Abstract
In early modern Hebrew usage, the verb leha-atik means to translate, to copy, or to transfer. Leon Modena used the verb regularly to describe his activities, which represented the Renaissance ideal of translatio studiorum, i.e., the transfer of culture across both time and space and also among various groups. Through his life and work, Modena used his position at the center of the Venetian Empire to transfer Jewish culture between Jewish centers in Italy, elsewhere in eastern and western Europe, and the Ottoman Empire; from Greek, Latin, Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim culture to Jews; and from Jewish tradition to Christians, including major scholars in Venice and abroad, who in turn incorporated his work into their Latin works. Modena also transformed Jewish culture as he engaged in critiques of tradition and current practice, created new vehicles of Jewish cultural creativity, reclaimed the past and made it accessible, and developed methods of conveying Jewish culture to Christians and to Jews of all levels of education. Modena was neither typical of Renaissance rabbis nor was he unique, but he was talented and prolific.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Primary Literature
Ancona, Clemente. 1963–1964. Difesa da quello che scrive Fra’ Sisto Senese nella sua Bibliotheca de precetti da Talmudisti a Hebrei contra Christiani. Bollettino dell’istituto di storia della societa’ e della stato veneziano 5–6: 297–323.
Min-Halleviyyim, Isaac. 1985. Medaber tahpuchot, ed. Daniel Carpi. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University.
Modena, Leon. 1852. Behinat hakabbalah: Kol sakhal and Shaagat aryeh, ed. Isaac. Reggio. Gorizia: Seit.
Modena, Leon. 1856. Ma-amar magen vetzinnah, ed. Abraham Geiger. Breslau: Zultsbakh.
Modena, Leon. 1907. Leo Modenas Brief und Schriftuecke, ed. Lajos Blau. Strassburg: K. Truebner.
Modena, Leon. 1929. Ari nohem, ed. Nehemiah Libowitz. Jerusalem: Drom.
Modena, Leon. 1932. The Divan of Leo de Modena, ed. Simon Bernstein. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.
Modena, Leon. 1956. Ziknei yehudah, ed. Shlomo Simonsohn. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kuk.
Modena, Leon. 1960. Magen veherev, ed. Sholomo Simonsohn. Jerusalem: Mekitze nirdamim.
Modena, Leon. 1984a. Iggrot rabi yehudah aryeh mimodena, ed. Yacob Boksenboim. Tel Aviv: Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies, Tel Aviv University.
Modena, Leon. 1984b. Sefer hayyei yehudah, ed. Daniel Carpi. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University.
Modena, Leon. 1988. The autobiography of a seventeenth-century Venetian rabi: Leon Modena’s Life of Judah. Ed. and Trans. Mark Cohen. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Roth, Cecil. 1928. L’Accademia musicale del ghetto veneziano. La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 3: 152–162.
Roth, Cecil. 1929. Leone da Modena and the Christian Hebraists of his Age. In Jewish studies in memory of Israel Abrahams, ed. George Kohut, 384–401. New York: Jewish Institute of Religion.
Roth, Cecil. 1951–1952. Leone da Modena and his English correspondents. Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 12: 39–43.
Sonne, Isaiah. 1948. Leon Modena and the da Costa Circle. Hebrew Union College Annual 21: 13–28.
Secondary Literature
Adelman, Howard. 1985. Success and failure in the seventeenth-century ghetto of Venice: The life and thought of Leon Modena, 1571–1648. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.
Adelman, Howard. 1988. Rabbi Leon Modena and the Christian Kabbalists. In Renaissance rereadings: Intertext and context, ed. Maryanne C. Horowitz, Wendy Furman, and Anne Cruz, 271–286. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Adelman, Howard. 2012. A rabi reads the Qur’an in the Venetian ghetto. Jewish History 26 (1–2): 125–137.
Adelman, Howard. 2015. Criticism and tradition: Leon Modena, Azariah de’Rossi, and Elijah Levita Bahur on Kabbalah and the Hebrew Vowels. In History, memory, and Jewish identity, ed. Ira Robinson, Naftali S. Cohen, and Lorenzo D’Tommaso, 147–171. Brighton: Academic Studies Press.
Adelman, Howard. 2016. Leon Modena, Sarra Copia Sullam, and L’Accademia degli Incogniti. In Venice, the Jews, and Europe, 1516–2016, ed. Donatella Calabi, 310–313. Venice: Marsilio.
Andreatta, Michela. 2015. The taste of conviviality: A poem on food by Leon Modena. Jewish Quarterly Review 105: 456–481.
Bland, Kalman. 2009. A Jewish theory of Jewish visual culture: Leon Modena’s concepts of images and their effect on locative memory. Ars Judaica 5: 59–66.
Chayes, Evelien. 2017. Crossing cultures in the Venetian ghetto. Leone Modena, the Accademia degli Incogniti and imprese Literature. Bollettino di italianistica 2: 62–88.
Davis, Robert, and Benjamin Ravid, eds. 2001. The Jews of early modern Venice. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Dweck, Yaacob. 2011. The scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish mysticism, and early modern Venice. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Facchini, Cristiana. 2018. Il Gesù di Leone Modena. Per una storia material e urbana del Magen we-herev di Leon Modena. Annali di stori dell’esegesi 35 (1): 161–185.
Fishman, Talya. 1997. Shaking the pillars of exile: ‘Voice of a Fool,’ an early-modern Jewish critique of rabbinic culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Harran, Don. 1998. ‘Dum recordaremur Sion’: Music in the life and thought of the Venetian Rabbi Leon Modena (1571–1648). Association of Jewish Studies Review 23: 17–61.
Malkiel, David, and Robert Bonfil, eds. 2003. The Lion Shall Roar: Leon Modena and his world: Italia. Jerusalem: Magnus Press and Ben Zvi Institute.
Richler, Binyamin. 1993. Ketavim bilti yedu-aim shel rabi yehudah aryeh mimodena. Asufot 7: 157–172.
Ruderman, David, ed. 1992. Preachers of the Italian ghetto. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sabar, Shalom. 2005. The right path for an artist: The approach of Leon da Modena to visual Art. Hebraica hereditas 255–290.
Sulam, Sarra Copia. 2009. Jewish poet and intellectual in seventeenth-century Venice. Ed. and Trans. Don Harran. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Veltri, Giuseppe, and Evelien Chayes. 2016. Oltre le mura del ghetto. Accademie, scetticismo e tolleranza nella Venezia barocca. Studi e documenti d’archivio. Palermo: New Digital Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Adelman, H.T. (2019). Modena, Leon. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_813-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_813-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-02848-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02848-4
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities