Miguel de Barrios

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The Jew's Bride. Painting by Rembrandt 1667. Allegedly depicting Miguel de Barrios and his wife Abigail.

Don Miguel de Barrios ( Hebrew Daniel Levi ; * 1635 in Montilla ; † October 6, 1701 in Amsterdam ) was a Spanish - Jewish poet and historian.

Life

Converso in Spain

Miguel de Barrios was born in Montilla ( Cordoba Province ) in 1635 to a Portuguese - Marran family. When one of his relatives in Cordoba was killed by the Inquisition , the family left Spain around 1650 and initially moved to Oran (now Algeria ). Miguel and his brother seem to have served in the Spanish army there (in Mers-el-Kébir ). When Jews and Conversos were also expelled from Oran in 1667, he went to Italy with many others .

Jew in the West Indies

In Livorno he returned to Judaism, was circumcised and took the name Daniel. Shortly afterwards he married Deborah Váez. In 1660 he sailed with his first wife and 152 co-religionists, mostly former Conversos , to the Netherlands Antilles , with the intention of finding happiness in the new world ( Pensaban probar fortunas en el Nuevo Mundo ). He settled in Tobago , but soon returned to Europe after the early death of his wife.

Catholic in Brussels

In 1662 he married Abigail da Pina , an ex-Conversa from Morocco, in Amsterdam . At the same time he joined the Spanish army and lived for the next twelve years as a Catholic captain ( Capitan de Caballos ) and Spanish poet in Brussels . His wife stayed in Amsterdam, so he maintained his relationship with the local Jewish community. In Brussels he published his two main works Flor de Apolo (1665) and Coro de las Musas (1672) as well as three dramas.

Jew in Amsterdam

When he said goodbye in 1674 , he returned to Amsterdam to live with his wife and two children and again openly confessed to Judaism under the name of Daniel Levi de Barrios. Like many of the Amsterdam Jews, he became a follower of Shabbtai Zvi and prepared for the arrival of the supposed Messiah by fasting in 1675 . He continued to deal with his poetic work, but was now increasingly active as a historian. With his Historia universal judáica he tried to write an outline of Jewish history; in Casa de Jacob he wrote about the first settlement of Jews in Holland.

With casual poetry, little poems of praise for richer Sephardi , Barrios could barely earn a living for himself and his family. He also received regular alms from the Portuguese community . His wife died in Amsterdam in 1686, his only son Simon in the Barbados in 1688 . After 1689, hardly anything was printed by Miguel de Barrios. He died in Amsterdam in 1701, according to other sources in 1705, where he was buried next to his second wife.

The Jewish bride

On the frontispiece of the Amsterdam edition of the Imperio de Dios en la harmonia del mundo (1663) the Barrios family is depicted in allegorical form. The poet can be seen surrounded by his wife as Bellona , his daughter Rebekka as Cupid and his son Simon as Mercury . Better known than this engraving by Christian van Hagen is the portrait of Rembrandt , which is also supposed to depict the Barrios. The work The Jewish Bride was created in 1667. The picture was only given this title in the 19th century. Around 1929 Jacob Zwarts put forward the thesis that the couple depicted could be Miguel and Abigail de Barrios. Other interpreters see a biblical representation in the picture.

plant

Like his life, his work can be divided into two periods. The turning point is the year 1674, when he quit his service in Catholic Brussels and returned to the Jewish community in Amsterdam.

In Brussels his spelling was strongly indebted to the Spanish Baroque . His role model was the Spanish poet and playwright Luis de Góngora . The three plays that Barrios published in Brussels together with his most famous collection of poems, Flor de Apolo , corresponded to the typical Spanish style of his time. His work is often attributed to the Siglo de Oro (Golden Age). In addition, he took up Jewish / converso topics during his time in Brussels. The play Contra la verdad no hay fuerza was about the burning of three martyrs at an auto-da-fé in Cordoba.

Although Barrios continued to write praise poems for Christian rulers and nobles during his time in Amsterdam, he now increasingly turned to specifically Jewish topics. In addition to some religious poems, he wrote some historical works related to the Sephardic community of Amsterdam ( Triumpho del goviemo popular , Casa de Jacob , Relación de los poetas y escritores españoles, etc.).

Imperio de Dios en la Harmonia del Mundo occupies a special position . With this work he attempted to present the Pentateuch in a poetic version.

