{"title":"Judaica","description":"\u003cp\u003eJewish history, religion, culture, language, and texts.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"gaffarel-jacques","title":"GAFFAREL, Jacques","description":"\u003cp\u003eA rare clandestine edition of an important and influential work on Oriental Talismans, Hebrew, Egyptian and Arabic Astrology, the Cabala and Star-writing, (the theory that the starts are arranged in the form of Hebrew letters, which can be read by those with the specific knowledge), with two beautiful folding celestial charts depicting the theory the constellations could be read as a book. Gaffarel was a follower of Pico de Mirandola and one of the chief exponents of Christain Kabbalism, and as such came into conflict with the Sorbonne and particularly with Mersenne who unambiguously rejected his work as impious and published  De Gaffarello Judicio  attacking him, though he recognized Gaffarel s profound knowledge of Kabbalah.  Jaques Gaffarel,.... was born in Provence in 1601, educated at the Universities of Valence and Paris where he received the degree of Doctor of canon law, became a priest and chaplain of Richelieu, and had a wide knowledge of Oriental languages - Hebrew, Arabic, Syrian and Persian. ... (This) is Gaffarels main work, the first appearance was in Paris 1629 and then it was repeatedly reprinted into the early 18th century and translated into Latin and English. It divides into three parts, of which the first defends orientals, especially Hebrews, from Christian charges, and the third deals with ancient Hebrew and oriental astrology. The second part, on the talismanic sculpture of the Persians, especially interests us for its close connection with natural magic..... He further contends that the astrology of the ancients was neither idolatry nor the cause of of idolatry, and accuses Scaliger and others of having misrepresented the astrology of the ancient Hebrews, Egyptians and Arabs. On August 1, 1629, the faculty of theology at Paris condemned Gaffarel's book as \"entirely to be disapproved\", and called its doctrine false, erroneous, scandalous, opposed to Holy Writ, contumelious towards the Church Fathers, and superstitious besides.  Thorndike. Gaffarel duly signed a retraction, but couched it in vague and general terms, stating that he was merely recording the opinions collected from the writings of the Arabs and Hebrews. The book enjoyed great success, Descartes and Sir Thomas Browne read it with interest and Pierre Gassendi defended it. Richelieu made Gaffarel his librarian and he travelled extensively, first to Italy, where he met Campanella, then to Greece and Asia in search of rare books. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n A most appropriate provenance: Carl Aurivillius was professor of oriental languages at Uppsala, Swedish linguist, translator and orientalist [b. 1717, d.1786]. He wrote several dissertations of profound scholarship on subjects connected with biblical and Oriental literature, of which thirty were published by J. D. Michaelis. Aurivillius studied at Uppsala, then at Paris, Leiden and Halle, where he became friends with great contemporary Orientalists, such as Michaelis, Fourmont and Albert Schulten. He was part of Gustav III's Biblical Commission, and helped translate almost the entire Old Testament into Swedish. A very good, unsophisticated copy of this work, with the two folding plates in excellent condition.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"GAFFAREL, Jacques","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816067047759,"sku":"L1321","price":2950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_3451.jpg?v=1781795328"},{"product_id":"columna-petrus-galatinus","title":"COLUMNA, Petrus Galatinus.","description":"\u003cp\u003eA very rare and curious Cabalistic work from Gerson Soncino s short lived Orthona press, which produced four books, one of them in Hebrew.  Most interesting of all of these is the work of Petrus Galatinus, the Franciscan,  On the Mystery of the Catholic Truth  (...) we find among [Gerson s] publications the ancient classics as well as Catholic publications (...) and most remarkable of all the book of Galatinus, which was not only Catholic but distinctly anti-Jewish in purpose, introduced to the public in Hebrew verses by the author or some apostate editor as a book filled with loveliness, expounding the secrets of the Talmud in which may be found the very foundation of Christian Messianism the unity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The desire to find support in the Hebrew books for the doctrine of the Trinity arose out of the spread of Cabalism, a so-called science, through which Jewish mystics attempted to explain the mysteries of heaven and earth, and which had many Christian devotees, among them the famous Cardinal Egidio of Viterbo, who in this very year 1518 had assisted in the establishment of a Hebrew press in the city of Rome . (Amram cit. infr.)\u003cbr\u003e\n \u003cbr\u003e\n Galatinus (al. Columna) was a converted Jew from Apulia who in the present work, dedicated to the Emperor Maximilian no less, undertook the defence of Reuchlin for his interest in the Cabala and Jewish books. He explains that in times past the Cabala had been secretly and orally transmitted, though recent Jews such as the Rabbi Simeon had written about it lest it be lost entirely, albeit in veiled terms. Galatinus holds that the Talmudic tradition enables one to piece out gaps or corrupt passages in scripture. He also deals at length with the Tetragrammaton and the divine names, the rest of the book being concerned chiefly with the Messiah and the time of His coming. A remarkable and substantial work of Judeo-Christian mysticism of the esoteric kind which fascinated many of the Renaissance s most considerable minds.\u003cbr\u003e\n \u003cbr\u003e\n  It is also a beautifully produced and very handsome volume.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"COLUMNA, Petrus Galatinus.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816125178191,"sku":"SN2632","price":15000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/SN2632-Columna-5.jpg?v=1781795278"},{"product_id":"bible-decorated-manuscript","title":"BIBLE, decorated manuscript","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis is a handsome and weighty thirteenth-century most probably English Bible, the format in which most readers of the Middle Ages knew the complete text. Due to its vast size, most Early Medieval Biblical books included only sections of the complete canon, but the needs of students in the fledging university in Paris in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries lead to advancements in the methods of book production in order to mass-produce complete copies for that market. Script became miniaturised and the words themselves heavily abbreviated in an effort to push resources to their limit, and at the same time libraires or master-book producers divided up master-copies to hand out in sections (or pecia) to multiple copyists at once, dramatically increasing the rate of copying. Thus they survived relatively in large numbers. However their multiple decorated initials and fine script often attracted the attentions of the commercial book dispersers from the nineteenth century onwards, and they have become fewer and fewer in the market in the last century, with examples continuing to fetch record prices. