POMIS, DAVID DE

Giordano Ziletti

Venice

v.d.

Koheleth-L’Ecclesiaste di Salomone. Hebrew text with inter-linear traslation into Italian. With introduction and explanatory notes in Italian by David de Pomis. Dedicated to Cardinal G. Grimani. FIRST EDITION. ff.(8), 41 (of 42), (2). Lacking f.1. [Vinograd, Venice 572-without recording the second work; not in Adams]. 1571. * Discorso intorno a l’humana miseria e sopr’al modo di Fuggirla [“A Discourse on Human Suffering and How to Escape It”]. Dedicated to Margaret Duchess of Savoy. Text in Italian. FIRST EDITION. ff. (4), 38. 1572

David de Pomis studied medicine and philosophy in Perugia and received his doctorate in medicine in 1551. Throughout his life, his ability to practice medicine was periodically restricted by Papal edicts that forbade Jewish physicians attending Christians. The lulls in his medical career gave him the opportunity to gain repute as a writer and a linguist. He wrote several medical pamphlets, a trilingial dictionary (see Lot ***) as well as Italian translations of the Bible. The two present works are thus representative of the scope of de Pomis’s scholarship: a Biblical translation and an holistic medicinal discourse in which de Pomis shares the methods he had formulated to distract himself from misfortunes suffered. The second work was published as an appendix to the first, intended as a practical afterword to King Solomon’s treatment on temporal suffering