Works (selection)

  • Flor de Apolo. Dirigida al Ilustrísimo Señor Don Antonio Fernández de Córdoba . Brussels 1665.
  • El canto junto al encanto . Brussels 1665.
  • Pedir favor al contrario . Brussels 1665.
  • El español en Orán . Brussels 1665.
  • El Coro de las Musas, dirigido al excelentísimo Señor Don Francisco de Melo . Brussels 1672.
  • Palacio de la Sabiduría , Don Sancho y Sobre la victoria de Ameixal . Brussels 1673.
  • Las poesías famosas y comedias . Brussels 1674.
  • Imperio de Dios en la Harmonia del Mundo . 1673 Amsterdam
  • Sol de la vida . Antwerp 1679.
  • Árbol florido de noche . Amsterdam 1680.
  • Luna opulenta de Holanda, en nubes que el amor manda . Amsterdam 1680.
  • Descripción de Las islas del mar Atlántico y de América , Piratas de la America y luz à la defensa de las costas de Indias Occidentales . Cologne 1681.
  • Relación de los poetas y escritores españoles de la nación judáica amstelodana . Amsterdam 1683.
  • Triumpho del goviemo popular y de la antigüedad holandesa . Amsterdam 1683.
  • Historia universal judáica . Amsterdam 1683.
  • Casa de Jacob . Amsterdam 1684.
  • Bello Monte de Helicona . Brussels 1686.
  • Estrella de Iacob sobre flores de Lis . Amsterdam 1686.
  • Alegrías o pinturas lucientes de himeneo . Amsterdam 1686.
New edition
  • Complete Works in three volumes. Moshe Lazar, F. Javier Pueyo Mena (eds.), Volume 1: Pieces, Volume 2: Poems. Lancester 2002-… ISBN 0-911437-88-6 .

literature

  • Norman Toby Simms: Masks in the mirror. Marranism in Jewish experience . New York 2006, ISBN 978-0-8204-8120-3 .
  • Francisco J. Sedeño Rodríguez: Flor de Apolo . Kassel 2005, ISBN 978-3-937734-04-0
  • F. Díaz Esteban: La fidelidad de los judíos a los reyes en la Historia Universal Judaica de Miguel de Barrios . In: J. Targarona y A. Sáenz-Badillos (eds.), Jewish Studies in the Turn of the Twentieth Century . Leyden 1999, ISBN 978-90-04-11558-3 , pp. 498-503.
  • Julia Rebollo Lieberman: El teatro alegorico de Miguel (Daniel Levi) de Barrios . Newark 1996, ISBN 0-936388-68-4
  • Harn den Boer: La literatura hispano-portuguesa de los sefardíes de Ámsterdam en su contexto histórico-social (siglos XVII y XVIII) . Ámsterdam 1992.
  • Timothy Oelman: Marrano Poets of the Seventeenth Century. An Anthology of the Poetry of João Pinto Delgado, Antonio Enríquez Gómez, and Miguel de Barrios . London, Toronto 1982, ISBN 978-0-19-710047-9
  • Israël Salvator Révah: Les Écrivains Manuel de Pina et Miguel de Barrios et la censure de la Communauté Judéo-Portuguaise D'Amsterdam . In: Tesoro de los judíos sefardíes , 8 (1965), pp. 74-91.
  • Kenneth R. Scholberg: Miguel de Barrios and the Amsterdam Sephardic Community . In: The Jewish Quarterly Review , 53/2 (1962), pp. 120-159.
  • Kenneth R. Scholberg: La poesía religiosa . Madrid, Ohio State University Press 1962.
  • Meyer Keyserling: Une histoire de la littérature juive de Daniel Levi de Barrios . In: Revue des Etudes Juives , 18 (1889), pp. 276-2281.
  • Wilhelmina Chr. Pieterse: Daniel Levi de Barrios as a divorcee from de portugees-israelietische gemeente te amsterdam in zijn “triumpho del govierno popular” . Amsterdam 1968.
  • Edward Glaser: Two Notes on the Hispano- Jewish Poet Don Miguel de Barrios . In: Revue des Etudes Juives , 124 (1965) pp. 201-211.
  • Kenneth R. Scholberg, Yom Tom Assis:  Barrios, Daniel Levi (Miguel) de. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 3, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865931-2 , pp. 176-177 (English).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mordechai Arbell: Leghorn: Center of immigration of the Sephardic Jews to America, 17th century.
  2. ↑ a b Meyer Keyserling, 1889
  3. ^ Mordechai Arbell: The Failure of the Jewish Settlement in Tobago . In: Judaica Latinoamericana 3 (1997), pp. 9-21. online ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / gator227.hostgator.com
  4. ↑ a b Simms, 2006.
  5. ^ Pieterse, 1968.
  6. ↑ Michael Zell: Reframing Rembrandt: Jews and the Christian image in seventeenth-century Amsterdam . Berkeley 2002, ISBN 978-0-520-22741-5 .
  7. ^ Jacob Zwarts: The Significance of Rembrandt's “The Jewish Bride” . Amersfort 1929.
  8. ↑ Scholberg, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2.
  9. ↑ Scholberg, 1962.
personal data
SURNAME Barrios, Miguel de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Barrios, Daniel Levi de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish-Jewish poet and historian
DATE OF BIRTH 1635
PLACE OF BIRTH Montilla , Cordoba Province
DATE OF DEATH October 6, 1701
Place of death Amsterdam