The Land Is Mine: Sephardi Jews and Bible Commentary in the Renaissance 9780812298314

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The Land Is Mine

JEWISH CULTURE AND CONTEXTS Published in association with the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania

Series Editors: Shaul Magid, Francesca Trivellato, Steven Weitzman A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

THE LAND IS MINE Sephardi Jews and Bible Commentary in the Re­nais­sance

Andrew D. Berns

u n i v e r s i t y o f p e n n s y lva n i a p r e s s philadelphia

 Copyright © 2022 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www​.­upenn​.­edu​/­pennpress Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca on acid-­free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A Cataloging-in-Publication record is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-0-8122-5369-6

Contents

Introduction

1

Chapter 1. Life in the City

19

Chapter 2. Life in the Country

45

Chapter 3. “The Root of the Entire Torah”

66

Chapter 4. Pastoralists and Agriculturalists at Odds

86

Chapter 5. Greed and the Land

106

Epilogue

127

Notes

135

Bibliography

185

Index Acknowl­edgments

209 213

Introduction

In his commentary on Leviticus, written shortly ­after 1492, the Spanish rabbi Abraham Saba highlighted the importance of agricultural laws in the Bible, especially ­those concerning the Sabbatical and Jubilee. ­Those commandments, which proscribe farming, mandate letting the land lie fallow, revoke property owner­ship, and remit debts, “contain profound mysteries and ­things which are the secret of the world. According to the plain sense [of Scripture] it is the root of the entire Torah and the secret of the ­whole world.”1 Saba and his rabbinic peers, some of Sephardic Jewry’s most articulate representatives who w ­ ere expelled from their ancestral homeland in 1492, ­were preoccupied with land. They interpreted Judaism as a tradition whose best expression, and ultimate fulfillment, took place away from cities and in rural settings. In one sense, their focus on the land is understandable: they ached for what they had lost.2 Iberian Jews certainly had more direct contact with the land, its products, and its natu­ral pro­cesses than do most readers of this book and than modern scholarship typically acknowledges. Some of them farmed, raised animals, cultivated vines, and managed rural properties.3 Even ­those like Saba, who dwelled in cities, regularly saw and engaged with farmers, shepherds, and slaughterers.4 But in another sense, Saba’s emphasis on the Sabbatical and Jubilee is puzzling: why should a relatively obscure set of biblical laws, buried late in the book of Leviticus, and honored only in the breach for much of the Jewish historical experience, constitute “the root of the entire Torah and the secret of the ­whole world”? The Land Is Mine proposes that the answer to this question lies in the lived experience of late medieval5 Iberian Jewry rather than the abstractions of their theology. To grasp why they lavished so much attention on the soil, and why they invested it with so much moral significance, we need to understand how central it was to the social, economic, and environmental prob­lems of their era. And we need to comprehend how steeped ­these commentators ­were in classical traditions that glorified rural life.

2

Introduction

The Land Is Mine takes its point of departure from the works of three major Sephardi Bible commentators: Isaac ben Judah Abravanel, Abraham ben Jacob Saba, and Isaac ben Moses Arama. It also incorporates insights and observations from two of their lesser-­k nown contemporaries: Isaac ben Joseph Caro (whose nephew, Joseph Caro, composed early modernity’s most impor­tant code of Jewish law, the Shulḥan ‘arukh); and Joseph ben Meir Gerson. Abravanel, Saba, and Arama have been studied as individuals.6 However, they have never been treated as a collective.7 ­These men shared a number of ­things in common. They ­were all born on the Iberian Peninsula; they all endured exile in 1492 and underwent significant personal trauma; each wrote a commentary on the Pentateuch, as well as other books of the Bible; all of them died in exile; none converted to Chris­tian­ity (or Islam); all wrote both directly and indirectly about the indignities they suffered in Spain and the meaning of the Expulsion; and they borrowed from, and may even have plagiarized, each other.8 Most importantly, t­ hese writers had similar and complementary ideas about the centrality of land—­both to the biblical narrative and to their own times—­and regarding wealth and its corrosive effects. For Abravanel, Saba, and Arama environment was the lens through which a cluster of spiritual, moral, and social issues came into sharper focus. They considered the manner in which biblical characters treated the land, and lived upon it, as ciphers for how they treated each other and indicators of the health or infirmity of their inner lives. Often, Iberian Jewish exegetes conveyed ­these ideas through meditations on the disparities between city and country, as they assessed which setting was most conducive to a morally ­wholesome existence. To the protagonists of this book, cities ­were, at best, dangerous places from which they and their coreligionists had been expelled.9 At worst, they ­were morally repugnant dens of iniquity. This perspective developed in the context of the Iberian cities they knew and in which they had lived—­ Saragossa, Tarragona, Seville, Lisbon, and Toledo—­and it colored the way they saw biblical conurbations from Sodom to Babylon to Nineveh. It was reinforced by their tumultuous passage to Italian and Ottoman locations where they w ­ ere initially made to suffer: Naples, Corfu, and Salonica. We tend to think of Jews, in both the modern and premodern worlds, as paradigmatic cosmopolitans: urban, urbane, deracinated from the soil.10 ­There is some truth to this claim. But some of the most civilized premodern Jews—in the literal, etymological sense of that word (civis, or townsman)—­extolled

Introduction

3

the lives of rural farmers, and especially shepherds. For ­these prolific writers and incisive social commentators, cities ­were no places of grace.11 In the twilight of the fifteenth ­century and at the dawn of the sixteenth, several members of late medieval Jewry’s most acculturated, intellectually accomplished, and po­liti­cally influential diaspora professed to reject the world that had brought them their success: the increasingly urbanized, eco­ nom­ically developed, environmentally exploitative Spanish kingdoms. By denigrating cities and celebrating country life, Arama, Saba, and Abravanel ostensibly repudiated the culture their ancestors had long been recognized for building.12 This rejection was more rhetorical and figurative than earnest: they did not urge, nor expect, their readers to flee urban centers and become shepherds. Though they presented shepherding as a non-­commercial ideal, they knew it was anything but. Herding enchanted Abravanel, Saba, and Arama through its promise to provide security and self-­sufficiency—­a noble dream for men who had lived through an expulsion. More importantly, ­these thinkers ­were champions of the type of spiritual growth which that lifestyle supposedly encouraged: to their minds shepherding offered the space and seclusion necessary for direct communion with God. Their pastoralism, which implied a program of moral renovation, depended on an idealization of the past and a concomitant disparagement of the pre­sent. As the social critic Christopher Lasch observed, “The charm of pastoralism lies, of course, not in the accurate observation of country life but in the dream of childlike simplicity and security.” “The cult of idyllic simplicity,” Lasch elaborated, “took for granted the impossibility of its attainment.”13 Saba, Arama, and Abravanel emphasized land as a hermeneutic key to Scripture and a symbol for moral excellence. ­These men grafted their vision of an ideal life in the mythologically distant Golden Age onto the trunk of biblical morality using the tools of humanistic learning. They did this in order to have the biblical rootstock produce a fruit representative of what ­these men saw as one of the main spiritual messages of the Bible for their times: the path to fulfillment modeled by the patriarchs and prophets led away from cities and into the country. Sephardic Jews who belonged to the generation of the Expulsion put forth ­these views in ethical letters, historical compositions, and imaginative works. But the fullest articulation of their claim that misuse of the land and excessive devotion to urban mores ­were to blame for their national downfall came in a genre less familiar to modern readers, and less elaborated upon by

4

Introduction

historical scholarship on premodern Jewry: biblical commentary.14 Spanish Jews of this period, like other Jews and Christians, wrote commentaries on Bible stories in order to express their ideas and frame their social and cultural criticism. They saw the Bible as a mirror of their own times. Biblical heroes ­were models worthy of emulation; biblical villains ­were typologies of evil. It can be said that this form of scholarship represented the apogee of Jewish intellectual life, at least in Spain. According to one student of the subject, in biblical studies “the intellectual history of Spanish Jewry found its most fundamental and concrete articulation.”15 The centrality of Bible study was hardly unique to Jewish culture: as Beryl Smalley observed seventy years ago, “the Bible was the most studied book of the ­middle ages,” and “Bible study represented the highest branch of learning.”16 Accordingly, in the fifteenth ­century a number of learned Spaniards penned commentaries to the Bible in ­either Latin or vari­ous Iberian languages.17 Among t­ hese w ­ ere a convert from Judaism, Pablo de Burgos, and a Jew, Moses Arragel de Guadalajara.18 One feature of ­these works is a desire to bring the Bible to life, by making the ancient Near East more vivid or by using biblical stories to comment—­directly or indirectly—on con­temporary prob­lems. Several generations preceding that of Abravanel, Arama, and Saba, the polemicist, grammarian, and physician Profayt Duran devoted considerable attention to biblical lit­er­a­ture. The po­liti­cal and realistic emphasis Duran placed on the David saga, for example, in his grammatical work Ma‘aseh ’Efod constitutes an impor­tant pre­ce­dent to Abravanel’s own historically minded exegesis.19 As innovative as Abravanel and his peers ­were, t­ here was strong Iberian antecedent to their “realistic attitude ­toward the Jewish past.”20 And even though he has received disproportionate scholarly attention, Abravanel was not unique in using his exegetical powers to respond to the prob­lems of his time: Arama and Saba did as well, and they deserve more study. This approach to the Bible was informed by the commentators’ lives. One goal of this book is to challenge a subtle but entrenched assumption in medieval and early modern histories of the Jews: that biblical commentary is insulated against the biographical realities of Jewish writers and the po­ liti­cal conditions of their times. As a leading scholar of Jewish life in late medieval Spain has observed, “Jewish historiographical tradition . . . ​privileges philosophical, theosophical, and polemical texts” and “often overlooks crucial details of Jewish socioeconomic life.”21 We know, for example, that both Jewish and non-­Jewish Bible commentators in the ­Middle Ages and early

Introduction

5

modern period welcomed a variety of theories and disciplinary approaches into their scriptural analyses.22 But the extent to which biblical explication provided a forum for Jewish commentators to wrestle with con­temporary social, agrarian, and economic prob­lems is largely uncharted ­territory—at least in historiography on premodern Jews.23 Scholars of Christian Bible commentary in the ­later ­Middle Ages have no difficulty acknowledging this: Smalley’s fundamental work on the subject states that “the history of interpretation can be used as a mirror for social and cultural changes.”24 More recent work on humanist Bible commentary, for example Daniele Conti’s study of Marsilio Ficino, confirms and extends this approach.25 Nor do Hispanists who study this period shy away from observing that “cultural p­ roduction . . . ​ always occurs within an intersection of social, economic, and po­liti­cal dynamics” or that “ideas emerge from and reflect the context of the material world.”26 In Islamic Studies several scholars have recently argued for the progressivist qualities of commentary in this period, seeing such works as innovative rather than imitative.27 Like the commentaries of their Muslim contemporaries, Jewish work on the Bible does not float in a timeless ether. The insights of Abravanel, Saba, and Arama are inseparable from the conditions of their lives; more likely, they w ­ ere strongly influenced by them. It ­wasn’t only the elite who saw the Bible as their intellectual and moral lodestar; Jewish masses did, too. In fact ­there is evidence that the Jewish exegetes of this generation directed their energy to biblical interpretation with such fervor ­because their congregants and readers wanted the Bible to be relevant to them and their lives. Isaac Abravanel, for example, criticized his medieval pre­de­ces­sor Abraham Ibn Ezra—­and the entire Andalusi Jewish exegetical school—­for a constricted focus on grammar and the “superficial meaning” of the text, a Hebrew phrase with clear resonances to con­temporary Latin usage.28 Abravanel’s peer Isaac Arama related how his parishioners complained that while Christian preachers search “enthusiastically for religious and ethical content,” their Jewish counter­parts limit themselves to “grammatical forms of words and the ­simple meaning of the stories and commandments.”29 In his introduction to ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, Arama pointed out that traditionally Jewish exegetes ­were concerned with grammar and the ­simple meaning of Scripture but that they neglected the deeper meaning of the Bible.30 Arama set out to correct this prob­lem by writing sermons and commentaries in a decidedly dif­fer­ent style. When Abravanel, Arama, and ­others searched “enthusiastically for religious and ethical content,” they found it in abundance. ­These scholars w ­ ere

6

Introduction

anti-­materialists and ruralists.31 They believed that Judaism presented an alternative to the false gods of acquisitiveness, who, as they saw it, exerted power­f ul control over Jews in late medieval Spain. They perceived Spain as increasingly cursed ­after the violent persecutions and forced conversions of 1391.32 They elaborated this view not only in response to the Jews’ grim fate—­ the events of 1391 would roil Iberian Jewry for the next hundred years—­but also in terms of Spanish mismanagement of land and other natu­ral resources. One notable feature of the tragic events of that year was that so many of its massacres ­were directed against urban Jews; once the vio­lence subsided, the restoration of property to former ­owners (or heirs) was extremely difficult.33 As such, animosity ­toward cities was an understandable feature of Iberian Jewish intellectual life over the course of the next ­century. The challenges of their lives, and ­those of their embattled coreligionists, provided a structure through which Abravanel, Saba, and Arama framed their ideas. This cadre of writers dichotomized many features of their society—­from occupations to philosophical attitudes—­into the “natu­ral” and the “artificial.” In their scorn for the artificial and their cele­bration of the natu­ral, they proposed a romantic and unrealistic plan: that Jews take up the profession most prized by their ancestral, biblical heroes: shepherding. They ­imagined shepherding as the best way to fulfill their spiritual and contemplative yearnings. Trapped in a binary between corrosive modernity and its “artificial,” “unnatural” lifestyles on the one hand and their escapist fantasies of salvation in rustic places on the other, they pondered humanity’s duty to the land and how God’s promises of reward and punishment ­were contingent upon ­human relationships to the earth and its bounty. Fantasies about a return to the land w ­ ere, at their core, merely that: fantasies. At a deeper psychological and cultural substratum, Spanish Jews of this generation who witnessed the development of agrarian capitalism may have longed for some sense of what Durkheim and scholars in his wake call “organic solidarity.”34 The lettered protagonists of this book inveighed against the mores of their brethren, both before the Expulsion and ­after. Perhaps predictably, their descendants ­were fated to fall into the same materialist traps in Italy and the Ottoman Empire that their forebears so eloquently warned them about. For example, in the summer of 1495, Abravanel took refuge for a few months on the Mediterranean island of Corfu, then ­under Venetian control. ­There ­were a number of Sephardic exiles on Corfu, and the scene was not a heartening one. In his commentary on the Ethics of the ­Fathers, Abravanel painted a grim picture of Spanish exiles’ comportment and lamented

Introduction

7

that the refugees “neglect eternal values and are interested in temporal affairs only, like dissolute slaves. They spend all their days ­either in diligent pursuit of money and the comforts they desire . . . ​or in the ways of the sinful, in the com­pany of the lightheaded [Ps. 1:1]. They breathe forth falsehoods [Prov. 6:19], and play games with dice, and they band together with irreverence. And as for the work of the Lord [Isa. 5:12], which is the beginning of His way [Prov. 8:22] and the gift of His Torah, they see not even in their dreams.”35 The idealization of rural life and concomitant scorn for cities that are prominent features not only of Abravanel’s work but of that of his peers are worthy of our attention. For their ideas about land use, wealth acquisition, and property represent a component of their po­liti­cal thought—in the broadest sense of that term. Most scholars of premodern Jewish po­liti­cal thought rely on the explication of a restricted corpus of biblical texts: Exodus 18:13–27, in which Jethro criticizes Moses for acting as Israel’s sole judge; Deuteronomy 17 and its permittance of a form of modified kingship as Israelites enter the Land of Israel; and 1 Samuel 8, Samuel’s warnings about the evils of kingship.36 My interest lies not in scriptural texts that serve as obvious hooks for po­liti­cal philosophy to be draped upon but rather on biblical stories and myths that helped fifteenth-­century writers delve deeper into what they saw as the “natu­ral” essence of humankind. Angst about cities and paeans to the country, ­after all, mask the idealization of a world, remote in time (or in space), in which, to quote Raymond Williams, “one is not necessarily a stranger and an agent, but can be a member, a discoverer, in a shared source of life.”37 As scholars of early modern intellectual life have long known, religion played a key role in the development of a taste for country life and the romanticizations ­those tastes represent: for many writers faith was “no mere defense mechanism against a corrupt world; it was an open gateway to paradise before the Fall.”38 Jewish ideas about rural redoubts have barely been examined at all. Though sacred texts constitute one impor­tant source from which late medieval Sephardic Jews drew their ideas, ­there was another body of lit­er­a­ ture nearly as compelling: classical Greek and Latin works, especially ­those which ­later scholars have classified as primitivist.39 Primitivist ideas come in a variety of colors, several of which found their way onto the palettes of Abravanel, Saba, and Arama, who applied them to varying degrees in their works. One common cluster of ideas is known as chronological primitivism, which is characterized by notions of a Golden Age found in the works of

8

Introduction

Hesiod, Ovid, Vergil, and Lucian. For the purposes of Arama, Saba, and Abravanel, the importance of ­these writers pales in significance when compared to another strain in classical lit­er­a­ture: Stoicism, chiefly the form expounded by Seneca in his Epistulae Morales, whose importance to Iberian intellectuals cannot be overestimated.40 Thanks to the pioneering works of Gutwirth, Motis Dolader, Cohen-­Skalli, and Nelson Nevoa we know that fifteenth-­century Iberian Jews ­were steeped in this lit­er­a­ture.41 Isaac Abravanel cited some of ­these authors—­especially Ovid, Vergil, and Seneca.42 Although explicit citations are somewhat ­limited, all three of this book’s protagonists allude to and weave this thread of classical thought into their Hebrew Bible commentaries. Understandably, many scholarly accounts of Jewish intellectual life in this period draw their heat from the trauma of the 1492 Expulsion.43 This book does not. Although my analy­sis does not deny the dramatic effects of the uprooting of a millennial community from its native land, it is not a study of the upheavals of expulsion. ­There are plenty of ­those.44 The Land Is Mine examines how a learned, cultured, insightful group of Sephardic Jews responded to changes in late medieval Spanish economy and society. Though they may have seen the Expulsion as a culmination of ­those changes (rather than an aberration), their view of economy and society was not exclusively ­shaped by the tragedy of 1492. Many of ­those economic and social shifts had to do with changing attitudes t­ oward land, particularly urbanization and the conversion of large swathes of Iberia from farmland to pasture. To ­these commentators, land was the key setting for meaningful ­human action and morality. As we w ­ ill see, the dominant mores of the fifteenth c­ entury that stressed accumulation and ostentation ­were liable to ferocious castigation by gifted writers such as Abravanel, Arama, and Saba. For t­ hese authors and a few of their peers, land was both a real concern and an interpretive lens through which they viewed the Bible and evaluated ­human conduct. While historians and literary scholars of the medieval and early modern world have long paid attention to the importance of earthly concerns, both economic and intellectual, historians of the Jews have lagged ­behind.45 Scholars of the Jewish past are still largely u ­ nder the spell of a narrative according to which, from the institution of the kharaj (land tax) in the early Umayyad Caliphate through their near genocide in the twentieth ­century (or at least their pioneering efforts to make the deserts of Palestine bloom), Jews ­were removed from the land, a form of alienation that was

Introduction

9

both legislated by non-­Jewish authorities and accepted by an ethnic-­religious group that preferred the advantages of urban life to the exigencies of living off the land.46 In truth, throughout the period this book covers (as well as before and ­after), some Jews lived on the land and off its produce. Many ­others owned property, managed land, and oversaw laborers. It should hardly be surprising that land was central to Spanish Jewish commentators: their scriptural analy­sis was ­shaped by lived concerns as much as by theological abstractions. Sephardi Jewish biblical commentaries, with their emphasis on land, demonstrate the historically contingent nature of premodern Jewish scriptural exegesis. While ­these authors may not have formulated an environmental ethic, they certainly knew that environment mattered. ­There’s no greater proof of this than the fact that they returned to agrarian issues again and again in their commentaries on Judaism’s most sacred text.

Major Figures and Their Works Abraham Saba, a Castilian preacher and exegete, wrote his main works in Portugal between 1492 and 1497. ­These include his commentaries on the Pentateuch, Ẓeror ha-­Mor (A Bundle of Myrrh);47 on the Five Scrolls (Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther); and on the rabbinic text Pirqe ’avot.48 Like many Castilian Jews, Saba chose exile in Portugal rather than undertake the longer, more expensive, and more dangerous voyages to southern Italy or the Ottoman Empire.49 Though we do not know much about his early life, ­there is evidence that he lived in Zamora for approximately eight years prior to the Expulsion.50 His occupation is unknown, though he did preach and may have earned his living d­ oing so.51 The text of Saba’s commentary on the Pentateuch that we possess, from surviving manuscripts to the first sixteenth-­century edition (1522) to the nineteenth-­and twentieth-­century reprintings, is a mere abridgment of what he originally wrote.52 ­After the Portuguese Edict of Expulsion was issued in 1496, Saba stashed many of his works, “a number of books that I had composed,” beneath “the trunk of a large olive tree” outside of Porto.53 He then departed the kingdom, traveling by sea to North Africa and alighting at Portuguese-­controlled Arzila. Soon thereafter he made his way to El Qsar el Kebir, where he reconstructed his Pentateuch commentary from memory.54

10 Introduction

From 1498 he lived mainly in Fez, and from ­there he may have gone to Adrianople—or perhaps elsewhere in Turkey. ­There is competing evidence that he lived his final days in northern Italy, at Verona.55 Ẓeror ha-­Mor has not received extensive scholarly attention. As Abraham Gross points out, Saba’s work has been overlooked for a number of reasons, including that exegesis modeled as sermons attracts less attention.56 Saba’s commentaries may have been intended to guide preachers: at the beginning of his work on Deuteronomy he announced his plan to structure the work around a “topic” (nos’e) and “dictum” (­ma’amar).57 Saba states that he was focused above all on peshat (the plain meaning of the text), followed by midrashic interpretations, as well as esoteric ones.58 Saba’s commentaries are digressive and feature extensive wordplay.59 Ẓeror ha-­Mor also draws from, and makes reference to, the con­temporary realities of Saba’s life. As Gross observes, any preacher’s commentary is “more likely than that of an exegete to be closely related to con­temporary real­ity.”60 This indebtedness to “con­ temporary real­ity” is a prime reason Ẓeror ha-­Mor is a rich mine for Sephardi perspectives on issues of the day, including land use, and the moral valences that underlay Scripture’s pre­sen­ta­tion of natu­ral setting. Another preacher whose work reflects the world in which it was written is Isaac Arama. Born in Zamora, the same city where Saba spent the years immediately preceding the Expulsion, Arama wrote one of the best-­k nown scriptural commentaries of his generation: ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq (Binding of Isaac).61 At an unknown date, Arama left Zamora for Tarragona in Aragon—­a kingdom with far fewer Jews than Castile.62 Given the language with which Arama described Zamora, he must have felt at home ­there. He called Zamora “the place of my desire [Ps. 107:30] and my resting place, fair in situation, in the uttermost parts of the north” (Ps. 48:3). But Arama seemed no less fond of his new home, musing that God “brought me ­here to a peaceful habitation [Isa. 33:20], the kingdom of Aragon,” the “pleasant and enjoyable Tarragona.” His original plan was to open a yeshiva (acad­emy), but he could not secure the requisite funds. Characteristically, he chose a natu­ral meta­phor to describe this dearth of available capital: Tarragona “was not a place of ­cattle” (Num. 32:1).63 Unable to find employment as head of a Jewish acad­emy, he began to preach. From his own testimony he was quite successful: he claimed in the author’s introduction to ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, “I have become rich! I have gotten power!” (Hos. 12:9). Apparently his audience in Tarragona wanted more—­and livelier—­preaching. Some Jews in Tarragona had attended church ser­v ices

Introduction

11

and heard Christian preachers. From Arama’s own description, as well as outside evidence, it is unclear w ­ hether or not the Jews of Tarragona w ­ ere forced to listen to conversionary sermons. Arama is unabashed in noting that some of the Jewish attendees took delight in the remarks of Christian preachers: “they heard their words, which ­were pleasing.”64 Arama was inspired by this emphasis on preaching in con­temporary Christian culture and set out to explicate Scripture to his fellow Jews in a manner that would similarly engage them. By some mea­sures he succeeded: one scholar has called Arama “the most creative exegete and preacher in late medieval Spain.”65 As Bernard Septimus, one of Arama’s most perceptive students, observes: the spiritual needs of Arama’s congregants “reflected the challenge of a learned and eloquent Christian culture.”66 Septimus also argues that Arama’s audience craved philosophy: “Arama reminds us that a fundamental impulse to philosophical preaching came from below.”67 And perhaps not only from below: philosophical studies ­were so widespread in Sephardic yeshivot that Yoel Marciano has deployed the term “philosophical yeshiva” to describe the phenomenon whereby Torah study and philosophical pursuits ­were undertaken in tandem.68 The Zamoran rabbi’s exegetical corpus comprises ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, an exposition of the Torah divided into 105 “portals,” as well as commentaries on the Five Scrolls and Proverbs.69 ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq has been called “an elaborately reworked rec­ord of oral sermons” delivered by Arama in the synagogue.70 Each portal is divided into two parts: an investigation (derishah) of a par­tic­ u­lar subject in the Torah, such as the soul, prophecy, or repentance, and a commentary (perishah) according to Scripture’s plain sense, in which difficulties are raised and resolved. Compared to the relatively straightforward, lucid writing of Abravanel, Saba, and Caro, Arama’s prose style is intricate and “borders on the baroque.”71 With regard to content and purpose, it has been said that Arama aims to repel the twofold challenge posed to Judaism by Greco-­Arabic philosophy on the one hand and Chris­tian­ity on the other.72 ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq fosters a genuine dialogue between Judaism and classical philosophic sources, most notably Aristotle’s Ethics.73 Arama began work on ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq during his time in Tarragona and Fraga, a smaller city some ninety-­five kilo­meters distant, where he also served the community in a pastoral role and likely preached on some Sabbaths and holidays. Arama’s composition pro­cess was protracted. As he recollected, “over the course of the years I went back and amended, erasing and adding.”74 He formally began the revision pro­cess when he relocated to

12 Introduction

Calatayud.75 In Calatayud Arama completed revisions of ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq and composed commentaries on the Five Scrolls. He also left to posterity a commentary on Proverbs called Yad ’Avshalom (Hand of Absalom).76 He finished all of this work before he left Spain for Naples in 1492.77 Arama died ­there in 1494. In Naples Arama spent plenty of time with Isaac Abravanel, the third exegete whose work substantially informs this book.78 Don Isaac Abravanel was born in 1437 in Lisbon, to a ­family that boasted of deep Castilian roots. In 1483 Abravanel was forced to flee Portugal and lived in Castile from August of that year u ­ ntil the Expulsion of 1492. In Castile he farmed taxes for Cardinal Don Pedro Gonzalez Mendoza. In addition to his focus on fiscal and po­liti­cal activities he enjoyed the Mendoza ­family’s intellectual support: the cardinal was a patron to numerous men of letters.79 From the summer of 1492 ­u ntil his death in Venice in 1508, Abravanel lived on the Italian peninsula, first in the Kingdom of Naples and eventually in the Republic of Venice. His Neapolitan years ­were especially fruitful for his literary activities: compared to his Iberian period, he was less involved in politics and commerce; he wrote more and left his business concerns to his sons.80 His literary ­career was long and prolific: barely out of his teens when he produced his first theoretical and philosophical piece of writing Ẓurot ha-­Yesodot [Forms of the Ele­ments],81 he wrote continuously ­until the twilight of his life, when he composed his commentary on the Pentateuch, which he completed in Venice between 1505 and 1507.82 Abravanel identified himself as a member of the Sephardi diaspora and likely ­imagined his audience as largely comprised of other learned Sephardic Jews.83 In fact, from the ­later sixteenth ­century onward, his printed works attracted the attention of the Jewish world as far away as the Polish-­Lithuanian commonwealth.84 A number of Christian members of the Republic of Letters translated excerpts of Abravanel’s work into Latin.85 Unlike Arama, Abravanel did not compose a preface to his commentary on the Pentateuch that explained his intentions. Thankfully, a number of scholars have explicated Abravanel’s methods.86 The feature of his work that differentiates him most sharply from his pre­de­ces­sors in the Sephardic world is his exegetical strategy of dealing with specific prob­lems and topics in the biblical narrative rather than with single words or phrases. As ­we’ve seen, Arama’s ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq is structured similarly. In his focus on topical issues rather than grammatical or textual prob­lems, Abravanel was also likely indebted to a Spanish pre­de­ces­sor: Rabbi Nisim ben Reuven of Girona.87 In addition

Introduction

13

to ­t hese Hispano-­Jewish pre­ce­dents, it is well-­k nown that Abravanel made extensive use of the scholastic disputatio. Abravanel may have learned about and appropriated this method from Christian scholars such as Alfonso Tostado. It is also quite likely that Abravanel absorbed aspects of this approach from fellow Jews. This approach, which Mauro Zonta has called “Hebrew Scholasticism,” developed in fifteenth-­century Iberia among Jewish phi­los­ o­phers such as Joseph Albo (c. 1380–1444), Abraham Bibago (c. 1425–1489), and Abraham Shalom (d. 1492), as well as Isaac Arama.88 As Cohen-­Skalli has pointed out, Abravanel drew inspiration for his exegetical method both from the so-­called Sephardic ‘iyyun (speculation), which dominated Jewish circles in fifteenth-­century Iberia, and from the traditions of Christian scholasticism.89 One feature of this approach is a catholic curiosity: Abravanel’s works pullulate with references and allusions not only to biblical, rabbinic, and medieval Jewish philosophical traditions but to other textual corpora as well: Greek and Latin classics, Patristics, medieval Christian theology, and Arabic lit­er­a­ture (in Hebrew translation).90 But it w ­ asn’t only his wide reading that informed his work: it was the world he lived in, too. As one of Abravanel’s most accomplished students put it, the “social and literary dimensions of his life and works” are “complementary facets of his personality.”91 ­There is much to be said about the role of Abravanel’s lived experiences in his exegetical works.

* * * Saba, Arama, and Abravanel ­were steeped in Jewish texts and traditions. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of their readers consisted of highly literate, learned Jews comfortable with rabbinic Hebrew. Though we know Abravanel corresponded with Catholic humanists and po­liti­cal figures, and wrote in at least one Iberian vernacular (Portuguese), his primary audience was other Jews and his principal literary medium the Hebrew language.92 The same goes for Arama and Saba. While this may have restricted their readership in comparison with other con­temporary Iberian biblical commentators, such as Alfonso Fernández de Madrigal, Juan de Torquemada, and Jaime Pérez de Valencia, all of whom wrote in Latin, it did liberate them in a certain sense.93 Not having to placate highly placed church officials or statesmen in their literary compositions meant freedom to criticize Iberian politics, economics, and society. Abravanel may have spent much of his adult professional life in the ser­vice of Iberian magnates and politicians, but when he

14 Introduction

retreated to his study in order to compose his Hebrew tracts he was ­free to scrutinize his world in a way that his peers who wrote in Latin or Iberian languages ­were not.94 The best brief illustration of this contrast is to consider the work of a fifteenth-­century Spanish rabbi who wrote a biblical commentary not in Hebrew but in Castilian: Moses Arragel. In 1422, Rabbi Arragel, originally from Guadalajara, settled in Maqueda, forty kilo­meters northwest of Toledo, in Castile. ­There Don Luis de Guzmán, ­grand master of Calatrava, invited him to translate the Bible into Spanish with a commentary. Arragel at first demurred, but he eventually consented to the proj­ect and completed his work in 1433.95 Although Arragel was educated in the same manner as ­were his rabbinic colleagues—he cites Jewish exegetes in addition to Aristotle, Pliny, Boethius, Nicholas of Lyra, and ­others96—­his commentary bears scant resemblance to ­those of Abravanel, Arama, or Saba. While the protagonists of this book ­were critical of con­temporary Spanish mores, and paid par­tic­u­lar attention to po­liti­cal economy, often to fulminate against it, Arragel’s work is much more conservative. For example, in their analy­sis of the Cain and Abel story, Abravanel and his peers excoriate farming and exonerate the pastoral life. Arragel, by contrast, merely notes that Abel saw Cain as lacking a “profession” and did not wish that for himself.97 The story of the Tower of Babel was an opportunity for Arama and Abravanel to decry private property; Arragel says nothing of the sort.98 In fact, when he mentions the abolition of private property, he downplays the idea by ascribing it to an anonymous phi­los­o­pher and then explic­itly mentions Aristotle’s conviction that private property is necessary.99 While Arragel says ­little about Sodom and Gomorrah other than that they “murmured against God, and their sins ­were very ­great,” Saba, Abravanel, and Arama used that story as germ for an animated discussion about hospitality and ethics—­all grounded in the lived environment of the valley of Shinar.100 In several chapters that follow I contrast the approach of Jewish exegetes to that of  fifteenth-­century Iberia’s best-­k nown Catholic Bible commentator: ­A lfonso Tostado (Fernández de Madrigal), who wrote in Latin. Writing in a non-­imperial language such as Hebrew may have stimulated critique of empire. The Land Is Mine tells the story of anti-­u rban advocates of rural retreat. Jews ­weren’t the earliest votaries of incipient mercantile capitalism; they ­were, however, along with several of their Catholic contemporaries, some of its earliest critics.101 ­Later in this book I survey late medieval and Re­nais­sance views by leading Eu­ro­pean intellectuals who ­were sharply critical of urban-

Introduction

15

ization and attendant materialism in the Catholic world, especially Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More, and their fourteenth-­and fifteenth-­century pre­de­ces­sors Alberto Mussato, Francesco Petrarch, Poggio Bracciolini, and Marsilio Ficino. I do not argue that Sephardi Jews anticipated ­later and better-­k nown critiques of acquisitiveness and urban indulgence, only that they resemble them. ­After all, the Latinate humanists who criticized wealth and saw it as morally repugnant drank from the same fountains as Sephardi intellectuals did, and they all imbibed so much of the Old Testament that both its language and moral architecture fundamentally configured their minds.102 This book consists of five chapters. Chapter 1, “Life in the City,” sets the scene in which Spanish Jewish intellectuals of this period lived, worked, and wrote. Making use of commentaries on the Tower of Babel story, it discusses some of the ways in which Abravanel and his peers censured what they saw as the urban vices of excess and artificiality; it also illuminates the social tensions between Jews and Christians, as well as between wealthy Jews and their less fortunate coreligionists. Chapter 2, “Life in the Country,” is its complement. ­After presenting the common tropes ­these writers used to glorify rural life, it surveys the landed dispersion of Iberian Jews in the fifteenth ­century, explores rabbinic justifications for agricultural work, and tells the story of how ­these Jews came to be the most agriculturally engaged Jewish diaspora of the ­later ­Middle Ages—­a story that stretches back to the early years of the reconquista. This historical background serves to frame a focused discussion of how Abravanel, Saba, and Arama understood the story of the Garden of Eden, which they took as a parable about how mankind once lived a “natu­ral” life—­and might do so again. This material demonstrates the clearest linkages between classical lit­er­a­ture, especially Seneca, and Spanish Jewish thought. Chapter 3, “ ‘ The Root of the Entire Torah’ ” centers on a discussion of how ­these Spanish Jewish sages understood the biblical commandments regarding the Sabbatical and Jubilee. Saba, as we have seen, insisted that the ­whole Torah was encapsulated in ­these commandments, and each author studied ­here wrote extensively about the laws of the Sabbatical and Jubilee—­even though they ­were never upheld ­after the destruction of the Second ­Temple in 70 CE, and perhaps even before then only selectively. This third chapter explains the intense preoccupation with agricultural laws in the context of fifteenth-­century strug­gles to control the land between pastoralists (represented by the increasingly power­f ul sheep-­herding guild, or mesta) and agriculturalists. In many ways, this chapter is a fulcrum, both arithmetic

16 Introduction

and conceptual, upon which this book pivots. Sephardi commentators emphasized the Sabbatical and Jubilee laws as the essence of the Torah and inter­ preted ­those commandments as injunctions mandating economic moderation. The fact that they considered a set of agricultural laws both ecologically and socially significant indicates how inextricably linked the land and ­those who lived on it w ­ ere in their minds. Chapter 4, “Pastoralists and Agriculturalists at Odds,” dives into the rich exegetical tradition regarding the story of Cain and Abel. Cain the agriculturalist was pitted against Abel the shepherd, and I argue that the way Saba, Abravanel, and Arama interpreted this tale has as much to do with the Spain of their day as with the mythological world of Genesis’s early chapters. The fifth and final chapter, “Greed and the Land,” focuses on what Sephardi exegetes identified as the most unpardonable sin: greed. The chapter analyzes the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which t­ hese Spanish commentators perceived as a cautionary tale about the evils of cities, the agricultural economies that support them, and the be­hav­iors enabled by such socie­ties. Fi­nally, the chapter sets Saba’s, Abravanel’s, and Arama’s work in the context of fifteenth-­ and early sixteenth-­century Eu­ro­pean humanist invective against cities, money, and private property.103 Jewish Bible commentators in Re­nais­sance Spain drew on their own unique experiences—­ and their deep knowledge of the Bible and its exegetical tradition—­but they ­weren’t lone voices of protest drowned out in a chorus of cheers for incipient mercantile capitalism. Far from the conservative, traditional figures Sephardic Jews have often been made out to be, they w ­ ere cultural critics, participants in a distinctive though numerically slight group skeptical of how Eu­ro­pean society had become increasingly monetized, urbanized, acquisitive, and ecologically unsustainable. Throughout this book I highlight broad trends in fifteenth-­century Iberian economic life and underscore how consistently Sephardi intellectuals responded to them. Numerous historians of Jewish society in late medieval Iberia have cautioned against such generalizations regarding peninsular politics and economics. They tend to note, rightly, the differences between one late medieval village and the next, to say nothing of one kingdom and another.104 But this book’s focus on intellectual culture justifies a certain degree of generalization: ideas, even ­those ­shaped by economic considerations, are seldom mindful of geographic bound­aries. Hebrew and Latin manuscripts circulated freely and widely, and Saba, Arama, Abravanel, and Caro read each other’s work, as well as relevant texts from all over the peninsula—­and

Introduction

17

beyond.105 Moreover, Abravanel, Saba, and Arama spoke of sefarad, or “the kingdoms of sefarad,” as a collective; they seldom mentioned individual crowns.106 While I am cognizant and respectful of pronounced regional variations in late fifteenth-­century Iberia, the economic trends that underlay the ideas I explore ­here ­were applicable at least throughout Castile, and in other Iberian kingdoms as well.107 Furthermore, Saba, Arama, and Abravanel w ­ ere peripatetic, and their intellectual culture was, too.108 That intellectual culture featured plenty of imaginative lit­er­a­ture: poems, lamentations, hortatory letters, and chronicles. The following chapters make liberal use of ­these texts. I follow the lead of scholars who affirm the historical value of such sources. As Keith Thomas observed, for all the defects of imaginative lit­er­a­ture, “­there is nothing to surpass it as a guide to the thoughts and feelings of at least the more articulate sections of the population.”109 Some of the tropes fifteenth-­century Sephardic writers explored—­ greed, criticism of the courtier class, anti-­urbanism—­have antecedents in the ­Middle Ages and echoes in the early modern period. ­These sources ­were certainly, as Susan Einbinder argued regarding commemorative laments in the wake of the Black Death, “voices of convention and belief.”110 Her work offers a model of how both to honor “institutionalized ways of seeing” and to “peek ­behind, around, and under­neath them for glimpses of an unrulier real­ ity.” And as Einbinder points out, Hebrew literary sources from this period often constitute a “public genre,” designed for the “articulation of social ideals and be­hav­ior.”111 Aspiration is as impor­tant as accomplishment and as worthy of historians’ attention. As we ­shall see, pastoral and agrarian themes at the twilight of Iberian Jewish life comprise a heretofore overlooked social, po­liti­cal, theological, and spiritual ideal. Saba, Arama, and Abravanel ­were fond of deploying ecological imagery and meta­phors. That they did so with such frequency and care testifies to their penchant to explain the Pentateuch’s wisdom with recourse to nature and that they ­were confident their readers—­and listeners, in the probable case of Saba’s and Arama’s sermons—­could intimately relate to such imagery. For example, in a discussion of Psalm 92’s statement that “the wicked spring up as the grass” while the “righ­teous s­ hall flourish like the palm-­tree,” Isaac Arama launches into a detailed explanation of the root structure and reproductive faculties of both flowering plants.112 Isaac Abravanel devoted hundreds of words to a discussion of rainbows, clouds, air, and light so that his readers would better understand the significance of the meteorological phenomenon in Genesis 9.113 In his analy­sis of Genesis 28:14, “and thy seed

18 Introduction

s­ hall be as the dust of the earth,” Abraham Saba expatiated on the properties of dust and its centrality everywhere from the most remote wilderness to the sun itself.114 Examples could easily be multiplied.115 But when it came to the natu­ral world, Saba, Abravanel, and Arama reserved their greatest exegetic strength for passages concerning the land: its role in the scriptural narrative, its meta­phorical associations, its connection to ­human character development, and its central position as a mediator between divine ideals and ­human action. Perhaps no part of the biblical canon contained more fodder for reflection on ­these ­matters than Genesis. Accordingly, most of the source material in the following pages is drawn from commentaries on the Bible’s first book. The title of this book—­The Land Is Mine—­has several resonances. It is a quotation from the King James translation of the Bible, specifically Leviticus 25:23, where God addresses the Israelites regarding the Sabbatical and Jubilee and tells them “The land ­shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.” The declaration “the land is mine” reminds Israelites that they are not the true ­owners of the earth—­only God himself is. The book’s title is also meant to evoke the ­bitter power strug­gles between pastoralists and agriculturalists, which manifested as a series of pitched debates—­and land grabs—­over the course of several centuries, especially in the late fifteenth. In late medieval Iberia, it seems, every­one wanted to say “the land is mine.” Commentators such as Abravanel, Saba, and Arama invoked the phrase, too, but in a decidedly dif­ fer­ent tone: they reminded their readers that no ­matter the clamor on Spain’s plateaus and in its river valleys, where ranchers and farmers clashed, and in the cortes of several Iberian kingdoms, where ­legal ­battles ­were fought over land rights, ­there was only one true possessor of the earth.

Chapter 1

Life in the City

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, prominent Sephardi intellectuals wrote extensive commentaries on the story of the Tower of Babel. In their remarks on this famous biblical tale, Isaac Abravanel, Abraham Saba, and Isaac Arama lavished unpre­ce­dented focus on the physical features of the tower’s construction. Their analy­sis focused on the setting in which the tower was built and the materials used to construct it. From this common root, their remarks branched in two related directions: moralism and po­liti­cal philosophy. In both cases, the construction of a city and the erection of a tower within it was the germ for reflection about ethics and politics. ­There ­were many passages in the Hebrew Bible that could serve as pegs upon which late medieval Sephardi commentators might hang their thoughts about politics. It ­wasn’t only the well-­k nown episodes emphasized in most modern scholarship.1 For Abravanel, Arama, and Saba, Genesis 11 and its story of the Tower of Babel was one of the most con­spic­u­ous. In that chapter, the descendants of ­those who survived the flood settled in a plain in the Land of Shinar and banded together in order to build a city and a tower. Their po­liti­cal and urban aspirations ­were of far more interest to Spanish Jewish commentators than their erection of a tall edifice. In medieval Jewish commentaries on the Tower of Babel ­there was very ­little pre­ce­dent for this approach; in that tradition Arama, Saba, and Abravanel found only a few basic remarks concerning geography and construction materials. Patristic and con­temporary Christian commentaries in Latin offered scarcely more. Why did the story of the Tower of Babel generate such intensive moralizing and such sophisticated rumination on politics and economics? What was it about the scriptural account of the world’s first city

20

Chapter 1

that pushed Sephardi intellectuals in ­these interpretive directions? This chapter offers two answers. First, the real­ity of urban existence for Jews and conversos throughout Iberia, particularly Castile and Aragon, during the second half of the fifteenth ­century predisposed ­t hese intellectuals to be suspicious of cities and to cast aspersions on their pretensions to represent the ideal form of ­human society. ­These Sephardic commentators saw the world around them through the prism of biblical stories and typologies; conversely, their view of the Bible was tinted by careful so­cio­log­i­cal observations. Second, the absorption of literary and philosophical texts from three traditions—classical Latin lit­er­a­t ure, Patristics, and humanism—­ stimulated a radical philosophy that questioned the ethical, economic, and spiritual value of urban life. The setting in which the narrative of Genesis 11 took place drew the attention of several protagonists of this book. For example, Isaac Abravanel discussed the physical geography of this story and reminded readers that Shinar, the plain to which the survivors of the flood journeyed, was flat: “it is known even ­today that for many miles one finds neither a mountain nor any stone whatsoever, and since they saw that the position of that land was favorable and could support every­one: they settled ­there.” Abravanel’s glosses ­were more than just topographic; they ­were economic. He suggested that the “generation of separation,” as they ­were known in rabbinic lit­er­a­ture, settled ­there ­because it was a fit dwelling place and “they chose to build a ­great city for every­one to ­settle in, for they saw that that plain was appropriate to supply all the needs of that ­g reat city.”2 The other Sephardi exegetes ­u nder consideration ­here made similar remarks about the fitness of a plain for the builders’ purposes.3 Close on the heels of this emphasis on physical setting was an analy­sis of building materials. Abraham Saba fixated on brickwork, which he and his peers understood as the artificial production of a building material. As the biblical actors had no access to proper stone, they had to fabricate bricks. Saba wrote, “And this is the meaning of ‘they had brick for stone [Gen. 11:3]’: they ­were in agreement about this.” In other words the builders conceded that the unity they w ­ ere pursuing was not an au­then­tic form of “truth”; rather it was, in Saba’s terminology, a “lie.” “This is a lie,” the Spanish rabbi noted, “­because brick is not stone.” The builders ­weren’t entirely mendacious, as “they agreed that ‘slime’ is ‘mortar,’ which is true.”4 Saba contrasts their use of slime as mortar in this verse, which he condoned, with the use of brick as stone, which was deceitful. Abravanel’s remarks ­were similar: as fitting as



Life in the City

21

the plain might have been for urban construction and expansion, it was a poor choice regarding natu­ral resources. As did Saba, Abravanel focused on the verse “they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar,” but unlike Saba he saw both pro­cesses as out of joint with natu­ral dictates. ­These remarks ­didn’t merely concern material culture; they evince a preoccupation with the distinction between the natu­ral and the artificial. Abravanel argued that “in place of stone, which is a natu­ral object, they made for themselves brick with artifice. And in place of natu­ral mortar they used artifice to make mortar, which is lime or clay. For their ­whole intention was to make use of artificial ­things, and neglect the natu­ral.” Abravanel found a clue in a seemingly innocuous hortatory verb at the beginning of the verse: “come” (as in, “come, let us . . . ​[Gen. 11:4]”), insisting that this single word was significant ­because “beforehand they would use natu­ral objects: every­ one would find them and take enough for their needs without asking the other to give it to him. But when they began worldly tasks, and when each person designated ­things for himself ­people had to rely on their fellow man and request ‘come, let us make brick.’ ” And Abravanel explic­itly addressed the fabrication of plaster: “one may say” that they had to make plaster “­because plaster is made from [certain] areas of the earth, from a known quarry and from soft stones that are not suitable for construction.”5 Put differently, the materials that the builders needed ­were not ­there, and so they had to construct them. This, to Abravanel’s mind, was both “artificial” and a form of artifice. It was also disrespectful to the land’s resources—­a valley that lacked significant deposits of stone is not conducive to building. As a modern critic of industrial agriculture has observed, good design begins by asking, “What is ­here? What ­will nature permit us to do ­here? What ­will nature help us to do ­here?”6 According to Abravanel and Saba, the generation of separation did not ask t­ hose questions; they thought only of their own, selfish aims. While ­those two commentators offered relatively brief comments about the construction materials mentioned in Genesis 11, their peer Isaac Arama was more prolix. That prolixity allowed him to relate the use of an artificial, and ultimately weaker, product to corrupt morals. For Arama, materials and morals ­were closely connected. With regard to the valley of Shinar, he noted, “it was well known that that valley was not a land of quarries from which they could hew complete stones, heavy stones, square stones for building.” Instead, “there ­were, however, pebbles and stones and boulders that are not suitable for this building, both ­because of their small size and ­because they ­will not withstand crushing and cutting. For this reason they ­were constrained

22

Chapter 1

to make bricks from mud and to fire them, so that they could use them rather than stones, and then fire t­ hose boulders, from which they could make plaster. Fundamentally they ­were lacking many of the ­things they needed for construction. As is known, the stones ­were more durable for them than bricks. However, ­there was a surplus of mortar from which they would construct the building. Mortar is plaster that is stronger and more durable than mortar made from large rocks. For this reason the builders chose clay rather than building with stones, as the material for constructing the bricks. The strong material was the stronger substance, and the weak the weaker substance. But they ­were available to them—­the strong mortar in place of the weak mortar—as was the case with the inner depths of their thoughts: they confounded the highest spiritual purpose, which is the essential t­ hing.”7 If the tower had been architecturally strong, the builders would have utilized stones from an ­actual quarry. Not using materials to hand and instead fabricating bricks was not only “false,” it was also a betrayal of the natu­ ral setting in which that generation found themselves ­after the flood. Saba agreed and thought that the use of brick rather than stone was not merely wrongheaded; it was a moral failing: “the result of this is that they could not distinguish between good and evil.”8 To Arama, the betrayal was not only architectural; it was so­cio­log­i­cal. “For they saw,” the Zamoran rabbi argued, “that the essence of their perfection was in being builders of a g­ reat city [Jon. 1:2], in which po­liti­cal consolidation and perfection would be attained. Cain, too, saw this ‘and he built a city’ [Gen. 4:17], for they thought that that action would bind them and draw them near to heaven.”9 As Cain miscalculated, so did the actors in Genesis 11. From Cain to Sodom, Genesis condemned cities. This group of commentators was acutely aware of that. As writers who expanded upon their inherited legacy of medieval Jewish commentary both quantitatively and qualitatively, they had much more to say about cities. T ­ hese ­weren’t only symbols of moral weakness; they represented a crucial stage in the historical development of the ­human race. The first cities in Genesis generated detailed discussion of the economics of construction. For example, Isaac Caro, a con­temporary of Abravanel, Saba, and Arama, comments extensively on Cain’s fate as the “builder of a city” (Gen. 4:17). To Caro, the fact that Scripture uses a participle in this verse (“building”), rather than a perfect finite verb (“he built”), is odd: one might think the narrative would have been better served if it had described Cain as having built a city as a completed past action. The grammatical



Life in the City

23

oddity presented Caro the opportunity to explain the connection between Cain’s curse and his life as a builder: It seems to me that since the Holy One Blessed be He said to him [Cain] “you ­shall become a restless wanderer on earth”10 [Gen. 4:14] he built a city as an act of repentance, for a builder of a city is a “restless wanderer.” He goes to one place to seek plaster, and another place to seek lumber for construction, and to yet another to seek nails. And thus he goes to numerous places for all ­things that the building of a city requires. He never ­settles in any par­tic­u­lar place. All the moreso if he is alone and has no helper, as was the case with Cain. The first builder [i.e., Cain] did not find all the materials in one place, as one who dwells in a city might find them ­today. For this reason [Scripture] says he was a “builder of cities,” for he was delayed many days in building the city.11 In this passage Caro is sensitive not only to the materials any builder needs but to the fact that at the dawn of humanity one could not find ­those materials in any given place. This is explic­itly contrasted to the Castile of his day, when cities ­were rapidly expanding. Caro seems to have known that in the fifteenth ­century, unlike in the distant past, one could con­ve­niently procure nails, lumber, and other requisite materials in one location.12 But that con­ve­nience came at a price. Several Sephardic exegetes understood cities as harboring the first accumulations of private property, which was a social ill to ­these men. Abravanel’s commentary on this biblical story, for example, includes a concise summary of the origin of private property. He began that summary by inquiring about an apparent redundancy in a scriptural verse: what does it mean, he asked, that before the sin of the tower’s construction the ­whole earth was of one language and “of one speech” (Gen. 11:1)? The answer had more to do with possessions than with speech: “the ­things they had ­were common property amongst them,” Abravanel explained, “for man had no private inheritance and no other private object for his personal use. Every­thing was common to all and equal to all, as was language.”13 This doctrine of common possession extended far beyond historical linguistics into demography and economics. According to Abravanel, the builders of Babel described in Genesis 11 constructed a city, which ultimately led to greed and the institution of private property. Abravanel rued the day when the members of that generation “turned to innovation of construction

24

Chapter 1

techniques for building the city and the tower. They removed themselves from brotherhood, acquisitions and landed property became private, and exchange and possessiveness resulted from their greed to acquire and distinguish par­tic­u­lar ­things, each for himself, and to say ‘what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours’ ­until, on account of this, man was separated from his fellow man.”14 To the astute commentator, Scripture sprinkled other clues regarding the drama of this transition: journeying “from the east” (Gen. 11:2) meant that the survivors of the flood “moved away from the natu­ral, original way—­making use of and supplying themselves with essential, natu­ral items—­a nd they ‘walked ­a fter vanity, and became vain’ [Jer. 2:5] by seeking artificial ­things to satisfy their desires for superfluities [motarot].”15 What exactly was so odious about cities—­a nd private property—­for Abravanel? Scholars writing in the 1930s noticed this feature of Abravanel’s work. In a classic article Fritz Baer observed that Abravanel “dreamed of being released from the courts of the kings . . . ​a nd of living in purity and simplicity like Adam in the Garden of Eden.”16 For Baer, ­these ­were escapist fantasies. For Leo Strauss, who wrote in response to Baer, Abravanel’s ideas about private property ­were an attempt to undermine Maimonides’s po­liti­cal philosophy, by contesting its ultimate assumption that the city is “natu­ ral.”17 Both Baer and Strauss consign Abravanel to a realm of pure ideas: neither acknowledges the fact that the Portuguese exegete had plenty of personal experience with both private property and cities. Abravanel spent most of his life in urban centers—­from Lisbon to Toledo to Naples to Venice—­ and knew a lot about “desires for superfluities”: he saw firsthand how greed and acquisitiveness led to strife and alienation. His world was one in which Jews owned substantial private property.18 Abravanel knew very well how Jewish possession of property had po­liti­cal ­causes—­and consequences. He remarked that the tower was placed in the midst of Babel “in order to gather [themselves] together ­there and make themselves po­liti­cal beings [medini’im],19 instead of men of the field. They thought that their par­tic­u­lar end in life was the consolidation of po­liti­cal entities, to prolong among themselves a partnership and a society, and that this was the apogee of all ­human goals. What results from this—­from reputations and appointments and power and imaginary honors—is the appetite for increasing acquisitions, and injustice and thievery and murder follow on their heels. This was unpre­ce­dented when they ­were in a pastoral setting, each living in­de­pen­dently.”20 The po­ liti­cal chain of causation that Abravanel had in mind (from the formation



Life in the City

25

of society to the proliferation of greed and crime) was not solely informed by the fifteenth-­century Iberian world that he knew so well; as we ­will see ­later in this chapter his formulation was clearly influenced by several ancient po­ liti­cal phi­los­o­phers, including Seneca.21 Abravanel was not alone among his peers in celebrating some aspects of common property. Abraham Saba had similar views. He suggested that “­these men therefore said ‘come, let us build us a city,’ so that we might be united in it and share our wealth22 and our ­children and our wives so that ­there be neither division nor strife amongst us.” The Spanish commentator was enthusiastic about ­these proposals: “and this is the positive aspect of unity, but the rest is falsehood, merely building a tower ‘with its top in heaven,’ against God and his Torah.”23 Saba’s endorsement of a form of communal living is highly compatible with Abravanel’s criticism of private property.

