1. Gregory Martin, Roma Sancta (1581), ed. George B. Parks (Rome, 1969), pp. 70–71, quoted by Frederick J. McGinness in “Preaching Ideals and Practice in Counter-Reformation Rome,” Sixteenth Century Journal 11 (1980): 124. [BACK]

2. Hillary D. Smith, Preaching in the Spanish Golden Age (Oxford, 1978), p. 5. She also quotes on the same page, note 1, the evocative description of Benedetto Croce in his I predicatori italiani del Seicento e il gusto spagnuolo (Naples, 1899), p. 9: “chi puo ripensare al Seicento senza rivedere in fantasia la figura del Predicatore, nerovestito come un gesuita, o biancovestito come un domenicano o col rozzo saio cappuccino, gesticolante in una chiesa barocca, innanzi a un uditorio dia fastosi abbigliamenti.” For a recent bibliography on Catholic preaching in early modern Europe, see the essay by Peter Bayley in Catholicism in Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Research, ed. John O’Malley, vol. 2 of Reformation Guides to Research (St. Louis, 1988), pp. 299–314. [BACK]

3. See McGinness, p. 109. On the importance of obligatory sermons in fostering conversion to Christianity during this period, see Kenneth Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy 1555–1593 (New York, 1977), chap. 10, and the earlier works he cites, especially those of Browe and Hoffmann. [BACK]

4. Roma Sancta, pp. 71–72, quoted by McGinness, p. 109. [BACK]

5. There exists no comprehensive treatment of this phenomenon in recent scholarly literature. The best overview of Jewish preaching in general with ample references to the early modern period is Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching 1200–1800: An Anthology (New Haven and London, 1989). On Jewish preaching in Eastern Europe, see Jacob Elbaum, Petiḥut ve-Histagrut: Ha-Yeẓirah ha-Ruḥanit be-Folin u-ve-Arẓot Ashkenaz be-Shalhe ha-Me’ah ha-16 (Jerusalem, 1990), pp. 223–247. On the Sephardic preacher, see Joseph Hacker, “The Sephardic Sermon in the Sixteenth Century” [Hebrew], Pe’amim 26 (1986): 108–127. [BACK]

6. The scholarly literature on Italian Jewish preaching is also limited. See Robert Bonfil, Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy, trans. from the Hebrew by Jonathan Chipman (Oxford, 1990), pp. 298–315; Joseph Dan, “An Inquiry into the Hebrew Homiletical Literature During the Period of the Italian Renaissance” [Hebrew], Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, 1967), division 3, pp. 105–110. Additional references are provided in the essays below. [BACK]

7. See especially Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy; idem, “The Burning of the Talmud in 1553 in the Light of Sixteenth-Century Catholic Attitudes Toward the Talmud,” Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance 34 (1972): 435–459; Daniel Carpi, “The Expulsion of the Jews from the Papal States during the Time of Pope Pius V and the Inquisitional Trials against the Jews of Bologna” [Hebrew], in Scritti in memoria di Enzo Sereni, ed. Daniel Carpi and Renato Spiegel (Jerusalem, 1970), pp. 145–165 (reprinted with additions in Daniel Carpi, Be-Tarbut ha-Renasans u-vein Ḥomot ha-Geto [Tel Aviv, 1989], pp. 148–167); and David Ruderman, “A Jewish Apologetic Treatise from Sixteenth-Century Bologna,” Hebrew Union College Annual 50 (1979): 253–276. [BACK]

8. On Jewish life in Renaissance Italy, see the standard surveys of Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia, 1959); Moses A. Shulvass, Jews in the World of the Renaissance (Leiden and Chicago, 1973); and Attilio Milano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia (Turin, 1963). See also Robert Bonfil, Rabbis and Jewish Communities; David B. Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew (Cincinnati, 1981). [BACK]

9. For a survey and interpretation of Jewish intellectual life in the Renaissance with extensive bibliographical citations, see David B. Ruderman, “The Italian Renaissance and Jewish Thought,” in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations and Forms, 3 vols., ed. Albert Rabil, Jr. (Philadelphia, 1988), vol. 1, pp. 382–433. [BACK]

