In this study the author informs the academic world about several recent discoveries of unknown autograph writings and documents related to Marco Mortara, chief Rabbi in Mantua for over half a century from 1842 to 1894. Well known for its Indice alfabetico dei rabbini e scrittori israeliti di cosegiudaiche in Italia (1886), Mortara remains largely unknown and little studied, despite his fame and his relations with the greatest scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums such as Steinschneider, Jellinek, Shadal and others. After creating a workshop on this master and promoting the 2009 AISG Congress on Mortara, of which we publish the proceedings in this issue of “Materia giudaica”, Perani presents for the first time the complete bibliography of Mortara, lists his autograph manuscripts, known and unknown, kept at the Archive of the Jewish Community of Mantua and in the private Fornasa Collection. In a documentary Appendix at the end of the study he published many unpublished letters, writings and texts of Mortara, which reveal his role in the dispute between tradition and reform, conservatism and modernity that characterized the nineteenth century. Among them, two poems written on the occasion of the bestowal of a Doctorate in Theology to Mortara, and of his election as chief Rabbi in Mantua; a letter in which the Rabbi requests an increase of his salary after 15 years of service in Mantua, documents showing his attitude toward the city’s Jews who converted to Christianity, or his comments on the draft of a statute to formally establish a Jewish community in Milan; the epitaph and a Psalm in Hebrew and Italian prepared by his disciple Donato Modena, his epitaph written by Mortara himself, andother topics of great interest. The hope is that the continuation of research on the work and the thought of Marco Mortara becomes easier, with this study and with the Epistolary of Mortara, published at the same time by Asher Salah for La Giuntina Press, originally a paper delivered at the above-mentioned conference, but published in book form, due to the large amount of material found.
M. Perani (2012). Per uno studio dell'opera e del pensiero di Marco Mortara: recenti scoperte di manoscritti ignoti, la sua bibliografia e piste di ricerca, con un'appendice di documenti inediti. MATERIA GIUDAICA, XV-XVI 2010-2011, 30-110.
Per uno studio dell'opera e del pensiero di Marco Mortara: recenti scoperte di manoscritti ignoti, la sua bibliografia e piste di ricerca, con un'appendice di documenti inediti
PERANI, MAURO
2012
Abstract
In this study the author informs the academic world about several recent discoveries of unknown autograph writings and documents related to Marco Mortara, chief Rabbi in Mantua for over half a century from 1842 to 1894. Well known for its Indice alfabetico dei rabbini e scrittori israeliti di cosegiudaiche in Italia (1886), Mortara remains largely unknown and little studied, despite his fame and his relations with the greatest scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums such as Steinschneider, Jellinek, Shadal and others. After creating a workshop on this master and promoting the 2009 AISG Congress on Mortara, of which we publish the proceedings in this issue of “Materia giudaica”, Perani presents for the first time the complete bibliography of Mortara, lists his autograph manuscripts, known and unknown, kept at the Archive of the Jewish Community of Mantua and in the private Fornasa Collection. In a documentary Appendix at the end of the study he published many unpublished letters, writings and texts of Mortara, which reveal his role in the dispute between tradition and reform, conservatism and modernity that characterized the nineteenth century. Among them, two poems written on the occasion of the bestowal of a Doctorate in Theology to Mortara, and of his election as chief Rabbi in Mantua; a letter in which the Rabbi requests an increase of his salary after 15 years of service in Mantua, documents showing his attitude toward the city’s Jews who converted to Christianity, or his comments on the draft of a statute to formally establish a Jewish community in Milan; the epitaph and a Psalm in Hebrew and Italian prepared by his disciple Donato Modena, his epitaph written by Mortara himself, andother topics of great interest. The hope is that the continuation of research on the work and the thought of Marco Mortara becomes easier, with this study and with the Epistolary of Mortara, published at the same time by Asher Salah for La Giuntina Press, originally a paper delivered at the above-mentioned conference, but published in book form, due to the large amount of material found.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
