Renaissance thinkers, the so-called “Christian scholars,” use to fashion their own ideas—is derivative of the Hebrew Bible and, by extension, Jews and Judaism. In so doing, Abravanel engages in a clever hermeneutic. He has emphasized the Bible’s conformity with non-Jewish science and then used this reconfiguration of the Bible to re-inform ancient myth. To use the words of Sophia at the end of the passage: I very much like this allegory and its conformity with the creation narrated in the Holy Scripture of Moses and the continuation of the work throughout six consecutive days. It is truly admirable that it is possible to conceal such great and lofty things beneath the veil of Jupiter’s carnal loves.43 In these above examples, Abravanel is quick to point out not only the intersection of the Greek and biblical stories, but the superiority of the latter on account of their antiquity and purity. Near the end of the Dialoghi, Sophia, the female character, asks Philo whether he prefers the Platonic or the Aristotelian account of the origin of Beauty. Philo responds: Because I follow Moses on theological wisdom, I feel closer to the [Pla- tonic] theory, for it is truly Mosaic theology. Plato, because he had greater notions of this ancient wisdom than Aristotle, followed it. Aristotle, who penetrated less deeply into abstract things, and unlike Plato did not have the testimony of our ancient theologians, denied that hidden territory, which he could not see . . . Because Plato learned from the ancients in Egypt, he could sense further [than Aristotle] even if he was not able to see the hidden principle of supreme wisdom or first beauty . . . Although Plato was for so many years Aristotle’s teacher, he learned from better teachers than Aristotle, because Plato studied with our ancient fathers.44 Whereas the previous two examples had implied that the elaborate Greek myths existed in a more refined and subtle manner in the biblical narrative, the present example makes explicit that the biblical text is the actual origin of Greek ideas. Reproducing the well-known trope that Plato studied with the prophets of ancient Israel,45 Philo here argues that Plato’s teaching, which tends to coincide more closely with biblical teaching, does so because Plato actually learned it from

43 Ibid., 131. 44 Ibid., 325 (my italics). 45 The classic study of this trope may be found in Norman Roth “The ‘Theftof Philosophy’ by the Greeks from the Jews,” Classical Folio 32 (1978): 52–67. 264 aaron w. hughes the Jews. It is not the case that the Platonic account of Beauty closely resembles the biblical one. On the contrary, as Sophia herself remarks in response to Philo’s argument: “the Platonic is the Mosaic.”46 Whereas Judah Messer Leon had argued that the Bible, when read properly, bests any non-Jewish work of rhetoric, Judah Abravanel uncovers a full-blown “Mosaic theology” in the Bible. This theology, in many ways indistinct from that produced by the likes of his non- Jewish contemporaries, differs only in terms of its grounding in Jewish sources and that it is the birthright of Jews. The only reason that non- Jews have it is because they copied from them.

Translation and the Theft of Hebraic Ideas

Translation, as witnessed above, was fundamentally apologetical. Embedded in the transfer of meaning from one language to another— the movement across the horizon of one cultural field to the plain of another—is change. Whether because the old language is ostensibly “dead” or because of a perceived sense of inferiority there exists the often implicit realization that one must adopt and adapt to the ostensible attainments of new cultural parameters. One must convince both one’s coreligionists and those who are not that one’s own tradition possesses all the intellectual richness and aesthetic elegance of the host, at least when properly calibrated. However this calibration is not as obvious as first appears. Certainly on one level it permitted Jews to argue that all of the intellectual and literary innovations associated with ancient Greece, Muslim Spain, the Renaissance or the Weimar Republic were essentially a series of thefts from Hebraic-Biblical culture.47 This is grounded in the minority need for legitimation—especially in terms of its cultural productions, its worldview, its way of life—in the face of the cultural and aesthetic achievements of a majority. Yet in making this statement I do not want to fall into the trap of ascribing essential features to Judaism and/or the various larger cultures with which it intersected. Indeed,

46 Ebreo, Dialoghi d’Amore, 326. 47 See my “A Case of Twelfth-Century Plagiarism: Abraham ibn Ezra’s Hay ben Meqitz and Avicenna’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan,” Journal of Jewish Studies 55, 2 (2004): 306–31. the case of judah messer leon and judah abravanel 265 perhaps it was these intersections, indeed fluidity, between Jewish and non-Jewish cultures that permitted such easy exchange. It is in the accusations of Gentile theft that the production of Jewish and Hebraic translative activity begins to appear. By claiming that the Jews were, at some originary and mythic point in the distant past, in full possession of all wisdom owing to God’s perfection and the gift of the Torah is not only a sign of religio-ethnic pride, but also permits the “re-absorption” of this wisdom back into Judaism. If science or rhetoric was part of every Jew’s birthright—even if long forgotten— this nonetheless still justified active participation in these activities. The trope of theft became an important literary site where various Jew- ish identities could be both performed and contested. The accusation that Gentiles stole from Jews however was not simply a passive response to a perceived aesthetic and scientific imbal- ance. Rather this charge facilitated the active participation of Jews in these activities. If it could be argued that science, rhetoric or aesthetics represented autochthonous expressions that originally sprouted on Jewish soil then they could with minor conceptual and terminological difficulties be grafted back into this now barren soil and subsequently cultivated. Of central concern in this process was the re-translation of these sciences into more familiar (i.e., Jewish or Hebraic) idioms. The semantic field onto which they had to be grafted was the biblical narrative that now became the uniquely Jewish possession to rival all claims to superiority put forth by other cultures or groups. Translation played a formative role in this activity by both articulat- ing and facilitating counterpoints between what was Jewish and what was not and between what the Torah literally said and how it was to be read or interpreted. This translative activity was ultimately responsible for taking the antiquity of the received text and, while making it new, simultaneously retaining its hoary antiquity. The paradox however was that this antiquity was always conceived of along modern lines. These constructions maintained the familiar themes of the past in the strangely familiar cadences and rhythms of the present.