* * * To the historian of Jewish thought in the l­ater M ­ iddle Ages, such bold ideas regarding the impropriety of private property and the tendency of cities to breed cupidity and associated moral and economic ills seem to come out of nowhere.24 The medieval tradition of Jewish biblical commentary to which Abravanel, Saba, and Arama ­were heirs did not treat the story of the Tower of Babel in such a manner. ­There is some pre­ce­dent in ­earlier medieval texts for the fifteenth-­century Iberian emphasis on the natu­ral setting of, and building materials for, the Tower of Babel. Still, such glosses stop far short of moralizing, to say nothing of philosophizing. Rashi, a commentator whom all three of this book’s protagonists regularly read and often cited, notes that when the survivors of the flood journeyed east and “found a plain” (Gen. 11:2), “they espied a place that would accommodate them all, and they only found Shinar.”25 Rashi’s commentary also noted the absence of stones in Shinar: “­there are no stones in Bavel, for it is a plain.”26 The twelfth-­century Spanish exegete Abraham Ibn Ezra explained why the builders burned bricks: “they burnt them so they would endure” and be impervious to ­water and fire. 27 As their purpose in building a city was to ensure that their “name would endure” ­after them, firing bricks was one way to achieve this. Ibn Ezra’s con­temporary David Kimḥi similarly noted that “in that valley ­there ­were no stones, so all of their building was with bricks.” Their bricks ­were made “from mud, which they fired in a kiln.”28 Naḥmanides and Gersonides, two authorities who ­were frequently cited throughout the fifteenth ­century,

26

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­ ere ­silent on ­these verses.29 Compared to their medieval pre­de­ces­sors, w Arama, Saba, and Abravanel had much more developed ideas about the materials used to build the city and its tower in Genesis 11. Their ideas regarding the moral message hidden in the Bible’s language about bricks and stones, and the philosophical implications of this story, had l­ittle to do with canonical medieval Jewish interpretations. The Christian commentary tradition written in Latin displays stronger affinities to the work of Abravanel, Saba, and Arama. For example, Abravanel read and cited the late antique phi­los­o­pher Augustine, whom he called “the greatest of the Christian scholars,” and ­there’s no reason to doubt that Arama and Saba w ­ ere similarly familiar with his work.30 On this par­tic­u­lar biblical tale, Augustine’s interpretation, articulated in his De civitate Dei, would not have been particularly helpful. His writings stressed the extreme height of the tower; pride as the builders’ major sin; and the city itself as the paradigmatic civitas terrena (earthly city), in contrast to the civitas Dei (divine city).31 ­There ­were two other likely Christian sources for Abravanel, Saba, and Arama: Nicholas of Lyra and Alfonso Fernández de Madrigal (1410–55), known as Tostado.32 Nicholas of Lyra’s Postillae to the glossa ordinaria on the Bible w ­ ere much read in fifteenth-­century Iberia.33 It has already been shown that Abravanel was indebted to Lyra, and Lyra’s commentary on Genesis 11 shows affinities to ­those of Saba and Arama.34 Regarding the verse “they found a plain” (Gen. 11:2), Lyra explains that “this is flat, open land suited to this [purpose],” namely building a city.35 When the builders said to themselves “come, let us make brick,” Lyra explains this decision by reference to geography: “­because in that flat, open plain t­ here w ­ ere no stone quarries.”36 While Lyra’s interest in stones and bricks did not extend as far as that of Abravanel and his peers, he did display some awareness of setting. And in a comment on the connection between God’s confusion of languages (Gen. 11:7) and the builders’ cessation of construction (Gen. 11:8), Lyra demonstrates awareness of how the construction pro­cess would be adversely affected by a confusion of language: “Since when a person asked for stones another would bring him cement, or something similar, a person would think he was being mocked by the other, division and dispute would break out.”37 Lyra chose to illustrate the curse of linguistic confusion by drawing attention to practical prob­lems, and ­those practical prob­lems had to do with construction. The attention that Lyra paid to geo­graph­i­cal context and the construction pro­cess itself may have resonated with Sephardic exegetes, or even helped to shape their ap-



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proach to Genesis 11. But far more consonant with Abravanel’s stress on the po­liti­cal ramifications of urbanization ­were the comments of his near con­ temporary Alfonso Fernández de Madrigal.38 ­There are consistencies and inconsistencies between the views of Tostado and the Iberian Jewish writers studied in this book. Chief among the consistencies is a shared emphasis on the scarcity of resources in, and inherent vulnerability of, any given metropole. Urbanization had consequences and imposed strains. Tostado remarked that “if that tower and city ­were perfect, as they intended, the ­great renown of the city and the tower would induce ­people to linger ­there, or at least in the area around that city.”39 In other words, the city ­wasn’t only for the ­people who had voyaged from the Valley of Shinar but was also meant to attract new residents. And then, according to the Spanish exegete, concrete prob­lems result: “when all men live together they ­a ren’t able to have provisions, since a ­limited portion of land would not supply food for so ­great a multitude of men. Therefore, a division of dwellings was necessary for [sustaining] life.”40 Besides food shortages, urbanization imposed other disadvantages, among them vulnerability to military invasion and contagion. It would be easy to destroy such a group of ­people in a war, Tostado observed, ­because of their spatial consolidation. Furthermore, concentrated populations contract illness more easily and may perish as a result.41 Abravanel, Saba, and Arama did not explic­itly state t­ hese concerns, but they may well have shared them. One impor­tant split between Tostado and his Jewish contemporaries was the theological significance of a city. Tostado’s ultimate concern regarding ­people in that generation banding together was about heresy. “For it was always the case,” he wrote, “that idolaters and evil doers existed among men, or did exist, and in fact do exist, and may easily corrupt ­others. Thus the ­whole world may lose its way.”42 To Tostado, God confused the language of man and destroyed the city and its tower to eliminate idolatry, or at least to prevent its spread. The sum of Tostado’s fears for the fate of a city is the spread of dissident beliefs; practical concerns ­were secondary to theological ones. Jewish exegetes of this generation, as we have seen, ­were more concerned with the consolidation of property and its attendant social ills. ­There is a larger, more fundamental point of disagreement between the views of Abravanel and Tostado: they had opposed ideas regarding ­whether or not it was a good idea to live in a city. Tostado commented on Genesis 11 that “they all wished to live together. This is a natu­ral desire, as man is by

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nature a po­liti­cal animal.”43 Each thinker read Aristotle,44 but while Abravanel implied that it was the builders’ intention all along to band together in a city, Tostado states that it was an accident: when they came from the east their original intention ­wasn’t to build a tower or a city: “by chance they built some small dwellings ­there . . . ​they did not come from the East with the intention of building a city or a tower, but rather to live in a plain.” And then, Tostado muses, “they had the idea to build a tower and a city.”45 ­Whether an accident of history or a preordained decision, Tostado and Abravanel held conflicting views of the propriety of city life. The two exegetes disagreed ­because they had starkly dif­fer­ent views of private property. Abravanel believed that when Genesis described the earth as “of one language and speech,” it meant that “every­thing was common to all.” When the builders of the tower and the city “made themselves po­liti­ cal” and de­cided to “form among themselves a partnership and a society,” humanity was subject to “the appetite for increasing acquisitions, and greed and theft and murder.”46 Tostado, on the other hand, upheld private property as an inalienable right. This was a delicate intellectual maneuver for Tostado to perform: he deemed it necessary to distinguish between ultimate dominion, which belongs only to God, and owner­ship by ­human, or positive law.47 The idea that God was the one true owner comes up in several places in Tostado’s biblical commentaries. In his work on 1 Chronicles 29 he writes that “God is the Lord of all ­things in heaven and on earth,” and by “on earth” Tostado specified “all created ­things, ­because the term ‘earth’ includes all the ele­ments, and ­these ­things too belong to God.”48 Elsewhere he writes “all ­things belong to God, and nothing is ours.”49 For Tostado, ­human possessions are essentially loans, and ­people are administrators of creation, with the “full and ­free authority to manage” creation.50 It is only with God’s permission that h ­ umans can hold private property.51 To articulate ­these ideas Tostado engaged two of antiquity’s most impor­tant po­liti­cal phi­los­o­phers: Plato and Aristotle. He did so in a short treatise titled De optima politia (On the Best Government).52 In this work Tostado claims that in remote antiquity property was not held in common.53 His argument follows Aristotle’s in the Politics, especially Book 2, where Aristotle criticizes Socrates’s suggestion in the Republic that men in an ideal city should share wives, ­children, and property.54 But Tostado is far more interested in polygamy than in shared material possessions. He writes that Socrates proposed sharing wives in common ­because he came from a culture in which men often had more than one wife; other­wise such a notion would be “beyond



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the limits of reason.”55 Though Aristotle discusses the advantages and disadvantages of shared property, Tostado neglects to do that and focuses exclusively on marriage, proposing that “neither nature, nor reason allows for holding wives in common.”56 A selective reader of Aristotle, Tostado invoked the Greek phi­los­o­pher to buttress his belief that property never was, nor should be, truly common. In addition to the literary and philosophical sources that Tostado engaged (besides Aristotle and Plato, Tostado quotes Ovid, Augustine, and Aquinas), ­there was an impor­tant social event that served as background to Tostado’s ideas. In 1442 an apostate Franciscan, Fray Alonso de Mella (or Mela), recruited five hundred ­people to join his cause: the foundation of a city in which spouses and property ­were to be held in common. Thirteen of ­these recruits ­were convicted and burned to death by the Inquisition.57 The fresh memory of this episode, in which aspirations for communal life and shared property ­were crushed, may have strengthened Tostado’s anti-­communistic position. And it is certainly pos­si­ble that Tostado’s ideas served as foil for Abravanel, given how closely the latter followed the former’s work and how he occasionally even took plea­sure in refuting it.58 In sum, the difference in view between Abravanel and Tostado regarding cities is clear: Tostado, following Aristotle, maintained that cities ­were appropriate settings for ­human society. Abravanel was much more skeptical and saw the construction of the city and its tower in Genesis 11 as the instigator of many of modern society’s ills. Tostado found philosophical and theological justification for owner­ship of private property, at least according to ­human law; Abravanel was a critic of private property. ­These divergent views may have simply been a product of contrasting ideas, rooted in dissimilar readings of the Bible and classical Greek lit­er­a­ture. T ­ hose views w ­ ere likely also ­shaped by the tumultuous experiences that Jews (and conversos) had in fifteenth-­century Iberian cities, in contradistinction to the more secure status of Iberian Christians.

Jewish Wealth and “The Artificial” What­ever the disparities in the historical experience of Iberian Jews, conversos, and Christians (as well as Muslims), they shared urban spaces and ­were bound by strong communal ties.59 Even though Jews may have thrived

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eco­nom­ically, that success came at a price: instability and vio­lence afflicted Jews and conversos throughout the second half of the fifteenth ­century, to say nothing of the eventual Expulsion of Jews from the Spanish kingdoms.60 With regard to their material success, evidence from the ­later fifteenth ­century abounds, especially in 1492, for that year Spanish authorities undertook careful surveys of Jewish property.61 The data do not lie: some Jews lived sumptuous lifestyles. In the commentaries of Abravanel, Arama, and Saba, the term most conspicuously invoked as a way of censuring this lifestyle is “artificial.” By contrast, as ­we’ll see in Chapter 2, life in a rural setting was deemed to be “natu­ral.” The following pages explore how the real­ity ­these Sephardi exiles faced in vari­ous Iberian cities may explain why they brandished the term “artificial” to describe them. To the moralizing exegetes who lived through the Expulsion from Spain, the clearest manifestation of an “artificial” lifestyle was materialist excess. But it ­wasn’t just their coreligionists who lived lives of moneyed privilege; Isaac Abravanel himself did, as well. Born in Lisbon to an exiled Castilian ­family that rebuilt its fortunes and reputation, young Isaac had not only cultivated his precocious literary talents (as a teenager he wrote his first philosophical treatise in elegant Hebrew prose) but became fabulously wealthy while still in his thirties. Working as a tax farmer and advisor to the noble Bragança ­family, as well as to the Portuguese monarch prior to his flight from Portugal in 1483 (Abravanel was falsely implicated in an anti-­monarchical conspiracy against João II), he recouped his wealth and served as financier to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.62 He also began to farm taxes for Cardinal Don Pedro Gonzalez Mendoza and was appointed chief accountant of the Duke of Infantando, Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza.63 ­There is yet more evidence of his wealth during his Portuguese young adulthood: ­after a costly war against Castile in 1480 that drained the Portuguese trea­sury, a band of nobles loaned 12,000,000 reals to the Portuguese king. Abravanel’s contribution was more than a tenth of that sum.64 That same year, the Duke of Bragança gifted Abravanel an estate in Queluz, near Lisbon, “with all its lands.”65 Abravanel was not unique in his wealth and success; many Jews lived lavishly in fifteenth-­century Spain. In the words of a Jewish historian writing a ­century ­later who looked back at life in Spain with a mixture of nostalgia and regret, ­there was “no end to the grandeur and greatness of their courtyards and homes.”66 By the ­middle of the fifteenth ­century it was com-



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mon knowledge that the Jewish upper classes, especially courtiers, enjoyed extravagant parties; Jewish men held sumptuous dances with ­women and engaged illicit concubines. Affluent Jews even got a daily allowance of meat from city officials. Such privileges ­were hereditary, passed from ­father to son.67 Some Jews in fifteenth-­century Spain ­were more than comfortable; they ­were fabulously affluent. One was Abraham Se­nior—­Abravanel’s friend, who ­later converted to Chris­tian­ity and took the name Fernán Núñez Coronel. Shortly before the Expulsion, one of Se­nior’s Catholic colleagues estimated the Jew’s fortune at a million maravedis.68 Even if that was an exaggeration meant to boast about the wealth and stature of Spain’s newest and most prominent convert to Catholicism, it’s still safe to say that Se­nior was hugely wealthy. One modern historian estimates that Se­nior’s riches ­were equal to ­those of 100 noblemen who enjoyed state incomes of between 100,000 and 500,000 maravedis.69 A 1492 inventory of his possessions, including his ­house in Segovia, reads like a lusty real estate advertisement. It notes that the home had an elegant chamber in which Se­nior could converse with visitors or pray. His wine cellar had multiple entrances, and a tall fence enclosed a sun-­ speckled porch.70 Se­nior ­wasn’t alone in his excesses. Plenty of sources from this time testify to what one leading historian referred to as the “consumption frenzies of the Spanish elites.”71 Ferdinand and Isabella’s court was mobile in ­these years: the king and queen seldom stayed in one place for long. When they arrived at their destination—­a large city or smaller town—­such royal visits constituted “a crushing affair” for the community that hosted them.72 During Abravanel’s lifetime, we have information about the festivals sponsored by the constable Don Miguel Lucas de Iranzo in Jaén in the 1460s. One chronicler emphasizes not only huge amounts of food but also luxurious ser­ vice: plates, silverware, glasses, and serving ­tables. Distribution of food to ­people in the Jaén might have brought together high and low (the royal banquet was open to townspeople), but silver and gold place settings served as markers of difference.73 Although the king and queen ­were exceptional in the degree of their excesses, the upper segments of Castilian society aspired to such hedonistic and con­spic­u­ous expenditures. Still, ­there ­were differences between Jewish and Christian consumption patterns. Unlike ­those of his Christian peers, Se­nior’s expenditures had to be specially permitted. In 1476 Se­nior petitioned for, and was granted, an

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exemption from the sumptuary laws passed at the junta, or assembly, of the Hermandades.74 Sumptuary laws, which ­were common in the medieval and early modern world, ­were meant to curb excess and encourage moderation.75 Occasionally such legislation targeted religious or ethnic minorities such as Jews, whose flaunting of wealth could engender envy or rage and put their physical safety at risk.76 Alternatively, the success of minorities could simply make the Christian majority look bad. Se­nior’s request was honored: he, his wife, and their sons could all wear “embroideries or adornments, silk, camlet, scarlet, gold, pearls or pearls’ embroidery.”77 That they had such luxuries in the first place, and loved to brag about them, was a fact designed to impress. Impress they certainly did, but the Jews’ material success could not save them. Looking back on Jewish achievements from the sobering perspective of the post-­expulsion period, an anonymous chronicler writing in Hebrew noted that the Jews of Castile, Aragon, and Navarre had “light in their dwellings [Exod. 10:23]” and that they lived “on their land in their towns and encampments [Gen. 25:16].” This was a fact worthy of note ­because in some diasporic communities Jews could not own land. That they could in Spain was meant to underscore their success. But, the chronicler lamented, the Jews of Castile in par­tic­u­lar, who had lived “in stillness and quiet” (Isa. 30:15), built a “rebellious and wicked city [Ezra 4:12],” with the result that God “removed Israel from His presence [2 Kings 17:23],” “throwing Israel into utter panic [Deut. 7:23],” “slaying both young man and virgin [Deut. 32:25].”78

Jews in Spanish Cities Long before the “mighty destruction” of Spanish Jewry, Jewish communities across Iberia had urbanized, following well-­charted demographic and economic trends. Over the course of the fifteenth ­century a rural society became increasingly urban: ­people fled the countryside, which had been ravaged a ­century before by the Black Death, and took refuge in cities. During this period cities absorbed plenty of Jews along with their Christian neighbors.79 Attendant upon rapid urbanization was a form of “incipient mercantile capitalism” that Jewish intellectuals like Abravanel criticized but from which they also benefited.80 In spite of the variety of professions that Spanish Jews practiced,81 it was in finance that the Jews made their real mark in



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society. As one historian put it, they “involved themselves in all the ramifications of the urban, seigneurial and royal financial administrations.”82 Registers of royal revenues, this same authority argued, contain the names of families that could be described as veritable dynasties of tax farmers and collectors, including the Abenamías, Abenxuxen, Abudaran, Baquex, Bienveniste, Çabaco, Levi, Leyva, and Nasçi.83 In the second half of the fifteenth ­century, in the Aragonese town of Morvedre, Jews played an increased role in tax farming.84 In Castile at this time, by some estimates, Jews controlled two-­thirds of the indirect taxes and customs.85 Tax farming—­collecting taxes on behalf of someone ­else, usually a po­liti­cal figure—­may have been lucrative, but it carried risks and could be socially disadvantageous. For one ­thing, in fifteenth-­century Aragon, the most valuable terços86 ­were collected on bread, wine, oil, and, ­after 1465, sugar. ­These terços ­were often collected in kind, which meant dealing with perishable produce.87 For another, such positions ­were seen in Castilian society as incompatible with true hidalguía, or nobility.88 A nobleman, so the thinking went, would not stoop to sullying his hands with money. In addition, it isolated Jews and incited popu­lar ire. As one historian has put it, “like other merchants and tax collectors,” Jews ­were “hated.”89 At this time foreign observers noted that Spanish Jews ­were closely associated with wealth. The Italian historian and diplomat Francesco Guicciardini, writing in 1513, observed that half a ­century before “the ­whole kingdom,” by which he meant Castile, “was full of Jews and heretics . . . ​who had in their hands all the main offices and wealth.”90 And it w ­ asn’t only Catholics who felt this way. Solomon ibn Verga, a Jewish historian looking back at the tragedy of Jewish life in Spain from the vantage point of the sixteenth ­century, “saw the jealousy of Christians for Jews excited by Jewish thirst for riches and power, the pride and luxury displayed in their dress, far richer than that of Christian nobles.”91 Jews at this time had a tendency to denigrate manual l­abor and laud work in the financial sphere. They did this in spite of social pressures and without regard for the predictable results of their financial role in society. For years leading up to the Expulsion Hebrew poems had contrasted the “clean” work of the merchant and financier to the “undignified” work of the farmer or laborer.92 In 1445, the Saragossan poet Solomon Bonafed vented his frustrations about community leaders being exiled from his hometown. In their place, he remarked disparagingly, tailors had become judges and shoe­makers

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magistrates. At the same time, this generation of cultivated Iberian intellectuals did not merely accept social in­equality as inevitable. In the 1470s the Castilian poet Jorge Manrique described the leveling properties of death in his Coplas a la muerte de mi padre (Ode to the Death of My F ­ ather). Manrique compared ­human lives to rivers that flow into a sea “which is ­dying,” noting that all rivers, large and small, run into the sea and that all are equal, “­those who live by the [work of their] hands and ­those who are rich.”93 ­There was a comparable tendency in Hebrew texts written at this time to muse on the transience of worldly pleasures and the specious advantages of class privilege.94 The dusk of Jewish life in Spain coincided with a surge in urban populations, and this, in turn, meant greater prosperity, at least for the elite. One historian has called this period “the ­great age of municipal power and wealth,” especially in Aragon.95 Cities grew even faster, and ­were more populous in Castile: by one estimate Castilian cities accounted for three-­quarters of Spain’s population.96 During the fifteenth c­ entury t­ here was a steady increase in urban population, up to 20 ­percent by 1500. In all of Eu­rope only Flanders and northern Italy saw greater urban growth.97 City life meant the ­emergence—or strengthening—of a monetary economy, which naturally exploited certain vulnerable populations while enriching merchants and nobles.98 Perhaps ­because of the growing economic inequalities in Castilian and Aragonese population centers, many Spaniards fulminated against cities, especially larger ones. Port cities earned special opprobrium. For example, in the 1450s the Castilian cleric Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo condemned maritime cities, with their throngs of merchants, as “contrary to good and noble policy.” For him merchants ­were an inferior species, “not concerned with virtue” but with riches.99 Large metropolitan centers brought certain benefits to late medieval Spain—­such as increased wealth and convenience—­but some observers at the time had plenty of concerns about the urbanization of late medieval life. Throughout Iberia, anti-­Jewish legislation was particularly pronounced in the peninsula’s most populous cities. Edicts of segregation that forcibly separated Jews from conversos ­were first issued on 27 December 1477. Over the next few years (in 1478 in Cáceres and Seville, and in Soria in 1480), similarly cruel legislation was enacted that segregated Jews from all Christians—­ not just recent converts.100 In 1480 the cortes101 convened in Toledo and went a step further: they forbade Jews from living with Christians or Mus-



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lims. The penalty stipulated for any transgression was stiff: any Jew found dwelling outside ­those areas “­w ill lose by that very act his property [which ­w ill be] impounded for the benefit of our trea­sury, and he personally ­will be subject to our mercy, and any judge can seize his body according to his authority.”102 In this period, the cortes in par­tic­u­lar often proposed and passed anti-­ Jewish legislation throughout the Iberian kingdoms.103 Sometimes ­these mea­sures ­were disguised as actions directed against professions that ­were known to engage many Jews: chiefly commerce, artisanal trades, and medicine.104 City representatives, a power­f ul faction at many such parliamentary assemblies, targeted Jews moreso than did the clergy or nobility. As José María Monsalvo Antón has pointed out, the procuradores, who made many of the decisions at the cortes, ­were closely allied with urban oligarchies.105 City representatives thought that “Jewish professions” like moneylending would lead to a “natu­ral conflict” with Christians.106 Jews ­were especially singled out, and systematically disadvantaged, by city representatives to cortes on the subject of moneylending.107 For example, some cortes moved to annul even ­those business agreements made between Jews and Christians in the presence of a witness.108 Other common forms of petition on behalf of the cities in cortes ­were ­those against Jewish landlords. ­These ­were baldly proposed to protect the interests of “ricos hombres.”109 Overall, this same scholar claims, historians can speak of a “progressive worsening” of conditions for Jews with regard to their treatment at the hands of fifteenth-­century Castilian cortes.110 In the period leading up to the Expulsion, successive waves of ordinances ­were passed against Jews in cities and towns of vari­ous sizes. For example, in Medina del Campo an attempt was made to prevent Jews from receiving food or fuel from outside the town; in Orense they ­were not allowed to trade in the plaza, where most commercial transactions took place; and in the port city of Bilbao they ­were prohibited from spending a single night inside the city walls.111 All of ­these places ­were impor­tant in the context of the wool trade, in which Jews had played a prominent role. ­These restrictive mea­ sures effectively shut Jews out of a major segment of the Spanish economy. A concomitant result of this was felt in the real estate market: the value of an abandoned h ­ ouse was often less than that of a new home, and Jews suffered marked financial loss. In some places entire Jewish communities simply dis­ appeared, as was the case in Ciudad Real (La Mancha) and many surrounding villages.112 ­These ­weren’t only Spanish, let alone Castilian, developments;

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they stretched throughout Christendom. In May 1484 Pope Sixtus IV echoed ­these restrictions with a bull forbidding Jews and Muslims from living with Christians.113 It ­wasn’t only that anti-­Jewish legislation was pushed through by representatives of Iberian towns and cities; vio­lence resulted, too, especially in Castile. As Mark Meyerson has observed, vio­lence against Castilian Jews was the result of “years of vicious anti-­Jewish activity”; anti-­Judaism was “a fixture in the realm’s public discourse.”114 This was due to the nobility’s preponderant influence in po­liti­cal life: nobility who wished to assert their own privileges by challenging the monarchy found an easy target in Jews, many of whom worked in administrative and fiscal roles for the crown.115 In Toledo in 1467, and throughout Andalusia in 1473, popu­lar uprisings targeted both conversos and Jews.116 Envy of urban, worldly success held a correlative, if not causal, relationship to anti-­Jewish and anti-­converso vio­lence and persecution. One change wrought by urbanization was a pronounced disparity of wealth between rich and poor. In Seville, for example, where Abravanel’s ­family lived before their fourteenth-­century exile to Portugal, and where Isaac himself likely spent time while in Ferdinand and Isabella’s employ, growth resulted in ever-­increasing imbalances of wealth. In Abravanel’s lifetime Seville grew rapidly: from a population of 22,018 during the years 1426–1451 to 31,032  in 1483–1489.117 Accordingly, divisions of wealth w ­ ere extreme. Late in the fifteenth ­century merely 42 ­percent of all citizens of Seville ­were listed in the survey of individual wealth: the remainder of the population was ­either too poor or too rich to be taxed. Of ­those subject to taxation, 95.5 ­percent ­were taxed at the lowest economic scale, paying the bare minimum. An eye-­popping 4.5 ­percent of ­those listed as taxpayers held 44.7 ­percent of all wealth owned by this group. Furthermore, the aristocratic elite paid no taxes at all.118 Seville is representative of broader trends: over the course of the fifteenth ­century class distinctions ­were increasingly heightened throughout Aragon and Castile, and data show a movement “from relatively undifferentiated rankings to sharp social and class distinctions.”119 None of this was good for Seville’s Jewish and converso population, who ­were repeatedly subjects of vio­lence: in 1450 many sevillanos, urged on by a Franciscan friar, planned to assault the city’s judería, though their plans ­were foiled.120 ­Things w ­ ere worse for conversos, who suffered repeated persecution between 1433 and 1473.121 Jewish security in fifteenth-­century Iberian cities was often uncertain. This real­ity constitutes impor­tant background



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to Abravanel’s view of the builders of the Bible’s first city, who moved away from what he termed “the ancient, natu­ral way.”122

Cities and Private Property For commentators like Abravanel, cities ­were historically and typologically linked to the establishment and preservation of private property. One point of origin for ideas concerning the pernicious and artificial quality of private property is in the writings of the Church ­Fathers. Patristic sources ­were well-­ known in fifteenth-­century Iberia, and the ­fathers of the church had much to say about the evils of acquisitiveness.123 John Chrysostom, for example, in a homily on Psalm 48, urged his audience not to become “more savage than the beasts, for they hold all ­things in common: the earth, springs, grass, mountains forests. None has any more than another.”124 The Latin f­athers ­were better known to Abravanel’s generation of exegetes. Ambrose, for example, wrote that “our Lord God wanted this earth to be the common possession of all ­people, and that it distribute its goods to all.”125 In another work, Ambrose was quite direct in pronouncing property “unnatural.”126 The only way ius privatum could emerge from ius commune, to borrow Ambrose’s language, was by theft.127 Augustine, on the contrary, saw property as ultimately legitimate.128 But before he arrived at this permissive stance, he acknowledged that “quarrels, enmity, discord, war among men, strife, rebellion, scandals, sin, in­equality, and murder” result from the establishment of private property.129 While ­there was much discussion about the origins and nature of private property in antiquity and late antiquity, arguments about it largely lay dormant from Patristic lit­er­a­ture to the m ­ iddle of the twelfth c­ entury. When it was taken up again in the High ­Middle Ages writers of many stripes repeated Patristic arguments: while private property had no place in an ideal, divine society, in the real world it was necessary to satisfy h ­ uman greed and 130 maintain public order. For scholastic authors like San Bernardino of Siena, communism exists “in a state of innocence,” but not since the Fall of Man.131 This idea originated in the work of Duns Scotus, who argued that private property had been instituted in order to prevent neglect, fraud, and discord.132 But even San Bernardino, who wrote extensively on the subject, was not an unqualified supporter of the sanctity of property rights. He observed that, while in accordance with canon law, private property is

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instituted by neither divine nor natu­ral law; only ­human law regulates it, and since this is conventional, it can be modified and varied from place to place.133 In the M ­ iddle Ages wealth was seen by some thinkers in a positive light. Its advantage lay in its ability to help one exercise civic virtue. The earliest expression of this notion may be found in Aristotle’s Politics. In the thirteenth ­century Aquinas enlarged on this theme in his Summa Theologiae, in a quaestio titled de honestate. ­Things other than virtue may be honored ­because they are helpful to the “exercise of virtue.” Among t­ hese are “nobility, power and wealth.”134 Aquinas maintained that private property is not only legitimate but essential to po­liti­cal life. If every­thing ­were held in common, he asserted, no one would work: endless confusion and quarreling would be the result.135 Given scholastic approbations of the pursuit of wealth, it is likely that Abravanel, Arama, and Saba inherited their suspicion regarding private property from writers other than t­ hese theologians. Though scholars debate the origins of late thirteenth-­and fourteenth-­ century distaste for wealth, such sentiments constitute an unmistakable trend in Eu­ro­pean intellectual circles.136 In the ­fourteenth ­century ­these ideas persisted.137 Humanists such as Coluccio Salutati condemned secular life in his De seculo et religione, a treatise on the life of the regular clergy.138 “How easy it is,” Salutati mused, “to satisfy ­these necessities the first age teaches, which, as is read, satisfied hunger with acorns, conquered thirst from brooks, drove off cold with skins . . . ​all ­things ­were common.”139 Ultimately Salutati advocated a monastic life, far from what Abravanel or his Jewish peers would have wished. But Salutati’s analy­sis of property may have resonated with Don Isaac. Commenting on the words “mine” (meum) and “yours” (tuum), the Florentine chancellor wrote, “­Those two quarrelsome words which disturb the peace of mortals, and which bar to men the road to heaven, are inciters of avarice and authors of contentions.”140 The humanist tradition constitutes impor­tant background to Abravanel’s radical disapproval of private property. And few authors ­were more beloved to fifteenth-­century Iberian humanists than Seneca.

* * * As we have seen, t­ here w ­ ere several impor­tant contexts for understanding the anti-­urbanism (and anti-­materialism) of Abravanel and his peers. ­These include local po­liti­cal circumstances in Spanish cities, as well as social, religious, and



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scholarly trends across western Eu­rope at this time. But ­there ­were impor­tant classical literary influences on this group, too. When it came to excoriation of cities, ­there was no more relevant critic than the first-­century Roman writer Seneca, whose importance to fifteenth-­century Iberian intellectuals was pronounced. Despite the separation of nearly fifteen hundred years, as well as a profound difference in religion and worldview, Seneca’s life followed a similar pattern to that of Abravanel. ­These biographical resemblances may have endeared the ancient writer to the Re­nais­sance commentator. Born in Córdoba in 4 B.C.E., Seneca was the son of a man active in Roman po­ liti­cal life. Soon ­a fter embarking on a po­liti­cal ­career, Seneca quickly became embroiled in controversy; the Emperor Caligula exiled him to Corsica on the basis of spurious charges of adultery. ­A fter spending several years in Corsica, Seneca was eventually recalled to Rome in 49, where he came into po­liti­cal ­favor following the murder of the Emperor Claudius and the ascendancy of Nero, whom Seneca tutored. ­A fter a number of years holding vari­ous positions of po­liti­cal prominence, Seneca retired from active po­liti­cal life and penned the majority of his philosophical corpus, including his Epistulae Morales, which exerted a formidable influence on Abravanel.141 Before we look at connections between Seneca’s and Abravanel’s thought, it is impor­tant to establish Seneca’s popularity in fifteenth-­century Iberia. From the ­Middle Ages through the Baroque period, Seneca enjoyed a warm reception in Spanish belles lettres.142 During the second quarter of the fifteenth ­century, a number of translations into Castilian and Catalan ­were commissioned, in addition to the dissemination of the original Latin text of Seneca’s writings.143 ­Those translations w ­ ere among the first of Latin authors into Eu­ro­pean vernaculars.144 It is impor­tant to bear in mind that vernacular translations from classical authors w ­ ere “one of the forms of secular lit­er­a­ture most enjoyed by the fifteenth-­century lay reading public.”145 Apart from copies made of Seneca’s works, and translations into Castilian and other Iberian languages, the Cordoban phi­los­o­pher was quoted extensively in a number of digests and miscellanies, including the popu­lar and much-­circulated Dichos de sabios y philósofos, translated from Catalan into Castilian by Çadique de Uclés in 1402 for a Castilian patron.146 All of this was part of nascent humanism on the Iberian Peninsula.147 Evidence of just how popu­lar Seneca was can be seen in individual texts such as miscellanies. James Nelson Novoa has undertaken a careful study of

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a single fifteenth-­century manuscript of Iberian provenance.148 This work, a miscellany, includes a 1486 digest titled simply “Seneca.”149 Nelson Novoa argues convincingly that the fifteenth ­century was the “heyday” of Seneca in Spain: the ­middle of the ­century witnessed a transition from indirect knowledge of Seneca to the direct availability of texts in Latin and Castilian translation.150 ­These texts ­were especially prevalent in the court libraries of fifteenth-­century Spain.151 Cultural links between Spain and Italy grew stronger ­a fter the 1442 expansion of the Kingdom of Aragon into Italy ­under Alfonso V. An ethical system deemed compatible with Chris­tian­ity, a compelling moral philosophy, and a resource for ­t hose contributing to the popu­lar genre of consolation are among the ­f actors that made Seneca appealing.152 Seneca’s prominence in fifteenth-­century Iberia is not merely a ­matter of bibliographical data; con­temporary translators and scholars discussed the issue openly. For example, Alonso de Cartagena’s introduction to his 1431 translation of De Providentia explic­itly states his preference for Seneca over other Latin writers. Cartagena asserts: “Though in Cicero all the Latins recognized the embodiment of eloquence, his writings in many places are more worldly, and he did not adorn his books with many doctrinal expressions fitting of his prolix and pompous method of writing; whereas Seneca, with his eloquent style, laid out the rules of virtue minutely and pithily, as if he ­were embroidering a well-­crafted silver filigree of science on the pretty cloth of eloquence.”153 Cartagena’s introduction to De Providentia reveals two tendencies: the desire to make Seneca a native of Spain and to claim him as a classical representative of ancient Spanish culture.154 Both of t­ hese tendencies on the part of Spain’s letrados indicate a par­tic­u­lar affection for Seneca in Iberia. In fact, Seneca was so beloved that the Palermitan poet and scholar Antonio Beccadelli said of King Alfonso that he “loved and respected his Spanish contemporaries ­because they translated the letters of Seneca from Latin into their ­mother tongue, so that knowledge of that divine book should not escape the unlettered.”155 Accordingly, the fact that Abravanel’s writings reveal a predilection for Seneca is hardly surprising. What’s more, Juan II (1405–1454), a major patron of humanistic scholarship, commissioned two Seneca translations, both of which emerged from the pens of conversos.156 For Jews and former Jews alike, Seneca had ­great appeal. As we saw, Abravanel’s analy­sis of the Tower of Babel idealizes remote antiquity, or the “Golden Age.” In this mythical epoch men led lives un­



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perturbed by po­liti­cal divisiveness, ­free from widespread theft and vio­lence, and unencumbered by linguistic barriers. In his 90th  epistle, Seneca demonstrates a similar nostalgia for ancient history. He stresses, like Abravanel, how much better life was before the proliferation of technology and, especially, cities. Seneca’s glorification of bygone days, his insistence that vice and material envy lead to vio­lence and po­liti­cal corruption, his belief that nature provides every­thing that man truly needs, and his assertion that the desire for “luxury” corrupts man’s essential being all resonate in the commentaries of Isaac Abravanel. Near the beginning of Seneca’s Epistula XC, he laments the pre­sent state of mankind and glorifies ancient times: “Fellowship among men remained unspoiled for a long time, ­until avarice tore the community apart and became the cause of poverty, even in the case of ­those whom she herself had most enriched. For men cease to possess all ­things the moment they desire all ­things for their own.”157 Both Abravanel and Seneca, referring to the same point in the distant past, use similar words to describe the sort of selfless cooperation and idyllic coexistence that predominated before the age of tools, permanent homes, and cities. For ­these men of letters, a hallmark of ancient life was a universal fellowship of man that was ruined first by technology and subsequently by greed, theft, and vio­lence. ­Later in his Epistula Seneca debates the sagacity of inventing tools, cities, and other man-­made arts. He writes: Posidonius says: “when men ­were scattered over the earth, protected by caves or by the dug-­out shelter of a cliff or by the trunk of a hollow tree, it was philosophy that taught them to build ­houses.” But I, for my part, do not hold that philosophy devised ­these shrewdly-­ contrived dwellings of ours which rise story upon story, where city crowds against city, any more than that she in­ven­ted the fish farms, which are enclosed for the purpose of saving men’s gluttony from having to run the risks of storms, and in order that, no ­matter how wildly the sea is raging, luxury [luxuria] may have its safe harbors in which to fatten fancy breeds of fish.158 Seneca asked plangently, “Was it not enough for man to provide himself a roof of any chance covering, and to contrive for himself some natu­ral retreat without the help of art and without trou­ble? Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders!”159

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­There are clear parallels between Seneca’s disdain for builders and Abravanel’s strident disapproval of ­those who practice the “superfluous” crafts.160 One general theme ­running between the historical nostalgia of Seneca and that of Abravanel is what one modern scholar has referred to as “technopessimism.” Speaking of Seneca, Sirkka Heinonen writes that he “saw technology as a primary cause for the moral degradation of humankind.”161 Seneca concludes this section with a memorable observation: “thatched roofs once covered ­free men; ­under marble and gold dwells slavery.”162 In Seneca’s Phaedra ­there’s a dialogue between an anti-­primitivistic nurse and an austere youth. The young man replies to the nurse with a long eulogy to the state of nature: ­ here is no life freer and more innocent, none which better cherT ishes the ancient ways [priscos], than that which, leaving city walls ­behind, loves the woods. His mind is inflamed by no mad greed of gain [avarae mentis furor] who gives himself up to a harmless existence on the mountain heights; no breath of popu­lar applause is ­there, no mob faithless to good men, no poisonous envy and no fickle ­favor. He serves no ruler nor, seeking himself to rule, does he pursue empty honors or fleeting wealth [vanos honores . . . ​aux fluxas opes]. Since he is ­free alike from hope and fear, black devouring envy does not attack him with its ignoble tooth; unknown to him are the crimes that spawn in teeming cities . . . ​but he is master of the empty countryside and wanders harmless beneath the open sky.163 The dichotomy of urban-­rural is forcefully presented in Seneca’s work. Furthermore, the notion that “the ancient ways” are only attainable ­after “leaving city walls ­behind” resonates deeply with Abravanel’s ideas regarding the purity of the country and the moral pollution of cities. Seneca’s work delves deeper into what rural life offered that cities could not: They had no blind love of gold. No sacred boundary stone stood as a witness to the ­peoples, dividing field from field. . . . ​Cities had not girt themselves with mighty walls thick-­set with towers . . . ​nor yet did earth, compelled to submit to a master’s rule, endure the ­labor of the yoked ox; but the fields, fruitful of themselves, fed ­peoples who demanded nothing more; the woods gave men their natu­ral wealth and dim caves their natu­ral shelter. Impious love of gain



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broke up this harmony, and headlong wrath, and lust that sets men’s hearts aflame. Then came the ruthless thirst for power.164 Seneca’s importance can hardly be overemphasized. But ­there’s another classical authority whose presence in the fifteenth ­century is less con­spic­u­ ous but perhaps as impor­tant: Plato.165 Plato’s Republic famously advocates the abolition of private property.166 For this reason and ­others, Plato’s absorption into the bloodstream of Eu­ro­pean intellectual life in the fifteenth ­century was perilous and perceived as toxic.167 Eugenio Garin has argued that the readmission of Plato into the Western canon, from Manuel Chrysoloras and Uberto Decembrio at the beginning of the fifteenth ­century to Ficino at its end, had serious consequences and was much more than a dry academic debate. The Aristotelian phi­los­o­pher George of Trebizond bitterly attacked Georgius Gemistus Plethon for his promotion of Plato. Trebizond stated that Plato’s thought was anti-­Christian, anti-­Roman, and capable of “ruining” Western civilization.168 Islamophobia was part of Trebizond’s argument: he labeled the prophet Mohammed as a revivifier of Plato, responsible for combining and transmitting the worst ele­ments in Greek thought.169 In humanist circles at this time, Plato was fodder for intense po­liti­cal debates. For example, the dedicatory letter of George of Trebizond’s translation of Plato’s Laws to Nicholas V (1450–1451), and to Francesco Barbaro in Venice, makes the comparison between Venice and the ideal Platonic state explicit. Abravanel spent the final years of his life in Venice, where he finished his commentary on Genesis in 1505. As Abraham Melamed has shown, Abravanel idolized the Venetian state and saw its government as the nearly ideal form.170 Cedric Cohen-­Skalli has argued that Abravanel’s discussion of Saul’s leadership drew from Book IV of the Republic.171 Strauss has argued persuasively that much of Abravanel’s idealization of rural life may be understood as criticism of Maimonidean philosophy by means of what Cohen-­ Skalli has termed a “rapprochement with Plato.”172 As such, Plato was a potentially impor­tant source, not only regarding the abolition of private property but also on the nature of ideal government.173

* * * Fifteenth-­century Iberian Jewish authors knew well that cities could not “bind them and draw them near heaven.”174 Rather, they ­were strikingly ambivalent about, and critical of, cities. Even before their ultimate Expulsion,

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they had seen too many restrictions and tragedies in urban centers. The story of the Tower of Babel was an ideal frame through which Sephardi commentators could view not only the Bible’s declinist historical narrative but also a parable of their own times.175 Their own times, as this chapter has suggested, saw rapid urbanization and related consequences: a growing gap between rich and poor, and an increase in vio­lence and religious persecution. What made urban life pos­si­ble for Jew and Christian alike, as is always the case, ­were the farmers, ranchers, and pastors who earned their living from the soil and supplied cities with necessary provisions. Among ­these rural workers ­were some Jews. As tensions increased in fifteenth-­century Spanish cities, it stood to reason that Abravanel, Saba, and Arama—­who ministered to urban communities and passed the majority of their lives in urban centers—­would dream of relief from the dangers and indulgences of Iberian towns. It is to t­ hose dreams that we now turn our attention.

Chapter 2

Life in the Country

For some Sephardi Bible commentators of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, cities ­were exemplars of hedonism, materialism, and the “unnatural.” Conversely, life in the country exemplified the “natu­ral.” At ­every opportunity, Abravanel, Saba, and Arama praised country life. They did so indirectly, in the context of their scriptural exegesis, rather than by directly commenting on their immediate social and physical surroundings. Often they lauded biblical figures for their work as shepherds and lavished attention on the economics of rural Near Eastern life. Above all ­others, the biblical story they focused on was the Garden of Eden. The dichotomy ­these Sephardi intellectuals drew between urban and rural was forced, heavi­ly romanticized, and more of a “retrospective radicalism” than a robust cultural critique.1 Still, it was rooted in long experience in Iberia’s cities, towns, and rural enclaves. Even though historians tend to associate medieval Jews with cities, and perceive their trades as urban, commercial, and proto-­capitalist, they ­were more landed than recent historiography acknowledges. In order to understand better the con­spic­u­ous cele­bration of country life in ­these commentaries, we must examine the economics of Jewish life in late medieval Spain, especially its rural dimensions. Accordingly, this chapter has several aims. First, it pre­sents Abravanel’s, and to a lesser extent Arama’s and Saba’s, tendency to idealize rural life through an analy­sis of their commentaries on the Garden of Eden. ­After a brief exploration of pos­si­ble Catholic influences on their ideas, the chapter develops its major argument: that Abravanel’s ideas are best understood in light of the extent and quality of Jewish settlement on the land, including Jews’ owner­ship of immovable property. Next, as in Chapter 1, vari­ous strains of classical lit­er­a­ture popu­lar in fifteenth-­century Iberia—­chiefly primitivism

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and related ideas of a mythological Golden Age—­a re shown to have helped frame ­these commentators’ ideas about how “natu­ral” and salubrious life in the country was and how “unnatural” urban life was. The chapter closes with a brief examination of how Abravanel, Saba, and Arama emphasized the eternal relevance of biblical and rabbinic laws pertaining to agriculture.

* * * Iberian Jews could be found in villages and small towns throughout the Castilian and Aragonese countryside, engaged in vari­ous forms of work. Their intellectual and spiritual leaders—­among them Saba, Arama, and Abravanel—­ looked to the distant past for confirmation that life on the land was truly what God wanted for them. They cast their gaze not to the historical parts of the Bible but to its mythological sections.2 And no tale better illustrated the opportunities and dangers of a s­ imple, landed life than did that of the Garden of Eden. For this group the story of Adam and Eve in Eden may amount to a myth, but it was a myth with eternal relevance. What’s more, they ­were absolutely convinced that the Garden physically existed.3 For Jewish writers like Abravanel, being cast out of the Garden of Eden amounted to a mandate to work the land. Expulsion from the Garden was not necessarily perceived as strict punishment; it amounted to humankind’s destiny, as well as an opportunity. In his commentary on this story he writes, “Therefore it would be appropriate that [Adam] be cast out of the garden to work the land, for it is reasonable that this law apply to him, that he be a ‘tiller of the earth’ [Gen. 4:2], and that he not resemble the most high.”4 Abravanel’s peer Isaac Caro had a complementary observation: working in agriculture distinguished Adam not only from God, as Abravanel had it, but from his previous ontological state in the Garden of Eden. Caro pointed out that while Genesis 3:23 states that God “sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken,” the subsequent verse notes that God “drove him out.” For Caro the verb “sent” suggested “one who sends an emissary to complete a mission,” and that mission was “to till the ground.” If that’s the case, Caro asked, why does the next verse state that God “drove” Adam out? “I contend,” Caro answered, that the intention ­here is that the Holy One, Blessed be He, said “if I say to him I drive you out from the garden on account of your misappropriation of my [garden],5 he would not want to leave the



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garden, and w ­ ill choose death over life” (cf. Deut. 30:19) and would not want to leave the garden even if God put him to death by ‘all four types of capital punishment.’ ”6 . . . ​So what did the Holy One, Blessed be He, do? He chose a course of action such that [Adam] would leave the garden, and did not say to him “leave the garden of Eden” but rather “go outside of the garden to till the ground.” For it was from outside the garden that the soil was taken from which you ­were fashioned [Gen. 2:7], and if you till the garden, as it is written ‘He put him into the garden of Eden to till it and tend it’ [Gen. 2:15], it is also appropriate that you should till the earth from which you ­were taken.” And he departed from that place [the Garden] to till the earth.7 ­ ere Caro comes close to endorsing some form of agricultural work, which H was unusual, given the degraded nature of the world—­a nd agricultural ­labor—­after Adam’s sin.8 ­Later, when we review his remarks on the story of Cain and Abel, we ­will see that he upholds a rigid professional hierarchy: farming is an inferior occupation to the pastoral life. What­ever their respective merits and demerits, for Caro and his Spanish peers both walks of life are certainly superior to the noxious corruptions of the city. Beyond the mandate to earn one’s living from the sweat of one’s brow, Abravanel and his generation drew another major lesson from the tale of Eden: in the Garden God provided all of life’s necessities. Isaac Caro pointed out that the trees of Eden existed exclusively for ­human benefit: “they have no seeds such that they might reproduce sexually.” In this regard, Caro added, “they are like the stars and constellations, which have no need to survive by reproduction.”9 Abraham Saba made a similar point: “Scripture says ‘and God planted [a garden]’ [Gen. 2:8] to indicate the exalted nature of man, as if [God] caused the ­whole world to grow again for the sake of mankind, to prepare a fitting place for ­people to ­settle, even though He had already done this in the [original] work of creation.”10 To ­these commentators the Garden was intended for more than ­human nourishment: man’s ultimate goal was to perfect his soul, and in order to avoid distractions from this summum bonum man was provided with every­thing he needed. It followed that urban society represented a corruption of God’s intention for man—to live simply. As Abravanel put it: “God provided all ­things necessary for the maintenance of life: food, drink, fruit from the trees of the garden that He planted, ­waters from its rivers, all of this in their natu­ral existence without him having to

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toil and trou­ble, without ­human ­labor. Rather, all his necessities would be available, and always at hand so that he would not have to weary his soul in seeking his bodily needs.”11 Before Adam and Eve’s sin t­ here was no need for any physical l­abor. The key adjective in ­these lines is “natu­ral” (ṭiv‘i). Abravanel uses this term to denote ele­ments of the natu­ral world, as in the food and drink mentioned above. Arama, too, stressed the fact that in Eden one could find the “necessary items for alimentation, and a sufficient amount of the other essentials necessary for sustaining life.”12 In this par­tic­u­lar passage, Abravanel’s emphasis on “the natu­ral” was stronger than Arama’s: the Portuguese commentator deployed the term in a philosophical sense, as a contrast to what he deemed artificial: “On account of this God commanded him [Adam] to supply himself with natu­ral t­ hings which He provided for his need, and not to pursue superfluous ­things that are needed for worldly tasks, and for popu­lar notions.” Man’s failure to understand this and live life in accordance with this message is what led him to sin.13 Abravanel was precise about what exactly ­these “natu­ral” or “necessary” ­things ­were that Adam found in Eden. Abravanel notes, “God supplied all of man’s needs while he was in the garden by causing all types of trees to grow ­there that benefit and please man. ­W hether for visual aesthetics, as with lilies and other beautiful flowers; or for food, being appropriate nourishment; or regarding maintenance of health and the curing of illness, as medicines in accordance with their qualities and secret properties. For every­ thing was pre­sent in the garden, and concerning this scripture states ‘And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow,’ ­etc. [Gen 2:9].”14 In this passage we see Abravanel underscoring three distinct features of Eden’s botany: visual delight, nourishment, and medicine. In the Re­nais­sance and ­later ­Middle Ages all three ­were commonly acknowledged advantages that plants provided.15 Still, Eden was special. The Spanish sage notes that “God did not bring ­those trees from elsewhere to plant them ­there [in Eden]; rather he caused them to grow from that very ground from the time of creation, for Him to take pride in.”16 The Garden, Abraham Saba wrote, was “the choicest of all places,” “a land of rivers and streams.”17 ­There was something particularly salubrious about the soil watered by t­ hose rivers and streams: for Abravanel the Tree of Life bestowed “herbal medicines to protect health and remove illness.”18 The Portuguese commentator was an avid reader of traveler’s reports that ­were flooding the Spanish and Italian markets in the 1490s and



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1500s.19 One common feature of t­ hose reports was an emphasis on the exuberance and healthfulness of the produce in the equatorial regions of the New World recently discovered by Spanish and Portuguese explorers and conquistadores. ­These trees, fruits, and rivers teeming with fish ­weren’t merely ­things to indulge in or exploit—­although Spaniards certainly did that.20 Physicians and other learned writers of this period believed that such natu­ral bounty could extend life and improve its quality, and Abravanel’s view of Eden was framed through this lens.21 Like the native Americans whom Columbus and other authors described, original man, for this commentator, had no motivation to sin in pursuit of “the good and the pleas­ur­able, for in his youth he was impoverished, and was created outside of the garden, and the Holy One Blessed be He took him and established him from lowly dust and placed him in the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it; not to exist ­there as lord and master.”22 Excess and the moral imperative to avoid it are central themes in this group’s discussion of the garden. Abraham Saba insisted that the Garden “was not lacking any good ­thing” and that “all delights ­were ­there.” The prob­lem was that man could not resist temptation: “for man, due to his inclination ­after luxuries, destroys his world.” Wistfully, Saba mused “if only man took a modest portion, enough for his health, and a ­little honey for his plea­sure,” he might have avoided exile from the Garden.23 Isaac Caro made a similar point: when Adam “ate of that tree he inclined exceedingly ­towards his evil inclination, as do the majority of men ­today.” If the point ­were lost on his readers, Caro took care to underscore it: “distinguished men and princes incline exceedingly ­towards the evil inclination and worldly luxuries.”24 The story of Eden presented an opportunity for Sephardic commentators to blend social criticism with reflections about the theological and moral significance of botany. In Abravanel’s commentary, the subject of excess often arises with regard to sex and food. Adam was forbidden to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil ­because once he does “eating it ­will bring him to separation of desire, and descent to that despicable act for the sake of animal plea­sure” as opposed to the “proper and pleasant intellectual goal of mating.”25 The link between sex and food is clear: what Adam eats is a central part of his punishment and a key ele­ment in the contrast between life in the garden and exile from it. Before his banishment he ate from ­every tree of the garden, but “­after he sinned he pursued his animal desire . . . ​with re­ spect to food and nourishment [his punishment was] that he be comparable

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to domestic animals,” in other words that he had to seek out his food. Abravanel reminded his readers that “on this ­matter [Scripture] states: ‘thorns and thistles ­shall it [the land] sprout for you, but your food ­shall be the grasses of the field’ [Gen. 3:18].”26 Alimentation and sexuality invited excess and needed to be tempered. Abravanel applied this logic about “natu­ral,” as opposed to excessive, consumption to his analy­sis of the longevity of the patriarchs—­a topic of interest to Christian as well as Jewish scholars.27 “The opinion of the master and teacher [i.e., Maimonides] is that, with re­spect to the ancient generations, natu­ral and super­natural c­ auses joined together for their benefit to prolong their lives, in wondrous fashion. The natu­ral cause is their good sense regarding food and drink, in accordance with necessity, and without excesses [motarot]. For they, in their generations, would not eat meat and they would not drink wine.”28 Abravanel’s discussion of Eden is rife with contrasts between “natu­ral” and “artificial.” He and other phi­los­o­phers of his generation devoted considerable attention to the literal and symbolic associations with the Garden of Eden. But they ­were also deeply concerned with another related topic: the need for ­humans to content themselves with ­little. If cities ­were known for excess and indulgence, Sephardic intellectuals celebrated the countryside as a place where ­humans could fulfill their true destiny as minimalists. Many biblical figures exemplified this approach to life. ­Later, when we look more closely at the strug­gles and competition between pastoralists and agriculturalists, ­we’ll see how Spanish Jewish commentators of the Re­nais­ sance juxtaposed the acquisitive tendencies of farmers to the minimalism of semi-­pastoral shepherds. Even though this dichotomy was forced, and grounded more in their imagination than in the soil of ­either con­temporary Iberia or the biblical Land of Israel, it pre­sents a key that helps unlock their ­mental world. One example of this may be seen in Abravanel’s commentary to Genesis 37, the tale of Joseph and his ­brothers. Expounding on the chapter’s opening verse, “Jacob dwelt in the land of his ­fathers’ sojournings” (Gen. 37:1), Abravanel noted that “since Jacob was outside of the land and on the move ­until his arrival at his ­father’s ­house, he always strived to acquire temporal, physical goods and to increase his flock, as [the verse] says ‘in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night’ [Gen. 31:40].” To the commentator, all this changed when Jacob came to Canaan, the land of his f­ather’s home. Canaan was a place “fit to worship God, for two reasons.” The first



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reason was that “­there his forefather Abraham and ­father Isaac lived,” which signaled the country’s intrinsic sacrality. The second reason, and the more marked change, was with regard to, in Abravanel’s words, “the land itself.” Being “holy, land that God chose, he [Jacob] did not wish to acquire ­things of this world and to increase his flock; he only wished to dwell t­ here and to be isolated in his wisdom, as his ­fathers had done. His sons ­were aflame with desire for material acquisitions, to the betrayal of their nature.”29 Abravanel has a par­tic­u­lar gloss on Israel commanding Joseph to leave Hebron, one especially relevant to ecological concerns: “­there is no doubt that Hebron was ill suited for his residence, ­because of the quality of pasture for his flock: for it is a land of boulders, ­there’s no pasture for their flock. For this reason his sons ­were constrained to go and shepherd the flock in Shechem, which is distant from Hebron. But Jacob chose that place ­because it was ideal for his isolation and settlement. He was not concerned about his flock,” only about returning to the land of his f­ athers. “This verse comes to relate Jacob’s excellence: for while it is ­human nature to follow ­after riches as they grow—­‘a lover of money never has his fill of money’ [Eccles. 5:9]”—­​ ­Jacob was not like this, for he departed from “the ways of acquiring possessions and vanities of the world.”30 In other words, Jacob’s skill as a shepherd was extraordinary, and Abravanel went so far as to spell out Jacob’s agrarian and pastoral expertise.31 What made the biblical patriarch truly worthy of praise, however, was his rejection of worldly comforts and his embrace of a more minimalistic lifestyle. Arama joined Abravanel in emphasizing that Israel’s true purpose is not to accumulate excess but rather to economize. In a sermon on the Sabbatical and Jubilee (Portal #69), Arama pointed out that the difference between Israel and other nations is that Israel’s purpose in coming into possession of the Land of Israel was not to become wealthy, “to bring forth the land’s surplus, and hoard its produce.” This stood in strong contradistinction to “the rest of the nations on their land, as [Scripture] said: ‘let them dwell in the land, and trade therein; for, behold, the land is large enough for them’ [Gen. 34:21].” The intention (of the verse with regard to Israelites) is rather “that they be self-­sufficient and seek their [spiritual] perfection as is the ­will of their creator, and thus content themselves with what is necessary for their sustenance, so that they not lack anything [essential].”32 As we saw in Chapter 1, ­there are clear connections between the work of ­these Sephardi exegetes and their Catholic pre­de­ces­sors and peers. None of the Jewish sages who preceded Abravanel, Saba, and Arama commented

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at such length on the opportunity to farm that the Expulsion represented; the Garden’s ideal supply of life’s necessities; or the link between the longevity of the Bible’s earliest personalities and the “natu­ral” lifestyle they led. However, some exegetes writing in Latin did touch on t­ hese m ­ atters. Tostado was likely a chief inspiration for Abravanel’s approach to the Garden of Eden. Tostado was consistent in his cele­bration of the garden as an ecological and nutritional paradise. Leaning on Augustine, Tostado stated that “that place, therefore, was the best,” a setting “in which nothing that a person might desire was lacking, and nothing was pre­sent that might sadden a person.”33 Furthermore, one would never elect to go anywhere ­else, since what­ever would benefit them in the world was more abundant in Paradise, and “thus a person would not go outside [the garden] to seek it.”34 Similar remarks abound in Tostado’s commentary: ­there was “no other place on earth,” besides the Garden of Eden, “in which such a supply of beneficial ­things existed.”35 Furthermore, like Abravanel, Tostado stressed that “nothing other than what was necessary” populated the garden.36 Though the Bishop of Ávila did not mention superfluous ­things as the foil to necessary ones, the stress on essentials rather than nonessentials is consistent with the thrust of Abravanel’s commentary. Like Abravanel, Tostado taxonomized what exactly ­those necessary ­things ­were: “principally, ­there ­were three ­things in Paradise not found elsewhere: namely the multiplicity of trees and herbs, the ­wholesomeness of the air, and the abundance of produce from the tree of life.”37 And though Tostado was ­silent on the ­matter, Nicholas of Lyra did offer a brief, naturalistic explanation of lignum vitae’s rejuvenating properties.38 ­These commentaries may have provided fodder for Abravanel’s discussion of the unique properties of, as well as the lessons to be learned from, the Garden of Eden. As influential as ­these well-­k nown Latin exegetes ­were, the setting in which Abravanel and his peers lived and wrote may have ­shaped their ideas as much as what they read. And no ele­ment of that setting in late fifteenth-­ century Iberia was as relevant to a romantic cele­bration of the Garden of Eden as the rural distribution, landownership, and agricultural activity of Spanish Jewry.

* * * More than half a ­century ago Bernhard Blumenkranz saw it as “truly astonishing that, in all the economic histories ­there is so much attention paid to Jewish merchants and so l­ittle paid to Jewish farmers, for our documentation



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on the latter is much richer than that of the former.”39 Indeed we have plenty of evidence that medieval Jews owned land, farmed it, and ­were engaged in a variety of agricultural pursuits. While Blumenkranz was concerned with continental Eu­rope from the fifth ­century through the First Crusade, the High and Late ­Middle Ages offer evidence at least as abundant, and even more compelling. Perhaps the richest documentation concerning Jews and their agricultural activities comes from the Spanish kingdoms of the ­later ­Middle Ages. In the fifteenth ­century, the Jews in Spain ­were not only, or even primarily, residents of large cities; they often lived in small towns and villages. Impor­tant recent work on Jews and property investment in medieval Aragon by Michael Schraer has demonstrated, based on extensive archival research, that “many Jews inhabited small, market towns.”40 The vast majority of Jews alternated between artisanal occupations and work in the fields. Most Jews who owned land possessed a small garden, an olive grove, or a modest vineyard.41 Schraer has also suggested that Jewish settlement is best defined “not by a modern urban/rural dichotomy but by the presence of an economy in which trade and finance prospered.” Such an economy, in turn, “would contain large ele­ments of agricultural produce as well as crafts and industry and would be intimately connected to the rural hinterland.”42 Wherever Jews lived, their livelihoods depended on the products of the land. Years ago, Abraham Neuman pointed out that ­there is evidence from the earliest period of rabbinic rec­ords down to the final Expulsion in 1492 that Spanish Jews themselves cultivated gardens, vineyards, and fields, some of which they owned.43 Neuman demonstrated that “the numerous references to fields and pasture lands, orchards, gardens and vineyards indicate that many Jews followed agricultural pursuits and lived freely outside the city limits in villages and country estates.”44 Recent work based on diligent archival spadework, especially in the Crown of Aragon, has confirmed and extended our understanding of Iberian Jews’ settlement outside of large cities.45 ­There ­were impor­tant regional distinctions throughout the Iberian kingdoms: Jews in Navarre, for example, ­were less involved in agriculture than their Aragonese and Castilian peers. Aragonese Jews, and to a certain extent their coreligionists in Castile, retained their semi-­a grarian character ­until the Expulsion.46 Most of the Jews in fifteenth-­century Portugal, where Abravanel spent the first forty-­six years of his life, worked in agriculture, crafts, or local trade.47 In spite of ­these differences in the degree of Iberian Jews’ agricultural involvement, ­there is ­little doubt among modern scholars

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as to their landed distribution and their dependence on an agrarian economy.48 This is fundamentally unlike the situation elsewhere in Latin Christendom during the ­later M ­ iddle Ages.49 German-­speaking Eu­rope offers an instructive contrast. By the mid-­ thirteenth ­century it had become increasingly difficult for Jews to own land in ­these regions. The German author of Das Rechtsbuch nach Distinctionem, composed between 1357 and 1387, stated that “Jews are not allowed to own real property in this country.”50 Over the course of the ­fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it became harder and harder for Jews to own land as civil and ecclesiastical restrictions piled up and became more onerous. By 1500, throughout most of Latin Christendom, Jews ­were effectively prohibited from owning land. Pope Paul IV’s 1555 Cum ni­mis absurdum, for example, stipulated that Jews must not possess any kind of immovable property.51 In places like Italy and Germany, even though ­these prohibitions ­were sporadic, and not always evenly enforced before 1500, the legislation still complicated and contested Jewish claims to land. By contrast, in Spain, Portugal, and Provence Jews faced far fewer obstacles.52 In ­England, northern France, and Germany the number of Jews actually engaged in farming always ­was relatively small.53 The number and frequency of violent outbreaks, expulsions, and decrees acted as impediments to sustained agricultural work. The situation in the Spanish kingdoms was entirely dif­fer­ent: as Schraer notes, ­there is “overwhelming evidence for Jews exploiting land both as a physical asset, deriving crops both for their own use and for trading, and financially, as an impor­tant generator of monetary income.”54 In medieval Spain Jews enjoyed basic property owner­ship and transactional rights, similar to ­those of the Christian majority, “albeit with specific advantages and restrictions.”55 In some Iberian locales, agriculture was facilitated by “­great emphasis laid upon vineyards, orchards and truck gardens which could be cultivated in the vicinity of the Jews’ urban or suburban homes.”56 The proximity of numerous small vineyards to Barcelona, for example, suggests that Jews could pursue agricultural ­labor close to cities, towns, and villages.57 At certain times and in certain places, vineyards ­were owned jointly by a group of Jewish investors.58 Such arrangements, dubbed a “subsidiary activity” by a leading scholar, w ­ ere often spearheaded by urban Jews who may have managed and occasionally worked in the vineyards but who lived in cities.59 ­Those larger Jewish communities provided the social and religious ser­vices without which life as a Jew was made immeasurably more difficult: synagogues, schools, qualified butchers, ritual baths (miqva’ot), and charitable organ­



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izations. In medieval Spain one pro­cess, more than any other, acted as a stimulant to Jewish landownership: the reconquista, or Christian conquest of Iberia, which began in earnest in the eleventh c­ entury. The following remarks pre­sent background on Jewish land tenure in the wake of the expansion of Christian kingdoms.

* * * As a result of Catholic conquest of Iberian territories controlled by Muslims, lay and religious authorities rewarded Jews with tracts of land.60 In spite of occasional opposition Jews came to possess vast holdings, especially vineyards, sometimes through purchase and sometimes from royal donation.61 Upon allocation of land, Jews ­were also sometimes given tax exemptions and alienation rights.62 In Aragon, ­these grants (repartiment) included far more than just land: “grants included entire farmsteads or villages, hereditaments of ­houses with attached land and vineyards, mills and workshops, often with varying rights and payments attached.”63 More than any other historical development, the reconquista facilitated the rural dispersion of Jews throughout medieval Iberia. Though many of the land titles granted to Jews in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries formally expired well before the fifteenth ­century, the demographic trends that brought Jews to the countryside indelibly ­shaped patterns of Jewish property owner­ship. For many reasons, Jews ­were regarded by Christian rulers as an impor­ tant asset to the crown. Catholic authorities protected Jewish courtiers, astronomers, diplomats, physicians, and interpreters—as a vast body of scholarly lit­er­a­ture has made clear.64 In fact, entire Jewish communities w ­ ere “care65 fully husbanded as impor­tant revenue-­yielding resources.” In the thirteenth ­century ­there was fierce competition between the crown and seigneurial lords for seignorality over Jews who resided outside the royal domains. Eventually the crown extended its claims, and in Aragon, long before the lifetimes of Abravanel, Saba, and Arama, Aragonese monarchs had claimed Jews as res proprie camera nostra.66 In financial terms, a stable, landed Jewry was good for the crown: tax revenues ­were more consistent from farming communities than from urban, mercantile ones.67 ­These demographic shifts ensured not only that Jews ­were living and working on the land but that they possessed land legally and formally. ­There ­were many advantages to landownership in addition to use value (notably for making kasher wine): stable, long-­term income ­free from the taint of usury;

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capital appreciation and seigniorial dues; respectability and power status; an asset and collateral for lending and borrowing.68 As Michael Schraer has shown, some of the key economic trends of this period, namely the boom in credit and increasing monetization of the economy, support the emergence of property as a financial asset.69 Throughout the ­fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Jews continued to own and cultivate land, often near urban centers. As late as 1492, according to Motis Dolader, Jews of Tarazona owned vineyards and olive groves in a wide arc around the town, confirming the broad spread of lands held in other centers.70 In the fifteenth c­ entury, as Mark Meyerson has shown, the Jews of Morvedre (now Sagunto), near Valencia, “remained close to the soil.”71 Although it is hard to know what proportion of Aragonese Jews owned land, surviving data suggest it was “reasonably widespread.”72 That land was put to many uses: Motis Dolader has argued that Jews ­were especially involved in the tríada mediterránea: wheat, grapes, olives.73 In Aragon at least, vineyards rather than cereal crops seem to have predominated.74 Sometimes the land that Jews owned ­wasn’t always, or even primarily, agricultural; it was sometimes pastoral. T ­ here is evidence in the thirteenth and ­fourteenth centuries that Jews ­were often granted permission to own and graze ­cattle.75 Late in the thirteenth ­century, for example, a small Jewish com­pany, headed by Solomon Bahia, acquired the pasture lands of the Kingdom of Valencia from Pedro III.76 Enterprises such as that of Solomon Bahia ­were likely staffed by as many Christians as Jews: the minimum geo­graph­i­cal range of pastoral activities necessitated a considerable ­labor force merely to employ and supervise the requisite workers. And even on smaller parcels of land, Jewish property ­owners routinely hired Christian farmhands.77 ­W hether Jews staffed their agricultural lands themselves or hired Christian—or even mudéjar—­workers to help them, they had to attend to Jewish agricultural laws and, in many cases, observe them to the best of their ability. We have evidence from the Aragonese hamlet of Montalbán in the ­fourteenth ­century that during the harvest season the region’s Jews ­were often busy in the fields. They ­were so preoccupied with their agricultural ­labors that they could not spare the time to raise funds to help save the historical burial ground of Barcelona Jewry (Montjuich). A Hebrew text preserves evidence of them petitioning Hasdai Crescas that they would like to postpone the effort ­until a­ fter the Jewish New Year.78 The experience of Montalbán’s Jews signals another impor­tant feature of Jewish agricultural involvement: the connection between their religion and



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their ­labor. Medieval rabbis encouraged agriculture on ritualistic grounds: they wanted their communities to produce wine and dairy that better met religious requirements by obviating the need for gentile involvement.79 As David Jacoby has argued, in Byzantium and the Hellenic Territories of the Venetian Republic, Jewish economic activities ­were carried out in two separate yet interconnected systems: an internal Jewish network that produced kasher products and a “broad general economic network” that catered to non-­ Jewish needs.80 The same could be said for Iberian Jewish economic activities.81 What’s more, ­t here ­were plenty of passages in classical rabbinic lit­er­a­ture that lauded Jewish landedness. “He that owns no land is no man,” as the Babylonian Talmud put it. And on the very same folio we read that “in time to come all artisans ­will turn to the working of the soil: for the soil is the surest source of sustenance to ­those that work it: and such occupation brings with it, moreover, health of body and ease of mind.”82 Medieval rabbis also encouraged Jewish agricultural activity on social grounds. The need to procure animals ­free from disqualifying blemishes in order to perform ritual slaughter (sheḥitah) necessitated close relationships between butchers and farmers, and religious leaders therefore often justified Jewish agricultural involvement.83 The prohibition of Jews consuming wine suspected (or known) to have been manipulated by an idolater (yein nesekh), for example, encouraged Jews to plant their own vineyards: if they could not rely on Christian vintners or wine merchants, they had to make their own wine.84 Some rabbis took a stringent view of certain ritual laws pertaining to agriculture. As Baron and other scholars have pointed out, certain laws placed Jewish ­owners at a “competitive disadvantage.”85 One set of laws in par­tic­u­ lar is often invoked as cumbersome—or even inhibited Jews’ ability to earn a living from the land: the prohibitions concerning consumption or use of fruit from trees during the first three years of the tree’s life (‘orlah) and the proscription against benefiting from the fruit of a vineyard in its fourth year (kerem reva‘i).86 Some Spanish authorities, such as the Catalan pietist Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi (d. 1264), insisted that the prohibition of ‘orlah applied outside the biblical Land of Israel, and Gerondi was firm in his insistence concerning kerem reva‘i that it is “forbidden to derive benefit [from such grapes] without redeeming [them].”87 Gerondi seems to have been punctilious regarding Jewish observance of agricultural laws outside of Spain. He insisted that Jewish viticulturalists abstain from working in their vineyards not only on the Sabbath and holidays but even during the week between the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement.88 In the l­ater M ­ iddle Ages,

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Spanish Jewish ­legal thought took agriculture seriously. This is additional evidence that Jews ­were involved with cultivation of the land. By the fifteenth ­century Spanish Jews ­were widely integrated in society, including its landholding classes. A con­temporary at the time of expulsion wrote that “they had ­houses, fields, vineyards, flocks, domesticated animals, and the majority of them [the Jews] ­were laborers [ba‘ale mel’akhot].”89 Spanish Jews held many jobs. ­These ranged from working-­class trades such as artisanal l­abor and shopkeeping in Iberian cities and towns, to agricultural work, to finance and tax farming. We possess detailed lists of Jewish property in and around 1492, due to the surveying that was done by the crown during the lead-up to the Expulsion.90 Such lists reflect many agricultural pursuits. ­After the Expulsion agriculture continued to attract and employ Jews: a sixteenth-­century rabbi writing in Ottoman Safed expressed concern that if he interpreted certain laws stringently he would deter the Spanish exiles from cultivating land.91 The implication, of course, is that they ­were already farming. Even popu­lar ballads in expulsion-­era Spain confirm the involvement of Sephardi Jews in agriculture.92 In the m ­ iddle of the fifteenth ­century it was said of Jews of Huerta, a small town in Castile along the Tormes river, that they ­were “for the most part laborers and cultivators of fields and vineyards.”93 Such data rebut comments made by con­temporary Christians to the effect that Jews would not stoop to the level of manual ­labor. Consider the tirade of Andrés Bernáldez, a Spanish bishop and historian at the time of the Expulsion, against the Jews: For the most part, they ­were a profiteering ­people, with many arts and deceits, ­because they all lived from idle jobs and they had no conscience when buying or selling with Christians. They never wanted to take jobs such as ploughing or digging, or walking through the fields looking ­a fter flocks, nor did they teach such ­things to their ­children, but rather [they took] jobs in the town, and sitting down making their living with ­little effort. In ­these kingdoms, many of them gained ­great wealth and property in a short time, b­ ecause they had no conscience about profit and usury.94 ­ here is an ele­ment of truth to Bernáldez’s words: some Jews did “gain ­great T wealth.” Abraham Se­nior’s displays of success ­were ostentatious, as we saw in Chapter 1. But many more Jews farmed fields than farmed taxes. Due to entrenched biases, this propensity to work the land largely escaped the attention



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of Catholic polemicists. It hardly escaped the notice of Sephardic Bible commentators in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Though they criticized certain aspects of farm work as morally degenerate, their overall view of rural life was celebratory.

* * * As we saw in Chapter 1, Jewish life in fifteenth-­century Spain was comfortable if not indulgent for a noticeable segment of the population.95 Both the sociodemographic realities and the moralizing perception of rabbis and commentators reveal one of the most materially secure diasporas in the historical experience of the Jews. The fire of moralists and the romanticizing tendency of biblical commentators to glorify the ­simple life ­were based in part on the landed real­ity of Spanish Jewish existence. But other ­factors also informed this perspective. Inspiration for this idealization of the distant past could be found in views of an ­imagined Golden Age that ­were popu­lar among Iberian Christians as well as Jews. A useful descriptor for this body of ideas is primitivism.96 To varying degrees, Abravanel, Saba, and Arama deployed primitivist concepts in their work. The ideas of Hesiod, Ovid, Vergil, Lucian, Diogenes Laertius, Cicero, and above all Seneca appear in the writings of Iberian Jewish intellectuals. Spanish and Portuguese Jews ­were steeped in this lit­er­a­ ture and, as we saw in the previous chapter, Abravanel even directly cited some of ­these authors—­especially Ovid, Vergil, and Seneca.97 When we pair what we know of fifteenth-­century Spanish Jews’ reading interests with what other Iberian intellectuals ­were reading, a fuller picture emerges of the indebtedness of ­these communities to the Greek and Roman classical tradition.98 We may also come to see t­ hese Sephardi thinkers as contributors to a small but active group of Eu­ro­pean intellectuals resuscitating ­these concepts and applying them to the stark po­liti­cal and economic prob­lems of incipient modernity. One helpful definition of this cluster of ideas is as “the discontent of the civilized with civilization, or with some con­spic­u­ous and characteristic feature of it. It is the belief of men living in a relatively highly evolved and complex cultural condition that a life far simpler and less sophisticated in some or in all re­spects is a more desirable life.”99 “Civilization,” of course, is a relative term. As Lovejoy and Boas put it, “To men living in any phase of cultural development it is always pos­si­ble to conceive of some simpler one,

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and usually pos­si­ble to point to other men, past or pre­sent, in whose life it is exemplified.” The commentaries of Abravanel, Arama, and Saba bear eloquent witness to this tendency. Their effusiveness regarding paradise in Eden was not entirely idealistic fantasy; they, like many other devotees of primitivism in the past, conceived of it as a real­ity: “The cultural primitivist has almost invariably believed that the simpler life of which he has dreamed has been somewhere, at some time, actually lived by h ­ uman beings.”100 The story of Adam and Eve may have belonged to the realm of my­thol­ogy rather than history.101 However, that mythological past was no less real to members of the generation of the Expulsion; a myth, as Karen Armstrong put it, “is an event that—in some sense—­happened once, but which also happens all the time.”102 This belief in the ability of ancient p­ eople to be content with ­little, and to bear hardships with dignity, was especially popu­lar among ­those who preach an ethics of renunciation, austerity, or self-­discipline.103 An “ethics of renunciation” is a distinct theme in the moralizing lit­er­a­ture of late medieval Spanish Jewry. From Alami’s Iggeret Musar at the beginning of the fifteenth ­century to Abravanel’s criticisms of the material indulgences of Spanish Jewry at the beginning of the sixteenth, the key to proper repentance on the part of Spanish Jews was precisely an ethic of renunciation.104 Primitivist ideas may have been welcome to Iberian Jews, especially in the wake of exile, when Abravanel was particularly piqued by the indulgences of his fellow Jews on Corfu.105 One rubric that ancient and medieval thinkers alike found especially compelling was that of the Golden Age.

The Golden Age A number of classical authors, many of whom w ­ ere read in fifteenth-­century Spain, ­either in the original languages or in Castilian translations, idealized a mythical Golden Age. One con­spic­u­ous feature of this mythologized past is that of a giving earth generously bestowing her abundance. For example, Ovid sang that the “earth herself, unburdened and untouched by the hoe and unwounded by the ploughshare, gave all ­things freely. And content with foods produced without constraint, they gathered the fruit of the arbute tree and mountain berries.”106 To the imaginations of classical writers two t­ hings ­were chiefly responsible for this bounty: the lack of civilization and the related absence of towns.



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Not surprisingly, both trains of thought ran through the minds of Sephardic exiles in the 1490s and 1500s. Vergil and Ovid are perhaps the most con­spic­ u­ous expositors of ­these ideas, and both ­were read by Iberian letrados, Jewish and Christian alike.107 In Book Eight of his Aeneid Vergil reminisced that “in ­these groves the native Fauns and Nymphs once dwelt and a race of men born of tree trunks and hard oak, who had neither a rule of life nor civilization (neque mos neque cultus erat), nor did they know how to yoke bulls or store up their wealth or husband their gains (componere opes norant aut parcere parto), but fed themselves from trees and the rough fare of the huntsman.”108 In this passage, living in the natu­ral world, away from the comforts and indulgences of elaborate homes, is associated with the absence of rule of life (mos), and ­these, in turn, are closely related to an absence of surplus. For it was in towns, of course, in the ancient world as in the Re­nais­sance, that surpluses ­were stored. In a world where “towns had no moats” ­humans ­were “safe without armies” and “found the fruit / of the arbutus bush, and cornel-­ cherries, / gathered wild berries from the mountain-­sides, / eating ripe fruit plucked from the thorny canes, / and acorns as they fell from Jove’s wide oak.”109 Cities and towns, for Ovid, would lead directly to ruin: “you have been too clever for your own good, O h ­ uman nature! And gifted beyond mea­ sure to your ruin. Of what avail to you to gird cities with turreted walls?”110 In Chapter 1 we examined the urban dimensions of Iberian Jewish life, and ­later in this book we ­will see how starkly critical Abravanel, Arama, and Saba ­were of cities—­both typological ones in the Bible and by implication the Iberian ones they lived in, traveled through, and ­were expelled from. For late medieval Jewish intellectuals, like the ancient writers they revered, ­didn’t believe that the Golden Age was irretrievable, lost to the distant past. Sirkka Heinonen, a scholar of Seneca’s thought, has astutely observed that for the first-­century Roman thinker, “the idea of the Golden Age did not exclusively refer to the distant past. It could be used to denote ­f uture blissful circumstances on earth or in the Elysian Fields ­after life.”111 She may have just as easily been describing fifteenth-­century Sephardi intellectuals.

Nature and the “Natu­ral” As we saw at the beginning of this chapter, Abravanel and his peers ­were fond of juxtaposing the “unnatural” or “artificial” with the “natu­ral.” The former was often associated with the city, the latter with life in the country. In

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classical thought, nature and “the natu­ral” constitute anti­theses to art, understood as anything made by man. Lovejoy and Boas define nature as “that which exists apart from man and without ­human effort or contrivance.”112 In ancient thinking about the state of nature, technology and economics are intimately related. A technological state of nature is understood as “the condition of ­human life in which it is most ­free from the intrusion of ‘art.’ ” Similarly, Lovejoy and Boas describe the economic state of nature as a form of ­human society without private property, especially without landed property. This they call “economic communism.”113 The “arts” can be “instruments of mischief ” rather than benefit to mankind. Mining, metallurgy, and fire-­making, in so far as it was instrumental to metallurgy, are “con­spic­u­ous examples of this melancholy truth,” especially with regard to war.114 Abravanel himself drew this association between tool-­making and bellicosity in his discussion of Cain’s legacy: Cain “furnished copper and iron from the earth, for ­because of his strength, and being a man of war by nature, he in­ven­ted weapons for warriors.”115 Seneca was one likely source for Abravanel’s romantic ideas about the purity of life, work, and morals in the Golden Age. Iberian Jewish intellectuals of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries had access to another body of classical thought that would have inspired Abravanel nearly as much as Seneca’s stoicism: Epicureanism. This doctrine was popu­lar among other humanist writers of early sixteenth-­century Eu­rope, such as Thomas More.116 ­There ­were a number of channels through which scholars of Abravanel’s time could have accessed Epicurean thought, including Seneca. The most direct, perhaps, was Cicero, who exclaimed in his Tusculan Disputations, “With how ­little was Epicurus himself contented! No one has had more to say than he about plain living.” Cicero went on to note that Epicurus has divided the desires into classes, not very subtly, perhaps, but nevertheless usefully: in part, he says, they are both natu­ral and necessary (naturales et necessarias), in part natu­ral but not necessary, in part neither. ­Those that are necessary, he says, can be satisfied with almost nothing, for the riches of nature are easy to come by (divitias enim naturae esse parabiles); the second class of objects of desire, he thinks, are not difficult to attain, but neither are they difficult to go without; the third class he thought should be utterly rejected, ­because they are manifestly empty, having in them nothing e­ ither necessary or natu­ral.117



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This division of desires into the “natu­ral and necessary” as well as ­those that are “manifestly empty” constitutes a helpful model for Bible commentators analyzing the modern meaning of the Garden of Eden story. Ideas from classical lit­er­a­ture ­were a major source of Abravanel’s intellectual nourishment.

Spanish Jews and the Centrality of Agriculture Spanish Jewish intellectuals of the generation of the Expulsion ­were drawn to models of life that would mitigate the cupidity that seemed to be a feature of ­human nature and which the Torah frequently warned against. One clear alternative to the acquisitiveness of cities was a pastoral life in the country. This pastoralism went beyond romanticized ideas about the salubrious effects of landscape and the healthful diets of pastors and truck farmers. Sephardic thinkers ­were convinced that the Torah’s agricultural laws placed man within a natu­ral order, conditioned him to re­spect certain limits in terms of what the earth could realistically bring forth, and explic­itly prevented any one person from growing too rich. In the next chapter ­we’ll explore the way ­these writers assessed the Sabbatical and Jubilee laws. Before we discuss the changes in the Spanish landscape and how ­those alterations affected fifteenth-­ century understandings of scriptural agricultural law, it’s impor­tant to note how Jewish intellectuals of this time thought about agriculture at a legalistic level. Crucially, premodern Jewish views of land are inseparable from how the Promised Land was depicted in the Bible and in post-­biblical Hebrew lit­er­ a­ture. Perhaps more than other medieval diasporas, Spanish Jews perceived a close affinity between their native Iberian soil and that of the biblical Land of Israel. Regardless of location, Scripture makes it clear that ­there is a connection between proper land use and social justice: “parts of the land’s produce,” one scholar notes, including “the corner of the field (pe’ah), the gleanings of stalks (leqet), the forgotten sheaf (shikhekhah), the separated fruits (peret), and the defective clusters (‘olelot)—­a re to be given to ­those who do not own land.” Accordingly, “by observing ­these par­tic­u­lar commandments, the soil itself becomes holy.”118 Saba, Abravanel, and Arama certainly d­ idn’t see Spanish soil the same way they saw the soil of the Holy Land.119 But their strong sense of social justice, mediated through an understanding of biblical and rabbinic attitudes to the proper and improper use of land, conditioned

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them to place soil at the center of their analyses of many biblical stories. They also thought that life lived in direct contact with the land, away from cities, offered the best opportunity for individual and collective salvation. ­These writers believed that laws pertaining to agriculture ­were polysemic. For some Jewish intellectuals of this period, such as the Italian kabbalist Yoḥannan Alemanno, ­there ­were occult scientific reasons to consider agriculture a true scientia, and not merely an unlettered art.120 ­There ­were also homiletical reasons. Isaac Arama stated one of ­these in connection with the laws of Jubilee: “the par­tic­u­lar ­thing about Jubilee is that all landed possessions that are sold for the needs of their o­ wners and which ­were not redeemed, ­w ill all return to their original state in the Jubilee year . . . ​such is the secret of man.” In other words man returns to dust as land returns to its original state during the Jubilee. For a prooftext Arama cited Ecclesiastes: “and the dust returneth to the earth as it was, and the spirit returneth unto God who gave it” (Eccles. 12:7). The wording of the Jubilee commandment is highly specific, and Arama indicates that the reason the verse has to say “ye ­shall do My statutes, and keep Mine ordinances and do them; and ye ­shall dwell in the land in safety” (Lev. 25:18) is that “­these periods of rest for the land are Godly signs. God, may He be exalted, gave them in accordance with nature, and in opposition to what ­people of the land do.” According to Arama, most ­people think only of themselves and their needs. For the Zamoran rabbi, the purpose of the Torah’s agricultural laws was to inculcate social values and instill proper re­spect for the land, including its periods of necessary rest. For Spanish Jewish writers of this period, the Torah was meant for a rural, rustic setting: its true and proper fulfillment could only take place in a world marked by the rhythms of farming and shepherding. As Abravanel wrote, “the Blessed One commanded that Israelites perform agricultural ­labor.”121 Paradoxically, ­these men required prolonged experience in Iberian cities to realize that.

* * * During the lifetimes of ­these biblical commentators and critics, life on the land was no mere pastoral idyll; dramatic changes to the Spanish landscape took place. Changes in land distribution patterns, land use, and urban-­rural divides ­were obvious to any alert observer, including Arama, Abravanel, and Saba. Some of ­those changes—­such as urbanization and the demographic trends that swept ­people from the Castilian and Leonese countryside into



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cities—­were particularly pronounced in the fifteenth ­century. ­Others, such as the marked strug­gle between agriculturalists and pastoralists, had been in train since the High M ­ iddle Ages and ­were merely accelerating. In order to understand why some Spanish Jews developed radical social and ecological ideas about the centrality of Sabbatical and Jubilee laws to the Torah’s sense of justice, we must examine their elaborations of the relevant biblical passages, as well as certain features of their economic and agrarian world.

Chapter 3

“The Root of the Entire Torah”

Abraham Saba stated that the entire Torah could be reduced to one set of practices: the Sabbatical and Jubilee. A critic of economic in­equality, he stressed that Scripture prioritizes the needs of the poor, nowhere more clearly than in its agricultural laws: “The m ­ atter of the Sabbatical and Jubilee contain profound mysteries and ­things which are the secret of the world. According to the plain sense [of Scripture] it is the root of the entire Torah and the secret of the ­whole world, for the world can only endure with both rich and poor. With the institution of Sabbatical and Jubilee the Holy One, may He be Blessed, wished rich and poor to be equal. As it is written: ‘for you, and for your servant,’ (Lev. 25:6) and as [it is also] written: ‘the poor of thy ­people may eat’ (Ex. 23:11).” Saba had a keen sense of the ­trials of poverty and the privilege of wealth. He wrote that “it is known regarding the poor that all his days are pained, and he is angered by his suffering. For he has nothing to eat and at all times, in ­every season his eyes are lifted to Heaven, and his life hangs in doubt before him (Deut. 28:66).” The rich man, by contrast, passes “all of his days in plenty and with a merry heart—­a continuous feast (Proverbs 15:15). As a consequence, in his wealth and pride, he forgets about the poor and is not mindful of his sufferings.” In Saba’s view the Torah imposed the Sabbatical and Jubilee as “sacred years,” such that “even the rich person raises his eyes heavenward.” A wealthy person should experience hunger, “so he ­will know and remember the agony of the poor, all of whose days and years are [marked by] grief and worry. . . . ​His eyes are lifted heavenward and to mankind, for his ­children ask for bread, but ­there is no one to answer them (Lam. 4:4).”1 Many other passages of the Torah could have served as “the root” of Scripture, or as “the secret of the world.” Saba might have invoked Hillel’s



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famous answer to a prospective convert’s query as to the essence of Judaism: “ ‘What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor.’ That is the ­whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary thereof; go and learn it.”2 In this chapter I argue it was no accident that a set of relatively obscure laws in Leviticus that emphasize social justice—­manumission of slaves, cancellation of debt—­ and declaim an ecological princi­ple (letting the land lie fallow) ­were the essence of the Torah for a Spanish Jew in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Sephardic Jews of Saba’s generation, including Isaac Abravanel and Isaac Arama, understood social justice, economic equality, and environmental responsibility as firmly intertwined. As such, it’s not surprising that Saba isolated the Sabbatical and Jubilee as the “root” of Scripture.3 One shoot that grew from that root was a demand that Israelites minimize the gap between rich and poor. Saba ­wasn’t the only commentator to emphasize this; Isaac Arama did, too. And like Saba, Arama stressed the centrality of this commandment: “I consider that this is the intended subject that the Torah goes so far as to command and alert [man] on the ­matter of the sabbatical of the land, its general princi­ples and specifics. Its princi­ple expression is in this glorious pericope. Its branches and fo­liage extend into many other places besides this one.”4 Like many Jewish exegetes, Arama was impelled to explain apparent redundancies, such as why ­there are other scriptural verses that detail ­these laws. “Thus the duplication of the commands,” he wrote, and “the multiplication of explicit warnings and prolongation of content on this ­matter bear witness to the power of the intended gain [in observing the Sabbatical and Jubilee] for t­ hose who are commanded.”5 Furthermore, Arama, like Saba, thought that the Torah’s pre­sen­ta­tion of Sabbatical and Jubilee laws spoke to “the secret of man.” It is proper that in the Jubilee year land reverts to its original owner, just as dust “returns to earth [Eccles. 12:7].” “This,” Arama emphasized, “is truly the ­matter of the Jubilee: that the earthly portion return to the place naturally ordained for it from the beginning.”6 But it ­wasn’t only an emphasis on the cardinal importance of ­these laws that linked Arama to Saba: their stress on economic justice did, too. “God prepared and designated the good land for the use of his ­people,” Arama noted, which he gave to them “as a possession, and was extremely insistent that the Israelites cling to their estate so that ­there not be an indigent person among them, ‘neither bond nor ­free’ [cf. Deut. 32:36], who does not have his allotment, in order that he not be troubled in attaining his perfection.”7 In other words, God gave the Israelites the Land of Israel so that they would

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have their basic needs met and be allowed to reach their spiritual perfection—­ without having to worry about a livelihood.8 The argument that the pursuit of social justice was linked with the proper observance of agricultural laws was not something Saba articulated only once; it is a leitmotif in his commentary on the Pentateuch. For example, he noticed a syntactical oddity in Exodus 23:10—­a key verse concerning the Sabbatical. The verse states “and six years thou shalt sow thy land, and gather in the increase thereof.” Saba observes that “the verse only would have had to say ‘six years,’ and not ‘and six years.’ ” The seemingly superfluous conjunction “and” signals the verse’s connection to the one that came before it. “What connection is ­there to ‘a stranger shalt thou not oppress’ [Exod. 23:9]?” Saba asks. His answer is telling: “this is to say that all of this concerns justice for the poor [din ha-­‘aniyyim].”9 To this commentator, even grammatical nuances are seized upon for evidence that the Torah equated divinely mandated farming laws with fiscal and social responsibility. A related concept often recurs in ­these commentaries: the laws pertaining to the Sabbatical are seen to have ethical as well as agricultural application. As Arama put it, the purpose of the Sabbatical year is “to alert our minds and promulgate to our ears that we ­were not sent ­here to be as slaves sold for menial work, but rather for another purpose, one more noble and wonderful than that, such that we not pay attention to working the land merely for our sustenance and other basic needs, while at the same time we make ­every effort to attain that supreme goal.” Such, Arama noted, “is the intention of the gift of this land.”10 Similarly, he wrote that “entrance to the Land [of Israel] was not for the purpose of being slaves to the land, and working it to extract its resources and accumulate its produce, to store them up in order to become wealthy.”11 Arama was a preacher by profession and inclination, and this sort of ethical exhortation was hardly unusual in his oeuvre. Writing about the Jubilee, the rabbi from Zamora observes that its purpose is “to show man his ultimate end, and the secret of the purpose of his world that extends to him directly from the original instruction,” a term Arama invokes to mean the essence, or truth.12 Abravanel also perceived a link between the Sabbatical laws and man’s “higher purpose.” The Bible states that the earth ­will yield produce in the seventh year even if ­people do not cultivate it, and this “intimates what ­will occur ­after a man’s death: his property and every­thing that he possesses ­shall belong to someone who did not toil over it or raise it.” A morbid but sensible note underlies this observation: at most a person has fifty productive



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years—­one ­can’t truly work in one’s boyhood or senescence. As such, ­after fifty years, corresponding to the Jubilee, “it is proper for him to leave ­behind physical ­things and material desires and sanctify himself and comport himself with holiness and purity.”13 It behooves a person to consider himself a guest on earth rather than a permanent resident. Glossing Leviticus 25:23, “and the land ­shall not be sold in perpetuity; for the land is Mine; for ye are strangers and settlers with Me,” Abravanel writes: “you are like guests in my ­house and in my land; how could you sell it?”14 Between his expulsion from Spain in the summer of 1492 u ­ ntil he composed his commentary on the Pentateuch more than a dozen years ­later, in Venice, Abravanel resided in at least six places: he certainly knew what it meant to feel like a guest, deprived of permanent residence. Arama reflected similarly that “the par­tic­u­lar ­thing about Jubilee is that all landed possessions that are sold for the needs of their ­owners and which are not redeemed, ­will all return to their original state in the Jubilee year.” To his mind this was a meta­phor for ­human life: “such is the secret of man.” In other words a person returns to his original own­erless state, just like land. As a prooftext he cites a verse from Ecclesiastes: “and the dust returneth to the earth as it was, and the spirit returneth unto God who gave it.”15 For ­these commentators, one way to explain the Torah’s insistence that possession of land—­and by extension other material goods—is illusory is to emphasize contentment rather than covetousness. Abraham Saba attributes ­great significance to the fact that immediately ­after the Sabbatical and Jubilee are described in detail in Leviticus 25, the Torah shifts to a warning regarding the dangers of idolatry. Scripture states “you s­ hall make for yourselves no idols” (Lev. 26:1), in order “to suggest that Sabbatical is equal to the rest of the commandments, and anyone who rejects it is considered as one who believes in idolatry. And all this comes from covetousness [ḥemdah], since he coveted the fruits of the seventh year.”16 Saba’s peers similarly emphasized the moral message inherent in laws and customs concerning land. In his commentary on Genesis 15, where God promises land to Abram, Abravanel notes that God’s promise was taking possession of the land, “not wealth or other property.”17 Even if in fifteenth-­century Spain land was equated with wealth, and the former was being systematically exploited to the detriment of most of the Spanish population, Abravanel, Saba, and Arama saw that the Bible presented a moral and ecological alternative to greed and rapacity. One scholar has noted the moral dimension of Arama’s stance concerning the Sabbatical and Jubilee laws, stating that to the preacher’s mind the

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purpose of this legislation “is to warn man and to prevent him from the folly of spending all his time and energy in the acquisition of material wealth.”18 As we saw in the previous chapter, the chief difference between Israel and other nations, according to Arama, is that Israel’s purpose (in coming into the Land of Israel) is not to become wealthy and “bring forth the land’s surplus, and hoard its produce.” This is in contradistinction to “the rest of the nations on their land, as [Scripture] said: ‘let them dwell in the land, and trade therein; for, behold, the land is large enough for them’ [Gen. 34:21].” For Israelites the intention is rather “that they be self-­sufficient and seek their [spiritual] perfection in accordance with the ­will of their creator, and thus content themselves with what is necessary for their sustenance, so that their communities not lack anything [essential].”19 In a summary of the purpose of Sabbatical legislation, Arama stresses its moral valence: “This is only true for in our mind the ­matter is revealed to our ears and awakens our mind by presenting to us ­great and awesome images, and producing numerous and power­f ul signs that grant sight to blinded eyes [Isa. 42:7] drowned in worldly illusions, with their falsehoods and fraudulences [cf. Dan. 2:9]. ­Those who sell land permanently to do merely physical work, and the work of burdens [cf. Num. 4:47],” are just like “teams of mules” and diametrically opposed to ­those who “serve God out of love.”20 This quotation belies two assumptions: the folly of any belief that land can truly be sold, and suspicion about the ultimate ends of agriculture. In the next chapter ­we’ll explore how this group of commentators analyzed the story of Cain and Abel and saw ­those two figures as, respectively, typologies of the farmer and the shepherd. To the minds of ­these exegetes, the laws presented in Leviticus 25 complement Scripture’s warnings about the evils of agriculture, particularly its tendency to promote acquisitiveness. As Arama put it, the Sabbatical’s purpose is to teach that “it is not by means of agricultural work that man ­shall thrive.”21 ­Here and elsewhere, though Arama is of course commenting directly on the biblical text, his message strikes deeper chords: ­those listening to him preach, or reading his words, could not fail to note the connections between his exegesis and his worldview. At a time when agriculture was devalued and farming was subsumed to more lucrative ranching activities, statements of this sort have dual resonance: they elucidate Scripture and represent social criticism. Arama decried the evils of agriculture and extolled the moral dimensions of Leviticus 25. Near the beginning of his sermon on the Sabbatical and Jubilee, he notes that “even though worldly goods are troublesome . . . ​they are necessary. Therefore it is fitting that this



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subject be given in the divine Torah, to inform and teach one how to make use of worldly goods so as to accept their benefit, but reject what is evil in them.”22 ­These laws, Arama points out, are fundamentally about “restraining desires and contracting the appetite for worldly possessions.”23 The preacher from Zamora emphasizes that righ­teous p­ eople content themselves only with what they “truly need.”24 One of the clearest expositions of the connection between Sabbatical laws and the Bible’s warnings about greed comes from Abravanel’s commentary on Pirqe ’Avot, where he surveys four major opinions regarding the proper ends of life.25 Of t­ hese, the first and third are ripe for special censure. Abravanel notes that some believe that “the telos of man is a life of appetites: to eat and drink and rejuvenate their bodies and delay their demise.” The third opinion, one even more objectionable to the Castilian scholar, is that of “the multitude [hamon],” that “accumulating and storing up riches is the telos of gratification for man, such that he ‘may dwell securely’ [Prov. 1:33] and not lack anything necessary for his provision, nor require ­human gifts.”26 Money, however, in his view, is illusory. “Know that wealth and poverty are all the work of the imagination, and have no existence in truth or real­ity.”27 As such, Abravanel goes on, the Torah does many ­things to discourage ­people from the pursuit of wealth, and it is in this context that the Sabbatical is given par­tic­u­lar emphasis. “To distance man from pursuing wealth and riches the Torah obligates ­people to give to charity, to contribute heave-­offerings and tithes. It instituted the Sabbatical and Jubilee and the pilgrimage festivals and contributions to the priestly community, and the prohibition of lending money at interest.”28 Late medieval Sephardic exegesis stressed that the agricultural laws presented in Leviticus are accompanied by economic instructions regarding the necessity of donating to charity and lending money without interest. At times the ecological sensibility under­lying ­these Hebrew biblical commentaries is covert and needs to be teased out; at other times it is overt. For example, in Arama’s commentary on the Sabbatical he draws a direct connection between how Scripture articulates ­these laws and the natu­ral order of ­things. He observes that the reason the verse states “ye ­shall do My statutes, and keep Mine ordinances and do them; and ye ­shall dwell in the land in safety” (Lev. 25:18) is that “­those abstentions from work are divine indicators. God, may He be exalted, bestowed them contrary to nature, and in opposition to what p­ eople of that land [Canaan] do.” Canaanite farmers—­and by implication most agriculturalists—­farm the land continually. But in the

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Bible’s social ecol­ogy soil, like ­people, requires rejuvenation. “­People of the land,” by contrast, are ­either motivated by greed or suffer from what one evolutionary botanist and social critic has termed “cap­i­tal­ist agro-­scientific psychosis” and fail to re­spect the land’s need for rest.29 As evidence of this mentality, and the belief that ­people tend to think only of themselves and their needs, Arama cites the famous lament of Israelites who balked at ­these commandments: “What ­shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we may not sow, nor gather in our increase” (Lev 25:20).30 Related to this view of the land’s natu­ral rhythms ­either honored or betrayed by ­human economic practices is the notion that the earth has agency. In par­tic­u­lar, she is conscious of and responsive to good treatment as well as mistreatment.31 A representative example of this mentality may be found in Abraham Saba’s commentary on Genesis’s tale of the flood, in which the earth itself bears witness against the wickedness of man, and even God himself is powerless to lift or reverse that judgment. Saba notes that “Scripture said that the earth comes to bring a ­legal claim against” man, for ­people “defiled” and “perverted the earth with their abominations and loathsomeness, and therefore God was not able to avoid this law.”32 Saba and his peer exegetes took the land seriously, not only stewardship of it but the earth’s ability to have agency and act autonomously. Abravanel’s commentaries on the former prophets, written in the 1480s when he was in Castile, display a similar sensibility. He averred that causing “harm [hashḥatah] to speechless objects is like causing pain [haka’ah] to living ­things.”33 Abravanel and Saba may have acknowledged sentience in the plant and mineral kingdoms.34 The argument of t­ hese commentators concerning the earth’s agency, which can respond to mistreatment by exacting revenge on hapless h ­ umans, is related to a par­tic­u­lar understanding of Jewish history. If abuse of the earth, signaled by a failure to observe the Bible’s agricultural laws, can lead directly to ­human suffering, it can also lead to adverse communal and demographic circumstances. The most obvious of ­these, both in the biblical narrative and in the story of their own lifetimes, is exile. Abraham Saba was explicit about this: “in the ­earlier version [of my commentary] I broadened the discussion of this passage,” arguing that “the cause for the Expulsion” was “the arrogance and presumptuousness that existed in Israel, as though they ­were living in their homeland, which caused this [the Expulsion].” This was the equivalent of Iberian Jews “building ruins for themselves” (Job 3:14), “houses paneled with cedar and ‘gallant barques’ [Isa. 2:16], like kings’



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palaces, as a consequence of which they bowed down and worshipped idolatry.”35 Writing from the comparative safety of Lisbon in the years between 1492 and 1497, when Saba was forced to flee by ship to North Africa, a commentary on Leviticus gave him the opportunity to reflect on the ­causes of expulsion. With the phrase “building ruins for themselves” Saba subtly critiques more than real estate choices: he singles out the courtier class for par­tic­u­lar censure. The complete verse from which he plucked this phrase reads “with kings and counsellors of the earth, who build ruins for themselves” (Job 3:14). “Counsellors of the earth” (yo‘atze ’aretz) may not have been the term fifteenth-­century Hebrew writers used to denote courtiers, but it was an unmistakable allusion nevertheless.36 If Saba’s argument for the ­causes of expulsion ­were traceable to arrogance and greed, Arama’s was more directly concerned with the link between disrespect to the land and po­liti­cal catastrophe. In his commentary on Leviticus he cites the anonymous sages of ’Avot, chapter 5, who declaim that “exile comes to the world ­because of [the violation of] the sabbatical of the earth.” For good mea­sure, Arama adds “one must marvel as to why it would be so on account of this sin.”37 As readers of ­these biblical exegetes we need not marvel: their commentaries on the Pentateuch plainly address the causative links between failure to heed the Torah’s call for a Sabbatical and Jubilee, the land’s ire, and ­human suffering.

* * * It is impossible to understand the positions of Abravanel, Arama, and Saba on the Sabbatical and Jubilee years without a quick overview of the laws themselves, their historical application, and the way commentators prior to the late fifteenth ­century—­especially their Iberian forebears—­understood ­these key scriptural passages. In essence, the laws of Sabbatical and Jubilee proscribed farming, mandated letting the land lie fallow, revoked property owner­ship, and remitted debts. ­There are several main biblical prooftexts: the Sabbatical is explained at Exodus 23:10–11; Leviticus 25:1–7 and 18–22; and Deuteronomy 15:1–11. The Jubilee is prescribed at Leviticus 27:16–25 and Numbers 36:4. Sabbatical laws stipulate that during the seventh year all land had to lie fallow and debts ­were to be remitted. The close of seven Sabbatical cycles instituted the Jubilee. During this fiftieth year ­there was to be no agricultural work; all landed property reverted to its original owner, and slaves w ­ ere set fr ­ ee.

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The degree to which ancient Israelites ever observed ­these laws—­f ully or selectively—is still a m ­ atter of scholarly debate. In fact, t­ hese issues arise in the Talmud itself, where dissenting rabbis debate the interdependence or in­de­pen­dence of the Sabbatical and Jubilee.38 Modern scholarship has dif­ fer­ent concerns: one dilemma that repeatedly arises is ­whether or not the Jubilee year was counted as the last Sabbatical year in seven cycles (the forty-­ ninth year) or was an additional year ­after the end of the seven cycles (the fiftieth year).39 A more fiercely debated topic is the broader question of ­whether or not t­ hese laws ­were ever followed.40 It is difficult to make a firm pronouncement on the issue, but most scholars agree that the full implementation of Sabbatical and Jubilee laws would have been ruinous for the antique and late antique Palestinian economy. Saba and his peers may have seen ­these laws as central to Judaism, but the idealism of the laws clashed with the realities of the Roman Empire’s monetary economy and provincial tax policies. In the ­Middle Ages, most Jewish commentators who did address this issue responded explic­itly or implicitly to Maimonides. In the Guide of the Perplexed Maimonides stressed three distinct applications or justifications for ­these laws. First, some of ­these commandments “are meant to lead to pity and help for all men—as the text has it: ‘That the poor of thy ­people may eat; and what they leave the beasts of the field ­shall eat.’ ” Without explaining the connection, Maimonides observes that ­these practices “are meant to make the earth more fertile and stronger through letting it lie fallow.” Second, other commandments are “meant to lead to benevolence ­toward slaves and poor ­people; I refer to remission of debts and freeing of slaves.” Third, yet other commandments “consider what is useful from a permanent point of view in providing for a living, through turning the ­whole land into an inalienable possession that cannot be sold in absolute fashion: and the land ­shall not be sold in perpetuity; consequently a man’s property remains, as far as the landed property itself is concerned, reserved for him and his ­children, and he can only exploit its produce.”41 The first of ­these justifications we might term the social and ecological application of ­these laws; the second justice to the poor; the third an argument in support of the economic sensibility of t­ hese laws. ­These views did not go uncontested in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Maimonides’s first claim, that Sabbatical and Jubilee laws “are meant to make the earth more fertile and stronger through letting it lie fallow,” was rejected forcefully by Abravanel. He writes in his commentary on



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Leviticus: “for Maimonides wrote that the reason for the Sabbatical was to allow the earth to rest so that it ­shall ‘continue to yield its strength’ [Gen. 4:12] for the [benefit of the] farmer. But truly the ­matter is not so.” He went on to explain that if the Torah ­were concerned about the fertility of the earth decreasing, as is its nature when the soil is consistently exploited, and therefore would need to rest, it would be extremely difficult to understand why in the sixth year the earth would continue to generate yield for three years—­namely the seventh year of the Sabbatical, the following Jubilee year, and the subsequent year: three consecutive years. If the reason w ­ ere as Maimonides said, the Blessed One would not have mandated exile for his ­people on account of their abrogation of Sabbaticals. Rather, the punishment for this would be that the transgressor’s land would be cursed and weakened on [his] account, and would cease to yield its strength. (Gen. 4:12)42 Isaac Arama issued a similar rebuttal: “if this abstention from farming ­ ere for agricultural purposes, as is the practice of ­those workers who let w the land lie fallow for a few years in order to regenerate its strength43 and increase its yield, it would be sufficient for God to inform them of the secret of working the land, ­whether to observe [the Sabbatical] or omit it, and the reduction in yield would be their punishment—­why should they be banished from the land?”44 ­Here Arama proposes that if the intention of Sabbatical ­were merely to produce better crops, a year of ­limited yield would be suf­ ficient punishment; exile would surely be excessive. Arama replied to his own query: “this is not true.” In other words, the punishment of a ­limited agricultural yield is not the main (or only) divine punishment. Rather, the exile promised by rabbinic texts such as ’Avot signals that mismanagement of the land has serious consequences. ­After Maimonides, the medieval Jewish commentator who placed the heaviest emphasis on the Sabbatical and Jubilee was Naḥmanides.45 In turn, most subsequent Hebrew writers, especially in the Iberian context, responded to him—by quotation or indirect reference. Naḥmanides commented on several aspects of this issue. He insisted, in a manner that may, in fact, have anticipated Saba’s ­later remarks, that “­here is a ­great secret among the secrets of the Torah. Anyone who denies it,” he continued, “does not acknowledge

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the creation of the world or the afterlife.”46 Agricultural particulars engaged his attention, too: Naḥmanides was interested in what exactly Scripture meant when it said “let it [the land] lie fallow” (Exod. 23:11) and argued that Jews are “only forbidden from plowing and sowing, but hoeing and manuring, and even clearing and preparing for tillage and all other agricultural ­labors are not forbidden according to the Torah.”47 Perhaps most significantly for the subjects of this book, Naḥmanides developed the connection between the Israelites’ failure to honor ­these commandments and their eventual exile: “[the laws of] Sabbatical are positioned in the same parashah as [the laws of] forbidden sexual relations ­because violation of ­these commandments leads the land to ‘vomit not you out also’ ” (Lev. 18:28). Lest ­there be any doubt, Naḥmanides is explicit: “this is to say that even the sin of [not observing] Sabbatical leads to exile.”48 Two other medieval Hebrew texts ­were likely impor­tant sources for Abravanel, Saba, and Arama. The anonymous Sefer HaḤinukh and the Zohar (both composed in the thirteenth ­century)49 address the rationale for the Sabbatical and Jubilee laws, and each points to a common denominator: observance of ­these commandments cultivates generosity and heightens sensitivity to the plight of the poor. The Sefer HaḤinukh states: t­ here is a further benefit in this ­matter, and that is that through observing, one acquires a quality of generosity for no one is as generous as a man who gives up property without hope of any reward. And ­there is a further benefit to be acquired from it in that it increases man’s trust in God. For whoever succeeds in giving away and abandoning every­thing that grows on his lands and on the inheritance of his ancestors for one ­whole year out of seven, and he and his ­family become well accustomed to ­doing this throughout their lives, miserliness or lack of trust in God w ­ ill never get a firm hold on them.50 The Zohar’s stance on Sabbatical is similarly moralizing, and in response to a query regarding the intention of ­these commandments responds “ ‘that the needy of your ­people may eat’ [Exod. 23:11], for the poor depend upon this place, so let them eat. Consequently, one who shows compassion to a poor person brings peace to the Assembly of Israel, increasing blessing in the world.”51



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It ­wasn’t only in biblical commentary that Spanish Jews addressed the Sabbatical, Jubilee, and related ancient agricultural laws and customs. Other genres of Hebrew lit­er­a­ture from Iberia (such as responsa, communal ordinances, and ­legal compilations) evince increased attention to biblical agrarian laws in the ­later ­Middle Ages. In the Crown of Aragon, for example, Rashba, Solomon Ibn Adret, was asked about ḥadash (new produce not permitted before omer day) and ‘orlah (fruit of trees of the first three years).52 He also answered a query about ­whether a vine that had been grafted fell ­under the ‘orlah restriction.53 Such con­spic­u­ous attention to the ­legal and ethical implications of agricultural activity in Iberia extends back to rabbinic responsa from the tenth c­ entury.54 In the same period Hebrew sharecropping contracts reveal the deployment of Spanish ­legal provisions such as tenancy “ad complatandum.”55 Examples could easily be multiplied, and cover the period down to 1492.56 This emphasis on Jewish agricultural law would have been unlikely ­were it not for Spanish Jews’ con­spic­u­ous presence on the land. As we saw in Chapter 2, not only did Jews farm and work the land, they ­were landowners as well. If the fact that Arama, Abravanel, and Saba saw social justice, economic equality, and environmental responsibility as inextricably linked in their Bible commentaries is one explanation as to why they placed such heavy emphasis on the Sabbatical and Jubilee, another impor­tant ­factor is the agrarian world in which they lived. Several features of the late medieval Iberian economy serve as impor­tant background to understanding why Abravanel, Saba, and Arama placed such emphasis on the land, both in their exegesis of the Bible and in their covert criticism of con­temporary Spanish practices. ­These include the use of fertilizers, particularly in Castile; crop rotation; and a practice denounced by late medieval and early modern Spanish economic thinkers: the census.

* * * Throughout the Spanish kingdoms in the ­later ­Middle Ages ­there was a general dearth of manure—­the essential fertilizer to any agricultural practice in the premodern period, before petrochemicals assumed that role on farms throughout the developed world. In Castile, as Teofilo Ruiz has shown, pigeon ­houses ­were often built in the ­middle of gardens or vineyards, in imitation of prior Muslim practices. The droppings from ­those birds ­were

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collected and added to ­human and other animal waste in order to fertilize the fields.57 But such scant amounts of nitrogen-­rich materials could not fertilize the full expanse of Spanish fields, especially the poor soil of Castile’s central plateau, which Pliny the Elder famously dubbed dura tellus Iberia (harsh Iberian land). As such, late medieval Castilians ­were accustomed to letting land lie fallow so as to improve soil structure, discourage the buildup of pathogens, and return nutrients to the earth. As Ruiz points out, many ­labor and land contracts stipulate the need to leave a buen barbecho, or fallow period.58 Even though this system of crop rotation did not typically feature unused land—­plots ­were repurposed during certain years with nitrogen-­ fixing crops59—­this practice may have alerted Jews, farmers and non-­farmers alike, to the sensibility of letting the land lie fallow. Increased focus on Leviticus’s Sabbatical and Jubilee laws on the part of Abravanel, Saba, and Arama might have been developed due in part to the ubiquity of field rotation in their times. Some practices, such as the tendency to honor a buen barbecho, may have accustomed Jewish writers in late medieval Spain to agricultural practices that resisted incipient agro-­capitalism’s drive to exploit as much land as pos­ si­ble. Other practices of this period concerning land management, however, may have disillusioned Bible commentators who ­were attuned to the ecological and financial ramifications of farming. One such practice was resoundingly condemned by po­liti­cal economists and theologians. Known in this period as the census, it was an obligation to pay an annual return from fruitful property—in other words, from land known to provide substantial crop yields. For example, a farmer could sell, for cash, the right to ­f uture produce on his land. This practice was widespread in the medieval Spanish kingdoms, as demand for cash outstripped the desire to retain tenancy. Theologians wrote extensively on this practice, mostly in terms of ­whether or not this constituted a prohibited form of usury.60 ­Later in the sixteenth ­century, for instance, Tomás de Mercado observed that ­there ­were two kinds of census: reservative, which in the sixteenth ­century was common between ecclesiastics, and consignative, then common among laity.61 Spaniards of this period lamented ­these practices, seeing them as precipitative of graver po­liti­cal prob­ lems. At the turn of the seventeenth ­century, for example, the arbitrista (reformist thinker) González de Cellorigo complained that “all the ills of Spain proceed from shunning what destroys republics, when they place their wealth in money and in the income derived from census-­contracts.” To the learned economist this “has so obviously ruined this republic and the census-­



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holders, ­because, thinking only of getting an income, they have renounced the virtuous pro­cesses of the crafts, commerce, husbandry, and all that naturally sustains mankind.”62 Of course, “all that naturally sustains mankind” means, first and foremost, the land itself. A common financial practice that treated land as no more than an economic asset to be exploited earned condemnation from many Spaniards.63

* * * When considering ­these features of Spain’s late medieval agrarian economy, it is essential to remember another fact: Iberian land had been celebrated by Roman, Muslim, and Christian writers for centuries. From an ecological perspective, this cele­bration of Spain’s natu­ral resources is peculiar, for despite the fact that some small irrigated regions around the edges of the Iberian Peninsula contain some of the most productive land in Eu­rope, a large part of central Spain consists of thin steppe pasture or desert. In encomia to Spain, the periphery often captured more attention than the center. Isidore of Seville (560–636) lauded Spain in his History of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi (written in 624). “Of all the lands from the west to the Indies,” Isidore intoned, “you, Spain, O sacred and always fortunate ­mother of princes and ­peoples, are the most beautiful.”64 The cele­bration was even more fulsome: Indulgent nature has deservedly enriched you with an abundance of every­thing fruitful. You are rich with olives, overflowing with grapes, fertile with harvests. You are dressed in corn, shaded with olive trees, covered with the vine. Your fields are full of flowers, your mountains full of trees, and your shores full of fish. You are located in the most favourable region in the world; neither are you parched by the summer heat of the sun, nor do you languish ­under icy cold, but girded by a temperate band of sky, you are nourished by fertile west winds. You bring forth the fruits of the fields, the wealth of the mines, and beautiful and useful plants and animals. Nor are you to be held inferior in rivers, which the brilliant fame of your fair flocks ennobles.65 Awareness of Spain’s fertility and overall agricultural grandeur stretched back to the early ­Middle Ages.

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In al-­A ndalus, paeans to Iberian ecol­ogy ­were just as enthusiastic. As far back as the ninth ­century, Arabic writings portrayed al-­A ndalus as fertile and climatically favorable. Sheikh Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad Ibn Mūsā al-­Rāzī observed that “the land of al-­Andalus is the western extreme of the fourth clime. In the opinion of the wise it is a land plentiful in lowlands with good, arable soil, fertile settlements, flowing copiously with plentiful rivers and fresh springs.”66 The Jewish scholar Hasdai Ibn Shaprut, in a letter to the Kazar king, wrote that Andalus is “rich, abounding in rivers, springs, and aqueducts; a land of corn, oil, and wine, of fruits and all manner of delicacies; it has pleasure-­gardens and orchards, fruitful trees of ­every kind, including the leaves of the tree upon which the silkworm feeds, of which we have ­great abundance.”67 In the ­fourteenth c­ entury, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa enthused about Granada: “its environs are unparalleled on earth. It covers forty miles and is crossed by the well-­k nown Genil River and many rivers like it. Many types of gardens [riyāḍāt, jannāt, basātīn], palaces, and vineyards surround it on ­every side.”68 In the ­later fifteenth ­century ­there are some Jewish testimonies to the grandeur of Spain’s land. Still, ­these are faint indeed when compared to the ­earlier encomia ­we’ve surveyed. Abravanel praised the vineyards and fields of Spain. Speaking of “the captivity of Jerusalem, that is in Sefarad” (Obadiah 1:20), he stressed “the best of its fields and the best of its vineyards.”69 And some Jewish exiles thought of Spain as their land, and the lands of their sojourn as foreign. In Abravanel’s commentary on Kings, when recounting his attempt to convince Ferdinand to rescind the Edict of Expulsion, the exegete reports cajoling the monarch to “ask for many gifts and bribes of gold and silver, every­thing that belongs to ­every man of the House of Israel he ­shall give on behalf of his land.”70 Similarly, Joseph ben Meir Gerson stressed that the exile (galut) experienced by ­those expelled in 1492 is only worthy of the name ­because “we ­were exiled from our land to come to a strange land.”71 A much more dramatic trend is vis­i­ble a ­century ­earlier, when the chaotic events of 1391 and its tumultuous aftershocks led some Jewish intellectuals to take revenge upon Spain in an unlikely format: by inveighing against the Spanish landscape. Some texts written in the wake of 1391’s violent outbreaks and forced conversions chose to focus on the land of Spain becoming corrupt, rather than merely its denizens. Such language, rooted in the Bible as it was, would have had power­ful resonance for readers in the late ­fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries who knew all too well about forced alterations to the Iberian



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landscape. For example, in 1396 the son of a Toledo merchant who had immigrated to Palestine received a letter from an anonymous Hebrew writer in Zaragosa. The epistle concerns the events of 1391 and pronounces Spain a “land of thick darkness, as darkness itself, a land of the shadow of death, without any order for the Jews in each and ­every city.”72 “The ­people who dwell in it are locusts,” the author states. He asks for revenge against the Spaniards and predicts that Spain ­will become a land of “cracked ground (Jeremiah 14:4), a land brought to ruin (Psalms 89:41).” “In place of wheat and in place of barley (Job 31:40),” he prophesies, “­will be a degenerate plant of a strange vine (Jeremiah 2:21).” For the land “hath wearied itself with toil,” “dross and filth to her width and breadth: the land was ruined” (Exod. 8:20).73 For good mea­sure, the author declares that Spain “is a land that devours its inhabitants (Numbers 13:32), they are hungry and thirsty (Psalm 107:5) like grasshoppers (Isaiah 40:22).” Spain, for him, is like a “land which is cut off” (Lev. 16:22), “a salt land” (Jer. 17:6), and a “deep-­ditched” land.74 Similarly, Abba Mari Bonafoux, a Spanish Jew who emigrated to Italy ­after 1391, spoke of the “cursed land of Catalonia.”75 ­These sorts of dirges continued well into the fifteenth ­century, as Spain’s agrarian challenges only mounted. In 1429, Bonfos Bonfil Astruc, best known as a translator of Boethius, wrote that “my soul has not had rest since the day I left the land cursed to us by God [Gen. 5:29], the province of Catalonia, which is precious beyond other kingdoms.”76 In the preface to his translation of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae he stated “God surely expelled us from the cursed ground [Gen. 3:17].”77 As Joseph Hacker has argued, many Spanish and North African Jews wrote more positively about the Land of Israel ­after the persecutions of 1391. Relatedly, they disparaged Spanish territories, as well.78 That disparagement became even more intense ­after 1492. Soon ­after the Expulsion, an anonymous chronicler lamented that in Spain the “earth was divided” and “corrupt” (Gen. 10:25; Gen. 6:12).79 The same author noted that God wished to “pollute the pride of all [dwellers]” of Spain (Isa. 23:9).80 Spanish Jews w ­ ere compared to “fish taken in an evil net” (Eccles. 9:12).81 ­These sorrowful expressions ­were offset by nostalgia for the way ­things ­were. Before the Expulsion, in Castile, Aragon, and Navarre, Jews had “light in their dwellings” and lived “on their land in their towns and c­ astles” (Exod. 10:23; Gen. 25:16).82 The leaders of the generation, the scholars, once “spread their wings wide” and served as eyes for the community but now “lie down between the baking oven and the cooking stove.”83 As did Gerson, this anonymous

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chronicler saw Spain as his land, as is clear from his remark that God “rooted us out of our land.” The result was destitution: “all the days I live upon the earth I sit in darkness, clothed with desolation, like a ­woman forsaken and grieved” (Deut. 29:27; 1 Sam. 20:31; Mic. 7:8; Ezek. 7:27; Isa. 54:6).84 It ­wasn’t just the trauma of the Expulsion that spurred ­these acid assessments of the Spanish landscape; the fifteenth ­century saw increasingly restrictive legislation regarding Jewish landowning well before 1492. Such legislation confirms the prevalence of Jews as landowners. Perhaps not surprisingly, ­there was also a series of recurring agrarian crises, for which Jews ­were sometimes blamed. Even though, as we have seen, Jews w ­ ere allowed—­ and even encouraged—to own land in the ­later ­Middle Ages, Catholic authorities hypocritically enacted restrictive legislation limiting Jews’ ability to be involved in agriculture. By the ­middle of the fifteenth ­century, when Arama, Saba, and Abravanel ­were entering adulthood, Jewish rights to own land ­were being increasingly curbed. In 1453, for example, the Haro city council protested against a pact made between Jews and Muslims not to sell land to Christians. According to the council’s statement, ­there was a perceived danger that Jews would ultimately monopolize all landholdings.85 Even though Jews came into vaster landed holdings throughout this period, ­those acquisitions would ultimately bring more enmity upon the Jews. We can partly explain that enmity as a result of the economic upheavals in the second half of the fifteenth c­ entury: agrarian crises, shortages of grain and other staples, currency devaluation, and shifting land-­use patterns. On the ­whole the aristocracy benefited from ­these developments, while the rest of the population suffered. ­These severe challenges affected every­one who lived in the Spanish kingdoms, not only Jews. The most severe agrarian crises struck in the 1460s. By 1470, the chronicler Diego Enríquez del Castillo observed that ­there ­were shortages of bread and wine, “as well as of all other provisions for ­human life.”86 Plague predictably followed, and the period 1450–1475 was especially rife with them. Major currencies ­were also devalued, notably the maravedi. In the words of one economic historian, that coin, the Castilian money of account, “lost more value than any other western Eu­ro­pean equivalent.”87 A long-­term comparison with a competing Eu­ro­pean currency is illuminating: in 1300 the Florentine gold florin was worth just ­under 6 maravedís; by 1500 the same florin was worth 375 maravedís. Even if this devaluation may be explained in part by the surge of the Florentine economy in ­those years, it still suggests the precipitous decline of Castilian currency. In this period agricultural practices



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changed, too. During this time ­there was a decrease in the production of cereals and an increased development in the cultivation of specialized crops and the raising of sheep. Across Castile agricultural production stagnated and could only supply local markets, or at most the acarreo markets—­centers that serve to distribute products of a given region. Nearly everywhere irrigation was inadequate: only the Rioja region maintained well-­irrigated land. Agriculturally, ­things would become even worse ­after the expulsion of the Muslims at the end of the fifteenth ­century for it was they who, as Grice-­ Hutchinson put it with a tinge of romanticism, “had tended the land so lovingly.”88 Con­temporary sources also express this view: in 1526, thirty-­four years ­after the fall of Granada, the Venetian ambassador Andrea Navagero visited Andalusia and wrote that hidden among the ­waters, fruit trees, and woods “are the farms of the Moors, many in ruins, for the Moorish population is diminishing and it is they who kept every­thing in order: the Spaniards, h ­ ere as in other parts of Spain, are not industrious and disdain agriculture.”89 More consequential than any of ­these developments was a shift in the use of land from arable to pasture. This occurred in order to facilitate sheep-­ raising. By 1500, transhumant sheep-­herding became Spain’s most impor­ tant and lucrative industry. Livestock-­raising had many by-­products besides wool, including leather, meat, and cheese. All ­were impor­tant to Spain at this time. Herds increased geometrically: they doubled in size during the fifteenth ­century, and by 1467 flocks totaled 2.7 million. The economic roots of greater sheep-­herding lie in sharply increased demand for wool, especially from northern Eu­rope (Flanders in par­tic­u­lar), as early as the second half of the ­fourteenth ­century. It is hard to overstate the importance of wool. In the words of a leading historian, “the entire economic and social structure of the country—­both its assets and its liabilities—­was ­etched by merino sheep-­grazing more deeply than by olives, grapes, leatherwork, or even Peruvian trea­suries.” But ­these developments had their downsides, too: chiefly conflict between agriculturalists and livestock farmers. Of course, this especially changed the countryside: “well-­to-do farmers began to monopolize most of the land.” This created conditions for some class advancement: in Soria, for example, ranchers from the hinterlands, and of peasant stock, “­rose to the ranks of the urban patriciate.”90

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Jewish writers ­were well aware of changes in the Spanish landscape and economy, even when they did not comment on them directly or extensively. We ­will soon see how impor­tant the conflict between agriculturalists and pastoralists was not only to the fifteenth-­century Iberian economy but also to Jewish commentators’ understanding of classic biblical stories. Often, as I’ve argued in the foregoing pages, criticisms of the Spanish economy and of Iberian land management practices are implicit rather than explicit and must be teased out of this substantial corpus of biblical exegesis. However, such observations are occasionally quite direct and reveal that when Abravanel and his peers scrutinized the Bible they ­were also reflecting on the po­liti­cal and economic practices of their own times. For example, Abraham Saba, in his commentary on Leviticus, opined that Jews have a special ability to generate rainfall: they are able to affect weather patterns by intense devotion during prayer.91 When he mentions this, he invokes a vignette from recent history: “This is a known ­matter, for it was on this condition that they received us in the land of the nations ­after we ­were expelled from our land. This already happened in the Kingdom of Aragon at the time of drought. They threw the Jews out of the city and closed the gates ­behind them ­until the ­water [i.e., rains] came.”92 At times Spanish Jewish commentators explic­itly acknowledge their familiarity with Iberian land management practices, especially its pastoral economy. For example, in his analy­sis of Exodus 23, Abravanel examines the commandment not to boil a kid in its ­mother’s milk. The commentator explains that idolaters typically cook meat in dairy products, and notes that Muslims “still do this.” He also mentions the Mediterranean world’s best-­ known sheep-­herders’ guild: ­ ntil this very day [Gen. 26:33] this is the custom in the kingdoms U of Spain: that all shepherds gather twice a year to consult with each other and to pass ordinances concerning ­matters of shepherds and flocks. In their language they call this gathering the mesta. At that time we investigated it [the ­matter] and so it is: their food indeed is meat and milk together, and this ­recipe for the meat of baby goat is the choicest among them. I have already asked and investigated and I truly know that on an island at the edge of the earth which is called ­England ­there is an enormous quantity of flocks, greater than any other land, and this is also their enduring custom.93



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In other words Abravanel explains a puzzling biblical commandment based on his knowledge of shepherding customs. The awareness on the part of ­these Sephardic Jews of po­liti­cal, social, and economic realities suffuses their biblical commentaries and colors the way they interpreted key stories from the Pentateuch.94 As bad as ­things sometimes ­were at the end of the fifteenth ­century and the beginning of the sixteenth, for in­de­pen­dent peasant farmers (labradores), members of the lower classes, and of course Iberia’s Jewish population, literate commentators like Abravanel ­were able to take intellectual refuge in the distant biblical past. ­There was one additional dimension to their cogitations about the Sabbatical and Jubilee that may have served them especially well in the dark years around the turn of the sixteenth ­century: nostalgia. In his commentary on Leviticus, Abravanel comments that the Jubilee effectively returns Israelites to their status when they stood ­under Mount Sinai: they ­were “­free men,” as when they ­were newly emancipated from Egypt. For Abravanel the verse “ye ­shall not sow, neither reap [Lev. 25:11]” carries more than mere ­legal force: “this resembles the state at Mt Sinai, when both sowing and reaping ­were forbidden.” “Estates,” Abravanel added, “return to their original ­owners, since the Israelites w ­ ere then lords of the earth, and they had no landed property of field or vineyard.”95 ­Here Abravanel turns the logic of expulsion on its head; rather than a tragedy to be lamented, it could invoke the distant, mythological past when Israelites ­were truly emancipated. And that emancipation was rooted in the maintenance of a pastoral lifestyle, a way of life that had no space—or need—­for agricultural work. As w ­ e’ll now see, our three Hebrew writers had much to say about Genesis’s classic opposition between agriculturalism and pastoralism: the tale of Cain and Abel.

