The Book of the Honeycomb's Flow: Sepher Nopheth Suphim by Judah Messer Leon

By Isaac Rabinowitz and Judah Messer Leon

Judah Messer Leon's The Book of the Honeycomb's Flow, written in the second half of the fifteenth century, is a treatise on the art of rhetoric in which the classical rehtorical doctrine of the Greeks and Romas is applied to the Hebrew Bible. It is the earliest such work by a competent Hebrew scholar. Duscussing or alluding to a wide variety of theological, philosophical, political, legal, and psychological subjects, it is one of the most important books of early Renaissance humanism.

As the indispensable basis of his annotated English translation, Isaac Rabinowitx has provided the first critical edition of the Hebrew text, drawing on an early manuscript, the first print edition of 1475/6, and other pertinent sources. Besides supplying paragraphing and punctuation, his Hebrew text includes references to all passages of Scripture cited for exposition or for illustration of rhetorical doctrine, apparatuses of the variant readings and of the book's implicit scriptural allusions and reminiscences, and other textual notes. The annotated translation—the first in any modern European language—includes full referneces to all Messer Leon's classical sources. The introduction to the entire work contains a detailed reconstruction of Messer Leon's life and a full discussion of the nature and intended purposes of The Book of the Honeycomb's Flow.

The publication of the The Book of the Honeycomb's Flow will help scholars to appreciate more fully the importance of the vital Italian Jewish culture of the Renaissance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781501752209

Book preview

Introduction

1. The Nature and Importance of the Nōpheth Ṣūphīm

Judah Messer Leon’s Sēpher Nōpheth Ṣūphīm (The Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow [Psalms 19:10]) is a treatise on the art of Rhetoric—an ars rhetorica—in which the principles and rules of effective and eloquent utterance, formulated in accordance with the doctrine of some of the most authoritative ancient Greek and Latin writings on the subject, are illustrated from, and in turn used to interpret, passages of the Hebrew Bible. Written and published in northern Italy within the third quarter of the fifteenth century, this book, earlier and more clearly than any other single work of Jewish provenience, reflects that deepened and extended concern with classical rhetoric which is taken to be the hallmark of early Renaissance humanism, the most important intellectual movement in the European culture of its day.¹

As a handbook of rhetoric, no topic, theme, or issue susceptible of persuasive presentation to an audience by a speaker or writer was in principle outside the purview of the Nōpheth Ṣūphīm.² The work in fact discusses or alludes to a wide variety of theological, philosophical, political, legal, and psychological subjects. It thus constitutes an excellent conspectus of fifteenth-century ideas, set forth from the point of view of a rabbi and Jewish communal leader who was, in addition, an adherent of and a commentator upon the Aristotelian-Maimonist-Averroist philosophy, an educator, and a physician.

In finding exemplification of classical rhetorical doctrine in passages of the Hebrew Bible, Messer Leon was in effect declaring that, although the sacred texts are perfect as God is perfect, they were composed, and are to be interpreted, according to the same rhetorical and poetical principles as those governing works of a secular or profane character.³ His treatise must, accordingly, rank as one of the earliest monuments of the modern literary and rhetorical criticism of the Hebrew Scriptures. Indeed, Book Four of the Nōpheth Ṣūphīm, which consists of descriptions and scriptural illustrations of no fewer than eighty figures of thought and of speech, is still useful as one of the ablest and fullest treatments of these important features of Biblical Hebrew diction and style.⁴

To its own contemporaries, however, and to successive generations of Italian Jewish writers and scholars throughout the Renaissance period, the Nōpheth Ṣūphīm was chiefly important for its restatement of the age-old doctrine that all scientific and scholarly knowledge is essentially scriptural or Israelite in origin, hence licit for Jewish study, and for its utility as a practical guide to effective speech and writing. It is no accident that Azariah de’ Rossi, whose Me’ōr ‘Ēnayim (first published at Mantua, 1573–75) is the ablest Jewish historical work to appear between the second and the nineteenth centuries, quotes one of the two notable passages of the Nōpheth Ṣūphīm in which Messer Leon defends his recourse to Gentile ideas and teachings; nor that the other is quoted in Judah Moscato’s Nephūṣōth Yehūdhāh (first published at Venice, 1589), the volume through which Moscato is held to have metamorphosed the form and vitalized the content of the Jewish sermon.⁵ An interesting memorandum, dated 1538, attests the fact that the professional scribes (sōpherīm) employed by Italian Jewish communities to compose official letters, addresses, petitions, and other public documents were paid according to their competence in rhetoric.⁶ The Nōpheth Ṣūphīm was doubtless as widely used in the training of such official secretaries as in the preparation of young men for the study of medicine and of philosophy at the Italian universities that would admit them.⁷ In the seventeenth century (1623), we find Joseph Solomon Delmedigo recommending study of Messer Leon’s Nōpheth Ṣūphīm, along with Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics, to whoever might wish to dispose of "the excellence of dignity and the excellence of power [Gen. 49:3] in language."⁸ Our treatise was still in use as late as the eighteenth century: Shimshon Kohen Modon (or, as he signed himself, Sansone Sacerdote Modone), a well-known rabbi and poet who in 1722 was appointed Scholar (ḥākhām) and Secretary (sōphēr) of the Mantua Community, once owned, and quite certainly studied, the William Roth copy of the Incunabulum used in preparing the present edition.⁹

As the first work in Hebrew literature wholly devoted to the new, rhetoric-centered outlook upon life and letters that characterizes the Italian Renaissance, the Nōpheth Ṣūphīm most fittingly and deservedly has the honor of being the first Hebrew book printed and published in its author’s lifetime.¹⁰

2. The Author

Regrettably, we know all too little about the life and career of Rabbi Judah ben Jehiel Rophé, titled Messer Leon, author of the N.S. and certainly fifteenth-century Italian Jewry’s nearest equivalent of the archetypal Renaissance man. Rabbi, educator, physician, exegete, and author, at various times in a life course that spanned the last three quarters of the quattrocento he resided and worked in some of the most important centers of the burgeoning Renaissance Italian culture, including Ancona, Padua, Venice, Bologna, Mantua, and Naples. Judah Messer Leon’s biography, if it were known in sufficient depth and detail, would yield rich stores of insight into the inner life and problems of a Jewish community that, for a century or so, was more tolerated and freer than any in the world prior to the nineteenth century. The brief outline of Judah Messer Leon’s life presented in the following pages is, I believe, the first completely accurate statement of all the basic chronological and residential facts that have thus far become known.¹¹