Conclusions

Translation, broadly conceived, is an understudied process in the study of Jewish philosophy. Certainly there is a general and widespread recognition of its ability to absorb and domesticate the ideas of everyone 266 aaron w. hughes from Aristotle to Kant. Historically, in other words, we know quite a lot about translation. Yet relatively little work has been devoted to the meta-historical processes, the imaginaire, that made such processes possible. Why translate? What motivations—whether historical or philosophical—make this possible? The translative act is what signals Judaism’s originary encounter with non-Jewish ideas. It defines Judaism as it opens it up; creates boundaries precisely as it dismantles them. Certainly translation is about finding old words or coining new ones to make up for the lacunae brought about by the encounter with the strange and the foreign. Yet, just as importantly if not more so, translation refits and recalibrates Judaism’s conceptual apparatus to absorb the new on the level of ideas. The result is nothing short of the redefinition or invention, the constant and continuous redefinition or invention, of Judaism. The new becomes old and the old new. INDEX

‘Aqedah 76–77, 79, 81, 83–84, 85–100, Alumbradismo 151, 209 107, 140–141, 143, 210 Ambrose 102 Amos 226 1391 41–43, 45, 47, 49–51, 53, 55, Amsterdam 217–219, 243 57–59, 75 114, 133–134, 140, 151, Ancona 253 177–180 Andreatta, Michela 204, 207 Angels 95–97n, 130n, 135, 229 Abarbanel, Samuel 75–76 Angelic youth 121 Abel 41, 44–48, 50–52, 54–55, 57–59 Rebel (fallen) angels 46, 47, 53, 59 Abner of Burgos 102, 110, 178–179, Anti-Judaism 163 187n, 194 Anti-rationalism 76n Abraham 78–100, 107 Anti-Semitism 21n, 57 Abravanel (Abarbanel), Isaac 52, Apostles 157, 167, 183, 196 75–100, 259–260 Apprehension 86–87, 89–90, 94 Abravanel, Judah 245, 47, 249, Intellectual 120 251–255, 257, 259–265 Aquinas, Thomas of 159, 162–163n, Acts 155–156, 175, 183–184, 188–190, 167, 170–171, 193–194n 196 Aragon 28, 61, 140, 177, 259 Adam of St Victor 51 Intellectual elite 28 Adam 41, 51, 59, 67–68, 77–78, 261 Arama, Isaac 121, 139–147 Additiones 156, 167–168, 178, 180, Arama, Meir 140 182, 185–186, 188, 190, 193, 194, 197 Arias de Encinas 44 Adonay 228–229, 239, 240 Arie, Yehuda (da Fano) 62 Aggadah 16–17, 19, 25n, 29, 38, 42, Family of 63 47, 49 Aristophanes 261 Aggadat Shir ha-Shirim 121 Aristotle 167, 193–194, 252–253, 263, Akiva 143 266 Al-Andalus 119, 127, 129 Causes 142 Poets 145 Theology 167 Albo, Don Baruch 63 Aristotelianism 249, 252, 259 Albo, Yosef 63 Ark of the Covenant 71, 138 Alborayque 56n Arragel, Moses 44, 168, 240 Alemanno, Yohannan 253n, 258 Ashkenaz 118n, 125n Alfaqui 28 Ashkenazi 49, 131, 212, 225 Alfonso de Valladolid 102 (see Abner), Assyrians 113 178–179, 187n, 194 Asuncão Dogo de 211 Aljamiado 23, 28–29, 33n, 40 Athens 79 Allegory 120–121, 123–124, 131, 137, Attack, assault 41, 52, 55–56, 76, 91, 139 96–97, 101, 104, 177 Allegorical narrative 125n Augustine 171, 173, 181, Christological 36 186n–187–193, 197 Of soul and intellect 120 Augustinian theology 51n, 170, 194 Historical 129, 145–147 Avignon 178 Of church and synagogue 21 Avishag 129 Alonso de Cartagena 152, 154, Azevedo Mea, Elvira Cunha 215 156–159, 161, 166, 171–174, 176, 180 al-Thaʿlabī’ 26, 28 Babel (tower of ) 59 Altortos, Joseph Ben Samuel 63 Babylonia 37, 122, 124 268 index

Babylonians 37, 169 Saint Louis Bible 44, 46, 55 Balkans 236 Salonica Bible 243 Bandarra, Gonçalo Eanes 205–206 Sauvigny Bible 67 Barletta 259 Sephardic Bible 61, 65, 70, 71, 72 Baroque 204–206, 208–210, 214, 219 Stories 15 Bashan 128 Ulrich Schreiler 68 Basto, Barros 201 Urbino Bible 72 Bataillon, Marcel 151 Utrecht Bible 68 Batsheva 129 Wenceslas Bible 68 Baxandall, Michael 57 Bildad 107, 111 Bayonne 218 Bilhah 25n Beiras 201, 220 Blood libel 52 Belgrade 231, 243 Bologna 253 Belle Lettres 20, 25, 249, 25 Bonfil, Robert 209, 248n, 249n Spanish 15 Books Ben Asher 62 Hebrew 218n Ben Dosa, Halafta 226 Jewish 65 Ben Judah, David 259 Manufacture of 64, 66 Ben Naftali 62 Books of Hours 212 Ben Nahmani, Samuel 113 Bordeaux 218 Benedict XIII 178 Brotherhoods 207, 209, 211–213, 219 Benedict of Parma 253n Buber, Martin 257 Berakhot 25n, 98n, 104n, 108n Burgos 154, 178, 181, 193, 195–196 Bereshit Rabbah 81n, 109n Diego de 164 Bernard de Clairvaux 119, 126 Pablo de 155, 157 Bestiaries 56 See also Abner of Burgos Bible 14–15, 25, 42–48, 70, 154–156, Burning bush 94–95 164–167, 173, 181, 192–193, 223, Buschhausen, Helmut 51 227–228, 237, 239–243, 245–248, 250, 252, 254–257 Cain 41, 44–48, 51–56, 58–59 Arragel (or Alba) Bible 41, 43–49, Calatayud 140 53, 55–58, 168, 224, 228, 231, 240 Caltrava, Order of 43, 168 Arundel Bible 67, 280 Cambridge 69 Christian 69, 72, 142 Canaan 227 Commentaries 170, 185 Caananites 80 Corbie Bible 67 Camoes, Luis de 37 Davies Bible 243 Cano de Aranda 66 Enrique-Arias Bible 243 Cansino, Jacob 219 Evert van Soundenbalch 69, 282, 283 Cantiga 205 Ferrara Bible 230, 231, 238, 241, 243 Capitulis 69 Genoa Bible 63, 66 Carrillo (Archbishop) 66 Gothic Bible 67 Carmel 128 Hebrew 14, 16, 49, 62, 72, 131, 147, Cartagena 178, 196n 168, 185, 187, 192 Carvajal, Miguel de 33, 35, 37–38, 40n Imola Bible 63, 66, 68, 69, 71, 272, Castile 44, 61, 63, 70, 71, 139–140, 273, 274, 279, 281, 284 177–179 Jeselsohn Bible 277, 278 Illuminations 63, 272–274, 279, 282, Latin Bible 65 284 Literal interpretation 164, 174 Intellectual elite 28 Morgan Picture Bible 46, 47 Jewish elites 251 Neapolitan Bible 68 Catalonia Parma (Palatina) Bible 63, 66, 275, Askenazi Jews 49 276 Elegiac tradition 29 Pontigny Bible 67 Haggadot 47, 49, 58 Romanesque Bible 66, 67 Miniatures 65 index 269

Catherine of Lancaster 54 Conversos 33–37, 49, 54, 56n-58, 83, Catholic truth 182 151–155, 157–165, 168–177, 180–181, Católica Impugnación 154, 165, 195, 198, 201–203, 205–209, 215, 217, 174n-175n 221, 238, 260 Cejador, Julio 202 Coplas de Yosef 13, 18–19, 21–22, Chaldeans 132, 166 38–40 Chansons de geste 203 Corinthians 102, 160, 171, 174 Christ 36–37, 132, 153, 156–162, Cota, Alfonso 181 164–166, 174–175, 183, 185, 186 Counter-Reformation 204–206, Body of 160 209–211, 214, 220 Passion of 158 Coutinho de Vila Flor, Leonor 218 Christian Creation 41, 59, 67–68, 87, 106, Art 43, 50, 57, 68, 70, 72 108–110, 262–263 Authors 15 Crucifixion 52, 158 Interpretations 117, 123, 127, 168 Crypto-Jews 161, 201, 203, 203n, 205, Literature 21, 58 210, 214n, 216, 218 Polemical writings 50, 52–53, 56, Liturgy of 206, 212, 216 181, 194n Prayers of 207, 208, 210, 211, 212, Weeping 21n 214n Christian Hebraism 167 Crypto-Muslims 29 Christianity 32, 103, 108n, 112, 125, Cuenca 152 140, 153, 156, 159–161, 163–164, 166, Cyrus 122, 124 170, 175, 192, 194, 197 Christian-Jewishness 163, 176 Damascus 155 Christology 36, 58, 110, 132, 154, 156, Ananias de 156 169–171 David 127–129, 138–139, 169, 206 Chronicles 70–71 De Aguiar, Antonio 218 Church 111, 114, 117, 132–133, 147, De Barrientos, Lope 152 157, 159–162, 164–165, 173–174, 177, De Costa Fontes, Manuel 202, 220 188, 196, 196n, 197, 210 De la Cruz, Juan 205 Church and Synagogue 21 De Luna, Álvaro 180 Church Fathers 181 De Luna, Pedro 178 Cicero 256, 257 Debate 175 Circumcision 77–78, 82–84, 100, 172–173 Exegetical 25, 48–49 Clement of Rome 102 Jewish-Christian 112, 119–120, 131, Epistle To Corinthians 102, 102n 133, 140, 147, 179 Clément, Michele 206, 210 Defensorium Unitatis Christianae Coimbra 211 154–155, 160, 163, 171 Commandements 77, 81, 86–89, 91, Derrida, Jacques 246 93, 98–100, 105, 111, 123–124, 133, Deuteronomy 84, 88, 93, 94, 98, 107, 143, 187, 223 142, 172, 186, 195, 226, 227 Commentaries 14, 17, 44, 48, 51, 53, 89, Devequt 212 95, 101, 119–120, 124–126, 167, 209, 253 Devotion 19, 98, 100, 204, 216 Hebrew 117 Intellectual 87 Islamic 17 Dialoghi dʾamore 259–260, 261, 263 Judeo-Arabic 126, 130 Dialogus contra Iudaeos 194 Complaint against time 260 Diaspora 118, 139, 220, 223 Condotte 249 Sephardic 20, 216 Confessions 158, 188–191 Díaz, Fernando de Toledo 157 Constantinople 224, 239, 241, 243 Dishan 128 Pentateuch 241 Disputations 69, 112, 140 Controversy Dordrecht, Synod of 212 Maimonidean 75, 75n Drash 147 Conversion 49–50, 58, 75, 102, 125, Dreams 23, 25, 40, 47, 51, 59, 97, 114 131, 133, 140, 155–159, 177–194 Duran, Augustin 202 270 index

