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The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 104, No. 2 (Spring 2014) 192-233
I. BACKGROUND
The preparation of this essay has been coterminous with my teaching and
research at three different universities, and has benefited from the sage advice of
individuals too numerous to name here. I am grateful to the Program in Judaic
Studies at Yale University, the Department of Religious Studies at the University
of Oregon, and the Theology Faculty of the University of Greifswald, for provid-
ing stimulating and collégial atmospheres in which to work. In addition, I would
like especially to thank Malachi Beit-Arié, Phillipe Bobichon, Dario Burgaretta,
Giulio Busi, Saverio Campanini, Frank Griffel, Dimitri Gutas, Martin Jacobs,
Fabrizio Lelli, Aharon Maman, Yael Okun, Marina Rustow, Bernard Septimus,
Nadia Zeldes, Irene Zwiep, the staff of the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew
Manuscripts (IMHM) at the National Libraiy of Israel, and the anonymous
reviewers for helpful comments. Finally, it is my pleasure to thank David Ruder-
man on the occasion of his retirement as Katz Center director, for encourage-
ment, helpful advice, and numerous stimulating conversations over the years.
1. Biondo, Italia Illiuitrata, 373v ( Marcus Lippomanus Jureconsultus Grae-
cas, Chaldeas, Hebraeas litteras atque Latinas egregie doctus erat"); Filelfo, Sat-
yrae 1.4, ed. S. Fiaschi (Rome, 2005), 26, 11. 57-59; Contra Iuàaeoj et Gented VI, in
Giannozzo Manetti, Biographical Writings, ed. and trans. S. U. Baldassarri and R.
Bagemihl (Cambridge, Mass., 2003), 156-57; Christoph Dröge, Giannozzo
Manetti ab Denker und Heb raut (Frankfurt aM, 1987), 18-20. On Lippomano, see
Giovanni degli Agostini, Notizie btorico-criticbe intorno la vita, e le opere degli scrittori
viniziani (Venice, 1752- 54), 1:487- 94; Margaret King, Venetian Humanitní in an
Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton, N.J., 1986), 389-90; and Pierre A.
Mackay, "The Patrician from Negropont" (http://angiolello.net/Lippomano.html,
accessed February 12, 2013). King dates Lippomano's birth to approximately
1390; Mackay disputes this and prefers ca. 1380. Lippomano's death can be dated
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LI PPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 193
to between August 17, 1446, the date of his last political appointment (King,
Venetian HiunanLim, 389), and June 19, 1447. That he was dead by the latter date
is revealed in the will of his daughter-in-law (Mackay, "The Patrician"). On the
possible Jewish origins of the Lippomano family, see Mackay, who bases his claim
on the Arbori de'Patritä Veneti (269) of Marco Barbaro (1511-70), and Benjamin
Ravid, "The Jewish Mercantile Settlement of Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century
Venice: Reality or Conjecture?" AJS Review 2 (1977): 213-15. Giulio Busi abso-
lutely rejects claims as to the Lippomano family's Jewish extraction but refers only
to an eighteenth-century source alleging this. See Busi and Campanini, "Marco
Lippomano and Cresças Meir: A Humanistic Dispute in Hebrew," in Una Manna
Buona per Mantova: St uà i in onore ài Vittore Colorili per il duo 92 compleanno , ed. M.
Perani (Florence, 2004), 173, n. 12; Busi, "Marco Lippomano e Cresças Me 'ir: Una
disputa umanistica in ebraico," in ibid., L'enigma dell'ebraico nel Ruicucimento (Turin,
2007), 16, n. 13. The additional material brought forward here suggests that the
issue is not quite as clear-cut as Busi insists, though additions and modifications to
Barbara's compilation after his death somewhat undermine the reliability of this
source. While Jewish roots, were they to be confirmed, might render Lippomano s
turn to Hebrew less surprising, they would in no way detract from his achievement:
any such background would have been sufficiently remote such that Lippomano
would not have inherited any knowledge of Hebrew.
