Las excelencias de los Hebreos [“The Admirable Qualities of the Jewish People”-apologetic defense of Judaism and the Jewish people]. Two parts in one.

CARDOSO, ISAAC (FERNANDO)

David de Castro Tartas

Amsterdam

1679

FIRST EDITION. Woodcut device on title showing a hand gathering flowers with the motto,”El que me esparsio me recogera” (He who has scattered me will gather me). Additional frontispiece (bound in some copies prior to Part II) headed Las excelencias y calunias de los Hebreos, with another woodcut floral device with the motto, “Ellos maldiziran y yo bendizire” (They shall curse and I shall bless)

Kayserling 34

Born in 1603 to a New Christian family of crypto-Jews in Trancoso, Portugal, Cardoso studied medicine in Spain where he rapidly gained access to the highest social circles, and eventually became physician to the Court of Philip IV. However, in 1648, his dual life proved intolerable and he disappeared from Madrid and re-emerged in Venice where he joined the Sephardi community as a professing Jew. Las excelencias de los Hebreos is a masterpiece of Jewish anti-defamation, all the more so, from the pen of a former Marrano who only came into the full knowledge of his Jewish heritage in middle age. The work is divided into ten parts, each with ten chapters. Part I extols the “excelelcias”, or admirable qualities of the Jewish people. In part II, Cardoso refutes ten “calunias” slanders against the Jews. Passionate and eloquent, the work is not only an erudite defense of Jewry as a whole, but also a justification of Cardoso’s own choice to live as a Jew. See Y.H. Yerushalmi, Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana-Treasures of Jewish Booklore (1994) no. 21, pp.48-9 (illustrated)