Described by Cecil Roth as a «stately prose poem... (a) magnificent work, one of our main sources for the history of the period» (Roth 325), Consolação às Tribulações de Israel is, nonetheless, the work of a little-known author. Neither the year of Samuel Usque's birth nor that of his death can be ascertained with any certainty. We know that he was born in Lisbon in the early 1500's, that he fled the Inquisition to Italy in mid-century, and that he died in his sixties in Safed, a center for cabalistic studies in northern Galilee (Saraiva 343). And yet the Usques were an illustrious family whose origins in the Spanish city of Huesca are reflected in their patronymic. One of Samuel Usque's cousins, Solomon Usque, translated Petrarch into Spanish. Another kinsman, Abraham Usque, founded an important press in Ferrara, Italy, which published a number of works in Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew (Saraiva 242)⁷⁰. Among them, two were destined to become minor Portuguese classics, Samuel Usque's Consolação às Tribulações de Israel (1553) and Bernardim Ribeiro's Menina e Moça (1554).

Both works share a number of traits including pastoral settings, a plangent tone, tragic characterization, and a certain penchant for cabalistic imagery⁷¹. However, the copious bibliography concerning Ribeiro's work stands in marked contrast to the slender bibliography for Consolações às Tribulações de Israel, despite frequent references to Usque's work and its inclusion in standard anthologies of Portuguese literature⁷². A closer look at Usque's prose eclogues will doubtless suggest that his work deserves to be better known than is possible from a random sampling in high school textbooks⁷³.

Certainly basic to an appreciation of Consolação is Usque's linguistic skills, for the work exemplifies the clear, elegant Portuguese associated with the best examples of the language during the High Renaissance. Usque was something of a champion of the language at a time when many of his contemporaries preferred to express themselves in the more prestigious language of Castile (Beau 349-70). Indeed, in his prologue the author explicitly rejects such an option and points out that his main concern is to address himself as directly as possible to others who are also recent exiles from Portugal and therefore more comfortable in Portuguese, «a lingua que mamei»⁷⁴.

A model of language for ready communication rather than for rhetorical effect, Consolação as Tribulações de Israel declares the author's intention in its very title: his purpose is quite simply to provide religious succor to fellow Portuguese-speaking Jews during a time of enormous upheaval and suffering. There is, however, a sense of humanistic serenity as Usque, every bit the Renaissance scholar, cites a classical source to explain why a review of Jewish history might perhaps improve his contemporaries' morale. Thus, in the prologue to his first eclogue he invokes Socrates, «espelho e norte... da gentilidade possuidora de todas as artes» as he proceeds to cite the Greek philosopher's conviction that the trials of today will often seem less onerous if they are compared to those borne by one's ancestors. Usque's consolations, then, will involve a recreation of Israel's past viewed as a series of tribulations inflicted by a loving but stern God who jealously chastises His people for their transgressions. Jewish history for Samuel Usque is a single record of suffering following a brief Golden Age, and he

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stresses that for more than five millenia the instruments of divine retribution have been gentile rulers, from the ancient Moabites and Assyrians to the kings and institutions of sixteenth-century Europe. One and all are the subject of dire prophetic warnings which the author interweaves throughout his narrative with marginal annotations to indicate their biblical sources.

The structure of Consolação às Tribulações de Israel comprises three prose eclogues and three interlocutors, the patriarch Jacob and the prophets Nahum and Zachariah. From the outset it is clear that Jacob represents «todo o corpo de Israel» (I, i) in recounting his people's travails. The role of the two prophets is to cite precedent and justification, in effect, as John Milton would one day put it, explaining God's ways to man. Both prophets also seek to encourage Jacob by pointing out instances of God's blessings and by predicting an eventual end to his suffering. The three eclogues divide the sweep of Jewish history into three periods: the first ends with the return from Babylonian captivity, the second corresponds to the period of the Second Temple, and the third and longest eclogue tells of Israel in the Diaspora up to the author's own experiences as a recent exile from his ancestral home in Iberia.

