Elia Levita - Biography

Elia Levita (13 February 1469 – 28 January 1549), (Hebrew: אליהו בן אשר הלוי אשכנזי) also known as Elijah Levita, Elias Levita, Élie Lévita, Eliahu Bakhur ("Eliahu the Bachelor") was a Renaissance Hebrew grammarian, scholar and poet. He was influential in helping to create the Yiddish language. He was the author of the Bovo-Bukh (written in 1507–1508), the most popular chivalric romance written in Yiddish, which, according to Sol Liptzin, is "generally regarded as the most outstanding poetic work in Old Yiddish". Living for a decade in the house of Cardinal Aegidius of Viterbo, he was also one of the foremost tutors of Christian notables in Hebrew and Jewish mysticism during the Renaissance.

Born at Neustadt near Nuremberg, to a family of Levitical status, he was the youngest of nine brothers. During his early manhood, the Jews were expelled from this area. He lived in Venice for a time after 1496, where he was one of the most important figures of the flourishing of Yiddish literature, before the descendants of the Ashkenazic Jews who had emigrated this area adopted the local Italian speech. During these early years, Levita earned a living as reciter of verse. After Venice, he relocated to Padua (1504), where he wrote the 650 ottava rima stanzas of the Bovo-Bukh, based on the popular romance Buovo d'Antona, which, in turn, was based on the Anglo-Norman romance of Sir Bevis of Hampton.

Escaping a war, he left in 1509 for Rome, where he acquired a friend and patron, the Renaissance humanist Petrus Egidius (1471–1532) of Viterbo, a cardinal of Rome. When the turmoil of war drove Levita from Padua to Rome, he was welcomed at the house of Aegidius, where, with the cardinal's family, he lived for more than ten years. Levita taught Hebrew to Petrus, and copied Hebrew manuscripts—mostly related to the Kabbalah—for Petrus's library. The first edition of Levita's Baḥur (Rome, 1518) is dedicated to Petrus. Petrus introduced Levita to classical scholarship and the Greek language, thus enabling him to utilize Greek in his Hebrew lexicographic labors — a debt acknowledged by Levita, who, in 1521, dedicated his Concordance to the cardinal.

The 1527 Sack of Rome sent Levita back to Venice, where he worked as a proofreader and taught Hebrew. Levita published at Venice a treatise on the laws of cantillation entitled Sefer Tuv Ta'am. At seventy years of age, Levita left his wife and children and departed in 1540 for Isny, accepting the invitation of Paul Fagius to superintend his Hebrew printing-press there. During Elia's stay with Fagius (until 1542 at Isny and from 1542 to 1544 at Konstanz) he published the following works: Tishbi, a dictionary containing 712 words used in Talmud and Midrash, with explanations in German and a Latin translation by Fagius (Isny, 1541); Sefer Meturgeman, explaining all the Aramaic words found in the Targum (Isny, 1541); Shemot Debarim, an alphabetical list of the technical Hebrew words (Isny, 1542); a Judæo-German (that is, early Western Yiddish) version of the Pentateuch, the Five Megillot, and Haftarot (Konstanz, 1544); and a new and revised edition of the Bachur. While in Germany he also printed the first edition of his Bovo-Bukh. On returning to Venice, Eliah, in spite of his great age, he worked on editions of several works, including David Kimhi's Miklol, which he also annotated.

Elia Levita died 28 January 1549 in Venice, aged 80 years. He has descendants living today, including British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Liptzin writes that Paris and Vienna, attributed to Levita, "easily ranks with the Bovo-Bukh in quality though not in popularity. Also a chivalric verse romance, it tells the story of a knight (Paris) and a princess (Vienna); the name of the work has no apparent connection to the similarly named cities. He adds that Levita "was not the equal" of his contemporaries Ariosto or Tasso, and that the "knightly adventures" he depicted "had no basis in Jewish reality": compared to other chivalric romances, Levita's works "tone down the Christian symbols of his original" and "substitute Jewish customs, Jewish values and Jewish traits of character here and there..."

His grandson became a Jesuit priest.

Works

• Elia Levita Bachur's Bovo-Buch: A Translation of the Old Yiddish Edition of 1541 with Introduction and Notes by Elia Levita Bachur, translated and notes by Jerry C. Smith, Fenestra Books, 2003, ISBN 1-58736-160-4.
• Paris and Vienna (attributed)
• miscellaneous shorter poems

Notes

<references />

• Gottheil, Richard and Jacobs, Joseph Baba Buch, Jewish Encyclopedia, 1901-1906
• Liptzin, Sol, A History of Yiddish Literature, Jonathan David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, ISBN 0-8246-0124-6.