Ebionite 165, 174–175 Farissol, Abraham ben Mordechai 164 Ecclesiastes 86, 223 250, 251 Ecija 177 Farque, Isac 218 Edom 122, 128 Federico da Montefeltro 71 Egas Cueman 45n Ferdinand II of Aragon 254, 259 Egypt 16–18, 22, 25, 26n, 27n, 31, 75, Fernández de Córdoba 259 81, 118, 122–124, 130, 135, 142, 223, Ferrara 15, 72, 223, 230, 238–239, 241, 227, 230–231, 250, 263 243 Egyptians 37, 53, 166 Bible 224, 230, 231, 239, 241, 243 Elihu 114 Mahzor 224, 238, 243 Eliphaz 103, 106, 109, 111, 115 Miniatures 70 Elohim 84, 229, 239–240 School of 70 England 49, 241 Ferrer, Vincente 54, 140, 152 Enrique III 177 Figura 19, 36 Ephrat 16, 22, 22n Christ 37–38, 48 Epistles (Saint Paul) 151, 162, 188–190 Marian 36 Erasmus of Rotterdam 151, 162 Paulinian 167, 188–189 Esau 53 Filius dolorosus 36 Espina, Alonso de 161, 163, 175 Firenze 243 Esther 257 Foreign wisdom 80, 247 Eucharist 36, 160 Fortalitium Fidei 161 Eve 41, 47, 51, 59, 67, 68, 261 Fraga 140 Even Boḥan 102, 105, 108–112, 114 France 44, 50, 123, 218 Exegesis 91, 101, 119, 121, 123–124, Expulsion from 132–133 130–131, 147n, 151, 155, 187n, Jewish communities 125 190–192, 196, 198 Franco, Daniel 218 Allegorical 117 Franco-Mata, Ángela 42, 47, 54 Aramaic 99 Fredriksen, Paula 190 Ashkenazi 125n, 131 Augustinian 186–188, 191 Galatians 155, 167, 183 Biblical 76, 77, 154, 172, 185, 193 Garden 128, 131, 135 Christian 102, 105, 108–109, 117, Gazelle 121, 124, 138 126, 127, 185, 194, 197n Gazing 94, 128, 245, 248 Christological 154, 156 Gemara 250 Dominican 154 Genesis 13–14, 16–17, 25n, 43, 46, Exiles 18, 37 66–67, 72, 76, 88, 97n-99, 107, Hyeronimite 154 190–191, 193n-194n, 227, 257, 277 Jewish 15, 16, 102, 105, 117, 131, Rabbah 48, 52 180 Genoa 63, 66, 259 Karaite 126n Genot, Jacqueline 221 Maimonidean 83 Gentiles, gentilhood 69–70, 83–4, 158, Principles 167 160, 162, 164–166, 171, 173, 265 Rabbinical 239 Gersonides 101, 111n, 120, 146n, 147n, Traditional 15 253, 258 Exodus 43, 46, 95n, 117–118, 124, 126, Giordano, Maria Laura 153 130, 223, 226–227 Gitlitz, David 215 Expulsion Glosses 47, 129, 178–180, 182, 196 From England 49 Exegetical 15 From France 132 Hebrew 15 From Spain 52, 61–62, 65, 139, 211, Messianic 125n 223, 237, 254, 259 God 16–19, 41, 45, 47–48, 59, 72, Ezekiel 83n, 109, 123, 172, 174, 227 86–93, 95, 98–101, 105, 108, 110–111, 114–115, 124, 126, 129, 133, 137–138, Fano, Solomon 63 142–143, 160, 169, 184–186, 191–192, Fano, Yehuda Arié 62 195, 197, 227, 247, 265 index 271

