Person · 5350–5401 AM · 1590 CE — 1641 CE
Sara Copia Sullam שרה קופיה סולם
a poet of the Venetian ghetto who beat back an accusation in print
The year of birth is given as 1588, 1590 and 1592. For four years she corresponded with the Genoese poet-monk Ansaldo Cebà: he printed his fifty-three letters, hers are lost—the usual fate of the woman's half of a correspondence.
The Manifesto of 1621 is written in Italian, with dignity and irony: she believes in the soul's immortality and answers her accuser as an equal. Leone Modena, rabbi of Venice, dedicated his reworking of the Esther tragedy to her. Her only daughter died at ten months; she herself died in 1641.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- The Manifesto of Sarra Copia Sulam, a Jewess, 1621 — the printed answer to the accusation
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the years and their variance, the salon and the Cebà correspondence
Basis: Talmud and midrash.