(SEPHARDICA).

Gerhard Johan Janson and Israel Mondovy

Amsterdam

1771

Samuel Mendes de Sola. Oraçaô funebre as postumas memorias de sua serenissima Alteza, Principe Guilhermo IV. Principe de Orange & Nassau, Stadhouder hereditario das Sette Provincias Unidas [“Portuguese funeral sermon in memory of his Highness Prince William IV of Orange, Stadholder of the Dutch Republic of the United Provinces”]

Kayserling(1890) p. 104, Remedios(1911) p. 135, Neves(1913) 80, Den Boer, Spanish and Portuguese Printing (2003), n. 765

The present funeral sermon preached by Samuel Mendes de Solla in Curaçao at the Portuguese Jewish congregation of Mikveh Israel in 1751, was published by his son Isaac, in Amsterdam in 1771. Samuel Mendes de Solla (b. Lisbon 1699, d. Curaçao 1761) a brilliant student of the Portuguese Jewish seminary of Ets Haim, became a gifted scholar and a talented writer in both the Hebrew and Portuguese languages. Together with Abraham Mendez Chumacero he adapted two Spanish works by Moses Almosnino, Regimiento de la vida (1729) and Transformaciones de Morpheo (1734). In 1749 Mendes de Sola was appointed Haham of the Portuguese Jewish congregation of Mikve Israel at Curaçao. Soon after his arrival, he became involved in a conflict which split the Portuguese Jewish community, it was only with the intervention of the Dutch Prince William IV of Orange that the dispute was settled which indebted the Rabbi to the Prince, as delineated in the present eulogy. See I and S. Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles. Vol. I (1970) pp.181-212, esp. pp. 206-210.