Shiltei Hagiborim (“Shields of the Mighty”) [on the Second Temple]

PORTALEONE, ABRAHAM

Vicenzo Gonzaga

Mantua

1612

FIRST EDITION. Four parts in one. Three divisional titles all within a decorative typographical border. On title, signature of owner: “Jacob Kopel b. Samuel Ashkenazi.”

Vinograd, Mantua 196

An encyclopedic work on war, music, numismatics, weaponry, architecture - all discussed in order to elucidate the details 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, XIII, cols. 908-909. See C. Roth, Jews in the Renaissance (1959), pp. 315-319. In 1964, Jerusalem scholar Shaul Shefer reprinted several chapters from the rare Shiltei ha-Giborim in Bigdei Kehunah (“Priestly Vestments”), one of several volumes of his own encyclopedia of the Temple, complete with color photographs.