DELGADO, JUAN (MOSES) PINTO:
Marano poet; born at Tavira, Portugal, about 1530; died in 1591. Going to Spain in his youth, he studied the humanities at Salamanca, where he formed a friendship with the poet Luis de Leon. He was talented in many ways, and was endowed with an unusually retentive memory, being able to reproduce verbatim a discourse heard but once. Pursued by the Inquisition, he left his wife and child at Tavira, and went first to Rome, and then to France, where he openly professed Judaism and took the name of Moses.
The poems of Jean Pinto Delgado are distinguished for grace, sublimity of style, and variety of meters; "parts of them are written not only with tenderness, but in a sweet and pure versification," says Ticknor. In addition to various poems, he composed poetical versions of certain books of the Bible, which were published together under the title "Poëma de la Reyna Ester, Lamentaciones del Propheta Jeremias, Historia de Rut, y Varias Poesias" (Rouen, 1627), and dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu. The view of J. A. de los Rios and Ad. de Castro that there exists an earlier edition, published at Paris, is very questionable. Barbosa Machado says that Delgado translatedparts of Petrarch into Portuguese. Daniel Levi de Barrios says of him:
"Del Poema de Hester en sacro coro Mosseh Delgado da esplendor sonoro, Y corren con su voz en ricas plantas De Jeremias las Endechas santas."
- J. Amador de los Rios, Estudios Sobre los Judios de España, pp. 500 et seq.;
- Ad. de Castro, Hist. de los Judios en España, p. 195;
- De Rossi, Hist. Wörterb. der Jüd. Schriftsteller, p. 265;
- Barbosa Machado, Bibl. Lusitana, ii. 393, 722;
- Ticknor, Spanish Literature, ii. 46;
- Kayserling, Sephardim, pp. 153 et seq.;
- idem, Bibl. Esp.-Port.-Jud. p. 41.
