On the sources of Elijah Capsali's Chronicle of the ‘Kings’ of Venice

Abstract

The paper argues that in writing down the chronology of the doges, included within his Divrei ha-yamim le-malkhei Wenetsiya (1517), Elijah Capsali (ca. 1490–ca. 1555) availed himself of a manuscript akin to MS Correr 873 (Museo Correr, Venice) – a fifteenth-century testimony of the pseudo Enrico Dandolo's chronicle. The paper also points out that Capsali's Chronicle represents the first instance of a Diasporic Jew writing the history of his own native country (despite, or precisely because of, being himself a colony-dweller) on the basis of indigenous sources. It interprets the novelty of such an endeavour in the light of Capsali's conception of his political and civil responsibility as an officer of the Jewish community, the antiquity of the Jewish settlement in Crete, and Venice's comparative liberality towards the Jews.1

Keywords:

• Jewish Renaissance historiography
• Venetian chronicles
• Crete

Notes

 1. Here I wish to thank all the following people who have helped me with their suggestions and encouragement, as well as in many practical ways: Benjamin Arbel, Piero Brunello, Gigi Corazzol, Elena d'Este, Luca Fiori, Orfea Granzotto, Piero Lucchi, Antonella Parmeggiani, Mauro Perani, Chiara Petrolini, Margherita Elena Pomero, and Giuliano Tamani. My deep gratitude goes also to Rena Lauer, who revised the English text and improved it in a variety of ways.

 2. The Hebrew text of this chronicle has been published in Capsali, Seder Eliyyahu Zuta, II, 213–327. The text survives in two manuscripts which, although both partially incomplete, together provide a continuous text: MS Add. 19971, British Library, London (Margoliouth 1059), fols. 324r–429v; MS Or. 10713, British Library, London (Gaster 926), fols. 267r–329r. Some fragments of an otherwise lost copy are preserved in MS Heb. 4° 7504, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem. The first overall groundbreaking introduction to Elijah's Chronicle was provided by Porgès, ‘Élie Capsali et sa Chronique de Venise’.

 3. The number in parentheses indicates the corresponding page in the printed edition of Capsali's historical works (see note 2). Here and below, all the translations from Capsali's text and from the Venetian chronicles are mine.

 4. Capsali, Seder Eliyyahu Zuta, III, 77; Bonfil, ‘Riflessioni’, 58

 5. On this episode see Toaff, Pasque, 50–5.

 6. Carile, La cronachistica, 58.

 7. Pesce, ed., ‘Cronica’, LII.

 8. Cfr. Pesce, ed., ‘Cronica’, 4–5: ‘…ancora pregando alcun in chi poi mi questa cronica in mano pervignerà, che se homo el serà da proseguir lo dicto stilo per mi cominciado et ameçadodo, overo da più che gli piaqua per lo muodo simelle continuar, a ciò che perpetualmente si vegia et sapia i Doxi et stadi de Venesia como citade degna sovra ognuna che ancor si sapia’ (a tentative translation of this passage, which offers a typical example of pseudo-Dandolo's not always perspicuous style, may run as follows: ‘…bidding everybody into whose hands this chronicle of mine may fall, that, if they be able to do so, they follow the style contrived by me and continue [this chronicle] in a similar way, so that, in perpetuity, everybody may see and know the Doges who ruled over Venice, and that, among all cities, Venice is the worthiest’).

 9. Nanetti, ed., Il codice, IV, 1749–57.

10. Pesce, ed., ‘Cronica’, 66.

11. Artom and Cassuto, eds., Statuta, 153n.

12. See Bremer, ‘Portrait’; Bonfil, ‘Jewish Attitudes’, 17.

13. Artom and Cassuto, Statuta, 123, 133; Arbel, ‘Jews and Christians’, 289.

14. Jacobs, ‘Joseph ha-Kohen’, p. 78.

15. Bruner, The Culture of Education, 132.

16. In his introduction to Seder Eliyyahu Zuṭa, I, 11–2, Capsali openly admits having sometimes deliberately altered historical facts ‘in order to let the reader take delight in the artifices of fine Rhetoric’.

17. And not in 1519, as wrongly argued by Artom and Cassuto on the basis of the assumption that 18 ḥeshwan 5275 was a Saturday (while in fact it was a Tuesday). See Statuta Iudaeorum, 154n.

18. See Artom and Cassuto, Statuta Iudaeorum, 153–5.

19. Cozzi, La Repubblica, 150.

20. Jacoby, ‘Jews and Christians’, 256.