Her exceptional position as poetess, and her connection with Christians of high rank, brought her renown, not unattended by annoyances. Slanderous fellow-believers spread the report, that she esteemed the principles of Judaism but lightly, and did not fully believe in their divinity. An unprincipled Christian priest, Balthasar Bonifaccio, who later occupied the position of bishop, published a work accusing the Jewess Sarah Sullam of denying the immortality of the soul. Such a charge might in Catholic Venice have had other effects than that against Uriel da Costa in free-thinking, Protestant Amsterdam. Not merely fine and imprisonment might have been inflicted, but the Inquisition might have sentenced her to the dungeon, to torture, and perhaps even the stake. Hardly recovered from illness, she wrote (1621) a manifesto on the immortality of the soul, full of ripe dialectics, noble courage, and crushing force, against her slanderous accuser. The dedication to her deceased father is touching, and still more touching is her fervent psalm-like prayer in melodious Italian verses. The consciousness that she, a woman and Jewess, could not rely on her own strength, but only on help from above, spreads a halo about her memory. The end of this affair is not known. Ceba's epic "Esther" probably induced Leo Modena to translate Solomon Usque's tragedy on the same subject from Spanish into Italian verse; he dedicated it to Sarah Copia, whose epitaph he composed in melodious Hebrew verses. Leo Modena also had frequent intercourse with Christians. His peculiar nature, his communicative disposition, and great learning, as also his wit and his fondness for gaming, opened the doors of Christian circles to the volatile rabbi. Christian disciples sat at his feet. The French bishop Jacob Plantavicius, and the half-crazed Christian Kabbalist Jacob Gaffarelli, were his pupils. Nobles and learned men corresponded with him, and permitted him to inscribe his works to them with flattering dedications. Leo Modena held in Italy nearly the same position as Manasseh ben Israel in Holland. In the conversation of serious men and in the merry circle of gamesters, he often heard the ceremonies of Judaism ridiculed as childish nonsense (Lex Judæorum lex puerorum). At first he defended his religion, but gradually was forced to admit one thing and another in Judaism to be defective and ridiculous; he was ashamed to be so thoroughly a Jew as to justify all consequences. His necessities led him, on pressure from Christian friends, to render single portions, and at last the whole, of the Jewish code accessible to the Christian public in the Italian language. An English lord paid him for the work, with the intention of giving it to King James I, who made pretensions to extensive learning. Afterwards his Christian disciple Gaffarelli had this work, entitled "The Hebrew Rites," printed in Paris, and dedicated it to the French ambassador at Venice.