And the Jews 83–84, 93, 118, 121 Crypto-Jewish 161 As creator 81, 109 Sabbatean 218 As judge 103 Herod 21 Character of 92 Hezekiah 143 Eternity of 114 Hieronymite Order 161–165, 173–174 Eyes of 130n Historia de Josep 29 Fear of 77, 91, 93–96 Hobsbawm, Eric 201 Gazing at 94, 157 Holy land 88, 145 Grace of 184, 192, 196 Holy Spirit 109, 143, 254 Image of 49, 72, 91 Homem, Antonio 211 Incarnation 102, 108 Homilies 118 Intellectual apprehension of 80, 85, Honeycom Flow (The) 253, 254 94, 120 Horas de Nossa Sehora 212 Intimacy with 125 Horeb (Mount) 247n Justice 104, 112 Hosea 169 Knowledge of 105–107, 114 Hyenas 56 Love of 85–87, 94, 96, 119–120, 187 Names of 236 Iberian humanism 153 Will 92, 95, 99 Ibero-Romance 16, 19n, 21, 38 Gog and Magog 136, 138–139 Ibn Aqnin, Joseph 130, 131 Golden Age 20n, 33n, 119 Ibn Ezra, Abraham 25n, 82n, 101–102, Golden Calf 53, 59, 81 110n, 113, 119, 129–131, 134, 136, 145 Gomez, Fernando 218 Ibn Kaspi, Joseph 97n González de Guzmán, Luis 43–44, 46, Ibn Musa, Hayim 146, 147 168, 240 Ibn Shaprut, Shem Tov ibn Isaac Gospel 21, 162, 183 102–105, 107–115 Books 67 Ibn Shueib, Joshua 121, 134–138, Gothic 42, 64, 66–69 146–147 Grammar 250 Ibn Tibbon, Moses 120 Arabic 119 Ibn Tibbon, Samuel 79n, 90, 93, 95n Hebrew 119, 129 Ibn-Gabirol, Solomon 127, 131 Ladino 241 Iconography 41–42, 45, 47–48, 50, 55, Greece 236, 264 68, 71 Greek ideas 80, 262–263 Idolatry 82, 99, 138, 169, 213, 217 Greeks 166, 250, 261, 262 Ildefonso (San) 53–54 Guide of the Perplexed 75–76, 79, 85, Image (demut) 109 87–89, 93–95, 99–100, 120, 143 Immanuel of Rome 120 Imola 62–63, 66, 68–72, 272–274, 279, Haftara 223 281, 284 Hagar 78, 128 Incipits 64 Haggadah 223–227, 231, 237, Indian Jews 219 241–243 Inquisition 38, 85, 152, 161, 165, 181, Ḥ akham kolel 249, 254 202–203, 211–213, 215, 217–218, 220 Ha-Levi, Abraham ben Isaac 121, Intellect 79, 84–87, 92, 94, 120 137–139, 143–144, 146–147 Acquired 81 Halevi, Solomon 155, 157, 178, 195 Agent 119, 130n, 147n See also Pablo de Santa Maria Divine 90 Halorki, Joshua 156 Practical 78 Ham 53 Theoretical 78 Hanania 226 Invasão dos Judeos 206 Haram 224 Isaac 59, 78, 80, 82–84, 98, 100 210 Hazut Qadesh 140 Binding of 76, 81, 94n Hebrews 165, 168 Sacrificing of 59, 88, 98, 210 Heli 56 Isabel of Castile 154, 165, 259 Heresy 97, 127, 152, 161, 164 Isaiah 110, 113n, 134, 168, 171, 226, 258 272 index

Ishmael 78, 100 Juan I of Castile 177 Ishmaelites 17, 128 Juan II of Castile 178 Isidore 53 Juda 51 Israel 19n, 77, 80–81, 83–85, 90, 113, Judaic Translation 248 117, 119, 121–126, 128–132, 134–139, Judaizers 164, 173, 205n, 208, 214, 219 142–146, 157, 162, 169–172, 175, 186, Judaizing 155, 163–164, 181n, 217–218 213–214, 226, 227, 255, 263 Judea 139 Land of 85n, 136, 139 Judeo-Christian 153, 164, 165, 168 Old and New 187–188 Relations 42, 58 Israelite(s) 36, 53, 59, 107, 159, 168, Judeo-Spanish 20, 138, 223, 229, 231, 171–172, 225, 227 233, 235, 237–238 Italian aesthetic trends 260, 262 Judges 278 Italian Jewry 209, 249n Juno 262 Italy 61–63, 69–71, 76n, 205, 207, Jupiter 262–263 213–216, 218n, 231, 236, 241, 245, 249–254, 258 Kaʿb al-Ahbar 26n Kabbalah 141, 209, 215–216, 250–252, Jacob 23–14, 16–18, 20, 24n, 25, 30, 259 53, 59, 227 Kabbalistic Views 85, 251n James 168 Kabbalists 120 Jeremiah 17, 19, 20, 81 Kaplan, Yosef 217 Jericho 168 Kimhi, Isaac ben David 63 Jerónimo de Santa Fe 156 Kings 56, 78, 113, 257 Jerusalem 20, 37, 79, 126, 130, 139, 243 Klepper, Deeana 168, 178 Jeselsohn collection 63, 277–278 Knowledge 82, 87, 94–95, 103, Jesuits 151, 208, 212 105–110, 112, 114, 144, 147, 157 Jesus 102–103, 108–109, 117, 126–127, Kogman Appel, Katrin 47 132, 147, 153, 157, 159, 164–166, Kreisel, Howard 93 168–170, 187, 210 Kushan 128 Jewishness of 166 Jewish La Coruña 63, 277–278 Artistic tradition 49 La leyenda de Yusuf 28n Bestiality 57 Laban 225, 227, 230 Blindness 182, 183 Ladino 223, 225, 230, 231n, 236–237, Cannibalism 57 239, 241–243 Sodomy 57 Lamech 59 Sources 13, 33, 47, 185 Lamentations 223 Superiority 250, 256 Latona 262 Joachim of Fiore 159 Lauda 205 Joachinism 159 Lawee, Eric 3n, 76, 80n, 95n Job 101–108, 109n, 110–115, 166 Leah 21n, 24n, 25 John 156, 160, 171 Leghorn 218–219, 243 John of Valencia 43, 54 Leone Hebreo 245 See also Messer Jokshan 128 Leon, Judah Joseph 19, 22–23, 25, 26n, 28, 32n, 36, Leon, Luis de 37 37, 53, 59 Letrado 153, 168 Lament (weeping) 16, 18–19, 21, 27, Levites 53, 157, 195, 247n 29–30, 32–33, 36–38, 40n Llamedo González, Juan José 172 Tunic 13, 14, 15 Logrosan, Diego de 164 See also Story 13, 16, 17, 19n, 20, 25, 28, 32, Burgos, Diego 35, 38 Love 21, 90, 93–95 Joshua 168 Of God 85–87, 89, 93, 96, 107 Josiah (King) 71 Human 117, 119 Journey 26, 79, 89, 91, 168, 191, 215 Loyola, Ignacio de 152, 208 index 273

