Laguna, Daniel Israel Lopez. Espejo Fidel de Vidas que Contiene los Psalmos de David en Verso

A poetic rendition in Spanish of the Book of Psalms. “The translation is perhaps one of the most remarkable productions of Jewish-Spanish literature.” G.A. Kohut, Early Jewish Literature in America in: AJHSP (1915) p.112. Laguna was a Portuguese marrano, who persecuted by the Inquisition, fled to Jamaica, where he openly professed Judaism, and was naturalized in 1693. In the New World, Laguna was motivated to “make the Book of Psalms accessible to such of his co-religionists as had escaped from the Inquisition, but who, in their ignorance of the Hebrew tongue, did not know what they read...” M. Kayserling, The Jews in Jamaica in: JQR (1900) pp.708-17. Spanish approbation of David Nieto, hakham of London, and Hebrew approbation of Joseph ibn Danon. The book is dedicated to Mordecai Nunes Almeyda. “At Jamaica, Laguna completed the poetical work which he had begun in prison, a Spanish paraphrase of the Psalms. In the introductory poem he relates his varied experiences, and in several of his versions of the Psalms he alludes to his sufferings in the dungeons of the Inquisition. With this work, the fruit of 23 years of labor, he went to London… Here he found a patron in Mordecai Nunes Almeyda, who arranged to have the work printed…Laguna subsequently returned to Jamaica and died at the age of seventy.” A. Rosenthal Ltd., Catalog XI (1948), p. 32 (no. 511).