The place of JML’s birth and early rearing may, with fair plausibility, be inferred from several of the notarial documents which he executed, now preserved in the archives of both Padua and Mantua; in these he is named as the Jew, Leo, son of a certain Vitalis, of Monticulus.¹² Since he himself executed the documents, he must have so identified himself to the notaries in each case. He thought of himself, that is to say, as of Monticulus, meaning that Monticulus was the place where he was born and raised.¹³ Because, however, several northern and central Italian towns bear the name Monticulus (the Latin form of the more familiar Montecchio), the one of which JML considered himself native is not definitely certain.¹⁴ V. Colorni, followed by Daniel Carpi, thought the Montecchio of the region of Le Marche the likeliest such locale, as this is the Montecchio nearest Ancona, where, having been accepted as Rabbi while still in his early manhood, JML was in residence by 1453.¹⁵ But it is, I think, rather more probable that the small town in Vicenza Province known today as Montecchio Maggiore was the Monticulus in question. Both Padua and Mantua are much closer to Montecchio Maggiore than to the Montecchio situated in Le Marche between Pesaro and Urbino. A Paduan or Mantuan notary, hearing JML designate himself as of Montecchio would most naturally and immediately understand this to mean the place now known as Montecchio Maggiore; and since, in the documents prepared for JML, the notaries wrote Monticulus without other regional qualification, it may most easily be supposed that Montecchio Maggiore was the place they had in mind.

The earliest dated records we have of JML are: (1) the colophon of Libhenath Hassappīr, his Hebrew grammar, finished September 11, 1454;¹⁶ (2) the colophon of Mikhlal Yōphī, his minor textbook on logic, begun January 7, 1455, and finished February 6, 1455;¹⁷ (3) a letter of his, dated January 8, 1455, sent from Ancona to the Florentine Jewish community;¹⁸ and (4) the sharply negative response, dated April 6, 1455 of Rabbi Benjamin Montalcino of Florence to the open letters, circulated from Ancona, in which JML urged stricter observance of the rules of female ritual purification, and interdicted the study of Rabbi Levi ben Gershom’s commentary on the Pentateuch (as advocating a view of the divine omniscience that was tainted with heresy).¹⁹ Following the indications of date in the letter to the Florentine community and in Rabbi Benjamin’s adverse response, we note that the controversial letters circulated by JML, then already settled as a rabbi and Rōsh Yeshībhāh (head of academy) in Ancona, were written and sent out by him in the year 1454. Thus, with allowance for the time required to establish himself securely enough to feel able to circulate such letters,²⁰ the date of his arrival in Ancona can hardly have been later than the year 1453, and may have been as early as 1452.²¹

It is a fair guess, then, that JML was born between 1420 and 1425, for, brilliant and accomplished though he was, he could scarcely have been accepted as a rabbi and Rōsh Yeshībhāh in so important a community as Ancona if he were not close to thirty years of age, or older.²² On the other hand, he could not have been much older than thirty when he took up his duties there, since in another letter to the Jewish community of Florence—this one undated, but also adverting to the interdiction of Rabbi Levi’s commentary and to the admonition on female purification of his circular communications—he speaks of himself as ‘ūl yāmīm (an infant of days [Isa. 65:20]).²³

JML received the honorific which he thenceforward used in referring to himself, and which ultimately became part of his name,²⁴ in the first half of the year 1452, during the first visit to Italy of the emperor Frederick III.²⁵ The fact is established by a statement in Rabbi Benjamin Montalcino’s letter of April 6, 1455, in which we are informed that JML’s title was directly or indirectly conferred upon him by the pope and the emperor.²⁶ While Rabbi Benjamin thus professes not to know (he is perhaps unwilling to assert) that the pope and the emperor conferred the title upon JML in their own persons, his statement attests his knowledge that they could have done so, and this means that the title must have been conferred at a time when the emperor was in Italy. The only such period prior to 1454—by which time, as we have seen, JML was already using his honorific—was that of the emperor’s first Italian visit, January 1 to June 3, 1452. It is, accordingly, within this period that Rabbi Judah b. Jehiel Rophé, also known as Leon, was titled Messer Leon.²⁷

Of JML’s career before the year 1452 we know very little, and that mainly by inference. Like his father, he was licensed to practise medicine;²⁸ indeed, if his skill and accomplishments as a physician had not already won him more than local acclaim, he would probably never have been knighted by the emperor and the pope.²⁹ By this time, moreover, he must have been married,³⁰ and his daughter, Belladonna, may already have been born.³¹ He had also already opened, or was about to open, his famous yeshībhāh, an academy in which students, while receiving a thorough Jewish education, could be trained in the secular disciplines necessary for higher studies in the humanities, in philosophy, and in medicine.³² Finally, he had doubtless already embarked on the composition of his grammar, the first of the series of textbooks he designed for the use of students seeking to complete the religio-secular curriculum of his academy.³³

How long beyond the year 1455 JML maintained his residence in Ancona³⁴ we do not know, nor does the evidence now at our disposal permit absolute certainty of where he settled after he left Ancona. His residence at Padua by February 27, 1470, is, however, documentarily established;³⁵ and such other indication as we have of his residence during the fifteen years following his attested presence in Ancona also points rather to Padua than to any other locale.³⁶ The extraordinary writ of privilege issued in JML’s favor by the emperor Frederick III at Pordenone on February 21, 1469, while it does not specify the city where he was then residing, speaks of the testimony offered by reliably credible Christians to the effect that these have known him for a long period of time, and currently know him, to be engaged in the practice and teaching of medicine.³⁷ As the University of Bologna, the only seat of higher learning other than that of Padua wherein JML might possibly have been so described, is known not to have welcomed Jews as professors and students of medicine at this time,³⁸ it is probably Padua to which Rabbi Judah transferred his household and his yeshībhāh upon leaving Ancona.³⁹

