Melo, David Abenatar

Melo, David Abenatar a converted Spanish Jew, was born about the middle of the 16th century. Of his early life we know nothing beyond the fact that for several years he was an inmate of the prison of the Inquisition. Whether he was committed there because, as Milman states, he was baptized, and was suspected of not being a true Christian, or in order to crush out of him the betrayal of some of his kindred, or, as Kayserling states, because he translated some of David's Psalms into Spanish, is very difficult to say. He was released in 1611, and found a refuge in Holland, where a great many of his countrymen and co-religionists had settled. He soon became the head of the synagogue at Amsterdam, lecturing at the same time at the Academy of De los Pintos. Melo, whom Barrios calls "traductor harmonioso del Psalterio misterioso,'" is especially known as the translator of the Psalms into Spanish, which were printed at Frankfort in 1626, under the title, Los Psalmos de David en Varius Ninas, and which leads to the supposition that be went thither on his way to Holland, and spent some time there. See Gratz, Gesch. d. Juden (Leipsic, 1868), 10:5 sq.; Kayserling, Sephardim, page 169 sq.; De' Rossi, Dizionario Storico (Germ. transl. by Hamburger), page 218; Milman, History of the Jews (N.Y. 1870), 3:454; De los Rios, Estudios Sobre los Judios de Espana, page 521 sq.; Furst, Bibl. Jud. 2:351. (B.P.)