In composing his tract Samuel Usque employs all the stylistic conventions associated with pastoral literature in general and with the eclogue in particular. Each eclogue is accordingly designated a «diálogo pastoril» and is framed by the topos of shepherds taking their flocks to pasture at dawn and returning home with the setting sun. The interlocutors are accorded new designations which, while reminiscent of their original names, are more suitable to their pastoral roles. Jacob thus becomes Iacobo, while Nahum is Numeo and Zachariah appears as Zicareo. The result is that literary convention becomes a veil («véu») to cover historical reality («a verdadeira figura» [I, Prologue]), in effect, an anagogic rendering of Jewish history.

Samuel Usque's choice of the pastoral convention as a vehicle for his topic could hardly be considered a curious one in light of his cultural background, his intention, and his theme. As is well known, the eclogue in Iberia had already been adapted for expressing social and political views beginning with Juan del Encina in the previous century, and melancholy shepherds sharing tales of woe abound in the literatures of Spain and Portugal throughout the Renaissance⁷⁵. Moreover, shepherds and their flocks were as ubiquitous in Usque's time as they were central to the patriarchal society of ancient Israel. Even more basic to the intention of Samuel Usque's Consolação is the topos of the solicitous shepherd who responds to sounds of weeping and lamentation and enjoins a hapless colleague to unburden his sorrows by revealing the cause of his suffering. The reader is mindful of any number of stylized shepherds when Iacobo is overheard in a deserted valley bewailing «meus males e fadigas, minhas injúrias e ofensas, minhas saudades e misérias...» (I, ii), and Numeo and Zicareo, in true pastoral solidarity, come to his aid. Zicareo's solicitude likewise strikes a responsive chord in the readers of Bernardim Ribeiro and Garcilaso de la Vega when he invites Iacobo to tell of his sorrow: «...que desabafes conosco tuas paixões porque... sentirás alguma melhoria em tua dor, que aos males é alívio a comunicação deles» (I, 111). The resulting shared confidences, observations, and advice become the very essence of Consolação às Tribulações de Israel⁷⁶.

Usque's choice of pastoral tradition, then, is prompted by literary influences, historical reality, and a perspective and tone which he found especially compatible with his own vision. The same tradition also provides our author with a wealth of motifs which are appropriate to his themes. Thus, the Golden Age, which is basic to the premises of bucolic poetry, is evoked in several poetic pages to describe the time when Jacob lived the life of a simple shepherd. We read that he and his people once awoke to birdsong at dawn to take their bountiful flocks to pasture and end the day on the verdant banks of the Jordan over a simple supper followed by a peaceful sleep under starry skies or in rustic huts. The air was an eternal springtime and, as in hundreds of works from the period, gushing fountains are described as «cristalinas águas» (I, ix).

The Golden Age of pastoral peace and natural harmony ends when violence and bloodshed intrude in the form of hunting, and rabbits and deer replace cheese and mutton. As the shepherds become hunters and acquire «o costume gentílico e cruel, imitando... Ismael e Esau... oposto ao exercício pastoril

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aceito a meu criador» (I, xxvi), the hunt degenerates into idol-worship and other forms of rebellion against God. Usque also suggests the broken troth of the faithless shepherd of literary convention to describe Iacobo's sin. As Zicareo observes: «Da maneira que quebra a mulher a fé a seu namorado, assim a quebraste tu ao Senhor» (I, xxxiv). The unfaithful swain of pastoral eclogues is thus born to lament his betrayal in endless wandering.

The author extends his use of pastoral motifs to other aspects of his major theme in narrating the sufferings of Israel. Thus, he often refers to his people as helpless lambs, sheep, and scattered flocks as he enumerates the all too familiar catalogues of horrors, massacres, captivity, exile, and torture. Iacobo pines for his «ovelhas e cabras que perdi em Itália, Alemanha, Inglaterra, e Espanha... devoradas pelos lobos» (I, i). The victims of a massacre at the hands of Roman centurions are recalled as «120,000 cordeiros... ovelhas humanas» (I, xvi). It follows that the eternal spring on the banks of the Jordan has become «melancólico inverno» (xxx, xi) and the verdant pastures are now «desertos e moradas de feras» (I, xii). Throughout the travails, however, Israel somehow remains the Lord's «bezerrinho» (I, xxxviii), His beloved little calf.