At Padua, accordingly, JML remained between the date, after 1455, when he removed from Ancona, and the date in the latter part of 1470 or in 1471, when we find him in Venice.⁴⁰ He thus lived longer in Padua than anywhere else in Italy, except for his native town (Monticulus or Montecchio Maggiore) and Naples, the last of his major residencies, where he lived upward of fifteen years.⁴¹ Considering how attractive Padua at this time must have seemed to a man of JML’s professional and scholarly interests—its great university, unusually tolerant of Jews, was renowned alike for its medical school and for its hospitality to Averroist Aristotelianism—the wonder is less that he should have settled and remained there for so long than that he should ever have left.⁴² During these years in Padua, he lectured at the university,⁴³ continued to teach and practise medicine,⁴⁴ brought to completion two more of his curricular texts,⁴⁵ and probably began to write, but did not finally redact, a third.⁴⁶ It was during his Paduan residency, too, that his daughter, Belladonna, grew up and was married,⁴⁷ and that he himself married Stella, daughter of Benjamin ben Joab of Fano, the lady who, at Venice on December 10, 1471, was to give birth to their son David.⁴⁸ And it was while JML was resident at Padua, finally, that he traveled to Pordenone in order to meet his royal patron, the emperor Frederick III, then ending his second visit to Italy. Here, on February 21, 1469, the emperor bestowed upon him what must surely rank as the most extraordinary writ of privilege ever accorded an individual European Jewish academician: not only a double doctorate, in medicine and in the liberal arts, but also the right to confer such doctorates upon other Jews of proved and demonstrated worthiness.⁴⁹

As the Paduan archival documents attest, JML exercised the right granted him by Frederick III at least twice: on February 27, 1470, he conferred the degree of doctor of liberal arts and of medicine upon Johanan, son of Isaac Alemanno, of Mantua, and on June 15, 1470, he bestowed the same degree upon Benedict, son of Jacob de Gallis, of Parma.⁵⁰ Although we are not further informed about Benedict of Parma, Johanan Alemanno is quite well known as an author, and even more widely known as one of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s teachers of Hebrew and of Judaic literature.⁵¹ An unpublished work of Alemanno’s (his Liqqūṭīm [Miscellanies],⁵² is said to include JML’s N.S. and one of his works on Aristotelian logic in a listing of the books Alemanno considered the essential core of an ideal curriculum of Jewish education.⁵³ If the logical work in question was JML’s Super-commentary on Isagoge-Categories-De Interpretatione, as seems likely, Alemanno has thus indicated his abiding respect for two of the textbooks that must have been made available to him when he was their author’s student at Padua.

We unfortunately do not know whether JML conferred doctorates upon others besides Alemanno and Benedict of Parma, nor do we know how long his right so to act continued in effect. For such an educator as he had become and was to remain throughout most of his life, so much prestige and economic advantage obviously attached to the right to confer the doctorate, that he must certainly have exercised it in many more than the aforementioned two instances had he remained in uncontested possession of this authorization; and at least some of these instances, for doctorates (especially in medicine) were economically valuable, would have been recorded in various notarial archives, and thus become known to us. The absence of such records makes it probable that JML never awarded other doctorates than those given to Alemanno and Benedict of Parma.⁵⁴ Was he perhaps restrained from exercising his privilege at Padua? Was his move from Padua to Venice not long after he conferred the second of these double doctorates connected with the imposition of such a restraint? And was this extraordinary, imperially given privilege one of the issues at controversy in the disputations with Gentile scholars in which he says he engaged while at Bologna?⁵⁵

Whatever the cause or causes of JML’s abandoning Padua, we find him next successively at Venice and at Bologna, in each of which he remained for about a year (late 1470–1472).⁵⁶ Of his stay at Venice we know no more than that his son David was born there on December 10, 1471, and that three days later, in the presence of the students of his yeshībhāh, a young man from Cologna was examined in the rules of ritual meat slaughtering.⁵⁷ Concerning JML’s Bologna sojourn, our sole clear item of information is the aforementioned fact that he there engaged in disputations with Christian scholars.⁵⁸

We are far better informed about the next stage in JML’s career, the two years or so of his residence in Mantua (1473–1475).⁵⁹ We not only have several important notices by others about him at this time, but we have, as it were, an autobiographical statement: the two letters that he sent in 1474 to the Jewish communities of Bologna and of Florence, in which he defended himself against the slanders and falsehoods of a treacherous erstwhile protegé.⁶⁰

In Mantua, JML established his yeshībhāh and living quarters in close proximity⁶¹ to the home of Rabbi Joseph Colon, the great legal authority and Talmudist who in 1455 had upheld him in his views on female purification, and who, in the 1460s, had done so again on the issue of the cappa.⁶² Rabbi Joseph had settled in Mantua in 1470 or 1471;⁶³ he is documentarily attested as having remained there until at least April 26, 1475.⁶⁴

While both rabbis were thus fellow townsmen and neighbors, JML figured personally in a rather grim legal matter on which Rabbi Joseph had been asked to rule, and of which we have a fairly detailed account in two of his responsa.⁶⁵ As described by Rabbi Joseph, the case concerned a father and a son, Naphtali Herz Cohen and Asher Cohen, German Jews resident in Verona. They had quarreled, and the father had resorted to various expedients (including having his son severely beaten in the synagogue)⁶⁶ in order to force the younger man and his family to abandon their shared dwelling and household goods; the son, however, had managed (mostly by dint of the relief he was able to elicit from Rabbi Joseph) to thwart all his father’s attempts to victimize him. Cohen père, realizing that he was not likely to succeed in dislodging his son if the case were tried or arbitrated under Jewish auspices, at length resorted to a measure considered little short of sacrilege: pretending that Asher had refused, when requested, to have the case tried before a Jewish tribunal, Naphtali Herz brought charges against his son before the Gentile courts of Verona, had him arrested, and, as he was unable to furnish bail, remanded to prison.⁶⁷ It was at this juncture, according to Rabbi Joseph’s account, that JML happened to be in Verona.⁶⁸ He protested the unjustified bringing of the matter before a Gentile court; his protest, however, went unheeded, nor was he properly requested, as he ought to have been, to adjudicate the matter.⁶⁹ Upon arrival in Mantua, accordingly, he made a full report of the incident to Rabbi Joseph.⁷⁰ The latter at once dispatched his decree-in-judgment, ordering Naphtali Cohen, under penalty of excommunication, to have his son immediately released from jail and restored to their house, to withdraw the case from the jurisdiction of the Gentile courts, and to arrange with his son for a prompt and definitive settlement of their dispute under proper Jewish auspices.⁷¹

As Rabbi Joseph’s account of the foregoing episode clearly shows, he and JML had great respect and regard for each other, and were the friendliest of neighbors. We have no reason to suppose that the excellent relations between the two, thus depicted—as, indeed, in the several other responsa by Colon in which JML is named—ever deteriorated or altered.⁷² The sole contrary indication, an otherwise uncorroborated, brief report in Gedaliah ibn Yahya’s Shalsheleth ha-Qabbālāh (Chain of Tradition, first printed in 1587),⁷³ is not merely later by about a century than the circumstances it purports to describe, but its misstatements of definitely known facts show that it is totally devoid of credibility.⁷⁴ Acceptance of this demonstrably false report has nevertheless until quite recently dominated—and vitiated—practically the whole of the scholarly literature on JML.⁷⁵

