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168 a

Acosta, Uriel Acquittal

THE JEWISH EJ^CYCLOPEDIA

as a public enemy to religion. into prison, and tined ;S0 L'ulden (§!-(•) and his book was condemned to bo pul>licly liurned. Acosta seems to have tle. SOH), but he eventually returned; for doubt less he felt liimself completely ostracized there too Abjures by Jew and Clirislian alike. .Moreover, His he was iirnorant of the Gennan Ian-

asked

him

afrainst

He was lunsted. thrown

Errors,

iruaire.

Me niurned to .Vmstcrdam in He found he could

bitter resentment.

not live in seclusion; he yearned for companionship; he desired to marry ajridn he seems to have lost his wife in the interim (see Perles, I.e., p. 209) and as the guardian of his younij;er brothers he feared their tiuancial interests would sutfer through Accordingly, he resolved to swallow liis disjrnice. the bitter draft. He volunteered, as he says, "lobecome an ape among the apes." liud in ll):i3 he offered

—

—

his formal submissicm to tlieollici-rsof the.synagogue; he wiiuld be a dissenter and a sinner no mor<'. Though outwardly obedient. Acostu's enthusiastic religious bent had evolved a new tendency away from .Judaism. "I doubted whether Moses' law^ was in reality God's law, and decided that it w'as of human origin, as many others in the world have been." One step led to another. A species of natural religion, free from fcu'm or fonuula, bereft of all ceremony and ritual, seemed to him to be the

He became a Deist. God is true religion for man. nature the ruler of the external world: He has no concern with doctrines or modes of worship, all Nature of which are eiiually vain in His sight. teaches peace and harmony: religion uses the sword (U- the stake, or else the ban of exconununication. All the religion he would ap|irove is contained in the seven Xoahidic conuuandments ("Exemplar Humanie Vitiv." ed. Limborcli, p. 666). Unfortunately for himself, Acosta could not be a ))erfeet hypocrite: in his mode of life hecontinnally transgressed Mosjucand rabbinical regulations, such as those totiching the Sabbaths and festivals, the dietary laws, etc. and people soon knew of it. His own relatives severely cond<'nuied him for this luifaithfidness, but to no purjiose. Finally it was learned that he had dissuaded two Christians in



Spaniard and an Italian

— from

—

carrying out their

avowed

intention of endiracing the religion of Israel and this ti'eachcrv, as it seemed, once Second Ex- more broughl the lightnings of aiicommxini- tlioritative Judaism about his head. cation and Summoned again before the officials of Suicide. the congregation, he was reiiuired to renounce the errors of his way under penalty of the " greater ban." He would not submit and again he was excomnnuiieated. This further stroke of 1)igotry, as he considered it, was borne by him in sullen silence for seven y<'ars. during which time he sultered the indignity of being avoided by At the end of that all. even by his nearest relatives. period he succumbed and once more gave in hissulimissiou to authority, and was made to testify to it by the most degradin.s penances. Before the assembled himdreds in the synagogue men and women he recited a public confession of his sin and a recanta-

—

—

tion; this was followed by a public scourging then there, to the extent of the Biblical " forty stripes siive one " and as the crowning act he was laid jirostrate upon the threshold of the holy iilace, to be

and



stepped over or trample<l on by the gathered crowds. A proud and indomitable spirit like Acosta's might submit outwardly to such terrible formalities; i)ut it could not brook them tamely. He went home, and shortly after ended his stormy career by shooting

168

himself, having used the interval to write a few pages of what, he (idled "Exi'mplar Humana' Vita'" (A Specimen of Huni.an Life), a sketch of hisown career. It is almost the only source of information respecting the life of this eccentric ami unfortunate thinker, and was pulilished witii a refutation by Philip Limborcli, a Dutch theologian, as an appi'Uilix to his own work, entitled ".Vmiea Collatio ciimErudito Jutlivo," Gouda, 16ST; republished 1H47. Th<' " Kxemplar Humana' Vit;e," even making allowance for the intense mental stress under which it was written, and for the natural temptation to leave behind as crushing an imlictnient of his opponents as he could frame, shows Acosta to His "Ex- have been an ill-balanced thinker, imemplar." pul.sive to a degree, impatient, and l)resumptuousiii the faei' of grave disabilities. Had careful religious tniining in Judaism been joined to more wisely directed energies, the un-

common

intellectual endowments he undoubtedly possessed unght have made of him a powerful champion of the ancestral faith, a " Pharisee of the Pharisees." He had all the superabundant zeal necessary for the e(|uipmeut of such a defeniler of the faith. -Vn interesting reference to .Vcosia was discovered (see Perles, in " Monalsschrift," ISTT, xxvi. W.i) in a letter printed in a volume of responsa by a certain learned Venetian merchaut, Jacob b, Isra<'l ha-Levi (id eil., Venice, WM, art. 40). In this letter, a<lvice is asked of Ha-Levi as to the jiropriety of interring in the cimgregational cemetery the mother of an unnamed renegade, who had herself shared in her son's apostasy. The description given of the unnamed apostate's acts and writings, as well as the date of the letter and the known literary corresiiondence of the Amsterdam <'c<lesiastieal authorities with HaLevi, leaves no room for doubt that Acosta was the

excouHuunieate

in iiuestion.

The

tragic life of .costa has furnished material for the dramatist and the novelist. The most imis Gutzkow's tragedy, .Vcosia" (Leipsic. l.'^47), translated into Hebrew by Solomon Kubin, Vienna, 1S,")(. The novelist Zangwill has also ised the material for a skelrli in his " Dreamers of the Ghetto "(pp. 68-114, Philadelphia, 1»9S).

l)ortant

dramatic production

entitietl

" Triel

Bmi.iocH.ipnv: nnvle. bosii

DM.

Ilislnriquc rt Critiiiue,

l.iiT:

Bar-

liililiiithcca Lusitnua. il. ;ill-:il;i: WhlsUrminkiihlc Life nf I'ricl Acnsta. nii Kmiuent

.MiicliHclii,

tim. Till

L/>n<» I't .*('/.: J, df Costa, Isytict I It ill Viilhen, 2tl wl.. p. :JT4 Van (Ut Au, Biii{tl(ti)hich ^Vniiriii'tihiiik iit:r ycdcrlandcu^ s.'. H. Jellinek, Aensta^s LclH'n H. Lcltre, 1S74. pg »^ ^r

Frrr-thinkfi



p

ACQ,TJI



.V city

on the Bormida,

famous

in

the ]irovince

springs and Uomaii nuns. .Vceording lo its archives, Jews have lived there since 14(111. In the first decades of the nineteenth century the Jews at Acipii a.2grc,gated about 7(MI; in 189!) they uumbered but 2'2 individuals, many having emigrated to the mcu'c important cities of Ttuin and Milan. of .Vlessauilria, Italy,

its

fossess('S many charitable institutions. In l.S,si the old syna.aogue. together with the ghetto, was demolished; an<l anew one has been constructed in the Via Joua Ottoleughi, owing to the nnuiiticence of the man after whom the street is named. See OTTOi.KN(iiii, VlT.v. In 1S99 the rabbi of the congregation was .dolfo .Vncona, a pui)il of Prof. Eude Lolli.

The

F.

ACatriSITION Sec Alien,tion

(

LA'W

),

S.

TALMTTDICAL.

and Acquisition.