Chapter 4

Pastoralists and Agriculturalists at Odds

A healthy and productive ­human relationship with the land was an aspiration for Spanish Jewish thinkers in the l­ater ­Middle Ages. Curiously, however, Abravanel’s, Saba’s, and Arama’s vision of achieving ecological balance and economic prosperity meant a remarkably one-­dimensional approach to occupational pursuits. In their biblical commentaries all three men—­and several of their lesser-­k nown peers—­elevated one rural pursuit above all ­others: pastoring flocks of sheep and goats. Their perspective on the life and calling of a shepherd was rooted in biblical typologies that pitted the salubrious and divinely favored life of the pastor against the cursed existence of a farmer. As impor­tant as ­these scriptural tropes ­were to Sephardic Jews at the turn of the sixteenth ­century, their views of work ­were equally if not more informed by a new emphasis on sheep-­herding throughout Iberia. None of ­these men was ignorant that while pastoring may have been a divinely sanctioned profession—­Abraham, Moses, David, and other biblical heroes ­were all shepherds—­the godly profession had been altered and corrupted in the ­later ­Middle Ages. It was widely perceived as the fastest way to wealth. Sephardi perspectives on ideal ­human vocations ­were informed as much by what generated wealth in con­temporary Spain as by their fidelity to biblical archetypes. In Chapter 3 we saw how Abravanel’s, Saba’s, and Arama’s emphasis on the centrality of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years revealed their focus on agrarian concerns, as well as their awareness of Iberian economic ­matters. This chapter marks a shift away from Sephardi intellectuals’ idealization of a distant set of laws with so­cio­log­i­cal and agricultural significance. In the following pages ­we’ll see how they analyzed the Bible through the lens of very real concerns in fifteenth-­century Spain: ­battles between pastoralists and



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farmers. Though Sephardi Jews’ reading of key passages in Genesis concerning the pastoral life was just as idealized as their obsession with the Sabbatical, in this chapter I show how the scriptural practices they glorified ­were hugely significant to the fifteenth-­century economy. The analy­sis of Bible commentary, informed by an awareness of local conditions, helps us understand the lives of ­these commentators—as well as what made their exegesis new and noteworthy. The biblical episode that was most conducive to reflection about mankind’s two prototypical professions—­farming and animal husbandry—­ was the story of Cain and Abel. Isaac Arama, in Portal #11 of ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, notes that Cain and Abel are essentially typologies for mankind. Cain represents the belief that “material acquisitions” and “po­liti­cal organ­ization” are the ultimate telos of man. Abel, by contrast, was a shepherd, “and the younger son exceeded the older [son] in excellence.”1 All of the commentators considered in this book had much to say about this tale. Abel was consistently lauded and Cain villainized. But to this group of Spanish Jews, Cain’s villainry had ­little to do with his most famous crime: fratricide. On the contrary, his farming practices earned the sharpest censure. The pursuit of agriculture was deemed detrimental in many ways: it led to the pursual of luxury and the violation of commandments, among other pernicious ­things. Abel’s pastoral life, on the contrary, was idealized. Iberian Jewish scholars of the Bible stressed that Abel’s choice to be a shepherd was the proper one. Abel, Isaac Arama pointed out, was a pastor, “which is a profession greater [than Cain’s], both objectively and in terms of antiquity and primacy.”2 Abraham Saba noted that “Abel cleaved to God more than Cain did. Therefore his profession was as a shepherd, as is mentioned about the earliest ­fathers, and ‘he shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart’ [Ps. 78:72].”3 Isaac Caro emphasized a similar benefit to this profession. Caro noted that Abel “chose the occupation of shepherding for it is a ‘cleanly craft’ in which righ­teous men engage: Jacob, Moses, David, and the tribes, so that they could be isolated in the field, in order to understand the divine secrets.”4 Caro also stressed Cain’s misbegotten desire to satiate himself on produce before he brought an offering to God; Caro insisted that he should have offered the produce first. Abel was the model for this: “he chose life as a shepherd, and brought sacrifices first.”5 A life as a semi-­nomadic herder led to piety and earned divine f­ avor. Shepherding had yet another benefit: it instilled a sense of fulfillment. With regard to God’s “favoring” Abel over Cain (Gen. 4:4), Isaac Arama wrote

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that this “favoring” signals “what a shepherd attains from the life of ease and refinement inherent in his work, more than what a tiller of the earth achieves.” Cain knew this, and “his anger was kindled ­because of his jealousy, since someone other than he,” namely Abel, “would become his leader, the person who sates his ravenous hunger.”6 It overwhelmed the archetypal farmer to know that a mere shepherd was his master and provisioner. Arama perceived another advantage to the pastoral life: it curbed passions. To Sephardi commentators of this generation the contentment and contemplation that shepherding offered had a psychological and practical twin: self-­ sufficiency. The writer who expounded most on the subject of how the life of a shepherd leads to self-­sufficiency was Isaac Abravanel. In his commentary to ’Avot Abravanel has a revealing, detailed excursus in which he unpacks Solomon’s statement in Proverbs (27:23) “mind well the looks of your flock; pay attention to your herds.” He commented: And how beautiful are the words of Solomon! [The] interpretation [of this verse] is to praise and crown and glorify the life of a man engaged in the field in the occupation of shepherding his flocks and who flees from a high position and authority amongst urban dwellers, and therefore he [Solomon] said “mind well the looks of your flock” [v. 23]. This means do not say “I ­will entrust my flocks to the shepherds and make myself lord of the city.” Do not do this. You yourself should “mind well the looks of your flock.” Regarding this, “pay close attention to your herds,” [v. 23] and let all of your thoughts concern them [the animals], not the authorities and offices of the state. “For property does not last forever, or a crown for all generations.” [v. 24] This means that high positions and offices of the state are not permanent, and the crown of po­liti­cal power ­will not last from generation to generation. However, in shepherding the flock ­there ­will always be welfare and perpetual prosperity. And this is what is meant by “grass vanishes, new grass appears, and the herbage of the hills is gathered in.” [v. 25] That is to say, the harvest ­will come and afterwards herbage of the hills ­will be gathered, and the harvest of wool ­will be reserved for you from the flock, and this is the point of his saying “the lambs ­will provide you with clothing.” [v. 26] You ­will not have any need for the city, for if you need a garment to wear, do not go to the city merchant to buy it from him; from the wool of sheep you may make a garment to clothe



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yourself in your own home. If you need gold and silver coins, “the goats the price for a field.” [v. 26] This means ­people ­will come to you to buy goats, and they ­will give you money. If you need food ­there ­will be goats’ milk enough for thy food, for “the food of thy ­house­hold.” [v. 27] With all this, ­there ­will always be work for your maidens. All of t­ hese are advantages of field ­labor.7 In this passage Abravanel stresses two advantages to life as a pastor. First, unlike work with “authorities and offices of the state,” which are transient and dependent on mutable po­liti­cal ­will, ranching ­will forever be necessary. Second, it is only by possessing land and using it to raise herds that one may attain self-­sufficiency. The juxtaposition of po­liti­cal life to that of a shepherd was especially convincing coming from Abravanel, who had extensive experience working for the monarchs of Portugal, Castile, and Aragon—as well as the rulers of the Venetian republic. For Abravanel, in spite of his long and periodically successful ­career raising tax revenue and assisting in po­liti­ cal affairs, the most dependable route to economic security was to reenact an ancient practice whose con­temporary application had been drained of idealism and sullied by the bald pursuit of wealth. But the life of one involved in animal husbandry was not celebrated merely ­because of its practical applications: Bible commentary was not the appropriate forum in which to dwell at length on concrete occupational advantages. Theological concerns took pre­ce­dence. For example, shepherding had a close historical and theological relation to prophecy; in fact, the former led directly to the latter. Abravanel observed that the gift of prophecy did not come to Moses when he was in the palace of Pha­raoh’s ­daughter, nor when he was working with his ­people, but only “when he was a shepherd, dwelling in the ‘unpopulated places’ (Jeremiah 17:6) in the wilderness, alone, by himself.”8 Arama also, in his investigation of Moses’s profession, noted how shepherding was excellent preparation for leadership. “It is well known,” Arama insists, “that this profession comprises two ­matters together,” the first being attentiveness to “what is necessary in terms of the needs of the flock, to care for them with ­great diligence . . . ​the small as well as the large, the strong as well as the weak.” And this is “a ­matter that greatly relates to diligence in leading the nation [i.e., the Israelites].” The second feature of shepherding according to Arama is that it inculcates knowledge of the “secrets of existence and the nature of creation,” which are implicit in shepherding. Arama stresses that Moses’s ascent onto Mount Horeb in Exodus 3 demonstrates

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that the prophet had “already ascended to a point beyond shepherding.”9 In other words, the profession is a stepping-­stone to a greater calling. Moses’s life story was, of course, unique and did not serve as a realistic model for emulation. But the life of a shepherd did have a related advantage, one noted by several of Abravanel’s peers: shepherding is ideal training for life. Abel’s profession, Isaac Arama pointed out, is also an “allegory and symbol of how his pastoral work is more idyllic” than Cain’s “­because it introduces leadership and order to ­human life.” Arama cites several scriptural passages that support this claim and emphasizes the connection between raising flocks and leading men. “ ‘From following the ewes he brought him to shepherd Jacob his ­people’ (Psalm 78:71), as well as many other scriptural verses,” in Arama’s view, “speak meta­phor­ically about ­people as flocks and leaders as shepherds.”10 Abel “saw that this ­labor of his reared men most excellent in wisdom and authority.”11 If for Abravanel “leaders” meant po­liti­cal authorities, for Arama, who earned his living as a rabbi and preacher, they most likely connoted clergy. Conversely, the life of a farmer was subjected to withering criticism by this group of writers. In his analy­sis of why the Israelites could not hear Moses due to their “anguish of spirit [Exod. 6:9]” and that they ­were subjected to “cruel bondage [Exod. 1:14],” Abravanel blamed the demands of working the land. “­There are two reasons” the Israelites could not hearken to Moses. The first was “anguish of spirit,” which meant that “their souls ­were vexed ­because of their burden.” The second reason, concerning “the ‘cruel bondage’ that they ­were performing,” was that “they had no time even to listen to any good tidings. Therefore, ‘impatience of spirit’ was a ­matter of the spirit, and cruel bondage a ­matter of the body.” As such, Abravanel stressed, “they ­were not capable of listening to Moses.”12 ­Earlier Hebrew authors such as Joseph Albo wrote in detail on the Cain and Abel story in his Sefer haʻiḳarim, completed in 1425.13 Albo was well-­k nown to ­later fifteenth-­century Hebrew authors, particularly in Spain and on the Italian peninsula.14 Albo observed that Cain began tilling the ground u ­ nder mistaken premises. Plenty of commentators had already pointed out that God cursed the ground following Adam’s sin, and thereafter farming was suspect at best, forbidden at worst.15 Albo’s gloss was dif­fer­ent: Cain chose to farm ­because he “thought that the only superiority of man to the animals consisted in his ability to till the ground and live on choice plants.”16 In other words, farming provided an insufficient demarcation between the ­human and animal worlds.



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Shepherding represented a much more decisive ­human break with, and mastery of, the animal kingdom. A more common criticism of farming was that it led to the pursuit of luxury. Isaac Abravanel was explicit about this and stated that Cain specifically chose farming as a path to mea­sur­able, material acquisitions: “He chose tilling the ground as his occupation, so that he would be a pursuer of material ­things and apparent acquisitions. As such Cain is named from the word ‘acquisition.’ ”17 The etymological derivation of Cain from qinyan, or “acquisition,” is ancient and was familiar to Christian as well as Jewish scholars.18 Second only to his label as murderer, Cain’s lust for material possessions earned him the opprobrium of centuries of commentary. Abraham Saba developed this point in much more detail, juxtaposing Abel, who “shepherded them [sheep] according to the integrity of his heart [Ps. 78:72],” to Cain, who inclined ­towards agricultural work, and ­towards luxuries. Therefore it is said of him “in the course of time” [Gen. 4:3], since he brought upon himself divine judgment and the moral impurity of his ­mother, as in “he set bounds for darkness” [Job 28:3], and also “I have de­cided to put an end to all flesh” [Gen. 6:13], for that means to consume “both soul and body” [Isa. 10:18], and the “mark” [Gen. 4:15] which pertains to the slaying of Abel. The second “mark” is the offering he brought from the produce of the earth: the Torah never mentioned an offering of this sort. Furthermore since [the sages] said that it was flaxseed and its mnemotechnical note is that the final consonants of the word qorban’ [offering], when its letters are spelled out in this manner—­qof, resh, bet, nun—­denotes flax.19 ­Here we see the forbidden mixture of diverse kinds, a confusion, as it is said “you ­shall not wear cloth combining wool and linen [Deut. 22:11],” bringing an offering from the produce of the land. And thereby it was used as idolatry, as it is written: “they that work in combed flax ­shall be ashamed” [Isa. 19:9].20 The pursuit of material goods, of which Isaiah’s “combed flax” was merely one example, was bad enough; worse still was the tendency for the pursuit of luxuries to lead to a host of trou­bles, from financial woes to exile. Isaac Arama reflected that “the midrash describes three ­people who had a passion for agriculture, and none saw any benefit from it: Cain, Noah, Uziah.” ­Here Arama refers to a statement from Pirqe ’Avot (4:21): “three ­things hasten man’s

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departure from this earth: jealousy, greed, and the quest for personal glory.” Arama noted that the “common denominator between all three [figures] is that they ­were farmers. It appears that each one shares what is common to all.”21 Abraham Saba also insisted on the correlation between farming and acquisitiveness. Saba noted that “Abel cleaved to God more than Cain did. Therefore his profession was as a shepherd, as is mentioned about the earliest ­fathers. As such ‘he shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart’ [Ps. 78:72] but Cain inclined ­towards agriculture and luxuries.”22 Saba and Arama knew plenty about misfortune, and each suffered the indignities of expulsion and exile. They both connected monetary ruin and forced exile to the boundless pursuit of material advantage. That pursuit was not represented by usury or commerce; it was signaled by agricultural work. At base, farming was cursed, and shepherding was blessed. Therefore ­there was another, darker reason not to farm: persisting with agriculture testified to one’s lack of belief in God. Even though Abravanel and his peers could laud agricultural work, they ­were ambivalent about its moral valences, especially deep in the biblical past.23 Isaac Aboab, another con­temporary to Abravanel, Arama, and Saba, declaimed that Cain’s sin was lack of belief in God: “For men choose as their occupation that in which they ­will succeed. And since Cain chose agriculture he obviously did not believe in God who had cursed the earth.”24 Aboab certainly ­wasn’t the only one to observe that by working the land Cain denied God, since God had cursed the land to Adam. Isaac Abravanel, for example, maintained that farming in spite of God’s having cursed the land signaled Cain’s intractability: “in my eyes the correct [interpretation] is that Cain chose the occupation of tilling the ground for himself since he was not reverent of God, and did not fear the malediction ‘cursed is the ground for thy sake,’ which was issued to Adam, his ­father.”25 Elsewhere Abravanel pushed this analy­sis further: Abel’s profession is (or represents) the “sensitive soul, and Cain’s ­labor is the vegetative soul.”26 Abel knew that the earth is cursed (as in “the earth is cursed ­because of you” [Gen. 3:17]) but also knew that “pasturing animals is not cursed.” “Therefore,” Abravanel explained, Abel “brought from among the first-­born of his flock and the fat thereof [Gen. 4:4] to indicate their ­wholesome and blessed condition, given that they supplied good ­things for consumption apart from meat—­for example butter, milk, and the fleece of his sheep with which to warm himself.”27 The effects of God’s malediction ­were power­f ul: this generation of commentators understood farming to lead to the violation of commandments. For example, Abraham Saba speculated that “Cain bring-



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ing an offering from the produce of the land led him to mix wool and flax. His farming led directly to a violation of the Torah.”28 Agricultural work, in other words, was cursed for many reasons: it was too close to the tasks of brute animals; it led to the pursuit of material gain and luxury; and it could produce additional prob­lems ranging from insecurity to exile. Most of all, it is almost always presented in ­these writings as the reprehensible, menacing opposite to shepherding. Nearly e­ very denunciation of agriculture in the writings of exiled Sephardi Jews was paired with an encomium to pastoral work. The opposition between ­these two archetypal professions is structured around a familiar dyad that we first encountered in Chapter 1: Cain represents the artificial and Abel the natu­ral. For ­these commentators, much of this typologizing reflects Israel’s original exile in Egypt. For it was ­there that the descendants of Jacob ­were forced into agricultural ­labor. In Abravanel’s analy­sis it ­wasn’t only the large Pharaonic cities where Israelites ­were forced to ­labor; they toiled on private property as well. “For ­every Egyptian who needed ­labor in a field or vineyard or homestead,” Abravanel noted, “would take Jews and bring them ­there to perform his work as if they ­were his slaves. And this was more grievous than the prior burdens b­ ecause the Israelites w ­ ere like own­erless property: slaves for every­one.”29 Evoking memories of forced ­labor at the hands of Egyptians was an effective way to malign agricultural work. The customs of the Nile delta marked a con­ve­nient contrast to Israelite aspirations. The Egyptians, ­after all, ­were agriculturalists who burdened the Israelites with “hard ­labor” (Exod. 1:14) to build their cities and run their farms. In turn, permanent residents of lower Egypt looked down on animal husbandry.30 To underscore the appeal of shepherding for Jews, and highlight its centrality in their historical experience, Abravanel contrasted Egyptian views to ­those of the Israelites. In his analy­sis of how the sons of Jacob came to Goshen at Joseph’s behest, Abravanel examines why the Israelites told Pha­raoh they ­were shepherds. One explanation is quite practical: Joseph made a special point of emphasizing to Pha­raoh that his ­family came from Canaan, “lest suspicion arise in Pha­raoh’s heart that they came so that Joseph would support them from the royal store­houses.” Instead, to allay this suspicion, “he said they came from Canaan.” As foreigners, ­they’d have no claim to royal largesse, and this would be a relief to Pha­raoh. Furthermore, “he [Joseph] said ‘they have brought their flocks and their herds and all that is theirs [Gen. 46:32]’ in order to inform Pha­raoh that they ­were rich and had no need of him for their provisions.” Abravanel’s second explanation has more

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to do with cultural biases than politics. “Perhaps he said ‘it is an abomination to the Egyptians [Gen. 46:34],’ ” the commentator suggested, “from the language [of the verse] ‘if we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians’ [Exod. 8:22]. The ‘abomination of the Egyptians’ was like an Egyptian deity, for the Torah refers to their Gods as ‘abominations.’ It’s as if he [Joseph] said ­every shepherd has the standing of divinity for Egypt. Therefore they attribute to them honor, and allow them to ­settle in the best part of the land.” Practical and po­liti­cal motivations aside, Joseph emphasized an intrinsic value to shepherding: the vizier “did not want his ­family to depart from the profession of their ­fathers, for it is a divine occupation.”31 Abravanel, as did his peers, cast his cele­bration of shepherding as a divinely mandated profession. It was mainly Abravanel’s Jewish peers who esteemed the pastoral life and denigrated farming. For some Catholic exegetes of late medieval Iberia, the Cain and Abel story had dif­fer­ent contours. H ­ ere, as in previous chapters, Tostado serves as a guide to major trends in fifteenth-­century Spanish Bible commentary. Apart from a similar tendency to note the ancient and august nature of shepherding, Tostado’s commentary to Genesis 3 and 4 is quite dif­fer­ent from that of the Jewish exegetes we have been examining. Tostado’s work exonerates Cain and minimizes Abel’s saintliness. A brief examination of Tostado’s perspective on this story throws into sharper relief how unique the Sephardic approach was to this well-­k nown biblical tale. Tostado was familiar with the many challenges and advantages of raising sheep. To the Bishop of Ávila, Abel’s work to train and tame his herds signaled that he “cared deeply for them.” Tostado also had a strong sense of the benefits that accrue from having flocks: “fortunately, since it was not permitted for men to eat meat at that time, they nourished themselves on sheep’s milk, as if it ­were fruit from trees. And since the hides ­were useful as clothing on account of the intemperate weather, just as God sent forth the first ­humans from Paradise dressed in hides, in antiquity holy men took par­tic­u­lar care of their pastoral duties.” Dairy products and clothing are two of the more obvious benefits that shepherds enjoy. Still, this matter-­of-­fact pre­sen­ta­tion of the pastoral life stops far short of Abravanel’s full-­throated encomium to shepherding.32 Another difference between Tostado’s commentary and that of his Jewish peers is that Tostado’s pre­sen­ta­tion of Cain is much less critical. According to the Bishop of Ávila, Cain farmed out of necessity. Remarking on his title as vir agricola, Tostado noted “this means seeking food from the cultivation



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of fields. Previously the earth brought forth wheat, barley, and all sorts of pulse crops, but afterwards [­these ­things] required ­human effort.”33 With regard to Cain’s ill-­advised offering to the Lord of “fruits of the earth” (Gen. 4:3), Tostado qualified this misdeed: “Cain certainly brought crops, but the worst sort: crops that ­were gnawed on and rotten.” In other words it ­wasn’t farming per se that Tostado understood as a transgression but rather that Cain brought rotten and putrefied produce, and “that was the reason his offering was not received.”34 One final disparity deserves note: Tostado insists that Abel’s choice of the pastoral profession ­wasn’t a response to a divine calling; it was an attempt to relieve tedium: “Abel took up the task of pastoring animals as [a form of] discipline that would relieve his idleness.” Of course, ­there was a moral dimension to this: “it was a very bad ­thing to be ­free of any work: idleness teaches many bad habits.”35 Compared to Tostado’s mea­ sured analy­sis of ­these archetypal personalities, according to which Abel stumbled into his profession and Cain’s sin was merely having brought subpar produce as an offering, Abravanel’s, Saba’s, and Arama’s denunciations of farming and encomia to the pastoral life are unique and exceptional.

* * * Many of ­these scriptural analyses, ­whether in support of shepherding or in attack of farming, may be read in another, less theological manner: as the search for biblical justifications of what was eco­nom­ically advantageous in late fifteenth-­century Spain. Even though, as ­we’ve seen, Abravanel and his peers could be critical of Spanish practices—­urbanization and the aversion to manual trades among ­others—­their encomia to pastoral life represent something other than the desire to flee the “unnatural” and “artificial” urban enclaves where they lived, and from which they ­were eventually expelled, and seek some imaginary pastoral ideal. Rather, even though they ­were critical of Spanish leadership and dismayed about structural changes to the Spanish economy, they wrote so eloquently about pastoralism—­and so critically about farming—­that the force and ferocity of their observations demand analy­sis. In order to conduct that analy­sis properly, we must examine strug­gles regarding the uses of Iberian land at this time in some detail. The Iberian economy underwent significant structural changes in the ­Middle Ages. Perhaps the single most impor­tant shift in ­these years was the establishment of a power­f ul guild of sheep ranchers: the mesta. Founded in 1284 by Alfonso X of Castile, this guild constituted a “rupture between

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the agrarian system of the early ­Middle Ages, involving a balance between local herding, cereal farming, and wine production,” and that of the ­later ­Middle Ages, “which emphasized commercial crops and initiated a long period of agrarian dysfunction.”36 As a non-­specialist eloquently put it, as the foreign wool trade became more profitable, especially in the thirteenth and ­fourteenth centuries, Castilian nobles “saw that the easiest and most profitable use to which they could put their new territories would be to turn them into sheep runs.” Kings saw plenty of profit potential, too, ­because they could easily levy taxes on wool.37 Still, it ­wasn’t that all land was immediately converted from arable to pasture and repurposed for the needs of shepherds; that pro­cess took time.38 What did begin to change almost immediately was the practice of irrigation: in Christian kingdoms rights to ­water ­were essentially co-­opted by power­f ul landowners. In León and Castile large seigniorial domains aggrandized ­water rights through prior appropriation, donations, and purchase of ­water and mill contracts. As a result, ­water rights ­were essentially beyond the reach of small ­free proprietors. In the ninth and tenth centuries, the heyday of Andalusi culture, ­these small proprietors had been ­owners or co-­owners of the mills and irrigation ­water. In sum, “the system was built by small, ­free proprietors but over a period of time tended to become aggrandized by power­f ul lords, particularly monasteries.”39 This was the agricultural world Christians constructed. The mesta functioned, in the words of an expert on the topic, as a “power­ful cartel” that exerted considerable control over the Castilian economy.40 It would be simplistic to see Alfonso X as single-­handedly creating the conditions for exploitation of the land by ranchers. Overall, he simply stressed the importance of land stewardship. His Siete partidas note that Castilian subjects must “understand the land . . . ​and cultivate it well, not despising it and finding fault, ­because land that is useless for one crop ­will always serve for another.” According to Alfonso’s ­legal code, ­people must “break rocks, cut down forests, level the ground, and rid the country of wild beasts.”41 Alfonso’s insistence that ­people manage the land more actively created the conditions for the domination of sheep-­herders. During the ­fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ­there was a marked diminution in the production of cereals and a rise in the development of specialized crops and sheep-­raising.42 At this time agricultural practices changed considerably: in the words of one expert, the fifteenth ­century saw the “ruin of traditional agricultural practices,” especially in dry lands.43 The most impor­tant changes, not surprisingly, had to do with livestock-­raising and its



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by-­products: wool, leather, meat, and cheese. Herds belonging to the mesta, for example, doubled in size during the fifteenth ­century. As such, all of t­ hose products claimed an increased market share, mostly ­because the demand for wool, especially from Flanders, ­rose sharply as early as the second half of the ­fourteenth ­century.44 Spain was a highly rural society. And even though the last several de­ cades have seen more work on subjects such as land tenure and agriculture, historiography on the Spanish kingdoms is still largely dominated by urban concerns.45 In the ­middle of the fifteenth ­century the vast majority (usually stated as over 80 ­percent) of the population inhabited the countryside. This ratio was higher in Castile than in Aragon, where cities ­were larger and mercantile activity was more dynamic.46 Following the Black Death, especially in Castile, t­ here was much more land than ­people to ­labor on it. Such was the case even before the ­middle of the ­fourteenth ­century: from the end of the initial phases of the reconquista (often marked as the ­Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212), many areas suffered from a shortage of manpower and an abundance of land. Unlike the case in the rest of western Eu­rope, land became available at a faster rate than it was needed. As such, the arable economy of Castile was characterized by an almost total lack of demesne exploitation. In the absence of feudal-­style land management practices, pastoralism and transhumance flourished.47 All of this meant, in essence, that large portions of the Spanish kingdoms ­were no longer able to feed themselves by the fifteenth ­century: they imported grain, which meant more long-­distance trade and the further growth of port cities.48 As we saw in Chapter 1, the increasing prominence of port cities led to par­tic­u­lar censure from commentators who viewed them as dens of moral iniquity. By the beginning of Ferdinand and Isabella’s reign in 1474 some perceptive Spaniards saw the degraded state of agriculture as a cause of, rather than a consequence, Spain’s internal disorder. At the end of Henry IV’s reign, just before Isabella became queen of Castile, Spain was perceived to be in ­great disorder and chaos, and agriculture was invoked as a major reason.49 The Spanish nobility was locked in a series of internecine strug­gles, and lower classes ­were subjugated.50 In fact, it was nearly impossible for a farmer to earn a living from agriculture alone.51 Raising large herds of sheep was a better bet than farming. As a leading historian of Spain has observed, “In a country whose soil was hard and barren and where t­ here was frequent danger of marauding raids, sheep-­farming was a safer and more rewarding occupation than agriculture.”52 And so it was that increasing portions of Iberian

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land ­were converted from arable to pasture. This conversion of land use had marked financial and social consequences. During Ferdinand and Isabella’s reign the rivalry between agriculturists and ranchers became increasingly pronounced.53 The predominance of mountainous terrain with minimal fertility due to lack of irrigation, an unfavorable climate throughout much of the center of the peninsula, and the need for increasing royal tax revenues to fund an ongoing war against the emirate of Granada in the south all discouraged farming and encouraged large-­scale animal husbandry.54 Stock-­raising, as one expert put it, was “more advanced in the Iberian peninsula than anywhere e­ lse in the medieval world,” and this was “far more eco­nom­ically significant” than “cereal agriculture or viticulture.”55 Yet another advantage of ranching is that pasture land could be shared; cultivated property could not be.56 This was particularly the case around borders that separated town from town, and province from province. This was nowhere more the case than in the Kingdom of Granada, where frontiers often marked zones of collaboration, or vecindad.57 A type of treaty signed between members of neighboring municipalities or rural communities, vecindad could result in collaboration and solidarity in contentious border areas.58 As José Rodríguez Molina has shown in the case of Andalusia, frontiers between municipalities sometimes included a veritable no-­man’s land, which was often used as common pasture.59 What’s more, ­those lands could be jointly held by Christians and Muslims.60 If the Andalusi frontier could be, as Rodríguez Molina put it, a “mix of convivencia and war,” ranchers often benefited from shifting po­liti­cal borders and con­ve­nient treaties that permitted the ­free and common use of pasture land.61 It ­wasn’t only intrepid Christian and Muslim ranchers on the frontier of a newly expanded and emboldened Castile who stood to profit from ranching; it was a kingdom-­wide trend. In fact, it has been argued that Ferdinand and Isabella had four main economic and po­liti­cal goals throughout their reign: nationalizing industries; impeding the exportation of raw materials that could be developed locally; prohibiting the entrance of foreign goods; and blocking the exportation of gold and silver.62 With the pos­si­ble exception of the last goal regarding precious metals, all of ­these initiatives could be strengthened—­and in fact ­were, at least in the short term—by heavier investment in stock-­raising.63 But in the medium to long term most of this agenda was doomed to failure given a variety of ­factors, chief among them the ­bitter rivalry between farmers and ranchers.64 ­There ­were other obstacles, too, such as the difficulty of legislating economic regulations without



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being able to predict outcomes and the inevitable natu­ral disasters that disrupted an agrarian economy. Still, the strug­gle between ranchers and farmers was of paramount significance.65 How exactly did this strug­gle become so fierce? For one ­thing, the standardization of taxes on crops disincentivized farmers from cultivating their land. Planting cereals such as wheat, barley, and rye meant exposure to a greater tax burden. By 1502 ­these rates ­were standardized to 110 maravedis for a fanega of wheat; 60 for barley; and 60 for rye.66 But far more significant than tax policy on cereal crops was the centrality of the wool trade. During the expansion of the Castilian economy from the thirteenth to the fifteenth ­century, the development of the wool trade, based on the export of a raw material, was key.67 Numerous historians have argued that it is hard to overstate the importance of wool. As a leading scholar of the mesta summarized it, “the entire economic and social structure of the country—­both its assets and its liabilities—­was ­etched by merino sheep-­grazing more deeply than by olives, grapes, leatherwork, or even Peruvian trea­suries.”68 The consequences of the so-­called “wool revolution” ­were numerous, and significant. The size of herds increased enormously. In 1300 ­there ­were only 1,500,000 sheep in Spanish dominions; by 1467 ­there ­were 2,700,000. The Black Death and the ensuing depopulation made it easier for herders to impose their influence on the countryside.69 Predictably, agriculture stagnated. Castilian wool came to dominate the Mediterranean economy for two major reasons. First, a new breed of sheep (merino) appeared in Spain between 1290 and 1310. This was facilitated by the Genoese, who imported the sheep from North Africa and bred them. Second, En­glish wool output fell due to po­liti­ cal strug­gles, and Castile came to supply Flanders and Italy.70 Another significant consequence of the growth in Castile’s role in the wool trade was the flourishing of the aristocracy. The Castilian aristocracy at this time was aided by several developments. Huge land grants in Andalusia doubled the economic power of the old “northern nobility,” as Castilians ­were dubbed, and settled them in the south. Aristocrats ­were also aided by the success of the wool trade: since they owned most of the herds, profits increased substantially. Fi­nally, with the establishment of the “juros de heredad,” the cession of lands in fee ­simple, property became transmissible by inheritance to the eldest son. Technically, this was forbidden by Castilian law, but ­after Alfonso X we see some exceptions, and by the fifteenth ­century it had become common.71 Traditionally, the Spanish nobility tended to practice partible inheritance, but by the time Abravanel, Saba, and Arama ­were

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writing their biblical commentaries t­ here was ever greater entailment of estates into mayorazgo—­essentially a legalized form of primogeniture. This worked to the disadvantage of ­daughters and younger siblings, inter alia.72 None of this could have happened without Ferdinand and Isabella’s support. As one historian put it, they “stabilize[d] the equilibrium attained by Castilian nobility in the last half of the 15th ­century.”73 As a result, the Castilian aristocracy came to possess enormous domains. For example, Don Enrique de Sotomayor, who died at the end of the fifteenth ­century, possessed 50,000 hectares of land (the equivalent of approximately 5,000 square kilo­meters), half the size of an average Spanish province.74 Further undergirding aristocratic power was the fact that ­there ­were few ­viable economic alternatives to ranching: agriculture was stagnant during this period. Spanish farmers only produced enough crops to supply local markets, or at most the acarreo markets, centers that served to distribute products of a given region.75 So much for large economic and social trends. If the herds and tracts of land ­were owned by wealthy aristocratic magnates, who actually did the work of raising sheep and pasturing them? Not surprisingly, it was mostly the socially disadvantaged, “uneducated ­people living in isolation,” whose economic influence was disproportionate to their social status.76 In spite of their ­humble backgrounds, they formed a highly impor­tant branch of the economy. The fact that ­people from ­humble backgrounds had such an impor­tant role in the Spanish economy may partially explain Abravanel’s encomia to the pastoral life. Especially for wealthy men of leisure who had time and support to fantasize, cele­brations of a pastoral idyll are frequently paired in this period with the glorification of laborers.77 But unlike Abravanel’s romanticized vision in which one rancher controls herds throughout their seasonal migrations, the real­ity on the ground was quite dif­fer­ent. Castilian ranching required several dif­fer­ent social roles: in winter, lowland pastures, often near cities and their hinterlands, ­were sufficient for the nourishment of herds. In summer months flocks had to be driven into the upland grazing grounds of the nearest sierra. Pastores and vaqueros, respectively, drove stock to or from pastures. Montaneros patrolled pastures and guarded against theft.78 ­There was in fact a view at this time that ­those who owned land should also farm it: Spanish authors ­were deeply concerned about land distribution and administration. In 1600, for example, González de Cellorigo wrote “no one ­ought to hold land if he cannot cultivate it personally.” He noted that the rich do not choose to farm their estates, and the poor cannot do so properly for lack of capital. De Cellorigo’s goal was nothing short of a more equal



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distribution of wealth.79 In 1500 as in 1600, it was seldom if ever the case that the owner of land and herds was the one to care for and pasture the animals. Though the Sephardic commentators studied in this book frequently claimed that a life of stock-­raising meant ipso facto in­de­pen­dence, the real­ ity was quite dif­fer­ent. ­Those who owned land and herds w ­ ere certainly in­ de­pen­dent; t­ hose who did the work ­were often poorly paid wage laborers. ­There ­were further social consequences to the consolidation of sheep and land owner­ship: rural laborers, at least ­those not lucky enough to find work, however exiguous, with an owner of large flocks, ­were left out and disadvantaged. Even when Ferdinand and Isabella passed laws easing the burden on rural laborers (such as the policy they passed in Medina del Campo on 18 October 1486, according to which peasants can pass freely between estates with their goods) power­f ul classes sometimes ­rose up to suppress them.80 Furthermore, ranching expanded so much in the fifteenth ­century that additional settlements ­were founded: by the 1410s new villages ­were founded in northern Castile to support this industry and transhumance more generally.81 Eventually, this led to more conflict between t­ hose who wanted to devote arable land to raising crops, and ­those who wished to dedicate it to pasturage. As David Vassberg showed, pre­-­industrial village society in Spain was highly dynamic, with continuous intervillage, interregional, and rural-­ urban migration.82 But the ceaseless extension of pasturage led to increasing conflict between agriculturalists and livestock farmers.83 Several scholars have tracked how all of this resulted in social unrest.84 The Jews in par­tic­u­lar ­were determined to avoid this. In other words ­there was an equation in the minds of many Spaniards between farming and social prob­lems, while stock-­ raising was presumed to be advantageous, at least for the upper classes. ­There ­were a number of incentives to practice animal husbandry, and disincentives to farm. Even though demographic and economic trends ­were driving more and more p­ eople from the countryside into cities, some writers—­a nd not only highly literate Hebrew-­w riting Jewish Bible commentators—­ extolled the life of the country. In fact, ­there may have been a direct relationship between alienation from the land and cele­bration of it.85 One work in par­tic­u­lar deserves our attention.

* * * Around the time Abravanel, Saba, and Arama ­were writing, a Christian scholar, Gabriel Alonso de Herrera, penned a celebrated agricultural text.

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Born in Talavera de la Reina, not far from Toledo, he was educated in Grenada and ­after entering the priesthood became a personal chaplain to Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros.86 Herrera’s Obra de agricultura, financed by Cisneros himself, was at once an agronomy manual, a digest of classical authors who wrote about rural life (such as Palladius, Pliny, and Theophrastus), and a cele­bration of Andalusi Muslim contributions to agricultural sciences.87 In it he lauded life in the country. In its rhapsodic evocations of the glories of the land, Herrera’s paean to pastoral living resembles some of the more romantic ideas espoused by Sephardic writers we have been considering. For example, Herrera remarks, “Who can succinctly state the superior qualities and advantages that the countryside brings?” Life in the country, he went on to explain, “eliminates harmful idleness, and on the land ­there are no resentments nor enmities.”88 Herrera’s observation that ­there are no “resentments” or “enmities” would have resonated with Sephardic exiles, who had seen firsthand just how rancorous urban life in fifteenth-­ century Spain could be—­especially for Jews. Herrera’s work bears other similarities to Spanish Jews’ glorification of the countryside. A key advantage to life in the country for the Granadan writer is that it offers the best way to live without indulging in luxuries: “the countryside, in conclusion, bestows upon us all necessary ­things, and without it we cannot live.”89 Humanity is “naturally inclined” to this work, Herrera stresses, “for according to Ecclesiastes God created it [i.e., agriculture].”90 The Catholic cleric was not unaware that God had cursed the land in Genesis 3; still, he invokes Genesis as a prooftext for the divine license to farm. “We inherited agriculture from Adam,” he proclaims, “and God commanded it to him.”91 Curiously, Herrera emphasizes the commandment to farm “in toil” (Gen. 3:17) and “by the sweat of thy brow” (Gen. 3:19), while minimizing the notion of a cursed land that was so key to Spanish commentators writing in Hebrew. While Herrera’s insistence on the primacy of country living would have found a receptive audience among Abravanel, Saba, and Arama, the Catholic priest’s stress on farming, and neglect of shepherding, would have puzzled his Jewish contemporaries. For Herrera, agriculture’s ultimate benefit is that it brings “profit, plea­sure, and honor.”92 As ­we’ve seen, ­these are precisely the ­things Sephardic exiles wished to get away from. In short, the preeminent agricultural text of early sixteenth-­century Spain idolized farming for the very reasons Abravanel and his peers wanted to avoid it.



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One plausible explanation for this fissure between Jewish and Catholic views is cultural and geographic. Andalusia, where Herrera was educated and spent most of his professional life, was Spain’s most fertile agricultural region.93 The northern aristocracy flourished at this time, aided by huge land grants in Andalusia, which doubled their economic power and settled them in the south.94 Especially during the conquest of the Kingdom of Granada (1482–1492), a large number of Castilians moved south, attracted by the promise of land.95 Although education and employment in the clergy drew Herrera to Andalusia, he did descend from an aristocratic Toledan ­family, and as such his migration is an example of this geographic and economic trend. For this agronomist, Andalusia was a lush garden, promising wealth to t­ hose who farmed the land. By the late fifteenth ­century Andalusia had very dif­fer­ent connotations for Jews. Several massacres occurred in Andalusian towns in 1473, and while Jews seem not to have been the specific targets of that vio­lence, they ­were certainly not spared the ire and vio­lence of hungry mobs.96 Ten years ­later ­things took a turn for the worse: Jews ­were expelled from some Andalusian communities on 1 January 1483. Following the promulgation of ­those decrees Jews had only thirty days to leave Seville, Cádiz, and Córdoba—­a third of the time ­they’d be allotted nine years ­later to leave the Spanish kingdoms. By 1485 ­there ­were no Jews in Andalucía. Most fled to Extremadura, the province bordering Portugal to the north and west of their ancestral lands.97 This was especially traumatic ­because Andalusia was celebrated by Jewish writers such as Abravanel. In his commentary on 2 Kings 25 he recalled that in antiquity when he [Titus] brought [the Jews] to the Spanish kingdom by sea in ships he had them ­settle in two regions: one is the region that is still ­today called Andalusia, in one city, which in ­those days was “a metropole in Israel” (2 Samuel 20:19), “princess among the provinces,” (Lamentations 1:1), and the Jews called it Lucena. Even ­today it’s still called this, and the gentile sages said of it that its atmosphere makes one wise, since its air is exceedingly clear and pure. Perhaps it was on account of this that the Jews called it Lucena, for it’s like Luz in the Land of Israel, designated for its prophecy.98 If at the beginning of the sixteenth ­century Herrera could associate Andalusia with agricultural splendor and aristocratic privilege, Jews such as Abravanel

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could reflect on a quarter ­century of vio­lence, enmity, and expulsion. Worse still, ­because some Jews saw Andalusia as the cradle of their illustrious Iberian culture and, as shown by Abravanel’s choice of biblical verses, compared its cities to ­those of the Land of Israel, and even Jerusalem, Jews’ disappointment must have been even more profound.99

Conclusion The commentaries of Abraham Saba, Isaac Arama, and Isaac Abravanel display a highly favorable view of shepherding and an equally disfavorable view of farming. This perspective is rooted in Scripture itself and ramifies into more detail throughout centuries of late antique and medieval elaboration. But this chapter has argued that Sephardi intellectuals in the wake of the Expulsion devoted so much attention and energy to this typology of professions not as a m ­ atter of course or exegetical duty. Rather, they w ­ ere responding to trends in the economic organ­ization of late medieval Iberia, as well as debates about the proper use of land, and the proper occupation for men. What’s more, Arama’s, Saba’s, and Abravanel’s ideas ­were sometimes informed as much by what was financially profitable as by what was morally right. Cain and Abel as typologies of farmer and pastor was not merely a leitmotif in Genesis; it was a foil for the deepest fissure in Spanish economic thought and practice of the fifteenth ­century. It is in their glorification of the pastoral life with their recurring references to several biblical heroes—­not merely Abel—­that reveals ­these men’s true motive: to participate in a profession, and by extension an economic and environmental ideology, that put amassing wealth at the center of life. They spoke of autonomy; they meant something closer to autarchy. While they did not always advocate an ecological ethic, agrarian themes ­were often at the center of their work. ­After all, it ­wasn’t only Spanish and Portuguese Catholics who ­were involved in stock-­raising and its associated economic benefits; ­there is evidence of the connection between shepherding and amassing wealth in the historical experience of Iberian Jews themselves. Merely four years before the Edict of Expulsion in 1492, Yuçef Abravanel was appointed recuadador mayor (chief collector) of the royal taxes on livestock (servicio y montazgo de los ganados). In 1488 Ferdinand and Isabella granted ­these privileges to Don Abravanel “in recognition of the many good, loyal and agreeable ser­vices that Don Yuçef Abravanel has done for us and continues to do each day, and as



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some amends, satisfaction and remuneration for them, it is our grace and ­will to do him favour, and by this pre­sent we enact that he should be our chief collector of taxes of servicio and montazgo of livestock for ­these our kingdoms and lordships, which same collectorship we wish that the said Don Yuçef Abravanel should have and hold, and one heir whom he may name and have, for all the days of their lives.”100 Saba, Arama, and especially Isaac Abravanel may have known that their coreligionist (and, in Abravanel’s case, his relative) was awarded such a prestigious and hereditary privilege. Of course Don Yuçef ­wouldn’t have the chance to nominate an heir to his office of recuadador mayor; his sons would suffer the same ignominious fate as other Jews of the Spanish kingdoms: expulsion.101 In the next chapter we ­will explore just how deeply contradictory ­these princi­ples of economic life could be. For when this group of commentators analyzed the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, they saw that tale as a moral fable about the dangers of selfishness and greed. We should not necessarily expect consistency from any thinker—­let alone ­those who wrote at such length on such a fundamental corpus of texts in truly tumultuous times. But under­lying the unstable plate tectonics of their ideas regarding how one should live is a much more stable mantle: their insistence that the land itself—as well as what p­ eople do on it and what uses they put it to—is the foundation not only of the Bible but of the world.

Chapter 5

Greed and the Land

If the ideas Abravanel, Saba, and Arama held about professions ­were contradictory, their moral stance regarding avarice and materialism was unambiguous: ­these Sephardi Bible commentators identified greed as a truly unpardonable sin. As we saw in the last chapter, Abravanel’s, Saba’s, and Arama’s glorification of the pastoral life took its language, imagery, and theological justification from Scripture. At the same time, shepherding was socially and eco­nom­ically advantageous in late medieval Spain—­for Catholics and Jews alike. Their assertions about the supremacy of shepherding ­were undergirded by an axiom: greed was the most insidious ­human motivation. Even though some of their peers and coreligionists had amassed considerable fortunes (including, conspicuously, Abravanel himself), ­these commentators directed a laser-­like focus on the pernicious quality of greed. Although acquisitiveness was most con­spic­u­ous in the cities of fifteenth-­century Iberia, its roots lay in the countryside. As with any pre­industrial economy, even ­those urbanizing and monetizing as rapidly as ­those of the Spanish kingdoms, wealth was based in land, specifically in terms of who owned it and who controlled what was produced on it.1 For fifteenth-­century Sephardic exegetes, condemnation of greed was best accomplished by criticizing land-­use practices, or at the very least drawing connections between land use and cupidity. In order to develop ­these ideas, Sephardic writers of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries had plenty of scriptural material with which to work. Characters in the Bible who displayed greediness ­were excoriated by ­these commentators as villains. The episode that most dramatically captured the attention of ­these scholars was that of Sodom and Gomorrah. Isaac Arama in par­tic­u­lar devoted considerable energy to elucidating this tale. But before we see how Arama



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infused his work with a unique blend of philosophical nuance taken from ancient Greece and moral judgment derived from traditional Jewish texts, other stories from Scripture are worthy of consideration, as they constituted a platform upon which Sephardi exegetes rehearsed their stance about the contemptibility of greed. For ­these writers, covetousness was not only the result of unrestrained mercantile activity; it was born from, and developed according to, undisciplined abuse of the land. Analy­sis of one biblical episode in par­tic­u­lar, that of manna in the Egyptian desert, allows us to see how Sephardic commentators pressed their case regarding the centrality of the earth and its produce to their sense of cupidity. In turn, their writings shed new light on late medieval conceptions of, and debates about, greed.

* * * Almost two thousand years before the Jews ­were expelled from Spain, their Israelite ancestors lived through their dramatic exodus from Egypt. One aspect of this story in par­tic­u­lar engaged the attention of ­these commentators: its moral lesson about the evils of accumulation. Shortly ­a fter the Israelites left the land of the Pha­raohs, and immediately ­a fter they witnessed the parting of the Red Sea, they complained to Moses: “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this ­whole assembly with hunger” (Exod. 16:3). They ­were camped at Elim, where gurgling brooks provided ­water and a grove of date palms satisfied their hunger. Still, they missed the refinement of Egyptian cuisine. God’s response was to give the Israelites manna. “The ­people ­shall go out and gather a day’s portion ­every day,” God was quick to stipulate. The Israelites ­were specifically instructed not to gather more than they needed and not to leave any for the next morning. But they ­didn’t listen. Exodus tells us that “they hearkened not unto Moses; but some of them left of it ­until the morning.” Divine punishment was swift: the manna “bred worms, and rotted [Exod. 16:3–20].” Moses was irate. Isaac Abravanel understood this tale as a warning about the evils of acquisitiveness. Writing ten years ­after the Expulsion, from the tranquility of the Venetian lagoon (Venice was famously tolerant of its Jews), 2 Abravanel reflected on his ­people’s expulsion from Spain and the original exodus that served as its backdrop. “The Holy One, Blessed be He, did not want the

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Israelites to conduct themselves as was their wont with material ­things, namely to accumulate them in heaps [Exod. 8:10] and conduct trade with the surplus.” For Abravanel it was ­human nature to hoard possessions and trade them. Scripture intended to curb this tendency, for God did not want the Israelites to “bequeath it [the surplus] to their ­children ­until they had a ­human society. One wealthy person gives of his bread to a poor person, and a poor person sustains himself with charity. For all of this ­will bring about the nature of superfluities and their evil, and this excess of material ­things impedes you and is a heavy burden in [the quest to] attain spiritual perfection.”3 Though “­human society” might strike us as a neutral or approbatory term, ­here it is intended in a spirit of censure. In Abravanel’s analy­sis God foresaw what the Israelites’ tendency would be: like most ­human socie­ties, theirs would save and preserve wealth in order to pass it on to f­ uture generations. Knowing that excess would only bring out the worst in ­people, God commanded Jews to gather only what they needed. And therefore when the Blessed One l­imited the Israelites’ food in the desert he allotted their supply such that they would lack nothing. Indeed, he provided them their daily share of bread [Prov. 30:8; Gen. 47:22], so that nothing would remain that they could store, trade, and use for commercial purposes, as in ­those who hoard produce, oil, and wine in order to become wealthy. In this way they could avoid the trou­ble and the incon­ve­nience that result from superfluous items. For this reason He commanded that they “gather as much of it as each of you requires to eat” [Exod. 16:16], in other words that they not store it or trade it, rather that each [eats] according to his need.4 Abravanel proposed that Scripture deemed exploitation the natu­ral consequence of ­people taking more than they needed. To focus on necessities rather than luxuries was the moral of this story. For Abravanel ­there was a clear lesson to the story: Moses told the ­Israelites not to leave manna over ­until morning so that “no one would fritter away his time in collecting superfluous ­things: God does not refrain from aid, and furthermore it is proper for man to be content in his provisions with what is necessary.”5 Wasting time ­wasn’t the only consequence of cupidity; nothing short of man’s downfall would be next. Exodus related that



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t­ here ­were worms in the manna and it stank, and Abravanel added color to this description, choosing a vivid simile: the manna would be “like living meat that had died.” In an era before refrigeration every­body knew the smell of rotting flesh; it must have pervaded the marketplaces and abattoirs of late medieval Spain.6 But the stench w ­ asn’t only an aesthetic offense: its purpose was “to intimate to him the end of any person who pursues superfluous ­things.”7 The manna that rotted was more than a compensatory punishment; it was a visceral reminder of the futility of a life devoted to accumulation. In a moralizing manner, Abravanel insisted that a life of accumulating material possessions was a life lived in vain. What’s more, it is crucial to emphasize that when Abravanel chose to castigate unbridled accumulation, he did so with reference to a biblical tale concerning the earth and a product gathered from it. The Castilian commentator might have directed his exegetical energies to a number of other scriptural episodes: that he chose to highlight the Israelites’ disregard for natu­ral, divinely mandated limits in the context of a foodstuff signals his acute awareness of the primacy of ­human engagement with the earth.

* * * The Hebrew Bible presented many tales warning readers of the allures and traps of materialism. One approach favored by the Sephardic commentators studied in this book was to focus on par­tic­u ­lar biblical personalities who could serve as heroic typologies for anti-­materialism. ­After Moses, one patriarch in par­tic­u­lar attracted the attention of exiled Sephardic Jews: Abraham. Most famously, of course, Abraham was celebrated for his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac at God’s command. Still, Abraham was a paragon of piety in other ways. ­Earlier in the book of Genesis he fought a war against the King of Sodom and prevailed. Rather than plundering the king’s possessions, as ancient Near Eastern custom permitted him, and as the king himself offered, he avoided war profiteering.8 Spanish Jewish commentators drew moral lessons from Abraham’s attitude to material wealth. Perhaps the fullest glorification of Abraham’s acts is found in the work of Isaac Arama: he devoted par­tic­u­lar attention to Abraham’s lack of greed. Near the beginning of a sermon on Abraham’s spiritual perfection (Portal #16), Arama contrasts Abraham’s quest for “essential needs” to “the choice of superfluous ­things, which capture the masses, and prevent them. . . . ​from attaining the truth.”9 ­Later in that sermon, Arama noted that Abraham “by

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heavenly decree, and by po­liti­cal law, deserved all the goods and captives” from his war against the King of Sodom. But he was resolute in his desire not to take advantage of his superior position.10 The Bible reports that Abraham said to the King of Sodom, “I have lifted up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high God . . . ​that I ­will not take even a thread or a shoelace [from you].”11 Though Abraham was entitled to what­ever he wished, he did not want to profit from the king’s defeat. As ­were his contemporaries Saba and Abravanel, Arama was keen on fleshing out the Bible’s telegraphic style. Arama put ­these words in Abraham’s mouth when he spoke to the King of Sodom: “given all the booty that you have, I ­will not take anything from you as profit from the war, apart from the cities’ food supplies, the food which the young men have eaten, for it is not proper to give that back.” In other words Abraham would not return the rations his soldiers ate and conceded to the king that he could “give as war wages what is appropriate for men who went with me.”12 His soldiers needed to be fed and compensated for their bravery, but Abraham would take nothing ­else from the vanquished. Arama saw “a wondrous, foundational lesson” in Abraham’s be­hav­ior: “he turned to a dif­fer­ent form of wealth, greater and more distinguished in degree” from mere plunder. Abraham himself told the king he is not taking booty “lest thou shouldest say, ‘I have made Abram rich.’ ” In explaining how the patriarch’s goals ­were not ­those of a conventional king, Arama injected the following psychological rationale to Abraham’s resolution: he did not want the King of Sodom to be able to say “you and I are equals in the desire for wealth, to the extent that the wealth that enriches you is the same that enriches me. For it is not true! You hoard trea­sures below and I yearn to collect them for higher purposes, as it is written ‘righ­teousness looks down from heaven [Ps. 85:12].’ ” Arama imagines the dialogue concluding with God reassuring the patriarch, saying “do not be anxious, Abram: I am your protector, and your reward is plentiful.”13 For Arama, no scriptural story better exemplified the heroism of Judaism’s founder—­a heroism on display not only in ­battle but in the strug­gle to resist material indulgences. Arama caps off his encomium to Abraham with a telling fable. He sees this biblical story as an encapsulation of the strug­gle between material and spiritual values. At the gates of hell, a “perfect man,” a descriptor that denotes a man of unimpeachable moral and intellectual qualities, greets the King of Sodom.14 In Arama’s fable the King of Sodom allegorically represents the martial man who devotes his life to ­battle in order to acquire riches. “The King of Sodom,” Arama tells us, is actually the “king appointed to the



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gates of hell.” The “perfect man” awaits with a rebuke and tells the king “you are the man who cast your soul ­behind your back and sold it for thousands of gold and silver pieces. In acquiring them your days upon your land ­shall end.” And so, the “perfect man” continues, “ ‘give me the soul that you have despised, and take for yourself the goods that you have loved for yourself.’ And this is an eternally valid claim for what remains of man, for whom the result ­will be nil.”15 To Arama, as well as to ­others in his generation, the acquisition of material possessions bore a high price, one even higher than expulsion (which several of Arama’s peers saw as punishment for Jewish cupidity). For this Spanish commentator, pursuing greed meant forfeiting one’s soul.