We learn from David Messer Leon’s letter to David of Tivoli that his father’s work "on four books of the Physics" was composed in Mantua; here too, certainly, JML finished the redaction of the Super-commentary on the Posterior Analytics of which he speaks in his own letter to the Florentine Jewish community.⁷⁶ And it was also at this time—the slightly more than two years of JML’s Mantuan residency—that Rabbi Abraham Conat allowed the copy of the manuscript of the Nōpheth Ṣūphīm, which he had some time before made for himself, to be copied by Menahem ben Elijah de’ Rossi of Ferrara, and then, on the basis of his own returned copy, printed it⁷⁷ in the printing house he had just established in Mantua.⁷⁸ Thus, for the very first time in the history of Hebrew literature, a work by a living author was printed and published after the manner of a modern book.

Although the editio princeps of the N.S. does not indicate the year and place of its printing, we know from those of Conat’s imprints which do bear such indications that the place was definitely Mantua, and that the year, which cannot be later than early in 1476, was most probably 1475.⁷⁹ Thus the probability is very great that JML must still have been residing in Mantua when Conat first began to print the N.S. He undoubtedly knew that Conat had made a manuscript copy of his book, and he may have known of Conat’s intention, through the newly available printing process, to issue the work in multiple copies. It is certain, nevertheless, that JML, for all that he was the original author of the N.S., played no part whatever in its production as a printed book: he neither edited it nor corrected it in proof. Comparison of the text of Menahem de’ Rossi’s manuscript copy—based, it will be remembered, on the earlier copy made by Conat—with that of the incunabulum edition, shows clearly that Conat, in course of printing the volume, made many errors both of omission and of commission, errors that JML would never have overlooked or allowed to stand had he had anything to do with seeing the work through the press.⁸⁰

Closely associated with JML’s yeshībhāh in Mantua, whether as student or teaching assistant or both, was a young scribe and scholar from Ferrara named Abraham Farissol.⁸¹ Farissol, who later gained considerable fame as an author in his own right,⁸² was throughout much of his life a skilled and indefatigable copyist of manuscripts, many of which are still preserved. Among these is MS Parma 1957, which, besides some materials composed by Farissol himself, contains an assortment of texts by various authors; the codex is a portmanteau volume of school texts and other materials used, or deemed useful, by Farissol in his work as a teacher.⁸³ One of the texts (number 9 in de’ Rossi’s list), for example, bears the superscription, "These are the theses of the yeshībhāh of Messer Leon (his Rock and his Redeemer preserve him!), and consists of a series of propositions headed respectively in the Torah, in Logic, and in Grammar"—apparently propositions listed for discussion by Messer Leon at sessions of the courses in these subjects given in his yeshībhāh during a particular term.⁸⁴ An entire group of these texts, again (numbers 11–13 in de’ Rossi’s list), consists of letters, by various hands, which Farissol used as examples in teaching the scribal and epistolary art (the ars dictaminis). Included in this group of texts, and thus luckily preserved to us, are the two letters (number 12, as listed) sent by JML in 1474 to the Jewish communities of Bologna and Florence.⁸⁵

Messer Leon’s Letters (1474) to the Jewish Communities of Bologna and of Florence

The occasion of these letters was the fact that a teaching assistant whom JML had found it necessary to dismiss, a Spanish Jew (Sephardi) named David (patronymic unknown), was seeking to avenge himself upon his former employer and teacher by libeling and slandering him however and wherever he could. JML plainly felt constrained to refute these calumnies in the larger and more influential Jewish communities, particularly in Bologna, where he had been in residence just before coming to Mantua, and in Florence, where the Jewish community already then included many Sephardim; his defense in each letter is modulated—as might be expected from the writer of the N.S.—according to his anticipated readership and audience, and presumably, also, according to what he had heard of the acceptance accorded his opponent’s falsehoods.⁸⁶ The care JML has evidently taken with these letters, including his effort to enhance their dignity by writing them in phrases drawn mainly from the Scriptures (m elīṣāh),⁸⁷ shows that the affair was of more than passing concern to him. The letters are of unusual historical interest because, self-revelatory as they are, they afford a rare and most welcome glimpse into the feelings and personal opinions of this early Renaissance Jewish scholar and communal leader.

His Letter to the Jewish Community of Bologna (MS Parma 1957 [ = Codex De-Rossi 145]: 12a)

"[Farissol’s superscription]: This is the copy of the letter composed by Messer Leon (may his Rock protect him) and sent by him to Bologna because of a certain Sephardi who was opposed to him in Mantua in the year 234 of the l[esser] s[pecification] [= 1474 C.E.].

"[Messer Leon’s text]: I have heard that the cry is gone round about the borders [Isa. 15:8] of Bologna, has broadened and wound about higher and higher [Ezek. 41:7] in the full assemblies [Ps. 68:27]. In your house of prayer [Isa. 56:7] my glory has been put to shame [Ps. 4:3] by men of blood and deceit that shall not live out half their days [Ps. 55:24]. It is an enemy that taunts me [Ps. 55:13], and all the people perceive the thunderings [Exod. 20:15].⁸⁸

"Now, therefore, hear, O ye priests [Hos. 5:1], ye shepherds [Ezek. 34:7] of understanding and intelligence, the people in whose heart is the Lord’s Torah [Isa. 51:7].⁸⁹ How the mighty man glories [Jer. 9:22]—in evil! What shall he speak? or how shall he clear himself [Gen. 44:16]? For he has uttered wickedness against the Lord so as to practise ungodliness [cf. Isa. 32:6]. A two-edged sword is in his hand [Ps. 149:7] to cast down many wounded [cf. Prov. 7:26], victims of destructiveness and of denial of God. The sword, it is sharpened, yea, it is furbished [Ezek. 21:16], for to hunt down souls [Ezek. 13:20], in order to break down the towers [Ezek. 26:4] of the Torah. Smoother than cream are the speeches of his mouth [Ps. 55:22] so as to cast men into the depths [Mic. 7:19] of heresy and apostasy. His wine is the venom of serpents [Deut. 32:33], he is a root that bears gall and wormwood [Deut. 29:17].⁹⁰