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Here the form of the text is mostly that of a more common Parisian Bible, and with the standard abbreviations of Hebrew names in the form  Aaz apprehendens    at its end. Crucially, however, the script and penwork decoration here appear English and the books of Tobit, Judith and Esther are in the order usually identifying English use. In addition, the early notes on Hebrew at the end of the book strongly indicate an early use in a medieval English scholarly setting (see below). \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n What is perhaps most notable about this book is the interest of an early user in the Hebrew Bible. Additions to endleaves at the front of the volume suggest a contemporary or near-contemporary use in theological teaching or preaching, perhaps in a cathedral school (see below), but a page of notes added in the decades after the book s production to blank space before the abbreviations of Hebrew names indicates a more specific use. This begins with the words  Thorath id est lex  with five penlines drawn off to associated lines of text. These text-lines reveal that the scribe was attempting to describe the contents of the Torah   the Hebrew Bible, here described accurately as  the law [of Moses] , and each line opens with a somewhat garbled version of the opening words of the first five books of the Old Testament: \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  Bresith    in fact Bereshit (Genesis, ie.  In the beginning ) \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  Ellesmoth    in fact Shemot (Exodus, ie.  Names ) \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  Vaietra    in fact Vayikra (Leviticus, ie.  And he called ) \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  Vagedabar    in fact Bamidbar (Numbers, ie.  In the desert ) \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  Addabarim    in fact Devarim (Deuteronomy, ie.  The words ) \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n These are followed by a section of brief notes on Old Testament prophets and other figures from the Hebrew section of the Bible, as well as an observation on the absence of Baruch  In hebreo canone  ( in the Hebrew canon ). This section terminates with more usual notes on religious ideals and relative Biblical dates. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Despite Jerome s and Bede s insistence on the primacy of Hebrew as a Biblical language for Old Testament texts such as the Psalms (and indeed in some medieval accounts, the original language of all mankind), actual records of northern European interest in the language or its religious texts before the Renaissance are few[1], and astoundingly so from England which had no Jewish population before 1066 and none after Edward I expelled what Hebrew speakers it had in 1290. Indeed a memory of interacting with Jews in religious discussions as a youth and then their subsequent exile some years before the period in which these additions most probably were made might well explain these strange and fascinating additions by the present scribe, as well as their garbling from his slightly faulty memory. As such this volume would appear to bear witness to the impact of the English Jewry on theological thinking and teaching in medieval England, even after the expulsion of 1290. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n [1] We might cite here the allusions by the grand scholars William of Auvergne (bishop of Paris, d. 1249) and Alexander of Hales (taught University of Paris, d. 1245) to fleeting knowledge of the works of Maimonides either through translations from Hebrew or oral contact (on these see G.K. Hasselhoff,  Maimonides in the Latin Middle Ages: An Introductory Survey , Jewish Studies Quarterly 9 (2002), pp. 1-20). However, note that while Alexander of Hales was English by birth, he worked in Paris, and this interest is more probably a continental university phenomenon, and certainly so after 1290.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BIBLE, decorated manuscript","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816137433423,"sku":"K54","price":175000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_8243.jpg?v=1781795199"},{"product_id":"pius-iv-1","title":"[PIUS IV]","description":"\u003cp\u003eA fine copy of this very scarce edict by Pope Pius IV (1559-65)—a remarkable ephemeral survival—regulating Jewish bankers in Rome. Copies of this document were distributed to be attached to the ‘banchi’ or inside the bankers’ stores, so that all Christians could read them carefully. On the one hand, Pius IV relaxed regulations in Rome, revoking some of the harsher provisions and imposing controls on rents charged to the Jews in the ghetto; on the other hand, unlike his predecessor, he enforced tougher financial regulations for the Jewish ‘banchi’ (Poliakov, ‘Jewish Bankers’, 181, 190). This edict forbad money-lending at an interest greater than 24 per cent instead of the customary 30, demanding interest on interest, reckoning as one month any shorter span than 30 days or selling what was pawned by Christians before the passing of 18 months. Jewish bankers should also ensure that any Christian borrowing money or pawning belongings signed a paper written ‘in the Italian vernacular’—as required of all documents in bankers’ books—specifying his name, address, the amount borrowed or pawned, and the time span for restitution, according to the practice of the Monte di Pietà. First established in Italian cities in the 1460s, the Monti di Pietà were the result of Franciscan preaching against Jewish money-lending and were meant to ‘put an end to the “iniquitous usury” of the Jews by replacing them in the small loans sector’, without interest, in order to assist the poorer population (Toaff, ‘Jews’, 239). The Monti notwithstanding, Jewish bankers continued to operate their business unofficially or through new agreements with the authorities, as well as thanks to the support of wealthier borrowers. This edict also provided regulations on ‘house-keeping’ including the regular cleaning of clothes, to avoid the presence of moth, and the compulsory keeping of cats to chase away mice, so as to prevent pest damage to pawned objects. A very fine copy of this very scarce document for Jewish and economic history in Italy.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"[PIUS IV]","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816164335951,"sku":"L3199","price":2750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_6641-scaled.jpg?v=1781794878"},{"product_id":"munster-sebastian-1","title":"MÜNSTER, Sebastian","description":"\u003cp\u003eSecond edition of Münster’s impressive dictionary with triple column Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Biblical undertones run throughout, especially on pages 239-84 which contain a list of geographical locations mentioned in the Bible, translated from Hebrew into Latin by Matthäus Aurogallus (1490-1543). Sebastian Münster (1488-1552) was a cartographer, cosmographer and Christian Hebraist scholar who was born in Ingelheim, near Mainz in Germany. He wrote the earliest German description of the world, the Cosmographia, in 1544, demonstrating an interest in geography also seen here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMünster studied at the University of Tübingen under the renowned German mathematician, astronomer, astrologer and professor Johannes Stöffler. His religious background in both the Franciscan order and Lutheran church led to his intense interest in the biblical language of Hebrew. His work was guided by his close relationship with the Hebrew grammarian Elias Levita, and he became the first German scholar to produce an edition of the Hebrew Bible. The first edition of this Dictionarium Trilingue was published in 1530, the first of his three Hebrew grammar manuals. The success of his works is underlined in the continual reprints and wide readership. He died in Basel in 1552 from Bubonic plague.