Protector of Women

Judah Sommo

1577

1

Please listen to my words,
Wise, honest, and beautiful women1
For my riddle is complete:
Against your faithful crew [of women]
Old men
Raise your shame to the stars
While I protect you,
Defend you in every way.

2

You are beautiful, my darling,
Who calls me to this undertaking
To inspire my verses
In the defense of women:
Help me, countess,
Against errant words
Made out of evil:
A discourtesy to the world.

3

Sight was blocked from the eyes
Of one of our Mantuans
Which gave him purpose
To blame you in a strange way.
In this he was quite mad and vain,
his advice foolish,
even while his wife was educated
In physics and surgery.

4

He toiled to frenzy
Blaming this one, then that one
And considered it a glory to him
To defame a woman or damsel.
Such a thing is frequent,
To disgrace and disdain women.
It is the sin among the people:
In fact, it expresses their madness.

5

I was once also a youth.
Now I am approaching thirty years;
I see it now,
After adventures and happenings:
I do not find it at all harmful,
A woman’s being companion to man.
Only the disgraceful man is rancid
Who wants to travel an evil path.

6

I have toiled but did not ever find
A man whom woman called
To say: hear my advice,
To attract him to herself.
And if a woman loved a man,
For each noble heart loves,
She will not call to the beloved,
For that would be insolent.

7

But thousands upon thousands
Of my days I always see
Men commit adultery.
Evildoers, iniquitous and sad,
They see themselves as great conquerors.
Shame follows them into old age
While they catch in their nets
Some honest and devout woman. [ . . . ]

20

I will organize the war
Against those who call you wicked.
I will speak wisely,
Without going on obscure paths,
About women modern and ancient.
I will write their praises
And I will speak
Not like those who tell lies.

21

Of the Jewish women
From ancient times,
Pious prophetesses:
To tell of them does not tire me,
For thousands of praises I say;
They are as a mustard seed
In the sea: thus I will cease
Praising Rachel or Leah. [ . . . ]

30

Please lift your eyes, Fool,
For in blaming them you lose:
You do not see the Pleiades and Orion
But one who rises even higher
And you will see how much honor covers
Benvenida the noble,2
Whose name is a reminder
Of the noble Jewish woman.

31

From the blowing land
By the shore of the Tyrrhenian sea, happy
The province of Naples sits
Between Salerno and Gaieta
From where left the gentle one,
The honorable daughter of the king
Who guided her honor
With her noble society.

32

Bridegrooms and girls
Who have no equal in virtue
Can man count
Those with various virtues.
From this one each woman learns
How to present a gift before the Lord:
An offshoot of Jesse
They still never say that she is no longer.

33

Raise your eyelids
To his eldest daughter,
For she has a name among heroes
Of virtue, goodness and valor:
The Lady Joy in her honor
Beside maidens and crown,
In her glory, grace and splendor,
Which seems nourished in heaven.

34

Look at who else ascends
In few days to the glad sky:
Blessed Letizia,
For in Bologna her name is decorated,
The Pisan, Rieti, and Sforni3
Families mourn,
For death engulfed them,
Her bitter and dreadful death.

35

Who can find a woman of valor
In a higher degree of honor
In wisdom and counsel—
Certainly no man is her equal,
Scoundrels,
As I will call these men—
Bitterly, do they call Naomi
With infamy and villainy?

36

Please look around
And see the maidens
If it is in the spring months,
And if the sun is welcome and clear,
Indeed, Gentil nurtures the gracious girls:
Who can count her generosity
And describe the wisdom of Hannah:
What wisdom will suffice?

37

After her was born a girl
Adorned with supreme virtue
From Letizia
Who honors the Sforna Family:
Diamante is the name that adorns her,
The integrity of her deeds,
She is singular among women,
Worthy of every lordship.

38

See the splendor of her mother-in-law,
Bella is her name, and in fact she is so:
Will you find
A man of equal virtue to her
Thus speaks badly of her?
You men are masters of language:
Go to the Kishon River
To drown your dreadful crew.

39

Can you hide praise
From a sweet soul from Ascoli?
The lord of the lords of the spirits:
they believed her super-human,
the daughter-in-law of Diana
and a praised, coveted one
her goodness exalted
with every grace and courtesy.

40

Of the good and pleasant women
who in my country abound—
I am silent, for it is not fitting
For a man to praise his own grace,
But it will not do to suffer a disadvantage
From old men
Whose eyes are filled
With infamy and villainy.

