Sepher HaMachbaroth [poetry].

IMMANUEL BEN SOLOMON OF ROME.

Gershom ben Moses Soncino

Brescia

1491

FIRST EDITION. Alternating square Hebrew characters and cursive rabbinic (Rashi) script. With zodiacal illustrations within text of ff. 48r.-49r. Scattered marginalia including handwritten Hebrew designations in an Italian hand of each zodiacal illustration.

Vinograd, Brescia 3; Goff Heb-43; Steinschneider, col. 1057, no. 5269,1; Offenberg 58; Thes. A-77; BMC XIII, p. 68; Iakerson 66.

The first printed book of Hebrew poetry and one of only two literary Hebrew incunabula. Sepher HaMachbaroth is the most important work of Immanuel ben Solomon of Rome (ca. 1261-1328), poet, scholar and author of both Hebrew and Italian texts. It represents a perfect example of the blending of traditional Jewish and secular Italian literature that characterized much of the Jewish literary output during the Italian Renaissance. With his linguistic artistry and use of skillful wordplay, Immanuel sets a tone that is generally light-hearted and witty in twenty eight chapters that combine poetry and prose on subjects as diverse as love, wine, and friendship, along with satires, epistles, elegies and religious poems. The last chapter here is based on Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and portrays the Prophet Daniel leading Immanuel to Tophet (Hell) and Eden (Heaven). In this chapter, Immanuel, by composing a Jewish response to Dante's Christian Commedia, firmly situates himself in both the Hebrew and Italian literary traditions. The rabbinic prohibition that explicitly forbade the reading of the work due to its secular and sometimes erotic imagery, had little effect on its popularity, resulting in its inclusion among the corpus of Hebrew incunabula. Sepher HaMachbaroth was the first Hebrew book printed by Gershom Soncino in Brescia, the site of his second press. Soncino became the greatest of the pioneers of Hebrew printing and may be credited with numerous firsts, both in style and in content, including: The first illustrated Hebrew book, Meshal HaKadmoni (Brescia, 1491); and the first Hebrew book with a title page, Sepher HaRokeah (Fano, 1505). The only printer of Hebrew incunabula to continue his printing activities into the sixteenth century, Gershom printed in at least a dozen cities, often signing his name Ger-Sham (a temporary sojourner). In total, his extraordinary productivity included the printing of nearly one hundred Hebrew titles and almost as many non-Hebrew ones.