Introductiones Artis Grammatice Hebraice.

ZAMORA, ALFONSO DE

Michael de Eguia

Alcalá de Henares (Spain)

1526

FIRST COMPLETE EDITION. Latin and Hebrew texts. Title in red and black, printer’s device. Historiated initials. Exquisite Complutensian Hebrew types provided with nikud (vowel points). Latin marginalia.

Steinschneider, Cat. Bodl. 44408-1; Adams A-800.

Alfonso de Zamora (1480-c.1558), an educated and erudite Jew converted to Christianity in 1492. Appended to his Hebrew grammar and dictionary is “Epistola ad Hebraeos” composed in Hebrew with a Latin interlinear translation, being a conversionary tract addressed to the Jews of Rome. Joshua Bloch has sung the praise of the Hebrew typefaces found in this grammar. “Virtually nothing like their beauty is to be met in the types of fifteenth-century printing.” See J. Bloch, Early Hebrew Printing in Spain and Portugal, reprinted in: C. Berlin (ed.) Hebrew Printing and Bibliography (1976) pp. 46-7. These Hebrew types were earlier employed in the famous six-volume Complutensian Bible, the first polyglot Bible (Alcala de Henares, 1514-17 (Darlow and Moule 5082). That Bible, or at least its Hebrew text, which was established on the basis of ancient manuscripts, was the brainchild of Alfonso de Zamora himself along with three fellow Conversos. Zamora prepared the grammar and dictionary of the Hebrew language found in the sixth volume of the Bible. Our 1526 edition, though technically the second edition, is the first complete edition of the grammar. See A. Neubauer, Alfonso de Zamora, JQR VII, p. 398-417; J. Bloch, The People and the Book (1954) p. 81-2.