Bidspirit auction | LUZZATTO, SIMONE Discorso circa il

LUZZATTO, SIMONE Discorso circa il Stato de gl` Hebrei, et in particolar dimoranti nell`inclita Citt`a di Venetia (“Discourse on the Jews of Venice”). Venice, Giovanni Colleoni, 1638. FIRST EDITION. Text in Italian. Printer's device on title. AN UNCUT COPY. ff. 92. Ex-library. Touch stained, marginal notes. Loose in later limp boards. 4to. St. Cat. Bodl. col. 2597 no. 7191 “THE FIRST APOLOGETIC WORK OF ITS TYPE, AND THE FIRST IN WHICH ECONOMIC ARGUMENTS WERE BROUGHT FORWARD SYSTEMATICALLY IN ORDER TO ADVOCATE FOR THE JEWS.” (EJ).  Simone (Simcha) Luzzatto (1583-1663) was appointed senior Rabbi of Venice following the death of Leone Modena.  Luzzatto was motivated to compose this important text due to a threat to the Jews of expulsion from Venice. Luzzatto devoted the first part of the Discorso to a demonstration of the economic utility of the Venetian Jews.  Furthermore, he argued that due to their natural inclination toward political quietism, local Jewry posed no threat to the internal security of the Venetian Republic. See Benjamin Ravid, Moneylending in Seventeenth Century Jewish Vernacular Apologetica, and Bernard Septimus, Biblical Religion and Political Rationality in Simone Luzzatto, Maimonides and Spinoza in: Twersky & Septimus (eds.) Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century (1987), pp. 257-75 and 399-433.