Obadja, Manasseh and Benjamin of Rome

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Obadja, Manasseh and Benjamin of Rome ( עובדיה, מנשה ובנימין מרומא) The printers of the probably oldest Hebrew incunabula named themselves in a colophon . Her works were probably published in Rome around 1470 .

Research history

A group of about eight undated and mostly unfounded incunabula, which the first researcher of early Hebrew prints, Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi , had placed in the period before 1480, aroused the attention of Jewish bibliographers because of their apparently relatively old age. The place of Rome assumed as the place of printing, for the only printing under it, Moïse Schwab was the first in 1883 , probably due to the name of origin of Rome . But that only means that the three printers, or just the latter, Benjamin, came from Rome or lived there. A few years later, David Simonsen found a more reliable indication of the place of printing in a Responsum by Mose Provençal printed in Venice in 1566 , which cites a work by Solomon Adret as being printed in Rome. This quote only fits one of the incunabula from this group of books, also for the other works printed with the same type , an Ashkenazi square script , Simonsen therefore assumed Rome as the place of printing. The collector Lazarus Goldschmidt tried to show with substantive and technical arguments that these presumably Roman incunabula were the oldest printed with Hebrew types . Both the localization to Rome and the early dating were contradicted, but the counter-arguments proved to be inconclusive.

Building on Goldschmidt's assumptions and the observation made by Alexander Marx in a review that large folio volumes printed in one column were otherwise only more common in very early printers of Latin incunabula, his brother Moses Marx systematically compared these Hebrew prints with the information on early Latin prints from Italy in the incunabula catalog of the British Library . He found a large number of folio volumes printed in one column from the Roman printers Arnold Pannartz and Konrad Sweynheym , but also from Ulrich Han , Georg Lauer and the works published by Johannes Philippus de Lignamine . Otherwise he found prints of this format from Venice, but Jews were forbidden to live there at that time, so this city was out of the question as a point of contact and printing location. With the exception of Lignamine, the Roman printers chose this format mainly between 1469 and 1472 and later printed mostly in two columns or in smaller formats. Moses Marx also found the practice of leaving blank pages blank in front of the title page when printing, both in some early (but not later) Latin prints from Rome, as well as in one of the Hebrew prints in question. This led him to the conclusion that these incunabula were probably printed in Rome between 1469 and 1472 and that their printers had direct or indirect contact with early German printers in Rome. Edwin Hall, referring to Moses Marx's assumptions, interpreted a remark by Giovanni Andrea Bussi in the preface to the Bible edition published by Sweynheym and Pannartz in 1471 that they had no Hebrew types, as an apology to Jewish printers, with whom Sweynheym and Pannartz may have had contact . Georg Lauer and Eucharius Silber later did not use any Hebrew types either, they left space to add Hebrew words by hand if necessary.

Further research by Perez Tishby and Adri K. Offenberg confirmed and supplemented the observations of Moses Marx, with modifications in detail, such as the presumed order of appearance of the prints. The watermarks they examined provided another indication of the age of the prints. A watermark Crossbow in a circle can be found in identical form both in Ulrich Hans's second Livius edition, published before August 1470, and in four of the Hebrew prints. Six prints, for two of which a slightly smaller paper format was used, can be assigned to the presumably Roman printing press, for which the names Obaja, Manasse and Benjamin of Rome have been handed down in one of these prints. Two other prints, in which an identical markup font was used, show some further developments that do not make it possible to reliably assign them to this office (or the printing location Rome). These two prints, a Sefer Mitzvot gadol by Mose from Coucy and the leader of the undecided by Maimonides , form a typographical bridge between the works printed in Rome around 1470 and those printed in Piove di Sacco from 1475 onwards . Because of the name of one of the two printers, Obadja ben Moses, an edition of Maimonides' Mishne Torah was sometimes brought into connection with the print shop of Obadja, Manasseh and Benjamin of Rome. However, it is printed in a Sephardic script and must therefore be distinguished from the other two groups dealt with here. Three documents found in Roman archives point to a Hebrew print made in Rome before 1485. But neither the mentioned title, probably a Torah, nor the names of the people involved, Angelo di Mose and the two brothers Angelo and Rabbi Dattolo di Consiglio, can be clearly assigned to one of the previously known incunabulum prints.

Works

in the publication order assumed by Adri K. Offenberg:

literature

  • Moses Marx: On the Date of Appearance of the First Printed Hebrew Books. In: Saul Lieberman (ed.): Alexander Marx. Jubilee Volume. On the occasion of his seventieth birthday. English section. Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York 1950, pp. 481-501.
  • Riccardo Di Segni : Nuovi dati sugli incunaboli ebraici di Roma. In: Massimo Miglio, Francesca Niutta, Diego Quaglioni and Concetta Ranieri (eds.): Un Pontificato ed una città. Sisto IV (1471-1484). Atti del convegno, Roma, 3-7 December 1984. Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, Rome 1986 ( Studi storici 154-162), pp. 291-304.
  • Adri K. Offenberg: What do we know about the very first Jewish printers of Hebrew books? In: Studia Rosenthaliana 33 (1999) 2, pp. 174-180 ( JSTOR 41482411 ).