2. See Busi and Campanini, "Lippomano," 169-202; Busi, "Lippomano," 13-
23. The Italian is a slight revision of the original English article; the Hebrew text
of the letters, prepared by Campanini, is only included in the English version.
3. Adolf Neubauer, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library
and in the College Libraries of Oxford (Oxford, 1886), cols. 751-52, no. 2174. See
also Malachi Beit- Arie, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library:
Supplement of Addenda and Corrigenda to vol. I (A. Neubauer's Catalogue) , ed. R. A.
May (Oxford, 1994), 406. Here it is stated that "Cresças Me 'ir is probably the
pupil of Profiat Duran to whom Duran addressed replies on philosophical mat-
ters," but Busi rejects this. See Busi and Campanini, "Lippomano," 177, n. 33;
Busi, "Lippomano," 21, n. 40. For more on the identity of this figure, see below.
4. Busi and Campanini, "Lippomano," 172, and especially Busi, "Lippo-
mano," 16, n. 12, where he refers to the Hebrew letter written by Johannes
Reuchlin to Bonetto de Lattes, published in English translation by Jacob R. Mar-
cus, The Jew in the Medieval World (New York, 1974), 159- 64. For additional
Hebrew epistles crafted by Christian humanists, see Eric Zimmer, "Hebrew Let-
ters of Two 16th Century German Humanists," Revue des Etudes Juives 141.3/4
(1982): 379- 86. Later in the sixteenth century, Guillaume Postel also wrote in
Hebrew.
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194 JQR 104.2 (2014)
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LIPPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 195
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196 JQR 104.2 (2014)
16. We know of Jews who found refuge in Sicily in the late fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries from the increasingly hostile atmosphere in Spain and
Provence. See Wettinger, The Jew¿ of Malta (Valletta, Malta, 1985), 2.
17. On links in this period between Spain and Sicily, see Giuseppe Mandala,
"Da Toledo a Palermo: Yitshaq ben Šelomoh ibn al-Ahdab in Sicilia (ca. 1395/
96- 1431)," in Flavio Mitridate mediatore fra culture nel contento dell'ebraismo siciliano
del XV ¿ecolo, ed. M. Perani and G. Corazzol (Palermo, 2012), 1-16.
18. British Library, MS 2806; BNF, MS hébreu 1069; BAV, MSS Vat. Heb.
379 and 171; Russian State Library, MS Günzberg 571; Bodleian Library, MS
Poe. 368. See the appendix below for further details on these texts.
19. Bodleian, MS Mich. 400.
20. BNF, MS hebreu 907.
2 1 . The manuscripts to be discussed here. Isaac may also be associated with a
"Book of the Astrolabe," London, Montefiore Library 423/4, ff. 131a-44b. On
this text, see Appendix, no. 18.
22. Abraham David, "I manoscritti ebraici come fonti storiche dell'ebraismo
salentino quattrocentesco," in Gli ebrei nel Salento : Secoli IX- XVI, ed. F. Lelli
(Galatina, 2013), 271. See also Giuliano Tamani, "Manoscritti ebraici copiati in
Sicilia nei secoli XIV- XIV," Henoch 15 (1993): 109, where it is noted that Hebrew
manuscripts from Sicily contain "soprattutto opere astronomiche e scientifiche."
On the philosophic culture of Sicilian Jews, see Mauro Zonta, "La filosofia
ebraica medievale in Sicilia," in Ebrei e Sicilia, ed. N. Bucaria, M. Luzzati, A.
Tarantino (Palermo, 2002), 163-68.
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LI PPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 197
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198 JQR 104.2 (2014)
Introduction
Conclusion
28. In his third letter to Cresças Me'ir, Lippomano does cite Daniel 7.13-4 in
Aramaic. But this on its own does not indicate any study or expertise in the
language, since he could have easily copied these verses from the Hebrew Bible,
to which he clearly had access. See Busi and Campanini, "Lippomano," 184, f.
15a, 11. 17-19.
29. Parma: nto 3PD
30. Parma: TIEDO-Q
31. Parma: X-XTTD
32. Parma: inCD0"Q
33. Parma: TIT2rai
34. Parma: OnQ
35. Parma: ļrīlK a-OQ
36. Parma: *?"n
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LI PPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 199
run dk "ļn" :ppi rrarn pn -dis ynx no -inxn -urca run Trta "odi
wbxn moaa mmcn ar^u -ibk 39,tann *po -nonn *6" 38,,rnmon nsan nox"
:mrn -par -pit -prrm mi?n ļaoo ļaoo -poxn -d 40rnira dtttí? Drrpiürm
D-mnan kod ļfron 41noon -ptra tt
English Translation
A copy of the document which Rabbi Isaac Kohen the Jew sent to Mae-
stro Marco Lippomano the gentile (lit. "uncircumcised") of Venice
Introduction
Your dear letter came to me via Messer Vinicio [or Venezio?] and from
it I came to appreciate how exceedingly great is your desire to attain
understanding in every possible manner. And behold my response to your
earlier requests is in another letter, written on the thirtieth day of March.
But as for what you sought from the outset regarding the study of the
language of Hagar [i.e., Arabic] in accordance with its grammar, behold
I respond to you here and say: know that the verb in this language is
arranged into seven "buildings" 'binyanim = , i.e., stem formations] alone
and behold I will arrange them for you in accordance with the "buildings"
of the language of the Mistress Sarah [i.e., Hebrew]. And afterwards I
will specify the mixture of bricks in each building.42 The first they call
fe'al like pa al; the second 'anfe'al, like nifal ; the third pa al, with a dagejh
(doubling) on the 'ayin, as I will clarify, like the dagejh in pi* el9, the fourth
fu 'il , it too with a dagejh, like pu ' al • the fifth 'afal like h if il ; the sixth J uf al,
37. Yehuda ha-Levi, Sefer ha-Kuzari (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1969), 2:72; 146.
38. Ps 51.8.
39. Dt 7.25.
40. Cf. Is 44:18 ('tam-tf mino ra o").
41. Parma: Dnoon. Shimon Sharvit has shown that both forms are desacral-
ized replacements for elohay or elohun (God) common in thirteenth- through
fifteenth-century Italian texts, in which the term el (God) was replaced with 1 1 herno
(his name), much as in the present-day ha-jhem (The Name). This substitution
appears, for example, in the first printed edition of the Mishnah (Naples, 1492).
Might this have been a form unique to specifically southern Italian communities?
The current case does, however, differ from the examples discussed by Sharvit
in the presence of the definite article ha-. See his "Traditions of the Writing and
Pronunciation of the Names of God across the Generations" (Hebrew), Leshonenu
70 (2008): 610.
42. A clever play on the Hebrew term for verb stems binyanim (buildings),
referring to individual conjugations as levanun (bricks).
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200 JQR 104.2 (2014)
Conclusion
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LIPPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 201
This text raises a great many questions, only a few of which can be
answered with any certainty. Who is the "Messer" referred to in the very
first line as having brought Lippomano's letter to Isaac? The Paris manu-
script reads Parma Do these render the Italian proper name
"Vinicio"? Or should they perhaps be read as "Venezio," reflecting this
individual's association with the city of Venice? Might the Italian philoso-
pher and theologian Paulus Venetus (1368-1428) be the intended fig-
ure?48 As intriguing as this possibility is, in the absence of specific
evidence it must remain but a hypothesis.49
In addition, despite Isaac's reference to an earlier letter written on
March 30 of presumably the same year, the document cannot be precisely
dated.50 Lippomano's correspondence with Cresças Me 'ir probably took
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202 JQR 104.2 (20 M)
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LIPPOMANO -STEIN KOKIN 203
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204 JQR 104.2 (2014)
Whether and however it might have been used, Isaac's letter is significant
as a rare and particularly early indication of humanist interest in Arabic
in the Italian Renaissance. According to current scholarship, the four-
teenth and most of the fifteenth centuries were largely a black hole for
Arabic study in Latin Christendom.64 The Council of Vienne's 1312 call
common in the context of Italian Jewry . See II Pitigliani: Centro Ebraico Ital-
iano, Glossario Giudaico-Romanesco (Rome, 1996), 40.