Luke 162 Micrography 64, 65 Lumen ad revelationem gentium 154, Midrash 13, 15n, 18–19, 25n, 37, 49, 161–163, 173 118, 125, 130–131, 147, 179 Anthology 16 Mac Gaha, Michael 32 Figura 19 Madrid 218 Interpretation 146 Magen ve-Romah 146 Jewish 185 Maḥzorim 223, 224, 230, 237 Lament 21 Maimonides, Moses 75–100, 105, 107, Motifs 13, 16, 22, 27, 29–30, 40n, 109, 119–120, 140, 143, 185 50, 81 Interpreters 97 Scholarship 48 Prophecy 96 Sources 19, 33 Thirteen principles 94n Tales 22, 33 Malachi 226 Mishnaic Hebrew 241 Málaga 219 Mishneh Torah 86–87, 120 Mamre 59, 97n Mishpatim 88, 89, 101–102, 111 Manna 59, 107 Mitzvah/ot 86, 88, 91, 93, 99 Mantua 207, 209, 219 Moisés Orfali 163 Maravedí 54 Molho, Solomon 215 See also Diogo Marcion 173 Pires Marranos 83, 201–221 Moneylenders 249 Marthiya 20 Monotheism 99 Martin Luther 180 Montecchio Maggiore 253 Martinez, Ferrant 177 Moralejo, Serafin 55 Mashal 109n, 110, 144 Moreh edek 179 Mass conversion 50, 58, 133, 158, 177, Moriah (Mount) 89, 135 179, 203 Moriscos 28–29, 38 Mater dolorosa 31, 38 Moroccan Jews 218 Matter 130n Mosaic Law 164, 165, 166, 170 Matthew 21, 168, 170–171 Mosaic theology 263–264 Mediterranean 209, 213, 249 Moses of León 47 Megillot 141, 209, 223 Moses 46–49, 57–58, 94–95, 122, 124, Meir of Narbonne 144 185, 187, 247n, 261–263 Mendez Chavez, Luis 219 Mosque 42 Menendez, Pelayo 203 Mostrador de justicia 179, 194 Menendez, Pidal 203 Mudejar 28, 62 Mesopotamia 224 Muslim Messer Leon, Judah 245, 249–262, 264 Authors 15 See also Leone Hebreo Lands 126 Messiah 102–103, 109, 113–114, 119, Sources 19n, 33 121–134, 136, 138, 142–143, 147, 156, Spain 38 187 Mystical body 159, 160–161, 166, 175 Pseudo-messiah 133 Mysticism, Lurianic 213, 220 Messianic 52, 71, 117–118, 120n-127, 129–131, 133–136, 138–139, 144–147, Naḥmanides 14, 101 169, 205, 213, 215, 221 Naples 62, 140, 253, 254, 259 Consolation 145 Narbonne 124 Figures 120 Meir of 144 Ideas 221 Navarre 134 Interpretation of scriptures 133, Nefesh 105, 108, 109 136, 144 Nehemia (son of Ushiel) 130 Language 127n Neophytes 162 Michael (archangel) 59 Netanyahu, Benjamin 83 Michaelis, Carolina 202 Netherlands 241 274 index

New Christians 37, 153, 173, 175, 179, Pharaoh 46–47, 59, 142, 224, 226 201, 202, 206n, 208, 212, 215, 217–220 Philippians 185 New Testament 53, 164–165, 170, 174, Philo 261, 262, 263, 264 188–189, 192, 196 Philosophy 92, 140 Nicholas of Lyra 44, 50, 52–53, Greco-Arabic 75 131–132, 147, 156, 159, 166–168, 170, Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 253n, 173, 178–180, 196, 247 259 Postilla 44, 50, 131, 156, 168, 178n, Pires, Diogo 215 See also Molho, 182n Solomon Nicholas of Verdun 51 Pirke Avot 223–224, 226, 237–238, Nigleh 137 241–242 Nirenberg, David 57, 158 Pisan 46 Nistar 137 Pizmon 209 Noah 59, 78 Piyyutim 129n, 209 Nofet Sofim 253–254, 257–258, 260 Plague 47, 59 Non-judaic translation 248 Planctus 25, 28n, 30, 36 Nordstrom, Carl 47 Planh 20 Nunes, Brites 213 Plany 20 Plasencia 196 Ocker, Christopher 176 Plato 261, 263 Old Christians 152, 154, 157, 165, 174, Platonism 259 202 Poema de Yucuf 19, 22, 26, 27, 29, 38 Old Spanish 13, 15, 18n, 20, 21, 29, 31n Poetry Old Testament 37, 42, 44, 46, 48, 55, Liturgical 118, 219 58, 119, 165, 167, 174, 185–192, 195 Religious 204, 205, 210 Opusculum de conversion sua 194 Secular 129, 129n Origen 117, 123 Sephardic 206 Oropesa, Alonso de 154–155, 161–166, Polemical writings 147, 179, 181 173–176, 181–182 Anti-Christian 122, 140, 140, 144n, Ottoman Empire 217, 231, 241 146 Anti-Jewish 131, 133, 187n, 190, Padua 253 192, 194 Pagis, Dan 210 Polemics Papal Curia 160 Over philosophy 249 Paradise 59 Portugal 201, 205n, 216, 217, 219, 269 Parma (Palatina Library) 63 Post-exilic translations 232–236, Passover 71, 117–118, 133, 223, 226 238–241 Patronage 41, 43, 61n, 70, 71, 72 Prado-Vilar, Francisco 55 Patton, Pamela 51 Pranto 20 Paulinism 151–154, 168, 176, 188, 190, Pre-exilic translations 232–241 192 Prophecy 85, 96, 97n, 109, 138, 164, Paulo, Amilcar 201 190, 195, 257 Pedro Tenorio 43, 46, 49 Protestants 212 Pedrosa, Jose Manuel 202, 220 Providence 84, 104 Pentateuch 43, 52, 62, 209, 223, 239, Psalms 174, 186, 195, 205n, 206, 209, 241 215, 223, 226 Pentecost 223 Psalter 204, 205, 207 Perfection Pseudo-Saadia 127 Maimonidean 92 Purity of blood 151, 181 Persecutions 110, 112 Peshat 123–124, 131, 144, 146, 147 Qimḥi, David 14, 25n, 63, 82, 104n, 113n Pesikta de Rav Kahana 118, 121 Qisāṣ ̣ al-anbyiāʾ 19n, 26–28 Pesikta Rabbati 121 Quinah 20, 38 Petrus Alfonsi 50, 187n, 194 Quintilian 256, 257 Petrus Comestor 50 Qurʾan 24, 24n index 275

