Las Excelencias de los Hebreos [“The Admirable Qualities of the Jewish People]”

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)

First edition of a masterpiece of Jewish Apologetics. Contains numerous references to the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition, anti-Jewish Iberian authors and the history of sixteenth and seventeenth century Marranos in Spain an Portugal, with many first-hand anecdotes This famous apology of Judaism was written by the former converso, the physician FERNANDO CARDOSO (1604-1681). Born in Trancoso, Portugal, Cardoso was one of the many Portuguese New Christian immigrants who settled in Spain in the early seventeenth century. He studied at Salamanca and was accorded the title of “phisico mayor” or court physician by Philip IV. Afterwards he practised as a physician in Madrid, where he gained access to the highest literary and social circles. Fearing persecution by the Inquisition, he fled to Venice and subsequently settled in Verona. His comprehensive apologetic work Las excelencias y calunias de los Hebreos describes ten virtues of the Jewish people and refutes ten common calumnies, or anti-Jewish stereotype accusations. It has been considered “a masterpiece of Jewish anti-defamation, perhaps the most striking since Josephus’s Contra Apionem”. See EJ, s.v. “Cardozo, Isaac” and Y.H. Yerushalmi on Cardoso’s Excelencias in Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Treasures of Jewish Booklore. Amsterdam, AUP, 1995, p. 21