61. Appendix, nos. 16 and 17 (as well as the ownership inscriptions, nos. 12-
15).
62. Following the conclusion of the Paris manuscript, however, there is what
appears to be a signature in Roman letters, in what looks to be a later hand.
Unfortunately, I have thus far been unable to decipher it. Might this indicate a
censor's perusal of the text?
63. Richler, Hebrew Afss. in the Biblioteca Palatina, 419.
64. On the study of Arabic in the Renaissance, see Karl H. Dannenfeldt, "The
Renaissance Humanists and the Study of Arabic," Studies in the Renaissance 2.1
(1955): 96-1 17; Debora Kuller Shuger, The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice,
and Subjectivity (Berkeley, Calif., 1994), 13-16, 33-34; Hartmut Bobzin, "Gesch-
ichte der arabischen Philologie in Europa bis zum Ausgang des achtzehnten Jah-
rhunderts/' in Grundriss der Arabischen Philologie, ed. W. Fischer, Band 3:
Supplement (Wiesbaden, 1992), 155-87; Johann Fück, Die arabischen Studien in
Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 19 55), 25-53; and Benoît
Grévin, "Connaissance et enseignement de l'Arabe dans l'Italie du XVe siècle:
Quelques jalons," in Maghreb-Italie: Des passeurs médiévaux à l'orientalisme tnoderne
(XlIIe -mäieu XXe siècle), ed. ibid. (Rome, 2010), 103-38. With the exception of
Grévin, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are hardly discussed in these
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LIPPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 205
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206 JQR 104.2 (2014)
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LI PPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 207
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208 JQR 104.2 (2014)
executed in a likely novel and most unexpected manner, through the pro-
duction of an introduction to Arabic in Hebrew for a Christian Hebraist.
Isaac thus functions here as a new kind of mediator, not of knowledge
per se but rather of linguistic expertise, a role with which Italian and
other Jews in the coming decades would become increasingly familiar.
Lippomano's recourse to a Jewish teacher of Arabic raises the possibil-
ity that he was specifically interested in learning Judeo- Arabic, that is,
the Arabic written in Hebrew letters widely used by Jews in Muslim
lands.82 Busi linked Lippomano's Hebraism to his recognition "that the
Jews guarded books unavailable in any other language" (as noted above,
he even translated a Hebrew scientific text into Latin), an attitude that
he correctly describes as extremely precocious.83 There is thus every rea-
son to think that he would have come to the same realization as Migna-
nelli in his Liber (and likely a generation or so earlier) that Jewish authors
sua traduzione della sura 21," in ibid., 173-83. Benoît Grévin places Flavius's
Arabic knowledge in between the "considerations méprisantes de Levi Della
Vida" and the "louanges hyperboliques de la recherche récente," arguing that it
was by and large restricted to the Sicilian Judeo- Arabic in which he would have
been raised. See Grévin, "Un témoin majeur du rôle des communautés juives de
Sicile dans la préservation et la diffusion en Italie d'un savoir sur l'arabe et l'Islam
au XVe siècle: Les notes interlinéaires et marginales du 'Coran de Mithridate'
(MS Vat. Heb. 357)," in Chrétiens, Juif ó et Musulmans dans la Méditterranée Médié-
vale: Etudes en hommage à Henri Bresc, ed. G. Benoît, A. Nef, and E. Tixier (Paris,
2008), 45-56, esp. 53. Most recently, on the question of Flavius's Arabie knowl-
edge, see Flavio Mitridate mediatore.
82. Joshua Blau 's The Emergence and Ling uh tic Background of Judeo-Arabic: A
Study of the Origins of Middle Arabic (Jerusalem, 1981) remains a classic introduc-
tion to Judeo-Arabic.
