Benveniste, Samuel

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BENVENISTE, SAMUEL

BENVENISTE, SAMUEL (d. after 1356), physician and translator, who lived in Tarragona and Saragossa, Spain. Benveniste was a familiar figure at the court of King Pedro iv of Aragon, being physician to his brother, Don Manuel. In about 1300 he translated into Hebrew Maimonides' Sefer ha-Kaẓẓeret

("Treatise on Asthma"), apparently from a Latin translation; his rendering is colloquial and fluent, although the surviving manuscripts were carelessly copied. Some scholars ascribe to Benveniste a translation of Boethius' Consolations of Philosophy.

bibliography:

hb, 8 (1865), 85, 125f.; 9 (1869), 91; 10 (1870), 84; Steinschneider, Uebersetzungen, 496, 767; Baer, Urkunden, 1 (1929), 172, 434; Sanchez Real, in: Sefarad, 11 (1951), 347.