Joseph Penso and Literary Life: New Insights on Sephardic Literary Academies

The most commonly accepted idea on the origin of Sephardic literary academies of the seventeenth century – the Academia de los Sitibundos of Livorno and that of the Floridos of Amsterdam - is that they originated from similar learned reunions proper of the Spanish and Portuguese Baroque.

However, this idea seems too general and leaves a number of important questions unanswered. I surmise that important clues on the origin of the Sephardic academies can be found through the figure of Joseph Penso, who represents an interesting intercultural connection between the Spanish, Jewish and Italian tradition of the Renaissance. Apart from his own contributions and his printed works, the Italian cultural influence that he himself promoted deserves particular attention. In fact, the common space of religious openness and confraternity between Christian, Jewish and Converso intellectuals apparently present in Italy might have filtered to the Sephardic academies through Joseph Penso.