Moses Chayyim Catalan (? in

Padua Padua ( ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Veneto, northern Italy, and the capital of the province of Padua. The city lies on the banks of the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice and southeast of Vicenza, and has a population of 20 ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

– 1661 in Padua) was an Italian poet. A son of the physician Abraham Catalan, he was

rabbi A rabbi (; ) is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi—known as ''semikha''—following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of t ...

in his native town, and died there at an advanced age in 1661. It was to him that the first letters of Isaac Vita Cantarini, whose teacher he was, were addressed. His "Metzaref ha-Sekel", a rhetorical pamphlet on man, has never been published. He wrote a poem in honor of the marriage of his sister Perla to Raphael Gans Levi, which can be read either as Hebrew or as Italian. It has been reprinted by Johann Christoph Wolf, ''Bibliotheca Hebræa'' iii. 726. In 1645 he wrote a similar poem in honor of Shabbethai Astruc. An elegy on Lamentations in '' ottava rima'' was also published by him at Padua.

Bibliography

*Isaac Chayyim Cantarini, ''Pachad Yitzchaq'', 10a *Marco Osimo, ''Narrazione'', p. 68 *Franz Delitzsch, ''Zur Geschichte der Jüdischen Poesie'', p. 71 *

Moritz Steinschneider Moritz Steinschneider (; 30 March 1816 – 24 January 1907) was a Moravian bibliographer and Orientalist, and an important figure in Jewish studies and Jewish history. He is credited as having invented the term ''antisemitism.'' Education Mo ...

, ''Catalogus Librorum Hebræorum in Bibliotheca Bodleiana'' col. 1785 *Cat. Ghirondi (Sam. Schönblum, Berlin, 1872), p. 2, cod. 4B (where the pamphlet is erroneously ascribed to Abraham Catalan, "rabbi in Padua") *Moritz Steinschneider, in ''Monatsschrift'', xliii. 420 1661 deaths Rabbis from Padua 17th-century Italian rabbis Jewish writers Year of birth unknown {{Italy-reli-bio-stub