Rabbinic Saint Paul 151, 153, 155 157, 159, 163, Literature 118 165, 167, 169, 171, 173, 178, 183–184, Sources 18 188–191, 194, 197 Tradition 192 Saint Peter 46, 174 Writings 130 Salerno 45 Rachel 22, 24, 24n, 25n, 26n, 30, 36 Salomon, Herman Prins 202 Dream 22 Salonica 218, 224, 231, 239, 241–243 Tomb of 16, 16n, 21, 22, 26n, 27, Salvation 162, 169 37, 40n Samuel 57, 128 Weeping 17, 18, 19, 37 San Martin de Fromista 55 Ramah 17 Sanchez de Sevilla, Juan 76 See also Rape 55, 56 Abarbanel, Samuel Rashbam 124, 125, 126, 145 Sanhedrin 224–226 Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki) 25n, Santa Maria Family 152 50, 101, 110, 119, 123–126, 132, 145, Santa Maria de Husillo 55 185, 193 Santa Maria, Pablo de 154–158, 161, Rationalism 93 166–170, 176, 178, 180–188, 190–198 Raymond Marti 53 See also Solomon Halevi Reason 90, 92, 93 Sarah 78 Rebecca 59 Sarmiento, Pero 181 Red Sea 59 Sassoon collection 63 Redemption 118, 131, 136, 137 Satan 103, 104, 166 Divine 117 Saul of Tarsus 155, 178 National 113, 119 Saul 57 Rehab 168 Savonarola, Gerolamo 205 Renaissance 205–206, 210 245–246, Scheindlin, Raymond 128 249–254, 256, 260–261, 264 Scholastics 140 Hebrew 64 Schwarz, Samuel 201, 204, 207, 209, Rhetoric 255, 257 213, 220 Reubeni, David 215 Scriptures Revah, Israel Salvador 204 Christian 195 Reyes Nuevos 54 Hebrew 195 Riera i Sans, Jaume 202, 220 Holy 182, 255, 258 Riots 114, 151, 177 Latin 185 Ripoll Monastery 67 Scrutinium Scripturarum 154, 156, Rodrigues de Vilaflor, Violante 215 158, 167, 178, 179, 197 Roic de Corella 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, Sefer ha-Yashar 16, 22, 33n, 40n 40n Sefer ha-Zohar 47, 52 Romance vernacular 28 Sefer Neʾasot 110 Romans 166 Sefer Teshuba 224, 238 Romans 157–159, 165, 167, 169, 170, Sefer Zerubbavel 130 172, 174, 189 Sefirot 120 Rome 259n Self-knowledge 106, 114 Rosenstock, Bruce 152 Seliḥa 206 Rosenzweig, Franz 257 Sentencia-Estatuto 181 Roth, Cecil 204 Sephardi 38 Rouen 129 Bibles 61 Septuaginta 168 Saa, Mario 206 Sermons 56, 177 Saadia Gaon 101, 110n, 126, 246, 255 Anti-Jewish 163 Sacrifice(s) 99, 104, 125 By friars 133–134 Sages 108 Seth 59 Sain Jean de Luz 218 Seville 165, 177 Saint Jerome 50, 53n, 102, 168 Shekhinah 120, 120n, 134–135 Saint John Chrysostom 163 Shibbus ̣ Miqra’i 206 276 index

Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah 121, 134, 135 Cathedral 41–43, 45 Shirei Hama‘alot 205 Franciscan monastery 44 Shulamite 130, 139 Jewish communities 41 Sicroff, Alfred 163, 175 Toledo, Abraham 18, 38, 39n, 40n Siddur 223 Torah 79–81, 92, 94n, 99, 100, 108, Siglo de Oro 38 112, 114, 120n, 122–124, 127, 130, Siguenza, José de 162 225, 246–247, 250–251, 253–256, Sinai (Mount) 59, 79–80, 100, 107, 265 126, 247n, 250 Torquemada, Juan de 160–162, Sisebut (King) 171 172–173, 176 Slousch, Naum 201 Tractatus contra Madianitas et Soferim 118n Ismailitas 172 Solomon 129, 143 Tras os Montes 220 Solomon ben Ishmael 70 Trevino de Sobremonte, Tomas 216 Song of Songs 117–134, 136–146, 223 Trial (mishpat) 101, 102 Polemical reading of 147 Trinity 72 Sophia 261, 263 Trivellato, Francesca 218, 219 Soul 120 Tully 257 Human 119 Turkey 236 Spain 29, 33, 38, 42, 51, 70, 72, 139, 153, 158, 165, 205, 218n Uomo universalis 249, 254 Courts 111 Urbino 71, 72 Jewish communities 103, 110–111, Uriah 129 114, 216, 219 Muslim 264 Valencia 133 Spheres 130n Vaz, Antonio 212 St John of the Cross 37 Veneto 253 Stabat Mater 32 Venice 216, 218, 229, 243, 253, 259 Stars Vicenza 253 Fixed 130n Violence Stock, Brian 189 Anti-Jewish 132, 177 Stuczynsky, Claude 216 Virgin Mary 120, 132, 153, 156, 157 Surat Yusuf 24, 24n Jewishness of 166 Symposium 261 Visigothic council 58 Visigoths 171 Tafsīr 25 Visions (marʾeh) 97, 109, 205 Taḥamumin 209 Vulgate 69, 126, 192, 239 Talavera, Hernando de 154–155, 161, 165–166, 174–176 Weich-Shahak, Shoshana 242 Talmud 113, 118, 130, 135, 193, 209 Weimar Republic 264 Targum 101, 118, 121, 123–125, 127, Well-poisoning 132 131, 134, 147, 169 Witness theory 187n, 192, 197 Christological reading 132 Wolf, Ferdinand 202 Onkelos 98 Wolfthal, Diane 55 Tarragona 139 Telunah ʿal ha-zeman 260 Yafet, Sara 124 Temple 18, 20, 56, 62, 70, 98, 99, Yihud 144 123–126 134, 135–136, 138, 143, 255 Yosef ha-Saddiq 19 Second 169 Yugoslavia 236 Teresa de Cartagena 152 Theology 92 Zamora 139 Tiqunim 209, 213 Zion 129, 135, 254 Tirosh-Rotschild, Hava 140 Zonah 168 Titus 162, 173 Zuleikha 26 Toledo 41, 52, 53–55, 151, 180–181 Appendix: Illustrations

appendix: illustrations 279

The First Murder, Fig. 1: late fourteenth-century Choir screen relief in Toledo cathedral depicting the first murder. Published by kind permission of Ángela Franco. 280 appendix: illustrations

The First Murder, Fig. 2: A depiction of the first murder as seen in folio 29v of the Alba Bible, produced near Toledo in the 1420s. Taken with permission from the limited edition facsimile of the Alba Bible, www.facsimile-editions.com/en/ab. appendix: illustrations 281

The First Murder, Fig. 3: A Salerno Ivories panel depicting Cain and Abel wrestling in a fashion akin to that of the Alba Bible. 282 appendix: illustrations

Sephardic Illuminated Bibles, Fig. 1: imola Bible, Castile, mid-fifteenth century,I mola, Municipal Library MS 77, fols. 48v–49. appendix: illustrations 283

Sephardic Illuminated Bibles, Fig. 2: imola Bible, Castile, mid-fifteenth century, Imola, Municipal Library MS 77, fol. 78v. 284 appendix: illustrations

Sephardic Illuminated Bibles, Fig. 3: imola Bible, Castile, mid-fifteenth century,I mola, Municipal Library MS 77, fol. 212v, detail. appendix: illustrations 285

Sephardic Illuminated Bibles, Fig. 4: parma, Palatina Library MS 2018, Castile, 1484, fol. 12v. 286 appendix: illustrations

Sephardic Illuminated Bibles, Fig. 5: parma, Palatina Library MS 1994, Castile, 15th c. fol. 95v. appendix: illustrations 287

Sephardic Illuminated Bibles, Fig. 6: Jeselsohn Bible, Zurich, Jeselsohn Collection MS 5, La Coruña (?), 1477, fol. 9v Genesis. 288 appendix: illustrations

Sephardic Illuminated Bibles, Fig. 7: Jeselsohn Bible, Zurich, Jeselsohn Collection MS 5, La Coruña (?), 1477, fol. 191v. I Judges. appendix: illustrations 289

Sephardic Illuminated Bibles, Fig. 8: imola Bible, Castile, mid-fifteenth century, Imola, Municipal Library MS 77, fol. 13v. 290 appendix: illustrations

Sephardic Illuminated Bibles, Fig. 9: Arundel Bible, London, British Library MS Arundel 250, England, (Norwich?); second quarter of the 13th century, fol. 6v. appendix: illustrations 291

Sephardic Illuminated Bibles, Fig. 10: imola Bible, Castile, mid-fifteenth century, Imola, Municipal Library MS 77, fol. 13v, detail. 292 appendix: illustrations

Sephardic Illuminated Bibles, Fig. 11: History Bible of Evert van Soudenbach, Utrecth, Northern Netherlands, 1460, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek MS 2771, fol. 10. appendix: illustrations 293

Sephardic Illuminated Bibles, Fig. 12: History Bible of Evert van Soudenbach, Utrecht, Northern Netherlands, 1460, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek MS 2771, fol. 10, detail. 294 appendix: illustrations

Sephardic Illuminated Bibles, Fig. 13: imola Bible, Castile, mid-fifteenth century, Imola, Municipal Library MS 77, fols. 337v–338.