Isaac Chayyim Cantarini - His Style

His Style

In his poetical writings Cantarini based his language almost exclusively on that of the Bible; his sentences containing, in addition to innumerable conceits, allusions to Biblical expressions. The contents of his works must be judged apart from their unpleasing form, being remarkable for pithy sense and elegant definition.

The most important of his Hebrew works is Pachad Yitzchaq (The Fear of Isaac), a description of the attack on the ghetto at Padua by the Christian populace on August 20, 1684, published at Amsterdam in 1685. This work contains a detailed account of all the incidents, in most of which he had taken part (Otzar Nechmad, iii. 131); and many documents of the governments of Padua and Venice are therein translated and quoted in Hebrew. An account of the internal condition of the Jewish community, together with statistics, serves as an introduction (p. 10). The author develops entirely modern theories on the causes of these occurrences in the political as well as the physical world (5a et seq.). Noteworthy also is his decided tolerance toward Christians. (See, for instance, pp. 9a, 23g).