Discorso intorno a l’humana miseria e sopr’al modo di fuggirla [“A Discourse on Human Suffering and How to Escape It”]

POMIS, DAVID DE

Giordano Ziletti

Venice

1572

FIRST EDITION. Printer’s device on title. Text in Italian. At rear of book, two pages of possibly contemporary Italian manuscript, concerning the struggle of Catholic Ireland to free herself of English Protestant rule during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I

Not in Adams

David ben Isaac de Pomis [min ha-Tapuchim] (1525-1593) was a scion of one of the four most distinguished Roman families reputedly brought by Titus from Judea to Italy at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple. De Pomis was a practicing rabbi and physician who received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Perugia in 1551. In his capacity as physician, he served both the Orsini and Sforza families. In our slim work, the author shares with the reader methods he devised to distract himself from his suffering, due in no small measure to the anti-Jewish legislation enacted by Pope Paul IV, which deprived de Pomis of his possessions. See C. Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance, pp. 223-25