Sepher HaMachbaroth [poetry]

IMMANUEL BEN SOLOMON OF ROME

Gershom ben Moses Soncino

Brescia

1491

FIRST EDITION. Alternating square Hebrew characters and cursive rabbinic (Rashi) script. With zodiacal illustrations within text of ff. 48r.-49r. Scattered marginalia including handwritten Hebrew designations in an Italian hand of each zodiacal illustration.

Vinograd, Brescia 3; Goff Heb-43; Offenberg 58; Carmilly-Weinberger, pp. 214-7

The first printed book of Hebrew poetry. The first appearance of the signs of the Zodiac in a Hebrew book. One of only two literary Hebrew incunabulae. Immanuel of Rome (c.1261-1368), known in Italian as Manoello Giudeo, modeled this literary work on the classic Sephardic poets. The Machbaroth contain 27 compositions in the nature of satires, letters, prayers and dirges. According to Cecil Roth, Immanuel was “the most remarkable and important figure of the Renaissance-period in the Jewish world.” See The Jews in the Renaissance (1959), pp. 89-103.