The religious works of the seventeenth, as of the sixteenth century are very various in subject and treatment. FREI JOÃO CARDOSO (†1655), author of _Ruth Peregrina_ (2 pts., 1628, 54), also wrote a lengthy commentary on the 113th Psalm in twenty-one discourses: _Jornada Dalma Libertada_ (1626). Ten years earlier a Jew, JOÃO BAPTISTA D’ESTE, had published in excellent Portuguese a translation of the Psalms: _Consolaçam Christam e Lvz para o Povo Hebreo_ (1616). His title was suggested by that of a far more remarkable book by another Jew, SAMUEL USQUE (fl. 1540), _Consolaçam ás Tribulaçoens de Israel_, written probably between 1540 and 1550[572] and first printed at Ferrara by Abraham ben Usque in 1553. The author was the son of Spanish Jews who had taken refuge in Portugal, where he was born, probably at the end of the fifteenth century.[573] His famous work is an account of the sufferings of the Jewish race. In three dialogues Jacob (_Ycabo_), Nahum (_Numeo_), and Zachariah (_Zicareo_) converse as shepherds. Israel, in person, relates his sorrows down to the fall of Jerusalem, an event which is described in detail, and so on to the persecutions in European countries (_novas gentes_), and at the end of each dialogue the prophets administer their comfort. The book closes with a chorus of rapturous psalms in biblical prose, rejoicing at the coming end of Israel’s tribulations and calling for vengeance on their enemies, and thus finishes on a note of joyful faith and courageous hope, without an inkling of charity. The first dialogue, which condenses Old Testament history, has a rhythmical, luxuriant style, rich in Oriental imagery, but later, where Roman history is the authority, or in the tragic account of the persecution of Jews in Portugal[574] under João II and the two succeeding kings, the style is shorn of rhetoric. Nor is there a trace of false ornament in a long passage of wonderful eloquence, Israel’s final complaint and invocation to sky and earth, waters and mortal creatures. The agony and awful glow of indignation at these recent events had a restraining influence on the style, which loses nothing by this simplicity. Quieter descriptions are those of the shepherd’s life and of the chase in the first, and of spring and evening in the third part.