The Italian paradoxes of Alfonso de Zamora
(fl. 1516-1545): Abravanel on Latter Prophets
from Jewish Italy to Converso Castile
Jesús de Prado Plumed
Ecole pratique des hautes études (Paris)
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
“Judaism in the Mediterranean Context”
IX Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies
Ravenna, Italy, July 25-29, 2010
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(Image: Saint Ildephonsus College, Alcala).
On the eleventh of November, 1530, a most curious contract
was signed in Alcalá de Henares, a university town better known
among scholarly circles for its Latin name of “Complutum”, hence
the adjective “Complutensian” in English. At 31 km from Madrid
and 107 km from Toledo, the rectorial College of Saint Ildephonsus
and its other dependent colleges, that boasted around 4.000 students
in the sixteenth century, had been opened since the 18th October
1508. In October 1530 a new rector, the Aragonese Juan Gil had been
elected to conduct the university affairs for one year. He was one of
the two parties signing the contract. The other contracting party was
Alfonso de Zamora, who had been the Hebrew and Aramaic
professor, or “regente de c{tedra”, for more than eighteen years,
since the 12th of July 1512, when he had been called to Alcalá by
Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros, the founder of the university and the
driving and funding force of the main venture of Iberian scholarship
in the first part of the sixteenth-century, the well-known
Complutensian Polyglot Bible.
The text of the contract, containing the signature of both
parties, has been preserved in Madrid’s National Historical Archive
or Archivo Histórico Nacional. It is quite an unexceptional, ordinary
business agreement , but if one takes a Jewish standpoint, it’s an
extraordinary document indeed. It very likely was the first contract
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of a Hebrew naqdan or “punctuator” that had been signed on
Iberian soil for some thirty years, since the expulsions of 1492 (from
Castile and Aragon), 1496 (from Portugal) and 1498 (from Navarre).
And even more likely, it was the last contract of this kind ever to be
signed in the ancient land of Sefarad if we must judge on the
grounds of extant evidence. The Spanish text of the contract conveys
quite precisely what Alfonso was asked to do:
… he (Alfonso) takes care of punctuating a Hebrew book for
the library of the College, which is a gloss of Prophets, both former
and latter…
(AHN, Universidades, Alcalá, Registro de Escrituras, libro 4, f.
199r)
The contract also gives us the amount the University would be
paying Alfonso for his work: eight Castilian ducats. In order to
better grasp the value of this honorarium, one need only point out
that it represented almost half the price of the annual rent Alfonso
was paying since 1521-1522 for his house in a central location in
Alcalá. Around the same year of 1530, the University of Salamanca
was prepared to pay 12 ducats for a full copy, with Latin translation,
of all the Targumim. 12 ducats were nearly one third of Alfonso’s
annual salary of 35 ducats or 50 florins.
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(Image: Cover of BH DER 687)
This “glosa de los Profetas” that is mentioned in the contract
has been preserved in the library of the direct institutional
descendant of Alcalá University, the current Universidad
Complutense. It is a work published in two volumes by the Soncino
press at Pesaro, Italy in 1520. The two volumes are currently held by
the Biblioteca Histórica “Marqués de Valdecilla” of Universidad
Complutense under shelfmarks BH DER 686 (second volume) and
BH DER 687 (first volume). They contain Isaac Abravanel’s
commentary to Latter Prophets. (Don?) Isaac Abravanel had been of
course one of the main protagonists, on the Jewish side, in the
drama of the Expulsions of the 1490s. He has even been dubbed,
evocatively but wrongly, as the “leader” of the exiled Castilian and
Aragonese Jews.
Alfonso, however official his task of “converting” this book
into a university pedagogical tool was, apparently felt the need to
make clear–and make his own position safer perhaps–the most
Christian arguments this work of seemingly Jewish scholarship was
hiding. And he did it in no other place than the cover of the book,
where he noted in a clear hand:
(Image: First note on BH DER 687 cover)
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Out of the statements of this commentator, we will dig out
some good arguments for helping the faith of Jesus, our Messiah.
And
(Image: Second note on BH DER 687 cover)
In chapter 24 of this book, the author praises the exegesis of the
Christians and, would you search for it, in other places too.
