Emotions and the Hidden Transcript: The Jewish Gospel Toledot Yeshu in Early Modern Italy
From Firenze University Press Journal: CROMOHS
Daniel Barbu, CNRS, Laboratoire d’études sur les monothéismes (UMR 8584)
A Tour of the Ghetto
In 1611, the English tourist Thomas Coryat (1577–1617) published his Crudities, describing his journey across France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. The son of a Protestant minister, Coryat left Oxford without a degree, then became a favoured jester of the English court before setting out on his European expedition between May and October 1608. Among the many exploits and adventures he recounted with much humour and irony in the Crudities, Coryat included his ‘dangerous encounter with cruell Jewes’ while visiting the Jewish ghetto in Venice. A trip to the ghetto could indeed provide plenty of excitement for a seventeenth-century Englishman, whose knowledge of Jews might well have been limited to quasi-mythical accounts, such as Chaucer’s Prioress’s Taleor Marlowe’s Jew of Malta.
The ghetto was, after all, an ‘exotic microcosm within the Christian city.’3In his autobiography, the Venetian rabbi Leone Modena often recalls how Christian travellers visited the synagogue to marvel at the Jewish rituals and hear the rabbis sing and preach. While Modena does not mention him by name, Coryat was among them. He observed the synagogue rituals with curiosity and interest, noting that Jewish prayers were in fact more akin to shoutingthan to singing. He also deplored the Jewish custom of entering the synagogue without uncovering their heads or kneeling. The experience was evidently alienating, but also somewhat ambivalent. While Coryat admired the beauty of Jewish women and the elegance of Jewish men, he could not avoid feeling sad for these Jews and their antiquated religion. ‘Truly,’ he noted, ‘it is a most lamentable case for a Christian to consider the damnable estate of these miserable Jewes, in that they reject the true Messias and Saviour of their soules.’
The question obviously tormented him, to the point that he decided to try out his own missionary skills and engage in a ‘discourse with the Jewes about their religion.’ Thus he embarked upon a discussion with a ‘learned Rabbin that spake good Latin,’ asking him ‘his opinion of Christ, and why he did not receive him for his Messias.’7The rabbi apparently replied that, while he was willing to accept that Jesus was a prophet, he could not acknowledge his divinity or recognise himas the Messiah. Coryat replied byciting Jesus’smiracles and the biblical prophecies referring to his coming. He insisted that the rabbi ‘renounce his Jewish religion and undertake the Christian faith, without the which he should be eternally damned.’ His interlocutor, however, was not convinced. For him, it seemed Christians only interpret Scripture according to their will, adding that, for his part, he was ‘confidently resolved to live and die in his Jewish faith.’8By this time, Coryat noted, the rabbi was also ‘somewhat exasperated.’ Coryatcould only conclude that the Jews were indeed a stubborn people, who could not be converted as most of them only view Jesus as a ‘silly poor wretch’ unworthy of being the Messiah. The discussion had taken an uncomfortable turn, and Coryat reports that ‘[a]fter there had passed many vehement speeches to and fro betwixt us, it happened that some forty or fifty Jewes more flocked about me, and some of them beganne very insolently to swagger with me, because I durst reprehend their religion.’He eventually had to escape the ghetto, ‘least they would have offered me some violence.’ Fortunately, he encountered the English ambassador who quickly conveyed him to safe grounds, away from his ‘unchristian’ attackers.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/cromohs-12952
Read Full Text: https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/cromohs/article/view/12952
