Life and Work
Born at Neustadt near Nuremberg, to a family of Levitical status, he was the youngest of nine brothers. During his early manhood, the Jews were expelled from this area. He then moved to northern Italy, and in Padua in 1504, he wrote the 650 ottava rima stanzas of the Bovo-Bukh, based on the popular romance Buovo d'Antona, which, in turn, was based on the Anglo-Norman romance of Sir Bevis of Hampton.
By 1514 he was living in Venice, where he wrote two scathing satirical pasquinades. That same year he moved to Rome, where he acquired a friend and patron, the Renaissance humanist and cardinal Egidio da Viterbo (1471–1532) of Viterbo, in whose palace he lived for more than ten years. Levita taught Hebrew to Egidio, and copied Hebrew manuscripts—mostly related to the Kabbalah—for the cardinal's library. The first edition of Levita's Baḥur (Rome, 1518) is dedicated to Egidio, to whom Levita dedicated his Concordance (1521).
The 1527 Sack of Rome sent Levita into exile once more, back to Venice, where he worked as a proofreader and taught Hebrew. Levita published at Venice a treatise on the laws of cantillation entitled Sefer Tuv Ta'am. At seventy years of age, Levita left his wife and children and departed in 1540 for Isny, accepting the invitation of Paul Fagius to superintend his Hebrew printing-press there. During Elia's stay with Fagius (until 1542 at Isny (in Bavaria), he published the following works: Tishbi, a dictionary containing 712 words used in Talmud and Midrash, with explanations in German and a Latin translation by Fagius (Isny, 1541); Sefer Meturgeman, explaining all the Aramaic words found in the Targum (Isny, 1541); Shemot Debarim, an alphabetical list of the technical Hebrew words (Isny, 1542); and a new and revised edition of the Bachur. While in Germany he also printed his Bovo-Bukh. On returning to Venice, Eliah, in spite of his great age, he worked on editions of several works, including David Kimhi's Miklol, which he also annotated.
Elia Levita died 28 January 1549 in Venice, aged 80 years. He has descendants living today, including British Prime Minister David Cameron.
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