Afbeeldinghe van den Tempel Salomonis.

LEON, JACOB JUDAH (TEMPLO).

Symon Moulert

Middelburgh

1642

FIRST EDITION. With the large folding engraved plate of the Temple, Here, hand-colored. DEDICATION PAGE SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR IN HEBREW. With additional dedication page pasted over the original on f. A3. The Arthur Rubens copy (who has pasted to opening blank a photographic portrait of the author (see Rubens, Iconography no. 1734)

Of exceptional rarity. On the opening blank leaf the celebrated collector Alfred Rubens has penciled the suggestion that the engraving of the Temple here was accomplished by Salom d’Italia. He also suggests that the binding was produced for a member of the d’Aguilar family. This highly scarce treatise is an explanation to the exterior, interior and ritual objects of the Temple of Solomon. It accompanied the model the author created that received wide acclaim. The name “Templo” was added to the author’s family name on account of this work. Jacob Judah Aryeh Leon Templo was born near Coimbra in 1602. Three year later his family fled Portugal for Amsterdam where they returned to the open practice of Judaism. Jacob studied for the rabbinate and was eventually appointed to Hamburg and then Middleburg. It was there he met the Christian theologian and Millenarian Adam Boreel with whom he studied, along with Menasseh ben Israel. It is suggested that under Boreel’s urging Leon was inspired to construct a model of Solomon’s Temple based upon description in the Torah and later rabbinic writings. The present work is the booklet that accompanied the model. It was simultaneously translated into Spanish, and later into French, German, Latin and Hebrew. See A.K. Offenberg, Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana-Treasures of Jewish Booklore (1994) pp. 32-3; A.L. Shane, Rabbi Jacob Judah Leon (Templo) of Amsterdam and his Connections with England, in JHSET Vol. XXV pp. 120-36.