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Article Excerpt
A few years ago, while researching the perception of the Jews in Italy as revealed by Italian Renaissance plays preserved at the ShakespeareFolger Library, (2) found a play entitled: "La / Maravigliosa / Rappresentazione / Spirituale / (3) Non meno utile, e vaga, che curiosa, / & sententiosa: / Nella quale si tratta della Miseria, Vita, & fine del Genere humano. / Con un Dialogo d'un Romito, & di un Hebreo. / Dell'Eccll. M. Giouanni Stochmar, / Medico Alemanno. Dedicata all'Illustrissimo, & / Eccellentis. Signor / Steffano Viaro. / In Venetia, MDC.X. / Appresso Francesco Rampazzetto / Con Licenza, & Privileggio." (4) The "Sacra Rappresentazione" is a very prolix play in five acts: in the first act we find Divine Providence bestowing favors upon the human species. The second act deals with the afflictions and persecutions to which human genus is subject; the third is devoted to the ills by which humanity is beset, while the fourth is dedicated to human actions and the fifth to the causes of corruption among human beings.
The Dialogo is the jewel in the midst of so much boredom: it is a play within the play and depicts a discussion between two friends, a hermit and a rabbi, each one trying to extol the virtues of their own religion. It goes from page 202 to page 227 of the larger document and is couched in almost perfect Italian, although a few traces of Venetian appear here and there.
It became immediately apparent that the play contained two anomalies: first the designation, "a dialogue," which indicates a peaceful discussion, although the term "dispute" is usually applied to arguments of religious nature, public of private, between Christians and Jews. (5) It is unusual to find an amicable discussion since, according to Johnson, "once the break between Christianity and Judaism became unbridgeable, the only form of discourse between them was polemical." (6) The second anomaly lies in the unusual ending of the play, in which the Jew, instead of converting, simply agrees to give the matter of conversion his utmost attention and the two interlocutors, the Rabbi and the hermit, promise to meet another day. Although tucked in the center of a very orthodox play, it seems strange that, in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, in the middle of the Counter Reformation, the Venetian overseers gave the play "licenza e privilegio," without themselves being liable to severe penalties, until we focus our attention on the history of relations between Venice and the Jews, and Venice and the Holy See, exactly in the period in which the play was first printed.
The Jews had been expelled from Venice in 1527, but had been readmitted seven years later. The anti-Jewish behavior of the Republic was more gesture than substance since, as Bowsma indicates, Sansovino took pride not in the severity of the Republic but in the liberality in which it treated the Jews. (7) Although the name "ghetto" originated in Venice, "... the Jews ... enjoyed privileges and received exemplary treatment the like of which has scarcely been known ..." (8) and it was not uncommon for rabbis and Christian prelates to amicably discuss religious questions." (9) Similar events happened in Venice that are otherwise hard to explain. Jewish books, for example, were allowed to circulate, as shown by Daniel Bomberg's printing of the Pentateuch, a selection from the Prophets, and three editions of the great rabbinical Bible, the first edition of which was dedicated to Pope Leo X. (10) The burning of the Talmud (11) only occurred because the printing houses of Giustiniani and Bragadin [also called Bragadoni] (12) were quarreling about the new edition of the book. Once the Inquisition was called into examining this matter, it ordered the Talmud burned. Eight months later Pope Julius III issued the bull Cum sicut nuper to ensure the enforcement of the Inquisition's order. Books that lacked the authorization of the Council of Ten were also ordered burned. But the Republic was so lenient with the Jews that between 1517 and 1721 it allowed 250 Jewish students to graduate from the University of Padua that was subordinate to Venice. (13)
While the rest of Italy was in the throes of the Counter Reformation and religious pressure was irresistible in most Italian cities, political and religious unrest in Venice may explain the literary overseers' lenient behavior. Barely four years before the publication of the Dialogo, Pope Paul V had excommunicated the Doge and Senate and hurled the "interdictum" on all territories under Venetian rule. A Servita (14) friar, Paolo Sarpi, took the defense of the Republic and, in the Historia del Concilio tridentino (1608-1612), took the lay point of view in describing the proceedings of the Council of Trent. (15) It comes, thus, as no surprise that the overseers of the Dialogo took a lenient view of the non-conversion of the rabbi.
We know nothing about the author of the Dialogo, a German doctor called Giovanni Stochmar, other than that he was obviously a Catholic, since the entire dialogue is Christian propaganda. It is an attempt to convince the Jews of their foolishness in resisting conversion, since the coming of the Messiah had been foretold by the Prophets. In order to place such documents in the proper perspective, it seems appropriate to give a brief history of other debates between Christians and Jews prior to 1610. (16)
There is nothing new in Christian apologists attempting to justify the life and sacrifice of Christ by going back to the prophets of the Old Testament. The bifurcation of the Jewish religion in two sects, one called "Christian" and the other one retaining the name of "Jews" is a part of the history of Christianity. (17) While the expression "the Jews" appears five times each in the gospels of Matthew (18) and Luke and six in Mark, it appears 71 times in John with the common meaning of "opponents of Jesus' teachings." (19) If the writers of the Gospels were Jews quarreling with another Jewish sect, why would they identify the opponents as "Jews?" Barnstone explains that: by sleight-in-hand editing and translating, only certain figures of the Christian Scriptures remain clearly identifiable as Jews --not John the Baptist, not Mary, not Jesus, not James and Paul: even their names are not biblically Jewish. (20) Barnstone further writes that in the Christian Scriptures all Jews are depicted as evil and all the Christians as good, so that the self-criticism of the Prophets of the Old Testament is changed into a blood fight of Christians against Jews. (21) Thus Jesus, who was a Jewish rabbi, was identified in the Greek Gospels as "Master" while it is almost certain that in the original Hebrew or Aramaic text he would be called "Rabbi." The Gospel of John, written by a Jew whose name we ignore and the only one possibly written in the original Greek, calls Jesus with the name of "Rabbi." We must, thus, agree with Barnstone that "through false translation into and from the Bible, Jesus ceased to be a Jew." (22)
The complete breach between the two sects became final with Paul declaring "Christ is the consummation of the Law unto justice for everyone who believes" (Romans 10:4). Having been rejected by the Jews, who did not accept his belief in Christology, Paul who had been raised in the Jewish religion, used his wide knowledge of the Prophets to show that they had forecast the coming of Christ as the Messiah. Differing with the Law, which was only directed at the "Chosen People," he offered salvation to the Gentiles (Romans 11:11).
It has been said that the teachings of Christ contains, in nuce, the kernels of Christianity. As Williams says, "in the last chapter of Luke, Jesus shows his disciples...
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