Joseph Zark: A Hebrew Poet from Spain in Fifteenth-Century Italy

Yosef Sark, a learned immigrant from Spain, settled in northern Italy in the early 15th century. In the following decades he moved between different Italian Jewish communities, seeking a livelihood as a teacher and a clerk at the houses of wealthy patrons. His surviving oeuvre includes two grammatical works as well as the treatise “ניב שפתיים” (Fruit of the Lips), traditionally labelled an epistolary or a miscellany. This last work contains numerous letters composed on behalf of the Jewish elite of the day, and is an invaluable historical document, as scholars have acknowledged (Kauffmann 1891, 1892 1893, 1898, 1899; and more recently Bonfil 1985; Hacker 2014).

However, in addition to the aforementioned letters, the treatise includes about 130 poems and prose compositions, some written for prominent Jewish figures, including Yehuda Messer Leon, different members of the Finzi family, and even Don Vidal Benveniste of Saragossa. Yet the literary aspects of Sark’s work have so far remained untouched.

My aim in this talk will be to introduce Sark’s literary writings and present an assessment of his poetics, as it arises from my work on a critical edition of the text. I will argue that the “ניב שפתיים” – preserved in a single, unpublished manuscript – attests to a blend of Spanish poetical norms and newly acquired Italian sensitivities; an amalgam embodying the spirit of the mixed communities within which Sark lived and worked. As such, the treatise should be acknowledged as an important link between earlier Spanish poetical heritage and developing Italian traditions.