Shevet Yehudah [historiography]

IBN VERGA, SOLOMON

Immanuel Benveniste

Amsterdam

1655

Title within architectural columns. Printer’s mark of Immanuel Benveniste (see Ya’ari nos. 60-1)

Vinograd, Amsterdam 223

“One of the outstanding achievements of the Hebrew literature of the Renaissance.” (EJ, VIII col. 1204). A chronicle of Jewish persecution from the destruction of the Second Temple until the Author’s own day, including an account of the Expulsion from Spain. Within ibn Verga’s account, lies a melancholy tone in his critique of his fellow-Jews and the place Gentile society has created for the Jew. “Of all the historical works [of the sixteenth century], ibn Verga’s Shevet Yehudah was to enjoy the widest popularity.” See Y.H. Yerushalmi, Clio and the Jews: Reflections on Jewish Historiography in the Sixteenth Century in: American Academy of Jewish Research, Jubilee Volume (1980) pp.607-38 and reprinted in: D.B. Ruderman (Ed.) Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (1992) pp.191-218. See also idem, The Lisbon Massacre of 1506 and the Royal Image in the Shebet Yehudah, Hebrew Union College Annual, Supplement No.1 (1976). The final leaves of our edition (ff. 85r.-88v.) contain a detailed eyewitness account of the latest Jewish travail, the infamous Chmielnicki Massacres in the Ukraine, as recorded by the Torah genius, R. Shabtai Cohen, author of Sifthei Cohen (Sha”ch)