Invective and Insult in the Works of Immanuel of Rome

While Jews of the Islamic world had access to rhetorical theories through Moses ibn Ezra’s Kitab al Muhadara wal-Mudakara, Jews living in a Christian ambience had to wait until Messer Leon’s Nofet Zufim in the fifteenth century. However, rhetorical manuals containing (pseudo) Cicero’s and Quintillian’s rhetorical theories were available in Italian and French translations already in the thirteenth century, popularized by Brunetto Latini and others. Is there any way to prove that Jews of the Romance-speaking lands were aware of these theories before the Italian Renaissance? This paper will attempt to answer that question. Through careful study of the works of Immanuel of Rome, a thirteenth-century Italian Jewish author and poet, I will explore his approach to rhetorical theories of invective and insult. Immanuel was deeply influenced by both the Hebrew prose and poetry of Andalusi Spain, as well as the literary conventions of Italy. Often, his belletristic works reveal an interesting hybrid of both worlds.

This paper specifically focuses on the conventions of the epistolary genre, as Immanuel wrote a defamatory letter to Hillel of Verona within the context of the controversy over Maimonides’ writings. Immanuel’s denigration of Hillel’s character and his intellectual output offers a unique opportunity to examine his method of insult. Juxtaposed against a variety of examples from Immanuel’s Mahbarot, one can begin to tease out Immanuel’s methodology in light of the ancient rhetorical theories gaining popularity in late medieval Italy.