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ On this Fausto Parente:  De Rossi, Giovanni Bernardo. In: Massimiliano Pavan (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 39:  Deodato-DiFalco. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1991, pp. 205-214.
  2. ^ Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi: Annales Hebraeo-Typographici Sec. XV. Parma 1795 archive.org , pp. 121-126.
  3. ↑ Moïse Schwab: Les Incunables orientaux et les impressions orientales au commencement du XVIe siècle. Report to M. le Ministre de l'instruction publique sur une mission en Bavière et en Wurtemberg. Techener, Paris 1883 archive.org , p. 31, no. 13.
  4. ^ Moses Marx: On the Date of Appearance of the First Printed Hebrew Books. In: Saul Lieberman (ed.): Alexander Marx. Jubilee Volume. New York 1950, pp. 481-501, here pp. 486-487; Riccardo Di Segni: Nuovi dati sugli incunaboli ebraici di Roma. In: Massimo Miglio [et al.] (Ed.): Un Pontificato ed una città. Sisto IV (1471-1484). Rome 1986, pp. 291-304, here p. 292.
  5. ↑ David Simonsen: For book studies. Small messages. In: Festschrift for Moritz Steinschneider's eightieth birthday. Harrassowitz, Leipzig 1896, pp. 164–168 ( online ), here p. 166. Cf. Riccardo Di Segni: Nuovi dati sugli incunaboli ebraici di Roma. In: Massimo Miglio [et al.] (Ed.): Un Pontificato ed una città. Sisto IV (1471-1484). Rome 1986, pp. 291-304, here p. 292.
  6. ↑ Hebrew incunabula 1475 - 1496. With 33 facsimiles. Catalog 151. Ludwig Rosenthal's Antiquariat, Munich [1912/1913?]. online , p. 21. Cf. Alexander Marx: Hebrew Incunabula. In: The Jewish Quarterly Review 11 (1920) 1, pp. 98-115 doi: 10.2307 / 1451269 , here p. 105 and Moses Marx: On the Date of Appearance of the First Printed Hebrew Books. In: Saul Lieberman (ed.): Alexander Marx. Jubilee Volume. New York 1950, pp. 481-501, here pp. 485-486.
  7. ↑ Sigmund Seeligmann : Miscelles. II. The "undated prints from 1480". In: Zeitschrift für Hebräische Bibliographie 7 (1903), pp. 25-26 ( online ), ders., In: Zeitschrift für Hebräische Bibliographie 17 (1914), pp. 13-16 ( online ), cf. on the other hand Isaiah Sonne: printing. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 6 (1930), pp. 39–81, here p. 41, accordingly the passage cited by Seeligmann is not part of a colophon, but can already be found in the manuscripts. On JL Teicher: Notes on Hebrew Incunables. In: Journal of Jewish Bibliography 4 (1943), p. 54 cf. Sonne's notes in Moses Marx: On the Date of Appearance of the First Printed Hebrew Books. In: Saul Lieberman (ed.): Alexander Marx. Jubilee Volume. New York 1950, pp. 481-501, here p. 501.
  8. ↑ Alexander Marx: Hebrew Incunabula. In: The Jewish Quarterly Review 11 (1920) 1, pp. 98–115, here p. 105.
  9. ↑ See on this Paolo Veneziani:  Lauer, Georg. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 64:  Latilla – Levi Montalcini. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2005, pp. 51-53.
  10. ^ On this Carmelo Alaimo:  De Lignamine (Del Legname, La Legname, o Legname), Giovanni Filippo. In: Massimiliano Pavan (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 36:  DeFornari – Della Fonte. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1988, pp. 643-647.
  11. ^ Moses Marx: On the Date of Appearance of the First Printed Hebrew Books. In: Saul Lieberman (ed.): Alexander Marx. Jubilee Volume. New York 1950, pp. 481-501, here pp. 488-493.
  12. ^ Edwin Hall: Sweynheym & Pannartz and the Origins of Printing in Italy. German Technology and Italian Humanism in Renaissance Rome. McMinnville, Oregon 1991, ISBN 0-9628568-0-0 , pp. 61-62.
  13. ^ Moses Marx: On the Date of Appearance of the First Printed Hebrew Books. In: Saul Lieberman (ed.): Alexander Marx. Jubilee Volume. New York 1950, pp. 481-501, here pp. 497-498.
  14. ^ Adri K. Offenberg: Hebraica. Hes & de Graaf, 't Goy 2004 ( Catalog of books printed in the XVth century now in the British Library 13), ISBN 90-6194-259-4 , here pp. XLIV-XLV. On Tishby's research, published in Hebrew in the journal Kiryat Sefer 58 (1983), pp. 808-857 cf. also Riccardo Di Segni: Nuovi dati sugli incunaboli ebraici di Roma. In: Massimo Miglio [et al.] (Ed.): Un Pontificato ed una città. Sisto IV (1471-1484). Rome 1986, pp. 291-304, here pp. 293-294.
  15. ^ Adri K. Offenberg: Hebraica. 't Goy 2004 ( Catalog of books printed in the XVth century now in the British Library 13), here pp. XLV – XLVI.
  16. ^ Riccardo Di Segni: Nuovi dati sugli incunaboli ebraici di Roma. In: Massimo Miglio [et al.] (Ed.): Un Pontificato ed una città. Sisto IV (1471-1484). Rome 1986, pp. 291-304, here pp. 295-298 and 303-305 (edition by Anna Esposito and Micaela Procaccia).
  17. ↑ This anthology was also published as volume 5 in the series Littera Antiqua , Città del Vaticano 1986, ISBN 88-85054-05-6 , with the same page numbering .