And
(Image: Third note on BH DER 687 cover)
In chapter 28 of this book, the prophecy on Jesus is
illuminated, by saying “Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a
Stone”, i.e on the Messiah, so did Rashi comment it. But the author
has commented by his own will that half the verse refers to Ezekiel
and the other half on Nebuchadnezzar, but this interpretation cannot
be held. The truth is that it refers to the Messiah as I explained in the
Letter to the Jews of Rome, chapter 7.
(end of quote)
We will come back later to that polemical Letter to the Jews of
Rome, printed in Hebrew in Alfonso’s Hebrew grammar of 1526,
Introductiones artis grammatice hebraice nunc recenter edite, although
this letter could make an excellent justification to why Alfonso de
Zamora and his books may be discussed in this welcoming Italian
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context. It wouldn’t be the only reason that might justify an Italian
diversion in a Zamoresque wandering.
(Image: Naples manuscript)
Equally important perhaps, Italian is the language in which
the most updated summary of Zamora’s career, and a quite sound
evaluation of his merits, was written, by Giancarlo Lacerenza in his
“Il Commento ai Salmi di Dawid Qimhî in un manoscritto di
Alfonso de Zamora”, published in the volume Lacerenza himself
edited as a tribute to Cesare Colafemmina in 2005. I must happily
and publicly acknowledge my debt with Carlos Alonso Fontela who
first talked to me on this article by Lacerenza. Carlos Alonso was the
“discoverer” of these two volumes of Abravanel’s commentary and
Alfonso de Zamora’s “super-commentary” back in 1987, when he
published his first article on it in the journal Sefarad. All these would
suffice as reasons to talk about Zamora and his books in Italy and in
an Italian context, indeed. But there should be a better reason which
can be conveyed through a question: by which ways could a Jewish
book, i.e. a Hebrew book of Jewish exegesis, find its way from the
Soncino press of Pesaro, where it had been published in 1520, to the
library of a leading Spanish university, ten years later and more
than thirty years after the expulsion of the Jews?
I guess that, notwithstanding any future and deeper research
in the archives, two thick volumes, of which the first one is fully
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vocalized and thoroughly glossed in Hebrew and Spanish, can be
considered as conclusive evidence of some sort of trade in Jewish
books into a “de-Judaicized” Castile. I do consider it so, indeed.
However, until some new evidence is unearthed, the conclusions
drawn by Dennis E. Rhodes, a student of sixteenth-century Italian
book trade, can be of a useful prefatory nature for our own ventures:
Broadly speaking, Italy probably produced four or five times as
many books in the sixteenth century as did Spain. It is not
surprising that so few printers or booksellers came from Spain to
Italy. [Bibliographies] show us that the Italians were quite capable
themselves of printing books in Spanish to fulfil the needs of their
Spanish overlords during the Spanish domination of a large part of
their country.
(end of quotation)
(Image: Cover Archetypo by Quintanilla)
One might add a very Complutensian and late in time note to
this summary, by recalling that the hagiographical biography of
Cardinal Ximenez de Cisneros, the founder of the Complutensian
University in Alcalá, that was written in Spain by Spanish friar
Pedro de Aranda Quintanilla y Mendoza in the mid-1640s and was
intended to sustain the unsuccessful cause of Cisneros’ beatification,
was actually published in Palermo in 1657.
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(Image: Sephardic book in Italy)
One might also mention that in those very same years, a
parallel and contrary process was taking place in the world of the
Jewish book in Italy upon the arrival of Iberian Jewish exiled scribes,
who helped spread Sephardic codicological features in Hebrew
manuscripts produced in Italy and disseminate Iberian Jewish
scholarship in Italian circles. We might speak of a Jewish Iter
Sephardicum in Italy alongside a Christian Iter Italicum in Spain.
