LAGUNA, DANIEL ISRAEL LOPEZ. Espejo Fiel de Vidas que Contione Los Psalmos de David

(SEPHARDIC LITERATURE).

London

1720

Vignette of King David on title, most unusual allegorical engraved frontispiece and additional plate all engraved by Abraham Lopes de Oliveyra

Kayserling 55-6; Roth B11,12

Poetical version of the Psalms in Spanish. “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. Born in Portugal in 1653, Laguna was persecuted and imprisoned by the Inquisition as a Marrano. He succeeded in escaping and chose to settle in 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. The introductory poem relates Laguna’s varied experiences and in several of the Psalms, he alludes to his suffering during the Inquisition