‘ONE OF THE OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE HEBREW LITERATURE OF THE RENAISSANCE’
ANNOTATED
IBN VERGA, Solomon; Georg GENTIUS, translator.
Historia Judaica res Judaeorum ab eversa aede Hierosolymitana, ad haec fere tempora usque, complexa. De Hebraeo in Latinum versa a Georgio Gentio.
Amsterdam, Pieter Niellius, 1651.
4to, pp. [16], 464; occasional passages in Hebrew, woodcut arms of Amsterdam to title-page, woodcut initials; dampstain at foot of title leaf, a little light foxing, a few small paper-flaws, overall a very good copy; bound in contemporary Dutch stiff vellum, yapp fore-edges, title in ink in Latin and Hebrew at head of spine, edges sprinkled red; lower joint split at head, upper board slightly bowed, a few marks; armorial ex libris (1692) of Pierre-Daniel Huet and shelfmark label ‘X. E.’ to front pastedown, ‘D. de H. 788 A.’ to front flyleaf, Huet’s manuscript notes to front and rear endpapers, his occasional brief marginal annotations, marginal marks and underlinings, ownership inscription at head of title ‘Domus profess. Paris Societ. Jesu'.
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Historia Judaica res Judaeorum ab eversa aede Hierosolymitana, ad haec fere tempora usque, complexa. De Hebraeo in Latinum versa a Georgio Gentio.
First Latin edition of Solomon Ibn Verga’s Shevet Yehudah, an important account of persecutions suffered by the Jews and a reflection upon the origins of antisemitism, from the library of the distinguished French savant and bishop Pierre-Daniel Huet with annotations in his hand.
Ibn Verga (c. 1460–1554) was an important Spanish-Jewish historian. After the conquest of Málaga in 1487 he raised funds for ransoming Jews taken captive there; following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 he settled in Lisbon. When large numbers of Jews in Portugal were forcibly baptised, he was compelled to live as a converso, eventually moving to Italy in 1506. His Shevet Yehudah, composed in the 1520s, is ‘a compilation of accounts of the persecutions undergone by the Jews from the destruction of the Second Temple until his own day. At times, the author intersperses the historical account with disputations and deliberations, of which some are authentic and others imaginary. By means of these, he tried to clarify the problem of the hatred against the Jews, to examine their special destiny, to offer answers to the claims of their enemies, to rebuke his people for their social and moral faults, and to voice his objection against certain philosophical opinions … For his own period, he mentions some of the events which he heard of or witnessed and for which he is sometimes the only source. The work has special importance in the annals of Jewish historical thought … [it] is one of the outstanding achievements of the Hebrew literature of the Renaissance’ (Encyclopaedia Judaica). This Latin translation was undertaken by the German orientalist and diplomat Georg Gentius (1618–1687).
Provenance: from the library of Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630–1721), Bishop of Soissons and later of Avranches, a French scholar, antiquary, scientist, and philosopher, one of the most brilliant and renowned intellectuals during the reign of Louis XIV, ‘whose incisive skepticism, particularly as embodied in his cogent attacks on René Descartes, greatly influenced contemporary philosophers’ (Britannica). Huet’s father was a convert from Calvinism, but he was nonetheless educated by a Protestant pastor as his tutor during some of his first academic years. He studied at the Jesuit school in his native Caen, before moving to Paris where he forged a close friendship with Gabriel Naudé, librarian of the Mazarin Library. In 1652 he visited the court of Queen Christina of Sweden, in whose library he discovered some fragments of a commentary on St Matthew by Origen, which led to an edition of Origen in 1668. He later assisted the French bishop Jacques Bossuet, tutor to the Dauphin Louis, son of Louis XIV, and edited the celebrated series of Delphin Classics. Though not a Jesuit himself, Huet spent his last years in a Jesuit house in Paris, and bequeathed his library of some eight thousand books to the Jesuit College in Paris. With the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1763, the library reverted to Huet’s heirs who sold much of it to the Bibliothèque du Roi, some volumes being sold off.
The rear flyleaf bears notes in Huet’s neat hand in Latin and Hebrew, dated 19 February 1680, which clearly demonstrate his close engagement with Ibn Verga’s text. These include, for example, notes on Ibn Verga himself as well as on Abraham Ibn Ezra, Maimonides, the Talmud, and the Jewish temples in Jerusalem. A note to the front flyleaf relates to persecutions suffered by the Jews in Spain and Portugal.
STCN 089893883; USTC 1821019.
