Poems, Moses ben Joab Rieti, [16th century]

This volume contains sonnets and poems on various events. They include an elegy on the death of Moses ben Joab’s friend, the poet Joseph Tzarfati, as well as a poem in defense of philosophy. R. Bonfil points out that Rieti’s collection of poems, which has never been published in its entirety, contains sonnets on the immortality of the soul, on the study of the Talmud and at the same time, erotic poems. According to U. Cassuto the present manuscript is not an autograph but was perhaps copied by Moses ben Joab’s friend, Shlomo Poggibonsi. Bregman states that the manuscript is difficult to read and has numerous scribal errors. Samuel David Luzzatto has composed a table of contents and written a copy of a poem on fols. 41r-42v. Hirschfeld, who could not identify the author, gives a detailed account of the contents in his catalog. This author is not identical with the author of Ez Hayyim in Montefiore ms. 17, who is called Moses ben Joab of Florence.

Sotheby’s is grateful to Menahem Schmelzer z”l and Benjamin Richler for cataloguing this manuscript.

Provenance

Samuel David Luzzatto (note on front flyleaf, stating that he received it as a gift from ah”m) — Solomon Halberstam (shelf no. 178)

Physical Description

42 leaves on paper, 5 ¾ x 4 inches; 146 x 102 mm, written in brown ink in an Italian cursive script, modern foliation in ink; a few spots, faint dampstaining, library stamp on first folio and fol. 41. Stiff boards; stained, spine worn.

Literature

Hirschfeld (ms. no. 366); U. Cassuto, Ha-Yehudim be-Firenze, (1967), pp. 265-272; R. Bonfil, As by a Mirror: Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy, (1994), p. 136 (in Hebrew); D. Bregman, A Bundle of Gold: Hebrew Sonnets from the Renaissance and the Baroque, (1997), pp. 75-80, 568 (in Hebrew)