Shmuel Archevolti

Shmuel (ben Elchanan Ja'akov) Archevolti ( Hebrew שמואל ארקוולטי) (* around 1515/1530 in Cesena ; † 1611 ) was a Jewish grammarian and poet in Italy.

Archevolti was born in Cesena in Romagna. However, he spent most of his life in Padua , where he was head of the yeshiva , secretary of the congregation and Av Bet Din . Stays in Bologna and Venice , where he worked as a proofreader, are also documented. Archevolti studied with Meir Katzenellenbogen in his youth . His most important student is Leone da Modena .

Works

Among the most important works by Shmuel Archevolti are his He'arot le-Sefer he-Aruch - Notes on the Aruch of Nathan ben Jechiel (first printed in Venice 1553) and Arugat ha-Bosem , a Hebrew grammar with 32 chapters (German: "The Spice Bed"; First printing Venice 1602). In the first 25 chapters of this book, Archevolti deals with the basics of the Hebrew language, then with its poetic forms. So he discusses the accents and the metric, u. a. using our own model seals. Chapter 30 deals with Hebrew cryptography and steganography . Johann Buxtorf the Younger translated it into Latin and included it in his translation of the Kusari by Jehuda ha-Levi (Basel 1660).

There are also a number of sonnets that have so far only been published in a scattered manner. Some can be found in Dvora Bregman: A Bundle of Gold: Hebrew Sonetts from the Renaissance and the Baroque. Jerusalem / Beer Sheva 1997.

literature

• Yosef Ofer: Methods of encoding in Samuel de Archevolti's "Arugat ha-Bosem". In: European Journal of Jewish Studies 2 (2008), 45–63.
• Arie Schippers: The Work of Samuel Archivolti (1515-1611) in the Light of the Classical Traditions and Cinquecento Italian Literature. In: Helmántica 154 (2000), 121-138.

Web links

• Entry in the Jewish Encyclopedia . Funk and Wagnalls, New York 1901-1906.