83. Busi and Campanini, "Lippomano," 174; Busi, "Lippomano," 17. A some-
what similar notion can however be discerned in writings ascribed to the thir-
teenth-century philosopher and scientist Roger Bacon, which argue that
knowledge of Hebrew (alongside Greek and Arabic) is a prerequisite for the
study of philosophy. On this, see The Greek Grammar of Roger Bacon and a Fragment
of Hb Hebrew Grammar, ed. E. Nolan and S. A. Hirsch (Cambridge, 1902), xvi-
xvii. As to whether this Hebrew grammar can in fact be linked to Bacon, see
Judith Olszowy- Schlanger, "The Knowledge and Practice of Hebrew Grammar
among Christian Scholars in Pre-Expulsion England: The Evidence of 'Bilingual'
Hebrew- Latin Manuscripts," in Hebrew Scholarship and the Middle Aged, ed.
N. R. M. De Lange (Cambridge, 2001), 107- 27; Olszowy- Schlanger, "Robert
Wakefield and the Medieval Background of Hebrew Scholarship in Renaissance
England," in Hebrew to Latin - Latin to Hebrew: The Mirroring of Two Cultures in the
Age of Humanism, ed. G. Busi (Turin, 2006), 61-87.
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LIPPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 209
84. Ibid., Piemontese, "La lingua araba," 161. Kees Versteegh, Landmarks in
Linguistic Thought III: The Arabic linguistic tradition (London, 1997), 174, notes that
"Judaeo- Arabic was used for almost everything by Jewish authors."
85. Piemontese, Ebrei e Sicilia , 179. Though Piemontese argues that Sienese
Jews of Mignanelli's time knew Arabic "and probably possessed Arabic or
Judeo-Arabic manuscripts" (Piemontese, "La lingua araba"), this seems rather
unlikely and Piemontese himself does not furnish any evidence for these claims.
We do, however, know of some Judeo-Arabic scientific texts on the Italian penin-
sula in the fifteenth century. Umberto Cassuto noted the longstanding presence
of at least seven such manuscripts in the Vatican library, three of which (MSS
Vat. Heb. 357, 369, 378) belonged to Antonio Biaxander, a Sicilian-born oriental-
ist professor at the University of Rome in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries most commonly known by the academic name Flaminio. Thanks to the
more recent catalogue prepared by Richler and his team from the IMHM, we
can note that two additional texts in Flaminio's possession (MSS Vat. Heb. 203,
420) also contained Judeo-Arabic texts. Flaminio's apparent knowledge of some
Arabic, as well as Hebrew, accounts for his interest in these materials. See
Umberto Cassutto, I Manoscritti Palatini Ebraici della Biblioteca Apotolica Vaticana e
la Loro Storia (Vatican City, 1935), 70-74. On Flaminio, who appears to have
written a now-lost astronomical treatise, see Marco Vattasso, Antonio Flaminio e le
principali poesie dell'autografo vaticano 2870 (Rome, 1900), esp. 21; and, more
recently, Flavio Mitridate mediatore, 216, 241, 247-48, 276. Though some scholars
assert Flaminio's Jewish origins, I am aware of no evidence for this claim.
86. S. D. Goitein, Jews and Arabs: Their Contacts through the Ages (New York,
1955), 137. An early example of such an undertaking is the eleventh/twelfth-
centuiy Spanish Jew Isaac ibn Barun's Kitab al-muwazana bayn al-lugha al-
'ibraniyya wa-al-'arabiyya ( Book of Comparison between Hebrew and Arabic). I am
grateful to Alan Verskin for bringing this work to my attention. On this figure
and text, see Dan Becker, Arabic Sources of Isaac Ben Barun s Book of Comparison
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210 JQR 104.2 (2014)
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LI PPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 211
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212 JQR 104.2 (2014)
95. Blau observed that attempts to correct Middle Arabic into Classical Ara-
bic yielded forms that did not in fact exist. See Blau, The Emergence, 27.
96. Caspar, A Grammar, 49.
97. See Grévin, "Un témoin/' 53.
98. Chomsky, David Kimhi'á Hebrew Grammar, 10 ("Although the noun pre-
cedes the verb and is regarded in its relation to it as the substance to its accident,
yet I begin with the verb because of its significance and frequent usage"). It is
worth noting that in his second letter to Cresças Me 'ir, Lippomano indicates that
a codex containing Kimhi's Mikhlol and his Sefer ba-¿hora¿him represents the only
Hebrew book in his possession. Busi and Campanini, "Lippomano," 181, f. 17b,
11. 1-2.
