BERECHIAH BEN NATRONAI HA-NAKDAN [i.e. Benedictus le Puncteur(?)]. Mishlei Shu’alim [“Fox Fables”: Hebrew version of Aesop’s Fables]. Translated from Hebrew into Latin by Melchior Hanel

AUCTION 39 | Thursday, April 03rd, 2008 at 1:00

Fine Judaica: Printed Books, Manuscripts, Autograph Letters & Graphic Art

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Lot 103

(FABLES)

BERECHIAH BEN NATRONAI HA-NAKDAN [i.e. Benedictus le Puncteur(?)]. Mishlei Shu’alim [“Fox Fables”: Hebrew version of Aesop’s Fables]. Translated from Hebrew into Latin by Melchior Hanel

With engraved frontispiece of the Animal Kingdom, signed "Jo. Ch. Smischek fe[cit]." Title in red and black. Latin and Hebrew on facing pages. Hebrew in square characters typical of Prague, provided with nikud pp.(18), 436 (mispaginated but complete). Lightly browned, otherwise a clean copy. Contemporary vellum incorporating 16th-century manuscript music score, rubbed, later endpapers. 12mo Vinograd, Prague 443

Prague: Typographia Universitatis 1661

Est: $800 - $1,200

PRICE REALIZED $1,600

Berechiah (end 12th-13th century) at different times lived in Normandy and England. His appellation "Ha-Nakdan" ("The Punctuator") derives from the fact that he earned his living by punctuating Hebrew manuscripts. Berechiah's most celebrated work is Mishlei Shu'alim (Fox Fables), in which he made use of the French fable collection Ysopet by Marie de France (c. 1170) and the lost Latin translation of Aesop, Romulus. This European Aesopian tradition was married to the Biblical and Talmudic tradition, with the result that the animals converse in a Biblical Hebrew interspersed with Talmudic quotations. M. Hadas produced an English translation of Mishlei Shu'alim, Fables of a Jewish Aesop (1967). See EJ, Vol. IV, cols. 596-97