Heydeck, Don Juan Joseph. Ilustracion de la Inscripcion Hebrea que se halla en la Iglesia del Tránsito de la Ciudad de Toledo [Illustration of the Inscription Found in the El Tránsito Church, Toledo]

(SYNAGOGUE).

The Royal Press

Madrid

1795

FIRST EDITION. Spanish and Hebrew. On p. 8, woodcut plate of specimen Hebrew characters of the inscription

Freimann 196

The author, was an apostate English Jew ("son of Jonathan Levi Chief Rabbi of London,") who copied and translated the remarkable plasterwork Hebrew inscriptions at Toledo. The inscriptions are from an impressive building, originally consecrated as a synagogue in 1360 by Samuel Halevi Abulafia, Treasurer to King Pedro of Castile. Following the Expulsion of 1492, the synagogue was converted into the Church of Our Lady of Tránsito (“Nuestra Señora del Tránsito”). Centuries later, the synagogue’s many elegant plasterwork Hebrew inscriptions attracted the attention of philologists and antiquarians attempting to deduce their meaning. The inscriptions were first transcribed by Francisco Pérez Bayer in 1752 in his manuscript De Toletano Hebraeorum Templo, which Heydeck incorporated into the present work. Today, the building houses a Sephardic Museum under the auspices of the Spanish government. See C. H. Krinsky, Synagogues of Europe (1985), pp. 335-38; C. Roth, Journal of Jewish Studies (1951) pp.124-28; A. Rosenthal Ltd., Oxford, Catalogue 61, Biblioteca Sefardica, p. 51, no. 906