Travels and Growing Fame As Scholar
About 1469 Colon officiated as rabbi in Pieve de Sacco, in Venetian territory and continued on to Mestre, near Venice. Subsequently he was rabbi at Bologna and Mantua and, according to a report in Gedaliah Ibn Yahya's Shalshelet ha-Qabbalah, became embroiled in a quarrel with Rabbi Judah Messer Leon, both being banished by the authorities. Thereupon he relocated to Pavia. At the same time Colon's decisions in civil as well as religious questions were sought from far and wide—from German cities, such as Ulm and Nuremberg, as well as from Constantinople. He wrote a commentary on the Pentateuch, and novellæ on the Talmud and on the legal codex of Moses of Coucy, the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol. His major legacy were, however, his responsa. These were collected after his death by his son-in-law Rabbi Gershon Treves, and by one of his pupils, Hiyya Meïr ben David and were published in Venice in 1519 by Daniel Bomberg. They were subsequently republished many times. In 1984, E. D. Pines published fifty new responsa from manuscript. Many more of his responsa remain unpublished.
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Famous quotes containing the words travels, growing, fame and/or scholar:
“Take the instant way,
For honor travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast. Keep then the path,
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue. If you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide, they all rush by
And leave you hindmost.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“You will perceive by my preaching that I am growing old: it is the privilege of years, and I am sure you will pardon it from the purity of it’s motives.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“but as an Eagle
His cloudless thunderbolted on thir heads.
So vertue giv’n for lost,
Deprest, and overthrown, as seem’d,
Like that self-begott’n bird
In the Arabian woods embost,
That no second knows nor third,
And lay e’re while a Holocaust,
From out her ashie womb now teem’d
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deem’d,
And though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird ages of lives.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“The scholar may lose himself in schools, in words, and become a pedant; but when he comprehends his duties, he above all men is a realist, and converses with things.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)