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Perspectives on Uriel Da Costa's Example of a Human Life

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Perspectives on Uriel Da Costa's Example of a Human Life STUDIA ROSENTHALIANA 42-43 (2010-2011), 1-23 doi: 10.2143/SR.43.0.2175916 Perspectives on Uriel da Costa’s Example of a Human Life MATT GOLDISH he saga of Uriel da Costa (Oporto 1583/4-Amsterdam 1640) is one T of the best known episodes in Western Sephardic history. A consid- erable literature has been devoted to Da Costa’s biography, his family background, his beliefs, and his relationship with heretical trends among seventeenth-century Amsterdam Jews.1 Here I will not attempt to review the scholarship or present new documents about Da Costa, but to con- sider the Example as an important book in the history of the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish community. It is one of the very few pre-modern Jew- ish autobiographies we possess and is thus deserving of careful attention as a work in itself. The perspectives I will examine are the Example’s signifi- cance as a converso text, as a literary work, and as a document of the early Enlightenment. While the Example may have had limited circulation in manuscript during the seventeenth century,2 it was seen by a great many Jews and Christians after it was published, and it has had a profound effect on our understanding of the community in which it originated. 1. Major editions and studies include: G. Albiac (ed.), Espejo de una vida humana (Madrid 1984); C. Gebhardt, Die Schriften des Uriel da Costa mit Einleitung / Übertragung und Regesten (Amsterdam 1922); K. Müller, Das ‘Exemplar humanae vitae’ des Uriel da Costa (Aarau 1952); J.-P. Osier, D’Uriel da Costa à Spinoza (Paris 1983); O. Proietti, Uriel da Costa e l’‘Exemplar Huma- nae Vitae’ (Macerata 2005); I.S. Révah, Uriel da Costa et les marranes de Porto: cours au Collége de France 1966-1972, edited by C.L. Wilke (Paris 2004); H.P. Salomon and I.S.D. Sassoon, Uriel da Costa, ‘Examination of Pharisaic Traditions’ supplemented by Semuel da Silva’s ‘Treatise on the Immor- tality of the Soul’ (Leiden: 1993); Uriel Acosta: A Specimen of Human Life (n/a) (New York 1967); C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Uriel da Costa: Notas relativas à sua vida e às suas obras (Coimbra 1921). Extensive bibliographies can be found in Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Notas, p. 163-176; Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, p. xix-xxiii; Proietti, Uriel da Costa, p. 249-278. On the struc- ture of Da Costa’s narrative see Osier, D’Uriel da Costa, ch. 3. 2. The clearest evidence of this is the fact that Johannes Müller saw it and discussed it in his 1644 book Judaismus oder Jüdenthumb (cited in Gebhardt, Schriften, p. 202-204). 2 MATT GOLDISH Background Da Costa’s polemical autobiography, Example of a Human Life, written in Latin, was published by the Remonstrant theologian Philip van Lim- borch at Gouda in 1687 as an appendix to Limborch’s record of his disputation with the Jew Isaac Orobio de Castro.3 Limborch explains that in 1640 Da Costa attempted to assassinate a relative of his by whom he felt deeply insulted. Da Costa prepared two pistols: one for the assassination and one to turn upon himself. He missed the relative but immediately committed suicide with the second weapon. In Da Costa’s house, Limborch states, was found the manuscript of the Exam- ple of Human Life. A copy was made for Limborch’s great-uncle, the theologian Simon Episcopius, from whom Limborch received it.4 A contemporary of Da Costa who also saw the autobiography shortly after Da Costa’s death simply reports that Da Costa killed himself out of despair at his rejection by the community and left the manuscript on a nearby table.5 Scholars long debated the authenticity of the Example. The numer- ous documents about Da Costa and his background that have been unearthed since the early twentieth century, however, have essentially confirmed its veracity. While there are still questions about specific wording, particularly in opening passages of the work, it can now be taken as the actual statement of Da Costa.6 Uriel da Costa was born Gabriel da Costa in the city of Porto, Por- tugal, in 1583 or 1584. His family was well known in the circles of those conversos whose had fled the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 only to find themselves forcibly baptized by the Portuguese in 1497. Da Costa, 3. On this disputation see Y. Kaplan, From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro, trans. R. Loewe (Oxford 1989), ch. 10. 4. Gebhardt, Schriften, p. 206; Uriel Acosta, 94 (from John Whiston’s 1740 English transla- tion.) 5. The witness is Johannes Müller, in his Judaismus oder Jüdenthumb (1644), p. 71-72 (cited in Gebhardt, Schriften, 203.) See also Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, p. 23. 6. See, e.g., the statement of Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, p. 1. The following short description of Da Costa’s life is based on the Example with the addition of occasional material from the researches of Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Révah, Salomon, and others. Salomon’s introduction to the Examination, p. 1-24, provides an extremely useful amalgamation of the core story from the Example, Da Costa’s other writings, other contemporary sources, and the most important scholarly discoveries. PERSPECTIVES ON URIEL DA COSTA’S EXAMPLE OF A HUMAN LIFE 3 by way of introduction to his family background, says only that he was a descendant of conversos from a ‘noble family’ – whatever that might mean for a converso – and that his father was ‘truly a Christian’.7 The extraordinary researches of Professor Révah reveal that Da Costa’s family included a number of crypto-Jews who were caught at their Judaizing practices and tried by the Inquisition.8 This suggests that Da Costa may have been raised with a fair amount of education about Judaism about which he says nothing. As the memoir opens, Da Costa tells us, instead, of his youthful devotion to Christianity, his attentive reading of Christian literature, and the earnestness of his faith.9 The wealth and success of his family are attested by his education in the law faculty of Coimbra University.10 At the age of twenty-five Da Costa completed his legal studies and was granted an ecclesiastical benefice as treasurer of the collegiate church. Da Costa’s well ordered and successful life, however, was troubled by doubts about the Christian faith. These had begun to develop when he was around twenty years old, and he tells us that they centred on his diffi- culty with the doctrines of eternal damnation on the one hand, and the ability of men to avoid damnation through confession and absolution on the other. The reader armed with knowledge of Da Costa’s family and its suffering at the hands of the Inquisition might suspect that these too might have been a factor in his renunciation of the Catholic Church, but it is noteworthy that he does not mention it. Da Costa describes his desire to attach himself to some church, and his consequent decision to read the Old Testament with the under- standing that it contradicted many doctrines of the New Testament. Finding this to indeed be the case, Da Costa determined to become a Jew – as he understood it – and escape Portugal so he could practice Judaism. At the risk of life and limb he communicated his ‘discovery’ of true Judaism to his family and escaped with them to Amsterdam in 1615. (Archival researches have revealed that in Portugal Da Costa 7. ‘Parentes habui ex ordine nobilium, qui à Judæis originem trahebant, ad Christianam rel- ligionem, in illo regno, quondam per vim coactis. Pater meus verè erat Christianus…’ Gebhardt, Schriften, p. 105; Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, p. 556. 8. Révah, Da Costa et les marranes. 9. On the ‘summas confessariorum’ Da Costa says he read as a youth, see the fascinating analysis of Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Notas, p. 22-23. 10. On his education there see Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Notas, p. 13-21, 97-101. 4 MATT GOLDISH was deep in debt as well, which may also have been another important factor in his departure.) In Amsterdam he and the other men of the family were circumcised and they all converted to Judaism. In Amsterdam, Da Costa claims, he first realized that contemporary Judaism is not the literal practice of biblical law, though the Jews claim to follow the Bible. It is rather the religion of powerful but unscrupulous rabbis and their talmudic tradition. Like the Christians, then, Da Costa found that the Jews of his day only paid lip service to the Bible. Out- raged, he decided to challenge the rabbis. In Hamburg, where he had moved in the meanwhile, Da Costa composed Eleven Theses against the tradition (1616.) These he transmitted to the rabbinic court of the Span- ish and Portuguese Jews in Venice. This court commissioned Rabbi Leon Modena to write a response, and meanwhile recommended that the author be excommunicated. He was indeed excommunicated in both Hamburg and Venice, in 1618, and remained in that status for close to fifteen years. It was in this state of separation that Da Costa expanded the Eleven Theses into a book called Examination of Pharisaic Traditions. Before he could publish the Examination, the Hamburg Jewish physician Samuel Da Silva published a refutation of Da Costa’s case. Amazingly, Da Silva had somehow acquired three entire chapters from Da Costa’s unpub- lished manuscript treatise and included them in his book. These chap- ters emphasize Da Costa’s arguments against immortality of the soul, so that is the central object of Da Silva’s attack.
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