PINA, DE:

By: Isidore Singer, Meyer Kayserling, Richard Gottheil, Ismar Elbogen

Portuguese Marano family some members of which were able to escape the Inquisition and to confess Judaism openly in Amsterdam.

Jacob (Manuel) de Pina:

Spanish and Portuguese poet; born of Marano parents in Lisbon in 1616; went to Holland about 1660. In Amsterdam he openly accepted Judaism and took the name Jacob. In Lisbon he had published a "comedia burlesca" entitled "La Mayor Hazana de Carlos VI." and a volume of humorous poems entitled "Juguetes de la Niñez y Travesuras del Ingenio" (1656), which are the same as the "Chansas del Ingenio y Dislatas de la Musa" mentioned in Wolf (see bibliography below). Jacob mourned in elegies the deaths of Saul Levi Morteira and the martyrs Bernal and Lope de Vera; and in 1673 he celebrated in a Portuguese poem the verses of Joseph Penso, and in a Spanish one the translation of the psalms of Jacob Judah Leon.

S. M. K.Paul de Pina:

Born after 1580 in Lisbon. Poetically gifted and inclined to religious fanaticism, he was about to become a monk, and for this purpose made a journey to Rome. One of his relatives recommended him to the physician Filotheo Eliau (Elijah) Montalto in Leghorn, and the latter won the young man for the religion of his ancestors. Paul went to Brazil, and thence returned to Lisbon, where he still continued to appear as a Christian. He did not fully embrace Judaism until after the Franciscan monk Diego de la Axumçao had courageously suffered the death of a martyr for the Jewish faith. In 1604 Paul hastened to Amsterdam, where as a Jew he was called Rohel Jeshurun and became prominent in the community. In honor of the synagogue Bet-Ya'aḳob he in 1624 composed in Portuguese poetical dialogues between the seven principal mountains of Palestine in praise of the faith of Israel. These dialogues were printed in Amsterdam in 1767, and they are reprinted in Kayserling, "Sephardim," p. 340.

G. I. E.