41

Why would I drown in the depths
Of the great sea of their goodness?
To make it known
I spend my time in vanity:
You all know that in every period
Produces thousands and thousands
Of adulterous men:
The ungodliness that you men are.

42

But you ladies understand young men,4
You indeed see through the eyes of others,
Beams between teeth.
You don’t know how to expel them, O foolish men;
Hence one day I will strike by force
Against you men with a high hand,
And may you have the intelligence
To compose some lie or another.

43

Those sapped by blindness,
What will they compose against women,
Plowing with oxen?
Go as you men are used to
Finding, or not,
From women only evil.
Don’t pray for them,
For this was caused by your cowardice.

44

Because of this hostility
You wrote to condemn them
Because you men did not see their goodness,
Nor did you know them well.
Crazily, afterward, you said
They are all crazy;
For their name, to you, is confused
With some rebellious donkey.

45

You men shut your eye
To the wisest and most beautiful women
Until you thought of nothing.
Always women and damsels
Who are all faithful,
The splendor of my darling is described:
She is my dove, my love;
Praising her suffices for all women.

46

The top of her head is like gold
And her forehead cheerful and beautiful;
Her eyes carved by blade
Like a shining star in the sky.
Her speech comes out sweetly,
Her lips are roses;
In her grace rests
Whether laughing, speaking or silent.

47

Her neck is like a tower
In itself a necklace,
Which grows
Into her beautiful and humble face.
In her pretty chest, flint,
In which burns the fire of desire;
In her hand a weapon
With which love wounds the heart.

48

My eyes see her depicted
More perfect and singular,
And my ears perceived
Her erudite and pretty speech.
And if her manners seemed to me
On the side of what is good and dear,
Honor will be given to her;
I will have none without her.

49

She sits in the city
Called mother of learning:
She is Bologna, and God is lodged in her.
For my chosen star
Designed in delight
My faith is scarlet,
And from generosity it will emerge:
There is none like her nor will there be.

50

You are there:
My song is hiding our love
But my name and yours will be remembered.
Make it known here and there,
Say it without blushing:
I engrave Judah.
For this is my part in the world:
To honor my lady.

Translated by
Isabelle
Levy
.

Notes

[Sommo’s readers would recognize donne honeste e belle from Petrarch’s sonnet “Zephiro torna, e ’l bel tempo rimena” (Zephyrus returns and brings the fine weather), Canzoniere 310.—Trans.]

[Benvenida Abravanel, ca. 1473–after 1560. She lived in Naples and later in Ferrara.—Trans.]

[The Rieti family (da Rieti, Rietti, and possibly Arieti) was a prominent family of bankers originating in the town of Rieti. The Sfornis were a prominent family in north-central Italy, the most famous of whom was exegete and physician Ovadiah Sforno (ca. 1470–ca. 1550).—Trans.]

[Sommo’s readers would recall Dante’s famous canzone “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore” (Women who understand love), which appears in Vita nuova 19.—Trans.]

Credits

Judah Sommo, “Protector of Women” (Poem, Mantua, 1577). Published in: Leone de’ Sommi, ha-Maḥazeh ha-ʻIvri ha-rishon: Tsaḥut bediḥuta de-kidushin (The First Hebrew Play: The Comedy of Betrothal, by Yehuda Sommo (1527–92) (Leone Sommo de Portaleone), ed. Jefim Schirmann, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Sifre Tarshish, 1965), 129–145.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 5.

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Creator Bio

Judah Sommo

1525–1590

Judah ben Isaac Sommo (also known as Leone de Sommi Portaleone), born in Mantua, Italy, was a playwright, theater director, and author of Hebrew and Italian poetry. His five-act Tsaḥut bediḥuta de-kiddushin (An Eloquent Marriage Farce), is the earliest surviving Hebrew drama. Sommo wrote and staged plays for the Gonzaga court theater and became renowned throughout Europe as a dramatist and director, pioneering new forms of stage lighting. He was also active in the Jewish community, and he helped Azariah de’ Rossi publish Me’or ‘enayim (Light of the Eyes). Sommo was a prolific writer; however, eleven of sixteen volumes of his writings were lost in the Turin library fire of 1904. Among his greatest works is Dialoghi in materia di rappresentazioni sceniche (Dialogues on the Art of the Stage), which contains an important discussion about Renaissance theater.

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