Victor Tiribás

Reading a Book from the Outside: Martyrdom, Poetry, and Memory in the Sephardic Diaspora (1630-1707)

Reading a Book from the Outside is centered on a forgotten work of literature in praise of two Jewish martyrs burned alive by the Spanish Inquisition in 1655. Clandestinely printed in Amsterdam, the Elogios… a la felice memoria de Abraham Nuñez Bernal (1656) was the first collective book of the Sephardic diaspora, featuring contributions from twenty-five authors who moved between the Americas, Europe, and the Mediterranean. Coming from diverse backgrounds, the members of this underground literary circle crafted one of the strongest manifestos against intolerance and censorship of the early modern period. Employing a variety of styles in Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin, they enabled their subversive message to spread across the world, reaching audiences from different social levels and religious confessions. By unravelling the story of this global work, Reading a Book from the Outside offers the first cultural history of the Sephardic diaspora from the margins, demonstrating the impact of a dissident group of Jewish poets on the foundations of the Enlightenment.

Victor Tiribás is a historian of early modern intellectual and cultural history whose research focuses on book history and religious dissent in the Sephardic diaspora. After his Ph.D. at Scuola Normale Superiore, he held fellowships at Harvard University, the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Princeton University, and the University of Amsterdam. Over the years, his research has appeared in edited volumes and specialized journals, such as the Jewish Quarterly Review and the Journal of the History of Philosophy.