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31 THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

31

Apulia

Several details of ed. Castelli, Hebr. part, p. 3). DodiioIo's life throw light on the condition of Jew-

Apulian rabbis had been so firmly established even abroad, that in Prance the proverb came into vogue,

and country. Donnolo, for example, like his contemporary Palfiel, had become a devotee of astrology but in all the surrounding provinces not a single Jewish scholar could be found able to interpret the astrological writings which avowedly had been copied by him from anIt is interesting, however, to cient Jewish works. note that Donnolo had no hesitancy in seeking the instruction of Christian masters in matters of which the Jews were ignorant. This circumstance attests the early origin of that intimacy of relations for which Jewish and Christian scholars have been noted in Italy, and their frequent interchange of thought. Donnolo, besides being private physician to the viceroy of southern Italy, was intimately acquainted with Nilus the Younger, the abbot of Rossana and Grotta Ferrata, to whom, on a certain occasion, he appears to have introduced another Jewish scholar. The latter attempted to draw the abbot into a religious controversy, which was, however, adroitly evaded by him. InIt is one of tellectual the first discussions of this character Relations recorded in the European history of with. the Jews; and its significance lies in Christians, the aggressive part taken in it by the Jew, in contradistinction to the one into which, as stated above, Hananeel had been forced. Donnolo's allegorical method of exegesis adopted in his commentary on the mystic "Sefer Yezirah " (Book of Creation), as well as his knowledge of the Greek language displayed in it, also tes-

in allusion to Isa.

ish culture in his time



with Christian scholars, allegorism was highly popular, and whose spoken language, according to Mommsen, was veiy closely related to the Greek. That there was an abundance of Jewish scholars in Apulia toward the end of the tenth century (according to Gratz, but in 750 according to Ibn Daud) is learned, furthermore, from a well-known legend alluding to that age. Eour rabbis, as stated by Ibn Daud ("Sefer ha-Kabbalah," ed. Neubauer, in "Medieval Jew. Chronicles," i. 67 et aeq.), were on a seavoyage from Bari to Sebasteia, when their ship was overtaken by an Andalusian pirate (the admiral Ibn Romabis), and the scholars were made captive, the latter being in the end sold in several cities of Africa and Spain, where each rabbi ultimately became the founder of a Talmudic academy. The real origin and purpose of these traveling rabbis have been variously interpreted, but the historicity of the incident narrated by Ibn Daud can scarcely be doubted. The legend points distinctly to the fact that toward the end of the tenth ( ?) century certain rabbis emigrated from southern Italy and established schools in various Jewish communities in Africa and Spain (compare HUSHIEL E. ELHANAN). Bari was particularly popular as a center of Jewtifies

to his intercourse

among whom

witnessed by the fact that in the eleventh century, R. Nathan b. Jehiel, Centers of the author of the "Aruk," made a Learning, pilgrimage thither to hear the lectures of R. Moses Kalfo (compare Kohut, " Aruch Completum," Introduction, p. 15), and that in the twelfth century the religious authority of the ish learning, as is

ii. 3: " Out of Bari goeth forth the law, and the word of God from Otranto " (Jacob Tarn, " Sefer ha- Yashar, " 74«). Benjamin of Tudela, who in the latter part of the same century traveled through Apulia, found nourishing Jewish commu-

throughout the province, Trani possessing 200, Taranto 300, and Otranto 500 Jewish families, while in the port of Brindisi ten Jews were engaged in the nities

trade of dyeing. During the renaissance of Talmudic learning in the thirteenth century, Apulia still had the good fortune of bringing forth one of the most noted Jewish savants of the age, in the person of R. Isaiah b. Mali di Tkani, who not only became one of the most prolific and weighty rabbis of the Middle Ages, but also maintained the Italian tradition of friendly intercourse with Christian scholars, in favor of whose astronomic learning he at times even made bold to discard traditional rabbinic views. Di Trani's family produced several other noted men, among whom Isaiah's grandson and namesake attained to considerable distinction. Moses di Tkant, in the sixteenth century, was one of the most distinguished disciples of Jacob Berab. Fra Giordano da Rivalto, in one of his sermons preached in the year 1304, alludes to a general conversion of Apulian Jews that, it was alleged, had taken place about the year 1290, in consequence of a ritual murder with the commission of which they had been charged. The king, Charles I. (1284-1309), is alleged to have left them the choice between baptism and death, whereupon, it is said, Alleged about eight thousand embraced ChrisWholesale tianity, while the rest fled from the Concountry. The proportion of truth in this statement is not ascertainable. version. Glidemann denies the assertion altogether on the ground of the friendly disposition toward the Jews manifested b}r Charles I., though he admits that, in the year 1302, certain property in Trani that had formerly been used as a Jewish cemetery was usurped by the Dominican Order, and that about that time several Jewish synagogues in Certhe same city were converted into churches. tain, however, it is that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there were Jewish inhabitants in Trani as well as in the rest of Apulia; wherefore Giordano's statement concerning their wholesale

apostasy or emigration must be regarded at least as exaggerated, unless, indeed, under improved circumstances, a return of the Jews had occurred. In the sermons of another preacher from southern

Roberto da Lecce, who flourished in the first half of the fifteenth century, there are allusious to friendly relations between Jews and Christians. Italy,

That Apulia, however, had gradually lost its prominence as a center of Jewish learning, can not be In the early part of the sixteenth century, gainsaid. for example, there was in Constantinople a whole congregation consisting of Apulian immigrants, who exhibited, however, little of the Italian enlightenment, in that they were the leaders in an abortive attempt to exclude the children of the Karaites from the Rabbinite schools, and to build up a wall