This article examines the death and rebirth of the Hebrew manuscripts, and their reuse as book bindings and recent rediscovery. Without doubt, Italy is the country in which the largest number of Hebrew fragments of Medieval manuscripts is conserved, thanks to the central role that Italy played in Europe’s cultural development and the production and diffusion of the book between the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The recovery of these relics, in a way, gives new life to manuscripts that by now have been “dead” as books for four or five centuries. In recovering these manuscripts, one is entering into the history of the Hebrew book manuscript; retracing its back-story, closely related to that of the people that produced it; following its mobility; examining the methods and the forms in which it was conserved; and examining that which can be defined as its “death,” which consisted either of (1) its ritual placement in a genizah and successive burial, a ritual form of destruction to avoid desecration; (2) destruction by means of the book burnings of the Church that sadly accompanied the Church’s two-millennia-long prosecution of the Jews; or (3) its recycling, as in our case. Slightly more than 70,000 Hebrew book manuscripts have reached us to the present, conserved in about 600 national, state, public, municipal, university and monastic libraries, as well as in private collections. In addition to these, about 150,000 fragments of medieval manuscripts were recovered from the genizah of Cairo, which consisted of a depository in the Ben Ezra synagogue in old Cairo. However, between the manuscripts of Qumran, discovered beginning in 1947 and dated between the second century B.C.E. and the first century C.E., and the oldest medieval manuscript in our possession, we have a near total gap in documentation of 800 years. In fact, the oldest dated manuscript in our possession was copied in the years 903-904 in Islamic lands. This quantity of surviving medieval Hebrew books surely represents only a small fraction of the entire literary production of the Jews, which would have been much larger than that of the Christians, proportionate to the fact that the Jews constituted a minority, as Jews were taught to read and write from a young age. From time immemorial, almost all Jews, especially males, knew how to read and write. The period of the Hebrew manuscript continued until 1540, at which point the printing press was nearly capable of supplying the majority of written works. For this period of about 650 years, one calculates that around 40,000 or 50,000 Hebrew book manuscripts should have reached us, in addition to the already-mentioned fragments of the Cairo Genizah. According to an approximate calculation of Colette Sirat, one of the greatest scholars of the Hebrew book, no more than 5% of all the manuscripts produced in Europe by Jews during the Middle Ages have reached us. In light of these considerations, the discovery of even one fragment or a single page of a new medieval Hebrew manuscript is of noteworthy importance. In this sense, the census and cataloguing of the folios, bifolios and fragments of medieval Hebrew codices discovered as bindings of registers and printed books in the Italian and European archives is of great importance, as tens of thousands of fragments have been recovered. Of these, the majority was discovered in Italian archives, where we recovered, as was mentioned above, about 10,000 such fragments.

Morte e rinascita dei manoscritti ebraici: il loro riuso come legature e la loro recente riscoperta

PERANI, MAURO
2008

Abstract

This article examines the death and rebirth of the Hebrew manuscripts, and their reuse as book bindings and recent rediscovery. Without doubt, Italy is the country in which the largest number of Hebrew fragments of Medieval manuscripts is conserved, thanks to the central role that Italy played in Europe’s cultural development and the production and diffusion of the book between the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The recovery of these relics, in a way, gives new life to manuscripts that by now have been “dead” as books for four or five centuries. In recovering these manuscripts, one is entering into the history of the Hebrew book manuscript; retracing its back-story, closely related to that of the people that produced it; following its mobility; examining the methods and the forms in which it was conserved; and examining that which can be defined as its “death,” which consisted either of (1) its ritual placement in a genizah and successive burial, a ritual form of destruction to avoid desecration; (2) destruction by means of the book burnings of the Church that sadly accompanied the Church’s two-millennia-long prosecution of the Jews; or (3) its recycling, as in our case. Slightly more than 70,000 Hebrew book manuscripts have reached us to the present, conserved in about 600 national, state, public, municipal, university and monastic libraries, as well as in private collections. In addition to these, about 150,000 fragments of medieval manuscripts were recovered from the genizah of Cairo, which consisted of a depository in the Ben Ezra synagogue in old Cairo. However, between the manuscripts of Qumran, discovered beginning in 1947 and dated between the second century B.C.E. and the first century C.E., and the oldest medieval manuscript in our possession, we have a near total gap in documentation of 800 years. In fact, the oldest dated manuscript in our possession was copied in the years 903-904 in Islamic lands. This quantity of surviving medieval Hebrew books surely represents only a small fraction of the entire literary production of the Jews, which would have been much larger than that of the Christians, proportionate to the fact that the Jews constituted a minority, as Jews were taught to read and write from a young age. From time immemorial, almost all Jews, especially males, knew how to read and write. The period of the Hebrew manuscript continued until 1540, at which point the printing press was nearly capable of supplying the majority of written works. For this period of about 650 years, one calculates that around 40,000 or 50,000 Hebrew book manuscripts should have reached us, in addition to the already-mentioned fragments of the Cairo Genizah. According to an approximate calculation of Colette Sirat, one of the greatest scholars of the Hebrew book, no more than 5% of all the manuscripts produced in Europe by Jews during the Middle Ages have reached us. In light of these considerations, the discovery of even one fragment or a single page of a new medieval Hebrew manuscript is of noteworthy importance. In this sense, the census and cataloguing of the folios, bifolios and fragments of medieval Hebrew codices discovered as bindings of registers and printed books in the Italian and European archives is of great importance, as tens of thousands of fragments have been recovered. Of these, the majority was discovered in Italian archives, where we recovered, as was mentioned above, about 10,000 such fragments.
2008
Studi di storia del cristianesimo. Per Alba Maria Orselli
313
336
M. Perani
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/92084
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