Judah Leon Abravanel or Abrabanel (; 1460 Lisbon – c. 1530? Naples?), otherwise known by the pen name of Leo the Hebrew (in Latin: Leo Hebraeus; in Portuguese: Leão Hebreu; in Italian: Leone Ebreo; in Spanish: León Hebreo; in French: León l'Hebreu), was a Portuguese–Jewish philosopher, physician, and poet. He served as personal physician to the Spanish viceroy in Naples and wrote Telunah ʿal ha-Zeman ("Complaint against Time") as well as four poems about his father, Isaac.
Abravanel's best-known work was the philosophical dialogue on love Dialoghi di amore ("Dialogues of Love"), regarded as one of the most important philosophical works of its time. In it, human beings come to know love at three levels, "of pleasure, of profit, of virtue", and from these come to recognize love as the ultimate goal of the universe, attainable in its fullest sense only through union with God. The work was widely published and translated during the latter part of the 16th century.
Biography The Abravanel (or Abrabanel) family was extraordinarily prominent among Jewish families in the Middle Ages, active in public service in the court of Castile. Judah (or Leon, as he is known in Spanish) was the son of Isaac ben Judah Abravanel (meaning Isaac “son of Judah” Abravanel) who, according to Soria was “the last great commentator of the Bible of Medieval Jewry” (12). Don Isaac was a statesman, financier, and a defender of the Jewish faith, who was also born in Lisbon in 1437 and spent most of his life in Portugal, eventually becoming a financial advisor to King Afonso V. However, in 1481 King Afonso V died and Don Isaac was suspected of conspiring to enthrone the Duke of Braganza, whom he had befriended earlier, over the son of Afonso, João II. Consequently, he had to flee without his family from Portugal to Seville, then Castile, finally settling in Toledo. Don Isaac eventually took refuge from his financial and political dealings in his other love—literature—while living with his family, with whom he was later reunited in Toledo.
Spain had recently seen the marriage of Isabel de Castilla and Fernando de Aragón, the Catholic Monarchs. Under their rule began the centralization of power in Spain, then fragmented by individual governance of its many regions. The monarchs desired to conquer the kingdom of Granada, which at that time was Muslim. Don Isaac Abravanel saw this as an opportunity and became a financier at the court. His son, Judah, joined him in service to the Catholic Monarchs in 1484 as personal doctor to the royal family.
The year 1492 brought a turbulent change to the Abravanel family and to all Jews in Spain, as Isabella and Ferdinand ordered the forced conversion or expulsion of all Jews in Spain. Don Isaac, in a desperate plea, threw himself at the feet of the Catholic Monarchs and begged them to revoke their decree, but to no avail. He made plans to move his family to Naples, Italy. To no avail he bribed King Ferdinand and even threatened Queen Isabella that the Jews were the eternal people and therefore could not be destroyed. A plot was hatched to kidnap Judah's son as an attempt to persuade the Abravanel family to convert to Christianity and, ultimately, to remain in the service of the Catholic Monarchs. In an attempt to circumvent the plot, Judah sent his son to Portugal with a nurse, but by order of the king, the son was seized and baptized. This occurrence was a devastating insult to Judah and to his family, and was a source of bitterness throughout Judah's life and the topic of his writings years later.
The Abravanel family chose exile over conversion, although it was not an easy choice, considering that there were not many places in Europe that Jews were welcomed and that living in exile required money, and the Jews were not allowed to take much with them. Originally intent on traveling to the Ottoman Empire, Don Isaac and his family settled in Naples. There, he became a financial advisor to the King of Naples, Ferrante, and his son Alfonso. The Abravanel family enjoyed a position of prestige in the court of Naples until 1494 when Charles VIII, king of France, invaded Naples. The Neapolitan royal family then fled to Sicily, accompanied by Don Isaac.
Judah, meanwhile, moved to Genoa, where he studied in an Italian humanist milieu and probably wrote the first two of his Dialoghi. There is evidence that he moved from Genoa to Barletta in 1501, where he became a servant of King Frederick of Naples, leaving in 1503 for Venice, where he rejoined his father Dom Isaac. Other sources say that he left Genoa for Naples in 1501 and remained there until 1506. While in Naples, Judah (apparently overlooking the injuries of the past) became the doctor of the Spanish viceroy, Don Gonsalvo of Cordoba, “The Great Captain.”
By 1506, the Neapolitan government was defeated, and Spain gained control of southern Italy. Judah left Naples for Venice, where he dedicated himself again to the study of philosophy until 1507. After this time, little is known about Judah's life. His most famous work, Dialoghi d'amore, appears to have been written around 1501-02. In 1535, when his friend Mariano Lenzi discovered the manuscript and had it published in Rome, records indicate he had already died.