"And if it be said that thus to lay wanton charges against him [Deut. 22:14] is had of my hand [Isa. 50:11] because I hate him with utmost hatred [Ps. 139:22], was not David hiding himself with you [1 Sam. 23:19] ere ever he came to appear before me [Exod. 34:24]? And wise men that shall be wise [Prov. 13:20] had heard from him the voice of adjuration [Lev. 5:1], the voice of one shouting for mastery [Exod. 32:18] in order to rend the enclosure of hearts [Hos. 13:8], and the voice of one speaking words against the highest [Dan. 7:25]. And I knew that for their sake he suffered taunts [Jer. 15:15], that men had struck him in the open sight of others [Job 34:26] in the land of your sojournings [Gen. 17:8], whereas his voice was not heard [Ps. 19:4] when he went in unto the holy place [Exod. 28:29], though there was enough contempt and wrath [Esth. 1:18].⁹¹

"Indeed, his statutes would have been my songs [Ps. 119:54] in the midst of congregation and assembly [Prov. 5:14]. But witnesses have testified against him that he wished to make those athirst to hear the words of the Lord [Amos 8:11] drink of the beaker, even the cup of staggering [Isa. 51:17]; that he sought to seduce and to thrust down those gleaning before me from their height [cf. Ps. 62:5], and covertly placed before them ordinances which, straying from the way of understanding [cf. Prov. 21:16], would lead to the uttermost parts of the nether-world [cf. Isa. 14:15], would march them to the king of terrors [Job 18:14]. Moreover, as one that tramples down⁹² was he with them, as a madman who casts firebrands, arrows and death [Prov. 26:18].⁹³

"Therefore I administered no rebuke when they scorned and taunted him on the day of the convocation, for he deserves to die [1 Sam. 20:31] and ought properly to be overthrown: because of the perpetual ruins [Ps. 74:3], his name and memory ought to be made to perish. Let not an enemy do evil in the sanctuary [Ps. 74:3], but let him be delivered up to reproaches and insults. Happy is the man that does this [Isa. 56:2], because he fights the battles of the Lord [1 Sam. 25:28].⁹⁴

"As for his having opened his mouth wide against me [Ps. 35:21], gushing out, speaking arrogantly [Ps. 94:4] with tongue that speaks proud things [Ps. 12:4], I had almost quite held my peace, I had been still and refrained myself [Isa. 42:14] from answering him at all, for my people have known my name [Isa. 52:6] from the months of old [Job 29:2]. But now this has come to pass in your days [cf. Joel 1:2], that a base fellow should stand up in the assembly and cry out [Job 30:28] that I have not learned wisdom [Prov. 30:3], and that I am brutish,⁹⁵ unlike a man [Prov. 30:2]. For the mad fool, the enemy of the Lord and His holy Torah, he that is girded with new armor [2 Sam. 21:16], comes from afar with his tongue full of indignation [cf. Isa. 30:27], says to me as follows: ‘You are sunk in the mire of folly [Ps. 69:3]; with you it dwells, in the midst of you [Dent. 23:17]; carry it in your bosom’ [Num. 11:12].⁹⁶

"Are they not in full strength and likewise many [Nah. 1:12], of the wise men of the Gentiles, today in the land of your sojournings [Gen. 37:1] that have seen the mighty hand [Deut. 11:2] with which the Lord graced me in the way of discernment [Isa. 40:14]? Also, you yourselves are witnesses this day [Ruth 4:9] that, all the days when I stood at the threshold of your courts [Ps. 84:11], my heart was not turned back [Ps. 44:19] by reason of the prancings, the prancings of the mighty ones [Judg. 5:22] of the controversies. Yet who has said, ‘Nay, but it is [out of his mouth]⁹⁷ that come the knowledge and the discernment’ [Prov. 2:6]? Have I not conceived the people [Num. 11:12] of knowledge and skill [Dan. 1:17] since old time [Ezek, 38:17]? Or have I not brought them forth [Num. 11:12]? Or have all the wise men of the Gentiles and all their kings [cf. Jer. 10:7], when they saw my glory [Isa. 66:17], not said, ‘There is none so discreet and wise as he’ [Gen. 41:39]?⁹⁸

"Bring it to your minds [cf. Isa. 46:8], and ask for the old paths [Jer. 6:16]: When men rose up against us [Ps. 124:2], when the enemy said ‘I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil’ [Exod. 15:9], many times [Ps. 106:43], even in the days of my youth [Job 29:4], was not God with me [Gen. 28:20] to shatter the horn of our adversaries [Lam. 2:17], to be for the people [Exod. 18:19] a preserver of life [Gen. 45:5]? Was it not my hand that pierced the dragons [Isa. 51:9] of terror, that made the depths of the sea of troubles a way for the redeemed to pass over [Isa. 51:10]? Yet because of this my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty; neither do I exercise myself in things too great, or in things too wonderful for me [Ps. 131:1]. If I have done mighty and tremendous things [cf. Deut. 10:21], it was the Lord, blessed be He, He for Whom they that wait shall not be ashamed [Isa. 49:23], that gave power to the faint [Isa. 40:29] to do valiantly [Ps. 108:14], and to him that had no might He increased strength [Isa. 40:29]. He made my heart take courage [cf. Ps. 27:14] and gave me the tongue of them that are taught, that I should know how to sustain with words him that is weary [Isa. 50:4].⁹⁹

"Though I am little in my own sight [1 Sam. 15:17], and know that I have not the understanding of a man [Prov. 30:2], for who am I and what is my life [1 Sam. 18:18], the fact is, indeed, that I will say ‘Behold me’ [Isa. 65:1] to everyone that searches and to everyone that seeks [cf. Ezek. 34:6], and that my hands are spread forth [1 Kings 8:54] to strangers and settlers [Lev. 25:23] and foreigners whom I do not know. And brought down, I would speak from the ground [Isa. 29:4] for any man sore bestead and hungry [Isa. 8:21], though my speech should be low out of the dust [Isa. 29:4]. None crying out for deliverance is my ear too dull to hear [Isa. 59:1]. Nor have I been afraid to go into the land of great drought to proclaim liberty to the captives [Isa. 61:1] of terror, release to them that are fettered [Isa. 61:1] by panic, and to come from the lions’ dens, from the mountains of the leopards [Song of S. 4:8], in order to bring to pass as it is this day, to save much people alive [Gen. 50:20].¹⁰⁰

