well as Jewish lore. Their composite work, “The Rod of Judah,” was completed in 1554. It is a well-written but badly arranged martyrology, and over all its pages might be inscribed the Talmudical motto, that God’s chastisements of Israel are chastisements of love. The other work referred to is Joseph Cohen’s “Valley of Tears,” completed in 1575. The author was born in Avignon in 1496, four years after his father had shared in the exile from Spain. He himself suffered expatriation, for, though a distinguished physician and the private doctor of the Doge Andrea Doria, he was expelled with the rest of the Jews from Genoa in 1550. Settled in the little town of Voltaggio, he devoted himself to writing the annals of European and Jewish history. His style is clear and forcible, and recalls the lucid simplicity of the historical books of the Bible.
The only other histories that need be critically mentioned here are the “Branch