* * * As late medieval Sephardic commentators transferred their attention from an exposition of Genesis 14 and the ­battle of Siddim to the more famous story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah several chapters ­later, their focus changed. Two prominent features are worthy of note: a focus on the environmental backdrop to this story, and an analy­sis of “Sodom’s sin” that is highly inflected with philosophical language, in par­tic­u­lar with terms and concepts drawn from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. It is to the first feature that we now turn our attention. Isaac Abravanel had a unique view of what explained Sodomite selfishness: he argued that the greed demonstrated by the citizens of Sodom could be understood with reference to the physical situation of that city. He suggested that Sodom’s hinterland was especially fertile, and that fertility was what made the Sodomites extremely wealthy. As a consequence, they despised charity and ­were exemplars of miserliness. Abravanel invoked the view of Rabbi Menahema (who spoke in the name of Rav Bibi) in Genesis Rabbah, who said: “the men of Sodom thus ordained amongst themselves: we ­will lie with any stranger who comes ­here, and ­we’ll take his money from him.”16 Abravanel then explained that “their land was good and spacious [Exod. 3:8], fecund like the garden of God [Gen. 13:10], nothing is lacking it in [Prov. 31:11]. Accordingly, many poor p­ eople would come ­there, and they [Sodomites] loathed charity. Therefore amongst themselves they made a pact to prohibit travelers among them, such that no one would come to their land.”17 In Abravanel’s summary, the Jewish sages thought that the Sodomites committed many sins: “all negative attributes ­were to be found among them.” However,

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Abravanel stated, “their fate was fixed by that par­tic­u­lar sin: they did not strengthen the hand of the poor and impoverished” (Ezek. 16:49). “While the rest of the nations in their land w ­ ere charitable and honored the code of conduct to the indigent, the men of Sodom ­were exceedingly evil and sinful against the Lord by preventing any act of charity on behalf of the poor and needy.”18 Although it was hardly original for the Castilian commentator to understand Sodom’s sin as one of greed rather than sexual vio­lence directed at non-­resident men, Abravanel’s emphasis on the fertility of Sodom’s geo­ graph­i­cal setting was unique.19 It is fitting with the overall approach of early sixteenth-­century Sephardic commentaries on Genesis that he placed the land at the center of his analy­sis. Given his familiarity with late medieval Iberian land use, it is perhaps not surprising that Abravanel was so sensitive to the interactions of cities with their hinterlands, as well as the dependence of urban centers on the land that supports them.20 In his commentary on 1 Kings 5, for example, and its details about the provisioning of Solomon’s ­house­hold, he gave equivalents for biblical units of mea­sure­ment in Castilian, Portuguese, and Neapolitan units. 21 What is more surprising is the consistency with which Abravanel evoked this sort of explanation and the tenacity with which he deployed it. For example, Abravanel commented at length on Abram’s separation from Lot in Genesis 13. Centuries of commentators had discussed the concerns about sufficient pasturage that divided the two men and led them in their own directions.22 As Abraham Saba put it, “the well-­k nown, ­simple meaning [of the text] is that they ­were battling over pasture land.”23 But Abravanel was both more prolix and more insistent about the centrality of land use to this key divergence of destiny in the biblical narrative. Expounding upon the phrase “And the land was not able to bear them” (Gen. 13:6), the Portuguese sage remarked that both Abram and Lot “needed ‘broad pastures’ [Isa. 30:23] and spacious pasture for their herds, and that land could not sustain much beyond what the men of the land had seized for their ­cattle, and this is why the two of them could not dwell together.” The strug­gle between Abram’s and Lot’s men was expanded into an imaginary dialogue in which each said to the other, “ ‘ The place is too narrow for me; make room for me to ­settle’ [Isa. 49:20]. And since Abraham’s flocks ­were in good pasture Lot’s shepherds wanted to lead their ­cattle ­there, and this is the reason for their dispute.”24 So it was that Abram remained in Canaan, while Lot ventured east to the Jordan valley.



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The consequence of Lot’s eastward journey was profound: it led him to Sodom. To Abravanel’s mind, the Jordan plain, where Lot ventured, was “like the Garden of the Lord [Gen. 13:10], which is the Garden of Eden, ­because rivers watered it. Like Egypt, where the Nile ­waters the land all year round, and where vegetation is never lacking.” Abram’s nephew chose an extremely fertile destination for his ­cattle, and when Lot “journeyed eastward” (v. 11) this signified to Abravanel that he left ­behind “the former association he had known with Abraham” and abandoned “the originator of the world, as the sages of blessed memory say.”25 Arama also emphasized the association Lot once enjoyed with Abraham, ­going so far as to say that the two men ­were “partnered in t­ hese possessions,” namely their herds.26 As Arama saw it, the final separation between Abram and Lot was about conflicting worldviews: Lot strove for “the shame of ­things of this world” and Abraham pursued the “life of the highest world,” namely the world to come.27 Lot’s departure, significant to Abravanel and Saba in terms of geography and theology, had another implication: urbanization. Given how richly watered the Jordan plain was, the exegete ­imagined that ­there ­were plenty of settlements ­there already. “One day ­here, one day ­there,” is how Abravanel depicted Lot’s wanderings.28 The Spanish commentator expostulated, “In this manner, one was separated from his kinsman. I mean to say that the love between Abram and Lot was strong, as if they ­were ­brothers. And while Abram remained in the land of Canaan—­for his portion was ­there, in the land God gave him—­Lot resided in the cities of the plain, and ‘moved his tent as far as Sodom’ [v. 12]. For even though the Sodomites ­were wicked and sinful men, Lot did not refrain from associating with them.”29 A choice as ­simple as greener pasturage had dire consequences: Lot’s residence in a notoriously corrupt city. Abravanel ­wasn’t alone among the Sephardic exegetes of his generation in imagining Abram’s strug­gle with Lot in such terms. Abraham Saba also cast the episode in moral terms and saw a clear connection between landscape and morality. “And therefore ‘Lot lifted up his eye’ [Gen. 13:10],” Saba remarked, “for he followed his visual senses, the stubbornness of his heart, and [his] desires.” According to Saba Lot did this ­because “the land was rich, and he did not remember the patriarchal covenant, and the righ­teousness of Abraham.”30 Saba went so far as to imagine that it was Lot’s evil inclination that took over and effectively forced him to make the morally dubious choice of venturing into the Jordan plain: “And when the [evil] inclination saw that he had no place ­there, ‘he lifted up his eyes’31 and proceeded to seek evil men

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who follow their desires by the ‘watering troughs’ [Gen. 30:38] and ‘by the still ­waters’ [Ps. 23:2], and streams of Eden. And this is the Jordan plain, ‘all of it well-­watered’ [Gen. 13:10], and ­there dwell evil and sinful men [Gen. 13:13], the Sodomites, the kinsmen of Lot, whose region is called sin, as it is written ‘sin crouches at the door’ [Gen. 4:7].”32 ­W hether Lot himself was responsible, or his homunculus-­like evil inclination, Saba’s connection of fertile land to moral temptation was of a piece with Abravanel’s exegetical approach to this story. Saba believed Lot’s iniquity was so power­f ul as to have caused the plague that sent Abraham into Egypt in the first place: the famine in Canaan was “on account of Lot, who was traveling with Abraham, and who was completely wicked—he only learned a minuscule amount [Isa. 16:14] from Abraham.”33 Saba’s gloss constitutes another perceived link between moral turpitude and environmental degradation, in this case a causative one. One final feature is discernible in ­these commentaries regarding Lot’s dispute with Abram: an attentiveness to the material circumstances of their feud. The overwhelming emphasis, as we have seen, was on the land itself and its inability to support the flocks of both Abraham and Lot. But ­these Sephardi commentators w ­ ere sensitive to yet another feature of life in rural settings: war. Eleazar Gutwirth has shown that what emerges from an analy­ sis of Isaac Caro’s commentaries is the profile of a man quite familiar with the war-­torn Castile of the 1470s and 1480s.34 Isaac Arama and Abraham Saba must have also known something about the perils of war at this time. Each underscored another issue Abraham and Lot ­were wary to confront: the bellicosity of the Land of Canaan at that time. Saba adds to the terse dialogue between the two men as reported in Genesis 13 and imagines that “therefore Abraham said to him ‘you know that the Canaanite and the Perizzite continually fight in the land, and this conflict between my shepherds and your shepherds is untimely.’ And this is [what is meant by] ‘­there was a conflict between the shepherds’ [Gen. 13:7], at the time that the Canaanite was at large on the land.”35 Similarly, Arama noted that God wanted to “spread his shelter of peace” over Abraham and protect him from “the war that was raging ­there at that time.”36 An emphasis on the centrality of land to this story meant many ­things to this group: the dangers of war among them. As ­we’ve seen throughout this book, the work of Catholic exegetes can serve as both complement and contrast to the ideas of Abravanel, Saba, and Arama. Alfonso Tostado’s work is especially relevant to the subject of greed and pastoral life. Like his Jewish peers, Tostado paid par­tic­u­lar attention to



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Genesis 13 and its narrative concerning strug­gles between competing pastors. Tostado was keenly aware of the centrality of shepherding in the Bible: “since Abraham was wealthy in silver and gold, he had a large ­family, and many ­cattle and flocks, for the main occupation of the ancients, and especially the patriarchs, was pasturing sheep.”37 “For Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” Tostado went on, “­were wholly shepherds: their entire occupation was pasturing, and all of their wealth was in flocks.”38 To underscore the importance of wealth based in livestock, the Bishop of Ávila noted that although Abraham possessed bountiful silver and gold, the dispute between him and Lot was principally about herds, not precious metals: “the disagreement was on account of the ­great number of livestock, not on account of gold, silver, or other ­house­hold goods.”39 An emphasis on the centrality of shepherding to Genesis 13 connects Tostado’s work to that of Jewish exegetes a generation ­later. Also, like his Jewish peers, Tostado paid close attention to why “the earth could not bear” (Gen. 13:6) both Abraham’s and Lot’s flocks. “Since Abraham had many flocks,” Tostado remarked, “and Lot, too, they could not live together, for they needed lots of land, and much pasturage for their flocks.”40 Tostado’s analy­sis is even more detailed and perspicacious regarding ­water rights. “The dispute among the shepherds concerned ­water. Since they argued about pasturage, they argued especially about ­water. For this becomes a m ­ atter of greater contention when too much [­c attle] is held, and one needs more ­water than what exists. ­Water is exceedingly impor­tant to shepherds, and in Canaan it’s easier to find grass than ­water.” Geography mattered: Tostado observed that “in the deserts of Arabia, and in the land of Midian, and in the region of Mesopotamia ­there are few rivers, and the land is arid. As such both men and livestock make use of well ­water, and ­there are wells in the fields, from which they draw ­water, and it is released into ditches in a place where the herds drink.”41 ­Here Tostado displays some knowledge of irrigation practices in the ancient ­Middle East—­which may reveal more about con­temporary practices in the semi-­a rid environment of Castile and Aragon.42 The high value of ­water imposed certain social and procedural norms: “­water is so rare that it is zealously guarded,” and “the wells are closed up tightly, so that no given person can draw from it when he wishes. All pastors gather around wells that yield ­water which the flocks drink, lest [other pastors] commit fraud.”43 In t­ hese passages at least, Tostado was as sensitive to the physical context of Genesis as Abravanel, Saba, and Arama.

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The sharpest difference between Tostado’s interpretation of Genesis 13 and that of his Jewish contemporaries is the degree of his infatuation with shepherding. Where Abravanel extolled the virtues of the pastoral life and implied that all Jews might make a living owning and managing flocks, Tostado had a much more moderate view: he believed that diversification of ­labor was key to a functioning society and not every­one could pasture flocks of animals. It was, in a word, fantasy to imagine other­w ise. Shepherding is only pos­si­ble, Tostado insists, “in places where all professions and ser­vices exist which are necessary for life, and for living well in community. But this is not the case where every­one is a shepherd, and therefore not all Israelites can be shepherds—­only a very small number can be. ­Others must practice a variety of professions and care for a number of affairs that are necessary for life, and which good living requires.”44 He goes on to say that living in tabernacles and tents is impractical: at any given time ­there are few shepherds who are truly itinerant.45 The Jewish patriarchs, Tostado notes, could devote themselves to this lifestyle ­because they lived in a society with a diversified occupational structure: “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ­were dif­fer­ent from other Israelites. They ­were able to be entirely shepherds. . . . ​They lived among the Canaanites, and so could devote themselves completely to the pastoral life, for what­ever they lacked for life, or for living well, they could get from ­others.”46 This realistic portrait of the pastoral life functions as a counterpoint to Abravanel’s ideas and may have driven the Jewish exegete to praise pastoral life in even more rhapsodic tones.

* * * If Abravanel’s stress on the significance of land to this story was par­tic­u­lar to late medieval Spanish exegesis (among both Jews and Catholics), a philosophically rigorous examination of Sodomite ethics seems to be a hallmark of Hebrew writings from this time and place. Isaac Arama devoted special attention to this issue and cast his observations in the form of a miniature philosophical treatise.47 Before we explore how Arama reconciled Aristotelian and rabbinic ethics, we must pause and assess the degree to which Aristotle was known to fifteenth-­century Hebrew writers, especially in Iberia. Aristotle had long been familiar to medieval Jewish intellectuals.48 Beginning in the ninth ­century for Jews living in the Islamicate world, Aristotelian (and pseudo-­Aristotelian) works ­were studied in Arabic translations.49 Several centuries l­ater, Jews in Christendom depended upon



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Hebrew translations for their access to Aristotelian texts. By the fifteenth ­century when Arama received his education, no fewer than four prominent Iberian Jews produced commentaries on Aristotelian works that ­were widely read: Abraham ben Shem Tov Bibago, Isaac ben Shem Tov Ibn Shem Tov, Joseph Albo, and Simeon ben Ẓemaḥ Duran.50 ­These scholars, and o­ thers who ­were less well-­k nown, ­were especially interested in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.51 Around the time of the Expulsion, engagement with Aristotle accelerated. As Moshe Idel has argued, the Expulsion is best understood as a crisis that saved Sephardic Jewry from cultural stagnation.52 And as Hava Tirosh-­Samuelson has proven, one manifestation of that renewed cultural energy was a veritable explosion of interest in ancient Greek philosophy in general and Aristotelian works in par­tic­u­lar.53 In the fifteenth ­century, Hebrew scholarship on Aristotle had shifted in an impor­tant way: ­there was growing dissatisfaction with ­earlier medieval works that had been too dependent on Averroes’s interpretations of Aristotle. Leading figures in Iberia, and elsewhere in the Mediterranean, devised a new strategy: they aligned their work with con­temporary Christian Scholastic thinkers, relied less upon Averroes as an intermediary, and avidly studied Latin translations of Aristotle’s works. The result, according to Mauro Zonta, was a more direct engagement with the famous phi­los­o­pher’s works.54 Strong evidence of that engagement can be found in Arama’s evaluation of Sodomite practices in the light of Aristotelian categories. At the outset of the twentieth chapter of ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, he asked why the doctrine of “what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours” should be considered a “Sodomite philosophy.” ­Here Arama alludes to a well-­k nown passage from Pirqe ’avot that contains four dif­fer­ent statements regarding possessiveness: “­There are four types among men: he that says, ‘what is mine is mine and what is yours is yours’—­this is the common type, and some say that this is the type of Sodom; [he that says,] ‘what is mine is yours and what is yours is mine’—he is an ignorant man;’ [he that says,] ‘what is mine is yours and what is yours is yours’—he is a saintly man; [and he that says,] ‘what is yours is mine, and what is mine is mine own’—he is a wicked man.”55 ­After all, the fourth category—­the person who says “what is yours is mine, and what is mine is mine own”—­would appear to be more morally reprehensible than one who re­spects another’s property. Arama answered this question and explained why the doctrine of “what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours” should be considered a “Sodomite philosophy” by referring to another biblical text from the book of Ezekiel: “this was the iniquity of

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thy ­sister Sodom: pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her ­daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”56 Though this verse provided Arama with scriptural legitimacy demonizing miserliness, it could not fully solve a deeper philosophical prob­ lem: ­after all, it was strange to label adherents of “the ­middle, praiseworthy way” as “sinners liable to the death penalty.” As Aristotle taught in Book Four of his Nicomachean Ethics, the golden mean is preferable to all other approaches and is, in Arama’s judgment, “without a doubt reasonable.”57 How, then, could one say that a person who adheres to “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours” follows the “way of Sodom”?58 The answer is that such a “­middle way” might obviate covetousness, but it encourages stinginess and implies a lack of hospitality. Arama reminds his readers that for the Sodomites their “entire goal is to guard their wealth, with the object of preservation. For this purpose they chose that ­middle way of ‘what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours’ and for this reason we say that the ­middle way is that of Sodom.” Furthermore, “this is not true only as a custom, but as a law and a rule.” This assumption in Sodomite culture “obligates them to go to the extreme in all paths of wickedness and vio­lence.” Arama juxtaposes this to Judaism. “Know that our perfect Torah,” Arama proudly states, “differs from this notion and commands charity and awards and loans” to such an extent that one should consider that “every­thing we have is of the nature of a partnership with our fellow man, our neighbors, and familiar friends.”59 To Arama’s mind, Judaism’s ethic of generosity is more demanding than that of Aristotle: one who hoards what he considers his own while leaving his neighbor in peace may walk along a “­middle way” according to Aristotelian philosophy; but, at least to this Spanish exile, such a person could be labeled a Sodomite. The “essence” of the Sodomites’ sin, we are told, is “monetary, for that is what they truly want,” since “all of their moral corruption concerns wealth.”60 Arama announces that the consequence of the Sodomites’ selfishness is that “the earth is full of vio­lence as it was at the time of the flood. As such they received their punishment.” That punishment, of course, was to be incinerated by fire and brimstone.61 Though we do not know the precise date or location of Arama’s composition of ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, Arama may have written ­these words ­after the Expulsion. Following an already-­established tradition in Hispano-­Jewish culture, Arama may have attributed the trauma of the Expulsion to the greed of Iberian Jews. If he did wish to make that association implicit in his sermon, or its written version, Arama—­like other



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Spanish Jews writing in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries—­was an heir to a dynamic tradition of criticizing the social effects of wealth accumulation, one with plenty of pre­ce­dent in their native Iberia. Even in his own generation, his peers had been explicit about the relationship between greed and misfortune, including expulsion. Abraham Saba explained “the cause for the Expulsion” and inveighed against “the arrogance and presumptuousness that existed in Israel, as though they ­were living in their homeland, which caused this [the Expulsion].” Such arrogance, Saba thought, meant that the Jews “­were building ruins for themselves [Job 3:14].” ­Those ruins ­were deceptive; they ­were not crumbling edifices. They took the form of “houses paneled with cedar and ‘gallant barques’ [Isa. 2:16], like kings’ palaces, for the sake of which they bowed down and worshipped idolatry.”62 Saba’s insistence that the Jews brought expulsion and exile upon themselves as a result of their vanity and by virtue of their ostentatious dwellings echoed ­earlier responses to other tragedies that befell Iberian Jewry. A c­ entury before their final Expulsion in 1492, Jews suffered violent persecutions and forced conversions ­after a series of riots throughout Castile in 1391. Saba’s criticism of luxurious ­houses is reminiscent of another Jew who wrote three-­ quarters of a c­ entury before: Solomon Alami. Alami penned a lapidary letter to Spain’s Jews in 1414 lambasting them for their greed and imploring them to embrace a life of spiritual rather than physical pleasures. “­Those who sat in their paneled ­houses,” Alami moaned, “­were expelled from pleasant palaces. And we ­were expelled ­because we built wide ­houses with spacious, beautiful rooms in our exile.”63 The connection between gaudy real estate and expulsion was a Spanish Jewish topos. The blame for the demise of Spanish Jewry did not lie only with builders of flashy palaces.64 The courtier class—­those who, like Abravanel, advised kings and queens—­was especially guilty. “The ­g reat ones of the community,” Alami observed, “who stood before kings in their courts and their ­castles . . . ​became arrogant. They grew proud,” and this led to their “destruction.” “Every­one,” Alami insisted, “has corrupted his way upon the earth pursuing domination.”65 Jews in his time, apparently, ­were known as cheaters: “we dealt with them [Christians] in fraud and deceit . . . ​to the point that they despise us and hold us to be thieves and cheaters . . . ​and ­every work that is abhorred and contemptible they call a ‘Jewish work.’ ”66 A ­century ­later Sephardic Jews ­were still trying to explain why their sojourn in Iberia had come to such a sudden and ignominious end. From the safety of the Ottoman

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Empire, ­toward the ­middle of the sixteenth ­century, the historian and medical doctor Solomon Ibn Verga wrote a dialogue. In it he has a non-­Jewish ruler remark of the Jews that “their greatness and their elevation to office was the reason for their fall.” “­Every Jew,” he went on, “desires power and po­liti­cal office, to make himself lord over another [person].” The Jews ­were guilty, above all ­else, of “pride.”67 In the immediate aftermath of the Expulsion, Saba, Arama, and Abravanel displayed a heightened sensitivity to the plight of the poor. For example, Abravanel’s commentary on the Passover Haggadah, written in Monopoli in 1494, features numerous expositions of how the Passover ritual instills and embodies concern for the impoverished.68 He observes that the reason matzah is called the “bread of affliction” (laḥma anya) is ­because, due to its hard and dense composition, a small quantity suffices to satiate hunger by expanding in the stomach. “This is ideal for workers,” Abravanel claimed, “who need to feel full and cannot worry about the pangs of privation.”69 A combination of vitriol ­toward greediness and sensitivity to the unfortunate is con­spic­u­ous in the works of this generation of Spanish Jews—­not only in their commentaries on the story of Sodom and Gomorrah but in even more widely circulated compositions, such as clarifications of key Jewish rituals, namely the Passover seder.70

* * * To understand Saba’s, Abravanel’s, and Arama’s criticism of greed we must place their work in yet another context, in addition to concern for landscape and Aristotelian ethics. Their lifetimes witnessed the development of a European-­wide humanist invective against money and private property. ­These Jewish commentators ­were not the only objectors to the moral and social implications of incipient capitalism in late fifteenth-­ and early sixteenth-­ century western Eu­rope. In the early sixteenth ­century, as Abravanel and Saba ­were writing their commentaries, figures such as Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More decried urbanization and attendant materialism in the Catholic world. In certain re­spects, their ideas drew upon ­earlier humanist works by pre­de­ces­sors such as Alberto Mussato, Francesco Petrarch, and Poggio Bracciolini. Additionally, strengthening notions of Franciscan piety, which ­were pervasive across western Eu­rope, reveal sharply critical ideas concerning wealth and greed.71



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To be wealthy in the ­later ­Middle Ages did not necessarily mean having money; it meant possessing “land, ­people and power,” in the words of a distinguished medievalist.72 If land could be hidden from plain sight, owner­ ship of other ­humans and the display of po­liti­cal or other power ­were far more con­spic­u­ous. Such conspicuousness did not sit easily with Eu­ro­pe­ans of this period, and Spaniards ­were no exception. Sumptuary laws from the Spanish kingdoms at this time invoked a par­tic­u­lar national ideal: that Spaniards ­were frugal and hardy. This ideal was drawn in contrast to the supposed luxury that typified “the Moorish national ­enemy.”73 Throughout the ­Middle Ages, Spanish legislators and intellectuals sketched and celebrated a national self-­portrait based not only on religious difference but on prudence and minimalism, which they contrasted to Muslim prodigality and excess. More generally, as we shift our vision from the Spanish to the Eu­ro­pean context, money was understood in terms of religion, not on its own. As Anita Guerreau-­Jalabert has argued, t­ here was no notion of “economy” at this time as distinct from faith. She notes that in this period charity is the most impor­tant use to which money can be put; she not only calls caritas Christian but dubs it the “supreme social value in the west.” 74 In the Christian traditions that dominated western Eu­rope, and reigned supreme in the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella, riches ­were considered an impediment to salvation.75 One of the most impor­tant demonstrations of how closely aligned religious and monetary considerations could be was in a social movement of the ­later ­Middle Ages: Franciscan voluntary piety, which was far from a fringe faction. ­These ideas spread far beyond learned treatises and church documents into popu­lar literary works such as Dante’s Divine Comedy. In the fifteenth canto of Paradiso, Cacciaguida, an ancestor of Dante, praises medieval Florentines for their thrift, in juxtaposition to the acquisitive spirit and con­spic­u­ous consumption of ­later times.76 Though its origins date to the lifetime of St. Francis of Assisi and his followers, the influence of Franciscan beliefs about voluntary poverty are manifest even in sixteenth-­century trends such as Erasmus’s conception of the true philosophia Christi.77 As early as the eleventh ­century, avarice emerged as its own vice; previously it had been understood as a subcategory of pride.78 Peter Damian wrote that “avarice is the root of all evil,” and ­later, ­toward the end of the twelfth ­century, Alan of Lille remarked that “avarice weakens friendship, generates hatred, breeds anger, plants wars, nourishes controversies, and ruptures the bonds of ­children to their parents.”79 This medieval emphasis on the destructive

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quality of greed marked a new development: in late antiquity many bishops, such as Augustine, never considered poverty an aspiration and did not dissuade Christians from amassing fortunes—as long as their intentions ­were pure.80 However, negative views of greed certainly had pre­ce­dent in classical antiquity: Cicero had claimed that avarice is the “main vice from which all crimes and misdeeds derive.”81 ­These ideas w ­ ere eventually enshrined in Canon Law, which disapproved of an entire class of professionals: merchants. “A merchant,” the Corpus Juris Canonici claimed, “is rarely or never able to please God.”82 Merchants ­were guilty of the pursuit of luxury, but they ­weren’t the only ones. Figures at Eu­ro­pean courts ­were routinely condemned for their con­ spic­u­ous consumption, and in numerous texts lust was associated with luxury and seen as a twin vice.83 Courtiers spent plenty of time in cities, too. As ­we’ve seen already, cities ­were sharply criticized by a variety of intellectuals, including the Sephardic commentators studied in this book. Courts and cities, two of the premodern Eu­ro­pean settings that w ­ ere regularly assailed for abetting unsavory moral be­hav­ior, ­were places Isaac Abravanel knew very well, as he spent the last nine years of his Spanish sojourn in ser­vice of Ferdinand and Isabella. As Jacques Le Goff has shown, concerns about luxuria arose at precisely the time when the feudal aristocracy began to lose all real contact with the land and ­were transformed into “a parasitic rentier class” living off monetary rents, doomed to idleness.84 Alienation from the land, ongoing throughout the ­later ­Middle Ages, may have provided as impor­tant an impetus to Abravanel’s, Saba’s, and Arama’s idealization of rustic living as did any firsthand observation of agricultural or pastoral pursuits. This was hardly an Iberian phenomenon; it was pan-­ European. In ­England, as Keith Thomas has argued, the fifteenth ­century “witnessed a growth in the aristocratic consumption of silks, furs, jewels, bed hangings, and silver plate, rapid changes of fashion in dress and adornment, and a ­g reat expansion of expenditure by tradesmen and peasantry on clothes, food, and drink, tools, furniture, and ­house­hold equipment.”85 That pro­cess was in train ­earlier in the Spanish kingdoms and was likely even more manifest.86 ­A fter Franciscan ideas about voluntary poverty, humanist arguments about the evils of money constitute another potential influence on early sixteenth-­century Sephardic intellectuals.87 While scholars have proved that Abravanel was immersed in humanist traditions, no expert on Jews in this period has yet examined the pos­si­ble relevance of humanist views regarding



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money—­a contentious issue in the rapidly urbanizing Eu­ro­pean economy of this time.88 Living too comfortably, some writers suggested, had an enervating effect.89 However, humanist authors had to contend with a power­f ul trend in ancient philosophy: Aristotle (and his medieval expositor Aquinas) had described riches as “instruments of virtue.”90 In contrast, other classical authorities read and beloved by Re­nais­sance humanists had a much more skeptical view of money. Sallust remarked that “­great riches, as well as bodily strength and all other gifts of that kind, soon pass away, but the splendid achievements of the intellect, like the soul, are everlasting.”91 Similarly, he observed that “the goods of the body and of fortune have an end as well as a beginning, and they all rise and fall, wax and wane; but the mind, incorruptible, eternal, ruler of mankind, animates and controls all ­things, yet is itself not controlled.”92 Like Sallust, Cicero claimed that “­there is nothing so characteristic of narrowness and smallness of soul as the love of riches, and ­there is nothing more honorable and noble than to be indifferent to money if one does not possess it, and to devote it to beneficence and generosity if one does possess it.”93 In sum, classical antiquity had bequeathed a complicated legacy regarding wealth to humanists of the f­ourteenth and fifteenth centuries.94 Over a generation ago Hans Baron assigned the label “civic humanism” to fourteenth-­century Italian efforts to reconcile Franciscan ideas of voluntary piety with a new urban, mercantile real­ity in central and northern Italian cities.95 Of all fourteenth-­century humanists, Francesco Petrarch propounded the most detailed views regarding the evils of money. “Once riches are admitted and prized,” he warned, “every­thing in our existence becomes uncertain, and true happiness is no longer pos­si­ble.”96 “If you wish to be healthy,” Petrarch advised, “live like someone who is poor . . . ​if you wish to chase away gout, chase away sumptuousness; if you wish to remove evil, drive away wealth!”97 Against Baron, Quentin Skinner understands distaste for wealth as the expression of Stoic rather than Franciscan beliefs. As early as the late thirteenth ­century, Skinner demonstrated, Dino Compagni, Albertino Mussato, and Brunetto Latini wrote about the destructive effects of wealth on medieval Italian communes.98 ­These writers based their arguments on Sallust’s explanation of the collapse of the Roman Empire.99 What­ever the argument for the true origin of humanist ideas regarding wealth, it is undeniable that by the fifteenth ­century humanist invectives against the acquisition of money for its own sake had reached a fever pitch. One good example is Poggio Bracciolini’s dialogue De avaritia (On Avarice).100

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Poggio has the interlocutor Bartolomeo da Montepulciano argue that greed impedes po­liti­cal ser­vices and care of ­others. “This vice,” da Montepulciano suggests, “is repugnant and contrary to nature, whose laws tell us to put the common welfare before our own, so that we may bring help to as many ­people as pos­si­ble.”101 ­Later, ­after a long series of examples about nature’s bounty and munificence, we read that “avarice is entirely opposed to and quite removed from nature. Nature gives and bestows; avarice robs and steals. Nature donates freely and open-­handedly; avarice snatches away. Nature feeds us; avarice destroys our food. Nature fills every­thing with her gifts; avarice empties by robbing, so that at times it can be rightly said that every­thing but avarice operates according to nature.”102 ­There is no direct evidence that Abravanel or his peers read or knew Poggio’s work, but the Tuscan humanist’s suggestion that money is contrary to nature strikes a common chord with Sephardi notions that excess was “artificial,” and minimalism “natu­ ral.”103 This same interlocutor, Andrea of Constantinople, claims that all other vices “take stimulus and incitement from outside ­causes”: lust and plea­ sure arise from delights of the senses; anger comes from a desire for revenge; hatred as a result of injuries. But avarice “has no other stimulus than evil itself.”104 The fourth-­century Church ­Father John Chrysostom is quoted in Poggio’s dialogue as saying “­those who love money repudiate nature itself, and they do not know any kind of relationship. They do not observe customs. They do not re­spect age. The miser hates every­one, and himself most of all, not just for having lost his soul, but for bringing infinite evils and afflictions down on his head.”105 It was a sentiment that would have resonated with Abravanel and his peers. Some humanist compositions go beyond claims that wealth and its pursuit are contra naturam; they verge on outright communistic ideas about ideal social arrangements. For example, the Florentine scholar Marsilio ­Ficino wrote to Angelo Poliziano: “God wished the w ­ ater to be common to all aquatic creatures and the earth to be common to all terrestrial beings. Man alone, unhappy soul, separated what God had joined together. He contracted to a narrow compass his overlordship which by nature was spread far and wide. He introduced into the world mine and thine, the beginning of all dissension and wickedness.”106 In another letter to Pietro del Nero, Ficino opined that “no one in this city ­ought to say ‘this is mine and that is yours.’ Indeed, every­thing in this universe is, in a certain manner, communal. He would say ‘this and that is mine’ not as a way of indicating true possession, but out of affection and concern [for the ­thing].”107 Though Fi-



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cino ­stopped short of outright advocacy of communal property (as is clear from his use of the adverb quodammodo, “in a certain manner”), his statement is a remarkable example of communal tendencies in fifteenth-­century Florentine humanism. Perhaps the most obvious expression of a communistic ideology in the Re­nais­sance was articulated by Ficino’s younger En­glish con­temporary Thomas More.108 In his Utopia More writes, “When I consider all t­ hese ­things, I become more sympathetic to Plato, and won­der the less that he refused to make any laws for ­people who rejected laws requiring all goods to be shared equally by all. Wisest of men, he saw easily that the one and only path to the public welfare lies through equal allocation of goods.”109 More wrote extensively about scorn for wealth among Utopians: “while they eat from earthenware dishes and drink from glass cups, finely made but inexpensive, their chamber pots and all their humblest vessels, for use in the common halls and even in private homes, are made of gold and silver.”110 In another well-­k nown passage More predicts of the Utopians that “at the very moment when money dis­appeared, so would fear, anxiety, worry, toil, and sleepless nights.”111 Although they could not have met (More never left ­England, and Arama never ventured north of the Pyrenees), the Sephardic preacher would have likely agreed with his En­glish con­temporary. Arama’s criticisms of the wealthy ­were trenchant and full-­throated. He claimed that the essence of what the Torah describes as worshipping other Gods is best understood as bowing down before the idols of money. For the Spanish rabbi idolators focus on “acquiring money and prosperity in material goods: ­these are the mighty Gods which they rely on, and in whom they place their faith. By sanctifying their names [the names of t­ hese false Gods] they deny God above, and forsake His Torah . . . ​this is the essence and core of idolatry.”112 Arama’s determination to villainize money and ­those who pursue it led him to an extremely creative interpretation of one sage’s comment that “prophecy dwells only in the wise, mighty and wealthy.”113 In its elevation of wealth to a prerequisite for prophecy, such an assertion posed deep prob­lems for all the biblical scholars we have been considering, not least Arama. He declared that “divine ­will only decides to cause the prophetic spirit to dwell in he who is zealous and hasty and quick to actualize, ­whether with his words, or his physical strength.” “True ser­v ice of the divine,” he went on to say, “ ‘with his property’ means poverty, charity, and being content with ­little.”114 By inverting the logic of a talmudic dictum, Arama showed just how willing he

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was to contort a tannaitic statement in order to force it into his mold of Jewish ethics. To his mind, wealth was unnatural and inimical to righ­teousness: he mused that if money ­were truly such a ­great necessity for sustaining man’s life God would have tied “a purse of golden dinars to a newborn’s neck.”115

Conclusion For Arama, as for Abravanel and Saba, wealth was inimical to a system of ethics based on the Torah. Spanish Jewish writers of the generation of the Expulsion w ­ ere not unique in their insistence that the pursuit of money drives one away from the pursuit of righ­teousness.116 What was unique about their approach was their belief that greed was born from an unrestrained relationship to the land. Their ethics are grounded, figuratively and literally, in the earth. Plenty of polemic against wealth acquisition in the early modern period drew its heat from the epoch’s increasingly monetary economy.117 Abravanel, Saba, and Arama inveighed against greed in a dif­fer­ent way: by emphasizing the primacy of landed concerns. They lived during a time when Spain was undergoing significant changes, many of which resulted in the degradation of the land: the conversion of large swaths of forest and arable land into pasture, and the growth of cities. Just as Saba understood a set of ecological and social laws as the essence of the Torah, Arama and his peers interpreted some of the Pentateuch’s most central stories about the evils of wealth as evidence that although riches may manifest as cedar-­paneled homes and stacks of coins minted from precious metals, wealth always comes back to the land.

 Epilogue

In 1504 a ­bitter controversy erupted among the Jews of Ottoman Safed concerning the observation of the Sabbatical and Jubilee. In fact, the controversy spread far beyond Ottoman Palestine and engaged the attention of l­egal scholars as far away as Egypt and Salonica. The Salonican Rabbi Levi ibn Habib wrote a lengthy epistle to the rabbinic leadership in Jerusalem concerning the upcoming Sabbatical and Jubilee. In his letter he expressed concerns regarding the livelihoods of Iberian Jewish emigrants to Palestine: “how, in this evil time, w ­ ill they be able to earn a living” a­ fter such a cessation from agricultural work?1 As Rabbi Moses ben Joseph di Trani put it in a l­ater responsum, the autochthonous Palestinian Jewish communities before the Expulsion had not been punctilious in their observance of ­these commandments.2 Now, with the influx of learned Iberian Jews, halakhic authorities wished to be precise about the calculation of the Sabbatical and Jubilee and to honor the related economic restrictions. The authorities in Jerusalem ­were divided: one faction agreed that 1504 was the correct year; another group demurred and proposed the ­legal stringency of observing two Sabbatical years consecutively.3 ­Either way, observation of the Sabbatical and Jubilee restrictions was incumbent that year upon Jews residing in Ottoman Palestine. A group of scholars in Safed, irritated that the Jerusalem authorities had not consulted them, wrote a ­bitter letter of complaint. Of the eigh­ teen signatories, twelve hailed from Spain or Portugal.4 Though we have no rec­ord of how Jews living in the biblical Land of Israel observed the Sabbatical or Jubilee laws at that time, the letter leaves no doubt that they took the ­matter quite seriously.5 The authors of this epistle exclaimed “it is a Sabbatical year ‘throughout all the land that we hold’ [Lev. 25:24]. May redemption be imminent to the residents, poor and needy [Isa. 14:30], to natives and settlers.”6 The deliberation of religious law largely operates in­de­pen­dently from scriptural interpretation. Still, at the end of the fifteenth ­century and the beginning of the sixteenth the exegetical trend that emphasized land as

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central to the Bible was consonant with ­legal discussions on a topic with direct bearing on the lives and livelihoods of entire Jewish communities. As we have seen, Sephardi exegetes of the generation of the Expulsion lavished a lot of attention on the physical environment in which scriptural narratives unfolded. Landed concerns w ­ ere central to writers of that generation and provenance. They ­were, simply put, much more aware of the primacy of land, and the contours of state and private alteration of it, than many modern thinkers are. However, this focused attention on agricultural, pastoral, and ecological topics was not an end in itself; it was a means to amplify what they considered larger issues: how to interpret Scripture’s true significance, how to earn a living, and how to behave morally and ethically. For thinkers and writers like Isaac Abravanel, Abraham Saba, and Isaac Arama, the consistent use of images, meta­phors, and similes centering on the land signals that their readers could relate more closely to ecological meta­phors than any other. The same goes for ­those who listened to them—­ Arama was, ­a fter all, a preacher by occupation and outlook; Saba and Caro may have been as well. As Ellen Arnold has observed about northern Eu­ro­pean monks, “they believed that the natu­ral world reflected divine teachings” and that God could “change nature to teach ­people moral lessons.” ­People, in turn, “­were responsible for both recognizing and remembering ­these connections.”7 The same holds true for the subjects of this book. Stories about ­human treatment of land, and the expansion of ­those stories into exegesis, resonated with Iberian Jews of this period—­and not only intellectuals.8 Tales in Exodus about gathering too much manna from the earth likely called to mind extractive farming and mining practices.9 Elaborations on the story of Cain and Abel evoked ­bitter strug­gles between pastoralists and agriculturalists. A stress on the moral (and ecological) centrality of the Sabbatical and Jubilee laws was effective ­because ­people knew Spain was no longer a net exporter of grain; Iberian kingdoms had become importers. And so on. This book’s setting is a world of social and ecological transition—­one in which accomplished intellectuals and ­humble parishioners alike knew how fundamental soil was and that their lives and livelihoods depended on it. ­These Iberian Jewish intellectuals did not discuss environmental concerns to inculcate a protectionist or conservationist ethic among their readers. Premodern actors ­were certainly aware of the environment and conscious of ­human efforts to alter it.10 Still, they did not anticipate the tenets of modern environmentalism.11 This fact has not ­stopped defenders of all three



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Abrahamic faiths from claiming that Judaism, Chris­tian­ity, and Islam had sophisticated environmental ethics long before modernity.12 To the extent that premodern Jews may have laid the foundation for environmentalism avant la lettre, we would have to look at their kabbalistic writings, which imbue non-­human nature with consciousness.13 For it is only when ­humans acknowledge that life outside the animal kingdom communicates, thinks, and remembers14 that the ontological foundations are laid for true re­spect and consciousness of that life.15 Such philosophical considerations are lacking from our dominant po­liti­cal discourse, as well as from much academic and journalistic writing, even that which directly addresses the crisis of global climate change and pays it due urgency.16 As ­we’ve seen, Sephardi Bible commentators devoted so much attention to ­human interactions with the land in order to develop and deploy concepts central to their ethics and theology. Among ­these ­were the dangers of greed, the perils of cities, and the importance of choosing an occupation that would allow one, in a Maimonidean sense, to attain ­human perfection rather than mere financial stability. Did their focus on physical setting persist as a strategy for moral and ethical exhortation? One way of answering that question is to examine sixteenth-­century compositions from a subsequent generation of Hebrew writers who lived in Sephardic population centers in the Ottoman Empire—­the most inviting haven for exiled Spanish and Portuguese Jews.

* * * The sense of moral urgency that we saw in authors of the generation of the Expulsion reappears in ­later sixteenth-­century Sephardic texts, a sign that, mutatis mutandis, ­earlier messages ­were not heeded. As in the works of Abravanel, Saba, and Arama, ­later Sephardic compositions ­were laden with meta­phors and concepts drawn from the natu­ral world and informed by environment. Sometime in the ­middle of the sixteenth ­century, the poet Saadiah Longo addressed the Castilian community in Salonica, denouncing “haughtiness, arrogance, [and] perfumed ­houses. The delights of this world,” he warned, “are buried in the earth.”17 Longo urged his audience not to become too comfortable, and “see that you are a stranger and an exile from your place. Keep to the left from proximity to beloved delights of the earth, and to the right, far away from wealth: ‘riches kept by the owner, thereof to his hurt’ [Eccles. 5:12].”18 In the same generation, the communal

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leader and commentator Solomon Lebeit Halevi (1532–1600) lamented the fact that ­people pursued sensual delights, indulged in fantasies of status, and built spacious palaces and decks.19 ­Those large abodes w ­ ere a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem, for they led ­people to seek decorations and adornments, and in order to obtain ­these ­things ­people had to pursue money and secure slaves. All this was for the sake of honor, offices, and glory, lamented the preacher, which together constitute the “imaginary life,” a widespread delusion in his times.20 Lebeit Halevi had a revealing explanation of Israel’s descent into Egypt. He glossed the verse “and Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen; and they got them possessions therein, and ­were fruitful, and multiplied exceedingly” (Gen. 47:27) with a poignancy of disapprobation that must have been informed by con­temporary Ottoman realities. “They created a settlement ­there,” he noted, “in peace and quiet [1 Chron. 22:9], and they built ­houses and planted vineyards [Eccles. 2:4], and immediately they had to confront the agony of servitude, and their hearts fled on account of the agony of servitude.”21 Lebeit Halevi’s message was clear: Jews who ­were too comfortable in the Ottoman Empire earned comparison to Israelites in Egypt. He lamented that “we are among the Ishmaelites, and we learned from their ways, and we settled among them and forgot that we are in exile, pursuing ­human pleasures, offices, honor, wealth, property, and imaginary re­spect.”22 Allowing for a degree of rhetorical exaggeration, t­ here was some truth to his pronouncement: throughout the Ottoman Empire Jews lived in neighborhoods with Christians and Muslims, a far cry from the residential restrictions that bound them in Spain and Portugal.23 Lebeit Halevi’s disapproval of his coreligionists’ moneyed contentment may indicate his inveterate tendency to moralize, the real material success of Ottoman Jewry, or perhaps both. ­After all, Ottoman authorities w ­ ere happy to welcome the Jews. As a popu­lar historian noted, “artists and craftsmen among them ­were recognized as a vital force for an expanding empire. The merchants ­were seen as a valuable supplement to the existing warrior and agrarian classes.”24 More scholarly arguments have confirmed this sort of cele­bration of the Ottoman Empire as a sanctuary for Jews in the generations ­after the Expulsion.25 Sixteenth-­century Jews living outside of the empire issued their own form of propaganda, as Elia Capsali, writing from Crete as a booster for the imperial metropole, pleaded “let each one with his God come to Constantinople the seat of my Kingdom and sit ­under his vine and ­under his fig tree with his gold and silver, property and ­cattle, ­settle in the land and trade and become part of it.”26



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Their entry to the empire was marred by difficulties: many Jewish exiles lost ­family members ­a fter the Expulsion. As Joseph Gerson memorably testified, “we came from the ends of the earth through lions’ teeth.”27 Eventually, however, the Spanish and Portuguese exiles found their way in one of the sixteenth ­century’s most power­f ul empires. The demographic evidence is striking: ­there ­were no Jews in Salonica in 1489, and by 1519 ­there ­were 17,000. The religious demography of Istanbul changed dramatically, too: in 1477 ­there ­were 1,647 Jewish ­house­holds in the city, and according to a census in 1535 ­there ­were 8,070 ­house­holds.28 Overall some 50,000 Jews immigrated to the Ottoman Empire between 1492 and 1510. 29 Salonica was especially attractive: by the mid-­sixteenth ­century the city had a reputation as a sanctuary for Jews, and Samuel Usque called it “the ­mother of Judaism.”30 Jews of the Provençal community in Salonica, for example, wrote to their relatives in Provence in 1550 inviting them to come ­settle in Salonica ­because “­these poverty-­stricken ­people with no one to rely on ­here find suitable refuge; they neither hunger nor thirst, they are not smitten by the hardships of enslavement and exile.”31 As more and more Jews entered the empire, the occupational freedom granted by Ottoman authorities helped replicate the socioeconomic stratification that had plagued Jewish society in Spain. Some historians have seen Spanish Jews as “the ­middle class of Turkey, its business agents as well as the builders of its commercial and industrial structure.”32 Indeed, Spanish and Portuguese refugees ­rose quickly to riches within a de­cade or two.33 Wealthy Salonican Jews, for example, felt threatened by the poor. That fear ­wasn’t entirely illusory: the impecunious accounted for 30 to 40 ­percent of the population.34 The arrogance of the wealthy inspired Rabbi Isaac Onkineira to warn t­ hose of distinguished lineage not to be haughty.35 Unlike the case in Spain, ­there ­were no occupational restrictions in the Ottoman Empire; Jews ­were ­free to pursue what­ever ­careers they wished.36 In Aron Rodrigue’s telling, Sephardic Jews saw the empire as a “power­f ul magnet.”37 Throughout the empire Jews ­were active as artisans, shop­keep­ ers, peddlers, and small-­scale traders.38 And they ­were especially prominent in the textile industry. Other occupations included medicine, jewelry making, goldsmithing, tinting, tanning, and food production.39 As Joseph Hacker has written, Ottoman Jews “also had a hand in agricultural production.”40 Perhaps most revealingly, they continued to work in the industry that did the most to reshape fifteenth-­century Iberia’s economy and geography: the wool trade.41

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Sephardi Jews ­were disproportionately involved in the Ottoman wool industry. This was the case not only in major cities like Salonica but also in minor outposts like Safed.42 The demands of the Ottoman state itself led to support of the wool industry. The Jews had a reputation for being highly skilled in wool weaving, and “Salonica cloth” was exported in ­great quantity to the Balkans and to the lands north of the Danube. The largest portion of this cloth was sent to Istanbul for the needs of Janissaries.43 Immediately ­after the Expulsion, many Sephardi Jews in Safed w ­ ere involved in agriculture and in trade based on agricultural products. A con­temporary source testifies that they conducted trade in “spices, cheese, oil, vari­ous kinds of beans, and produce.”44 Jews also owned land in the Ottoman Empire. ­There is evidence that early in the sixteenth c­ entury they possessed modest tracts in Ottoman Palestine.45 By the ­middle of the c­ entury some prominent Jews, such as the sultan’s chief physician, Moses Hamon, owned considerable estates.46 The fact that Sephardi exiles worked the land, ­were prominent figures in the trade in agricultural products, and ­were con­spic­u­ous landowners may be understood in strictly economic terms. ­There may also be a literary and spiritual connection, as if Ottoman Jewry had heard Arama, read Abravanel and Saba, and doubled down on their commitment to pastoralism and its products. But in the multiethnic, multinational, cosmopolitan setting of the Ottoman Empire, appeals to a model of life inspired by Golden Age ideals must have seemed less and less realistic. Practically speaking, while at the beginning of the sixteenth ­century ­there was plenty of transhumance being practiced throughout the empire, and a thriving world of semi-­nomadic herders, the Ottoman authorities ­were suspicious of this population and made a concerted—­and successful—­effort to ­settle them down.47 The success of Ottoman Jewry, even as early as the sixteenth ­century, is testimony that economic advancement meant more than primitivist, escapist fantasies. ­Those ­were understandable in the wake of 1492’s horrors; they ­were less sensible for a more settled generation, building the foundations of lasting religious and communal life in Salonica, Edirne, and Istanbul that would endure for four hundred years, ­until the World War I.48 That sort of stability would have been impossible for Abravanel, Arama, and Saba to imagine. As Jackson Lears observed about the ­simple life at the turn of the twentieth ­century, it was “less a rejection of modernity than a means of revitalizing the modern morality of self-­control during a period of social and psychic stress.”49 This is as fitting—­and devastating—­a critique of modernity as it is a diagnosis of



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the psychological and intellectual preoccupations of Abravanel, Saba, Arama, and Caro. Though they spoke of land in moral terms, they did not advocate the resettlement of an urban population in rural areas. They did, however, frequently underscore the importance of physical setting while they excoriated the evils of acquisitiveness and yearned for the restoration of an i­magined past. Let us take one final example: when Isaac Abravanel scrutinized the tale of King Ahab’s seizure of Naboth’s vineyard in 1 Kings 21, he emphasized that even monarchs had no power to appropriate inherited land. “If the King ­were entitled to take the property of any one of his ­people, why did not Ahab simply take the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite,” Abravanel asked rhetorically. “Why,” he went on, did his wife Jezebel “have to go to the length of slanderously accusing him of cursing the king and then executing him in order to be able to appropriate it, if the king was entitled by law to take any field and vineyard he coveted?” The answer, of course, was that Ahab was powerless before laws and customs governing the land. Abravanel’s concluding thoughts on this episode are striking: the expropriation of fields and vineyards by a king is a greater injustice than forced ­labor. The exegete called it “extreme robbery and extortion.”50 If expropriation of fields and vineyards was a worse crime than forced ­labor—­after all, the paradigmatic Jewish experience of oppression—­Abravanel and his generation must have placed enormous importance on the land and how p­ eople related to it.

Notes

introduction 1. Abraham Saba, Ẓeror ha-­Mor (Warsaw: Aaron Walden, 1879 [Venice, 1522]), Vayiqra 31r. The expression “secret of the world” (kivshono shel ‘olam) derives from BT Ḥagigah 13b and denotes esoteric doctrine. The Sabbatical is explained at Exodus 23:10–11; Leviticus 25:1–7 and 18–22; and Deuteronomy 15:1–11. The Jubilee is prescribed at Leviticus 27:16–25 and Numbers 36:4. 2. Jews’ lamentations on the exile from Spain abound in language about cracked, scorched, arid, poisoned land. See Joseph Hacker, “New Chronicles on the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Its ­Causes and Results,” Zion 44 (1979): 201–228 [Hebrew], for example, 223 line 3, 224 line 4, 227 line 35, and passim. 3. Hipólito Rafael Oliva Herrer, “Judíos en el mundo rural castellano a fines de la Edad Media: Alvar Gomez del Castillo, antes Jacob Agay, en Torremormojón,” in Castilla y el mundo feudal: Homenaje al profesor Julio Valdeón, ed. María Isabel del Val Valdivieso and Pascual Martínez Sopena, 3 vols. (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, Consejería de Cultura y Turismo: Universidad de Valladolid, 2009), 2:293–303; Mark D. Meyerson, A Jewish Re­nais­sance in Fifteenth-­Century Spain (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2004), 112; Miguel Ángel Motis Dolader, “Régimen de explotación de las propiedades agrarias de los judíos en la porción oriental del reino de Aragón en el siglo XV,” Hispania 48/49 (1988): 405–492; ibid., “Explotaciones agrarias de los judíos de Tarazona a fines del siglo XV,” Sefarad 45 (1985): 353– 390. See also Chapter 2. 4. On the porosity of bound­a ries between city and country in the Spanish kingdoms of this period, see Teofilo F. Ruiz, Spanish Society, 1348–1700 (London: Longman, 2001), 62–63. For similar observations about Venetian Crete in the fifteenth ­century, see Freddy Thiriet, “Villes et campagnes en Crète vénitienne aux XIVe–­X Ve siècles,” in Études sur la Romanie greco-­vénitienne (Xe–­X Ve siècles), ed. Freddy Thiriet (London: Variorum, 1977), 447–459, esp. 447; and works by Peruccio, Ratajczak, and Faivre cited ­there. 5. When referring to social, economic, or po­liti­cal contexts I often use the term “late medieval.” When discussing fifteenth-­century intellectual and cultural developments, especially the recovery, circulation, and/or translation of ancient Greek and Latin lit­er­a­t ure, I prefer “Re­nais­sance.” On this terminology and related heuristic categories, see Wallace K. Ferguson, The Re­nais­sance in Historical Thought: Five Centuries of Interpretation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948); and Randolph Starn, “The Early Modern Muddle,” Journal of Early Modern History 6:3 (2002): 296–307. 6. Cedric Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel: An Intellectual Biography, trans. Avi Kallenbach (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2021); for an exhaustive bibliography of

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Notes to Pages 2–4

scholarship on Abravanel, see Eric Lawee, “Isaac Abarbanel: From Medieval to Re­nais­sance Jewish Biblical Scholarship,” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 2: From the Re­nais­sance to the Enlightenment, ed. Magne Sæbø (Göttingen: Vandeenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 190–194; Sarah Heller Wilensky, The Philosophy of Rabbi Isaac Arama (Jerusalem, 1956) [Hebrew]; Chaim Pearl, The Medieval Jewish Mind: The Religious Philosophy of Isaac Arama (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1971); Abraham Gross, Iberian Jewry from Twilight to Dawn: The World of Rabbi Abraham Saba (Leiden: Brill, 1995). 7. See Yoel Marciano, Sages of Spain in the Eye of the Storm: Jewish Scholars of Late Medieval Spain (Jerusalem: Bialik, 2019), 316 [Hebrew], where he mentions ­these three figures as the major innovators in Bible commentary. 8. Isaac Arama’s son Meir publicly accused Abravanel of plagiarizing his ­father’s work. See Joseph Hacker, “Rabbi Meir Arama’s Letter of Censure Against Isaac Abravanel—­A Riddle Solved,” Tarbiz 76:3–4 (2007): 501–518 [Hebrew]. According to Rabbi Meir Arama’s letter Abravanel frequently dined at the Arama home in Naples during the years following the Expulsion from Spain. See Hacker, “Rabbi Meir Arama’s Letter,” 515. Arama himself had been accused of copying from Abraham Bibago’s work. See Giulio Bartolucci, Vitae celeberrimorum rabbinorum, qui in sacrum codicem scripserunt commentarios, in Analecta rabbinica, ed. Adrian Reland (Utrecht: Jacobi à Poolsum & Jacobi Broedelet, 1723), 115. On the paucity of our knowledge about the contacts between Jewish intellectuals in late fifteenth-­century Iberia, see Hacker, “Rabbi Meir Arama’s Letter,” 501. On the concept of authorship in this period, see Roger Chartier, “Figures of the Author,” in The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Eu­rope Between the 14th and 18th Centuries (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 25–60. 9. To Spanish Jewish biblical commentators writing in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Expulsion from Castile and Aragon in 1492 was only the most recent and traumatic example. It was preceded by the 1482 Expulsion of Jews from Andalusia, and before that by a number of Edicts of Segregation issued throughout Ferdinand and Isabella’s kingdoms (1478 in Seville, 1478 in Cáceres, 1480 in Soria) that uprooted Jews from their homes and forcibly transferred them to other neighborhoods or other municipalities. On ­these edicts, see Haim Beinart, The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (Oxford: Littman Library, 2002), 9–15. 10. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, The Chosen Few: How Education S ­ haped Jewish History, 70–1492 (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2012); Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish ­Century (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2004); Salo Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of Amer­i­ca, 1967), 12:28; Werner Sombart, Jews and Modern Capitalism, trans. M. Epstein (London: T. F. Unwin, 1913). 11. The phrase is from T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). 12. Elijah Capsali, Seder Eliyahu Zuta, MS British Museum Add. Or. 19, 971, chap. 53, fol. 46r: “­There is no end to the grandeur and greatness of their courtyards and homes.” Cited in H. H. Ben Sasson, “The Generation of the Spanish Exiles on Its Fate,” Zion 26 (1961): 32 [Hebrew]. 13. Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Pro­g ress and Its Critics (New York: Norton, 1991), 83, 84. 14. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Barry D. Walfish, and Joseph W. Goering, eds., With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Chris­tian­ity, and Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Jonathan P. Decter and Arturo Prats, eds., The Hebrew Bible in Fifteenth-­Century Spain: Exegesis, Lit­er­a­ture, Philosophy, and the Arts (Leiden: Brill, 2012).



