Israelite

Juan Alfonso Baena, a converted Jew who flourished in the beginning of the 15th Century, made a curious collection of the poems of the Trobadores Espanoles including his own from which Rodrigues de Castro has given copious extracts. Don Santo, who flourished about the year 1360, made the following modest and not inelegant apology for taking his place among the poets of the land which had given him birth:

THE ROSE that twines a thorny sprig

Will not the less perfume the earth;

Good wine that leaves a creeping twig

Is not the worse for humble birth.

The hawk may be of noble kind

That from a soiled eyrie flew,

And precepts are not the less refined

Because they issue from a Jew.

Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD