Regimiento de la vida

"Moses ben Baruch Almosnino was born in Salonika c. 1518 to an important family from Huesca exiled by the order of explusion in 1492, his death occurred sometime after 1580. A rabbi and leader of the Salonika community, Almosnino was twice its emissary to the sultan, and as renowned preacher and scholar, received support from the Duke of Naxos, Yosef ha-Nasi, and his mother, Dona Gracia Mendes." "Addressed to his nephew, Moshe Garcon, Almosnino divides his Regimiento de la vida (Salonika, 1564) into three parts, each prescribing behaviors, activities, and attitudes proper to a given stage in an individual's physical, intellectual, and spiritual growth, and each correlating with what Almosnino terms one of the three worlds or "times of the soul." In content and plan, the Regimiento is a rabbinic interpretation fo Aristotle's Ethics, and relies on other ethical, medical, philosophical, and religious authorities, especially Avicenna's Canon, biblical and rabbinical writings, and Maimonides' Law of Character Traits, Eight Chapters, and Guide. The edition here also includes Almosnino's treatise on dreams, Tratado de los suenyos, which was originally bound with the Regimiento." "The book's chief audience is Hispanists, but scholars of Jewish studies will also find it interesting because it embodies a unique record of the ethical and intellectual panorama of first generation Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire."--BOOK JACKET.