Elia Levita (1469–1549), also known as Eliahu Bakhur ("Eliahu the Bachelor") was the author of the Bovo-Bukh (written in 1507–1508), the most popular chivalric romance in the Yiddish language, which, according to Sol Liptzin, is "generally regarded as the most outstanding poetic work in Old Yiddish". [Liptzin, 1972, 5, 7]

Born at Neustadt near Nuremberg, he was the youngest of nine brothers. During his early manhood, the Jews were expelled from this area. He lived in Venice for a time after 1496, where he was part of a brief efflorescence of Yiddish literature, before the descendants of the Ashkenazic Jews who had emigrated this area adopted the local Italian speech. [Liptzin, 1972, 5]

During these years, Levita scratched out a living as an entertainer. After Venice, he relocated to Padua (1504), where he wrote the 650 ottava rima stanzas of the Bovo-Bukh, based on the popular romance Buovo d'Antona, which, in turn, was based on the Anglo-Norman romance of Sir Bevis of Hampton. [Liptzin, 1972, 6]

Escaping a war, he left in 1509 for Rome, where he acquired a patron, the humanist Petrus Egidius (1471–1532) of Viterbo, who from 1517 held the rank of a Roman Catholic cardinal. Levita taught Hebrew to Petrus, and copied Hebrew manuscripts—mostly related to the Kaballah—for Petrus's library. [Liptzin, 1972, 6]

The 1527 Sack of Rome sent Levita back to Venice, where he worked as a proofreader and taught Hebrew. In 1541 he was back in Germany, working for a printer; there, in 1541, he printed his own works, including the first edition of the Bovo-Bukh. At the end of his life, he was back in Venice. [Liptzin, 1972, 6]

Sol Liptzin writes that Paris and Vienna, attributed to Levita, "easily ranks with the Bovo-Bukh in quality though not in popularity. Also a chivalric verse romance, it tells the story of a knight Paris and a princess Vienna; the name of the work has no apparent connection to the similarly named cities. [Liptzin, 1972, 7-8]

Liptzin writes that Levita "was not the equal" of his contemporaries Ariosto or Tasso, and that the "knightly adventures" he depicted "had no basis in Jewish reality", although compared to other chivalric romances, those of Levita "tone down the Christian symbols of his original" and "substitute Jewish customs, Jewish values and Jewish traits of character here and there..." [Liptzin, 1972, 8]

Works

• Elia Levita Bachur's Bovo-Buch: A Translation of the Old Yiddish Edition of 1541 with Introduction and Notes by Elia Levita Bachur, translated and notes by Jerry C. Smith, Fenestra Books, 2003, ISBN 1587361604.
• Paris and Vienna (attributed)
• miscellaneous shorter poems

References

• Gottheil, Richard and Jacobs, Joseph Baba Buch, Jewish Encyclopedia, 1901-1906
• Liptzin, Sol, A History of Yiddish Literature, Jonathan David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, ISBN 0-8246-0124-6.