Shiltei HaGiborim [“Shields of the Mighty”]

An encyclopedic work on war, music, numismatics, weaponry, architecture - all analyzed in order to elucidate the composition of the Temple in Jerusalem. “Portaleone’s treatment is so discursive as to make the work a compendium of all branches of science known in his day, in which all of the ten languages he knew were amply used.” EJ, Vol. XIII, cols. 908-9. See also Alessandro Guetta, Avraham Portaleone: From Science to Mysticism, in: Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (1999); and Samuel S. Kottek, Jews between Profane and Sacred Science, in: Renaissance Italy: The Case of Abraham Portaleone - Religious Confessions and the Sciences in the Sixteenth Century (2001) Abraham Joseph Solomon Graziano (d. 1684), the Rabbi of Modena, was a noted halachic scholar, bibliophile and poet. (See S. Baron, "Teshuvah...me’eth R. Abraham Graziano" in: Studies in Memory of A.S. Freidus (1929), pp. 122-37; A. J. Karp, From the Ends of the Earth: Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress, pp. 155-6)