"To whom turned I a stubborn shoulder [Zech. 7:11] when any man came nigh to prostrate himself before me [2 Sam. 15:5]? And what is the case even now [1 Kings 14:14]? If I were able to do something that would be good for you, either in general or specifically, upon my belly would I go and dust would I eat [Gen. 3:14]. I would not turn back before anyone [Prov. 30:30] until I had performed the purposes of your heart [Jer. 23:20]. Why, then, should you hear the reproof which puts me to shame [Job 20:3]? The foreigner who has come from a far land [Deut. 29:21] has a harlot’s forehead [Jer. 3:3] to have given me to reviling [Isa. 43:28] upon the highest places of the city [Prov. 9:3]. Your eyes have seen it [Deut. 4:3], but there is none of you that is sorry [1 Sam. 22:8] over my cause of sorrow.¹⁰¹

"Now, then, judge betwixt me and [Isa. 5:3] Master David, that littlest one [cf. 1 Sam. 17:14]. Consider all the goodness that I showed [1 Kings 8:66] him before he multiplied transgression [Amos 4:4] and turned to sacrilege.¹⁰² It came to pass upon a day [1 Sam. 1:4] that he came nigh to prostrate himself before me [2 Sam. 15:5]; he entreated me with his mouth [Job 19:16], and said that because of my name he had come from the ends of the earth [Isa. 41:9] that I might teach him knowledge and make him to know the way of discernment [Isa. 40:14]. He was garbed in patches, and spot cleaved to his hands [Job 31:7], but I was attentive to him, looked upon him, and my eye pitied him [Ezek. 16:5], so I brought him home into my house [Deut. 22:2] for a long time [Num. 20:15]. I made great provision for him [2 Kings 6:23], and made him joyful in the house of my renown¹⁰³ [cf. Isa. 56:7]. I spoke kindly to him [Gen. 50:21], and arranged that he read for my students [al-Ghazali’s] Principal Purposes of the Philosophers,¹⁰⁴ in order that they might put their money in his sack [Gen. 43:22] and there not be withholden from him that which he might purpose to do [cf. Gen. 11:6]. I solemnly warned him, however, not to discuss with the students, outside my presence, any matter that is religiously heterodox.

"Thus I magnified and exalted him [cf. Isa. 1:2] and made him a head of nations [Ps. 18:22].¹⁰⁵ And I gave him daily instruction in the Posterior Analytics, until David exceeded [1 Sam. 20:41].¹⁰⁶ But when he had been here a long time [Gen. 26:8], and I came to know that he devised to thrust down [Ps. 62:5], I drove him out so that he should not cleave unto the inheritance of holy ones [1 Sam. 26:19]. Then his spirit passed over [Hab. 1:11]: he has turned into another man [1 Sam. 10:6], and in the broad places he utters his voice [Prov. 1:20].¹⁰⁷

"Therefore consider, I pray you, and see [2 Kings 5:7] that I have not transgressed and have not rebelled [Lam. 3:42] in making a difference between the unclean and the clean [Lev. 11:47].¹⁰⁸ Of a truth I know that [Job 9:2] the man will not be quiet [Ruth 3:18], will not fail to return answer to these words of mine, but will puff out lies [Prov. 6:12]. But as for me, this once have I spoken [Job 40:5], and have declared you my opinion [Job 32:6]. I will not smite him the second time [1 Sam. 26:8] lest I turn back from the service of my work [Num. 8:25], stop the work of holiness [Exod. 36:4] in order to walk after things of nought [Jer. 2:5]. Finis."

His Letter to the Jewish Community of Florence (MS Parma 1957 [ = Codex De-Rossi 145]: 12b)

"[Farissol’s superscription]: Another letter by our teacher, Rabbi Leon, sent from Mantua to Florence because of the aforementioned Sephardi.

"[Messer Leon’s text]: The captivity of Jerusalem that is in Sepharad [Obad. 20] is that which sits first in the kingdom [Esth. 1:14] of the Torah-observant life, is that which has built in the heavens the upper chambers [Amos 9:6] of the faith. They are such as can order the battle-array [1 Chr. 12:39]: every man has his sword upon his thigh [Song of S. 3:8] so as to smite the God-denying with an incessant stroke [Isa. 14:6], with the stroke of the sword, and with slaughter and destruction [Esth. 9:5]. Unto them alone has been given the entire land [Job 15:19] of scientific inquiry. Him that speaks falsehood [Ps. 101:7], the destructive sects that utter wickedness against the Lord [Isa. 32:6], they have hurled down to utter [Ps. 73:18] and perpetual ruin [Ps. 74:3]; them that have set their mouth against Heaven [Ps. 73:9] they hunt with thrust upon thrust [Ps. 140:12]; their tongue walketh through [Ps. 73:9] the land of great drought [Hos. 13:5]. They built the palaces [Hos. 8:14] of knowledge; of unhewn stones [Deut. 27:6] did they set up its towers [Isa. 23:13], made them as high as the eagle [Obad. 4]; their place of defence [Isa. 33:16] was the fortresses of their Rock [cf. Ps. 31:4]. Above the stars of God have they exalted their throne [Isa. 14:13], and their righteousness endures forever [Ps. 111:3].¹⁰⁹

"Now, however, a rod of pride [Prov. 14:3] has come forth out of the stock [Isa. 11:1] of righteousness, the planting of the Lord wherein He might glory [Isa. 61:3]. It is a root that bears gall and wormwood [Deut. 29:17], one that is the cruel poison of asps [Deut. 32:33], and that has no compassion [Jer. 21:7]. His tongue, like a sharp sword [Isa. 49:2], is used to cast down many wounded [Prov. 7:26], the victims of his destructiveness. A rebel against his King and his God [Isa. 8:21], he speaks words against the highest [Dan. 7:25] in order to cast down from the heights the beauty of [Lam. 2:1] the perfect religion. His fool’s mouth is his ruin [Prov. 18:7] as he gushes out, speaks arrogancy [Ps. 94:4].¹¹⁰