But let’s get back to our important piece of Jewish
bibliography in Christian Spain. We know that Abravanel’s
modified and completed commentary on Latter Prophets was
important and cherished to its Complutensian users, first and
foremost to the then Hebrew professor in Alcalá, Alfonso de
Zamora. And we know it because he says so. In a subscription
included at the bottom of a commentary on Prophet Jeremiah,
Alfonso said:
(Image: Alfonso’s subscription in BH DER 687)
I, Alfonso de Zamora, have punctuated (“vocalized”) the
commentary of this book and finished it on Wednesday, the
fourteenth of the month of October in the year one thousand five
hundred and thirty four of the era of our Salvation, here, in the town
of Alcalá de Henares, by order of the master and great scholar in the
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science of God, don Juan Gil, Corregidor and judge in this House of
Wisdom. I do request from him and from those coming after him to
make a severe oath in the name of Jesus, our Messiah and Redeemer,
had they been in a capacity to judge as he does, that they give the
chair of reading this language only to whomever knows how to read
this commentary, so he will not deceive students who are longing to
study this book.
(End of quotation)
People kept reading and likely understanding Hebrew and
Aramaic in Alcal{ after Zamora’s silent disappearance from the
scene, a disappearance probably caused by a likely death around
1546 at an age of more than seventy years old. One example of the
prestige and quality of Hebrew education in Alcalá after the Zamora
years is of course Benito Arias Montano’s Hebrew and Aramaic
training in Alcalá, apparently acquired while studying with
Cipriano de la Huerga, Francisco de la Fuente and Hernán Díaz de
Toledo, in the second half of the sixteenth century. But Arias
Montano’s Hebrew scholarship, as demonstrated by his opus
magnum of the edition of the Antwerpian Polyglot Bible, was
different from Zamora’s linguistic background.
(Image: Introductiones on Hebrew letters and sounds)
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As in Gershwin’s song “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”, for
example, we could remark that where Zamora said “gimal” (or
tomeito) in his Hebrew grammar, Arias Montano wrote “gimel” (or
tomahto) in his Antwerpian Polyglot. Where Zamora said “çaddiq”
for the name of the eighteenth letter in the Hebrew alphabet, Arias
Montano says “tsade”. I must happily acknowledge here that my
attention was brought to this particular point by my hevruta in all
matters Complutensian and Antwerpian, Theodor Dunkelgrün,
from the University of Chicago.
In a less amusing tone, we can acknowledge that a certain
continuity had been broken, something had come to an end,
between the converso generation of Zamora, Pablo Núñez Coronel
or Alfonso de Alcalá and the Old Christian scholars of the late
sixteenth century. While Zamora or Núñez Coronel practiced a
living tradition of the Hebrew and Aramaic language and textual
scholarship. Arias Montano may be the herald of a glorious
philologically antiquarian drive, let’s put it this way, but his inner
drive was different from the impulse that might have led Zamora’s
career in Alcal{ or Núñez Coronel’s activity in Salamanca.
Something that can be put in an evocative Italian turn of phrase as
an “obbligo di tramandare”. While both scholars – Zamora and
Montano - represent, in a certain sense, the end of their respective
traditions, those traditions were different and distinct. Zamora was,
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perhaps above all, a transmitter, while Montano, perhaps above all,
was a receiver.
(Image: Leiden colophon)
Some fifteen years after first being charged by the Alcalá rector
to produce a Christianized yet effective tool of Hebrew education,
Zamora acknowledged in a touching postface to a letter of
complaint sent in Hebrew to Pope Paul III by the Senate or Claustro
of the Complutensian University that he, Zamora, was the
only one left among all the sages of Spain, of the Expulsion of
the Kingdom of Castile, that took place in the year five thousand two
hundred and fifty of the era of the creation of the World, by the
reckoning that is followed today by all the Jews who live in exile all
over the world because of their sins
(End of quotation)
(Leiden, Or. 645, section E, f. 4r).
Something had been indeed broken, not only in Zamora’s
inner strength, but in the general outlook of converso Hebrew
scholarship in Iberia and beyond. In the second half of the sixteenth
century, the Complutensian Polyglot Bible was as much a piece of
Christian-driven scholarship as it has always been, just as Zamora’s
1526 Hebrew grammar, his Introductiones artis grammatice hebraice. In
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the letter to the Jews of Rome (let’s come back to Italy for a minute
or two) he berated Roman Jewish scholars for teaching and learning
the Hebrew language of the Bible through a contextual rather than a
grammatical method. Put in Alfonso’s own words:
(Image: Iggeret on Hebrew grammar)
Because not a single student has been found up to this day
who was able and who knew how to speak your language following a
grammatical order, as do these days those who believe in our holy
faith. They speak Latin following their grammatical order that was
given to them by their ancient and modern authors. They scorn you
because you cannot speak your language if you don’t go and fetch the
Twenty Four Books [of the Bible] so you can be reminded the verse in
the Scripture something is said that fits your purposes.
