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Santob (Shem-Ṭob) de Carrion

The 1901 Jewish Encyclopedia

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Spanish poet; born toward the end of the thirteenth century at Carrion de los Condes, a town in Castile, whence his cognomen. He lived in the reigns of Alfonso XI. and his son and successor Pedro, with both of whom he was in high favor. The "Doctrina Christiana" and "Danza General en Que Entram Todos los Estados de Gente," contained in the same manuscript with a collection of his poems, have long been falsely ascribed to him.

Santob wrote "Consejos y Documentos del Rabbi Don Santo al Rey D. Pedro" or "Proverbios Morales," of which two manuscripts are in existence, one in the Escorial and the other in the National Library, Madrid. The proverbs as found in the two manuscripts are alike in content, but differ in wording; the latter consisting of 627, the former of 686, "coplas." The manuscript of the National Library was copied by Ticknor in his "History of Spanish Literature" (3:422-436, London, 1855). The Escorial manuscript was published for the first time, with a collation of the Madrid text and under the title "Proverbios Morales del Rabbi Don Sem Tob," in "Biblioteca de Autores Españoles" (58:331-372, Madrid, 1864). Several verses have been translated into German by Kayserling in his "Sephardim" and by J. Fastenrath in his "Immortellen aus Toledo" (Leipsic, 1869). The "Consejos" or "Proverbios Morales," the composition of which the author began under King Alfonso, and which he afterward combined and dedicated to King Pedro (1357-60), begin as follows:

Though without much coherence, the works of Santob are remarkable for the epigrammatic precision and vivacity of their style. The author based some of his apothegms on his own views on life, and others he took from the Proverbs of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Pirḳe Abot, the Talmud, and from the works of the Spanish-Moorish period, e.g., Ibn Gabirol's "Mibḥar ha-Peninim."