10. In addition to the references cited in note 8 above, see, for example, Léon Poliakov, Jewish Bankers and the Holy See, trans. M. L. Kochan (London, Henley, and Boston, 1977); Shlomo Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua (Jerusalem, 1977); Umberto Cassuto, Gli ebrei a Firenze nell’età del Rinascimento (Florence, 1918; 1965); and Gaetano Cozzi, ed., Gli ebrei e Venezia secoli XIV–XVIII (Milan, 1987). [BACK]

11. See Benjamin Ravid, “The Venetian Ghetto in Historical Perspective,” in The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi, ed. and trans. Mark Cohen (Princeton, 1988), pp. 279–283, and also his “The Religious, Economic, and Social Background of the Establishment of the Ghetti in Venice,” in Cozzi, Gli ebrei e Venezia, pp. 211–259; Attilio Milano, Il Ghetto di Roma (Rome, 1964). [BACK]

12. Ravid, “The Venetian Ghetto,” p. 283. [BACK]

13. Robert Bonfil, “Change in the Cultural Patterns of a Jewish Society in Crisis,” Jewish History 3 (1988): 11–33. (Reprinted in David B. Ruderman, ed., Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy [New York, 1992].) See also his “Cultura e mistica a Venezia nel Cinquecento,” in Cozzi, Gli ebrei e Venezia, pp. 496–506. [BACK]

14. Bonfil, “Change in Cultural Patterns,” p. 13. [BACK]

15. Ibid., p. 12. [BACK]

16. Ibid., and in general, the entire essay. [BACK]

17. See Bonfil’s essay and Jefim Schirmann, “Theater and Music in Italian Jewish Quarters XVI–XVIII Centuries” [Hebrew], Zion 29 (1964): 61–111; and his “The Hebrew Drama in the XVIIIth Century” [Hebrew], Moznayim 4 (1938): 624–635. Both reprinted in Schirmann, Studies in the History of Hebrew Poetry and Drama, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1977), vol. 1, pp. 25–38; 44–94. [BACK]

18. See Dan Harrán, “Tradition and Innovation in Jewish Music of the Later Renaissance,” The Journal of Musicology 7 (1989): 107–130, reprinted in Ruderman, Essential Papers; Israel Adler, “The Rise of Art Music in the Italian Ghetto,” in Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), pp. 321–364. [BACK]

19. See Dan Pagis, “Baroque Trends in Italian Hebrew Poetry as Reflected in an Unknown Genre,” Italia Judaica (Rome, 1986), vol. 2, pp. 263–277 (reprinted in Ruderman, Essential Papers); and Pagis, Al Sod Ḥatum (Jerusalem, 1986). [BACK]

20. Shalom Sabar, “The Use and Meaning of Christian Motifs in Illustrations of Jewish Marriage Contracts in Italy,” Journal of Jewish Art 10 (1984): 46–63. [BACK]

21. See Bonfil, p. 21, and Yosef Melkman, “Moses Zacuto’s Play Yesod Olam” [Hebrew], Sefunot 10 (1966): 299–333. [BACK]

22. Bonfil, pp. 16–18. [BACK]

23. Ibid., p. 18 and throughout. For a discussion of the meaning of the Renaissance when applied to Jewish culture, see Ruderman, “The Italian Renaissance,” cited in note 9 above. On previous uses of the term “baroque” in characterizing Jewish cultural history of the ghetto era, see Giuseppe Sermonetta, “Aspetti del pensiero moderno nell’ebraismo tra Rinascimento e età barocca,” in Italia Judaica, vol. 2, pp. 17–35; David B. Ruderman, A Valley of Vision: The Heavenly Journey of Abraham ben Hananiah Yagel (Philadelphia, 1990), pp. 65–68. On the notion of “Baroque” in general, see, for example, Frank J. Warnke, Versions of Baroque: European Literature in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven and London, 1963), and the additional references cited in Ruderman, p. 65, n. 192.

The participants in this volume, as the reader will notice, employ the terms “Renaissance,” “post-Renaissance,” “Counter-Renaissance,” and “baroque” in describing Jewish cultural development in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in less than uniform ways. While I have attempted to clarify (and even to reconcile tentatively) their usages in this introduction, I am well aware that a lack of uniformity still remains. This situation seems unavoidable, however, given the present state of research and the differences in approach among the contributors and other scholars of this era. For further clarification of this issue of periodizing the “Renaissance” and “baroque” with respect to Jewish culture, see Ruderman, Essential Papers, especially the introduction, and compare Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, “Jewish Culture in Renaissance Italy: A Methodological Survey,” Italia 9 (1990): 63–96 [BACK]

24. In this regard, consider Moshe Idel’s essay in this volume. [BACK]

25. See below, pp. 22–40. [BACK]

26. This situation is fully discussed in Simonsohn, Mantua. Idel’s essay is found below, pp. 41–66. In designating Moscato the oldest of the preachers discussed below, I exclude those discussed collectively by Horowitz in his essay on eulogies. Given its special subject matter, I have treated this essay separately from the rest. [BACK]

27. See, for example, his “The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations of the Kabbalah in the Renaissance,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard Cooperman (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 186–242, and his “Major Currents in Italian Kabbalah Between 1560–1660,” Italia Judaica, vol. 2, pp. 143–162. Both essays have been reprinted in Ruderman, Essential Papers. [BACK]

28. See below, p. 57. [BACK]

29. See below, pp. 67–88. [BACK]

30. See below, pp. 89–104. [BACK]

31. For additional references, see Ruderman below, pp. 101–102, n. 1. [BACK]

32. See Michel Foucault, “The Prose of the World,” in The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences (New York, 1970), pp. 17–50, first published as Les mots et les choses (Paris, 1966). This type of thinking characterized that of Moscato’s Jewish contemporary, Abraham Yagel. On him, see David B. Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1988), especially chap. 4. [BACK]

33. See Hiram Haydn, The Counter-Renaissance (New York, 1950), and compare Moshe Idel, “Differing Conceptions of Kabbalah in the Early 17th Century,” in Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Isadore Twersky and Bernard Septimus (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1987), pp. 137–200, especially p. 174. [BACK]

34. See below, pp. 105–128. For additional references to Modena’s life and thought, see the references in Weinberg’s essay below, especially the work of Howard Adelman. [BACK]

35. See below, p. 110. [BACK]

36. See below, p. 122. [BACK]

38. Ibid. [BACK]

39. On this, see Ruderman, “The Language of Science as the Language of Faith,” listed in my essay below, pp. 101–102, n. 1. [BACK]

40. John W. O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court c. 1450–1521 (Durham, N.C., 1979). [BACK]

41. See below, pp. 129–162. [BACK]

42. See below, p. 131. [BACK]

43. See below, pp. 131–135. [BACK]

44. See below, p. 137. [BACK]

45. See Bonfil, “Change in the Cultural Patterns,” p. 12, and in his book, Rabbis and Jewish Communities, and see Saperstein below, p. 26. [BACK]

46. On the Catholic eulogy during the Counter-Reformation, see McGinness, “Preaching Ideals and Practice,” p. 125, and the bibliography cited there, especially Verdun L. Saulnier, “L’oraison funèbre au XVI^e siècle,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 10 (1948): 124–157. [BACK]

47. See Oratione Del. R. P. Francesco Panigarola…In morte, e sopra il corpo Dell’ Ill. mo Carlo Borromeo (Rome, 1585). [BACK]

48. See below, pp. 135–137, 138, 141, 144. [BACK]

49. Elliott Horowitz, “Jewish Confraternities in Seventeenth-Century Verona: A Study in the Social History of Piety,” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1982, chap. 3. [BACK]

50. My thanks to Benjamin Ravid and Marc Saperstein for reading a draft of this introduction and offering me their thoughtful comments. [BACK]