Notes to Pages 4–5

137

15. Nahum M. Sarna, “Hebrew and Bible Studies in Medieval Spain,” in Studies in Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2000), 82, originally published in Richard D. Barnett, ed., The Sephardi Heritage (London: Vallentine and Mitchell, 1971), 1:323–366. 16. Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the M ­ iddle Ages (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1952), xi. See also the classic work of Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 3 vols., trans. E. M. Macierowsky (­Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000 [French original 1959, Éditions Montaigne]). 17. Emilia Fernández Tejero and Natalio Fernández Marcos, “Scriptural Interpretation in Re­nais­sance Spain,” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 2: From the Re­nais­sance to the Enlightenment, ed. Magne Sæbø (Göttingen: Vandeenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 231–253; Klaus Reinhardt and Horacio Santiago-­Otero, Biblioteca bíblica ibérica medieval (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1986); Klaus Reinhardt and Horacio Santiago-­Otero, La Biblia en la península ibérica durante la edad media (siglos xii–­xv): El texto y su interpretación (Coimbra: Arquivo da Universidade de Coimbra, 2001). 18. On Pablo de Burgos, see Reinhardt and Santiago-­Otero, Biblioteca bíblica ibérica medieval, 240–249. On Abravanel’s indebtedness to Pablo de Burgos’s remarks on kingship, see Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 140. On Arragel, see Antonio Paz y Meliá, ed., Biblia (Antiguo Testamento) traducida del hebreo al castellano por Rabi Mose Arragel de Guadelfajara (1422–1433?) y publicada por El Duque de Berwick y de Alba (N.p., 1920); Francisco Javier Pueyo Mena and Andrés Enrique-­A rias, “Los romanceamientos castellanos de la Biblia hebrea compuestos en la Edad Media: Manuscritos y traducciones,” Sefarad 73 (2013): 165–224; Margherita Morreale, “Apuntes bibliográficos para la iniciación al studio de las Biblias medievales en castellano,” Sefarad 20 (1960): 66–109; Ángel Sáenz-­Badillos, “Jewish and Christian Interpretations in Arragel’s Biblical Glosses,” in Medieval Exegesis and Religious Difference: Commentary, Conflict, and Community in the Premodern Mediterranean, ed. Ryan Szpiech (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 142–154. 19. Eleazar Gutwirth, “Duran and Ahitophel: The Practice of Jewish History in Late Medieval Spain,” Jewish History 4:1 (1989): 59–74. On Duran more recently, see Maud Kozodoy, The Secret Faith of Maestre Honoratus: Profayt Duran and Jewish Identity in Late Medieval Iberia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 20. Gutwirth, “Duran and Ahitophel,” 59. 21. Meyerson, A Jewish Re­nais­sance, 7. 22. On Jews in this period accommodating non-­Jewish ideas, see Tamar Rudavsky, “Creation, Time and Biblical Hermeneutics in Early Modern Jewish Philosophy,” in Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: Up to 1700, ed. Scott Mandelbrote and Jitse van der Meer (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 2:531. On Re­nais­sance Bible commentary as a “disciplinary matrix” rather than a specialized discipline, see Debora Shuger, The Re­nais­sance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice, and Subjectivity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 4. On Abravanel incorporating “as many hermeneutic perspectives as pos­si­ble,” see Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 116. On this point, see also Jair Haas, “Divine Perfection and Methodological Inconsistency: ­Towards an Understanding of Isaac Abarbanel’s Exegetical Frame of Mind,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 17 (2010): 302–357. 23. Scholars dedicated to other traditions have made similar arguments. Discussing early modern ­England, two accomplished historians note that “the Bible was read above all other books for a knowledge of man’s past, and not only the past, but for pos­si­ble suggestions for improvements that ­humans could make in the seventeenth-­century pre­sent.” See Scott Mandelbrote and Jim Bennett, “Biblical Interpretation and the Improvement of Society:

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Samuel Hartlib (1600–1662) and His Circle,” Intellectual News 3:1 (1998): 18. See also David M. Whitford, The Curse of Ham in the Early Modern Era: The Bible and the Justifications for Slavery, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). Notable exceptions include Eleazar Gutwirth, “Isaac Caro in His Time,” Miscelánea de estudios árabes y hebraicos 40 (1991): 119–130; and Joseph Hacker, “ ‘If We Have Forgotten the Name of Our God’ (Psalm 44:21): Interpretation in Light of the Realities of Medieval Spain,” Zion 57 (1992): 247–274 [Hebrew]. 24. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the M ­ iddle Ages, xiii. 25. Daniele Conti, ed., Marsilii Ficini Florentini Commentarium in Epistolas Pauli (Turin: Aragno, 2018), especially xxxii–­x xxviii and clxxxi–­ccvi. 26. Teofilo F. Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth: The Reordering of Castilian Society, 1150–1350 (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2004), xi, 58. 27. Matthew Melvin-­Koushki, “Taḥqīq vs. Taqlīd in the Re­nais­sances of Western Early Modernity,” Philological Encounters 3 (2018): 193–249; Asad Q. Ahmed, “Post-­Classical Philosophical Commentaries/Glosses: Innovation in the Margins,” Oriens 41 (2013): 317–348; Matthew B. Ingalls, “Zakariyyā al-­Anṣārī and the Study of Muslim Commentaries from the ­Later Islamic ­Middle Period,” Religion Compass 10:5 (2016): 118–130; Matthew B. Ingalls, “Subtle Innovation Within Networks of Convention: The Life, Thought, and Intellectual Legacy of Zakariyyā al-­A nṣārī (d. 926/1520)” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2011). 28. Abravanel’s phrase is “kefi shitḥiyut ha-­peshat,” which he uses in his haqdama to Joshua. Elsewhere he uses slightly dif­fer­ent language (“kefi shitḥiyut ha-’inyan”). See his commentary to Deuteronomy, parashat ki teẓe, chap. 25. This may correspond to the con­temporary Latin phrase “iuxta superficiem littere.” See Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 1200–1800: An Anthology (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). 29. Isaac Arama, ‘Aqedat yitzhaq, ed. Hayim Pollak (Pressburg: V. Kittseer, 1849), 1:1v. For this translation, see Saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 392. 30. Isaac Arama, Haqdamat ha-­meḥaber, 1:1v. 31. Renzo Dubbini, Geography of the Gaze: Urban and Rural Vision in Early Modern Eu­ rope, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 32. On 1391, see Benjamin Gampel, Anti-­Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response, 1391–1392 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Baron understands this post-1391 period as the “Decline of Iberian Jewry.” See his A Social and Religious History, 10:167– 219. In opposition to this view, see Meyerson, A Jewish Re­nais­sance, 2; and Javier Castaño, “Social Networks in a Castilian Jewish Aljama and the Court Jews in the Fifteenth ­Century: A Preliminary Survey (Madrid 1440–1475),” En la España Medieval 20 (1997): 379–392. That late fifteenth-­century Sephardic commentators saw Spain as cursed does not imply they lived through intellectual de­cadence. On the intellectual vitality of Jewish culture at this time, see Marciano, Sages of Spain in the Eye of the Storm, esp. vii–­viii. 33. Baron, A Social and Religious History, 10:173. 34. For a discussion of developing agrarian capitalism, see Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 22. On organic solidarity, see Emile Durkheim, The Division of L ­ abor in Society (Glencoe, IL: ­Free Press, 1947), 130–131. 35. Isaac Abravanel, Naḥalat ’avot (Ashkelon: n.p., 2013), 1. For similar comments directed against conversos, see Isaac Caro’s Toledot yitzḥaq (Warsaw, 1877 [1518]) to parashat netzavim, 77a–­b, cited in Sasson, “The Generation of the Spanish Exiles on Its Fate,” 46. On the economic motivations of conversos, see Ram Ben Shalom, “The Social Context of Apostasy Among Fifteenth-­Century Spanish Jewry: The Dynamics of a New Religious Borderland,”



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in Rethinking Eu­ro­pean Jewish History, ed. Jeremy Cohen and Moshe Rosman (Oxford: Littman Library, 2008), 173–198. 36. Abraham Melamed, “Jethro’s Advice in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish and Christian Po­liti­c al Thought,” Jewish Po­liti­cal Studies Review 2:1/2 (1990): 3–41; Abraham Melamed, Wisdom’s L ­ ittle S ­ ister: Studies in Medieval and Re­nais­sance Jewish Po­liti­cal Thought (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012); Abraham Melamed, The Phi­los­o­pher King in Medieval and Re­nais­sance Jewish Po­liti­cal Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003). 37. Williams, The Country and the City, 298. 38. Maren-­Sofie Røstvig, The Happy Man: Studies in the Metamorphoses of a Classical Ideal (Oslo: Akademisk forlag, 1954–1958), 1:307. 39. Arthur Lovejoy and George Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965 [1935]); Arthur Lovejoy and George Boas, A Documentary History of Primitivism and Related Ideas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1935). 40. Karl Alfred Blüher, Séneca en España: Investigaciones Sobre la Recepción de Séneca en España desde el Siglo XIII hasta el Siglo XVII, trans. Juan Conde (Madrid: Gredos, 1983). Originally published in German as Seneca in Spanien (Munich: Francke, 1969). 41. Eleazar Gutwirth and Miguel Angel Motis Dolader, “Twenty-­Six Jewish Libraries from Fifteenth-­C entury Spain,” The Library 18:1 (1996): 27–53; James Nelson Novoa, “MS Parma Pal. 2666 as a Document of Sephardi Literary and Philosophical Expression in Fifteenth-­C entury Spain,” Eu­ro­pean Judaism: A Journal for the New Eu­rope 43:2 (Autumn 2010): 20–36; Cedric Cohen-­Skalli, Isaac Abravanel: Letters (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007). 42. See Jacob Guttmann, Die religionsphilosophischen Lehren des Isaak Abravanel (Breslau: M. & H. Marcus, 1916), 41–43. On Seneca’s popularity in Iberian vernacular translations, for example Infante Dom Pedro (Portuguese), in his Livro da Vertuosa Benfeytoria, or the Castilian renderings of Fernán Pérez de Guzmán (1378–1460) and Alonso de Cartagena (1385–1456), see Karl Alfred Blüher, Seneca in Spanien Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Seneca-­Rezeption in Spanien vom 13. Bis 17. Jahrhundert (Munich: Franke, 1969), 86–117; Fernando Gómez Redondo, Historia de la Prosa Medieval Castellana, vol. 3: Los Orígenes del Humanismo (Madrid: Cátedra, 2002), 2420–2454, 2598–2630; Ángel Gómez Moreno, España y la Italia de los Humanistas (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1994), 133–152; Helen Nader, The Mendoza F ­ amily in the Spanish Re­nais­sance (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1979), 58–100. 43. One of the many signs of this trauma that has not received extensive attention is the fact that Sephardi exiles remade their calendars and began to enumerate years from the Expulsion onward. ­There is evidence of this in printed calendars from the sixteenth ­century. Hacker, “New Chronicles on the Expulsion,” 202n6. See also Elisheva Carlebach, Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Eu­rope (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 47. 44. Beinart, The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain; Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676 (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2017); Miguel Ángel Motis Dolader, The Expulsion of the Jews from Calatayud, 1492–1500: Documents and Regesta (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1990); Moshe Lazar and Stephen Haliczer, eds., The Jews of Spain and the Expulsion of 1492 (Lancaster, CA: Labyrinthos, 1997); David Raphael, ed., The Expulsion 1492 Chronicles: An Anthology of Medieval Chronicles Relating to the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal (North Hollywood, CA: Carmi House Press, 1992); Roland Goetschel, ed., 1492: L’expulsion des Juifs d’Espagne (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose,

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1996); Jonathan Ray, ­After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of the Sephardic Jewry (New York: New York University Press, 2012); Elie Kedourie, ed., Spain and the Jews: The Sephardi Experience 1492 and A ­ fter (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992). 45. Margreta de Grazia, “Hamlet” Without Hamlet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecol­ogy of New ­England (New York: Hill & Wang, 1984); Ellen Arnold, Negotiating the Landscape: Environment and Monastic Identity in the Medieval Ardennes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); Alan Mikhail, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: ­Women, Ecol­ogy, and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1980). 46. Nachum Gross, ed., Economic History of the Jews (New York: Schocken Books, 1975), 25. An impor­tant corrective to this argument may be found in Phillip I. Ackerman-­Lieberman, “Revisiting Jewish Occupational Choice and Urbanization in Iraq ­Under the Early Abbasids,” Jewish History 29 (2015): 113–135. 47. Song of Songs, 1:13. ZM was first published in 1522, by which time Saba was dead: on the title page he is granted an honorific reserved for the deceased. ­There are four surviving manuscripts of ZM: Oxford, Bodley 254 (Opp. Add. 4^0 11); Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, 8/5 (3075-6); JTS (Jewish Theological Seminary of New York) L918 (Adler 1214); JTS L919. On the manuscripts of Abraham Saba’s works, see Dan Manor, “On the History of Abraham Saba,” Mehkere yerushalayim be-­mahashevet Yisrael 2 (1982): 208–231 [Hebrew]. 48. ­There is one exception: according to Gross, Saba likely wrote his commentary on Genesis in Zamora before the Expulsion. Gross, Iberian Jewry from Twilight to Dawn, 6. 49. Saba fled to Guimarães, only thirty-­five kilo­meters from Zamora. On the Jewish community ­there, see Maria José Pimenta Ferro, Os Judeus em Portugal no Século XIV (Lisbon: Guimarães, 1970), 38, 264. 50. Gross, Iberian Jewry from Twilight to Dawn, 6. In spite of Zamora’s small size, it boasted a wealthy and educated Jewish minority. See Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, “Apuntes para la historia de los Judíos y conversos de Zamora en la edad media (siglos xiii–xv),” Sefarad 48 (1988): 56. The Jewish community raised sufficient funds for Ferdinand and Isabella’s war against Granada to be specifically mentioned in several royal documents. See Luis Suárez Fernández, Documentos acerca de la expulsión de los Judios (Valladolid: Patronato Marcelino Menendez Pelayo, 1964), 65–72. Zamora had one of the earliest Hebrew printing ­houses in Spain (1484). See Gross, Iberian Jewry from Twilight to Dawn, 6. Isaac Canpanton’s famous yeshiva was in Zamora. 51. Gross suggests that Saba may have been wealthy. He cites Saba’s knowledge of “court ceremonials” (Iberian Jewry from Twilight to Dawn, 28n19). For the expression “court ceremonials,” see BT Shabbat 31a, which Saba uses in Ẓeror ha-­Mor, Gen. 33a–­b, 50bff., 58a, 90b, 106b, 111a, and 112b. As evidence for Saba’s wealth Gross adduces that Saba boasted of his large library; that Saba was not harassed by Portuguese authorities ­a fter his initial eight-­ month residential permit elapsed; and the fact that he was at leisure to write suggests in­de­ pen­dent means (Gross, Iberian Jewry from Twilight to Dawn, 8). In North Africa Saba bemoaned his loss of “house, property, and ­every precious ­thing.” Quotation at Gross, Iberian Jewry from Twilight to Dawn, 30n36, but without source. 52. Saba tells us repeatedly that the second version of ZM was shorter due to his poor memory, shortage of books, and lack of time (Gen. 31b, 99a; Exod. 21a, 32b; Deut. 56a), all cited in Gross, Iberian Jewry from Twilight to Dawn, 30n34. See also Saba to Genesis 24r, where he mentions “the commentary on the Torah which I left in Portugal.”



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53. This comment may be found in the MS version of ZM, Oxford MS 254, page 82v. See Joseph Hacker, “On the Intellectual Character and Self-­Perception of Spanish Jewry in the Late Fifteenth ­Century,” Sefunot, n.s., 2:17 (1983): 22n5. 54. Saba spent fourteen to sixteen months in El Qsar el Kebir. He finished reworking ZM, then moved on to Fez. Most of the re-­creation of his commentaries on Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy was completed in El Qsar el Kebir in 1499 prior moving to Fez, where he stayed for eigh­teen months. 55. See Gross, Iberian Jewry from Twilight to Dawn, 14–15 and notes ­there. 56. Ibid., 40. 57. Ibid., 42. This orga­nizational schema did not apply to the rest of his work. 58. Ibid., 43. The emphasis on peshat is also announced on the title page of the 1522 edition: “ ‘al peshat ha-­Torah.” 59. Ibid., 58. 60. Ibid., 44. Gross remarks that Saba’s “commentary is influenced greatly by real­ity and much of it cannot be fully understood if taken out of its historical context” (45, 45n32). See also Eleazar Gutwirth’s similar argument about Saba’s con­temporary Isaac Caro. Gutwirth argues that Caro used numerous exempla drawn from daily Castilian life in the 1470s and 1480s. See “Isaac Caro in His Time,” 127. 61. As Bettan puts it: “to this very day, Arama may be said to persist as a living presence in many a Jewish pulpit.” Israel Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching: ­Middle Ages (Lanham, MD: University Press of Amer­i­ca, 1939): 130–191, 133. 62. On the eve of the Expulsion ­there ­were approximately 80,000 Jews in Castile and 12,000 in Aragon. Joseph Hacker, “Spanish Exiles in the Ottoman Empire from the Fifteenth to the Eigh­teenth ­Century,” in The Sephardic Jewish Diaspora ­After the Exile from Spain, ed. Michel Abitbol, Esther Benbassa, Robert Bonfil, Joseph Hacker, and Yosef Kaplan (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1992), 27–72: 27 [Hebrew]. 63. Arama, Haqdamat ha-­meḥaber, 1:1r. 64. Ibid. Arama mentions a Christian preacher, “a sage from among the gentile sages,” who spoke to large audiences and to whose personal invitation some Jews responded with their presence. See Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching, 135n6, and his comment that “nowhere does he [Arama] speak disapprovingly of this practice, ­either bemoaning the perilous exposure or censuring the coercive mea­sure” (135–136). For the original source, see Ḥazut qasha, 6:7r. According to Arama’s report, the Christian preacher was discussing Malachi 1:2–3: “I loved Jacob but Esau I hated.” 65. James Robinson, “Philosophy and Science in Medieval Jewish Commentaries on the Bible,” in Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures, ed. Gad Freudenthal (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 475. 66. Bernard Septimus, “Arama and Aristotle’s Ethics,” in Jews and Conversos at the Time of the Expulsion, ed. Yom Tov Assis and Yosef Kaplan (Jerusalem: Shazar, 1999), 5. 67. Ibid., 7. See also Gerson’s observation that Spanish Jews wished to study philosophy more than they wished to study Torah. Gerson, Ben porat yosef, British Museum MS. Or. 10726 (col. Gaster), 238v, cited in Hacker, “On the Intellectual Character,” 55. 68. Marciano, Sages of Spain in the Eye of the Storm, 229. Gerson remarked that one who does not study philosophy risked being called an ignoramus. See Ben Porat yosef, 170r, cited in Hacker, “On the Intellectual Character,” 51. 69. Technically AY contains 105 portals but in real­ity consists of 117 sermons. Portal #25 consists of two sermons; Portal #44 is divided into three sermons; Portal #67 contains seven

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sermons, all on major Holy Days; and Portal #105 contains two sermons. Fi­nally, two additional sermons are not technically counted among the gates: an “introduction to the gates” and the “conclusion to the gates.” On the first edition of Arama’s work, see Heller Wilensky, The Philosophy of Rabbi Isaac Arama, 225ff. 70. Eric Lawee, “Isaac ben Moses Arama,” in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), vol. 2: col. 619. 71. Ibid. 72. Septimus, “Arama,” 10. 73. This paragraph draws heavi­ly from Lawee, “Isaac ben Moses Arama.” Bettan, in Studies in Jewish Preaching, 134n3, refers to Aristotle as “one of the chief pillars” in Arama’s “­temple of ideas.” Arama himself refers to a commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics that was never published. According to Septimus, Arama “prob­ably did not” write this commentary (“Arama,” 12n48). 74. Arama, Haqdamat ha-­meḥaber, 1:2r. 75. We do not know when he arrived in Calatayud, but Arama was ­there in 1485, since a document testifies to him as the defendant in a lawsuit. See Encarnación Marín Padilla, “En torno a una demanda de pago a Rabí Açach Arama ante los dayyanim de Calatayud,” Michael 11 (1989): 121–148. 76. Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching, 137–138. 77. For further evidence that Arama completed AY before leaving Spain, see Hacker, “ ‘If We Have Forgotten the Name of Our God,’ ” 267. 78. Hacker, “Rabbi Meir Arama’s Letter,” 515. See also Saul Regev, “The First Edition of Abravanel’s Commentary on Deuteronomy,” Kobez al-­yad, n.s., 15 (2000): 287–380 [Hebrew]. 79. The ­house of Mendoza produced renowned writers: Pero López de Ayala; the famous biographer of the Castilian monarchs and noblemen, Fernán Pérez de Guzmán (c. 1377–­ c. 1460); and the impor­tant humanist poet, the Marqués de Santillana, to name just a few examples. De Santillana’s humanist library was one of the first and largest of its kind in the Iberian Peninsula. See Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 157. On De Santillana’s library, see Mario Schiff, La Bibliothèque du Marquis de Santillane (Amsterdam: Gérard Th. van Heusden, 1970). 80. Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 170. During ­these years Abravanel wrote his commentary on Kings (1493). He also completed Rosh Amanah (Princi­ples of Faith). ­A fter leaving Naples he spent time in Corfu, where he began work on his commentaries to Isaiah and the Minor Prophets. Subsequently he lived in Monopoli, where he finished his work on Deuteronomy, as well as commentaries on the Passover Haggadah (Zevaḥ Pesaḥ) and on ’Avot (Naḥalat ’Avot). ­These three works (Rosh Amanah, Zevaḥ Pesaḥ, and Naḥalat ’Avot) together comprise the first printed edition of Abravanel’s work, completed in Naples on 5 December 1505 by David and Samuel ibn Naḥmias, members of the Portuguese Jewish elite in Constantinople. See Cedric Cohen-­Skalli, “Yitsḥaq Abravanel’s First Edition (Constantinople 1505): Rhe­toric Content and Editorial Background,” Hispania Judaica Bulletin 5 (2007): 153–175. In southern Italy Abravanel also completed three works on messianism: Ma‘yenei Yeshu‘ah, Yeshu‘ot Meshiḥo, and Mashmi‘a Yeshu‘ah; and two works on the creation of the world: Shamayim Ḥadashim (New Heavens) and Mifalot Elohim (Won­ders of the Lord). 81. In Portugal he also wrote Ateret Zekenim (Crown of the Elders), as well as a work on prophecy, Maḥazeh Shaddai (Vision of the Almighty). 82. According to Netanyahu, Abravanel worked intensively on his commentary to the Pentateuch in Venice between 1505 and 1507. See Benzion Netanyahu, Don Isaac Abravanel:



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Statesman and Phi­los­o­pher (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1953), 86. Note that Abravanel wrote the Deuteronomy commentary as early as 1472, while still in Portugal. He described this work as “not yet complete” in a letter of that year to Yehiel da Pisa. See Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 48. In Venice, during the final years of his life, he wrote commentaries on Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, as well as a commentary on Maimonides’s Guide. 83. Cohen-­Skalli suggests that this work and ­others written by Abravanel ­a fter the Expulsion represent “Abravanel’s intention . . . ​to pre­s ent a series of ‘popu­lar’ commentaries which rely on ritual readings or well-­institutionalized debates in order to reach a large readership among Sephardic exiles and Italian Jews.” Cohen-­Skalli, “Yitsḥaq Abravanel’s First Edition,” 159. See also Giancarlo Lacarenza, “Lo spazio dell’ebreo: Insediamenti e cultura ebraica a Napoli (secoli XV–­X VI),” in Integrazione ed emarginazione. Circuiti e modelli: Italia e Spagna nei secoli XV–­X VIII, ed. Laura Barletta (Naples: CUEN, 2002), 357–427. 84. The first complete edition of his Pentateuch commentary was published in Venice by the Christian printer Juan Bragadin, in collaboration with the Jewish scholar and writer Rabbi Samuel Archivolti. See Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 281. On Abravanel’s Deuteronomy commentary, see Regev, “The First Edition of Abravanel’s Commentary on Deuteronomy.” 85. Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 282–283. Constantijn L’Empereur (1599–1648) translated several passages from Abravanel’s commentary on Isaiah. Johannes Buxtorf the younger (1559–1664) translated several excerpts from Abravanel’s oeuvre. 86. See the works of Netanyahu, Lawee, Ben Shalom, Cohen-­Skalli, Haas, Gutwirth, Marciano, and Hacker cited throughout this book. 87. Rabbi Nisim died in 1396. See Aryeh Leib Feldman, “Derashot Haran: Haderush ha‘asiri nosah bet,” Sinai 75 (1973): 9–51. 88. Mauro Zonta, Hebrew Scholasticism in the Fifteenth C ­ entury: A History and Source Book (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006). 89. Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 114. Most recently see Marciano, Sages of Spain in the Eye of the Storm, 204–240. See especially 204–212 for Marciano’s helpful discussion of the particularly Sephardic idea of the “logical argument from outside sources.” See also Eric Lawee, “Sephardic Intellectuals: Challenges and Creativity (1391–1492),” in The Jew in Medieval Iberia, ed. Jonathan Ray (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012), 372–373. For the view that Christian scholasticism influenced Isaac Caro, particularly through the Spanish diffusion of Nicholas of Lyra, see Eleazar Gutwirth, “La España de Isaac Caro,” in Actas IV Congreso Internacional “Encuentro de las Tres Culturas,” ed. Carlos Carrete Parrondo (Toledo: Ayunamiento de Toledo, 1988), 56. For an excellent introduction to scholasticism in fifteenth-­century Spain, see Luis Manuel Girón-­Negrón, Alfonso de la Torre’s “Visión Deleytable”: Philosophical Rationalism and the Religious Imagination in 15th-­Century Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2001), chap. 1. 90. For an initial list of Abravanel’s sources, see Guttmann, Die religionsphilosophischen Lehren des Isaak Abravanel, 22–47. As Baer pointed out, ­there is plenty to add to Guttmann’s list. See Fritz (Yiẓḥaq) Baer, “Don Isaac Abravanel and His Relation to the Prob­lems of History and Politics,” Tarbiz 8:3–4 (1937): 245n11 [Hebrew]. Abravanel has been called an “eclectic thinker” several times: Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 138–139; Baer, “Don Isaac Abravanel,” 245. 91. Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, xi.

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92. For the text of Abravanel’s Portuguese letter to the Count of Faro from 1470–1471, see Cohen-­Skalli, Isaac Abravanel: Letters, 81–97 and 12–25 for Cohen-­Skalli’s analy­sis. 93. See Reinhardt and Santiago-­Otero, Biblioteca bíblica ibérica medieval, 64–79 for Fernández de Madrigal; 213–219 for Torquemada; 172–179 for Pérez de Valencia. 94. On Abravanel’s working methods, including a description of how he would dictate most of his work to an amanuensis and then add corrections in his own hand, see Gregorio Ruiz, ed. and trans., Don Isaac Abrabanel y su comentario al Libro de Amos: Texto hebreo del manuscrito de El Escorial (Madrid: UPCM/Publicaciones de la Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 1984), lvii–­lviii. 95. Paz y Meliá, Biblia (Antiguo Testamento). On Arragel, see Sonia Fellous, Histoire de la Bible de Moïse Arragel: Quand un rabbin interprète la Bible pour les chrétiens: Tolède 1422–1433 (Paris: Somogy, 2001); Luis Manuel Girón-­Negrón, “La Biblia de Arragel y la edición de traducciones bíblicas del siglo XV,” Helmántica: Revista de filología clásica y hebrea 190 (2012): 291–309. 96. For a complete list of the non-­Jewish authorities Arragel invokes, see Paz y Meliá, introduction to Biblia (Antiguo Testamento), xix. 97. Arragel, Biblia, 110: “que Chaym non ofiçio otro tenia sauo a Dios servir, e relata agora [la] ley que Abel pastor de ganado fue, como a Abel vio que agricola era, e syn oficio estar non quiso.” 98. Ibid., 118: “la entençion de ellos era que querian tener do sienpre juntos fuesen e non derramados.” 99. Ibid., 498: “que otro philosopho que dixo que para çibdadana vida beuir, que muy noble cosa seria que los bienes e posessiones della fuesen comunes e non proprios, nin ninguno cosa suya cognosçiese. . . . ​Es otra opinion de Aristotiles que desbarata la del ser los bienes comunes por ciertas ogebçiones que en contra le son. E afirma ser mejor ser los bienes propios.” 100. Ibid., 126. 101. For the phrase “incipient mercantile capitalism,” see Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, “Spain, Circa 1492: Social Values and Structures,” in Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters Between Eu­ro­pe­ans and Other ­Peoples in the Early Modern Era, ed. Stuart B. Schwartz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 110. 102. On the centrality of the Bible to Spanish Jewish education, including the practice of rote learning that began in early childhood, see Jefim Schirmann, Ha-­Shira ha-’Ivrit bi-­ Sefarad (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1954–1960), 1:32. See also Marciano, Sages of Spain in the Eye of the Storm, 32, where he claims that Bible study was more pronounced in Spain than anywhere ­else in the Jewish world. 103. ­There is recent scholarly pre­ce­dent for close comparison of Hebrew and Latin humanists in Cedric Cohen-­Skalli, “Don Isaac Abravanel and Leonardo Bruni: A Literary and Philosophical Confrontation,” Eu­ro­pean Legacy 20:5 (2015): 1–21; and Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 144–151, 194–195. 104. Meyerson, A Jewish Re­nais­sance, 3, 7. 105. Thérése Metzger, Les manuscrits Hébreux copiés et décorés à Lisbonne dans les dernières décennies du XVe siècle (Paris: Fundaçâo Calouste Gulbenkian, 1977); Gabrielle Sed-­R ajna, Manuscrits hébreux de Lisbonne: Un atelier de copiste et d’enlumineurs au XVe siècle (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1993). More recently, on the semi-­public manuscript libraries in fifteenth-­ century Iberian Jewish culture, see Joseph Hacker, “Jewish Book O ­ wners and Their Libraries in the Iberian Peninsula, F ­ ourteenth–­Fifteenth Centuries,” in The Late Medieval Hebrew



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Book in the Western Mediterranean: Hebrew Manuscripts and Incunabula in Context, ed. Javier del Barco (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 70–104. 106. See, for example, Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah (Jerusalem: Bene Arabel, 1964), Shemot, 118. See also Hacker, “On the Intellectual Character,” 25; Eric Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance ­Toward Tradition: Defense, Dissent and Dialogue (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 219n1. 107. Jaime Vicens Vives, An Economic History of Spain (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1969), especially 245–56. 108. Menahem Schmelzer, “Hebrew Manuscripts and Printed Books Among the Sephardim Before and ­After the Expulsion,” in Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World, 1391–1648, ed. Benjamin R. Gampel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 257–266. 109. Keith Thomas, Man and the Natu­ral World: Changing Attitudes in ­England, 1500– 1800 (London: Allen Lane, 1983), 16. 110. Susan L. Einbinder, ­After the Black Death: Plague and Commemoration Among Iberian Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 11. 111. Ibid., 22. 112. Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, Portal #39, 2:51v–60v: 57v–58r. 113. For the quaestiones (she’elot) in which Abravanel introduces the subject, see Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis 159–160, and for the discussion see 164–166. See also his detailed ornithological discussion of raven be­hav­ior at Genesis, 156–157. 114. Saba, Ẓeror ha-­Mor, Genesis, 33v. 115. For instance, see Abravanel’s classification of animals and discourse on zoological be­hav­ior in Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis 64–66; Caro’s discussion of the vegetal and animal soul as he compares flowering plants and “living creatures” (Gen. 1:20), in Toledot yitzḥaq, Genesis 5v–6r; and Arama’s analy­sis of ritual impurity in Leviticus in terms of natu­ral and medical frameworks, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq 3:42v–43r.

chapter 1 1. Deuteronomy 17; 1 Samuel 8; Exodus 18. 2. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 179. For the phrase “­g reat city,” cf. Jonah 1:2, where the referent is Nineveh, a city known for its wickedness. ­Here and throughout this book I use modern (nineteenth-­and twentieth-­century) printed editions of Abravanel’s, Saba’s, and Arama’s work. This is the approach taken by most leading scholars of ­these fifteenth-­ century figures, including Cedric Cohen-­Skalli, Eric Lawee, Abraham Gross, and Sarah Heller Wilensky. 3. Saba, Ẓeror ha-­Mor, Genesis, 15v; Isaac Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 6 vols. (Jerusalem, 1973), 1:130r, where he notes that “the land was ‘good and spacious’ [Exod. 3:8] and very pleasant to ­settle in. Therefore they chose to live ­there rather than in other places.” 4. Saba, Genesis, 15v. 5. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 179. 6. Wendell Berry, Home Economics: Fourteen Essays (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987), 146. 7. Arama, Sefer ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 1:130r. See also his point that the builders prioritized “imaginary ­things” (1:108r). Abravanel uses identical language regarding Cain’s choice of “imaginary ­things” (Perush Bereshit, 125).

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Notes to Pages 22–26

8. Saba, Genesis, 15v. 9. Arama, Sefer ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 1:130r. 10. For this phrase I use the translation of E. A. Speiser in his Genesis: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, vol. 1 of The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries (New York: Doubleday, 1964), 30. 11. Caro, Toledot yitzhaq, 12r. 12. On the use of realia in Caro’s exegesis, see Gutwirth, “La España de Isaac Caro,” 56. 13. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 179. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. Abraham Saba offers a more conventional interpretation of “from the east”: he understands it as “ a place of magic and divination.” Saba, ZM, 15r. See also Arama, Sefer ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 1:108r, who notes that they traveled “away from God.” 16. Baer, “Don Isaac Abravanel,” 245. See also Cedric Cohen-­Skalli, “Between Yitzhak Baer and Leo Strauss: The Rediscovery of Isaac Abravanel’s Po­liti­cal Thought in the Late 1930s,” Daat: A Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 88 (2019): 172. 17. Leo Strauss, “On Abravanel’s Philosophical Tendency and Po­liti­cal Teaching,” in Isaac Abravanel: Six Lectures, ed. J. B. Tren and H. Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937), 93–129. See Cohen-­Skalli, “Between Yitzhak Baer and Leo Strauss,” 183. 18. As Cohen-­Skalli points out regarding Abravanel’s years in Portugal, he was “one of the richest Jewish merchant bankers in the kingdom.” Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, vii. 19. My translation of medini’im as “po­liti­cal” follows Jacob Klatzkin, Thesaurus philosophicus linguae hebraicae et veteris et recentioris (Leipzig: ex officina Augusti Pries, 1928), 319, s.v. medin’i. 20. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 176. This passage is also quoted in Baer, “Don Isaac Abravanel,” 252. Arama agreed with Abravanel and stated boldly that “po­liti­cal consolidation was not man’s true purpose.” Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq 1:108v. 21. Abravanel saw Seneca first and foremost as a po­liti­cal phi­los­o­pher; in his commentary on Samuel 1:18 he called him “Seneca ha-­Medini,” as cited in Klatzkin, Thesaurus, 319, s.v. medin’i. Strauss, “On Abravanel’s Philosophical Tendency,” 110, notes this passage in Abravanel’s Genesis commentary and asserts that Abravanel’s term “men of the field” (bene ha-­sadeh) may come from Seneca, Epistulae morales, #90, paragraph 42: “agreste domicilium.” The Epistles of Seneca (LCL 76), 426. 22. Literally: “be partners in our resources” (shutafim be-­mamonenu). 23. Saba, Genesis, 15v. 24. See, however, Strauss, “On Abravanel’s Philosophical Tendency”; and Baer, “Don Isaac Abravanel.” 25. Rashi to Gen. 11:2. The verb “espy” (latur) recalls the twelve spies sent to scout the land of Canaan. See Numbers 13:2ff. See also Bereshit Rabbah 38:7. On the reception of Rashi in fifteenth-­century Iberia, see Eric Lawee, Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Re­sis­tance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 57–61. 26. Rashi to Genesis 11:3. 27. Ibn Ezra to Genesis 11:3. 28. Kimḥi to Genesis 11:3. 29. On Abravanel’s stance ­toward Gersonides, see Menachem Marc Kellner, “Gersonides and His Cultured Despisers: Arama and Abravanel,” Journal of Medieval and Re­nais­sance Studies 6 (1976): 269–296. See also Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 119–129. Naḥmanides does



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comment on the builders’ motivation and criticizes Ibn Ezra and Kimhi, “pursuers of the plain meaning,” for thinking that the builders’ goal was merely to be “joined together.” To Naḥmanides their sin was more spiritual: they ­were “hostile to religion,” literally “they cut the shoots.” For this idiom, see Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Lit­er­a­ture (London: Trübner, 1903), s.v. kiẓeẓ, 1407. See Naḥmanides to Genesis 11:2, and Bereshit Rabbah 38:9. Gershom Scholem notes in his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1995 [1946]), 404n105, that the expression “cutting the shoots” was used frequently by Iberian Jewish scholars, particularly the Geronese school. 30. For a partial list of Abravanel’s citations of Augustine, see Guttmann, Die religionsphilosophischen Lehren, 45. For this quotation, from Abravanel’s commentary on Samuel, see Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance, 39. 31. See De civitate Dei, Book 16, chaps. 4 and 5. The above examples are from Augustine: City of God, Volume 5: Books 16–18.35 (Loeb Classical Library 415), 26–28, 30, and 30, respectively. 32. The influence of Lyra on Abravanel was noted by Netanyahu, Don Isaac Abravanel, 38; Guttmann, Die religionsphilosophischen Lehren, 46; and developed more recently by Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance, 118, 199–200, and Cohen-­Skalli, “Don Isaac Abravanel and Leonardo Bruni,” 8. On Tostado and Abravanel, see Solomon Gaon, The Influence of the Catholic Theologian Alfonso Tostado on the Pentateuch Commentary of Isaac Abravanel (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1993). Eric Lawee notes that Abravanel borrowed “liberally” from Tostado’s works (Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance, 39). 33. Fernández Tejero and Fernández Marcos, “Scriptural Interpretation in Re­nais­sance Spain,” 232–233. For an accessible introduction to Nicholas of Lyra’s work, see his commentaries on Genesis 42–46, a se­lection of which ­were translated into En­glish in “Nicholas of Lyra,” in The Bible in Medieval Tradition: The Book of Genesis, ed. and trans. Joy Schroeder (­Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), 190–221. 34. See note 32 in this chapter. 35. Textus biblie cum Glosa ordinaria (Basel: Johann Froben 1506–1508), 1:58v: “id est terram planam et magnam ad hoc aptam.” 36. Ibid.: “quia illa terra campestris est non habens lapidicinas.” 37. Ibid., 1:59v: “quia quando unus petebat lapides alter portabat sibi cementum, vel aliquid simile, et sic credebat unus se derideri ab alio propter quod mota est inter rixa et contentio.” 38. For recent bibliography on Tostado, see Antonio López Fonseca, “Alfonso Fernández de Madrigal, ‘El Tostado’: Un ensayo bibliográfico,” Tempus 41 (2017): 7–40; on Tostado’s skills as a Hebraist, see Santiago García, “La competencia hebraica de Alfonso de Madrigal,” La corónica 33:1 (2004): 85–98. 39. Alfonso Tostado, Alphonsi Tostati Hispani Abulensis Opera Omnia, 23 vols. (Venice: Sessa, 1596), Alphonsi Tostati Hispani Commentaria in Genesim, 1:55v, col. 1: “Item si illa turris, et civitas completa fuisset, sicut illi facere intendebant, tanta nobilitas civitatis, et turris induxisset homines ad simul ibi morandum, vel saltem circa illam civitatem.” See his nearly identical comment in Tostado’s treatise De optima politia, 1596 Opera Omnia, 15:3v. Elsewhere Tostado indicates that many cities ­were founded on the model of the conurbation in Genesis 11; Babylon was a symbol for cities more generally. See Tostado, De optima politia, 1r–8v:3v in Opuscula eruditissima (Venice, 1596): “post hanc vero crebrerrimae in orbe civitates conditae sunt, de quibus propositi nostri differere non est.” See note 52 in this chapter for more on this work.

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Notes to Pages 27–28

40. Alphonsi Tostati Hispani Commentaria in Genesim, 1:55v, col. 1: “Et licet unitas idiomatis, et simultanea commoratio de se bona essent, per accidens tamen multum nociva erant generi humano; quia si omnes homines simul habitarent, non possent habere victum: quia modicum terrae spacium non sufficiebat cibos tantae hominum multitudini exhibere: ideo ad vitam necessaria erat distinctio commorationis.” 41. Ibid.: “item morbi magis invalescerent, quia nunc licet una terra pestifera sit, et quasi tota destruatur”; “si autem omnes simul mansissent, cum illa terra ex habitudine coeli, vel alias male disponeretur, omnes mori possent.” 42. Ibid., 55v, col. 2: “cum ergo semper inter homines mali, et idolatrae fuissent, vel fuerunt, et sunt, illi faciliter alios corrupissent, et sic totus mundus erraret.” 43. Ibid., 55v, col. 1: “Desiderabant enim omnes simul vivere; hoc enim naturale desiderium est, cum homo naturaliter sit animal politicum,” citing Book 1 of Aristotle’s Politics. 44. For a selective list of places where Abravanel cites Aristotle, see Guttmann, Die religionsphilosophischen Lehren, 41. See also Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance, 39, where he suggests that Abravanel likely knew Aristotle’s Politics through Thomas Aquinas. See also Baer, “Don Isaac Abravanel,” 245n11, 248. On Aristotle in fifteenth-­century Castile, especially the diffusion of Leonardo Bruni’s Latin translations, see Juan Miguel Valero Moreno, “Formas del aristotelismo ético-­político en la Castilla del siglo XV,” in Aristotele fatto volgare: Tradizione aristotelica e cultura volgare nel Rinascimento, ed. David A. Lines and Eugenio Refini (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2014), 253–310. 45. Alphonsi Tostati Hispani Commentaria in Genesim, 1:54v, cols. 1–2: “Forte fecerunt ibi aliquas parvas mansiunculas: et patet ex hoc cum sequenti quod quando isti moverunt sedes de Oriente ad locum illum non venerunt ea intentione ut turrim, aut civitatem facerent, sed ut in plano habitarent. Deinde venit eis in mentem, ut facerent turrim, et civitatem: sic enim dicitur quod primo habitaverunt in campo illo, quasi nihil aliud intendentes. Deinde tractu temporis, quasi consiliantes dixerunt inter se, Venite faciamus lateres.” 46. See above, p. 24. 47. Maria Idoya Zorroza, “La naturalidad del dominio humano sobre las cosas en Alfonso de Madrigal,” Azafea 14 (2012): 233–252. 48. I translate from Idoya Zorroza’s Spanish, “La naturalidad,” 242. See In Paralipomenon, I, fol. 337v, col. 1, on 1 Chronicles 29:10–28. 49. Idoya Zorroza, “La naturalidad,” 243. See In Paralipomenon, I, fol. 338r, col. 2. 50. Idoya Zorroza, “La naturalidad,” 244–245. 51. Ibid., 249. 52. On this text, see Juan Candela Martínez, “El De optima politia de Alfonso de Madrigal, el Tostado,” Anales de la Universidad de Murcia 13 (1954–1955): 61–108. The treatise itself is undated, but Candela Martínez estimates its composition “well ­a fter” 1430 (69). The editio princeps is Venice, 1507, and the work is accessible in Tostado’s 1596 Opera Omnia, vol. 15 (Opuscula eruditissima). For a modern critical edition, see Nuria Belloso Martín, ed. and trans., El gobierno ideal de Alfonso de Madrigal “el Tostado”: Introducción, traducción y texto latino con aparato crítico y citas (Navarra: Barañáin, 2003). On the Tower of Babel as the second city (­a fter Cain’s original city, the “civitas demonis”), see the edition in Opera Omnia (Venice, 1596), 3r–4r. 53. Candela Martínez, “El De optima politia,” 75. 54. Tostado, De optima politia, 3v; Aristotle, Politics 1261a. See Plato, Republic 423e6–424a2.



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55. De optima politia, 3v. 56. Ibid., 8v, septima conclusio: “communitatem uxorum politiae Socratis, et Platonis non capit natura, nec ulla vis rationis.” Tostado does, however, permit polygamy and strenuously opposes polyandry. Ibid., 7r–8r. 57. Candela Martínez (“El De optima politia,” 68) suggests this episode’s relevance to Tostado’s treatise. For background to this episode, see José Goñi Gaztambide, “Los herejes de Durango: Nuevas aportaciones,” Hispania sacra 28 (1975): 225–238. 58. Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance, 201. 59. On associations between religious groups in Spain during the ­Middle Ages, see David Nirenberg, Communities of Vio­lence: Persecution of Minorities in the ­Middle Ages (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1996); and David Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths: Chris­tian­ity, Islam, and Judaism in the ­Middle Ages and ­Today (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). 60. While I resist the declensionist narrative of Jewish life in fifteenth-­century Iberia, best represented by Yitzḥaq Baer in his History of the Jews of Christian Spain (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1961–1966), and agree with Mark Meyerson (A Jewish Re­nais­sance), who argues for a much more balanced approach, the following pages note and discuss anti-­Jewish persecution, which was undeniably pronounced in the larger cities of some Iberian kingdoms, notably Castile. 61. Beinart, The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. 62. Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance, 2. 63. Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 156. 64. Netanyahu, Don Isaac Abravanel, 25. On the Portuguese setting for Abravanel’s youth and young adulthood, see Maria José Pimenta Ferro Tavares, Os judeus em Portugal no século XV. 2 Vols. (Lisbon: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, 1984). 65. The gift was ratified by Afonso V. For the relevant Portuguese documentation, see Elias Lipiner, Two Portuguese Exiles in Castile: Dom David Negro and Dom Isaac Abravanel (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), 104–109. For discussion, see Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 17. 66. Elia Capsali, cited in H. H. Ben Sasson, “The Generation of the Spanish Exiles on Its Fate,” Zion (1961): 32 [Hebrew]. 67. Yom Tov Assis, “Social Unrest and Class Strug­gle in Jewish Communities in Spain Before the Expulsion,” in Culture and History, ed. J. Dan (Jerusalem: Misgav yerushalayim, 1987), 122–123 [Hebrew]. 68. Eleazar Gutwirth, “­Towards Expulsion: 1391–1492,” in Spain and the Jews, ed. Elie Kedourie (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), 68. The figure comes from the sixteenth-­ century chronicler Andrés Bernáldez. 69. Eleazar Gutwirth, “Abraham Seneor: Social Tensions and the Court-­Jew,” Michael: On the History of the Jews in the Diaspora 11 (1989): 190. 70. Carlos Carrete Parrondo, Proceso inquisitorial contra los Arias Dávila segovianos: Un enfrentamiento social entre judíos y conversos. Fontes Iudaeorum Regni Castellae 3 (Salamanca: Universidad Pontifica de Salamanca, 1986), #66, p. 43. See Gutwirth, “Abraham Seneor,” 195n134. 71. Teofilo F. Ruiz, Spanish Society, 1400–1600 (London: Longman, 2001), 215. 72. Ibid., 216.

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Notes to Pages 31–33

73. Ibid., 217. For more, see Juan de Mata Carriazo, Hechos del Condestable don Miguel Lucas de Iranzo (Madrid: Espasa-­Calpe, 1940). 74. Gutwirth, “Abraham Seneor,” 197. See Suárez Fernández, Documentos, #39, 162–163. 75. Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, “Reconciling the Privilege of a Few with the Common Good: Sumptuary Laws in Medieval and Early Modern Eu­rope,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 39:3 (2009): 597–617. On Spain in par­t ic­u ­lar, see José Damián González Arce, Apariencia y poder: La legislación suntuaria castellana en los siglos XIII y XV (Jaén: Universidad de Jaén, 1998); Juan Sempere y Guarinos and Juan Rico Giménez, Historia del lujo y de las leyes suntuarias de España (Valencia: Istitucio Alfons el Magnanim, 2000); and Mercé Aventin, “Le leggi suntuarie in Spagna: Stato della questione,” in Disciplinare il lusso: La legislazione suntuaria in Italia e in Europa tra Medioevo ed età moderna, ed. Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli and Antonella Campanini (Rome: Carocci, 2003), 109–120. 76. Diane Owen Hughes, “Distinguishing Signs: Ear-­R ings, Jews, and Franciscan Rhe­toric in the Italian Re­nais­s ance City,” Past and Pre­sent 112 (August 1986): 3–59. More recently, see Ariel Toaff, “La prammatica degli ebrei e per gli ebrei,” in Disciplinare il lusso, 91–105. 77. Gutwirth, “Abraham Seneor,” 197; Suárez Fernández, Documentos, #39, 162–163. 78. Hacker, “New Chronicles on the Expulsion,” 226, lines 21 and 23. On the Castilian focus ­here, see 225, line 20, “in the kingdom of Castile,” and 226, line 22, “the communities of Castile.” See also Hacker’s comment on p. 209. 79. On growth of medieval towns and cities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, see Robert Bartlett, The Making of Eu­rope: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 930–1350 (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1993), 167–196. On ­these trends in general, see Henri Pirenne, Early Democracies in the Low Countries: Urban Society and Po­liti­cal Conflict in the ­Middle Ages and the Re­nais­sance, trans. J. V. Saunders (New York: Harper & Row, 1963). Pirenne’s source base is northern Eu­ro­pean, but the pro­cesses he charts are valid across Eu­rope at this time. See also Keith  D. Lilley, Urban Life in the ­Middle Ages, 1000–1450 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002). 80. Ladero Quesada, “Spain, Circa 1492,” 110. 81. See the lists of Jewish possessions drawn up ­a fter the Expulsion for Hita, Buitrago, and San Martín de Valdeiglesias. The lists for Maqueda have been thoroughly studied by Pilar León Tello, Judíos de Toledo (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científica, 1979), 1:295ff. See also Israel Abrahams, Jewish Life in the ­Middle Ages (London: Macmillan, 1932), 267. 82. Angus Mackay, “Popu­lar Movements and Pogroms in Fifteenth-­Century Castile,” Past and Pre­sent 55:1 (1972): 41. 83. Ibid. 84. Meyerson, A Jewish Re­nais­sance, 123. For this observation Meyerson’s data are from 1445 to 1482. 85. Baer, A History, 2:250–251. 86. The portion (one-­third) of the ecclesiastical tithe that the papacy had granted Jaume I the right to collect in all territories ­under direct royal lordship. See Meyerson, A Jewish Re­ nais­sance, 247. 87. Ibid., 123. 88. Mackay, “Popu­lar Movements,” 44. 89. Ibid., 61. Even, sometimes, by their fellow Jews. In his ‘Ein haqoreh (1508), David Messer Leon notes derisively that Abravanel had been “nothing but a merchant all his



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days.” Bodleian Library, MS Neubauer 1263, fol. 61r, as cited by Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 173. 90. Quoted in J. N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250–1516 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976–1978), 2:453. 91. Ibid., 2:133. 92. Eleazar Gutwirth, “Contempt for the Lower ­Orders in 15th-­Century Hispano Jewish Thought,” Miscelánea de estudios árabes y hebraicos 30 (1981): 84. See also the parallel observation of the early thirteenth-­century Hebrew poet from Gerona, Meshulam da Piera, who was well-­k nown to fifteenth-­century Hebrew poets: “give me a clean occupation!” See Jefim Schirmann, Hebrew Poetry in Spain and Provence (Jerusalem/Tel Aviv: Mosad Bialik, 1956), 2:308/309, lines 20–24 [Hebrew], cited by Gutwirth, “Contempt,” 84. 93. Ruiz, Spanish Society 1348–1700, 4. 94. See, for example, Abravanel’s remarks about the Tabernacle in his commentary to Exodus 25: “­human perfection is not acquired by being among the wise, or among ­those who ­labor the land, or among the mighty of the earth, nor among the princes of gold, who fill their ­houses with silver.” Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Exodus, 152; See also Capsali, Seder Eliyahu Zuta, 178, where he describes the (potentially apocryphal) plunder of a certain Don Pedro’s riches: Don Pedro offered every­thing he had to the king and was then killed anyway. 95. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 2:66. 96. Joseph Pérez, “Las ciudades en la época de los Reyes Católicos,” in Sociedad y economía en tiempos de Isabel la Católica, ed. Julio Valdeón Baruque (Valladolid: Ámbito, 2002), 116. 97. Ladero Quesada, “Spain, Circa 1492,” 109–110. 98. Ángel Rama has suggested that perhaps ­because of such social fissures, the majority of conquistadores who sought their fortunes and glory overseas in the New World deliberately avoided reproducing the “organic” model of Iberian cities. Rather, from Peru to Mexico and beyond, they ­were dedicated to the construction of “ordered” cosmopolitan centers, rather than replicate the perceived chaos of Spanish and Portuguese cities. See The Lettered City, ed. and trans. John Charles Chasteen (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 1–2. I am grateful to María García Otero for this reference. As a form of protest against poor urban planning and the so­cio­log­i­cal realities attendant upon it, colonizers of the New World did not reproduce the layout of Iberian cities. See Jorge E. Hardoy, El modelo clásico de la ciudad colonial hispanoamericana (Buenos Aires: Instituto Tocuato di Tella, 1968). 99. Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo, Suma de la política I.8 in Biblioteca de Autores Españoles (Madrid: Atlas, 1846–1999), 116:264. 100. Beinart, The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, 9. See n. 35 ­there for the text of the Cáceres legislation. 101. The parliamentary assembly of representatives from the nobility, clergy, and towns. It was supposedly called by the ruler of a Spanish kingdom—­each had its own assembly—at regular intervals in order to decide ­matters of legislation and taxation, among other issues. 102. Beinart, The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, 11, 28 May 1480. See also Stephen Haliczer, “The Castilian Urban Patriciate and the Jewish Expulsions of 1480–92,” American Historical Review 78 (1973): 35–58. 103. For Castile, see Enrique Cantera Montenegro, “La legislación general acerca de los judíos en el reinado de Juan II,” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, ser. 3, 25 (2012): 119–146. Cantera Montenegro’s discussion of the Cortes of Valladolid in 1405 is especially relevant. In that year prohibitions ­were enacted against lending at interest; contracts between Jews and Christians ­were strictly regulated; property rights ­were restricted; and a requirement that Jews wear

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identifying badges was approved. Ibid., 122–123. The situation in Aragon was less dire: see Miguel Ángel Motis Dolader and Luisa Sanchez Aragones, “Legislación sobre judíos promulgada por las Cortes de Aragón durante el reinado de Alfonso V (1416–1458),” in La Corona d’Aragona ai tempi di Alfonso II el Magnanimo: I modelli politico-­istituzionali, la circolazione degli uomini, delle idee, delle merci, gli influssi sulla società e sul costume (Naples: Paparo, 2000), 1:933–948. 104. José María Monsalvo Antón, “Cortes de Castilla y León y minorías religiosas: Los judíos,” in Las Cortes de Castilla y León en la Edad Media (Actas del I Congreso de Historia de las Cortes de Castilla y León, Burgos, 1986) (Valladolid: Cortes de Castilla y León, 1988), 2:159. 105. Ibid., 2:149. 106. The quotation marks enclose Monsalvo Antón’s glosses at 2:148–149. 107. Ibid., 2:168–176. His evidence is drawn from many cities, including Burgos, Palencia, Valladolid, Segovia, and Toledo. For background on this issue in Castile through the reign of Enrique III, see Sergio Serrano, “Judíos, préstamos y usuras en la Castilla medieval: De Alfonso X a Enrique III,” Edad Media 5 (2002): 179–215. 108. Monsalvo Antón, “Cortes de Castilla,” 2:173. 109. Ibid., 2:186. 110. Ibid., 2:188. 111. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 2:443. 112. Beinart, The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, 13. ­These transfers sometimes meant that Jews went to very undesirable places. In Ávila, for example, Jews ­were forced into a new neighborhood near leather tanneries—­regarded as the worst place in the city. Ibid., 15. 113. The papal charter included a ban against Jews dressing as Christians and forbidding Christian nursemaids from suckling Jewish or Muslim babies. See Bernardino Llorca, Bulario Pontificio de la Inquisición Española en su período constitucional (1478–1525) (Rome: Pontificia Università gregoriana, 1949), 106–108. 114. Meyerson, A Jewish Re­nais­sance, 19. 115. Ibid. 116. In general, see Julio Valdeón Baruque, Los conflictos sociales en el reino de Castilla en los siglos XIV y XV (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 1975), 141–153, 174–183. For recent work based on new archival discoveries, see Óscar López Gómez, Los Reyes Católicos y la Pacificación de Toledo (Madrid: A. C. Castellum, 2008), 54–71. 117. For more on demographic changes in Seville during the fifteenth and first part of the sixteenth centuries, see Antonio Collantes de Terán, Sevilla en la baja Edad Media: La ciudad y sus hombres (Seville: Sección de Publicaciones del Excmo. Ayuntamiento, 1977). For a summary, see Ruiz, Spanish Society, 1400–1600, 57. 118. See Ruiz, Spanish Society, 1400–1600, 58–59, summarizing Collantes de Terán. 119. Ibid., 49. For more on class transformation in late medieval and early modern villages, see T. H. Aston and C. H. E. Philpin, eds., The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Developments in Pre­-­Industrial Eu­rope (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 120. Isabel Montes Romero Camacho, “Relaciones de poder entre los judíos y conversos sevillanos,” in Judíos y conversos: Relaciones de poder en Galicia y en los reinos hispanos, ed. Eduardo Pardo de Guevara y Valdés and María Gloria de Antonio Rubio (Santiago de Compostela: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2017), 112. 121. Ibid., 125. 122. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 176.



Notes to Pages 37–38

153

123. Katherine van Liere, Simon Ditchfield, and Howard Louthan, eds., Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Re­nais­sance World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Irena Backus, “The Church ­Fathers and the Humanities in the Re­nais­s ance and the Reformation,” in Re-­Envisioning Christian Humanism, ed. Jens Zimmermann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 33–54. 124. John Chrysostom, homilia 2 in Ps. 48, Patrologia Graeca 55:517, quoted (and translated) in Igino Giordani, Il messaggio sociale di Gesù, vol. 4: I grandi padri della chiesa (Milan: Società editrice “vita e pensiero,” 1947), 110. 125. Ambrose in Ps. 118:8, 22, quoted in Giordani, Il messaggio sociale di Gesù, 4:114. 126. Ambrose, De officiis 1, 28:132: “ne hoc quidem secundum naturam; natura enim omnia omnibus in commune profudit. Sic enim Deus generari iussit omnia, ut pastus omnibus communis esset, et terra, foret omnium quaedam communis possessio. Natura igitur ius commune generavit, usurpatio ius fecit privatum.” Quoted in Giordani, Il messaggio sociale di Gesù, 4:115. 127. Giordani, Il messaggio sociale di Gesù, 4:115. “Natura igitur ius commune generavit, usurpatio ius fecit privatim.” 128. Ibid., 4:118. See also D. J. MacQueen, “St. Augustine’s Concept of Property Owner­ ship,” Recherches Augustiniennes 8 (1972): 187–229. 129. Augustine, Sancti Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis Episcopi Opera Omnia, 11 vols. (Paris: Apud Gaume Fratres, 1836–1838), vol. 4, part 2: 2097–2114: 2101, in Psalmum CXXXI enarratio. 130. Lester ­Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Eu­rope (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 176. 131. De evangelio aeterno, sermon 32, art. 1, cap. 1 in Opera omnia, 8 vols. (Florence: Typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1950–1963), 4:120. 132. Scotus, Questiones in librum quartum sententiarum, Disputatio XV, quaestio 2, no. 4 in Opera omnia (Paris: Vivès, 1894), 18:256. 133. Corpus juris canonici, Decretum Gratiani: canon Quo jure, Disputatio 8, c. 1 (Venice, 1584). 134. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Pars IIa IIae, ed. Piero Caramello (Turin: Marietti, 1952–1962), IIa, IIae, Qu. 134, art. 1, ad. 2, p. 629. See Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Po­liti­cal Thought, vol. 1: The Re­nais­sance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 226. 135. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IIa, IIae, Qu. 66, art. 2, resp., p. 325. For more on Aquinas and private property, see Hermann Chroust and Robert  J. Affeldt, “The Prob­lem of Private Property According to St. Thomas Aquinas,” Marquette Law Review 34:3 (1950–1951): 151–182. 136. Hans Baron argued that Franciscan influence was chiefly responsible. See his “Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth in the Shaping of Trecento Humanistic Thought: The Role of Petrarch,” in In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1988), 158–190. Quentin Skinner sees this as the expression of Stoic rather than Franciscan beliefs, based on Sallust’s explanation of the collapse of the Roman Empire. See Skinner, Foundations, 1:43. 137. Felice Tocco, La Quistione della povertà nel Secolo XIV, secondo nuovi documenti (Naples: Francesco Perrella, 1901), 1–51. 138. B. L. Ullman, ed., Colucii Salutati De seculo et religione (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1957). 139. Ibid., 80. See Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 1:665.

