GÓMEZ DE SOSSA, ISAAC

GÓMEZ DE SOSSA, ISAAC (late 17th century), marrano literary figure. Gómez de Sossa lived and worked in Amsterdam and, according to miguel de barrios , was a Latin poet and an imitator of Virgil. He composed poems in praise of the works of other writers, and was responsible for a Spanish translation of saul levi morteira 's Hebrew work on the divine origin of the Law. He was a member of the Academia de los Sitibundos, a literary society founded in 1676 by Manuel de Belmonte, and was one of the judges of its poetry contests. His younger brother, Benito Gómez de Sossa, was a minor writer in Amsterdam. Their father, Abraham Gómez de Sossa, had once served as physician-in-ordinary to the infante Fernando, the son of Philip III of Spain and governor of the Netherlands in 1632. Abraham Gómez de Sossa died in Amsterdam in 1667, and Isaac composed a Latin epitaph for his tombstone. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: M. de Barrios, Relación de los Poetas y Escritores Españoles de la Nación Judaica Amstelodama (n. d.); Kayserling, Bibl, 74, 104; idem, Sephardim (Ger., 1859), 292. (Kenneth R. Scholberg)