Invented identities: Credulity in the age of prophecy and exploration

Journal of Early Modern History

Volumn 3, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 203-232

  Eliav Feldon, Miriam ^a  

^a TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY   (Israel)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 2442430515     PISSN: 13853783     EISSN: 15700658     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/157006599X00242     Document Type: Review

References (101)

1. Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (London: Penguin Books, 1985)
2. Davis, Martin Guerre, 63
3. on safe-conducts and passports: Daniel Nordman, "Saufconduits et passeports, en France, à la Renaissance," in Voyager à la Renaissance, ed. Jean Céard et Jean-Claude Margolin (Paris, 1987), 145-58
4. on health certificates: Carlo M. Cipolla, Public Health and the Medical Profession in the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1976), 23-29
5. on residency permits: Benjamin Ravid, "New Light on the Ghetti of Venice," Shlomo Simonsohn Jubilee Volume (Tel Aviv, 1993), 152-53
6. By P. T. Barnum (New York, 1866) - one of innumerable works of this kind
7. The best works on nicodemism are in Italian: Antonio Rotondò, "Atteggiamenti della vita morale del Cinquecento: la pratica nicodemitica," Rivista storica italiana 79 (1967): 991-1030
8. Delio Cantimori, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento: ricerche storiche (1939; reprint, Florence, 1967)
9. in English see Perez Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1990)
10. in French: Elie Barnavi and Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Le périple de Francesco Pucci: Utopie, hérésie et vérité religieuse dans la Renaissance tardive (Paris, 1988)
11. Jean-Claude Margolin, "Sur quelques figures de charlatans à la Renaissance: Apparence et réalité du charlatanisme," in Devins et charlatans au temps de la Renaissance, ed. M. T. Jones-Davies (Paris, 1979), 48
12. Anthony Grafton, Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton, 1990), 49
13. Yet, surely, his own disclosure that even Erasmus forged a patristic text (Grafton, Forgers and Critics, 44-45) should have led him to doubt the notion that "plus ça change plus c'est la même chose."
14. Edward Ullendorff and C. F. Beckingham, eds., The Hebrew Letters of Prester John (Oxford and New York, 1982), 4
15. Christiane Deluz, "Le Livre Jehan de Mandeville, autorité géographique à la Renaissance," in Céard and Margolin, Renaissance, 205-20
16. ' There is a vast amount of literature on the legend and letters of Prester John, the most recent publication being the collection of articles edited by Charles F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton, Prester John, the Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes (Aldershot, 1996), which includes a comprehensive bibliography
17. st paperback ed., Athens, Ohio, 1996)
18. L. N. Gumilev, Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom: The Legend of the Kingdom of Prester John, trans. R. E. F. Smith (Cambridge, 1987), 6
19. C. F. Beckingham, Between Islam and Christendom: Travellers, Facts and Legends in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London, 1983), 19
20. Francis M. Rogen, Travels of the Infante Dom Pedro of Portugal (Cambridge, Mass., 1961)
21. Silverberg, Realm of Prester John, 225-31
22. Francis M. Rogers, The Quest for Eastern Christians (Minneapolis, 1962)
23. th Centuries, trans. Eric Nicholson (New York, 1990), 257
24. e siècles (Paris, 1983)
25. So described by his contemporaries, both Jews (such as Abraham Farissol or Daniel of Pisa) as well as non-Jews (e.g., Ramusio). On their reactions, see below
26. In Reuveni's letter to King John III; see below note 21
27. These letters are reproduced (in Latin with a Hebrew translation) in Aaron Zeev Aescoly, The Story of David Hareuveni, 2d ed. (Jerusalem, 1993), 172-78
28. Letter reproduced by Elias Lipiner, "Notes on the Episode of David Reuveni and Solomon Molcho," in Aescoly, Story of David Hareuveni, xlvii-xlviii
29. Ms. Heb. f. 14: Diary of David Reubeni (copy of Ms. Michael [old No.] 560)