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140. Ullman, Colucii Salutati De seculo et religione, 80. Some classical sources for this: Juvenal VI, Iff.; Vergil, Ecologues 4, 6, 9; Boethius, Consolatio II, 5, 23–24, 25–26. For recent work on Salutati, especially his reception in Spain and among Iberian scholars, see Josué Villa Prieto, “Monarquías, Imperio y Papado: Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo y el ideario político bajomedieval italiano,” Anthologica Annua 62 (2015): 943–1114; and María Morrás, “Coluccio Salutati en España: La versión romance de las Declamationes Lucretiae,” La Corónica 39:1 (2010): 209–247. 141. Cedric Cohen-­Skalli, Letters, Isaac Abravanel, 1437–1508 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 2, 13, 88–91, 61, 72. 142. On the reception of Seneca in Spain, see Blüher, Séneca en España. 143. Ibid., 58, 126. 144. Ottavio Di Camillo, El Humanismo Castellano del Siglo XV (Valencia: Fernando Torres, 1976), 50. 145. J. N. H. Lawrance, “On Fifteenth-­Century Spanish Vernacular Humanism,” in Medieval and Re­nais­sance Studies in Honor of Robert Brian Tate, ed. Ian Michael and Richard A. Cardwell (Oxford: Dolphin Book, 1986), 65. 146. Olga Borovaya, The Beginnings of Ladino Lit­er­a­ture: Moses Almosnino and His Readers (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 25; Maxim Kerkhof, ed., “Un fragmento desconocido del compendio de dichos de sabios y philósofos, traducido del catalán al castellano por Jacob Çadique de Uclés en 1402,” http://­parnaseo​.­uv​.­es​/ ­Lemir​/ ­Textos​/ ­Kerkhof​ /­Kerkhof​.­htm. Seneca is quoted twenty-­three times. See also Eleazar Gutwirth, “Hercules Furens and War: On Abrabanel’s Courtly Context,” Jewish History 23 (2009): 299, where he labels Abravanel’s interest in Seneca’s tragedies as part of “a community of interests and authors.” 147. As Di Camillo points out, the vernacular component of humanism “cannot be explained away as a continuation of a medieval current or as a practice that is extraneous or even antithetical to the humanist movement. The truth is that this sudden surge of vernacular translations had no pre­ce­dent in Spanish culture and was clearly motivated and inspired by humanism.” Ottavio Di Camillo, “Humanism in Spain,” in Re­nais­sance Humanism, vol. 3: Foundations, Forms, Legacy, ed. Arthur Rabil Jr. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 59. 148. Nelson Novoa, “MS Parma.” 149. Ibid., 22. The text is found in MS Parma Pal. 2666 from 121r–137v. 150. Nelson Novoa, “MS Parma,” 25. 151. Blüher, Séneca en España, 115. 152. Nelson Novoa, “MS Parma,” 25. 153. Di Camillo, “Humanism in Spain,” 69. 154. Ibid., 78. For more on Cartagena’s translation, see Lawrance, “On Fifteenth-­Century Spanish Vernacular Humanism,” 72. On the importance of Spain and its heritage in the court of Alfonso V of Aragon, see Peter Stacey, “Hispania and Royal Humanism in Alfonsine Naples,” Mediterranean Historical Review 26:1 (June 2011): 51–65. See also Di Camillo, El Humanismo Castellano del Siglo XV, 124. 155. Stacey, “Hispania,” 59. 156. Alfonso de Cartagena (1384–1456), son of Pablo de Santa Maria. See his Los cinco libros de Seneca, published in Seville in 1491 along with extensive marginal glosses. See Blüher, Seneca en España, 133–135. On Cartagena as a translator, see Nicholas G. Round, “Alonso de



Notes to Pages 41–44

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Cartagena and John Calvin as Interpreters of Seneca’s de clementia,” in Atoms, Pneuma, and Tranquility: Epicurean and Stoic Themes in Eu­ro­pean Thought, ed. Margaret J. Osler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 67–88. 157. Seneca, Ad Lucilium epistolae morales, trans. Richard Gummere (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1962), XC:3. 158. Ibid., XC:7, 8. Seneca’s term luxuria, or excesses, is related to Abravanel’s motarot. See Baer’s translation of motarot as supervacua in “Don Isaac Abravanel,” 249. 159. Seneca, Ad Lucilium epistolae morales, XC:9. 160. See, for example, Abravanel’s discussion of the longevity of the patriarchs in Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 137. 161. Sirkka Heinonen, Prometheus Revisited: H ­ uman Interaction with Nature Through Technology in Seneca (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 2000), 71. 162. Seneca, Ad Lucilium epistolae morales, XC:10. 163. Seneca, Phaedra 483ff., trans. in Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism, 284. 164. Ibid. 165. For a list of places where Abravanel cites Plato, see Guttmann, Die religionsphilosophischen Lehren, 41. 166. Plato, Republic 421c, 423e–424a, 462b–­c. See Cinzia Arruzza, “The Private and the Common in Plato’s Republic,” History of Po­liti­cal Thought 32:2 (2001): 215–233. 167. On the reaction to the discovery of Plato’s writings in the West, and the dangers that a work like the Republic could pre­sent, see Eugenio Garin, “Il platonismo come ideologia della sovversione europea: La polemica antiplatonica di Giorgio Trapezunzio,” in Studia humanitatis, ed. Eginhard Hora and Eckhard Kessler (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1973), 113–120. See also James Hankins, Plato in the Italian Re­nais­sance, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 1:165. 168. Trebizond: “Platonis scripta, praecepta, instituta, Graeciam perdiderunt; nisi provideatur, similiter ruent occidentalia.” Quoted in Garin, “Il platonismo,” 116. Further: “non possumus simul Christo et Platoni ac Machumeto servire.” For the full text, see Francesco Adorno, Plato: Dialoghi politici e lettere (Turin: UTET, 1970), 2:966–976. 169. Garin, “Il platonismo,” 116. Plato’s syncretic tendencies ­were seen by Trebizond as anti-­Christian (though Pico and Ficino held the opposite view). On syncretism and Pico’s ­Theses, see Carl N. Still, “Pico’s Quest for All Knowledge,” in Pico della Mirandola: New Essays, ed. M. V. Dougherty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 179–201. 170. Melamed, “Jethro’s Advice,” 29. 171. Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 124–125. 172. Cohen-­Skalli, “Between Yitzhak Baer and Leo Strauss,” 184; Strauss, “On Abravanel’s Philosophical Tendency,” 96, 104. 173. It is also pos­si­ble that Abravanel accessed Plato through al-­Farabi’s The Perfect City. See Cohen-­Skalli, “Between Yitzhak Baer and Leo Strauss,” 180. For specific citations of al-­Farabi in Abravanel, see Guttmann, Die religionsphilosophischen Lehren, 43n6. According to Guttmann (ibid., 41), Abravanel likely knew Plato through extracts from Averroes, though Abravanel did cite Plato by name in the former’s commentary on ’Avot, where he referred to Plato’s Sefer hanhagat ha-­medinah. See Abravanel, Naḥalat ’avot, 14. For the Hebrew expression hanhagat ha-­medinah as equivalent to the Republic, see Klatzkin, Thesaurus, 117, 319. 174. Arama, Sefer ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 1:130r. Quoted on p. 22. 175. In general, see Shuger, The Re­nais­sance Bible.

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chapter 2 1. The term is from Williams, The Country and the City, 35–36, where he discusses early modern En­glish writers who idealized a lost golden age of En­glish agriculture. Such idealizations ­were often paired with cele­brations of capitalism as a progressive force. See Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, 86. 2. I owe this distinction between my­thol­ogy and history in the Hebrew Bible to the late Elliott Horo­w itz. 3. Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq 1:56r, where he states it is located at “the center of the earth,” in other words at the equator. Cf. Ezekiel 38:12. See also Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­ Torah, Genesis 113. Abravanel ­here discusses Genesis 3:24 (“And having driven out the Man, He stationed at the east of the Garden of Eden the Cherubim and the flame of the ever-­ revolving sword, to guard the way to the tree of life”). The Cherubim are understood as allusions to celestial constellations, and the “flame of the ever-­revolving sword” is thought to signal the intense heat of equatorial regions. 4. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 111. Abravanel’s choice of appellation for God, the “most high” (‘elyon), is a pun meant to accentuate Adam’s lowly status ­a fter his expulsion from the Garden. 5. Caro’s choice of verb ­here (ma‘al) refers to inappropriate use of sacred property. See Leviticus 5:15. 6. BT Sanhedrin, 49b. 7. Caro, Toledot yitzḥaq, 11v, on Genesis 3:23. 8. Compare Abraham Ibn Ezra to Gen. 3:23, who notes that the verb “to send” denotes “exile” and “disgrace.” 9. Caro, Toledot yitzḥaq 5r. 10. Saba, 6r. 11. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 89. 12. Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq 1:56v. 13. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 89. 14. For a discussion of how medieval theologians became increasingly aware of medical arguments about longevity, see Joseph Ziegler, “Medicine and Immortality in Terrestrial Paradise,” in Religion and Medicine in the M ­ iddle Ages, ed. Peter Biller and Joseph Ziegler (Rochester, NY: York Medieval Press, 2001), 201–242. For a parallel Hebrew source close to Abravanel’s time, see Abraham Farissol, Iggeret Orḥot Ha-­Olam (Venice: Zuan di Gara, 1586 [completed 1525]), 34r. On complexion theory and plants, see Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Re­nais­sance Medicine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 120–123. On secret properties, see Katherine Park and Lorraine Daston, Won­ders and the Order of Nature (New York: Zone Books, 1998), 129–130, 160–162. 15. See Brent Elliott, “The World of the Re­nais­sance Herbal,” Re­nais­sance Studies 25:1 (2011): 24–41. 16. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 92. 17. Saba, Genesis, 7r. 18. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 92. 19. On Abravanel’s knowledge of recent geo­g raph­i­cal discoveries, see Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance, 35. Abravanel specifically mentions reading an “au­t hen­t ic document” that Portuguese merchants and sailors brought back from India. See his comments to Jeremiah 3:14, in Perush ‘al Nevi’im uKetuvim (Jerusalem: Torah va-­da’at, 1955), Perush ‘al



Notes to Pages 49–51

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Nevi’im Aharonim, 317. He also served as an official mediator between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Republic of Venice regarding maritime trade issues that arose in the wake of Vasco da Gama’s discovery of a new sea route to India. On this episode most recently, see Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 265–267. On Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian travel writings, see the thirteen volumes of the Repertorium Columbianum (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993–2004); and Anthony Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). On the impact of ­these discoveries on Jewish thinkers of the period, see David  B. Ruderman, The World of a Re­nais­sance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1981). On the early Portuguese explorers with whose work Abravanel was likely familiar, see Eric Axelson, Congo to Cape: Early Portuguese Explorers (London: Faber and Faber, 1973). Abravanel also read ancient geographers like Ptolemy. See his remarks on 1 Kings 10 as Cush being the probable location of Sheba in Abravanel, Perush ‘al Nevi’im uKetuvim (Jerusalem: Torah va-­da’at, 1955), Perush ‘al Nevi’im Rishonim, 540. 20. See Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1972). For an excellent recent summary of Spanish abuses in the New World, and critiques of the imperial proj­ect from the early to mid-­sixteenth ­century, see Antonio Feros, Speaking of Spain: The Evolution of Race and Nation in the Hispanic World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 117–132. 21. For a similar argument regarding ­later sixteenth-­century Spanish Jewish and Italian Jewish scholars, see Andrew D. Berns, “The Place of Paradise in Re­nais­sance Jewish Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 75:3 (2014): 351–371. Arama held similar views. He notes that according to “truthful researchers” the equatorial regions “have the best pos­si­ble climate for growing produce.” Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 1:56r. 22. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 93. For Columbus on this point, see Cecil Jane, ed. and trans., The Four Voyages of Columbus (London: Hakluyt Society, 1933), 34–38; and The Columbus Letter of 1493; a facsimile of the copy in the William L. Clements Library, with a new translation into En­glish by Frank E. Robbins (Ann Arbor, MI: Clements Library Associates, 1952), 9–10. 23. Saba, 6r. For man “destroying his world,” see Mishnah ‘Avodah zara 4:7. 24. Caro, Toledot yitzḥaq, 9v. 25. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 94. The phrase “separation of desire” (haflagat ha-­ta’avah) suggests that once Adam experienced desire he deviated from his true course. For similar expressions in medieval Hebrew lit­er­a­t ure, see Maimonides, Guide 3:51; and Meir ibn Aldabi, Shebile ‘emunah 5, as cited in Klatzkin, Thesaurus, 225. 26. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 109. 27. See the work of the Paduan natu­ral phi­los­o­pher Pietro d’Abano (ca. 1257–1316): Pietro d’Abano, Conciliator (Venice: Giunta, 1565 [repr., Padua: Antenore, 1985]), 14r–15v, Differentia IX: “utrum natura humana sit debilitata ab eo quod antiquitus necne.” On the influence of this text on ­later sixteenth-­century Hebrew texts, see Berns, “The Place of Paradise,” 360–361. 28. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 137. 29. Ibid., 362. “Isolated in his wisdom” (mitboded be-­ḥ ochmato) is a highly unusual expression. Cf. Maimonides, Hilchot yesode haTorah 7:4, where he discusses prophecy. Abravanel, Saba, and Arama often used this verb (lehitboded) to denote a pastorally enabled otium. For example, see Saba’s explanation of Scripture’s notoriously difficult statement

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about the patriarch Isaac “­going out to meditate in the field [Gen. 24:63]”: “when Scripture said that ‘Isaac went out to meditate in the field’ [this means] to isolate himself (lehitboded) and to pray with intention.” Saba, Genesis, 27r. See also Arama’s comment regarding Moses, David, and Jacob: he remarks that “secrets of existence and the nature of creation . . . ​surround this profession.” Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 2:15r. 30. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 362. 31. The verse reads “Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren” (Gen. 37:2), and Abravanel comments: “this means that he was so wise and understanding in ­every ­matter, even the cultivation of sheep and what they need, such that he was the lead shepherd who taught his ­brothers on the subject of sheep. . . . ​Even though he ­didn’t walk with the sheep he understood and knew better than his ­brothers what sheep need.” Ibid. 32. Arama, Sefer ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 3:147v. Arama refers to parashat ha-­man ­here: a liturgical composition, common in the Sephardi rite, featuring the recitation of Exodus 16:4–36. Arama’s phrase “that they not lack anything” comes from the first sentence of parashat ha-­man. For a study of fifteenth-­century Aragonese prayerbooks, with a helpful bibliography, see Amos Dodi, “The Hebrew Linguistic Tradition of a Fifteenth-­Century Aragonese Maḥzor,” Lĕšonénu: A Journal for the Study of the Hebrew Language and Cognate Subjects 69:3–4 (2007): 329–330 [Hebrew]. For a thorough survey of manuscripts of siddurim and maḥzorim from France, Provence, and Spain, see Yaakov Yisrael Stal, “The Custom of Reciting pitom haqetoret in Hebrew Prayer: The Customs of France, Provencal, and Other Places,” Mekhilta 1 (2019): 41–112, especially 70–72nn102–103 [Hebrew]. I am grateful to Pinchas Roth for this reference. 33. Alphonsi Tostati Hispani Commentaria in Genesim, 1:106v, col. 2: “Erat enim locus ille optimus, in quo nihil deerat, quod homo concupisceret, et nihil aderat, quod homo contristaret.” See Augustine, De civitate Dei, Book 14, chapter 10. See Loeb Classical Library, vol. 414, 321. 34. Alphonsi Tostati Hispani Commentaria in Genesim, 1:106v, col. 2: “non iret in terras alias . . . ​quia quicquid boni est in tota terra est abundantius in Paradiso, et ideo non iret foras ad illud quaerendum.” 35. Ibid., 107v, col. 1: “istud autem non invenitur in aliquo alio loco, nisi in Paradiso: nullus loco erat in terra in quo tanta bonorum copia esset, et nullus, in quo non aliquod incommodum inveniretur, quod hominum contristaret.” 36. Ibid., 107v, col. 2: “nam ibi nihil alterum necessarium est, nisi vacare, et videre, neque est aliqua alia operatio delectabilio, quam huic praeponere velit. Neque ista aliquando est eis fastidio, ut eam permutare velint.” 37. Ibid., 107v, col. 1: “Nam in Paradiso erant tria principaliter, quae alibi non invenirentur, scilicet arborum, et herbarum multiplicitas, aeris salubritas, et fructus ligni vitae copia.” “Sed ista tria erant necessaria ad feliciter vivendum.” To l­ater medieval commentators on the Bible who wrote in Latin, “tree of life,” lignum vitae, was a general expression that included many products found in Eden. See, for example, Augustinus Steuchus, Recognitio Veteris Testamenti (Venice: Aldus, 1529), 29r–29v; and Berns, “The Place of Paradise,” 362–363. 38. See Nicholas of Lyra, Biblie iampridem renovate pars prima [-­sexta] complectens penta­teuchum: una cum glosa ordinaria, et litterali moralique expositione Nicolai de Lyra, necnon additionibus Burgensis, ac replicis Thoringi, novisque distinctionibus et marginalibus summariisque annotationibus (Basel: Froben, 1502) on Genesis 2:9, where Lyra explains that lignum vitae functions “ad impediendum senectutem” (36v).



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39. Bernhard Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens dans le monde occidental, 430–1096 (Paris: La Haye Mouton, 1960), 22. 40. Michael Schraer, A Stake in the Ground: Jews and Property Investment in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 75–76. 41. Juan Piqueras Haba, “Los judíos y el vino en España: Siglos XI–­X V, una geografía histórica,” Cuadernos de Geografía 75 (2004): 20. 42. Schraer, A Stake in the Ground, 76. 43. Abraham Neuman, The Jews in Spain: Their Social, Po­liti­cal, and Cultural Life During the ­Middle Ages (New York: Octagon Books, 1942), 1:164. For the late thirteenth and early ­fourteenth centuries, see the response of Ibn Adret I, 744, 915, 999; II 1, 105, 140; III, 150, 210, 237; IV, 54; V, 255; VI, 218; VII, 188; VIII, 14, 16. For more citations from rabbinic responsa, see Neuman, The Jews in Spain, 1:277n18. More recently, see Yom Tov Assis, “La participación de los judíos en la vida económica de Barcelona (siglos xiii–­x iv),” Jornades d’Història dels Jueus a Catalunya (1990): 77–92, esp. 83. 44. Neuman, The Jews in Spain, 1:165–166. 45. Schraer, A Stake in the Ground; Meyerson, A Jewish Re­nais­sance. 46. Neuman, The Jews in Spain, 1:206. 47. Ferro Tavares, Os Judeus em Portugal no Século XV, 1:43–105. 48. For a helpful summary of debates regarding Jews as cultivators of land in medieval Spain, see Schraer, A Stake in the Ground, 111–119. 49. Kenneth R. Stow, “The Jewish ­Family in the Rhineland in the High ­Middle Ages: Form and Function,” American Historical Review 92:5 (1987): 1085–1110. 50. Baron, A Social and Religious History, 12:30. 51. Ibid., 12:31. 52. Ibid., 12:30. 53. Ibid., 12:37. 54. Schraer, A Stake in the Ground, 118. 55. Ibid., 56. For more on ­those restrictions, including Jews’ inability to sell to Christians, see ibid., 236. 56. Baron, A Social and Religious History, 12:37. 57. Schraer, A Stake in the Ground, 111–112. 58. Ana María Rivera Medina: “Vid, viñedos y vino en Sefarad: Cultivo, elaboración y comercio de un vino diferenciador,” Espacio, Tiempo, y Forma 20 (2007): 213. Rivera Medina’s data are drawn from Madrid, Huesca, and a number of other locations. 59. Ibid., 211. 60. Neuman, The Jews in Spain, 1:4–5, 164–167 and sources cited ­there. 61. Piqueras Haba, “Los judíos y el vino en España,” 21. 62. Schraer, A Stake in the Ground, 40. 63. Ibid., 58, citing Josep Torró, “Guerra, repartiment i colonització al regne de València (1248–1249),” in Repartiments medievals a la corona d’Aragó (segles xii–­xiii), ed. Enric Guinot and Josep Torró (Valencia: Universitat de València, 2007), 232. 64. Most recently, see Kozodoy, The Secret Faith of Maestre Honoratus. 65. Neuman, The Jews in Spain, 1:4. 66. Jaume II was the first to do this, in 1299. See Schraer, A Stake in the Ground, 40. 67. See sources for this in Fritz (Yiẓḥaq) Baer, Die Juden im christlichen Spanien. Erster teil: Urkunden und Regesten (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1929) 2 vols., 1:28, 76; Jean Régné,

160

Notes to Pages 56–57

Cata­logue des actes de Jaime I, Pedro III, & Alfonso III, rois d’Aragon, concernant les Juifs (1213– 1291), 2 vols. in 3 (Paris: Durlacher, 1911–), nos. 1408, 1430, and 1439. 68. Schraer, A Stake in the Ground, 236. 69. Ibid., 237. 70. Miguel Ángel Motis Dolader, Los judíos en Aragón en la edad media (siglos xiii–­xv) (Aragón: Caja de Ahorros de la Inmaculada de Aragón, 1990), 139–145; Schraer, A Stake in the Ground, 74. 71. Meyerson, A Jewish Re­nais­sance, 110. 72. Schraer, A Stake in the Ground, 238. As Miguel Ángel Motis Dolader has observed, this is an underworked subject. See his “Régimen de explotación,” 406. 73. Motis Dolader, “Explotaciones agrarias.” 74. Meyerson, A Jewish Re­nais­sance, 111. See Motis Dolader, Los judíos en Aragón, 144, where a helpful chart depicts six Aragonese locations and the percentage of cultivation dedicated to grapes. ­These percentages range from as high as 79 ­percent of all land (in Sos del Rey Católico) and only as low as 47.5 ­percent (in Calatayud). 75. Jaume Riera i Sans, “La conflictivitat de l’alimentació dels jueus medievals (segles xii–xv),” in Alimentació i societat a la Catalunya Medieval, Anuario de Estudios Medievales 20 (Barcelona: CSIC, 1988), 299. 76. Neuman, The Jews in Spain, 1:165. 77. See Siete Partidas, VII, 24:8; Elias Hayim Lindo, The History of the Jews of Spain and Portugal (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1848), 101; Baer, Die Juden, 2:63, 2:228 paragraph 11, 2:275 paragraph 19. 78. Baer, Die Juden, 1:727. See Ibn Adret I, 881, 915, 916. 79. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of Amer­i­ca, 1952–) 17 vols., 12 (1967), chap. 51, 27. More recently, see Pinchas Roth, “Halakhah and Criticism in Southern France: R. David ben Saul on the Laws of Wine Made by Gentiles,” Tarbiz 83 (2015): 439–463 [Hebrew]; David Malkiel, “Gentile Wine and Italian Exceptionalism,” Journal of Jewish Studies 68:2 (2017): 346–368. 80. David Jacoby, “The Jews in the Byzantine Economy (Seventh to Mid-­Fifteenth ­C entury),” in Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures, ed. Guy G. Stroumsa et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 221. 81. As in fact Ana María Rivera Medina (“Vid, viñedos y vino en Sefarad”) has claimed with regard to viticultural activities. 82. BT Yevamot 63r. On agriculture in the Talmud, see Samuel Krauss, Talmudische Archäologie (Schriften der Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums) (Leipzig: G. Fock, 1910–1912). 83. Juan Antonio Bonachía Hernando, “Abastecimiento urbano, mercado local y control municipal: La provisión y comercialización de la carne en Burgos (siglo XV),” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie III, Historia Medieval 5 (1992): 85–162; José Luis Lacave Riaño, “La carnicería de la aljama zaragozana a fines del siglo XV,” Sefarad 35:1–2 (1975): 3–35. 84. Rivera Medina, “Vid, viñedos y vino en Sefarad,” 212. On wine in medieval Jewish law and culture, see Haym Soloveitchik, Yenam: Sahar be-­yenam shel goyim ‘al gilgulah shel halakhah be-’olam ha-­ma’aseh (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2003); Haym Soloveitchik, Ha-­Yayin bi-­ yeme ha-­benayim: Perek be-­toldot ha-­halakhah be-­Ashkenaz (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar, 2008). 85. Baron, A Social and Religious History, 4:28. 86. See, respectively, Leviticus 19:23 and 19:24.



Notes to Pages 57–60

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87. Sha‘are Teshuvah (Lemberg, 1847), 21v. On Gerondi, see Warren Zev Harvey, “Rabbi Nissim of Girona on the Constitutional Power of the Sovereign,” Diné Yisrael 29 (2013): 91– 100; Gidon Rothstein, “Working ­Towards Accommodation: Rabbenu Yonah Gerondi’s Slow Ac­cep­tance of Andalusian Rabbinic Traditions,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 12:3 (2003): 87–104 and bibliography ­there. Rashba affirmed ­these views in his Responsa 1:744. In the thirteenth ­century Naḥmanides decreed that only ‘orlah is observed outside the Land of Israel, not the prohibition regarding a vineyard in its fourth year. 88. Baron, A Social and Religious History, 4:28. 89. My translation. For the original, see Neuman, The Jews in Spain, 1:267n18. 90. See Beinart, The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and the lit­er­a­t ure cited ­there. For conversos and their property, see Juan Gil, Los conversos y la Inquisición sevillana, 5 vols. (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2000–2001). 91. Gutwirth, “Contempt,” 93. 92. Ibid., 93; Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman, “A New Collection of Judeo-­Spanish Songs,” Jahrbuch für Volksliederforschung 19 (1974): 154–166. 93. The original phrase is “pro magna parte laboratores sive cultivatores agrorum et vinearum.” See Piqueras Haba, “Los judíos y el vino en España,” 20. 94. See Andrés Bernáldez’s assertion that the Jews never engaged in the work of the soil in Juan de Mata Carriazo and Manuel Gómez-­Moreno, eds., Memorias del Reinado de los Reyes Católicos (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1962), 98. Translation ­here from John Edwards, The Jews in Western Europe, 1400-1600 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 75. 95. Valladolid ordinances from 1432 clearly indicate, as do con­temporary Italian ones from Forlì in 1418 and Ferrara in 1555, that Jewish consumption habits met with rabbinic and lay disapproval and had to be curbed. For the original text (Castilian written in Hebrew characters), see Baer, Die Juden, 2:280–298; for an En­glish translation, see Louis Finkelstein, Jewish Self Government in the M ­ iddle Ages (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1924), 349–375. 96. Although the term is no longer in vogue among historians of ideas, it remains the best umbrella term ­under which we can bring together the diverse ideas and authors that inspired this cohort of fifteenth-­century intellectuals in their analy­sis of the Bible’s Golden Age. 97. Guttmann, Die religionsphilosophischen Lehren, 41–43. 98. Blüher, Séneca en España; Gómez Moreno, España y la Italia de los Humanistas; Eleazar Gutwirth, “Consolatio: Don Ishaq Abravanel and the Classical Tradition,” Medievalia et Humanistica 27 (2000): 79–98. 99. Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism, 7. See also Strauss’s comments about Abravanel’s polemic against civilization, which he associates with Seneca, in “On Abravanel’s Philosophical Tendency and Po­liti­cal Teaching,” 109–111. 100. Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism, 8. 101. Stephen Greenblatt, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve (New York: Norton, 2017). 102. Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005), 111. 103. Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism, 10. 104. See the late fifteenth-­ and early sixteenth-­century sources collected in Joseph Hacker, ed., Peraḳim mi-­sifre ha-­maḥashavah veha-­musar shel ḥakhme Sefarad be-­dor ha-­gerush (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1966). 105. Abravanel, Naḥalat ’avot, 1. 106. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1:76ff. See Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism, 46.

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Notes to Pages 61–67

107. On the popularity of ­these authors among Iberian Christians, see Di Camillo, El Humanismo Castellano del Siglo XV; and Di Camillo, “Humanism in Spain.” For a partial list of passages in which Abravanel cites Vergil and Ovid, see Guttmann, Die religionsphilosophischen Lehren, 42. 108. Vergil, Aeneid VIII, 314ff., cited in Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism, 58. 109. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1:11, 89–136. 110. Ovid, Amores III, viii, 35–56, cited in Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism, 63. 111. Heinonen, Prometheus Revisited, 74–75. 112. Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism, 13. Some sources of this idea may be found in Hippocrates, On Diet I, vi, 486, On Epidemics VI, v, 314; Democritus, Fragm. 33; Plato, Laws 888e– 890a; Cicero, De fin. IV, 16; and Aristotle, Phys. 194a, 21. 113. Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism, 14. 114. Ibid., 15. 115. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 130. 116. See Peter G. Bietenholz, “Erasmus, His Mistress Folly, and the Garden of Epicurus,” in Encounters with a Radical Erasmus: Erasmus’ Work as a Source of Radical Thought in Early Modern Eu­rope (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 109–140. 117. Cicero, Tusc. disp. V, 89, 93, trans. Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism, 153. 118. Hava Tirosh-­Samuelson, “Nature in the Sources of Judaism,” Daedalus 130:4 (Fall 2001): 109. For further elaboration of this, see Richard G. Hirsch, The Way of the Upright: A Jewish View of Economic Justice (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations for the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism, 1973). 119. However, Abravanel was prone to pair Spanish cities with ­those of the biblical Land of Israel, due to climatic or etymological resemblances. See, for example, his commentary on 2 Kings 25 as quoted above, 103: “When Jews came to Spain by ship they settled in two places: one is the region that is still ­today called Andalusia, in one city, which in ­those days was ‘a metropole in Israel’ (2 Samuel 20:19), ‘princess among the provinces,’ (Lamentations 1:1), the Jews called it Lucena. Even ­today it’s still called this, and the gentile sages say of it that its air makes one wise, since its air is exceedingly clear and pure. Perhaps it was on account of this that the Jews called it Lucena, for it’s like Luz in the Land of Israel, designated for its prophecy.” For pre­ce­dents, see Bernard Septimus’s summary of Yehuda Alharizi’s view that Spain “could qualify as a surrogate Palestine,” and “Toledo was its Jerusalem” in Bernard Septimus, Hispano-­Jewish Culture in Transition: The ­Career and Controversies of Ramah (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 3. On the importance of Toledo to Spanish Jewry, see also Eliyahu Ashtor, Ḳorot ha-­Yehudim bi-­Sefarad ha-­Muslemit (Jerusalem: Qiryat Sefer, 1966), 1:211. 120. Yoḥannan Alemanno, Sha’ar ha-­Ḥesheq (Halberstadt, 1860), 34b, and discussion in Moshe Idel, “The Study Program of Rabbi Yohannan Alemanno,” Tarbiz 48 (1979): 324–328 [Hebrew], as well as Fabrizio Lelli, “L’educazione ebraica nella seconda metà del’400: Poetica e scienze naturali nel Hay ha-­‘Olamim di Yohanan Alemanno,” Rinascimento 36 (1996): 104–116. 121. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Leviticus, 145.

chapter 3 1. Saba, Ẓeror ha-­Mor, Leviticus 31r. 2. BT Shabbat 31r, Soncino translation. See Leviticus 19:18.



Notes to Pages 67–71

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3. Arama did not go quite so far as Saba, but he did observe that the Sages (BT Kiddushin 20a) thought that violation of the Sabbatical laws, particularly the practice of an agricultural occupation indirectly related to ­t hose forbidden in the Sabbatical year (’avka shel shevi’it), constituted “the root of all transgressions.” Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 3:138v. 4. Arama points out that the topic is addressed in the pericopes Mishpatim and Ki Tisa’, and in Deuteronomy 15. Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 3:146v. The word I’ve translated ­here as fo­ liage (sansan) literally refers to the “pointed, ribbed leaf of the palm tree.” 5. Ibid.. 6. Ibid., 3:137v. 7. Ibid., 3:145v. 8. This language is reminiscent of Abravanel on the provision of necessities in the Garden. See Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 89, quoted in Chapter 2. ­These ideas also have their echoes in the late twentieth ­century among modern writers addressing environmental challenges who are steeped in the biblical tradition: “If we want to stop the impoverishment of land and ­people,” Wendell Berry noted, “we ourselves must be prepared to become poorer.” Wendell Berry, “Less Energy, More Life,” in Our Only World: Ten Essays (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2015), 71. 9. Saba, Ẓeror ha-­Mor, Shemot, 36. 10. Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 3:147v. 11. Ibid., 3:137r. 12. Ibid., 3:148r. For the term “instruction” (hayeshara), see similar expressions in Maimonides, Guide 1:56, 2:39, 3:51. 13. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Leviticus, 156. 14. Ibid., 160. 15. Ecclesiastes 12:7. See Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 3:148r. 16. Saba, Ẓeror ha-­Mor, Leviticus 32a. 17. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 210, citing Naḥmanides. 18. See Pearl, The Medieval Jewish Mind, 99. 19. Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 3:147v, Portal #69. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., 3:147v. Cf. 1 Samuel 2:9. 22. Ibid., 3:134r–­v. 23. Ibid., 3:137v. 24. Ibid., 3:140v. 25. ­These derive from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 1095a15–1098a20. For more on this, see John M. Cooper, Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2012); and Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). 26. Abravanel, Naḥalat ’avot (Ashkelon, 2013), 80–81. ­Here Abravanel comments on Avot 2:7, “The more flesh the more worms; the more possessions the more care.” Danby translation. For more on hamon in early modern Hebrew writings, see Yaacob Dweck, Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2019), 123–166. 27. Abravanel, Naḥalat ’avot, 81. For the expression po‘al ha-­dimyon, see Maimonides, Guide 1:73, as cited in Klatzkin, Thesaurus, s.v. dimyon. 28. Abravanel, Naḥalat ’avot, 81.

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Notes to Pages 72–74

29. The phrase is from Monica Gagliano, Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants (New York: Penguin, 2018), 25. 30. The quotations in this paragraph are from Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 3:148r. 31. I use the feminine pronoun h ­ ere in reference to land for several reasons. First, in the Hebrew ­t hese men wrote, the word “land” (­either ’aretz or ’adamah) is feminine, and in sentences with in­de­pen­dent clauses the feminine pronoun is frequently used to refer to “earth” or the “land.” Second, in the Iberian vernaculars they spoke, “land” (Castilian/ Aragonese: tierra; Catalan/Portuguese: terra) is also gendered feminine. Third, eco-­feminist scholars such as Rosemary Radford Ruether and Anne Primavesi argue for the importance of gendering the earth as feminine. See excerpts from their writings in Roger S. Gottlieb, This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment (New York: Routledge, 2004), 322–345. 32. Saba, Ẓeror ha-­Mor, Genesis, 12r. 33. Abravanel is commenting on 2 Kings 3:19: “And ye ­shall smite ­every fortified city, and ­every choice city, and ­shall fell ­every good tree, and stop all fountains of ­water, and mar ­every good piece of land with stones.” See his Perush ha-­nevi’im, 7 vols. (Jerusalem: Horev, 2009), 3:420. The noun hashḥatah would have instantly reminded con­temporary readers of Deuteronomy 20:19 and its prohibition against destroying fruit-­bearing trees at a time of siege. The lit­er­a­t ure on bal tashḥit—­the rabbinic princi­ple derived from this verse—is im­mense. A cogent introduction may be found in Eilon Schwartz, “Bal Tashchit: A Jewish Environmental Precept,” in Judaism and Environmental Ethics, ed. Martin D. Yaffe (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001), 230–249. 34. Recent work in bioacoustics and evolutionary botany has only confirmed this. See Monica Gagliano, John C. Ryan, and Patrícia Vieira, eds., The Language of Plants: Science, Philosophy and Lit­er­a­ture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017). 35. Saba, Ẓeror ha-­Mor, Leviticus 32a, as cited in Gross, Iberian Jewry from Twilight to Dawn, 100–101. For “houses paneled with cedar,” see Jeremiah 22:14. 36. For the variety of expressions used, see Ben Sasson, “The Generation of the Spanish Exiles on Its Fate,” 28–34. 37. Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 3:147r. 38. BT Gittin 36r, and summary in Isadore Grunfeld, Shemittah and Yobel (London: Soncino Press, 1972), 12–13. 39. Solomon Zeitlin, “Some Stages of the Jewish Calendar,” in Studies in the Early History of Judaism (New York: Ktav, 1973), 1:183–193; Sidney B. Hoenig, “Sabbatical Years and the Year of the Jubilee,” Jewish Quarterly Review 59:3 (1969): 222–236; Jeffery A. Fager, Land Tenure and the Biblical Jubilee: Uncovering Biblical Ethics Through the Sociology of Knowledge (Sheffield: JSOT Press for Sheffield Academic Press, 1993); Robert North, Sociology of the Biblical Jubilee (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1954); Bruce Ledewitz, “Law of the Jubilee Year,” Vermont Law Review 22 (1997–1998): 157–172; Lee W. Casperson, “Sabbatical, Jubilee, and the ­Temple of Solomon,” Vetus Testamentum 53:3 (2003): 283–296. 40. For a positivistic view (that Sabbatical years and Jubilee years ­were a fact of life through the Second ­Temple period) and an extensive overview of the status quaestionis, see Casperson, “Sabbatical, Jubilee, and the ­Temple of Solomon.” For the opposite view that ­t hese ­were “ideal” prescriptions never fully followed, see John Sietze Bergsma, The Jubilee from Leviticus to Qumran: A History of Interpretation (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 2, where he suggests “it was intended as earnest legislation reflecting the values and structures of pre-­ monarchic tribal Israel, regardless of the extent to which it was practiced or enforced.”



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Similarly, Jacob Milgrom claims that “the Jubilee is a socioeconomic mechanism to prevent latifundia (the loss of the debtors’ land to the creditor-­rich) and the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor—­which Israel’s prophets can only condemn, but which Israel’s priests attempt to rectify in law and practice in this chapter of Leviticus.” See Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics: A Continental Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 302. See also p. 298. I am grateful to John Mandsager for help with this bibliography. 41. Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 3:39, p. 553, quoted in Aviezer Ravitzky, The Shemittah Year: Collection of Sources and Articles, trans. Mordell Klein (Jerusalem: Department for Torah Education and Culture in the Diaspora, 1972), 34. 42. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Leviticus, 154. For a similar view in the con­temporary Catholic world, see Tostado, Commentaria in Leviticum, 287r–288r. The relationship between Abravanel’s and Tostado’s views of the Sabbatical was noted by Gaon, The Influence of the Catholic Theologian, 84–87. Tostado’s extensive remarks on the Sabbatical and Jubilee may be found from 287r to 306r. 43. I’ve translated this expression (taḥalif koaḥ) in accordance with use of the verb heḥelif in BT ‘Erubin 100b. See Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Lit­er­a­ture (London: Trübner, 1903), 471, s.v. ḥalaf. 44. Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 147r. 45. Moses Naḥmanides, Perush ha-­Torah, ed. C. B. Chavel (Jerusalem: Mosad Ha-­Rav Kook, 1967), 2:163–182. 46. Naḥmanides on Leviticus 25:2, in ibid., 2:166. 47. Naḥmanides to Exodus 23:11, in ibid., 1:439. 48. Ibid., 1:169. 49. For a summary of debates on the composition of the Zohar, see Arthur Green, A Guide to the Zohar (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 162–168. More recently, see Boaz Huss, The Zohar: Reception and Impact (Oxford: Littman Library, 2016). On the authorship of Sefer HaḤinukh, see Israel Ta-­Shema, “The True Author of Sefer HaḤinukh,” Qiryat Sefer 55:4 (1980): 787–790 [Hebrew]; on this text more generally, see Ephraim Kanarfogel, “Restoring Spanish Torah Study to Its Former Glory: On the Goals and Intended Audiences of ‘Sefer Ha-­Hinukh’ and Its Exposition of ‘Ta‘amei ha-­Mitsvot,’ ” Diné Israel: Studies in Halacha and Jewish Law 32 (2018): 39–53. In general on the place of the Zohar in fifteenth-­ century Spanish and Portuguese yeshivot, see Hacker, “On the Intellectual Character,” 52, where he notes that the Zohar was taught more than all other kabbalistic texts. 50. Quoted in Ravitzky, The Shemittah Year, 33–34. 51. Zohar 3:108b. For an En­glish translation, see Daniel C. Matt, ed., and trans., The Zohar: Pritzker Edition (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004–2017), 8:213–214. Saba is known as a kabbalist: the title pages of his posthumously printed books proudly proclaim that his works are “interwoven with pearls of the Zohar and its hidden secrets” and that the author “gazed into the glass of prophecy . . . ​a nd emerged unscathed.” See the frontispiece to Ẓeror ha-­Mor. The expression ḥozeh ba-­ispaqlaria derives from Genesis Rabbah, §91. Scholarship has acknowledged this feature of Saba’s thought: Marciano, Sages of Spain in the Eye of the Storm, 257; and Gross, Iberian Jewry from Twilight to Dawn. On Abravanel’s use of the Zohar, see, for example, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 88 and Perush ‘al ha-­Nevi’im, Joshua, 31. See also Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance, 284n43. Arama also read and cited the Zohar. In fact, one of Arama’s sermons that provides bountiful material for Chapter 2 opens with a long

166

Notes to Pages 76–80

Zoharic quotation. See his sermon on the Garden of Eden, Sefer ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq 1:72r–78r, Portal #7, which begins with a quotation from Zohar III: 152a. Heller Wilensky notes that Arama mentions the Zohar a number of times. See her Philosophy of Rabbi Isaac Arama, 46n160. 52. Rashba, She’elot u-­teshuvot, 1:744. 53. Ibid., 4:292. 54. See the many responsa in Joel Müller, Teshuvot ge’one mizraḥ u-­Ma‘arav (Berlin: P. Deutsch, 1888) concerning land. Among them: purchase and sale of arable land (no. 201); purchase and sale of vineyards (nos. 178, 206); the inheritance and bequest of farmland (nos. 196, 197, 209); fertile land given to a ­woman as dowry or gift (no.  199); disputes over the quality of soil in inherited land (nos. 197, 198). See the helpful discussion in Eliyahu Ashtor, The Jews of Moslem Spain (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1973–1984), 1:202–271. 55. Essentially a stipulation that the tenant is obligated to cultivate a parcel of land. See Joseph Riviln, ed., Bills and Contracts from Lucena (1020–1025 C.E.) (Ramat Gan: University of Bar Ilan Press, 1994), 104–105, 113 [Hebrew]. For a similar document one hundred years ­later of Catalan provenance, see Shlomo J. Halberstam, ed., Sepher Haschetaroth/Dokumentenbuch von R. Jehuda ben Barsilai aus Barcelona (Berlin: T. H. Iṭtsḳovsḳi, 1898 [repr., Jerusalem, 1967]), 99. 56. See my remarks on Rabbi Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi in the previous chapter, and for the fifteenth ­century, see Motis Dolader, “Explotaciones agrarias.” 57. Teofilo F. Ruiz, Crisis and Continuity: Land and Town in Late Medieval Castile (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 80. 58. Ibid., 80–81. 59. Ruiz, Spanish Society, 1348–1700, 59; Robert S. Smith, “Medieval Agrarian Society in Its Prime: Spain,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Eu­rope from the Decline of the Roman Empire, vol. 1: Agrarian Life of the M ­ iddle Ages, ed. M. M. Postan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 446–447; Marc Bloch, French Rural Society: An Essay on Its Basic Characteristics, trans. Janet Sondheimer (London: Routledge & Paul, 1966), 56–57. 60. Marjorie Grice-­Hutchinson, Early Economic Thought in Spain, 1177–1740 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1978), 43–44. See also J. T. Noonan, The Scholastic Analy­sis of Usury (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 155–161. See also Feliciano de Solis, De Censibus (Alcalà, 1594), and Diego Pizarro, De Censibus (Medina, 1551). Each cites a number of ­earlier authorities from the fifteenth c­ entury who wrote on the census. 61. Tomás de Mercado, Tratos y contratos de mercaderes (Salamanca: Mathias Gast, 1569), 127r–129v. 62. González de Cellorigo, Memorial de la política necesaria y útil restauración de la República de España (Valladolid, 1600), 4, cited in Grice-­Hutchinson, Early Economic Thought in Spain, 52–53. 63. For an excellent summary of Spanish economic thought in this period, with extensive bibliography, see Demetrio Iparraguirre, “Las fuentes del pensamiento economico en España, en los siglos XIII al XVI,” Estudios de Deusto, 2nd ser., 2:3 (1954): 79–113. 64. Olivia Remie Constable, ed., Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, (2012), 3–4. 65. Ibid., 30. 66. Quoted in Jonathan P. Decter, Iberian Jewish Lit­er­a­ture: Between al-­Andalus and Christian Eu­rope (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 20.



Notes to Pages 80–82

167

67. Franz Kobler, A Trea­sury of Jewish Letters: Letters from the Famous and the ­Humble (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1953), 99. On mulberry trees, silkworms, and silk production—­and especially how entrenched ­these ­were in socially exploitative premodern Eu­ ro­pean practices—­see Luca Mola, The Silk Industry of Re­nais­sance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Florence Edler de Roover, L’arte della seta a Firenze nei secoli XIV e XV (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1999). 68. Decter, Iberian Jewish Lit­er­a­ture, 21. 69. Abravanel, introduction to Me‘ayane HaYeshua, in Perush ‘al Nevi’im uKetuvim (Je­ rusalem: Bene Arbal, 1960), 262. See also the introduction to his commentary on Deuteronomy and the introduction to Zevaḥ Pesaḥ, both of which are quoted in Ben Sasson, “The Generation of the Spanish Exiles on Its Fate,” 25. 70. Abravanel, Perush ha-­nevi’im, 3 (Melakhim), 2. Emphasis mine. 71. My emphasis. See Exodus 2:22 and the introduction to Gerson’s Ben porat yosef, his collected sermons, in British Museum MS. Or. 10726 (col. Gaster), fol. 2v. Quoted in Ben Sasson, “The Generation of the Spanish Exiles on Its Fate,” 27n18. On this work, see Meir Benayahu, “The Sermons of Rabbi Joseph ben Meir Gerson as a Source for the History of the Expulsion from Spain and Sephardi Diaspora,” Michael 7 (1981): 42–205 [Hebrew]. On this theme, see also Yosef H. Yerushalmi, “Exile and Expulsion in Jewish History,” in Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World, 1391–1648, ed. Benjamin R. Gampel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 3–22. 72. Haim Beinart, “A Fifteenth-­C entury Hebrew Formulary from Spain,” Sefunot 5 (1961): 82. All material in this article comes from a letter collection in Montefiore Library #196. Cf. Job 10:22. See also Dan Pagis, “Dirges on the Persecutions of 1391 in Spain,” Tarbiz 37 (1968): 355–373 [Hebrew]. 73. Beinart, “A Fifteenth-­Century Hebrew Formulary,” 116. This last verse refers to Egypt ­a fter the plague of flies. Virtually all of the preceding biblical verses come from predictions of doom or dirges about the destruction of the Land of Israel. 74. Ibid., 116–117. 75. Cited in Eleazar Gutwirth, “Hispano-­Jewish Attitudes to the Moors in the Fifteenth ­Century,” Sefarad 49:2 (1989): 237–262, 250. 76. Joseph Hacker, “Between Italy and Spain in the Fifteenth ­Century: The Correspondence of the Zark ­Family,” Hispania Judaica 10 (2014): 44 [Hebrew]. For more on changes in Sephardi consciousness about and approaches to the land of Spain as an “unclean and cursed land” in the wake of the events of 1391 and the persecutions of 1412–1414, see Joseph Hacker, “Links Between Spanish Jewry and Palestine, 1391–1492,” Katedra 36 (1986): 10–13 [Hebrew]. 77. The letter’s author notes that he wound up in Italy, in Taranto in par­tic­u­lar, where he and other Jews ­were “taken ­under the shade” of Giovanni Antonio Orsini, prince of Taranto. See Hacker, “Links Between Spanish Jewry and Palestine,” 8. 78. Ibid., 10–11. 79. Hacker, “New Chronicles on the Expulsion,” 223, line 3. 80. Ibid., 224, line 4. 81. Ibid., 224, line 11. 82. Ibid., 226, line 21. 83. Cf. BT Ta’anit 30r–­v; Hacker, “New Chronicles on the Expulsion,” 226, line 29. 84. Hacker, “New Chronicles on the Expulsion,” 227, lines 35–36. 85. Pilar León Tello, “Nuevos documentos sobre la judería de Haro,” Sefarad 15 (1955): 157–169.

168

Notes to Pages 82–89

86. Diego Enríquez del Castillo, Crónica del rey Don Enrique el Cuarto, in Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, vol. 70 (Madrid: Atlas, 1878), 204. 87. Angus MacKay, “Castile and Navarre,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Christopher Allmand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 609. 88. Grice-­Hutchinson, Early Economic Thought in Spain, 92. 89. Quoted in Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth: An Account of the Social and Po­liti­ cal Background of the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 127, note D. 90. Ruiz, Spanish Society, 1400–1600, 50. On Soria, see David E. Vassberg, The Village and the Outside World in Golden Age Castile: Mobility and Migration in Everyday Rural Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 91. This rogatory practice is well attested in con­temporary Muslim sources (istisqa’). Islamic sources mention Jewish practices, too. Toufic Fahd describes “a very pious Palestinian Jew who arrived in Yathrib a few years before the advent of Islam. He lived among the Banū Ḳurayza, who applied to him ­every time a drought had lasted too long. He demanded that ­those who came to him place at their doors a ṣadaḳa consisting of one mea­sure of dates or two mea­sures of barley per person. A pro­cession was formed b­ ehind him; clouds rolled over and the rain fell as soon as the pro­cession crossed the dried-up stream.” T. Fahd and P. N. Boratav, “Istisḳāʾ”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs. Consulted online on 30 April 2021. My thanks to Noah Gardiner for this reference. 92. Saba, Ẓeror ha-­Mor, Leviticus, 34. 93. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Shemot, 118. 94. Abravanel refers to con­temporary Eu­ro­pean customs rather often. For example, he notes that Zabud the son of Nathan, chief minister to King Solomon in 1 Kings 4:5, performed a ser­vice still found “­today among the kings of France,” namely to have a confidant “sit beside them at all times,” which “in their language they call a mignon.” See Perush ha-­ nevi’im, 3 (Melakhim), 42. 95. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Vayiqr’a, 155.

chapter 4 1. Arama, Sefer ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 1:41v. 2. Ibid., 1:103v. 3. Saba, Ẓeror ha-­Mor, Genesis, 18. 4. Caro, Toledot yiẓḥaq, 12v. “Cleanly craft” is a quotation from Mishnah Kiddushin 4:14. See Herbert Danby, The Mishnah: Translated from the Hebrew with Introduction and Brief Explanatory Notes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), 329. 5. Ibid., 11v. 6. Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 1:104r. 7. Abravanel, Naḥalat ’avot, 45. 8. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Exodus, 23. This last term (mitboded), which I have translated as “by himself,” may mean “in exile.” See above, p. 51. ­There is a potential echo ­here to Stoicism. As Richard Tuck has argued, Seneca’s reticence regarding the vita activa and a life of po­liti­c al action was thoroughly absorbed into fifteenth-­century Humanist thought, especially neo-­Stoicism. See Richard Tuck, “Humanism and Po­liti­cal Thought,” in



Notes to Pages 90–92

169

The Impact of Humanism on Western Eu­rope, ed. Anthony Goodman and Angus Mackay (London: London, 1990), 45–46. 9. Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 2:15r. 10. Ibid., 1:103v. 11. Ibid., 1:104r. 12. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Exodus, 49. 13. Joseph Albo, Sefer haʻiḳarim: Book of Princi­ples, 4 vols., ed. and trans. Isaac Husik (Philadelphia: Schiff Library of Jewish Classics, 1946), 3:131–134. 14. Regarding Albo’s influence on ­later Jewish writers, see Shira Weiss, Joseph Albo on ­Free Choice: Exegetical Innovation in Medieval Jewish Philosophy in the Fifteenth ­Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 83–84. For example, Caro cites Albo’s discussion of Cain and Abel in Toledot yiẓḥaq, 12r. 15. See Rashi and Ibn Ezra to Genesis 3:17. 16. Albo, Sefer haʻiḳarim, 3:131. 17. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 125. 18. See Augustine, De Civitate Dei 15:1. 19. Saba deploys an exegetical technique (simanam sofe ha-’otiot) where the final consonants of the letters that spell the word in question may denote another word. Qof, the first letter of qorban, ends in a peh, and represents the first letter of pishtim, or “flax.” Resh, the second letter of qorban, ends in a shin, which represents the second letter of “flax,” or pishtim. And so forth. For the rabbinic equation of Cain’s offering with flax, though without the mnemotechnical device, see Tanḥuma Bereshit ¶9. Isaac Arama notes this source in ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, Portal #4, 1:83r–83v. For more on this and similar exegetical techniques and their popularity in the ­Middle Ages, see Israel Ta-­Shema’s introduction to Sefer gimaṭriyaʾot le-­Rabbi Yehudah he-­Ḥasid, ed. Daniel Abrams and Israel Ta-­Shema (Los Angeles: Keruv, 1998), 1–13. 20. Saba, Ẓeror ha-­Mor, Genesis, 9b. We ­w ill examine what “luxury” meant to ­these commentators in greater detail in Chapter 5. 21. Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 1:104r. 22. Saba, Ẓeror ha-­Mor, Genesis 18. 23. See Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Leviticus, 145. 24. Isaac Aboab, Nehar Pishon (Zolkiew, 1806), 6. On Aboab, see Eleazar Gutwirth, “Contempt for the Lower ­Orders in 15th-­Century Hispano Jewish Thought,” Miscelánea de estudios árabes y hebraicos 30 (1981): 90. 25. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 125. See also Saba, 10r, who points out that, in addition to the land being cursed, Cain could not maintain an agricultural lifestyle ­because his curse to be a “fugitive and wanderer” (Gen. 4:12) prohibited him from plowing, sowing, and harvesting. 26. For uses of this term in medieval Hebrew lit­er­a­t ure, see Klatzkin, Thesaurus, 434. Soon ­a fter the forced conversions of 1391, Joshua ha-­Lorki wrote to his former teacher Solomon ha-­Levi, who had converted to Chris­t ian­ity as Pablo de Santa María. “Perhaps your appetitive soul longed to climb the rungs of wealth and honor which every­one desires and to satisfy the craving soul with all manner of food and to gaze at the resplendent beauty of the countenance of gentile ­women.” See Benjamin Gampel, “A Letter to a Wayward Teacher: The Transformation of Sephardic Culture in Christian Iberia,” in Cultures of the Jews: A History, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken Books, 2002), 391.

170

Notes to Pages 92–96

27. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 126. 28. Saba, Ẓeror ha-­Mor, Genesis, 18. 29. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Exodus, 7. 30. See William H. C. Propp, Exodus 1–18: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 134–135 and studies noted ­there. 31. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 422. 32. Tostado, Commentaria in Genesim, 25v, col. 2: “congregavit Abel oves, quae mansuetae erant, et factus est habens curam earum, forte quia licet de carnibus non cibarentur in aetate illa, tamen lacte pecorum alebantur, quasi fructibus arborum, vel quia pelles ad vestiendum recipiebant propter intemperiem aeris, sicut Deus primos parentes pellibus vestitos de Paradiso emiserat, et ideo sancti viri antiquitus praecipuam curam de officio pastorali habebant.” 33. Ibid.: “idest quaerens cibos de cultura agrorum, terra enim ante triticum, ordeum, et omnia genera frugum atque leguminum protulerat, sed post humana industria indigebant.” 34. Ibid., 26r, col. 2: “scilicet de frugibus, sed de peioribus, et corrosis, vel putrefactis. Quare non recepta fuit oblatio eius.” 35. Ibid., 25v, col. 2: “Abel autem magis suscepit officium pastorale ad exercitationem, ut tolleret ociositatem, quam ut necessitatem sublevaret valde malum erat vacantem ab omni opere esse, quia multa mala docuit ociositas.” 36. Thomas F. Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early ­Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 106. See also Julius Klein, The Mesta: A Study in Spanish Economic History, 1273–1836 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920). See the helpful historiographical review essay by Esther Pascua Echegaray, “Las otras comunidades: Pastores y ganaderos en la Castilla medieval,” in El lugar del campesino: En torno a la obra de Reyna Pastor, ed. Ana Rodriguez (Valencia: Prensa Universitaria de Valencia, 2007), 209–238. 37. Brenan, Spanish Labyrinth, 104. 38. Though this certainly did take place. For town dwellers and agriculturalists in Muslim Spain sheep ­were raised for meat, and wool was a by-­product. From the thirteenth ­century onward Christians inverted this hierarchy of value: they cared only for wool and ascribed ­little significance to mutton. For example, compare the frequency of lamb and mutton ­recipes in the thirteenth-­century “Hispano-­Magribi” cookbook translated by Ambrosio Huici Miranda, Traducción española de un manuscrito anónimo del siglo XIII sobre la cocina hispano-­magribi (Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Valencia 1966), with the extremely low incidence of mutton eating in sixteenth-­century Spain as cited in Klein, The Mesta, 26. 39. See Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain, 99, and for more detail, see Jesús García Fernández, “Campos abiertos y campos cercados en Castilla la vieja,” in Homenaje a l’Emo. Sr. D. Amando Melón y Ruiz de Gordejuela (Zaragosa: Instituto de Estudios Pirenaicos, 1966), 119. 40. Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, “Daily Life and the ­Family in Re­nais­sance Spain,” in A Companion to the Spanish Re­nais­sance, ed. Hilaire Kallendorf (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 145. 41. “Las siete Partidas del rey D. Alfonso el Sabio,” in Los códigos españoles (Madrid: Impr. de la Publicidad, 1847–1851), vols. 2, 3, and 4, partida 2, tit. 20, laws 6 and 7, as cited in Grice-­Hutchinson, Early Economic Thought in Spain, 14. On the siete partidas, see Robert I. Burns, ed., Las siete partidas, trans. Samuel Parsons Scott, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001).



Notes to Pages 96–98

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42. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 2:6. 43. Ladero Quesada, “Spain, Circa 1492,” 112. 44. Ibid. 45. David E. Vassberg, Land and Society in Golden Age Castile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1. The recent works of Teofilo Ruiz are a welcome exception to this trend. See his From Heaven to Earth and Spanish Society, 1400–1600. See also the numerous works of Miguel Ángel Motis Dolader and Asunción Blasco Martínez for Aragon, and Enrique Cantera Montenegro for Castile. 46. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 2:501. 47. Angus Mackay, “Castile and Navarre,” in New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Christopher Allmand, vol. 7 (ca. 1415–ca. 1500) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 609. For more on the crisis of feudalism for vassals and señores in the fifteenth ­century, see Bartolome Yun Casalilla, Sobre la transición al capitalismo en Castilla: Economía y sociedad en Tierra de Campos (1500–1830) (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León. Consejería de Educación y Cultura, 1987), 69–95. 48. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 2:6. During the two years Abravanel spent in the Kingdom of Naples, he and his ­family ­were involved with the trade of salt, grain, and oil in the kingdom’s southern regions. See Cesare Colafemmina, Documenti per la Storia degli Ebrei in Puglia Nell’Archivio di Stato di Napoli (Bari: Istituto ecumenico “San Nicola,” 1990), 206– 207, 212–213, 277–278, 308. 49. Diego Clemencín, Elogio de la Reina Católica doña Isabel: Leído en la junta pública que celebró la Real Academia de la Historia el día 31 de julio de 1807 (Madrid: Imprenta de Sancha, 1820), 236. 50. José Urbano Martínez Carreras, “Historia agraria castellana: Estudio preliminar,” in Gabriel Alonso de Herrera, Obra de agricultura, Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, vol. 235 (Madrid: Atlas, 1970), xvi. 51. Ibid., xix–xx. 52. J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (London: Edward Arnold, 1963), 21. 53. For a detailed case study from Soria, see Máximo Diago Hernando, Soria en la baja edad media: Espacio rural y economia agraria (Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 1993). On the conflict between ranchers and farmers, see especially 38–59. Soria and its hinterland had a prominent Jewish population. See Beinart, The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, 217, 255. See also Baer, A History, Index s.v. Soria (2:535). 54. Eduardo Ibarra y Rodríguez, El problema cerealista en España durante el reinado de los Reyes Católicos (Madrid: CSIC, 1944), 14. 55. Charles Julian Bishko, “The Castilian as Plainsman: The Medieval Ranching Frontier in La Mancha and Extremadura,” in The New World Looks at Its History, ed. Archibald Lewis and Thomas McGann (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963), 54. 56. In lands governed by Roman law, any restriction on individual owner­ship (dominium) was “heinous,” in the terminology of some premodern jurists. See Bloch, French Rural History, 202. 57. See Claire Morgan Gilbert, “The Politics of Language in the Western Mediterranean c. 1492–­c. 1669: Multilingual Institutions and the Status of Arabic in Early Modern Spain” (PhD diss., UCLA, 2014), 69–70. I’d like to thank Dr. Gilbert for sharing her work with me. 58. Ibid., 69. For more on this, see José Rodríguez Molina, “Relaciones pacíficas en la frontera de Granada con los Reinos de Córdoba y Jaén,” Revista del Centro de Estudios

172

Notes to Pages 98–100

Históricos de Granada y su Reino 6 (1992): 81–128; and José Rodríguez Molina, “Contratos de vecindad en la frontera de Granada,” Revista del Centro de Estudios Históricos de Granada y su Reino 12 (1998): 33–56. 59. Rodríguez Molina, “Relaciones pacíficas,” 109. 60. Ibid., 110. 61. Ibid., 118. 62. Ibarra y Rodríguez, El problema cerealista en España durante el reinado de los Reyes Católicos, 103. 63. See Martínez Carreras, “Historia agraria castellana,” xxvi, for a survey of historians who agree that Ferdinand and Isabella preferred ranching to farming as national economic policy. 64. Ibid., xxiii. 65. Pablo Alvarez Rubiano, “La lección política de los Reyes Católicos,” Anales de la Universidad de Valencia 26:1 (1952–1953): 115. 66. Although this postdates the presence of Jews in Iberia—­the law is dated Madrid, 23 December 1502 (see Martínez Carreras, “Historia agraria castellana,” xxxvi)—­the pro­cess was underway ­earlier. For more on this, see Cristóbal Espejo, “La carestía de la vida en el siglo XVI y medios de abaratarla,” Revista de bibliotecas, archivos, y museos 41 (1920): 36–54; 169– 224; 329–354; 42 (1921): 1–18, 199–225, as well as Carmelo Viñas y Mey, El problema de la tierra en la España de los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid: CSIC, 1941), 103–106. On the commercialization of agricultural products, see Francis Brumont, Campo y campesinos de Castilla la vieja en tiempos de Felipe II (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno de España Editores, 1984), 36–50. 67. Vicens Vives, An Economic History of Spain, 241. 68. Robert Sabatino Lopez, “The Origin of the Merino Sheep,” in The Joshua Starr Memorial Volume: Studies in History and Philology (New York: Conference on Jewish Relations, 1953), 161. 69. It is worthy of note that the post-­plague economy saw a big increase in meat consumption across Eu­rope. See Paul Freedman, Food: The History of Taste (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007), 173; Jennifer Ward, ­Women in Medieval Eu­rope: 1200–1500 (London: Taylor & Francis, 2016), 74; George Huppert, ­After the Black Death: A Social History of Early Modern Eu­rope (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 16. 70. Vives, An Economic History of Spain, 250–252. See also Charles Julian Bishko, “El castellano, hombre de llanura: La explotación ganadera en el área fronteriza de la Mancha y Extremadura durante la Edad Media,” Homenaje a Jaime Vicéns Vives 1 (1965): 201–218. See also Klein, The Mesta; Ángel Ferrari Núñez, Castilla dividida en dominios según el Libro de las Behetrías (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1958); Lopez, “The Origin of the Merino Sheep.” 71. Vives, An Economic History of Spain, 245–246. 72. Isabel Beceiro Pita and Ricardo Córdoba de la Llave, Parentesco, poder, y mentalidad: La nobleza castellana, siglos xii–­xv (Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, 1990). This development began to affect rural holdings, but ­a fter the Cortes of Toro (1505) it applied to the urban patriciate as well. See Ladero Quesada, “Spain, Circa 1492,” 117. 73. Vives, An Economic History of Spain, 246–247. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid., 250. 76. Lopez, “The Origin of the Merino Sheep,” 168. 77. On Abravanel’s wealth, see Beinart, The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, 502–509.



