Sarah Copia Sullam
Sarah Copia Sullam (* around 1588/1592 in Venice ; † 1641 there ) was a Jewish-Venetian poet .
Sarah Sullam was in correspondence with the Genoese writer and poet Ansaldo Cebà. Leone da Modena was one of her patrons, who probably also wrote the inscription on her tombstone.
Names and first names vary in contemporary sources between Copio, Coppio, Copia, Coppia, Sara, Sarah or Sarra.
Life
Sarah Copia was born as the only child of Simone Coppio († 1606) and Ricca Coppia. The wealthy family, probably from Mantua, lived in the Venice ghetto . Between 1606 and 1612 she married Giacobbo Sullam, a prominent Jewish businessman. Their first child died in 1615, and none of those born later appear to have survived early childhood. Sarah and her husband loved the arts, ran an open house, held concerts there, and invited poets, artists, scholars and intellectuals, and both rabbis and Christian clerics, to their home.
Regular guests of the house included Numidio Paluzzi (1567-1625), a poet and man of letters who came from Rome and who may have taught her in Latin, Alessandro Berardelli, a painter from Rome and close friend of Paluzzis, and Baldassare Bonifacio (1586-1659), poet , Priest, legal scholar and correspondent of Paluzzi, Giovanni Francesco Corniani (1581–1646), writer and official of the Esecutori contro la bestemmia , an authority for the prosecution of blasphemy , and who also held the office of avogador di commun (equivalent to the public prosecutor), and the Jewish rabbi, scholar and family friend, Leone da Modena. Some of them belonged to the most important literary association in Venice at the time, the Accademia degli Innocenti.
In 1618 she read the book La Reina Ester , an epic poem by the Genoese poet Ansaldo Cebà, published in Genoa in 1615 and reprinted a year later in Milan, to whom she expressed her admiration and enthusiasm for the book in a letter. As a result, an emotionally charged correspondence developed between the two over four years. They exchanged pictures, poems and gifts. Cebà pursued the goal - unsuccessfully - of converting his correspondent to Christianity. After that venture failed, he abruptly stopped correspondence. From the intense debate between the two of them about the Christian and Jewish religions, only Part Cebàs remains, whose letters are kept in the library of the Museo Correr in Venice.
About the immortality of the soul
In 1621 a treatise by the cleric Baldassare (Balthasar) Bonifacio with the title Immortalità dell'anima came out in Venice , in which he accused Sarah Copia, whose guest he had often been, of not believing in the dogma of the immortality of the soul. Sarah Copia was in danger of attracting the attention of the Inquisition .
Sarah Copia immediately responded to the allegations with a manifesto dedicated to her late father. With this work, which came out in three different editions, she defended her views, attacked Bonifacio violently for his methods and arguments and, for her part, referred to sources from the Old and New Testaments, to Aristotle , Josephus Flavius and Dante . In a letter, Bonifacio insinuated that she had not written the text herself, but an - unnamed - rabbi; What was meant was probably the highly educated and eloquent Leone da Modena. In doing so, Bonifacio accused her not only of heresy , but also of deception and plagiarism .
Sarah sent a copy to Cebà, who did nothing in her defense, but tried again to convert her to Christianity; when he was unsuccessful, he broke off all contact with her. Bonifacio, for his part, responded to their manifesto with new accusations. Sarah Copia suddenly saw herself as a protagonist and a victim in a theological-philosophical dispute in which it was no longer about a single doctrine, but about a fundamental debate about Jewish and Christian beliefs. In 1623, Cebà's share of the correspondence appeared in a Milanese publisher, Sarah Copia's letters remained unprinted.
dig
Sarah Copia's grave is in the Jewish cemetery on Venice Lido . The inscription, carved in Hebrew script, is traditionally attributed to Leone da Modena. It was translated into Italian in the 19th century by Moisè Soave (1820–1882).
Questa è la lapide della distinta
Signora Sara Moglie del vivente
Jacobbe Sullam
L'angelo sterminatore saetto il dardo
ferendo mortalemento la Sara
Saggia fra le moglie, appoggio ai derelitti
Il tapino trovava in lei una compgna, un'amica
Se al presente e data irreparabildmente agli insetti
nel di predistinato dira il buon Dio:
Torna, torna o Sulamita.
Cessava di vivere il giorno seste (venerdi)
5 adar 5401 dell'era ebraica
L'anima sua possa godere l'eterna beatitudine
translated
This is the gravestone of certain
Signora Sara wife of the living
Jacobbe Sullam
The strangling angel threw the dice
Sara fatally aptly
wise among women, support the abandoned
The needy found in her a companion, a friend
Even though she was now irrevocably prey of worms [insects ] is
After the predestination, the good God will say:
Come back, come back, O Sulamith.
She ceased to live on the sixth day (Friday) of Adar
5th Hebrew time,
may your soul enjoy eternal bliss
Editions of works and contemporary sources
- Jewish Poet and Intellectual in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Works of Sarra Copia Sulam in Verse and Prose. Along with Writings of Her Contemporari. Series: The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Don Harran. Chicago University Press 2009 ISBN 0-226-77989-0
- Baldassare Bonifacio: Dell'immortalità dell'anima. Pinelli, Venice 1621
Literature (selection)
- Heinrich Graetz History of the Jews. Vol. 10. Leipzig 1868
- Ernest David: Sara Copia Sullam, une Héroïne Juive au XVIIe Siècle. Paris 1877
- Nahida Ruth Lazarus (Nahide Hemy): The Jewish woman. 3. Edition. Sullam, Berlin 1896, pp. 170 ff., Archive.org
- Meyer Kayserling : The Jewish Women in History, Literature and Art. 1879. books.google.de
- Hannah Karminski : Jewish-religious women's culture, in Emmy Wolff: generations of women in pictures. Herbig, Berlin 1928, pp. 163–172 (Sullam pp. 165f.)
- Riccardo Calimani : Storia del ghetto di Venezia. Milano 1995 ISBN 88-04-49884-6 . Cape. 15: Sara Coppio Sullam, la poetessa. Pp. 193-199
- Barbara H. Whitehead: Jewish Women and Family Life, Inside and Outside the Ghetto . In: The Jews of Early Modern Venice. Ed. Robert C. Davis and Benjamin Ravid, Baltimore 2001, pp. 143-165
Web links (selection)
- Jewish Encyclopedia
- Howard Tzvi Adelman: Sarra Copia Sullam. In: Jewish Women's Archive
Individual evidence
- ^ Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani . Treccani, Vol. 28, 1983.
- ↑ Hannah Karminski, op.cit., P. 165
- ^ Diana Mary Robin, Anne R. Larsen, Carole Levin: Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England . 2007, p. 97
- ↑ Balthasar Bonifacio wanted to make a career, which he succeeded; he became bishop of Capodistria
- ↑ Manifesto di Sarra Copia Sulam hebrea Nel quale è da lei riprovate, e detestata l'opinione negante l'Immortalità dell'Anima, falsemente attribuitale da Sig. Baldassare Bonifacio
- ↑ Longer German excerpt from Karminski 1928, p. 166. Sullam writes: My religion commands me to have pity on your simplicity.
- ^ Howard Zvi Adelmann
- ↑ Risposta al Manifesto. Venezia 1621
- ↑ Calimani 1995, p. 199
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sullam, Sarah Copia |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Venetian poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1588 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Venice |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1641 |
| Place of death | Venice |