Clearly Samuel Usque was no less conversant with the pastoral tradition as it had developed in the literatures of Spain and Portugal than he was familiar with the nuances of the Portuguese language. Moreover, our author went beyond mastering the canon of bucolic literature and conferred new forms and meaning to the conventions of the past. The late Portuguese critic, Hernâni Cidade, categorically stated that «ninguém na sua época, como ninguém antes ou depois, até os tempos românticos, se deteve a fixar na retina e na página [natural settings]... Usque sente [italics in the original] a natureza... com sentidos atentos a todos os aspectos dos seres e das coisas... A campina surge, como nunca até antão, animada de movimento, de ruido, e cor...» (Cidade 268). The reader frequently detects a kind of realism which belies all convention such as when the shepherds seek better forage «...lá detrás daquela costa... a erva nem estava pisada de duros bois ou trilhada de pressurosos caçadores», where they will find a little stream for refreshment at noon when the cicadas begin to trill (II, i). A similar concern for specific detail ends the day when Iacobo is invited to a supper of «maçãs maduras e um queijo fresco que esta manhã fiz do leite da minha ovelha pedrificada» (II, xliv). On another occasion the shepherds are awakened by the sounds of their dogs fending off wolves, but fortunately no harm occurs, «antes segundo me parece um deles (i. e., dos lobos) foi bem mordificado, porque o nosso cão orelhudo está ensanguentado todo, sem ele haver recebido dano» (III, i). One scene which is especially impressive suggests the artist's palette so dear to a nineteenth-century Parnassian as the author describes a sunset when the light fills the horizon «de inflamadas nuvens, umas louras da cor do ouro puro de Ofir, e outras sanguíneas qual a fina escarlata e preciosos rubis, entre negras algumas... muitas como montanhas de neve ou branca lã à maneira de longes serras, algumas cinzentas bordadas de ouro...» (II, iv-v). As is apparent in Usque's reference to Ofir, the author enhances his descriptions with images that evoke a decidedly «exotic» flavor, which pervades his prose. The reader is often mindful of the cadences of the Song of Songs and other books in the Bible, which is a constant point of reference. Not surprisingly, our author's use of language echoes the rhythm and sounds of the Psalms and the rhetoric of the prophets even as he creates a pastoral setting⁷⁷.

The artist, however, never overwhelms the committed writer, who strives to devote his considerable talents to consoling his people while retelling their history. Usque's anguish and a sense of urgency become particularly apparent in the third eclogue where thirty-seven short chapters reconstruct the events leading up to the author's own turbulent time. As Iacobo recalls his travels from the Balkans to the Iberian Peninsula, the shepherd-patriarch narrates a tragic litany of woes that are similar even in diversity. With almost anecdotal immediacy he tells of weak rulers who alternate between protecting their Jewish subjects for selfish reasons and persecuting them at the insistence of clergy and nobles driven by greed, resentment, and fanaticism. Every instance of a missing gentile child seems to unleash yet another pogrom driven by wild tales of human sacrifice, a calumny which the peaceful shepherd finds especially odious in light of his people's aversion to blood (III, xxxviii). Other calumnies would blame his flocks for war and pestilence. And when brief periods of calm do occur, the scattered flocks

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become complacent and religiously lax, thereby incurring further heavenly punishments, and the horrors resume.