Notes to Pages 100–103

173

78. Bishko, “The Castilian as Plainsman,” 56; Diago Hernando, Soria en la baja edad media. For more on transhumance and the exploitation by grandes señores of pasturage, see ibid., 135–176. 79. Memorial de la política necesaria y útil restauración de la República de España (Valladolid, 1600), pt. 2, p. 24, cited in Grice-­Hutchinson, Early Economic Thought in Spain, 155. Miguel Caja de Leruela, an official of the mesta, in his Restauración política de España (Naples, 1631), ascribed the ruin of Spain to a decline in stock-­farming. He wished to see peasants supplied with the animals necessary to become shepherds. See Grice-­Hutchinson, Early Economic Thought in Spain, 155. 80. José Cascón, “Los Reyes Católicos y la agricultura,” Boletín de la Sociedad Castellana de Excursiones 1 (1903–1904): 470–471. 81. Dyer, “Rural Eu­rope,” 7:112. For more on this, see Dufourcq and Gautier-­Dalché, Histoire économique et sociale de l’Espagne chrétienne au moyen âge, 234–235, 238–241. 82. Vassberg, The Village and the Outside World in Golden Age Castile. 83. Dufourcq and Gautier-­Dalché, Histoire économique et sociale de l’Espagne chrétienne au moyen âge, 234. See also Bartolome Yun Casalilla, Crisis de subsistencias y conflictividad social en Cordoba a principios del Siglo XVI: Una ciudad andaluza en los comienzos de la modernidad (Cordoba: Excma. Diputación Provincial de Córdoba, 1980). See especially chap. 8, “Tensiones del pueblo llano en la ciudad,” 179–191. 84. Mackay, “Popu­lar Movements,” 35. 85. The American environmental historian William Cronon has made this argument in “The Trou­ble with Wilderness, or, Getting back to the Wrong Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the H ­ uman Place in Nature, ed. Cronon (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 79. 86. Most recently on Cisneros, see José María Magaz Fernández and Juan Miguel Prim Goicoechea, eds., F. Ximénez de Cisneros: Reforma, conversión y evangelización (Madrid: Universidad San Dámaso, 2018). 87. Gabriel Alonso de Herrera, Obra de agricultura compilada de diversos auctores (Logroño, 1513). This work has been reprinted several times and modernized as Libro de agricultura and La labranza española. I have used the edition edited by José Urbano Martínez Carreras, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, vol. 235 (Madrid: Atlas, 1970). For a basic introduction to this text, see Consolación Baranda, “Ciencia y Humanismo: La obra de agricultura de Gabriel Alonso de Herrera (1513),” Criticón 46 (1989): 95–108. For a thorough list of editions of Herrera, see Martínez Carreras, “Historia agraria castellana,” lxix–­lxxiv. On Herrera’s use of Muslim sources, see C. E. Dubler, “Posibles fuentes árabes de la Agricultura general de G. A. de Herrera,” Al Andalus 6 (1941): 135–156. 88. Alonso de Herrera, Obra de agricultura, 7. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid. A marginal note ­here directs the reader to Ecclesiastes 7, though ­there’s no mention of agriculture or life in the country in this chapter. 91. Ibid., 7. 92. Ibid. 93. On this fact, and on the importance of Andalusia in Spanish economic thought, see Antonio García Lizana, “El significado de Al-­A ndalus en el pensamiento económico español,” in Economía y economistas españoles, ed. Enrique Fuentes Quintana (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg: Círculo de Lectores, 1999–2004), 2:9–35. My thanks to Antonio Feros for this reference. 94. Vives, An Economic History of Spain, 245–246.

174

Notes to Pages 103–111

95. See José Enrique López de Coca Castañer, “Las capitulaciones y la Granada mudéjar,” in La incorporación de Granada a la Corona de Castilla: Actas del Symposium conmemorativo del Quinto Centenario (Granada: Diputación Provincial, 1993), 263–305, esp. 271–278. 96. Mackay, “Popu­lar Movements,” 33. 97. Luis Suárez Fernández, Judíos españoles en la edad media (Madrid: Rialp, 1980), 265. 98. Abravanel, Perush ha-­nevi’im, 3 (Melakhim), 591. 99. The glorification and cele­bration of al-­Andalus in Jewish culture stretched back centuries before Abravanel’s time. See Decter, Iberian Jewish Lit­er­a­ture. 100. Suárez Fernández, Documentos, 311–312, dated 30 November 1488. Translation in John Edwards, The Jews in Christian Eu­rope, 1400–1700 (London: Routledge, 1988), 77–78. 101. Examples of wealthy Jewish stock-­raisers in Iberia can be multiplied: in 1492 Salamó Çaporta herded a flock of 350 sheep. His holdings ­were so substantial that at one point he sold animals valuing nearly 4,000 sous to a butcher in Xàtiva. See Meyerson, A Jewish Re­nais­ sance, 126n80.

chapter 5 1. M. M. Postan and H. J. Habakkuk, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Eu­rope, vol. 1: The Agrarian Life of the M ­ iddle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 432–448. 2. On Venice’s tolerance of Jews, see Benjamin Ravid, Studies on the Jews of Venice, 1382– 1797 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003); Robert C. Davis and Benjamin Ravid, eds., The Jews of Early Modern Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Gaetano Cozzi, ed., Gli Ebrei e Venezia: Secoli XIV–­X VIII (Milan: Edizioni Communità, 1987). 3. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Exodus, 340. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid., 341. 6. See the essays collected in Ryan D. Giles and Steven Wagschal, eds., Beyond Sight: Engaging the Senses in Iberian Lit­er­a­tures and Cultures, 1200–1750 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018). 7. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Exodus, 341. 8. On this custom in ancient Near Eastern socie­ties, see E. A. Speiser’s comments on Genesis 14 in Genesis: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, 105–109. 9. Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 1:114v. 10. Ibid., 1:144r. 11. Genesis 14:22–23. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. For the expression “perfect man” (’ish shalem) in medieval Hebrew lit­er­a­ture, see Ha-­ Levi, Kuzari 1:1, and Maimonides, Guide 1:20, 1:32, 1:59, and 3:13. 15. Arama, Sefer ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 1:144r. For the last phrase see BT Bava Batra 132a. The episode of Abraham and the King of Sodom is noted by Gerson in his undated eulogy for Samuel Franco. The text of the eulogy is reproduced in Hacker, “On the Intellectual Character,” 82–89. See 84. 16. See Genesis Rabbah 50:7. Abravanel misattributes this statement to “Menahem bar Rav,” who is not invoked in Genesis Rabbah.



Notes to Pages 111–115

175

17. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 243. 18. Ibid. I have translated ḥesed as “code of conduct” in line with Sol Cohen, “The Pastoral Idea of Hesed and the Symbolism of Matzo and Hamets,” in Marbeh Hokmah: Studies in the Bible and the Ancient Near East in Loving Memory of Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, ed. S. Yona, E. L. Greenstein, et al. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 111–136. 19. ­There is no pre­ce­dent for this view in the Hebrew Bible commentaries Abravanel knew well: Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Gersonides, or Nissim of Gerona. 20. In general on this topic, see A. R. Bridbury, “Sixteenth-­Century Farming,” Economic History Review, 2nd  ser., 27 (1974): 538–556; Eric Kerridge, Agrarian Prob­lems in the Sixteenth ­Century and ­A fter (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969). For Spain in par­t ic­ u­lar, see Francisco Luis Laporta, Historia de la agricultura española: Su origen, progresos, estado ­actual y reglas para darla la mayor perfección posible (Madrid: Cano, 1798); Klein, The Mesta. 21. In 1 Kings 5 Solomon requested 30 kor of fine flour per day. Abravanel comments: “Christian sages say that a kor is 30 eiphot [another biblical unit]. In Castille ­those are called fanegas. ­Every kor equals 45 fanegas. Thus, Solomon requires 2,700 fanegas of bread ­every day. This would be 225 kapizis, kafisish in Castille. In Portugal, the land of my birth, this is the mouoi. In Neapolitan units, this may be calculated as 3,200 tonbalos.” Abravanel, Perush ha-­ nevi’im, 3:132. On fanegas, the Castilian unit of mea­sure­ment, see Sebastian de Cobarruvias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (Madrid: L. Sanchez, 1611), 397. 22. See Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Naḥmanides on Genesis 13:6. 23. Saba, 17r. Saba’s choice of the verb “to ­battle” (loḥamim) is quite strong and may reflect the commentator’s interest in the bellicose context of this scriptural narrative. 24. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 196. 25. See Rashi to Genesis 13:11. See Bereshit Rabbah §38. Abravanel’s expression “all year round” may refer to the annual inundations of the Nile. 26. Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 1:121r. 27. Ibid. 28. Abravanel, Perush ‘al ha-­Torah, Genesis, 197. See Gen. 13:12, “and Lot settled in the cities of the plain.” 29. Ibid. 30. Saba, 17r. 31. ­Here Saba imagines that the verb nas’a is transitive rather than intransitive: it is the yetzer that lifts Lot’s eyes and tempts him into the Jordan plain. 32. Saba, 17r. 33. Saba, 16r. 34. Eleazar Gutwirth, “Isaac Caro in His Time,” Miscelánea de estudios árabes y hebraicos 40 (1991): 119–130. 35. Saba, 17r. 36. Arama, ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 1:119v. The phrase “spread his shelter of peace” derives from the hashkivenu prayer of ma‘ariv, the eve­ning liturgy. Arama also notes ­here that war requires much food for soldiers—­a nother nod to demands on the land. 37. Tostado, Commentaria in Genesim, 69r, col. 2: “quia cum esset Abraham dives in argento, et auro, haberet deinde multam familiam, et pecora, et greges: cum tota occupatio antiquorum praecipue patriarcharum esset circa pascua ovium.” 38. Ibid., 74r: “Nam Abraham, Isac, et Iacob, et filii Iacob fuerunt totaliter pastores; ita quod tota occupatio eorum erat in officio pastorali, et tota substantia eorum in pecoribus erat.”

176

Notes to Pages 115–116

39. Ibid., 74v: “hic maxime signat pecora, quia propter multitudinem pecorum erat ista contentio, non autem propter aurum, et argentum, aut reliquam supellectilem.” 40. Ibid., 74v, col. 1: “dicendum quod hoc dicitur ad signandum causam contentionis, et sequitur ex praecedenti litera, scilicet quia Abraham habebat pecora multa, et Loth pecora multa, non poterant simul habitare, quia indigebant terra multa, in qua possent capi, et copiose pasci pecora ipsorum.” See also 74v, col. 2, where Tostado notes that the strife concerned which land was better for grazing, and which worse. 41. Ibid., 75r: “erat contentio inter pastores pro aqua, quia licet pro pascuis contendere possent, praecipue tamen pro aqua: quia id magis in contentionem venit, quod ni­mis habetur, et magis eo indigemus talis erat aqua: nam aqua est ni­mis necessaria pastoribus, et in terra Chanaan facilius habetur herba, quam aqua. Hoc generale est in tota terra Chanaan, et in regionibus vicinis . . . ​desertis Arabiae, et in terra Madian, et in regione Mesopotamiae . . . ​ nam ibi sunt pauca flumina, et terra arida; unde et plurimum utuntur, tam homines, quam pecora aquis putealibus, et in agris sunt putei, de quibus hauritur [col. 1–­col. 2] aqua, et effunditur per canales in locum aliquem in quo pecora bibant.” 42. On harsh competition between locals and transhumants for watering places (variously called abrevaderos, balsas, pozos, acequias, or fuentes), see Esther Pascua Echegaray, “The Landmarks of Pastoral Activities on the Spanish Landscape,” in Marquers des Paysages et Systèmes socio-­économiques, ed. Rita Compatangelo-­Soussignan, Jean-­René Bertrand, et  al. (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2008), 68. On frequent conflicts regarding watering places in the Ebro River valley, see Esther Pascua Echegaray, “Round and About ­Water: Christians and Muslims in the Ebro Valley in the ­Fourteenth ­Century,” in Cross, Crescent and Conversion: Studies on Medieval Spain and Christendom in Memory of Richard Fletcher, ed. Simon Barton and Peter Linehan (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 293–310. 43. Tostado, Commentaria in Genesim, 75r, col. 2: “Tam rara aqua est, ponitur sub magna custodia . . . ​claudantur putei forte clausione, ut non liceat cuilibet haurire aquam quando voluerit. Sed congregatis omnibus pastoribus ad quos aqua illa pertinet bibant pecora, ne quod ibi fraudis conmitant.” 44. Ibid., 74 r., col 2: “Et hoc non est nisi ubi sunt omnia officia, et omnes ministrationes necesse ad vivere, et ad bene vivere in communitate. Sed hoc non esset ubi essent omnes pastores; ideo non poterant esse omnes pastores in tota gente Israelitarum, sed paucissimi ex eis essent pastores: alii vero in diversis officiis, et administrationibus essent, sicut ad vivere, et ad bene vivere requirit.” 45. Ibid.: “et ideo licet pastores non haberent locum ad manendum, saltem haberent alii, et ita habitarent plurimi in domibus, et determinatis locis: pauci autem essent, qui non haberent determinata loca, sed in tabernaculis habitarent.” 46. Ibid.: “de Abraham, Isac, et Iacob secus erat. Isti enim poterant esse totaliter pastores . . . ​sed inter Chananaeos vivebant, et sic poterant totaliter dediti esse vitae pastorali, quia quod eis ad vitam, aut bene vivere deesset, haberent ab aliis.” 47. For Arama’s engagement with Aristotle, see Septimus, “Arama,” 17–21. Abravanel was also familiar with Aristotle’s thought. See Abraham Melamed, “Rabbi Isaac Abravanel and Aristotle’s Politics,” Daat 29 (1992): 69–81; and Abraham Melamed, “Aristotle’s Politics in Medieval Jewish Thought,” Peamim 51 (1992): 48–58. See also Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance, 239. 48. N. M. Samuelson, “Medieval Jewish Aristotelianism,” in History of Jewish Philosophy, ed. D. H. Frank and O. Leaman (London: Routledge, 1997), 228–244.



Notes to Pages 116–118

177

49. Paul B. Fenton, “The Arabic and Hebrew Versions of the Theology of Aristotle,” in Pseudo-­Aristotle in the ­Middle Ages, ed. Jill Kraye et al. (London: Warburg Institute, 1985), 240–263. 50. On Bibago, see Allan Lazaroff, The Theology of Abraham Bibago: A Defense of the Divine ­Will, Knowledge, and Providence in Fifteenth-­Century Spanish-­Jewish Philosophy (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1981); Colette Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the M ­ iddle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990 [1985]), 384–89; and Joseph Hacker, “The Place of Abraham Bibago in the Controversy on the Study and Status of Philosophy in Fifteenth-­Century Spain,” Proceedings of the Fifth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1972), 3:151–158 [Hebrew]. On Ibn Shem Tov, see Bernard Septimus, “Narboni and Shem Tov on Martyrdom,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Lit­er­a­ture, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 2:447– 455; and Jean-­Pierre Rothschild, “Questions de philosophie soumises par Eli Habilio à Sem Tob Ibn Sem Tob, v. 1472,” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age 61 (1994): 105–132. On Albo, see Sirat, History of Jewish Philosophy in the ­Middle Ages, 374–81; and Dror Ehrlich, “A Reassessment of Natu­ral Law in Rabbi Joseph Albo’s ‘Book of Princi­ples,’ ” Hebraic Po­liti­cal Studies 1:4 (2006): 413–439. On Duran, see Nachum Arieli, “Mishnato ha-­ Filosofit shel Rabbi Shimon ben Zemach Duran” (PhD diss., Hebrew University, 1976). 51. For example, Meir ben Solomon Alguades, chief rabbi of Castile and court physician to several monarchs, translated the Ethics in 1405. See also Lawrence Berman, “Ibn Rushd’s ­Middle Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics in Medieval Hebrew Lit­er­a­t ure,” in Multiple Averroes (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1978), 287–322. Steven Harvey, “The Influence of the ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ on Medieval Jewish Thought,” Mélanges de l’Université Saint-­Joseph 65 (2013–2014): 119–142. On Abravanel’s use of Aristotle’s Ethics, see Cohen-­Skalli, Isaac Abravanel: Letters, 94–95. 52. Moshe Idel, “The Impact of the Expulsion on Jewish Creativity,” Zemanim 41 (1992): 11–12 [Hebrew]. 53. Hava Tirosh-­Samuelson, “The Ultimate End of ­Human Life in Postexpulsion Philosophical Lit­er­a­t ure,” in Crisis and Continuity in the Sephardic World: 1391–1648, ed. Benjamin R. Gampel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 223–254. Among the scholars she studies are Meir Aramah, Joseph Garson, Solomon Almoli, Joseph Taitatzak, Isaac Aderbi, Isaac Arroyo, Moses Almosnino, Solomon ben Isaac Halevi, and Abraham ibn Megash. See also Hava Tirosh-­Samuelson, “­Human Felicity: Fifteenth-­Century Sephardic Perspectives on Happiness,” in In Iberia and Beyond, ed. Bernard Cooperman (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998), 191–243. 54. See Zonta, Hebrew Scholasticism in the Fifteenth C ­ entury, 1–2. For prior bibliography on this topic, see 2n1. 55. Pirqe ’avot 5:10, trans. Danby. 56. Ezekiel 16:49. 57. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1106a26–­b28. 58. Arama, Sefer ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, 1:159v. 59. Ibid., 1:161r. 60. Ibid., 1:161v. 61. Ibid., 1:162r–­v. Abraham Saba makes a similar point—­that the Sodomites ­were destroyed by fire and brimstone “since they boasted about their wealth” (quoting Ezekiel 16:49). To this Saba adds: “he who exalts himself, his end is to fall in fire.” Saba, Genesis, 22r.

178

Notes to Pages 119–122

62. Saba, Ẓeror ha-­Mor, Leviticus, 32a. 63. Solomon Alami, Iggeret Musar (Jerusalem: Mosad Ha-­Rav Kook, 1946), 39. 64. See also Yom Tov ben Hannah’s complaint poem, written shortly ­a fter 1391, which is similar in spirit to Alami’s Iggeret Musar. See Ram Ben Shalom, “Conflict Between Jews and Converts in Aragon Following the Persecution of 1391: New Testimonies from the Formulary of Yom Tov ben Hannah of Montalbán,” Sefarad 73 (2013): 97–131. Yom Tov ben Hannah writes, “I have seen, in this generation, the rich ­people of the land are very evil and sinful against the Lord” (110). 65. Alami, Iggeret Musar, 39, 40, 44. On the Iggeret Musar, see Baer, A History, 2:239–242. 66. Alami, Iggeret Musar, 47. 67. Solomon Ibn Verga, Shevet Yehuda, ed. Azriel Shohat (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1947), 40. On Ibn Verga, see Jeremy Cohen, A Historian in Exile: Solomon ibn Verga, “Shevet Yehudah,” and the Jewish-­Christian Encounter (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). 68. On this work, see Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 223–224. 69. Abravanel, Zevaḥ pesaḥ (Jerusalem: Mosad Ha-­Rav Kook, 2007), 98. 70. On Zevaḥ pesaḥ, see Cohen-­Skalli, Don Isaac Abravanel, 223–224. 71. On the presence of Franciscans in Aragon and throughout Iberia in the thirteenth and ­fourteenth centuries, see Jill R. Webster, Els Menorets: The Franciscans in the Realms of Aragon from St. Francis to the Black Death (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1993). 72. Jacques Le Goff, Lo sterco del diavolo: Il denaro nel medioevo (Rome: Laterza, 2012); orig. Le Moyen Age et l’argent: Essai d’anthropologie historique (Paris: Perrin, 2010), ix. 73. Alan Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 80. 74. Le Goff, Lo sterco del diavolo, 184, citing Anita Guerreau-­Jalabert, “ ‘Caritas’ y don en la sociedad medieval occidental,” Hispania: Revista Española de Historia 60:204 (2000): 36. 75. Keith Thomas, The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfilment in Early Modern ­England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 111. 76. Ibid. 77. Erasmus, Enchiridion Militis Christiani (Handbook of the Christian Soldier, 1503), and its prefatory letter to the 1518 edition. See Epistula 858 in the Collected Works of Erasmus, ed. Richard J. Schoeck and Beatrice Corrigan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974–2018), vol. 6. On the per­sis­tence of ­these ideas from the early thirteenth ­century onward, see Constant J. Mews and Anna Welch, eds., Poverty and Devotion in Mendicant Cultures, 1200–1450 (London: Routledge, 2016), introduction. 78. Lester ­Little, “Pride Goes Before Avarice: Social Change and the Vices in Latin Christendom,” American Historical Review 76:1 (February 1971): 16–49. 79. See ­Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy, 36, and for Alan of Lille, see Patrologia Latina CCX, 465. 80. Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Chris­tian­ity in the West, 350–550 AD (Prince­ton: Prince­ton University Press, 2012); Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the ­Later Roman Empire (Hanover, NH: University Press of New E ­ ngland, 2002). 81. Cicero, Pro Sexto Roscio, 27:75. 82. Decretum, Ia pars, dist. 88, c. 11 in Emil Friedberg, ed., Corpus Juris Canonici (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1879–1881), 1:308: “mercator vix aut nunquam potest Deo placere,” as cited by ­Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy, 38.



Notes to Pages 122–123

179

83. Jacques Le Goff, The Medieval Imagination, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 184. 84. Jacques Le Goff, Medieval Civilization, 400–1500, trans. Julia Barrow (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988 [1964]), 253. 85. Thomas, Ends of Life, 119. 86. Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth. 87. On Abravanel’s receptivity to humanist trends and texts, see Eric Lawee, “On the Threshold of the Re­nais­sance: New Methods and Sensibilities in the Biblical Commentaries of Isaac Abarbanel,” Viator 26 (1995): 283–320; Lawee, “Isaac Abarbanel,” 201–211. More recently, see Cohen-­Skalli, “Don Isaac Abravanel and Leonardo Bruni.” 88. Eric Lawee, “The ‘Ways of Midrash’ in the Biblical Commentaries of Isaac Abravanel,” Hebrew College Annual 67 (1996): 107–142; Lawee, “On the Threshold of the Re­nais­sance”; Eric Lawee, “Don Isaac Abarbanel: Who Wrote the Books of the Bible?” Tradition 30 (1995–1996): 65–73; Lawee, Isaac Abravanel’s Stance; Cohen-­Skalli, Isaac Abravanel: Letters. Cohen-­Skalli discusses Abravanel’s views on wealth in “Don Isaac Abravanel and the Conversos: Wealth, Politics, and Messianism,” Journal of Levantine Studies 6 (2016): 43–69. 89. Thomas, Ends of Life, 132. For more on this, see John Sekora, Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought, Eden to Smollett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), chap. 1; Christopher  J. Berry, Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions, chap. 4. 90. Hans Baron, In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1988), chaps. 7–9. 91. Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum 2.2. On Machiavelli’s application of Sallust’s ideas regarding the evils of money and wealth, see Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-­Century Florence (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1965), 174. 92. Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum 2.3. 93. Cicero, De officiis 1.26.92. 94. See Patrick Gilli, “La place de l’argent dans la pensée humaniste italienne au Xve siècle,” in L’argent au Moyen Age (xxviiie congrès de la Société des historiens médiévistes de l’enseignement supérieur public, 28ᵉ congrès, Clermont-­Ferrand, 1997) (Paris: Sorbonne, 1997), 309–326. Gilli’s study only covers the ­fourteenth through the mid-­fifteenth ­century. 95. Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Re­nais­sance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny, 2 vols. (Prince­ton: Prince­ton University Press, 1966); Hans Baron, In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought, 2 vols. (Prince­ton: Prince­ton University Press, 1988). For analy­sis, see Albert Rabil Jr., “The Significance of ‘Civic Humanism’ in the Interpretation of the Italian Re­nais­ sance,” in Re­nais­sance Humanism: Foundations, Forms and Legacy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 1:141–174; and James Hankins, “The ‘Baron Thesis’ ­A fter Forty Years and Some Recent Studies of Leonardo Bruni,” Journal of the History of Ideas 56:2 (April 1995): 309–338. 96. Hans Baron, “Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth in the Shaping of Trecento Humanistic Thought: The Role of Petrarch,” in In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism, 1:167. Petrarch, Epistulae familiares III:6; the letter likely dates from 1351–1352. See also Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque fortunae (written between 1355 and 1365). 97. Petrarch, Epistulae familiares 1:150.

180

Notes to Pages 123–125

98. See Dino Compagni, The Chronicle, trans. Else C. M. Benecks and A. G. Ferrers Howell (London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1906), 139; Bruno Latini, Li livres dou tresor, ed. Francis J. Carmody (California, 1948), 299; Albertino Mussato, A History of the Achievements of the Italians ­After the Death of Henry VII [De Gestis Italicorum post Mortem Henrici VII Caesaris Historia], in Rerum italicarum scriptores, ed. Lodovico Antonio Muratori (Milan: Ex typographia Societatis Palatinae in Regia Curia 1723–1751), vol. 10: cols. 569–768; cols. 586–587 and 716. 99. Skinner, Foundations, 1:43. See also pages 43–44 for detailed discussion. 100. Poggio Bracciolini, On Avarice, in The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society, ed. Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 231–289. For the complete Latin text with an Italian translation and critical notes, see Giuseppe Germano, ed., Poggio Bracciolini, De avaritia (Dialogus contra avaritiam) (Livorno: Belforte, 1994). See also John W. Oppel, “Poggio, San Bernardino of Siena and the Dialogue On Avarice,” Re­nais­sance Quarterly 30 (1977): 564–587. More recently see Francesco Bausi, “Humanisme ‘civil’ et humanisme ‘chrétien’ dans le De avaritia de Poggio Bracciolini,” in Humanistes, clercs et laïcs dans l’Italie du XIIIe au début du XVIe siècle, ed. Cécile Caby and Rosa Maria Dessì (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 367–403. 101. Kohl and Witt, The Earthly Republic, 251. 102. Ibid., 268. The speaker ­here is Andrea of Constantinople. 103. See Chapter 4. 104. Kohl and Witt, The Earthly Republic, 271. 105. Ibid., 277. St. John Chrysostom, Homiliae 87 in Johannem, 3–4 (Patrolgia Graeca, 59:477). On the reception of Greek church ­fathers in fifteenth-­century humanist texts, see Charles L. Stinger, Humanism and the Church ­Fathers: Ambrogio Traversari (1386–1439) and Christian Antiquity in the Italian Re­nais­sance (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977); Jerry H. Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Re­nais­ sance (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1983). 106. Quoted in Edward L. Surtz, “Humanism and Communism,” in Utopia: A Revised Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism, ed. and trans. Robert M. Adams (New York: Norton, 1992), 175. Originally Opera I, 642 and II, 1402. 107. See Julie Reynaud and Sébastien Galland, eds., Marsile Ficin: Correspondance (Paris: J. Vrin, 2014), 1:156: “nemo igitur in hac urbana familia dicat ‘meum hoc et illud tuum’ -­ omnia enim in hoc ingenti animali quodammodo communia sunt -­, sed dicat ‘meum hoc et illud’ non possessione quidem propria, sed affectu potius atque cura.” I am grateful to Daniele Conti for sharing this quotation with me. 108. The first proverb discussed in Erasmus’s Adages is “amicorum communia omnia” (between friends all is common). Erasmus: “it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common owner­ship of Plato’s . . . ​a lthough nothing was ever said by a pagan phi­los­o­pher which comes closer to the mind of Christ.” See Richard J. Schoeck and Beatrice Corrigan, eds., Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974–2018), 31:30: “If only it ­were so fixed in men’s minds as it is frequent on every­body’s lips, most of the evils of our lives would promptly be removed.” 109. George M. Logan and Robert M. Adams, eds., Thomas More: Utopia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 37. In his Republic Plato insisted that communism is only for the ruling class (the Guardians). But in the Laws (V. 739B–­C) he suggests that the best commonwealth is one in which communism was applied universally. 110. Logan and Adams, Thomas More: Utopia, 37. See Tacitus, Germania 5: among the ancient Germans “one may see silver vessels. . . . ​treated as of no more value than earthenware.”



Notes to Pages 125–128

181

See also Vespucci, in Jane, Four Voyages, 98, where he notes native Americans’ indifference to gold and gems. See also Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, De orbe novo [On the new world], trans. Francis A. MacNutt (New York: Putnam, 1912), 1:221, where he tells of a tribe that “used kitchen and other common utensils made of gold.” 111. Logan and Adams, Thomas More: Utopia, 10. On ­these themes, see Edward L. Surtz, The Praise of Plea­sure: Philosophy, Education, and Communism in More’s Utopia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957); George  M. Logan, The Meaning of More’s Utopia (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1983), 131–270. 112. Arama, Sefer ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, portal 48, p. 112v, cited in Heller Wilensky, The Philosophy of Rabbi Isaac Arama, 24. 113. Rabbi Johanan in BT Nedarim 38a. The editor of ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq has incorrectly attributed this saying to BT Shabbat 92r. 114. Arama, Sefer ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, portal 35, p. 11v, cited in Heller Wilensky, The Philosophy of Rabbi Isaac Arama, 172. 115. Arama, Sefer ‘Aqedat yiẓḥaq, portal 65, p. 84r, cited in Heller Wilensky, The Philosophy of Rabbi Isaac Arama, 205. 116. Among the minor prophets, see Micah 2:1 and Habakuk 2:9; in rabbinic lit­er­a­t ure, see BT Pesaḥim 107a, ’Avot 2:11, 4:10; Mekhilta to Exodus 20:14. 117. Aston and Philipin, The Brenner Debate; Jan Luiten van Zanden, “Early Modern Economic Growth: A Survey of the Eu­ro­pean Economy, 1500–1800,” in Early Modern Capitalism: Economic and Social Change in Eu­rope 1400–1800, ed. Marten Prak (London: Routledge, 2014), 69–87; Richard  A. Goldthwaite, The Economy of Re­nais­sance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); Frank Perlin, “Monetary Revolution and Societal Change in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Times: A Review Article,” Journal of Asian Studies 45:5 (November 1986): 1037–1049.

epilogue 1. She’elot uTeshuvot HaRalbaḥ (Venice, 1565), #143, 249r. 2. She’elot uTeshuvot HaMabit (Venice, 1628), vol. 1, #21, 6v. He wrote that their “ ‘ hands waxed feeble’ [Jer. 6:24] from observing the prohibition of the produce of the seventh year.” 3. Meir Benayahu, “A Document from the First Generation of Sefardi Exiles in Safed,” in Sefer Assaf, ed. M. D. Cassuto, J. Klausner, and J. Gutman (Jerusalem, 1953), 119 [Hebrew]. 4. Ibid., 121. For notes on the biographies of ­these men, see ibid., 110–118. 5. This was not the last ­legal controversy on the ­matter. For a cogent summary of the well-­k nown dispute between Joseph Caro and Moses di Trani on ­whether or not the products of soil owned by a non-­Jew in the Holy Land are subject to Sabbatical restrictions, see Isidore Grunfeld, Shemittah and Yobel (London: Soncino, 1972), 84–85, and sources cited ­there. Caro ruled in the negative and permitted such agricultural products for Jewish consumption. Moses di Trani and his son Joseph ben Moses di Trani opposed Caro. 6. Benayahu, “A Document,” 123. 7. Arnold, Negotiating the Landscape, 3. 8. On Jewish sermons in this period addressing highly educated and lay audiences alike, see Saperstein, Jewish Preaching; David B. Ruderman, ed., Preachers of the Italian Ghetto (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Gianfranco Miletto and Giuseppe Veltri, ed. and trans., Judah Moscato Sermons: Edition and Translation (Leiden: Brill, 2011). On the importance

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of stories in environmental history, see William Cronon, “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” Journal of American History (March 1992): 1347–1376. 9. On mining, see Konrad Häbler, Die Geschichte der Fugger’schen Handlung in Spanien (Weimar: Verlag von Emil Felber, 1897), especially 42–71; Valentín Vásquez de Prada, “Las antiguas ferrarias de Vizcaya, 1450–1800,” in Histoire économique du monde méditerranéen, 1450– 1650 (Mélanges en l’honneur de Fernand Braudel) (Toulouse: n.p., 1973), 1:661–671. 10. Karl Richard Appuhn, A Forest on the Sea: Environmental Expertise in Re­nais­sance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); Mikhail, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt; Cronon, Changes in the Land; Clarence  J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eigh­teenth ­Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). For an overview, see Ellen F. Arnold, “An Introduction to Medieval Environmental History,” History Compass 6:3 (2008): 898–916. 11. Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: ­Toward Reinventing Nature (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995). 12. For Judaism, see Ellen Bern­stein, Ecol­ogy and the Jewish Spirit: Where Nature and the Sacred Meet (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1998); and Manfred Gerstenfeld, Judaism, Environmentalism, and the Environment: Mapping and Analy­sis (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 1998). For Chris­t ian­ity, see Roger Sorrell, St. Francis of Assisi and Nature: Tradition and Innovation in Western Christian Attitudes T ­ oward the Environment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); and Andrew Cunningham, “Science and Religion in the Thirteenth ­C entury Revisited: The Making of St. Francis the Proto-­ Ecologist,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part A, 31:4 (2000): 613–643; 32:1 (2001): 69–98. For Islam, see Anna  M. Gade, Muslim Environmentalisms: Religious and Social Foundations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019); and Ursula Kowanda-­ Yassin, Öko-­Dschihad: Der grüne Islam. Beggin einer globalen Unweltbewegung (Salzburg: Residenz Verlag, 2018). 13. David Mevorach Seidenberg, Kabbalah and Ecol­ogy: God’s Image in the More-­Than-­ Human World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 14. Gagliano, Ryan, and Vieira, The Language of Plants; Frantisek Baluska, Monica Gagliano, and Günther Witzany, eds., Memory and Learning in Plants (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018). 15. Gagliano, Thus Spoke the Plant, 105–107. 16. Naomi Klein, This Changes Every­thing: Capitalism vs. the Climate (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014); Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (New York: Henry Holt, 2014); Nathaniel Rich, Losing Earth: A Recent History (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2019); Amitav Ghosh, The ­G reat Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016); Bruno Latour, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018 [French original 2017]). 17. Seder Zemanim (1593), quoted in Joseph Hacker, Megorashe Sefarad ṿe-­tseʾetseʾehem ba-­ Imperyah ha-­ʻOt’manit ba-­meʾah ha-16: Śaloniḳi, Ḳushṭa ṿe-­agafehen (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1966), 167. On the Jewish community in Salonica, see Isaac Samuel Emmanuel, Histoire des Isráelites de Salonique (Paris: Thonon, 1936). See also Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 1430–1950 (New York: Vintage, 2005); and the articles collected in a special issue of Jewish History on Salonica’s Jews: 28:3–4 (2014).



Notes to Pages 129–131

183

18. Hacker, Megorashe Sefarad, 168. For more on Longo, see Emmanuel, Histoire des Israélites, 196, 220–223. 19. On this figure, see Joseph Hacker, “Israel Among the Nations as Described by Solomon le-­Beit ha-­Levi of Salonica,” Zion 34:1 (1969): 43–89 [Hebrew]; and Joseph Hacker, “Despair of Redemption and Messianic Hopes in the Writings of Solomon le-­Beit ha-­Levi,” Tarbiz 39 (1970): 195–213 [Hebrew]. 20. Divre Shelomo (Venice: Zanetti, 1596), quoted in Hacker, Megorashe Sefarad, 168. 21. Quoted in Hacker, Megorashe Sefarad, 171. For the phrase “their hearts fled,” see Bahya ben Asher to Genesis 47:28. 22. Quoted in Hacker, Megorashe Sefarad, 172. 23. Hacker, “Spanish Exiles in the Ottoman Empire,” 36. It is impor­tant to note that Salonica was exceptional: it was the only city in the Ottoman Empire with a Jewish majority. See Mazower, Salonica, 49. 24. Jane S. Gerber, The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience (New York: ­Free Press, 1992), 151. 25. Hacker, “Spanish Exiles in the Ottoman Empire.” 26. Quoted in Gerber, Jews of Spain, 151. It is impor­tant to note Capsali’s apocalypticism and messianism. Capsali explic­itly identified the Ottoman sultans Mehmed the Conqueror (1451–1481), Selīm I (1512–1520), the conqueror of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, and Süleymān as filling the role of the first Messiah (he of the ­house of Joseph) who would restore Jerusalem. See Charles Berlin, “A Sixteenth-­C entury Hebrew Chronicle of the Ottoman Empire: The Seder Eliyahu Zuta of Elijah Capsali and Its Message,” in Studies in Jewish Bibliography, History, and Lit­er­a­ture in Honor of I. Edward Kiev, ed. Charles Berlin (New York: Ktav, 1971), 21–44. For the broader Ottoman context, see Cornell  H. Fleischer, “A Mediterranean Apocalypse: Prophecies of Empire in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 61 (2018): 36. My thanks to Nükhet Varlık for this reference. 27. Gerson, Ben Porat Yosef, 198r, as cited in Hacker, “Spanish Exiles in the Ottoman Empire,” 34. See also Benayahu, “The Sermons of Rabbi Joseph ben Meir Gerson,” 72. For the phrase “lions’ teeth,” see Eikhah Rabba 1:45; for “from the ends of the earth,” see Isaiah 41:9. 28. Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1984), 118–123. 29. Hacker, “Spanish Exiles in the Ottoman Empire,” 28. 30. Samuel Usque, Consolação as Tribulações de Ysrael (Ferrara, 1553), 233v. See also Martin A. Cohen, ed. and trans., Samuel Usque’s Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1977), 211, 231. Cf. 2 Samuel 20:19. 31. MS Budapest, Kaufmann Collection 322A, 56r–­v, with minor changes in Isidore Loeb, “La correspondance des juifs d’Espagne avec ceux de Constantinople,” Revue des Études Juives 15 (1887): 270–276. 32. Morris Goodblatt, Jewish Life in Turkey in the Sixteenth ­Century as Reflected in the ­Legal Writings of Samuel de Medina (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of Amer­i­ca, 1952), 5. 33. Ibid., 58. 34. Hacker, “Spanish Exiles in the Ottoman Empire,” 51. ­These figures are deceptive: property values (and rents) fell, while wages ­rose during the sixteenth ­century in Salonica, especially ­a fter outbreaks of plague. See Emmanuel, Histoire des Israélites, 79. For trends in

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Istanbul during the same period, see Süleyman Özmucur and Şevket Pamuk, “Real Wages and Standards of Living in the Ottoman Empire, 1489–1914,” Journal of Economic History 62:2 (2002): 293–321. 35. See his ’Ayuma ka-­Nigdalot (Constantinople, 1577), 21r, quoted in Hacker, “Spanish Exiles in the Ottoman Empire,” 50. 36. Hacker, “Spanish Exiles in the Ottoman Empire,” 56. 37. Aron Rodrigue, “The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire,” in Spain and the Jews: The Sephardi Experience 1492 and ­A fter, ed. Elie Kedourie (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), 164. 38. Ibid., 168. 39. Hacker, “Spanish Exiles in the Ottoman Empire,” 63–64. See also Rodrigue, “The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire,” 168. 40. Joseph Hacker, “Jews in the Ottoman Empire, 1580–1839,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 7: The Early Modern Period, c. 1500–­c. 1815, ed. Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 854. 41. Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600 (London: Praeger, 1973), 160, where he reports that about 1,000 Jewish families ­were employed in the wool industry. More recently, see Nükhet Varlık, “Plague, Conflict, and Negotiation: The Jewish Broadcloth Weavers of Salonica and the Ottoman Central Administration in the Late Sixteenth ­Century,” Jewish History 28 (2014): 261–288. 42. Varlık “Plague, Conflict, and Negotiation.” 43. Halil Inalcik, “Capital Formation in the Ottoman Empire,” Journal of Economic History 29:1 (1969): 118. 44. Cited in Benayahu, “A Document,” 122. 45. Rabbi Moses HaDayyan owned land near Safed. See ibid. 46. For example, in 1550 Hamon was granted permission to sell to foreigners 600 mud (308 tons) of wheat grown on his arpalik, or estate. See Inalcik, “Capital Formation,” 120. For more on Hamon and his role as the sultan’s physician, based on Jewish sources, see Benayahu, “The Sermons of Rabbi Joseph ben Meir Gerson,” 124–132. See also Uriel Heyd, “Moses Hamon, Chief Jewish Physician to Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent,” Oriens 16:1 (1963): 152–170. 47. Among other reasons, so that it would be easier to collect taxes from them. See Reşat Kasaba, A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Mi­g rants, and Refugees (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010), especially chap. 2. 48. Joseph Hacker, “The ‘Chief Rabbinate’ in the Ottoman Empire in the 15th and 16th ­Century,” Zion 49 (1984): 225–263 [Hebrew]. 49. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace, 77. 50. Abravanel, Perush ‘al nevi’im rishonim, 1 Samuel 8:12, 14.

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Index

1391, 6, 80–81, 119 1492, expulsion, 2, 6, 8, 35, 80, 81, 136n9 1496, Portuguese edit of expulsion, 9 Abravanel, Isaac ben Judah, 2–8, 11–32, 36–53, 55, 59–64, 67–69, 71–74, 76–80, 82, 84–86, 88–95, 99–116, 119–120, 122, 124, 126, 128–29, 132–33 Abravanel, Yuçef, 104–105 agrarian crises, 82–83 Ahab, King, 133 Alami, Isaac, 60, 119 Albo, Joseph, 13, 90, 117 Alemanno, Yohannan, 64 Alfonso V, 40 Alfonso X of Castile, 95, 96, 99 Alonso de Herrera, Gabriel, 101–103 Ambrose, 37 Andalusia, 36, 83, 98, 103–04 Aquinas, 38 Aragon, 32, 33, 34, 36, 40, 53, 55, 81, 84, 89, 97, 115, 160n74 Arabic, 13 Arama, Isaac ben Moses Arama, 2–19, 21–22, 25–27, 30, 38, 44–46, 48, 51, 55, 59–61, 63–64, 67–73, 75–78, 86–87, 89–92, 95, 99, 101–102, 104–106, 109–111, 113–118, 120, 122, 125–126, 128–129, 132–133 Armstrong, Karen, 60 anti-­materialism, 6, 15, 38, 109, Aristotle, 11, 14, 28, 29, 38, 111, 118 Arnold, Ellen, 128 Astruc, Bonfos Bonfil, 81 Augustine, 26, 52, 122 Arzila, 9 Babel, Tower of, 14, 19–29, 40 Babylon, 2 Baer, Fritz, 24

Barcelona, 54, 56 Baron, Hans, 123 Bernáldez, Andrés, 58 Bibago, Abraham, 13, 117 Bible, King James Translation, 18 Black Death, 17, 32, 97, 99 Blumenkranz, Bernhard, 52 Boethius, 81 Bonafed, Solomon, 33 Bonafoux, Abba Mari, 81 Bragança ­family, 30 de Burgos, Pablo, 4 Boethius, 14 Bracciolini, Poggio, 15, 120, 123 Byzantium, 57 Cáceres, 34 Cádiz, 103 Cain and Abel, 14, 15, 22, 47, 70, 85, 86–95, 128 Calatayud, 12 Capsali, Elia, 130 Caro, Issac ben Joseph, 2, 11, 16, 22–23, 46–47, 49, 87, 114, 128, 133 Caro, Joseph, 2, 181n5 de Cartagena, Alonso, 40 Castile and Castilian Jews, 12, 30, 32, 33, 36, 53, 77, 81, 89, 97–100, 103, 115 census, 78–79 cereal production, 96, 98–99 Chris­tian­ity, 2, 11, 31, 40, 129 Chrysostom, John, 37 Cicero, 40, 59, 62, 122 city and country, disparities between, 2, 7, 42 Ciudad Real (La Mancha), 35 Cohen-­Skalli, Cedric, 8, 43 Columbus, Christopher, 49 Conti, Daniele, 5

210

Index

conversos, 20, 30, 34, 36 Córdoba, 39, 103 Corfu, 2, 60 Dante Alighieri, 121 Diogenes Laertius, 59 Duns Scotus, 37 Duran, Profayt, 4 Duran, Simeon ben Zemah, 117 Durkheim, Emile, 6 eco-­feminism, 164n31 ecol­ogy and ecological meta­phors, 16–17, 51–52, 65, 67, 69, 71–72, 74, 79–80, 86, 104, 126, 128 Eden, Garden of, 15, 24, 45–52, 63 Egypt, 85, 93–94, 107, 113–114, 127, 130 Einbinder, Susan, 17 Erasmus, Desiderius, 15, 120, 180n108 El Qsar el Kebir, 9 Epicureanism, 62 Extremadura, 103 fallow, 78 famine, 114 farmers and ranchers, strug­gle between, 18, 98–99 Ferdinand and Isabella, 30, 31, 36, 80, 97, 101, 103, 122 Fez, 10 Ficino, Marsilio, 5, 15, 124 Flanders, 34, 83, 99 flood, the, 72 Fraga, 11 Franciscans, 29, 36, 120–123 George of Trebizond, 43 Germany, 54 Gerondi, Jonah ben Abraham, 57 Gerson, Joseph ben Meir, 80, 81, 131 Gersonides, 25 Golden Age, 3, 7, 41–42, 46, 60–61, 161n96 Gonzalez Mendoza, Cardinal Don Pedro, 30 Goshen, 93, 130 Granada, 83, 98, 103 Grice-­Hutchinson, Marjorie (?), 83 Gross, Abraham de Gudalajarra, Moses Arragel, 4, 13, 14 Guicciardini, Francesco, 33 Gutwirth, Eleazar, 8

ibn Habib, Levi, 127 Hacker, Joseph, 81 Hamon, Moses, 132 Heinonen, Sirkka, 42, 61 Hesiod, 8, 59 Huerta, 58 humanism and humanists, 3, 5, 13, 15, 16, 20, 38–40, 43, 62, 120, 122–125 Iberian vernaculars, 4, 13, 39 ibn Ezra, Abraham, 5, 25 Idel, Moshe, 117 idolatry, 27 irrigation and ­water rights, 96–98, 124 Isidore of Seville, 79 ius commune, 37 ius privatum, 37 ‘iyyun, 13 Jacoby, David, 57 Jaén, 31 Jiménez de Cisneros, Francisco, 102 João II, 30 Jethro, 7 Juan II, 40 kabbalah and esotericism, 10, 64 kerem reva’i, 57 kharaj, 8 Kimhi, David, 25 Lasch, Christopher Latin language, 4, 5, 12, 13, 14 Latini, Brunetto, 123 Lebeit Halevi, Solomon, 130 Le Goff, Jacques, 122 leqet, 63 Leviticus, 1 Lisbon, 2, 12, 24, 31, 73 Lopez de Mendoza, Inigo, 30 Lucena, 103 Lucian, 8, 59 Lyra, Nicholas of, 14, 26, 52 Maimonides and Maimonideanism, 43, 50, 74–75, 129 manna, 107–109 Manrique, Jorge, 34 manure, 77–78 Marciano, Yoel, 11 Ma’aseh ’Efod, 4



Index

mayorazgo, 100 Melamed, Abraham, 43 de Mella, Fray Alonso, 29 mesta, 15, 84, 95, 96 Meyerson, Mark, 36, 56 Midrash, 10, 111 Monsalvo Antón, José María, 35 Montalbán, 56 More, Thomas, 125 Morvedre, 33 Moses, 7 Motis Dolader, 8, 56 Muslims and Islam, 2, 5, 29, 36, 55, 77, 79, 82–84, 98, 102, 116, 121, 129, 130 Mussato, Alberto, 15, 120, 123 Nahmanides, 25, 75–76 Naples, 2, 12, 24 Navarre, 32, 81 Nelson-­Novoa, James, 8, 39–40 del Nero, Pietro, 124 Neuman, Abraham, 53 Nicholas V, 43 Nineveh, 2, 145n Nisim ben Reuven of Girona, 12 ‘olelot, 63 ‘orlah, 57, 77 Ottoman Empire, 6, 127–133 Ovid, 8, 59, 61 Palladius, 102 Pastoralism, shepherding, and livestock raising, 3, 6, 15, 83, 86–101, 115–116; social class of prac­ti­tion­ers, 100–101 Patristics, 13, 37 Paul IV, 54 pe’ah, 63 Petrarch, Francesco, 15, 120, 123 Pirqe ’avot/Ethics of the F ­ athers, 6, 71, 88, 91, 117 Plato, 28, 29, 43, 155n173 Plethon, Georgius Gemistus, 43 Pliny, 14, 102 Portugal and Portuguese Jews, 9, 12, 13, 24, 30, 36, 48, 49, 53, 54, 59, 89, 103, 104, 112, 127 Posidonius, 41 Primitivism, 7, 42, 45, 59–60, 132 private property, criticism of, 25, 124–125 Provence, 54

211

Queluz, 30 Rama, Ángel, 151n98 Rashba (Solomon ibn Adret), 77 Rashi, 25 reconquista, 15, 55, 97 Republic of Letters, 12 Rodrigue, Aron, 131 Rodríguez Molina, José, 98 sabbatical and jubilee, 1, 15, 16, 51, 63–65, 66–77, 127–128 Saba, Abraham, 1–22, 25–27, 30, 38, 44–49, 51, 55, 59–61, 63–64, 66–69, 72–78, 82, 84, 86–87, 91–92, 95, 99, 101–102, 104–106, 110, 112–115, 119–120, 122, 126, 128–129, 132–133 Safed, 58, 127 Sallust, 123 Salonica, 2, 131, 132 Salutati, Coluccio, 38 San Bernardino, 37 Saragossa (Zaragosa), 2, 81 Schraer, Michael, 53 Sefer HaḤinukh, 76 Seneca, 8, 25, 38–43, 62 Se­nior, Abraham, 31–32, 58 Septimus, Berel, 11 Seville, 2, 34, 36, 103 Shalom, Abraham, 13 sheḥitah (ritual slaugther), 57 shikhekḥah, 63 Shinar, Valley of, 14, 19 Sixtus IV, 36 Skinner, Quentin, 123 Smalley, Beryl, 4, 5 Sodom, 2, 22, 113, 118; sodomite Philosophy, 117; King of Sodom, 109–111; Sodom and Gomorrah, 14, 105, 106, 111, 120 Soria, 34, 83 Spain, celebrated fertility, 79–80 Strauss, Leo, 24 superfluities (supervacua, motarot), 24, 42, 48, 52, 108, 109 Tarazona, 56 Tarragona, 2, 10 tax farming, 30 Theophrastus, 102 Thomas, Keith, 17, 122 Tirosh-­Samuelson, Hava, 117 Toledo, 2, 14, 24

212 Tormes River, 58 de Torquemada, Juan, 13 Tostado, Alfonso (de Madrigal, Alfonso Fernández), 13, 14, 26–29, 52, 94–95, 114–116 di Trani, Moses ben Joseph, 127, 181n5 de Uclés, Çadique, 39 Umayyad Caliphate, 8 urban life, criticism of, 6, 24, 45, 61; port cities, criticism of, 34 Usque, Samuel, 131 Valencia, 56 Valladolid, 151n103

Index de Valencia, Jaime Pérez, 13 Venice, 24, 69, 107 Ibn Verga, Solomon, 33 Vassberg, David, 101 Vergil, 8, 59, 61 wealth, criticism of, 2, 15, 25, 38, 66, 68–71, 78, 89, 108–111, 119–126, 129–31 wine and viticulture, 55, 57, 96, 98, 108 wool production and trade, 96–97, 99, 132, 170n38 Zamora, 9, 10 Zohar, 76, 165n51 Zonta, Mauro, 13, 117

Acknowledgments

It’s my g­ reat plea­sure to thank the many colleagues, friends, librarians, farmers, ranchers, and institutions that helped make this book pos­si­ble. My first thanks go to the History Department at the University of South Carolina. Jessica Elfenbein has been a wonderfully supportive chair. I am fortunate to have been the recipient of several awards that facilitated travel, provided summer salary, and aided the acquisition of research materials: a Dean’s Award from the College of Arts and Sciences, a Faculty Research Grant from the Walker Institute, and a Humanities Grant from the Provost’s Office. Lori Carey is simply a marvel as Department Coordinator and helped me in myriad ways. Abby Callahan and Cherare Robertson offered crucial support. I’d also like to thank the Jewish Studies Program and its director, Federica Clementi Schoeman. At Portland State University I’m grateful to the Judaic Studies program and its director, Natan Meir, for their hospitality, collegiality, and access to library resources. A Melville J. Kahn Fellowship at Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University Center for Italian Re­nais­sance Studies helped me immeasurably early in my research. I owe par­tic­u­lar thanks to its former director, Lino Pertile, as well as to Michael Rocke, Alan Grieco, and Angela Dressen. A Rose and Henry Zifkin Teaching Fellowship at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, was crucial, helping me lay the groundwork for this book. Some of the ideas in this book ­were presented at seminars and conferences in the following settings: the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, UCLA; South Carolina State University; the Newberry Library, Chicago; Reed College; the Re­nais­sance Society of Amer­i­ca Annual Meeting (Chicago, 2018); the University of California, Irvine and the University of Southern California. My thanks to Sarah Abrevaya Stein; Janice Hawes; Lia Markey; Kambiz GhaneaBassiri and Paul Robertson; and Jessica Marglin and Matthias Lehmann for their invitations to speak and for their constructive, collegial criticism. A section of this book was previously published in altered form as

214

Acknowledgments

“Medieval Spanish Jews and the Dangers of Wealth,” in All Religion Is Inter-­ Religion: Engaging the Work of Steven M. Wasserstrom, ed. Kambiz GhaneaBassiri and Paul Robertson (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 159–170. My thanks to Bloomsbury for their permission to reprint parts of my chapter h ­ ere. I owe a special debt of gratitude to many librarians, especially ­those at the University of South Carolina, who good-­naturedly put up with my endless requests. I’d like to especially thank Kathy Snediker, Amie Freeman, and the staff at Interlibrary Loan—­particularly Kytt Pavlakovich and Brian Barr. My research would be unimaginable without them. Thanks also to the staff at the Portland State University Library, especially Molly Gunderson; the Spertus Institute, Chicago, particularly its president and CEO, Dean Bell, and former librarian Gail Goldberg; the Library at the Herbert  D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, and Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania, particularly Arthur Kiron, Josef Gulka, John Pollack, and Lynne Farrington; the staffs of the Brandeis University and Boston University Libraries; and the Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio and Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna. Many colleagues discussed this book with me and pushed me to make it better: Franco Bacchelli, Giancarlo Casale, Nicholas de Lange, Kay Edwards, Emanuela Ferretti, Noah Gardiner, Claire Gilbert, Lena Lencek, ­Nicole Maskiell, David N. Meyers, Agata Paluch, Laura Refe, Pinchas Roth, Marina Rustow, David Shyovitz, Cedric Cohen-­Skalli, Marco Sgarbi, Daniel Stein-­Kokin, and Patricia ­Sullivan. I am especially grateful to ­those who read drafts or portions of drafts: William Long, Ann Moyer, and Nükhet Varlık. A few ­people bore a disproportionate brunt of my conversation and correspondence about this proj­ect: Daniele Conti, Gabi Kuenzli, Evan Meaney, Matthew Melvin-­Koushki, David Ruderman, and Peter Stacey. I thank them all. I’m especially obliged to Yaacob Dweck, who supported me through ­every stage of the research and writing and was kind enough to offer detailed comments on an early draft. I am also grateful to two anonymous readers from Penn Press: their reports significantly improved the book. Any remaining m ­ istakes are of course mine. A number of friends outside the acad­emy supported me in numerous ways: Alison Beard, Lucy Bellwood, Steve Bennett, Jennifer Brandel and Aaron Wickenden, Michael Burkett, Mitchell Charap and Karen Gilmore, Amy Ciesielski, Bill Deresiewicz, Jill Feldstein, Carol Ferris, Quint Fischer, Brian Hanley, Ashley Henry, Eric Hillerns, Jim Hinz, Nick Hurdon, Zina Jenny, Brandon and Meagan Keatley, Alexandra Lawrence, Luca Ljucevic,



Acknowledgments

215

Amanda Lucier, Robin Mesch and Scott Hanley, Harry Miley, Adam ­Morris, Nicki Anahata Musick, Clay Nort­house, Andy Rachlin, Jonathan Rosenblatt, Sonya and Jonathan Sanford, George Scialabba, Betty Soldi, Christopher Solomon, Karen Thompson, and Dylan Weller. I am so grateful for their hospitality, encouragement, creativity, and friendship. This book would have been much shallower if I had not had the opportunity to learn from and work with a number of farmers and ranchers. In Washington state, Sarah Berns and Daren, Ayla, and Maeve Belsby showed me the dedication, energy, and skill it takes to care for animals, raise vegetables, and run a ranch. Gary and Louise Belsby taught me more than I ever thought I needed to know about animal husbandry and ­running ­cattle, particularly during calving season. In Israel, Guy and Anat Ben Naim let me pastor their large flock of sheep and goats for a month and gave me perspective on what exactly Isaac Abravanel meant by the “meditative isolation” that comes with pastoring animals. Charlie Bar Sheshet was an inspiring taskmaster, introducing me to more forms of manual ­labor than I knew existed on his farm outside Jerusalem. In Oregon, Michelle Battista guided me to several adventures on vineyards and farms, and Margeaux Fraasa and Javier Lara graciously allowed me to observe a Nahuatl/Crow ceremony on their land to prepare soil for planting. In South Carolina, Rachael Sharpe opened her f­ amily farm to me and patiently answered my many questions. I owe an unredeemable debt to my teachers. One in par­tic­u­lar has been absolutely foundational over the last de­cade: Rabbi Dr. Sol Cohen has taught me nearly every­thing I know about the Talmud and rabbinic lit­er­a­ture. I am profoundly grateful for his steady presence as a teacher and study partner, rigorous instruction, and demanding standards. Dr. Cohen was generous enough to review with me all of the Hebrew to En­glish translations in the foregoing pages and saved me from numerous ­mistakes and stylistic infelicities. My ­f amily has been unfailingly supportive: warm thanks to David, Lee-­A nne, Sam, and Aaron Berns; Joan Feinberg Berns; and Carol Feinberg Cohen. At Penn Press Jerry Singerman believed in this proj­ect from the beginning. I am grateful to him for his encouragement and professionalism. Jenn Backer was a terrific copy editor, and Lily Palladino was exemplary as a managing editor. Errol Tisdale helped prepare the manuscript to Penn Press’s specifications. Konstanze Kunst kindly assisted in identifying the cover art. Fi­nally, Mara Zepeda has lived this book with me in ways that only she knows. I am unspeakably grateful for her love and support. Quid dulcius . . .

216

Acknowledgments

My students at the University of South Carolina have been unceasingly fascinated by this proj­ect’s central concerns: the Bible and how to interpret it, the land and how to live on it, the relationship between the physical circumstances of one’s life and the meaning of one’s thought. Their curiosity, energy, and commitment to studying the past remind me why I became a historian. The person who set me on my scholarly path was my cherished se­nior thesis advisor Scott B. Smith. He died while I was writing this book. Although Scott worked on subjects far remote from ­those that engage me ­here, he was the first historian to make the past come truly alive to me. He dismantled my writing and helped me piece it back together and taught me how to read and think about history. He set an example of not only how to teach and write history but how to be a mentor—­and a mensch. I dedicate this book to his memory.