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LI PPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 213
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214 JQR 104.2 (2014)
D. Sicilian Judeo-Arabic
106. Gn 11.30.
107. For additional bibliography on this trope, see Irene E. Zwiep, Mother of
Recuion and Revelation: A Short History of Medieval Jewish Ling nu tic Thought (Amster-
dam, 1997), 209, n. 131.
108. On the basis of the Hebrew language's priority to Arabic, as well as "its
status of having been created first of all the languages," Profiat Duran stridently
rejected the notion that Hebrew is corrupted Arabic, implying instead that the
opposite must be the case. Duran, Ma'aöeh efod, chap. 4, 33. Maimonides also was
party to this view, at least to a certain degree. See, for example, Isaiah Sonne,
"Maimonides' Letter to Samuel Ibn Tibbon according to an Unknown Text in
the Archives of the Jewish Community of Verona" (Hebrew), Tarbiz 10 (1939):
135-54, 309-32.
109. See Annliese Nef, "La langue écrite des juifs de Sicile au XVe siècle," in
Mutations à 'Identités en Méditerranée , ed. H. Bresc and C. Veauvy (Paris, 2000),
85-94.
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LIPPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 215
111. Wettinger, The Jews of Malta, 157: "Unlike Classical Arabic or Hebrew,
Judaeo- Arabic frequently resorted to the use of scriptio plena or the writing
down in full of the whole of a word, including the short vowels which the first
two languages left completely unrecorded in unpointed texts." In a personal com-
munication with the author, Dario Burgaretta stressed, in particular, the fre-
quency with which one encounters such orthography in fifteenth-century Judeo-
Arabic documents. According to Giuseppe Brincat, Malta: Una storia linguistica
(Recco, Genoa, 2003), 72, Sicilian bureaucratic documents sometimes render
Sicilian Arabic in Greek characters, thereby indicating the pronunciation more
clearly than would be the case in Arabic letters, "especially with regard to the
vowels." Brincat refers here to the Middle Ages; I submit that Isaac's letter
evinces the same phenomenon in a later period, in the Hebrew alphabet.
112. See the chart of comparative orthography in Brincat, Malta, 71; see also
Dionisius Albertus Agius, Siculo Arabic (London, 1996), 355-57. On Sicilian Ara-
bic in general, see Brincat, Malta, 64-78; Agius; and Bresc, Arabes de langue, 48.
113. Brincat, Malta, 70.
1 14. For example, the second-person feminine plural past form "you
acquired" is pronounced "kasavtuna" but is rendered in Hebrew as ļrĢO?. See
BNF MS hébreu 1224, f. 56v.
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216 JQR 104.2 (2014)
115. Wettinger, The Jew of Malta, 197. Nonetheless, on the basis (so far as I
can tell) of this same exact corpus, Henri Bresc does draw some conclusions as to
the character of fifteenth-centuiy Sicilian Judeo-Arabic. See Bresc, "Le judaïsme
sicilien: Caractères généraux et particularités," in Guglielmo Raimondo Moneada
al'uu Flavio Mitridate , 8.
116. In her 2002 analysis of Judeo-Sicilian notarial documents, for example,
Annliese Nef makes no reference to vocalized texts; see Nef, "Les Juifs de Sicile:
des juifs de langue arabe du Xllème au XVeme siècles," in Ebrei e Sicilia, 169- 78.
117. In his Lingua Franca in the Mediterranean (Surrey, 1996), 94-95, John E.
Wansbrough, writing of Sicilian Judeo-Arabic chancery documents, argues as
follows: "There, Hebrew script, standard format and bureaucratic nomenclature
generated a linguistic register that could only with obstinancy be construed as
reflecting speech." Likewise, Shlomo Simonsohn, Between Scylla and Charybdis: The
Jem in Sicily (Leiden, 2011), 377-78, argues that "the spoken language was the
[Latinate] vernacular ... to what extent and for how long immigrants from the
Iberian peninsula, the Italian mainland and North Africa retained their language
in the home we do not know." Thereafter, noting evidence from the late thir-
teenth century indicating that the Jews of Sicily still spoke Arabic, he comments
that "it is doubtful whether the memories of Arab domination still persisted that
strongly in the following centuries."