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMautthäus Aurogallus collaborated with Münster on this volume, both men having a shared interest in Hebrew studies. Born in Bohemia, modern Czech Republic, he was a professor of Hebrew and worked with Martin Luther on a number of his works. At the University of Wittenberg his professorship was intertwined with the contemporary religious tumult caused by the Protestant Reformation. He advised Luther on Hebrew translation and translated a number of biblical texts. The purpose of learning and reading Hebrew for both men was to better understand biblical scripture.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAn inscription in contemporary cursive Hebrew above the title page (שילוש לשונות in block text) translates as ‘triple tongued’. In the margins of Münster’s foreword and the praefatio are contemporaneous notes in Latin from an early owner with additional notes in Hebrew. Chaldaica is mentioned as referring to ancient Babylonian languages. Towards the end of the praefatio the notetaker quips ‘Quid ex hoc opera expectandum’ – wondering aloud about what he should expect from this book he has begun to muse over. Perhaps this inscription explains the lack of notes across the rest of the work. Konrad Dinner was born in Überlingen in 1540 and became professor of poetry in Freiburg in 1559, the year after the ex libris. He later became a councillor for the bishop of Würzburg.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MÜNSTER, Sebastian","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57820351299919,"sku":"L3506","price":1950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_4983-copy.jpg?v=1781794795"},{"product_id":"josephus-flavius-4","title":"JOSEPHUS, Flavius.","description":"\u003cp\u003e.A good copy of Flavius Josephus  collected works, edited and revised by the eminent German scholar Sigismundus Gelenius (1497-1554). This edition is a French reproduction of the original, published the previous year by Froben in Basle, featuring a charming new woodcut title page. Other Parisian printers (Jean Petit, Ambroise Girault and Jacques Kerver) republished it in 1535: Froben could not take action against them as his privilege was only valid within the Holy Roman Empire   he did, however, immediately sue two printers of Cologne who pirated this work in 1534.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n .Josephus Flavius (c. 37-100) was a Romano-Jewish writer and military leader, author of a number of historical, apologetical and autobiographical works which together comprise a major part of Hellenistic Jewish literature. This edition comprises his major works. The Latin text (mostly attributed to Rufinus of Aquileia) was heavily revised   on the basis of two Greek manuscripts   by Gelenius, who introduced many new readings translating Greek expression into humanistic Latin.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n . Antiquitates Judaicae  (The Antiquities of the Jews) recounts the history of the Jews from creation up until the revolt of AD 66-70 and contains contemporary references to Jesus, James (the  brother  of Jesus), John the Baptist, Pontius Pilate, Herod the Great, Agrippa I and Agrippa II, as well as the Sadducees, the Pharisees and the Zealots.  Bellum Judaicum  (History of the Jewish War) gives a detailed account of the revolt of AD 66-70 and includes Josephus  famous description of the siege of Jerusalem.  The Jewish War not only is the principal source for the Jewish revolt but is especially valuable for its description of Roman military tactics and strategy  (Britannica).  Contra Apionem  (Against Apion) is a defence of Judaism against the Greek Alexandrine grammarian Apion, in which Josephus demonstrates the antiquity of Jewish religion and the authenticity of the Jewish Bible. The last treatise, traditionally ascribed to Josephus but now acknowledged to be spurious,  De imperio rationis sive de Machabaeis , is an account of the martyrdom of the seven Maccabees and their mothers.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n . .French impressions of Froben s edition are rare, we were able to locate only two copies bearing Mac√® s imprints in libraries (Ohio State University Library, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"JOSEPHUS, Flavius.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57859653828943,"sku":"L3827","price":1750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L3827-3.jpg?v=1781793716"},{"product_id":"sahula-isaac-ben-solomon-ibn","title":"SAHULA, Isaac ben Solomon, ibn.","description":"\u003cp\u003e.Third edition of the first illustrated Hebrew book, with 79 very fine woodcuts, the earlier eds are usually found with 75. Rarely found complete, this is also the earliest obtainable edition, the first (1491) and second (1497) have passed through the market, both in incomplete copies, only twice. This copy is also remarkably preserved in an early binding, with interesting early North Italian provenance.. \u003cbr\u003e\n. \u003cbr\u003e\n.. ..It is the only  medieval Hebrew work with a continuous tradition of illustration going back to the author himself who provided rhymed captions for illustrations (Stern). The printer of this lovely and elegant ed., Meir Parenzo, learnt his craft at the Venetian presses of Daniel Bomberg and Marco Antonio Giustiniani. The illustrations had been an integral part of the work since its composition and are present in medieval mss as well, the earliest surviving codex dating from c.1450 (Habermann, p.169). The woodcuts reprise  those in contemporary eds of Aesop s fables, depicting animals, and less often people, engaged in various activities, including their discussions.   They were prepared by three different hands  (Haller, p.333).  Although these woodcuts are frequently referred to as sensuous, or even pornographic, there is but one illustration (p.170). that of the faithless wife and her lover, that includes an explicit feature. In some copies [as in the present], this has been obscured by pen-work  (Loewe, p.cxxiv). . \u003cbr\u003e\n. \u003cbr\u003e\n..Isaac bin Sahula (b.1244) was a Hebrew poet, scholar, physician and kabbalist from Castile, who travelled widely in the Iberian peninsula and Egypt.  Sahula s  Meshal ha-kadmoni\", completed in 1281, is one of the most famous works of Jewish literature from medieval Castile. Divided into five sections respectively on wisdom, penitence, good counsel, humility and reverence, it comprises dozens of self-contained fables, mostly accompanied by an illustration, in rhyming Hebrew prose with occasional verse following the Arabic  maq_ma  tradition, featuring animals as protagonists. Indeed, Sahula became known as  the Jewish Aesop . The fables are inserted as examples within a broader dialogue on those virtues between a Cynic and a Moralist. Among the fables are passages on natural science, medicine, philosophy, astronomy, geography, perception, meteorology and astrology.. \u003cbr\u003e\n. \u003cbr\u003e\n.. ..The late C17 and early C18 provenance appears to be north-west Italian, like the binding. Giacomo Ottavio Giustiniani was a Genoese aristocrat and commissioner at Ovada, Piedmont, mentioned in numerous local records c.1660s-80s. The Giustiniani family was born as a  maona  (business aggregation) of kin Genoese aristocratic families, in charge of the Island of Chios, which they lost in 1566. Some of the Hebrew autographs mention members (Abraham and Isaac) of the Valabrega family, present in Piedmont since the C16, and the manager of several  banchi  in Turin, in the C17 and C18. The Foa, originally a Jewish family from France, had been in Piedmont since the C15. Francesco Lonperto's name is followed by the Italian nickname  Grattarogna  ( scab scratcher ), an anti-Semitic stereotype found in several European proverbs (e.g., Poland, in Skuza, p.55, Venice, in Fortis, p.281). The Babylonian Talmud also has a few lines on scratching one s own scab on the day of the Sabbath. Mayer Sulzberger (1843-1923) was a judge and book collector, owner of one of the finest private libraries in America, later donated to the Jewish Theological Seminary. .