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Arts & Literature

Samuel Usque

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Who

Samuel Usque · Arts & Literature

What

Author of Consolacao as Tribulacoes de Israel (Ferrara, 1553), a landmark of Portuguese prose and the first sustained history of Jewish persecution written for exiled conversos

When

c. 1500, Lisbon, Portugal — after 1555, Italy or Ottoman Palestine

Where

Portugal · Ferrara · Italy · Ottoman Empire

Biography

Samuel Usque is recognized among Israeli contributors to Arts & Literature — Author of Consolacao as Tribulacoes de Israel (Ferrara, 1553), a landmark of Portuguese prose and the first sustained history of Jewish persecution written for exiled conversos

How & why

Samuel Usque was a Portuguese converso who settled in Ferrara, then a refuge for Iberian Jews returning openly to Judaism. His Consolacao as Tribulacoes de Israel, printed there in 1553 and dedicated to Gracia Mendes Nasi, sets the whole history of Jewish suffering in the form of a pastoral dialogue, ending with the argument that exile is neither an accident nor a proof of abandonment. Written in Portuguese for readers who had been cut off from Hebrew by forced conversion, it is both a monument of sixteenth-century Portuguese prose and one of the earliest Jewish histories of persecution. Usque also coined the name 'Mother of Israel' for Thessaloniki.

Sources & external links

Verify and go deeper with these external references.

Source: Wikipedia — Samuel Usque

Contributions & Sources

Author of Consolacao as Tribulacoes de Israel (Ferrara, 1553), a landmark of Portuguese prose and the first sustained history of Jewish persecution written for exiled conversos

1553

Source: Wikipedia — Samuel Usque