1 18. See www.jewish-languages.org/judeo-arabic.html (accessed on June 23,
2010). In addition, Blau stressed that Jews "generally attained only a limited
mastery of Classical Arabic" ( The Emergence , 22-23), while Wettinger observed
that when Jews' knowledge of Classical Arabic "faltered, they fell back- with
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LIPPOMANO -STEIN KOKIN 217
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218 JQR 104.2 (20 M)
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LIPPOMANO -STEIN KOKIN 219
125. On the fascinating question of what texts and information Jewish schol-
ars in this period may furnish Christian associates, see, for example, David Kauf-
mann, "Elia Menachem Chalfan on Jews Teaching Hebrew to Non- Jews," JQR
o.s. 9 (1896/97): 500-8, and Saverio Campanini, "Reuchlins Jüdische Lehrer aus
Italien," in ReuchUn und Italien, ed. G. Dörner (Stuttgart, 1999), 69-85.
126. Midrash Tanhuma, Ki tuuta 34 presents the Mishnah as the "mystery"
(p/U(JTT|QlOV) of the Holy One. For more substantial discussion of how anxiety
over Christian usurpation of Jewish "mystery" led some scholars to insist on the
preservation of sources solely in oral form, see Alyssa M. Gray, "A Contribution
to the Study of Martyrdom and Identity in the Palestinian Talmud," Journal of
Jewbh Studies 54.2 (2003): 264-66.
127. Busi and Campanini, "Lippomano," 174-5; Busi, "Lippomano," 17-18.
It is worth noting in this regard that Lippomano owned a copy of (Pseudo-)
Psellus, De operatane daemoniun (King, Venetian HumanLun , 390).
128. It is tempting to see in Isaac's "job application" a reflection of the move
among fifteenth-century Sicilian Jews to establish closer cultural ties with the
Italian peninsula and elsewhere in Europe, in contrast to the hitherto dominant
Spanish and North African orbits. See Scandaliato and Gerardi, "Lingua," 36.
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220 JQR 104.2 (2014)
These authors present this as an internal Jewish shift, but the cases and careers
of Flavius Mithridates (postconversion) and Flaminio point perhaps to a broader
Sicilian phenomenon at the time.
129. Busi and Campanini, "Lippomano," 181, f. 17a, 1. 20.
130. Isaac clearly also regards Lippomano as a wealthy man. But according
to King ( Venetian Humanuni, 389), the eponymous bank was founded after Mar-
co's time.
131. One wonders if Isaac had gotten word of Lippomano's declaration in his
first letter to Cresças Me 'ir, "I am ready to pay whatever you ask." Busi and
Campanini, "Lippomano," 180, f. 16a, 1. 24. He would, however, have been less
pleased by Lippomano's declaration that he has "weighed out [Cresças 's words]
on [the] scales [of the Jews]." Ibid., 182, f. 13b, 1. 15).
132. Filelfo, Satyrae, p. 23.
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LI PPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 221
But why, O friend, are you silent, how many times have ou
(nostra154) sought you out most dutifully (per officium)! What
presses down upon you on all sides? I confess that I have ne
to know the Jews, nor is there any commerce between me
Nor will there be any, unless, thanks to the grudging pove
often tends to force me into things, I should by chan
exempted from all interest Ļtoluto foenore) - to borrow som
Does wretched poverty render you deaf to me? But it is not
to respond to me in the Jewish way!135
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222 JQR 104.2 (2014)
VI. CONCLUSION
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LIPPOMANO -STEIN KOKIN 223
APPENDIX
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224 JQR 104.2 (2014)
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LI PPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 225
141. Richler, ed., Hebrew Mm. in the Vatican Library (Vatican City, 2
142. A number of locales in Italy bear the name Montalto; one of th
talto Uffugo, is located near Cosenza, in Calabria. On this figure, Z
("La filosofia," 168, n. 35) that "although he was not Sicilian, he was
to the Jewish astronomical and astrological circles on the island."