\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"SAHULA, Isaac ben Solomon, ibn.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868686721359,"sku":"L4298","price":64500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_7436.jpg?v=1781793470"},{"product_id":"delmedigo-joseph-solomon-2","title":"DELMEDIGO, Joseph Solomon.","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of this extensively illustrated, most important Hebrew work on astronomy, mathematics, natural philosophy, music and geometry, written by ‘the first Jewish Copernican’, student of Galileo and a major influence on Spinoza. Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (1591-1655) was a rabbi, physician and polymath from Crete. At Padua, he studied medicine and attended Galileo’s astronomy lectures 1609-10. After a brief stay in Venice, he journeyed the Middle East, eventually settling in Amsterdam in 1623, where he wrote ‘Sefer Elim’, his only known work. It is divided into two separately titled parts—‘Sefer Elim’ and ‘Ma’ayan Ganim’—the latter subdivided into four essays on astronomy, mathematics, the consonance of music and biblical passages in relation to the scientific method. ‘Sefer Elim’ is a reply to 12 broad and 70 specific questions posed in letters, reproduced at the beginning, by the Karite scholar Zerah. Delmedigo’s answer discusses Aristotelian natural philosophy, spherical trigonometry, celestial bodies, comets and the workings of the lever, illustrated with diagrams and illustrations. Whilst Delmedigo’s in-depth analysis of Copernican theories was left unpublished and is now lost, his circumscribed references in ‘Sefer Elim’ are nevertheless revealing. ‘Part of Delmedigo’s support for the Copernican model is to be found in his criticism of the Aristotelian conception of the universe […] By rejecting this idea, Delmedigo not only took on the accepted scientific views of the past, but also challenged the Jewish model of the universe, which was based on Aristotle’; he also stated that the universe was possibly infinite and included other solar systems (Brown, ‘New Heavens’, 70). He mentions studying with ‘his teacher Galileo’, as he describes their observation of the sky and planets through the famous telescope; however, scholars believe Delmedigo became familiar with Copernicanism elsewhere, as until 1610 Galileo was not publicly or privately endorsing this theory (Brown, ‘New Heavens’, 74). The epistemological inconsistencies of ‘Sefer Elim’ derive from Delmedigo’s complex relationship to the Scientific Revolution and Cabala-informed Jewish culture, resistant to the new method. As proved by the very title—a reference to the fountains of wisdom—he linked ‘Jewish-hermetic revelation with Copernican cosmology and sought material objects such as ancient Hebrew mss that, purportedly, maintained a stronger connection to the revelation’, seeking to connect Jewish theology and Copernicanism (Ben-Zaken, ‘Cross-Cultural’, 78). The work ‘became suspect in the eyes of the elders of the Sephardic community, and a committee was formed to investigate the matter. The book had to be translated orally into Portuguese’; the printer had to declare officially that certain portions would not be published, though by then Delmedigo had moved elsewhere (Heller, ‘C17 Hebrew Book’, 471).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis copy preserves the Latin dedication to the reader, often absent.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"DELMEDIGO, Joseph Solomon.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868705038671,"sku":"L4443","price":19500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_6368.webp?v=1781793436"},{"product_id":"tevele-david","title":"[TEVELE, David].","description":"\u003cp\u003e.A very good copy of two rare works on Jewish ethics and homiletics. David Tevele ben Benjamin (c.1615-1699) was a Talmudic scholar born in the Polish province of Posen, later exiled to Hamburg. Shaarei Tzion ('The Gates of Zion') and Masoret HaBrit ('The Bond of the Covenant') represent the main body of his published scholarly work. They were edited and published together posthumously by Tevele's son, Rabbi Me_ir ben ha-me.._aber. . \u003cbr\u003e\n. \u003cbr\u003e\n..The Shaarei Tzion is a work on ethics and ascetics in 13 chapters, drawing on numerous sources of Musar literature including the influential \"Sefer Hasidim\". It also includes his own prayers. The Musar system of moral instruction was relatively minor in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, only enjoying a major revival in the nineteenth in Lithuania. Tevele's commentary provides an interesting example of its development in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It is perhaps telling that Steinschneider lists Tevele among those scholars who \"introduced critical, Kabbalistic, and other unsuitable explanations\" into Masoretic study. (Jewish Literature, p.234). The Masoret HaBrit is a homiletic study of the Torah and the Five Scrolls (comprising the Song of Songs, the Book of Ruth, the Book of Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and the Book of Esther). Together the books are a fascinating and little-studied insight into Jewish scholarship in Germany in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries..\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"[TEVELE, David].","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868707037519,"sku":"L3506\/1","price":375.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Tevele-35061-6.jpg?v=1781793429"},{"product_id":"strasbourg","title":"STRASBOURG","description":"\u003cp\u003eExtremely rare decree issued by the Council of Strasbourg at the end of the Thirty Years‚Äô War. The first part concerns accusations against Jews using deceitful trading practices at the weekend market taking place outside Strasbourg‚Äôs Metzger Thor or ‚ÄòButcher‚Äôs Gate,‚Äô at which cattle were traded, and at a cloth market also held on roads outside the city. The Jewish merchants are accused of buying goods up cheaply from each other and then selling them at an exorbitant markup.\u003c\/p\u003e  \n\n\u003cp\u003eThe second part of the decree prohibits Jewish traders from operating within the precincts of the city or outside, except when horse-trading (Pferdhandels), though this is restricted to the city‚Äôs Rossmarkt. Anyone who contravenes the regulations, especially by trading in livestock, will forfeit their goods and be refused the right to trade with the guild (presumably Jews are implicitly excluded by the act); five schillings will be awarded to those who notify the authorities of illegal dealing. However, Jews are not prohibited from entering the city with goods, so long as they are properly declared.\u003c\/p\u003e  \n\n\u003cp\u003eEarlier persecutions of Jews in Strasbourg included the notorious Strasbourg massacre of 1349, in which the Jewish population was publicly burnt to death. Jews were officially expelled from Strasbourg in the same year and were not readmitted until the late eighteenth century, though they continued to participate in city life; many simply moved into rural areas. In 1570 Strasbourg‚Äôs magistrates banned Jewish commerce in the city and its territories, a law which elicited a response from the Alsatian Jews who appealed directly to Maximilian II. Clearly commerce between Jews and Christians continued, however, since further decrees were issued in 1616, 1628, 1639 and (this one) in 1648 (Debra Kaplan, Beyond Expulsion: Jews, Christians, and Reformation Strasbourg (Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 90-92).