PINTO DELGADO, JOÃO

PINTO DELGADO, JOÃO (Mosseh ; d. 1653), Portuguese *Marrano poet, born at Vila Nova de Portimão. His grandfather, of the same name, was in government administration in the Algarve, as was João's father, Gonçalo Delgado. On two separate occasions, João lived in Lisbon. His parents, after going to Antwerp, settled in Rouen, c. 1609, where he later joined them. In 1633 some of the Portuguese New Christians in Rouen denounced others as Judaizers, and João and his father took refuge in Antwerp (a brother, Gonçalo, remained in Rouen). João moved to Amsterdam in 1634, followed soon after by his father. In the Dutch city he openly joined the Jewish community and was known as Mosseh Pinto (Delgado). Around 1636, 1637, and 1640, he was one of the seven parnasim of the talmud torah. João Pinto Delgado began his literary career in Lisbon, where he contributed poetry to works of a purely Catholic nature by João Baptista de Este and Luis de Tovar. In Rouen, in 1627, he published a collection of verse paraphrases of Old Testament books, Poema de la Reyna Ester, Lamentaciones del Propheta Jeremias y Historia de Rut y varias poesías, which he dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu. I.S. Révah has published parts of a manuscript autobiography, in prose and verse and written in Holland, in which Pinto Delgado attacked the Inquisition and Christian beliefs, and satirized those New Christians of Rouen who denounced others in 1633.

bibliography:

João Pinto Delgado, Poema de la Reina Ester…, ed. by I.S. Révah (Lisbon, 1954); E.W. Wilson, in: jjs, 1 (1949), 131–42; C. Roth, in: Modern Language Review, 30 (1935), 19–25; idem, in: rej, 121 (1962), 355–66; I.S. Révah, in: rej, 119 (1961), 41–130.

[Kenneth R. Scholberg]