Una canción inédita de Salomón Usque

Abstract

Salomón Usque was descendant of Portuguese Jews that reached Ferrara during the Diaspora. He was possibly the son of Abraham Usque typographer of the Ferrara Bible (1553) written in ladino. We have evidence of his passing through Venice between 1560 and 1567, alternating stays in Constantinople, the Ottoman capital where he probably died. We owe to Salomón Usque the translation of Petrarch's Canzoniere into Spanish, published by Nicolò Bevilacqua in Venice in 1567. Usque is the author of the tragedy titled L’Ester arranged in 1619 by Leone Modena. He also wrote poetry in Italian. Among the manuscripts of the Ferrarían codex N.A. 5 belonging to the Biblioteca Ariostea there is a laudatory canzone addressed to Guidobaldo II Montefeltro (1514-1574), the Duke of Urbino, which is edited for the first time in the present article. The distribution of encyclopedic content reminds the distant source of St. Isidore of Seville, but there are some analogies with the poem Las siete edades del mundo written by Pablo de Santa Maria (born around 1350- 1435), a Spaniard converted Jew.