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"STRASBOURG","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868716147023,"sku":"L4739","price":2950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"chevallier-antoine-rodolphe","title":"CHEVALLIER, Antoine Rodolphe","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare first edition of this Hebrew alphabet compiled by the French Huguenot humanist Antoine Chevallier (1523-72), the first book printed by Henri Estienne using Hebrew type. \u003cbr\u003e\n Following the alphabet, which gives the forms of the individual letters, the pronunciation and force of the syllables, their likely conjunctions and their different accents, as well as punctuation and the Hebrew numbers, Chevallier gives the Hebrew versions of the decalogue or ten commandments, Lord s Prayer, creed, and various Jewish and Christian prayers, all glossed in Latin. The  colophon  is Christ s INRI title given in Latin, Greek and Hebrew.   \u003cbr\u003e\n Chevallier was made Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge University in 1569, lectured in Hebrew at St. Paul s Cathedral, and had been tutor in French and Hebrew to Queen Elizabeth I before her accession. He escaped the St. Bartholomew s Day Massacre in Paris in 1572 but died in Guernsey in the same year.    \u003cbr\u003e\n The work s rarity is attested by the lack of information in the bibliographies: Steinschneider had not seen a copy, since he lists it within brackets in his Catalogus Bibliotheca Bodleiana.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CHEVALLIER, Antoine Rodolphe","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868717883727,"sku":"L4836","price":2750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L4836-Chevallier-1.jpg?v=1781793366"},{"product_id":"josephus-flavius-5","title":"JOSEPHUS, Flavius.","description":"\u003cp\u003eFolio. ll. (iv) 886 [i] (xvi). Roman letter. Woodcut printer s device to t-p. Woodcut initials. Contemp. probably English but possibly Dutch blindstamped calf, central panel formed of double floriated roll (not in Oldham), fillets, remains of clasps and corner supports, ms. inscription to upper board mostly faded, rebacked, edges stained red, ms. edge title. Autograph to front flyleaf 1622 of Petrus van Spoelberch with purchase note  Inveteratus xxviii st[uiver?] , and note to lower corner,  praepositurus,  some inscriptions lost through ink burning, C17th ms. annotations likely in the same hand, some in Hebrew, small sheet with Dutch inscription laid in at index. C19th inscription to t-p,  Dulac.  Very light browning to index and to margins of a few ll., a very good, clean, wide margined copy. \u003cbr\u003e\n Rare sixth Froben edition of Josephus s history of the Jewish people in Latin, the most famous and influential work of Hellenistic Jewish history, edited by the German scholar Sigismundus Gelenius (1497-1554). It was first published in 1524 and followed by Froben s Greek editio princeps in 1544. Gelenius used Greek manuscripts to significantly update the existing Latin version, traditionally attributed to Rufinus of Aquileia. Also included is Josephus s autobiography, his history of the First Jewish Revolt of AD 66-70 against the Romans, his defence of Judaism against the Egyptian historian Apion, and his De Imperio Rationis, an account of the martyrdom of the seven Maccabee brothers and their mother, edited by Desiderius Erasmus. This last work is now acknowledged to be spurious. \u003cbr\u003e\n The Antiquitatum Judaicarum combines mythical Berosian, biblical, and Roman history to tell the story of the Jewish peoples from the creation to Josephus s own time, with his work De Bello Judaico conveying his own experiences of the Jewish Revolt against the Romans, which culminated in the Siege of Jerusalem and destruction of Herod s Temple. His works contain contemporary references to Jesus, his brother James, John the Baptist, Pontius Pilate, Herod, and the Sadducees, Pharisees and Zealots. The Contra Apionem is a defence of Judaism against the Greek Alexandrine historian Apion, in which Josephus demonstrated the antiquity of the Jewish religion and the authenticity of the Jewish scriptures.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  Petrus van Spoelberch may have belonged to the distinguished noble Belgian house of Spoelberch; someone with this name was born in 1576. Other books with his purchase notes appear in Belgian institutional library catalogues.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"JOSEPHUS, Flavius.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868718211407,"sku":"L4721","price":6950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L4721-Josephus-2.jpg?v=1781793364"},{"product_id":"reserved-21","title":"MARGARITHA, Anton.","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare second edition, with colophon dated 7 April, of this guide to Jewish life, culture and religious ceremonies by the C16th Jewish convert Anton Margaritha, the son of a rabbi in Augsburg, first published the same year on 16 March. The fascinating woodcuts, which are the earliest printed visual depictions of Jewish ceremonies, many of them showing Jewish women in traditional dress, were copied (traced and reversed) from a work of 1508 by another German convert, Johann Pfefferkorn (1469-1523), though the title-page woodcut was designed separately, attributed to J√∂rg Breu the Elder (c.1475-1537). \u003cbr\u003e\n  Much of the book consists of the German translation of the Jewish liturgy and prayers, with details of the observances of the Sabbath, Passover, Yom Kippur, circumcision, etc. It also contains Margaritha s criticism of rabbinic authority and the practice of usury, and shows the Jewish faith to be based on ritual and superstition. The book influenced Martin Luther, who read, praised and recommended it.  One of the fundamental factors determining Protestant policy towards the Jews during the 1530s   it confirmed [Luther s] belief that, like the  papists,  the Jews were completely focused on gaining salvation by virtue of specific religious acts in themselves   [which] was idolatry  (Thomas Kaufmann, Luther s Jews (Oxford: 2017), p. 79). It was after this that Luther moved from a position of toleration to one of hostility, penning a series of venomous denunciations of Judaism. Margaritha s attack on Judaism caused significant controversy in Augsburg and he was banned from the city. His work  was to remain one of the most important sources of information about Jewish religious ceremonies and practices into the eighteenth century  (Kaufmann), as well as a source of everyday Jewish life and customs.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MARGARITHA, Anton.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868719718735,"sku":"L4755","price":7500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L4755-margarita-3.jpg?v=1781793359"},{"product_id":"schickard-wilhelm","title":"SCHICKARD, Wilhelm.","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of this ‚ÄòTarikh‚Äô or History of the Persian kings by the German Hebraist and Arabist Wilhelm Schickard (1592-1635), also known as an astronomer and horologist, and designer of an early calculating machine. This genealogical chronicle, beginning with the C3rd AD Ardashir I and ending with the C7th Yazdigerd III, the last Sasanian emperor, is a valuable source for early Islamic history, culture and geography. It was translated from a Turkish manuscript in Ottoman Arabic with a colourful history: found in the library of Filakovo Castle in modern-day Slovenia, which was recaptured from the Ottomans by the Holy Roman Empire in 1593, and brought to Germany by the traveller Veit Marchthaler of Ulm (1564-1641), where it was left unstudied for almost thirty years. The reappearance of the manuscript, a copy of the Tavarich Beni Adam by Yusuf ibn ‚ÄòAbd al-Latif, caused Schickard ‚Äòboth excitement and despair,‚Äô because of his lack of proficiency in the Ottoman script and language (Stefan Hanss, ‚ÄòOttoman Language Learning in Early Modern Germany‚Äô in Central European History, 54.1 (2021), p. 25). Unable to gain help from any scholars in Europe, Schickard muddled through the manuscript by finding useful cognates between German, Hebrew, Arabic and Ottoman, producing his edition and commentary in less than three months (Hanss, p. 26).