Cunaeus, Petrus. La Republique des Hebreux. [“The Republic of the Hebrews, On the Commonwealth of the Jews.”] Edited and translated by Willem Goeree.

(ISRAEL, LAND OF).

Pierre Mortier

Amsterdam

1705

Three volumes. Replete with 46 exquisite HAND-COLORED plates and maps, most fold-out. A crisp, clean copy.

cf. Laor, 303, 1027.

Peter van der Cunaeus (1586-1638) was a professor of Latin at Leiden. His De Republica Hebraeorum was first published in Leiden in 1617. “De Republica Hebraeorum is essentially a conventional presentation of the traditional Calvinist views on biblical antiquity and on Judaism and the Jews …The true novelty of his work however, consists in its quarrying of [Maimonides’] Mishneh Torah for the study of the ancient Jewish commonwealth.” Aaron L. Katchen, Christian Hebraists and Dutch Rabbis (1984) p. 39. A set of the 1574 Venice edition of the Mishneh Torah had been given to Cunaeus by his friend Johannes Boreel (Borelius), who acquired the books on one of his tours of Italy. Cunaeus records in his memoirs, “I ran through the splendid treatises of Rabbi Maimonides with great enthusiasm in the most pleasant and leisurely fashion …I was so affected that I nearly turned my pen around and erased all my previous animadversions on things Jewish” (ibid).