ed under Emperor Frederick II., so
Kalonymos was attached to Robert of Naples, patron of Jewish scholars.
At the same time with the Spanish and the German minstrel, there
flourished in Rome Immanuel ben Solomon, the friend of Dante, upon whose
death he wrote an Italian sonnet, and whose _Divina Commedia_ inspired a
part of his poetical works also describing a visit to paradise and hell.

With the assiduous cultivation of romantic poetry, which was gradually
usurping the place of moral romances and novels, grew the importance of
Oriental legends and traditions, so pregnant with literary suggestions.
This is attested by the use made of the Hebrew translation of Indian
fables mentioned before, and of the famous collection of tales, the
_Disciplina clericalis_ by the baptized Jew Petrus Alphonsus. The Jews
naturally introduced many of their own peculiar traditions, and thus can
be explained the presence of tales from the Talmud and the Midrash in
our modern fairy tale books.

It is necessary to note again that the Jews in turn submitted to the
influence of foreign literatures. Immanuel Romi, for example, at his
best, is an exponent of Provencal versification and scholastic
philosophy, while his lapses testify to the self-complacency and levity
characteristic of the times. Yehuda Romano, one of his contemporaries,
is said to have been teacher to the king of Naples. He was the first Jew
to attain to a critical appreciation of the vagaries of scholasticism,
but his claim to mention rests upon his translations from the Latin.

As Jews assisted at the birth of Arabic, French, and German, so they
have a share in the beginnings of Spanish, literature. Jews must be
credited with the first "Chronicle of the Cid," with the romance, _Comte
Lyonnais, Palanus_, with the first collection of tales, the first chess
poems, and the first troubadour songs. Again, the oldest collection of
the last into a _cancionera_ was made by the Jew Juan Alfonso de Baena.

Even distant Persia has proofs to show of Jewish ability and energy in
those days. One Jew composed an epic on a biblical subject in the
Persian language, another translated the Psalms into the vernacular.

The most prominent Jewish exponent of philosophy in this age of
strenuous interest in metaphysical speculations and contests was Levi
ben Gerson (Leon di Bannolas), theologian, scientist, physician, and
astronomer. One of his ancestors, Gerson ben Solomon, had written a work
typic