Immanuel HaRomi

1261 CE–1335 CE · Rishonim · Rome

Immanuel ben Solomon of Rome (c. 1261–c. 1335), known as Immanuel HaRomi, was the leading Hebrew poet of medieval Italy and a contemporary of Dante. A biblical commentator who served as a leader of Rome's Jewish community before financial ruin sent him wandering through Italy — he died in Fermo — he is remembered above all for the Machbarot Immanuel, a brilliant collection of rhymed-prose maqāma that ranges from the sacred to the boldly secular. Its closing 'Tofet and Eden' (Hell and Paradise) echoes the world of Dante's Comedy. So worldly was some of his verse that the Shulchan Aruch later cautioned against reading it on the Sabbath.

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Stop 1 of 21261–1321Born

RomeרומאItaly

What they did here

Born in Rome around 1261; a poet and biblical commentator who served as a leader of the city's Jewish community.

Rome in this era

In the Middle Ages Rome was governed by the popes as capital of the Papal States. Its Jewish community, continuous since antiquity, produced scholars such as Nathan ben Jehiel, whose Talmudic dictionary the Arukh was completed in 1101, and the poet Immanuel of Rome (13th-14th century); Benjamin of Tudela, visiting about 1165, counted about 200 Jews (probably heads of household).

About Rome

Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.

In Rome at the same time

Tzidkiyah ben Avraham (the Anav), Abraham Abulafia, Shemariah of Negropont

Across the traditions, in Rome at the same time

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Immanuel HaRomi’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.