Note 226 — PART II (continued 4)

Perhaps a reference should be made to the Vision of the Otherworld composed by Dante’s friend, the learned Jew Immanuel ben Salamone, as the question might occur whether Dante may not, by his means, have arrived at such part of his subject as relates to Old Testament lore and Jewish tradition by a shorter cut than the usual channels, which it has been here attempted to trace. Immanuel was born at Rome in 1265, the year of Dante’s birth, and, like his friend, was at once poet, scholar, theologian, philosopher, and exile, and, probably, one of the most learned men of his day. It is possible that Dante may have been indebted to him for stray pieces of information, scraps of Hebrew, and the like, but the debt can hardly go further than this. Immanuel’s vision of Hell and Paradise was not completed till 1325, and is a manifest imitation of the Commedia; it has been conjectured, even, that by Daniel, who served as his guide, as Virgil did to Dante, he signified the latter. See Signor Seppelli’s translation, with notes and introduction—Inferno e Paradiso di Emanuele di Salamone, Ancona, 1874.