\u003c\/p\u003e  \n\n\u003cp\u003eSchickard saw Persian history as an overlooked and significant branch of human culture, the study of which could illuminate the Hebrew and Arabic languages, early Islamic history, and the geography of the medieval Islamic world. He also believed he could subordinate the Persian genealogy to the biblical genealogy of Christ, in opposition to what he called the ‚Äòlies‚Äô of the Muhammadans. The work contains two extensive indexes, one of people and one of places mentioned in the text, noting references to Egypt, Ethiopia, Baghdad, Mecca, the Ganges, and even Nova Zembla in Russia. The index of persons refers to Timur or Tamerlane, Schickard noting that the city of Nishapur in modern-day Iran was made infamous by the cruelty of Tamerlane (Tamerlanis crudelitate postmodum nobilitata), clearly confusing him with Genghis Kahn, whose army sacked the city in 1221, notoriously destroying almost the entire population in reprisal for the death during the siege of Genghis‚Äôs son-in-law Taghachar. Elsewhere Schickard refers to the vast size of Genghis‚Äôs empire and his patrimony of many descendants.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"SCHICKARD, Wilhelm.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868720963919,"sku":"L4760","price":3950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Schickard-L4760-2.jpg?v=1781793351"},{"product_id":"kircher-athanasius-3","title":"KIRCHER, Athanasius.","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher s (c.1600-80) groundbreaking linguistic study on the derivation of the Coptic language from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the first printed grammar of the Coptic language, with the Lord s Prayer in parallel Coptic and Latin, a typographical tour-de-force comparing Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Chaldean, Samaritan, Estrangelo and even Chinese scripts, with illustrated examples of the hieroglyphic writing of the ancient Egyptians. It preceded by more than a decade his magnum opus on ancient Egypt, the Oedipus Aegyptiacus, for which Kircher provides a detailed 6-page plan or  idea  at the end of this work.  \u003cbr\u003e\n Kircher used his study of Coptic to slip in a recent and exciting discovery. In 1625, much excitement had been generated among Jesuit missionaries in China by the excavation of an C8th AD stone tablet, the Xi An Stele, with a long inscription in Chinese and shorter texts in Syriac, giving a history of the activities of Syriac Christians in China. This extraordinary discovery seemed providential: the Jesuits had been searching for proof of ancient Christianity in China ever since Matteo Ricci s arrival in 1582, and considered the stele to be divine justification of their mission. Kircher, in the Prodromus, not only illustrated for the first time a small part of the stele, the plaquette at the top with nine Chinese characters, but was the first to bring widespread attention to the text, despite his being unable to read Chinese. He provided a complete translation of the text into Latin, derived from an original translation into Portuguese, and also reproduced, transliterated and translated the Syriac inscriptions, which contain a few Chinese characters reproduced in woodcut. Kircher simply noted that they represent  names and offices.    \u003cbr\u003e\n Kircher slightly fudged the origins of the ancient Chinese Christians to create a narrative in which Coptic had influenced other early Christian languages and even Chinese, thus tracing the origins of many of these Christian languages to the ancient Egyptians. This was also the basis for Kircher s interesting comparison between Christian theology, the Jewish Cabbala, and ancient Egyptian symbology, based on his reading of hieroglyphs. He notes for example that the resurrected Christ was like the Egyptian scarab beetle, that  most vile, foul and repulsive insect,  which is in the Egyptian cosmology eternally reborn, as he illustrates in a wonderful woodcut of the Egyptian cosmos. It is unclear from where Kircher derived these hieroglyphs, but his sources for Coptic included biblical texts in the Vatican Library, which he describes here, several Coptic manuscripts given to him by his friend and patron, the French astronomer Nicolas Claude Fabri de Pereisc (1580-1637), and an Arabic-Coptic vocabulary brought from Egypt by the Italian composer and traveller Pietro della Valle (1586-1652).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"KIRCHER, Athanasius.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868722241871,"sku":"L4812","price":7950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"gesner-conrad-with-sabbio-stefano-da","title":"GESNER, Conrad. (With) SABBIO, Stefano da.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-GB\"\u003eFascinating sammelband of two closely related works on ancient linguistics, one a first edition of Conrad Gesner’s work on the development of languages, including the gypsy dialect Rotwelsch, dedicated to John Barclay, Bishop of Ossory, the other the extremely rare third edition, first published 1527, of the first dictionary of vernacular Greek, from the library of the French historian and bibliophile Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1533-1617). \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-GB\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe second work, by the Venetian printer da Sabbio, under the Greek name of Stephanos Chrysimos, constitutes the first attempt to produce a dictionary of modern, vernacular Greek. It is unsurprising that Venice should have been the locale for such an effort, given the Republic’s frequent trading contacts with Greek merchants. It contains an alphabet with phonetic pronunciation, a brief description of vowels, diphthongs (of which there are twelve, divided into ‘proper,’ i.e. those known to be used in ancient times, and ‘improper,’ i.e. those introduced through modern custom), and consonants. There then follow Greek versions of the Lord’s prayer and Hail Mary transliterated phonetically into Roman script, and Latin versions transliterated back into phonetic Greek, the former providing a useful indication of contemporary pronunciation and corresponding orthography. Designed principally for Italian users, the dictionary is arranged alphabetically by Italian words, which are then provided in transliterated ‘vulgar’ or vernacular Greek, Latin, and finally literary or ancient Greek, below which all four words are transliterated phonetically into Greek script. Occasionally the Greek terms coincide (as do the Italian, Latin and literary Greek), but in many instances they differ entirely. ‘Horse,’ for example, is rendered as ‘alogo’ in vernacular Greek and ‘hippos’ the ancient language.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGesner’s work is a suitable accompaniment, being a study of the development of ancient languages into various dialects, from which modern languages are derived, He notes in the introduction that many languages are simply corruptions of ancient Hebrew, and divides languages into classical and ‘barbarian,’ divine and ‘brutish.’ The work itself, an attempt to delineate the origins of every modern vernacular and ancient language, takes the form of an alphabetical catalogue of entries, often very brief and containing a few examples of words transliterated into Roman script. These include, inter alia, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Armenian, Babylonian, Scottish, Welsh, English, Persian, Sabine, Rhaetic or ‘Alpine,’ Punic, Hebrew (using Hebrew script), Etruscan, Cappadocian, Chaldaean, Circasian, Moscovite, Turkish, and ancient and vernacular Greek. Aimed at a scholarly audience – Gesner acknowledges the influence of contemporary authors including Sebastian Münster, Guillaume Postel and Theodore Bibliander – this work nonetheless (like the Corona) addresses a modern vernacular context: the longest entry by far is on the German language and the ancient Scythian origins of the German tribes, as well as its derivation from Gothic. At the rear Gesner reprints a glossary of words in high German and ‘Rotwelsch,’ a slang or thieves’ cant used by gypsies as well as beggars, vagabonds and drifters, designed to illustrate the development of dialects. Gesner includes Rotwelsch in his catalogue of fictitious or invented languages, alongside Thomas More’s verse tetrastichon in Utopian, transliterated here into Roman script, with the Latin translation. Gesner quotes Münster’s assertion that this ‘barbaric’ dialect was invented by gypsies, whom Gesner calls ‘misshapen people, blackened by the sun,’ appearing in Germany in 1417 and pretending to possess ancient origins. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe majority of de Thou’s books were simply bound with his coat of arms. After 1587 he ordered a new block to include the arms of his first wife, Marie de Barbançon-Cany (1587-1601), as well as a cipher joining their initials, IAM, which appears on the spine of this copy. De Thou’s library of around 9000 volumes was left after his death to his children, under the care of his fellow bibliophile Pierre Dupuy. In 1642 de Thou’s eldest son, François Auguste, was executed for his role in the Cinq-Mars conspiracy, after which possession of the library passed to his younger brother Jacques-Auguste II de Thou (1609-77), but in 1669 his creditors took possession of the library and commissioned a catalogue for sale, published eventually in 1679 as Catalogus bibliothecae Thuanae, where the book appears, with only the Gesner mentioned, on p. 209. In 1680 the library was purchased en bloc by the Marquis Jean-Jacques Charron de Ménars (1643-1714), then sold in 1706 to Cardinal Armand-Gaston-Maximilien de Rohan-Soubise (1674-1749), and finally dispersed after the death of Charles de Rohan, Prince de Soubise (1715-1787), through auction in 1789. The Soubise library shelfmarks and notation can be found in this copy on the pastedown and front board, and the book appears in the catalogue of the Soubise sale, again only with mention of the Gesner, as item 4311, p. 293.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-GB\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"GESNER, Conrad. (With) SABBIO, Stefano da.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868722504015,"sku":"L4150","price":3950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"cleynaerts-nicolas-with-caligny-alain-restauld-de","title":"CLEYNAERTS, Nicolas. (With) CALIGNY, Alain Restauld de.","description":"\u003cp\u003eTwo very rare Hebrew grammars, the first a scarce edition of Cleynaert s extremely popular Hebrew grammar, first published 1529, bound with the second recorded edition ( tertia editio  on title-page) of a rare grammar first published 1541. Both are aimed at beginners, starting with the alphabet. However, while Cleynaert spends a great deal of time on nouns and their declinations - his book must have been useful to learners principally because of its extensive tables of declinations, with attention to the changes in accents or punctuation - before moving onto verbs, de Caligny moves straight onto verbs, only then dealing with nouns as they are used in relation to verbs, adverbs, pronouns and prepositions, etc..\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCleynaerts, a wonderfully prolific author, was an eccentric figure who saw linguistic scholarship as a means of peaceful mediation between Christians, Jews and Muslims, as well as a means to proselytization. Educated at Leuven in his native Brabant, he first travelled in Spain, where he applied in vain to read Arabic manuscripts in the library of the Inquisition, before going to Fez in Morocco, where he insisted on living in the Jewish (rather than the official Christian) quarter. Despite suffering abuse from local Jews, he found some who were willing to teach him Arabic in return for tuition in Latin, but was unsuccessful in his attempts to buy Arabic books from the bookstalls of the Great Mosque, since non-Muslims were banned. He returned to Granada after just over a year, having suffered a great deal, and died there in 1542. He is buried in the Alhambra. De Caligny, about whom much less is known, was a Hebraist of Vatable s and Mercier's circle in the Coll√®ge Royale de Paris.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis copy shows engagement by several readers. One contemporary annotator demonstrates an understanding of Hebrew grammar, expressed in contradictions of Cleynaert, notably over pronunciation of diphthongs and certain syllables (p. 16). Another, the most extensive, clearly applied his studies to Talmudic or biblical scholarship, given references to the Psalms, Book of Ruth, etc.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CLEYNAERTS, Nicolas. (With) CALIGNY, Alain Restauld de.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868723716431,"sku":"L4835A","price":2250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"biancuzzi-benedetto","title":"BIANCUZZI, Benedetto.","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of this scarce Hebrew grammar including an examination of ancient and modern Hebrew scripts, illustrated in a woodcut table. The Roman Hebraist and theologian Biancuzzi evidently believed that study of biblical Hebrew could be a tool in proselytization and conversion of Jews; on one occasion, at the request of Pope Paul V, he delivered a sermon to Rome s Jewish community. The work was sponsored by, and is dedicated to, Bernardino Paulino, a high-ranking papal official whose arms are most likely those on the t-p, and was written in part for the benefit of his nephew, according to the dedicatory letter, which also refers to the recently established Scots College in Rome. There follow laudatory Latin poems addressed to Biancuzzi by two Paulinos, presumably the nephews of Bernardino. The other beneficiaries of Biancuzzi s work were the students at the gymnasium in Rome, where he was professor of languages.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis grammar is more extensive than most, and deals with the pronunciation of Hebrew and reading of Hebrew texts, verbs, the  first part  of Hebrew speech, followed by nouns, the  second part , after which Biancuzzi discusses suffixes and prefixes, with changes that occur to nouns and verbs, followed by prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions, pronouns, the servile or changeable letters, accents, numbers, etc. There is a section on the difficulties of poetic composition in Hebrew, with examples of Hebrew verse translated into Latin, and another on Hebrew syntax. Finally, Biancuzzi goes through the alphabet giving abbreviations commonly found in Rabbinic texts. There are extensive tables of examples of Hebrew words with Latin glosses or transliterations, with their biblical or Talmudic appearances provided where appropriate.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe two pages of woodcut alphabets show Hebrew scripts as written by modern Jews in Arabia, Spain and Italy; Hebrew used in sacred texts; and antique Hebrew, both  ante  and  post transitum fluvii , i.e. before and after Abraham crossed the Euphrates. These apparently fanciful alphabets, supposedly derived from ancient coins - Biancuzzi invokes the famous numismatic collection of the Roman antiquarian Lelio Pasqualini (1549-1611) - must represent one of the very earliest attempts at the visual representation of antique, Abrahamic Hebrew, the existence of which had enticed scholars towards the end of the sixteenth century. There are also reproductions of Yahweh s name in the  post-Euphrates  script, examples of texts from coins and inscriptions, and from rabbinic texts from Italy, Arabia and Thessalonica in Greece. In reality these were probably Syriac, Amharic or Greek inscriptions from ancient Latin and Greek coins that scholars were eagerly adapting to their conception of a proto-Hebraic script.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BIANCUZZI, Benedetto.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868723781967,"sku":"L4839c","price":1950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"cinquarbres-jean","title":"CINQUARBRES, Jean.","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of this scarce Hebrew grammar by Jean Cinquarbres (1514-87), also known as Quinquarboreo, a French Hebraist at the Collège Royale de France in Paris, where he worked alongside Jean Mercier (c.1510-70). They were part of a second generation of Hebrew studies following François Vatable (d.1547) and his circle. The grammar goes through the alphabet and its accents, nouns, verbs and their tenses, and pronouns, with sections on changes of punctuation and the function of the seven  servile  or changeable letters, finally dealing with numbers. Cinquarbres  examples have a distinctly royalist tone, perhaps chosen to indicate his loyalty and that of the Collège, e.g.  purple robes ,  King of France ,  royal lands ,  royal sceptre , etc., as well as his fixation on wine:  wine, or sicera ,  adulterated wine ,  vinitor vinearum , i.e. viticulturist, etc., and, perhaps related,  sleep of the teacher.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CINQUARBRES, Jean.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868723814735,"sku":"L4839a","price":2350.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"scala-pace-1","title":"SCALA, Pace.","description":"\u003cp\u003eHandsome first edition of this work on expert or academic legal commentary (consilia) and judicial decisions by the little-known Paduan jurist Pace or Pax Scala (d. 1604), one of the few legal texts printed at the Aldine press. The book is set out as a series of quaestiones with responses by Scala, addressed to a fellow lawyer or patron called Bartolomeo Vitelli. The subject is the relationship of the written law to the legal opinions of jurists. The first book addresses the nature and status of consilia, as well as of jurists: can a Jewish convert, for example, become a jurist, since Jews could not? Scala is obviously interested in the relationship of Jewish citizens to the law courts, since he returns to it in the second book, which is an examination of different cases that might arise in the courts: Scala asks if Jews can bring suits against Christians, since Jews belong to a ‚Äòdifferent flock‚Äô. The third and fourth books discuss the relationship between learned consilia and judicial decisions, the most basic questions being whether, where, and when a judge should follow the letter of the law or the opinion given in a learned consilium. Situations discussed include when the judge disagrees with the consilia, when two different consilia disagree, and when the judge dies mid-case. There follows a brief work on how consilia relate to contracts and wills and testaments, and whether these should rely on consilia or the letter of the law in various situations, addressed to the Italian jurist Ottonelli Discaltio (1536-1607).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis copy bears the signature of Johann Fischard, signing himself as utriusque juris doctor, i.e. doctor of both civil and canon law. The date on our signature unfortunately rules out the famous German satirist Johann Fischart (c.1545-91), who was indeed a doctor of both laws; there is an example from 1580 of him signing himself as ‚Äòv.j.d.‚Äô (i.e. utriusque juris doctor), but in a slightly different hand and spelling his name Fischart. However, no one could be expected to have obtained their doctorate in both laws by the age of fifteen, which is roughly when students began their undergraduate degrees, and Fischart most likely did not gain his until the 1570s. Either the consensus on Fischart‚Äôs birth date is well off, therefore, or, more probably, this signature is that of another German doctor of both laws, born slightly earlier and with the very similar name of Fischard. A possible candidate is the Johann Fischard who was a pupil at the school in Frankfurt run by Jakob Mycillus, a former student of Melanchthon, and who contributed to a 1528 compendium of humanist Latin poetry and translations by Melanchthon‚Äôs circle (see Nathaniel Hess, ‚ÄòAngelo Poliziano and the Renaissance Invention of Greek-to-Latin Verse Translation‚Äô PhD thesis, University of Cambridge (2022), p. 101).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e‚ÄòVolume devenu rare et peu d‚Äôusage‚Äô (Renouard).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"SCALA, Pace.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868723847503,"sku":"L4852","price":2250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"kimchi-david-ed-baines-ralph","title":"KIMCHI, David, ed. BAINES, Ralph.","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of this scarce Latin compendium of Hebrew grammar, edited  for the first time  from the famous medieval Jewish grammarian David Kimchi by a Cambridge Hebraist, Ralph Baines (c.1504-59), Catholic bishop of Lichfield and Coventry under Mary I. He was professor of Hebrew at the Royal Coll√®ge de France in Paris between 1549 and 1554. This book is a Latin abstract or paraphrase of the first part of Kimchi s Hebrew grammar, dealing with the alphabet and accents, nouns and their conjugation, verbs, changes in punctuation, some account of pronunciation and reading, prefixes and suffixes, and numbers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRalph Baines was  one of the chief restorers of Hebrew learning in [England]  (Gillow). He was educated at St. John s College, Cambridge, where he opposed Latimer. He returned from Paris on the accession of Mary, became Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry in 1554, and received his DD from Cambridge the following year. After Elizabeth ascended the throne, he was deprived and imprisoned in 1559, and died the same year.  Dodd, in his Church History, states that he was  a divine of great note, very dexterous in expounding the Scriptures, and remarkably skilled in the three sacred languages   (Gillow)..\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"KIMCHI, David, ed. BAINES, Ralph.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57868723945807,"sku":"L4839b","price":2750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/collections\/Screenshot_2026-06-18_at_5.14.15_PM.png?v=1781799275","url":"https:\/\/www.sokol.co.uk\/collections\/judaica.oembed","provider":"Sokol Books Ltd","version":"1.0","type":"link"}