Career
In 1674 he was chosen by some Italian communities to represent them in a case against the heirs of R. Zachariah Porto. A responsum by him in this matter is found in She"elot u-Teshubot Mayim Rabbim. Another responsum is cited in Lampronti"s Paḥad Yiẓḥaḳ.
Frances also opposed the cabalists, creating so strong a feeling among the rabbis of Mantua that they destroyed his brother"s published poems and forced him (Frances) to leave the city.
He wandered from place to place, even to Algiers, settling finally in Livorno. Two of Immanuel"s poems were published by Nepi-Ghirondi in "Toledot Gedole Yisrael" (pp 291–293), others by Abraham Baruch Piperno in Ḳol "Ugab (1846).
Immanuel"s best-known work is Meteḳ Sefatayim (written in Algiers), a treatise on Hebrew prosody, in which he makes use of a number of his own verses. lieutenant has been edited by H. Brody (Hebr Prosodie von Immanuel Frances, 1892), and translated and thoroughly discussed by Martin Hartmann (Die Hebräische Verskunst, 1894).
