Wedding Poem, [Rome, Italy] 1722, Composed by Jacob Joseph Caivano

Private collection, Jerusalem

This poem was published by G.B. Sermoneta, in Scritti in Memoria di Enzo Sereni (Jerusalem, 1970), Hebrew section, pp. 1820-207; For Ambron see Vogelstein & Rieger, vol. 2, p. 249; For Caivano see A. Berliner, Geschichte der Juden in Rom , 1893, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 124 and 130).

Written in honor of the wedding of Manoah Hayyim (Tranquillo Vita), son of Shabbetai Sereni, and Fiore, daughter of Gabriel Ambron (or Amron). 

This magnificent poem documents the marriage of two of the most eminent and wealthy Jewish families in Rome. The groom, Manoah Hayyim, was a member of the distinguished Sereni family, a Roman family of ancient origin.  His business partner, Alexander Ambron was a member of the bride’s family. The bride, Fiore Ambron, was the daughter of Gabriel Ambron, one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Rome in the first half of the eighteenth century.  At the end of the seventeenth century, Pope Innocent XI had issued a privilege which designated members of the Ambron family as his personal suppliers of luxury furnishings throughout the Papal States.  The terms of this privilege also permitted the Ambron brothers and their families the right to live outside the ghetto walls, and exempted them from wearing the yellow badge.  In order to facilitate their commercial enterprises for the Pope, the Ambrons were allowed to travel freely within the Papal States, and accordingly, were granted special passports.  The Ambrons' status, privileges, and exemptions would be renewed by nearly every succeeding Pope into the nineteenth century.

In the poem, written in the style of the Italian Baroque, the poet writes that he was in the Divine “arcade” steeped in prayer and poetry but then left to wander through the fields and deserts.  Upon arriving at the arcade on Mount Parnassus he meets Melchizedek, a biblical character who here plays the role of Zeus, father of the muses.  Melchizedek commands his daughters, Calliope (the muse of epic poetry), Clio (the muse of history) and Euterpe (the muse of music and lyric poetry), to accompany the poet to the wedding. Each of the muses then recites her song, (which was probably accompanied by music) and at the conclusion, the wedding guests also participate in the recitation.

The main body of the text is written in three columns and enframed by lush floral border. The figures above represent three of the sister muses of Greek mythology: Euterpe, Clio and Calliope. Mirroring the wide-ranging Renaissance tendency to seek antecedents from the ancient Greek and Roman eras, the cultural borrowings of Italian Jewry extended to these classical models as well.