"Is it that my anger is kindled against the rivers of intellect, or my wrath against the sea [Hab. 3:8] of understanding? My mariners and my pilots [Ezek. 27:27] in gallant ship [Isa. 33:21], in swift ships [Job 9:26] do not do business in great waters [Ps. 107:23], do not thus firm their mast, not spread sail [Isa. 33:23] among the wrecks that are in the deep [Ps. 107:23] around them. Shall one man sin [Num. 16:22], and shall I be sore displeased [Zech. 1:2] with all the innocent congregation [Num. 16:22] in whose mouth are the high praises of God [Ps. 149:6]? Shall my wrath burn like fire [Ps. 89:47], and shall my mouth speak froward things [Prov. 2:12]? Is not all that is with me in the house [Josh. 6:17] of insight and in the field [Exod. 9:3] of scientific investigation received at their mouth [cf. Prov. 2:6] or from their writings? I have set them at the head over me as familiar friends [Jer. 13:21], for it is they—the mighty men that were of old [Gen. 6:4], of whom I said ‘In their shadow I shall live’ [Lam. 4:20]—who teach Jacob the ordinances of perfection, and the Torah of wisdom and knowledge to Israel [Deut. 33:10]. Do they not time and again put incense before me and whole burnt-offering upon my altar [Deut. 33:10]? And wherefore would I lift myself up above the assembly of the Lord [Num. 16:3]? Should the axe boast itself against him that hews therewith [Isa. 10:15]? Now, therefore, God forfend that I should present a stubborn shoulder [Neh. 9:29] and commit trespass against [Num. 5:6] those who have made me and fashioned me [Ps. 119:73], caused the light to shine upon me in dark places [Ps. 88:7], and cleared my way of stone of offense and rock of stumbling [Isa. 8:14].¹¹¹

"And who has feeling for the glory of the sons of Spain, if not I [Eccl. 2:25]? Was it not just a few days ago that one of the men of our congregation opened his mouth without measure [Isa. 5:11] in our prayer house, in the sight of all the people [Exod. 19:11], against the Sephardi? His tongue was as a devouring fire [Isa. 30:27], and beyond David he exceeded [1 Sam. 20:41], his throat an open sepulchre [Ps. 5:10]. But my lips were full of indignation [Isa. 30:27], and crying out in the assembly [Job 30:28], I took care to contend with him [Job 9:3] with tongue speaking proud things [Ps. 12:4] of a people revered from their beginning onward [Isa. 18:7]; for it has been a people of understanding [Isa. 27:11] from of old, and over lands have they called upon their names [Ps. 49:12].¹¹²

"Accordingly, if I have now become very wroth, and my anger has burned within me [Esth. 1:12], it is because of an adversary and an enemy [Esth. 7:6] who has rebelled and gone far in wickedness. I know that better than the fat of rams [1 Sam. 15:22], better than a bullock, does it please the Lord [Ps. 69:32] that I show zeal against the arrogant [Ps. 73:3]; for to hold it in I cannot [Jer. 20:9] when a man, upon coming in unto the holy place [Exod. 28:29], lifts up his voice in heresies and delusions that hunt souls as birds [Ezek. 13:20].¹¹³

"Now in order that no one imagine or consider that my hand has done this [Isa. 41:20] because of the hatred wherewith I hated him and so have laid wanton charges against him [Deut. 22:14], I have said to our dear friend from Bologna:¹¹⁴ ‘Cause judges, such as you choose and bring near [Ps. 65:5], to sit, and to his face righteous men will testify on oath that he has devised to thrust down [Ps. 62:5], depart from the path [Isa. 30:11], turn aside unto crooked ways [Ps. 125:5], in order to trust in vanity [Job 15:31] and falsehood, in order to break down the towers [Ezek. 26:4] of the faith. His guests are to be in the depths of hell [Prov. 9:18].¹¹⁵

"And if the former counts should be void [Num. 6:12], added besides unto them [Jer. 36:32] is an iniquitous act of transgression too great to be borne. For having slanderously informed against several of the students, he came into my house at eventide with great power and with a mighty hand [Exod. 32:11], with police officers of the (marchese’s) court armed with lances and swords, in order to arrest one of the students, to hurt his foot with fetters [Ps. 105:18]. The Lord, however, suffered him not to hurt us [Gen. 31:7], for he turned back by reason of his shame [Ps. 70:4].¹¹⁶

"Again, he wrote to Bologna and to other places falsehoods past searching out [Isa. 40:28], namely that I surely hired him [Gen. 30:16] to magnify my name and to praise my works in the gates [cf. Prov. 31:31]; also, that he should make me to know the way of discernment [Isa. 40:14], he that put his holy spirit in the midst of me [Isa. 63:11].¹¹⁷

"Again, too, he copied the Super-Commentary on the Posterior Analytics that I had made, but which had not previously been redacted. Inasmuch as I was in process of redacting the work at the time—or just prior to that time—that I was giving him instruction in it, he brought up an evil name against me [Deut. 22:14], namely, that although I had committed gross errors and mistakes, he had taught me how to make straight the crooked [cf. Eccl. 1:15], had given righteous judgments upon me [Jer. 39:5] so as to devise a skillful work [Exod. 31:4] on knowledge and all understanding [cf. Exod. 31:3]. Yet more: he excised the page containing the book’s preface, and wrote according to these words [Gen. 24:28]: ‘This is the commentary that Maestro Paulo made and that Messer Leon translated from the Christian tongue into Hebrew.’¹¹⁸

"Let now, therefore, the wise men make answer with knowledge [cf. Job 15:2]: see, yea, see [1 Sam. 24:12] how exalted is his stature [Ezek. 31:5], how he speaks insolence with a haughty neck [Ps. 75:6], and his tongue devises destruction [Ps. 52:4]. Have you not known, have you not heard [Isa. 40:28] from the ends of the earth [Isa. 41:9]? The statutes of the intellectibles have been my songs [Ps. 119:54] from months of old [Job 29:2]: I was set up from the beginning [Prov. 8:23] to teach the people knowledge [Eccl. 12:9], to pronounce aloud [Isa. 58:1] upon the highest places of the city [Prov. 9:3] lectures on the sciences, natural and divine. Before the mountains planned by Him were brought forth [Ps. 90:2], from the beginning, or ever the earth was [Prov. 8:23], the crown and the insignia [2 Kings 11:12] had been placed upon my head, and the rod of God in my hand [Exod. 4:20]; so the sheaves of the true ideas have drawn near, and bowed down to my sheaf [Gen. 37:7].¹¹⁹

"Alas for the eyes that thus see an ungodly man, flawed in intelligence and in character, rise up to bear perverted witness against me [Deut. 19:16], denying what is palpable and self-evident, and, in his initial words, attempting to profane my name amongst the Gentiles [cf. Ezek. 36:23]! Woe unto him that strives with his maker [Isa. 45:9], that opposes his master; a potsherd with the potsherds of the earth [Isa. 45:9] that says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’ [Isa. 45:10]! Who, then, is he that has been lecturing in the great academies, in the midst of many peoples [Mic. 5:7] since ancient years [Mai. 3:4], on all learning and wisdom [Dan. 1:17] after its kind [Gen. 1:12]? Or who is he that fights battles before the peoples and the princes [Esth. 1:11], that rends the mountains and breaks in pieces the rocks [1 Kings 19:11], that turns wise men backward [Isa. 44:25], as have I? This is because the Lord has been with me [Gen. 39:23].¹²⁰