There are claims that Judah converted to Christianity at the end of his life; however, upon further investigation, these claims appear unfounded. One source states that allusions made to Saint John the Evangelist in the work indicate his Christian beliefs; however, the tendency of Jewish scholars to cite examples from both New Testament and the Classics was common during this time. However, the Venetian press that printed the second and third editions of his Dialoghi in 1541 and 1545 claimed on the first pages of the work that the author had converted to Christianity: “Dialoghi di Amore composti per Leone Medico, di Natione Hebreo, et di poi fatto Christiano” (Dialogues of Love, composed by Doctor Leon, of Hebrew heritage, and who later became Christian). This statement does not appear in the first edition, nor in later editions. Therefore, this “editorial note” was most likely included to promote the work and to persuade those who harbored hostilities against Jews at that time to purchase the book. Further evidence that Judah remained true to his Jewish faith can be found in Dialoghi, where Judah directly addresses his heritage and religion, stating that the book was written “according to Hebrew truth” and addresses “all of us who believe in the holy law of Moses.”
Influences Through his travels, Judah was well-acquainted with many Italian humanists and with the Neapolitan Court. Some say he may have met Giovanni Pico della Mirandola while in Florence and composed for him a discourse on the “Harmony of the Skies.” If so, he also probably associated with Elia de Medigo, teacher of Pico della Mirandola, Yohanan Alemanno (a Jewish writer influenced by the Medici court and mysticism and author of Song of songs), Giovanni Pontano, Mario Equicola and monk Egidio da Viterbo.
Leon was surrounded by humanists interested in the topic of Love. The Chancellor of Florence, Marsilio Ficino commented on Plato’s Symposium (1474–75), while Girolamo Benivieni composed his Canzone d’amore (1486), which Pico della Mirandola analyzed soon after. Equicola’s Libro della natura d’amore (1495), Pietro Bembo’s Asolani and Francesco Cattani da Diacceto’s De amore were published while Judah was writing. Abravanel’s Dialoghi is regarded as the finest of these works. Menéndez Pelayo describes it as the most monumental work of Platonic philosophy since Plotinus's Enneads.
Similar to other humanist works, Dialoghi is strongly influenced by Plato and Aristotle. Menéndez Pelayo states that Abravanel employs Platonic ideals in his work, but filtered through his heritage. That is, his Neo-platonism derived from the Hispanic Jewish community, especially the works of Solomon ibn Gabirol and Maimonides. A disciple of these renowned Jewish scholars, Abravanel was also influenced by the Hellenic spirit of the Renaissance. Platonic notions of reaching towards a nearly impossible ideal of beauty, wisdom, and perfection encompass the whole of the work.
Dialoghi d'amore
The Dialoghi was an exceedingly popular book that enjoyed at least five editions in twenty years. First published in Italian, it was translated into French by Pontus de Tyard, into Hebrew, and into Latin by Sarasin. The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega made one of its three translations into Spanish. Abravanel’s Dialoghi is notably one of the first original philosophical compositions to be published in the vernacular (as opposed to Latin). However, there is some controversy about the language in which it was originally written. According to Roth, although Abravenel had ample time to embrace and employ Italian, “the Dialogue read a little stiffly, [therefore] there is good reason to doubt whether [it] represents the original text” (xii). Also, the Hebrew text that remains was probably a translation, and while Spanish scholars also want to claim he wrote it in the language of the country from which he was exiled, it is possible that he wrote it in Judeo-Spanish, the language of many Spanish Jews and a mixture of Hebrew and Castilian. In the British Library, there is a manuscript (Or. Gaster 10688) of a Spanish translation written with Hebrew characters. This was once thought to have been the author's original, or a copy of it; this is no longer accepted, and the text corresponds very closely to the 1568 Spanish translation.James Nelson Novoa, "Consideraciones acerca de una versión aljamiada de los Diálogos de amor de León Hebreo", Sefarad, volume 65, no. 1, 2005, pp. 103-126; http://sefarad.revistas.csic.es/index.php/sefarad/article/viewFile/493/591 This translation was likely produced in order reclaim Abravanel's Jewish identity and to encourage Spanish-speaking diaspora communities and as an appeal to the Spanish king to remember and reconsider the situation of the Sephardic exiles.Bacich, Damian. "Negotiating Renaissance Harmony: The First Spanish Translation of Leone Ebreo's Dialoghi d'amore". Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval & Renaissance Studies ; 2005, Vol. 36, p114
In his Dialoghi d'amore, Judah (Leon) Abravanel seeks to define love in philosophical terms. He structures his three dialogues as a conversation between two abstract and mostly undeveloped “characters”: Philo, representing love or appetite, and Sophia, representing science or wisdom, in other words, Philo+Sophia (philosophy).
The first dialogue, titled, “Philo and Sophia on Love and Desire” is a contemplation on the distinctions between love and desire, or the types of love and the true nature of love. In Sophia's opinion, love and desire are exclusive; however, Philo argues that love and desire mix in things we find pleasurable, and that desire assumes knowledge of its object and, thus, its existence. Philo defines desire as that which seeks to become united with its object and love as that which, in union with its object, is enjoyed. When love and desire intersect, there are three different qualities of objects: useful, pleasant and good. Useful objects are not loved and desired together. Useful objects are those that are possessed. Meanwhile, love and desire of pleasant objects grows and perishes at the same time; pleasant objects exist because of privation. Good objects, on the other hand, exist when love and desire have no limit.
Sophia then asks Philo to distinguish love of God from love of friends. He posits that God is the fountainhead, reason and end of good in the world. However, as humans, we lack the knowledge to love God completely.