30. Shlomo Simonsohn, "David Reubeni's second Mission in Italy," Zion 26 (1961): 198-207 (in Hebrew witii a short summary in English)
31. Elias Lipiner in Aescoly, xlv-lxvi (in Hebrew); Elias Lipiner, O Sapateiro de Trancoso e o Alfaiate de Setúbal (Rio de Janeiro, 1993)
32. Aescoly, 54-59, 93-100; Azriel Shohat, "Notes on the David Reubeni Affair," Zion 35 (1970): 96-116 (in Hebrew with a short summary in English)
33. On Reuveni as a Yemenite Jew: Shohat, "Notes on the David Reubeni Affair"; as an Ethiopian: M. D. Cassuto, "David Reubeni," Tarbiz 32 (1963): 339-58 (in Hebrew)
34. as a Jew from Cochin: E. Birnbaum, "David Reubeni's Indian Origin," Historia Judaica 20 (1958): 1-30
35. Max Brod, Rëubeni, Fürst der Juden (München, 1925)
36. Aescoly, 205-7
37. Steven Kaplan, The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia: From Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century (New York, 1992), 76
38. Diary, 33-34
39. Ottavia Niccoli, Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy (Princeton, 1990), 168-69
40. Reuveni, therefore, belongs to a different category than the "confidence men" who practised various methods of fraud to enrich their own pocket. For a fascinating story of such an impostor in the sixteenth century, see Natalie Zemon Davis, "From prodigious to heinous: Simon Goulart and the reframing of imposture," in L'Histoire grande ouverte: Hommages à Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (Paris, 1997), 274-83
41. Ramusio's report, as it appears in Sanudo's diaries, is reproduced in the Diary (in Italian with a Hebrew translation), 183-89
42. Diary, 76
43. Diary, 19
44. Diary, 77-79
45. Aescoly, 189
46. Y. H. Yerushalmi, "Messianic Impulses in Joseph ha-Kohen," in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 460-87
47. Gershom Scholem, Shabbetai Zevi (Tel Aviv, 1975), 81 (in Hebrew)
48. A Z. Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements, 2d ed. (Yerushalayim, 1987), 273-302 (in Hebrew)
49. Umberto Cassuto, "Chi era David Reubeni?" Rassegna mensile di Israel 35 (1969): 59-84
50. Cecil Roth, "A Zionist Experiment in the XVIth century," Midstream 9 (1963): 76-81
51. Moshe Idel, "An Introduction to the Second Edition" of Aescoly, xlii
52. This is Aescoly's view (191-92), based on Joseph ha-Kohen's opinion in his history of the kings of France and Turkey (first published 1554)
53. On Egidio see: François Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chrétiens de la Renaissance (Paris, 1964)
54. F. X. Martin, "The Problem of Giles of Viterbo: A Historiographical Survey," Augustiniana 9 (1959): 357-79
55. Augustiniana 10 (1960): 43-60 (additional articles on Egidio appear in almost every volume of this journal)
56. Anna Maria Voci Roth, ed., Egidio da Viterbo OSA, Lettere Familiari, 2 vols. (Rome, 1990)
57. Clare O'Reilly, ed., Giles of Viterbo OSA: Letters as Augustinian General, 1506-1517 (Rome, 1992)
58. John W. O'Malley, Rome and the Renaissance: Studies in Culture and Religion (London, 1981), 1-11
59. Marjorie Reeves, "Cardinal Egidio of Viterbo: A Prophetic Interpretation of History," in Prophetic Rome in the High Renaissance Period, ed. Marjorie Reeves (Oxford, 1992), 91-177
60. Gérard E. Weil, Élie Lévita: Humaniste et Massorète (1469-1549) (Leiden, 1963)
61. Beginning with Moritz Steinschneider and Heinrich Graetz down to Aescoly (104-5) and Weil, Élie Levita, 206
62. "To the vicar of an unnamed congregation in Spain," in O'Reilly, Giles of Viterbo, 190-94
63. John W. O'Malley, "Fulfillment of the Christian Golden Age under Pope Julius II: Text of a Discourse of Giles of Viterbo, 1507," Traditio 25 (1969): 265-338
64. Jean Delumeau, La Peur en occident: Une cité asiégée (Paris, 1978)
65. idem, History of Paradise The Garden of Eden in Myth and Tradition, trans, Matthew O'Connell (New York, 1995) In French: Une histoire du paradis: le jardin de délices (Paris, 1992)
66. A Chastel, quoted in Ottavia Niccoli, "High and Low Prophetic Culture in Rome at the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century," in Reeves, Prophetic Rome, 203-22
67. Niccoli, "High and Low Prophetic Culture," and idem, Prophecy and People
68. Heiko Oberman, "Three Sixteenth-Century Attitudes to Judaism: Rciichlin, Erasmus and Luther," in Coopennan, Jewish Thought, 326-64
69. David B Ruderman, "Hope against Hope: Jewish and Christian Messianic. Expectations in the Late Middle Ages," in Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Ranaissance and Baroque Italy, ed David B Ruderman (New York, 1992), 299-323
70. Moshe Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations of the Kabbalah in the Renaissance," in Cooperman, Jewish Thought 186-242
71. idem, "Major Currents in the Italian Kabbalah Between 1560-1660," in Italia Judaica. Gli ebrei in Italia Ira Rinascimento ed eta barocca (Rome, 1986), 243-62
72. (Idel's two articles are also reprinted in Ruderman, Essential Papers, 107-69, 345-68)
73. Stephen Sharot, Messianism, Mysticism and Magic: A Sociological Analysis of Jewish Religious Movements (Chapel Hill, 1982)
74. Robert Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy, trans- Anthony Oldeoin (Berkeley, 1994)
75. Guillaume Postel, De orbis terrae concordia (Basel, 1543), 20; quoted in Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chrétiens, 125n. In several early modern letters and chronicles referring to Reuveni his country of origin is named "Mt. Tabor" instead "Habor," and he is said to have come with the intention to convert Christian monarchs to Judaism
76. Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum 2 (Antwerp, 1572), 83 (reproduced in Diary, 168); La Relationi universali di Giovanni Bolero, Parte I, Libro 2 (Vicenza, 1595), 120 (reproduced in Diary, 167)
77. Clement VII's letters to John III and to the King of Ethiopia (the Latin original with a Hebrew translation) are reproduced in Diary, 172-78
78. Ludwig von Pastor, The History of the Popes, 4th ed., vol 10 (London, 1950), 171
79. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama (Cambridge, 1997), 282-84
80. Aescoly, 47-49; Kaplan, The Beta Israel, 80-82
81. In his report to Ramusio, in Diary, 187
82. Silverberg, Realm qf Presler John, 211-45
83. Jean Aubin ("L'Ambassade du Prêtre Jean à D Manuel," Marc Luso-lndicum 3 [1976]: 1-56) is the only modern historian who tries to argue diat Mateus was a bona fide delegate of the Ethiopian court
84. The safe-conduct is reproduced by Lipiner in Aescoly, L
85. A. H. M. Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, A History of Ethiopia (Oxford, 1978), 83-87
86. First published under the tide of A History of Abyssinia (Oxford, 1935)
87. Daniel of Pisa's letter reproduced in Diary, 151
88. Diary, 152
89. A sixteenth-century German scholar, J. A Widmannstadt, reported that Solomon Molcho also carried a banner embroidered with Hebrew letters (in Diary, 190-91, Latin text with Hebrew translation). Such a flag, allegedly Molcho's banner, can be seen today at The State Jewish Museum in Prague
90. Diary, 102
91. Federigo's letter reproduced (in Italian) in Simonsohn, "David Reubeni's Second Mission in Italy," 205-6
92. Benjamin Arbel, "Nur Banu (c 1530-1583): A Venetian Sultana?" Turcico 24 (1992): 242-59 I am grateful to my friend and colleague, Prof Arbel, for bringing this story to my attention and for his comments on the draft of this paper
93. The document concerning Ramusio's appointment as Reuveni's investigator is reproduced in Diary. 183
94. Reproduced (in Italian with Hebrew translation) in Diary, 183-89
95. Diary, 189
96. Aescoly, 165-70; Daniel Carpi, Between Renaissance and Ghetto (Tel Aviv, 1989), 85-95 (in Hebrew)
97. His letters, dated 1532 and 1536, reproduced in Diary, 159-62
98. Isaac Akrish in his critical survey of stories about the Ten Lost Tribes, published in Istanbul in the 1570s, quoted in Avraham Gross, "The Ten Tribes and the Kingdom of Prester John: Rumors and Investigations, before and after the Expulsion from Spain," Pe'amim 48 (1991): 41-45 (in Hebrew)
99. In Diary, 152. A similar sentiment was expressed by Abraham Farissol in his book on world geography, Iggeret Orhot Olam, written in 1525, shortly after Reuveni's first appearance in Italy
100. On Farissol, see David B. Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham Farissol (Cincinnati, 1981)
101. Inquisition documents related to Reuveni, quoted by Lipiner in Aescoly, lv-lvii