In Spain and, most recently, in Portugal, the author observes that the ultimate rebellion against the ancient Covenant has occurred in the form of assimilation, thus eliciting the ultimate punishment in the form of the Inquisition. This «fero Monstro» ferrets out «aquele mal batizado povo... escondido já no hábito de cristão» (III, xxxiii), thereby driving thousands, like Samuel Usque himself, into an uncertain exile marked by immense suffering at the hands of pirates, bandits, and frenzied mobs to say nothing of disease and stark poverty. The author notes with wry irony that in some lands, such as Flanders and France, forced conversion has backfired and caused dissension in the majority communities as Catholics of Jewish origin become Lutherans. Usque finds a poetic justice in such apostacy and observes that religious constancy can hardly be expected of those «não sossegando na fé que de tão má vontade receberam» (III, xv; xxi). With respect to such conversions, the author strikes a modern note as he calls for freedom of conscience for all: «As coisas da alma hão de ser livres pois nosso Senhor concedeu liberdade no arbítrio humano» (III, xiii)⁷⁸.

Iacobo's sympathetic listeners console their grieving colleague by predicting that his long history of punishment is nearing an end, since Portugal marks «...o fim da terra... estás posto no cabo das tuas tribulações, e não havendo além outra provincia onde possas passar mais adiante, faz tua peregrinação ali término» (III, lvii)⁷⁹. Even now a return to the Promised Land is underway, and the flocks are gathering in Salonika, «nestes tempos verdadeira madre do judáismo» (III, xxxiv). Other hopeful signs include the hospitality of the Duke of Ferrara and the Sultan of Constantinople, both of whom have welcomed the exiles driven from the literal end of the earth (III, liii). In addition, God has inflicted punishment on the gentiles with heaven-sent civil strife, plague, and war. Soon such scourges will reduce the temporal powers of Usque's Europe to the same oblivion which befell the Egyptians, the Persians, the Babylonians, and the Romans. The ultimate consolation, then is that only Israel remains and will one day rule over the remnants of her oppressors (III, li).

The prophetic shepherds couple an eventual reconciliation between God and his people with their return to a fertile Israel restored to the prosperity and harmony of a new Golden Age. Accordingly, they foresee a resumption of a peaceful life in the pleasant meadows of yore, «junto de rios... e outeiros viçosos» (III, lxviii). Other bucolic topoi include bountiful harvests and a happy people in tune with a benign nature. At this point Usque introduces a novel application of the pastoral perspective which traditionally pits the bucolic world against an urban setting. Samuel Usque rejects the conventional antimony in his vision of a new Israel and adds to sylvan glades and verdant meadows thriving cities inhabited by multitudes of «ovelhas santas, ovelhas humanas» (III, lxx). Unlike the Golden Age of popular literature, the new Jerusalem will resolve the tensions between rus and urbs, between country and city⁸⁰.

Heartened by the promise of delivery from suffering, Iacobo ends his third day of dialogue with the sage and sympathetic Numeo and Zicareo. The three shepherds return to their huts and decide to while away the time en route by harmonizing a «doce cantiga» once sung by «as... antigas serranas pelos outeiros de Sião» (III, lxxvii). The «sweet song» which young girls once sang in the hills of Zion is appropriately Psalm 126, which celebrates the joy of return. Its verses end Consolação às Tribulações de Israel.

In closing, the place of Samuel Usque as a Renaissance writer is perforce a modest one, but it merits greater consideration. Few sixteenth-century prose writers in Portugal match his graceful use of the vernacular, and his literary prowess is remarkable. Especially noteworthy is Usque's success in wedding a major cultural convention in sixteenth-century Iberia, the pastoral perspective, with a passionate commitment to consoling his people during a time of extreme hardship. In so doing he also created a remarkable document which sheds much light on a period crucial to the evolution of Sephardic culture. Consolação as Tribulações de Israel provides the reader, Renaissance or contemporary, with a noble attempt to make sense of a world which certainly seems out of joint if not mad. The sane and erudite shepherds of his pastoral dialogues do indeed provide consolation. They do not, however, pretend to provide an explanation for the horrors of exile and persecution.

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When Iacobo ponders on the reason for such evils and misery, he is ultimately reduced to exclaiming: «O fundissimo segredo de que os céus somente têm a chave» (III, xliii). Heaven only knows...

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Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 73, Number 1, March 1990