Me’or Einayim [historiography].

DE ROSSI, AZARIAH.

n.p.

Mantua

1574

First Edition. Title within woodcut architectural border. Woodcut diagrams on f. 156. Wide margined. Scattered marginalia. This copy with the corrected “Mahaduroth” present in most copies together with the rare “Hasagah” and “Teshuva Le’hasagah,” but without “Mahahaduroth Shniyoth” affixed to very few copies.

Vinograd, Mantua 138; Mehlman 1327.

“The Me’or Einaim became so important that it rendered its author as one of the greatest, or perhaps the very greatest, of Jewish historians who flourished in the seventeen centuries between Josephus and Jost.” S. Baron, Azariah de Rossi’s Attitude to Life in: Studies in Memory of I. Abrahams, (1927) p. 12. Azariah de Rossi was a member of an Italian Jewish family that traced its ancestry back to the time of Titus and the destruction of Jerusalem. His controversial Me’or Einaim questioned conventional medieval wisdom and introduced fundamental changes in chronology. Such hypotheses led the Me’or Einaim to be viewed as heresy and it was banned by the Rabbinic authorities upon publication. De Rossi reissued the work the same year, making changes to the offending passages and adding an apologetic post-script. He was spared personal rabbinic chastisement due to his conscientious observance of Halachic practices. See Carmilly-Weinberger, pp. 210-13; I. Mehlman, Gnuzoth Sepharim, (1976) pp. 21-39; see also M. Silber, America in Hebrew Literature in: Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, Vol. XXII.