FAENZA (
):
City in the province of Ravenna, and the family seat of the Finzi according to a tradition of the family; Maẓliaḥ (Felice) Finzi lived there as early as 1450. The physician Lazarus Hebræus, prominent in the fifteenth century on account of his wealth, his scholarship, and his benevolence in treating the poor gratuitously, and the liturgical poet Raphael (
) ben Isaac da Faenza were among its Jewish citizens. Several of the latter's piyyuṭim are in the Roman Maḥzor. Raphael ben Isaac sold a maḥzor to Uzziel da Camerino in Florence in 1458. Joseph Colon (Responsa, No. 171, ed. Cremona, p. 146c) mentions a decision by the rabbinate of Faenza dating from this same period.
Bibliography:
- Cassel, in Ersch and Gruber, Encyc. section ii., part 27, p. 153;
- Zunz, Literaturgesch. p. 385, Addenda 28;
- J. Q. R. xiv. 409;
- Bernardinus da Feltre, in Acta Sanctorum, viii. 926.
