CATALAN, MOSES ḤAYYIM:
Italian poet; born in Padua; son of the physician Abraham Catalan. He was rabbi in his native town, and died there at an advanced age in 1661. It was to him that the first letters of Isaac Vita Cantarini, whose teacher he was, were addressed. His "Meẓaref ha-Sekel," a rhetorical pamphlet on man, has never been published. He wrote a poem in honor of the marriage of his sister Perla to Raphael Gans Levi, which can be read either as Hebrew or as Italian. It has been reprinted by Wolf, "Bibl. Hebr." iii. 726. In 1645 he wrote a similar poem in honor of Shabbethai Astruc. An elegy on Lamentations in ottava rima was also published by him at Padua.
Bibliography:
- Cantarini, Paḥad Yiẓḥaḳ, 10a;
- Osimo, Narrazione, p. 68;
- Delitzsch, Zur Gesch. der Jüdischen Poesie, p. 71;
- Steinschneider, Cat. Bodl. col. 1785;
- Cat. Ghirondi (Sam. Schönblum, Berlin, 1872), p. 2, cod. 4B (where the pamphlet is erroneously ascribed to Abraham Catalan, "rabbi in Padua");
- Steinschneider, in Monatsschrift, xliii. 420.
