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IMMANUELLO ROMANO
A brief note on the
Rome-based poet Immanuello Romano (1265-c.1330). A very close contemporary (some would say a friend) of Dante, he
invites comment because he was the author of a Hebrew poetic text, the "Heaven
and Hell", which is inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy.
Considering the
extent of his literary output (several volumes of the Mahberot; a large
number of sonnets; a commentary on the Song of Songs etc), he is surprisingly
under-represented in the critical literature in English and Italian, and the
situation is not much better in Hebrew. However the basic facts of his life are
available, and leaving aside the literary terrain which he shares with Dante we
can say that aspects of his life were strikingly similar to those of Dante.
Briefly, he appears
as an eager polymath, very ready to put pen to paper on a wide range of secular
and religious subjects. As well as writing serious prose items and Bible
commentaries he produced copious amounts of poetry (including many sonnets, in
both Hebrew and Italian), evidently within a social milieu that involved other
poets. He is intensely interested in the relations between men and women, and
amorous verses sit alongside high-minded intellectual and religious texts (to
such an extent that his works were later banned for reading by Jews). He is
also known to have had an interest in music concomitant with his poetic output.
In 1321, after the
murder of his father-in-law Rabbi Samuel, he leaves Rome and travels to other
Italian cities (including Perugia, Orvieto and Ancona). Moving from one town to
another, seeking income and patronage (which he finds in Fermo). These are
troubled times. During this period of "exile" from Rome he finds
himself at the court of Can Grande della Scala (precisely, Dante's patron) in
Verona, and describes the cultural climate there. And from his writings it is
apparent that he was actively engaged with the new intellectual ideas of his
time.
There is no doubt that Immanuello
represents a link in a chain of transmission of Arabo-Andalusian culture as
mediated into Italy by the internationally mobile Jewish intelligentsia of the
time. His teacher may have been Zehariah ben Isaac, of Barcelona. Immanuello's Mahberot
are modelled on the Mahberot of al-Harizi, which in turn are modelled on
the Maqamat of Al-Hariri of Basra (1054-1121).
It is not surprising that the
Rome-based Immanuello has links into Arab-Andalusian culture. For instance we
know that the Jewish community in Rome was active in absorbing philosophical
texts from the Arabic. Among others the above Zeharia of Barcelona, a writer
and translator from the Arabic, “translated for the use of the learned Jews of
Rome [...] Aristotle’s Canon and a large part of Averroes’ commentaries
on the corpus of Aristotle’s writings”.
If these Jewish poets and
intellectuals lived in a ghettoised world of their own there would be no reason
to suppose that their "Arabism" impacted on Christian/Italian
culture. But they did not. Immanuello numbered among his friends Bosone da
Gubbio and Cino da Pistoia, with whom he corresponded, and both of these
featured as part of Dante's poetic circle. The circle of songsters and
sonneteers.
Ed Emery
Universitas adversitatis
31.vii.02
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