Venetian poet who hosted a literary salon in the Ghetto, debating Christian writers as an equal. When a cleric accused her of heresy she answered him in print, a rare public voice for a Jewish woman of her time.
Life and legacy
Sarra Copia Sullam was one of the most visible Jewish women in the intellectual culture of seventeenth-century Venice. Educated in Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, Latin, music, and literature, she hosted a salon that brought Jewish and Christian writers into sustained conversation. Her correspondence with the Genoese poet Ansaldo Cebà began with their shared interest in his epic treatment of Esther, but Cebà repeatedly attempted to convert her to Christianity. Sullam remained Jewish and later defended herself publicly when the cleric Baldassare Bonifacio accused her of denying the immortality of the soul. Her surviving Manifesto, poems, and letters reveal a skilled polemicist negotiating gender restrictions, confessional pressure, and literary rivalry. She is essential to understanding Jewish women’s authorship and interreligious intellectual exchange in early modern Italy.
Sephardic connection
Venetian Jewish woman from the Italian Sephardic milieu who participated publicly in early modern literary and philosophical debate
Sources
- Howard Tzvi Adelman, Sarra Copia Sullam, Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women
- Don Harrán, Jewish Poet and Intellectual in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Works of Sarra Copia Sulam