(End of quotation)
(Artes, i407.jpg)
After the 40s of the sixteenth century, something had perhaps
changed in Castile, Aragon, Portugal and beyond. The
Complutensian Polyglot and Zamora’s Hebrew grammar could by
then be used to incriminate a suspect of heresy as happened in the
Portuguese town of Évora in 1541.
(Image: Diogo de Ceuta’s process)
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Diogo de Ceuta was a churchman living in the town and a
prestigious Hebraist, apparently self-trained. He was accused of
reading Jewish books and refuting some theological Christian
assumptions by relying on Jewish scholarship through the medium
of Jewish books that he kept at his home. In Lisbon’s Arquivo
Nacional da Torre do Tombo, processo 8729, Inquisição de Évora, a
document dated on 10th July 1541 is kept, which records an “auto de
exame de certos lyvros que fforam achados a Diogo de Cepta clerigo preso o
qual o Ifante noso S.or mandou ffazer aos letrados abaixo nomeados”.
Among those requisitioned books there were the Bible of Alcalá and
two copies of Zamora’s “arte de hebrayco”. So the tool, Zamora’s
books, were as intentionally Christian as it has always been. But the
times have changed. As an Italian art historian has very recently put
it, 1545 might be called ”gli ultimi giorni del Rinascimento”. Perhaps
for Hebrew studies in Iberia too.
(Image/text: Borges’ quotation in Spanish)
Let’s come closer to some conclusion. In an infamous
reference, the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges misquoted
Edward Gibbon by attributing to him the statement that not a single
mention of a camel is found anywhere in the Qur’an, the most
Arabic of all Arabic books, as proposed by Borges. Quoting Borges:
Gibbon remarks that in the quintessential Arabic book, the
Qur’an, the absence of any mention of a camel would prove that it is
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indeed an Arabic book. We can behave as Muhammad did, we can
believe in the possibility of being Argentinean [writers] while
refusing to insist too much in being locally colourful.
(End of quote).
J. L. Borges, El escritor argentino y la tradición (1951)
Of course, camels are mentioned many times indeed in the
Qur’an. But, however wrong Borges was in misreading Gibbon
(whose actual quote on camels in the Qur’an is more dairy or lacteal
in nature: “Mohamed himself, who was fond of milk, prefers the
cow, and does not even mention the camel”) the idea lying below
the surface of his statement can still prove useful for our inquiry. I
understand Borges’ remark as applicable to our own subfield of
studies: sixteenth-century Christian Hebraism or as I would rather
call it, sixteenth-century University Hebraism. I have been asked,
even by colleagues immersed in the tiny sub-subfield of
Zamoresque studies, about Zamora’s inner drive or refutation of
Judaism as a religious persuasion. I’m afraid, disappointing as it
may sound, that we simply cannot judge this on the grounds of
extant and known evidence. Having said that, a large, wide and
entertaining subfield of studies is actually open by a primary
concern on the material and textual contents of Zamora’s books. The
main concern of scholars involved in tracing back the Iter
Sephardicum of Hebrew manuscripts in fifteenth and sixteenth-
15
century Italy hasn’t been an inquiry on the orthodox religious self-
definition of the gente del libro involved in that transfer of Sephardic
booklore into Italian soil. For the purposes of tracing back this
Jewish Iter Italicum on Iberian soil, I do think that the emphasis
should lie on the material evidence, either codicological,
bibliographical or textual. Much in line with a most recent line of
inquiry, the transfers and interaction between manuscripts and
printed books should be a priority, as proved in the planified
“manuscriptification” of the Soncino imprint that we have just
discussed today.
Codicology and textual studies might much better serve
scholarship than any search for orthodox camels, from any side of
orthodoxy, in a definitely heterogeneous rather than homogeneous
time as Zamora’s lifetime years were. Having intriguing
manuscripts, unread books and neglected archival material, why
should we need any camel?
Grazie tante.
Jesús de Prado Plumed
(Image: colophon—barukh noten la-ya’ef... & personal details)
