Joseph ha-Kohen

Joseph ha-Kohen (born December 20, 1496 in Avignon , † after 1577 in Genoa ) was a Jewish doctor and chronicler in Italy .

Life

Ha-Kohen's parents came to Avignon when the Jews were expelled from Spain , where Joseph claims to have been born in 1496. When the Jews were expelled from Provence in 1501 , the family moved on to Genoa. Here Joseph ha-Kohen spent his youth and received a comprehensive education in philology and medicine. After the expulsion from Genoa, the family moved to nearby Novi Ligure in 1516 , where ha-Kohen married the daughter of a Sephardic rabbi. From 1538 ha-Kohen practiced again for twelve years in Genoa, but had to leave the city again in 1550 after another expulsion decree. He moved to Voltaggio , where he was offered the job of city ​​doctor . Here he received the right to settle as Joseph de Sacerdotibus, hebreo medico . When the expulsion decree was extended to Voltaggio in 1567, ha-Kohen avoided the Duchy of Monferrato for a while . From 1571 he established himself again in Genoa, where he died after 1577.

Works

In addition to his work as a doctor, ha-Kohen dealt intensively with history. In 1554 his main work Divre ha-yamim le-malkhe Sarefat u-vet Otoman ha-Togar (Chronicle of the Kings of France and the Ototman dynasty of the Turks) appeared in Sabbioneta . In the form of annals he described the history of France and the Ottoman Empire and interwoven events from Jewish history.

Inspired by reading Samuel Usque 's Consolacam as tribulacoens de Israel (1553), he began his second major work, Emek ha-bacha ( Emeq ha-Bakha ; the valley of tears). This chronicle covers Jewish history from creation to the present, with an emphasis on the martyrology of the Jewish people. Joseph ha-Kohen revised Emek ha-bacha several times, the last time in 1575. The book circulated in several manuscripts. Parts of it were read in Italian synagogues on September 9th . A first printed version appeared in Hebrew in 1852; a German translation was published in 1858.

In addition to his historical works, Ha-Kohen wrote a number of other writings. He is the author of medical treatises as well as poetry. In order to familiarize his readers with general history, he translated and edited the ethnological work Omnium gentium mores, leges et ritus by Johannes Boemus and the Historia de las Indias y Conquista de México by Francisco López de Gómara .

expenditure

• Divre ha-yamim (Franco-Turkish Chronicle)
  • Sefer divre ha-yamim le-malkhe Sarefat u-vet Otoman ha-Togar . First printing Sabionetta 1544.
  • Sefer divre ha-yamim le-malkhe Sarefat u-malkhe vet Otoman ha-Togar, helek shelishi . DA Gross (ed.), Jerusalem 1955.

• Emek ha-bacha (valley of tears)
  • Emek habaca: Historia persecutionum Judaeorum (...) a Josepho Hacohen M. Letteris (ed.), First printed in Vienna 1852.
  • Emek habacha (German translation, by M. Wiener), Leipzig 1858. online
  • Sefer Emeq ha-Bakha (The vale of tears) with the Chronicle of the Anonymous Corrector . Karin Almbladh (ed.), Uppsala 1981 ISBN 91-554-1143-6 .
• Iggerot (letters)
  • The letters of Joseph ha-Kohen, the author of Emeq ha-bakha . Abraham David (ed.), Jerusalem 1985.
• Translations and edits
  • Sefer ha-Indiʾah ha-ḥadashah. Ṿe-Sefer Fernando Ḳorṭe (1553) Mosheh Lazar (ed.), Lancaster 2002. ISBN 0-911437-96-7

literature

• Martin Jacobs: Islamic History in Jewish Chronicles. Hebrew historiography of the 16th and 17th centuries. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2004, ISBN 3-16-148156-9 , pp. 82-108, 185-220.
• Martin Jacobs: Joseph ha-Kohen, Paolo Giovio, and Sixteenth-Century Historiography. In: David B. Ruderman, Giuseppe Veltri (Ed.): Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early-Modern Italy. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 2004, ISBN 0-8122-3779-X , pp. 67-85.
• Ephraim copper:  Joseph Ha-Kohen. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 11, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865939-8 , p. 429 (English).
• Isidore Loeb: Josef Haccohen et les chroniqueurs Juifs. In: Revue des Études juives (REJ). Vol. 16 (1888), pp. 28-56, 209-223, and Vol. 17 (1888), pp. 47-271 ( digital copy of a special edition).
• Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi : Clio and the Jews: Reflections on Jewish Historiography in the Sixteenth Century. In: Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research. Vol. 46/47 (1979/1980), pp. 607-638.
• Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi: Messianic Impulses in Joseph ha-Kohen. In: Bernard Dov Cooperman (Ed.): Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1983, ISBN 0-674-47461-9 , pp. 460-487.

Web links

• Eduard Neumann, Richard Gottheil:  Joseph ben Joshua ben Meir Ha-Kohen. In: Isidore Singer (Ed.): Jewish Encyclopedia . Funk and Wagnalls, New York 1901-1906.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Jacobs: Islamische Geschichte (2004), p. 85.