Sepher Ha’emunoth [“Book of Beliefs”]

AUCTION 8 | Tuesday, November 16th, 1999 at 1:00

Fine Judaica: Books, Manuscripts and Works of Art

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Lot 514

SHEM TOV IBN SHEM TOV

Sepher Ha’emunoth [“Book of Beliefs”]

FIRST EDITION. Title within woodcut architectural border. Woodcut printer’s device on title and at end ff.116. Few neat marginal repairs, otherwise a clean copy. Modern calf-backed boards. Sm.4to Vinograd, Ferrara 37; not in Adams

Ferrara: Abraham ibn Usque 1556

Est: $2,000 - $2,500

PRICE REALIZED $1,900

A work that opposes the philosophy of Jewish rationalists such as Abraham ibn Ezra, Levi b. Gershom (RaLBa’G) and Isaac Albalag - but especially that of Maimonides. A witness to the persecutions and conversions of late 14th- and early 15th-century Spain, Shem Tov believed that the philosophical approach was fundamentally incompatible with religious tradition. He viewed Maimonidean intellectualism to be responsible for facilitating apostasy. This anti-Maimonidean polemic was vehemently attacked by Moses Alashkar in his work Hassagoth (1557). See EJ, VIII, col.1198 and Carmilly-Weinberger, p.44