143. Richler, ed., Hebrew Mm. in the Vatican Library , 1 15.
144. Neubauer, Catalogne , 688-89 (No. 2006/4); Beit-Arié; R. A. May
ment of Addenda y 365-66.
145. Moritz Steinschneider, Mathematik beiden Juden (Hildesheim,
Steinschneider further notes that this treatise provides a proof that bo
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226 JQR 104.2 (2014)
(i.e., the ninth-centuiy Islamic astronomer Al-Sābic Thābit ibn Qurra al-Harrānī)
and Levi ben Gerson (Gersonides) had sought.
146. On Abraham de Balmes and his prominence in contemporary southern
Italian intellectual life, see David, "I manoscritti ebraici," 267-69.
147. We can, however, be certain that the text is not in Isaac's hand, since it
begins: "so said the great, perfect rabbi" Isaac ha- Kohen.
148. Neubauer, Catalogue, 700-1 (No. 2044); in Beit-Arié; R. A. May, Supple-
ment of Addenda, 374.
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LIPPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 227
In a recent article, Joseph Hacker has shown that the Hebrew term
midrajh , typically associated with the rabbinic study hall, was in fact used
more commonly in this period in the Muslim cultural orbit to denote a
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228 JQR 104.2 (2014)
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LI PPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 229
15. New York City, JTS 2876 (IMHM F 31714): Profiat Duran, Maajek
efod ; fifteenth century, Ashkenazic Italian script.
The same inscription in the same hand graces the opening of the
Ma 'ajeh efod. This hand may also be responsible for the frequent marginal
notes found through f. 58r. An additional ownership inscription in Italian
semicursive begins just to the left of this one and continues beneath it:
"The Lord caused his servants Aaron and Joseph to inherit [this book]
from the legacy of our revered father, our teacher, the rabbi, Rabbi Isaac
Kohen, mentioned above, may the memory of this righteous and pious
one be for a blessing." It thus seems that two inscriptions on this manu-
script associate it with our Isaac, including one from his two sons who
inherited it from him. Their inscription not only begins where his (or
whoever wrote on his behalf) left off- a compelling indication that it
postdates it - but also matches very nicely its formulations. Whereas the
first inscription refers to God's endowment, theirs refers to the inheri-
tance which God has bestowed upon them; both parties refer to them-
selves as God's servants. While I have come upon no other information
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230 JQR 104.2 (2014)
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LI PPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 231
But it is certainly possible that we are in fact dealing with one and the
same Isaac ha- Kohen, a figure therefore as invested in philosophy as in
astronomy and linguistics. As the hand of this one text differs from the
common hand of the rest of the texts in this manuscript, its provenance
may well be quite different from theirs: perhaps earlier; and perhaps Sic-
ily instead of Spain. However, one potential problem for this theory is the
relationship of the hand of MSS 907 and 967 with that of the ownership
inscriptions discussed above. Though the brevity of these inscriptions
prevents a comprehensive comparison with the much more extensive
writing of the philosophic works, the two hands do appear to be quite
different; at the very least, the hand of the ownership inscriptions is less
"cursive" than that of the texts. Perhaps the contrast can explained in
light of the very different context of the two forms of writing: might Isaac
have written in a less cursive form when indicating in one short phrase
that a text belonged to him as compared with when writing out an entire
multi-folio work?167 Or might the hand of the ownership inscriptions in
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232 JQR 104.2 (2014)
168. Beit- Arie has noted cases in which model colophons are copied by
scribes, date included, such that the date indicated in the now-copied colophon
is unreliable. Beit-Arié, Hebrew Manuscripts East and West: Toward a Comparative
Codicology (London, 1993), XXX.
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HA-KOHEN'S LETTER TO LI PPOMANO- STEIN KOKIN 233
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