"And if I am likened to the fly’s wings and the spider’s webs [Isa. 59:5], with whom took I counsel, and who instructed me [Isa. 40:14] when, these twenty years ago now [Gen. 31:41], I worked out and composed my rules of grammar, which are sweeter than honey [Ps. 19:11] to those who eat of their venison [Gen. 27:19], and which have been disseminated in the isles afar off [Isa. 66:19]?¹²¹ Or who taught me knowledge [Isa. 40:14] in the case of my Supercommentary on Isagoge-Categories-De Interpretatione?¹²² Or in the case of that extraordinary treatise, in the case of the novel Rhetoric,¹²³ who has given me anything beforehand, that I should repay him [Job 41:3]? Or in the case of the summary of logic,¹²⁴ which is altogether delight [Song of S. 5:16]? For David, when he changed his demeanour [Ps. 34:1], asserted that it was his power and the might of his hand that got me this wealth [Deut. 8:17]. And why should his face not now wax pale [Isa. 29:22] when he calls my compositions ‘translations’? Cannot eye see and ear hear [cf. Prov. 20:12], in an instant suddenly [Isa. 29:5], that the witness is a false witness [Deut. 19:18]?

"One [prayer] have I spoken with my hands spread forth toward heaven [1 Kings 8:54]: ‘Lord, remember unto David all my affliction’ [Ps. 132:1]. May God judge between him and me; [the heavens] shall reveal his iniquity, and the earth shall rise up against him [Job 20:27]. Finis."

No record remains of the effect, if any, produced by the foregoing letters, written and circulated in 1474, nor do we know if the bitter and ugly affair depicted therein was a factor in terminating Messer Leon’s residence at Mantua. A notarial document attests him as still in the city on March 13, 1475, when—possibly in anticipation of his imminent departure—he received back from the bank of the Norsa brothers the sum of 170 ducats which he had deposited with them two years earlier (March 11, 1473),¹²⁵ and a manuscript copy of his grammar, dated June 29, 1475, if it may be assumed to have been made in his yeshībhāh, quite possibly signifies that he did not move his household and school from Mantua until a time subsequent to this date.¹²⁶ It is even possible that, while JML did not participate in the production of the first printed edition of the N.S.,¹²⁷ he was still in Mantua throughout the time that the volume was in press. In such case, since as previously noted the printing is best assigned to the second half of 1475,¹²⁸ JML may not have terminated his residence at Mantua until some time in the year 1476.

Except for a single ambiguous reference in a manuscript of the British Museum, a prayer codex copied by Abraham Farissol and dated in the year 1478,¹²⁹ we now lose sight of JML for a period of approximately five years. Our next recorded mention of him—the earliest attestation we have of his long residence in Naples—is in a scribal note which is dated the 12th of Ab, 5240, that is, July 19, 1480; this note is found in another British Museum manuscript, a copy of JML’s own Super-commentary on Isagoge-Categories-De Interpretatione.¹³⁰ That he should have chosen to establish his yeshībhāh at Naples at about this time is easily understood. Attracted by the inducements and privileges made available as a matter of deliberate policy by the despotic Aragonese ruler, Ferrante I, Jews from all over northern Italy and from countries outside Italy were then settling in considerable numbers in the Kingdom of Naples.¹³¹

During the fifteen years or more of his residence in Naples, JML continued to produce works in the several fields of his scientific and scholarly competence;¹³² and he brought his yeshībhāh to the acme of its fame and influence. An idea of the nature and importance of the yeshībhāh, as it functioned in the year 1489 is conveyed in a short passage of David Messer Leon’s legal disquisition on rabbinical ordination (semīkhāh). David’s ordination—his first, as he tells us¹³³—was received "in my youth when I was eighteen years old, in Naples, in the great yeshībhāh of my lord and father (be his memory for blessing), under whom at the time were twenty-two well-known ordained rabbis. While my lord and father (be his memory for blessing) was a great man in his generation and the Light of our Exile, he himself did not wish to ordain me, because I was his son—this despite the fact that we find in Sanhedrin, Chapter I (5a), that Rabba bar Rav Huna obtained his authorization from his father. So it was, then, that all those rabbis who were there, from France, from Germany, and from other ‘tongues,’ ordained me.… This took place on my birthday, the Sabbath of Hanukkah; and many scholarly researches on the matter of the [proper] date of ordination were presented, some among which brought proof that, although I was but eighteen years old, ordination could be granted to such an one who was worthy.…"¹³⁴

One of the well-known rabbis associated with JML’s yeshībhāh at Naples was Rabbi Jacob Landau. His historically valuable legal code, Sēpher Hā’āghūr, is notable in two additional respects: it follows the N.S. as the second Hebrew book printed in its author’s lifetime; and it is the first work to carry those approbationary writs (haskāmōth) by outstanding rabbis and scholars which became so characteristic and fixed a feature of the Hebrew printed book.¹³⁵ JML himself was one of those who, at Rabbi Jacob’s request, furnished such a testimonial;¹³⁶ other yeshībhāh associates who did so were David Messer Leon, Jacob b. David Provenzali, and Moses b. Shem-Ṭob ibn Ḥabib.¹³⁷ Jacob Provenzali, in his responsum on the study, by Jews, of philosophy and the sciences (addressed in 1490 to David Messer Leon), refers to JML as the paragon of the generation, our guide and master, o[ur] h[onored] t[eacher], the R[abbi], R[abbi] Judah, called Messer Leon. ¹³⁸ Moses ibn Habib, in the year 1484, composed at Naples a Hebrew grammar, Peraḥ Shōshān [1 Kings 7:26] (The Lily’s Blossom), in which he makes frequent reference to Judah Messer Leon’s grammar, Libhenath Hassappīr.¹³⁹ We also know the names of at least two of JML’s younger pupils during the years of the yeshībhāh’s existence at Naples. One was Moses b. Shabbethai Levi, who in 1483 wrote for himself (as he tells us in the colophon) the very legible copy of JML’s Super-commentary on Isagoge-Categories-De Interpretatione preserved in the Biblioteca Casanatense at Rome.¹⁴⁰ The other was Abraham de Balmes of Lecce, recipient of a double doctorate at Naples in 1492, who many years later composed a Hebrew grammar in which he often cites both the work of his teacher, and the work