Semuel da Silva

Semuel da Silva (also Samuel da Silva ; * around 1570 probably in Porto ; † January 3, 1631 in Hamburg ) was a Portuguese doctor, author and translator.

Live and act

Little is known about the life of Semuel da Silva. After studying medicine at the University of Coimbra , he left his home country before 1613. The reason for his actions was most likely that he was fleeing the Inquisition . He then probably lived briefly in Amsterdam and came to Hamburg before 1616. Da Silva took an active part in the life of the local Jewish community . In 1613 his translation of a work by Maimonides from Hebrew into Spanish appeared in Amsterdam and Frankfurt . With this work he wanted to encourage parishioners who had returned from Christianity to Judaism. A list dated April 13, 1617 lists da Silva as one of the Portuguese living in Hamburg who wanted to leave Hamburg because their settlement privilege threatened not to be renewed.

Semuel da Silva probably met the Portuguese Uriel da Costa in Hamburg, who left Hamburg around 1623 in a dispute against Amsterdam. Here he worked on an extensive work. Da Silva came into possession of parts of da Costa's manuscript and published chapters 23 and 25 of it in his work Tratado da Immortalidade da Alma (On the immortality of the soul) in 1623. Da Silva did not mention da Costas by name, “um not to dishonor the blood from which it is derived ”. Nine copies of this work are known today.

Uriel da Costa published his work Exame das tradições phariseas (Examination of the Pharisaic Tradition) a year later in Antwerp and criticized the prevailing orthodoxy extremely harshly. Due to the criticism expressed by Semuel da Silva of Uriel da Costa, he was excluded from the Jewish community of Antwerp.

Semuel da Silva was married to Ribca, with whom he had the daughter Sara Mussaphia. The family's graves are in the Hamburg Portuguese cemetery .

expenditure

• Herman Prins Salomon, Isaac SD Sassoon (Eds.): Uriel da Costa: Examination of Pharisaic Traditions. Exame das tradições phariseas. Facsimile of the unique copy in the Royal Library of Copenhagen. Supplemented by Semuel da Silva's Treatise of the Immortality of the Soul. Tratado da immortalidade da alma. Brill, Leiden 1993, ISBN 90-04-09923-9

literature

• Michael Studemund-Halévy : Silva, Semuel there . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 3 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0081-4 , p. 363-364 .
• Meyer Kayserling:  Silva, Samuel there. In: Isidore Singer (Ed.): Jewish Encyclopedia . Volume 11, Funk and Wagnalls, New York 1901-1906, pp.  343-344 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Semuel da Silva in the catalog of the German National Library