Abstract
Salomon Usque was descendant of Portuguese Jews that reached Ferrara during the Diaspora. He was possibly the son of Abraham Usque typographer of the Ferrara Bible (1553) written in ladino . We have evidence of his passing through Venice between 1560 and 1567, alternating stays in Constantinople, the Ottoman capital where he probably died. We owe to Salomon Usque the translation of Petrarch's Canzoniere into Spanish, published by Nicolo Bevilacqua in Venice in 1567. Usque is the author of the tragedy titled L’Ester arranged in 1619 by Leone Modena. He also wrote poetry in Italian. Among the manuscripts of the Ferrarian codex N.A. 5 belonging to the Biblioteca Ariostea there is a laudatory canzone addressed to Guidobaldo II Montefeltro (1514-1574), the Duke of Urbino, which is edited for the first time in the present article. The distribution of encyclopedic content reminds the distant source of St. Isidore of Seville, but there are some analogies with the poem Las siete edades del mundo written by Pablo de Santa Maria (born around 1350- 1435), a Spaniard converted Jew.
Highlights
Salomón Usque was descendant of Portuguese Jews that reached Ferrara during the Diaspora
We have evidence of his passing through Venice between 1560 and 1567, alternating stays in Constantinople, the Ottoman capital where he probably died
We owe to Salomón Usque the translation of Petrarch's Canzoniere into Spanish, published by Nicolò Bevilacqua in Venice in 1567
Summary
Muy escasas son las noticias biográficas que de Salomón Usque han llegado hasta nosotros. Sabemos que era descendiente de judíos conversos portugueses, muchos de los cuales a partir de 1536 abandonaron masivamente el territorio lusitano dando lugar a colonias importantes en el puerto de Amberes y acto seguido en Ferrara, la capital del ducado Estense en cuya tolerante corte muchos de ellos volvieron abiertamente a la fe de sus antepasados. Él mismo corrobora tal origen al firmar con el seudónimo humanístico de Salusque Lusitano en frontispicio una parte de los ejemplares de su traducción castellana del Canzoniere de Petrarca (Venecia 1567) \ Sospechamos que fue hijo de Abraham Usque, asentado en Ferrara y con imprenta en Vignatagliata, en el barrio de San Romano, de donde salieron los ejemplares de la Biblia de Ferrara (c) Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas Licencia Creative Commons 3.0 España (by-nc) http://sefarad.revistas.csic.es
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