BIANCUZZI, Benedetto.
EARLY REPRESENTATIONS OF ANTIQUE HEBREW
Institutiones in linguam sanctam Hebraicam.
Rome, apud Bartholomaeum Zannettum.£1,950.00
FIRST EDITION. 4to. pp. (xvi) 295 (i). Roman and Hebrew letter. 2 pp. of woodcut alphabet tables showing different Hebrew scripts. T-p with woodcut arms of dedicatee, Abbot Bernardino Paulino, publisher’s device to last verso. Woodcut initials, large cherub tailpiece, typographical ornament. T-p a little dusty, waterstain to blank lower gutter quires H-K, just touching text to a few ll., intermittent very light waterstain to lower margin towards end, sometimes affecting a few lines of text, light marginal foxing, age yellowing. A perfectly acceptable copy in C17 calf, rebacked, ink numbers to ffep and fly, modern bookplate of Viktor Klagsbald to rear pastedown.
First edition of this scarce Hebrew grammar including an examination of ancient and modern Hebrew scripts, illustrated in a woodcut table. The Roman Hebraist and theologian Biancuzzi evidently believed that study of biblical Hebrew could be a tool in proselytization and conversion of Jews; on one occasion, at the request of Pope Paul V, he delivered a sermon to Rome’s Jewish community. The work was sponsored by, and is dedicated to, Bernardino Paulino, a high-ranking papal official whose arms are most likely those on the t-p, and was written in part for the benefit of his nephew, according to the dedicatory letter, which also refers to the recently established Scots College in Rome. There follow laudatory Latin poems addressed to Biancuzzi by two Paulinos, presumably the nephews of Bernardino. The other beneficiaries of Biancuzzi’s work were the students at the gymnasium in Rome, where he was professor of languages.
This grammar is more extensive than most, and deals with the pronunciation of Hebrew and reading of Hebrew texts, verbs, the ‘first part’ of Hebrew speech, followed by nouns, the ‘second part’, after which Biancuzzi discusses suffixes and prefixes, with changes that occur to nouns and verbs, followed by prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions, pronouns, the servile or changeable letters, accents, numbers, etc. There is a section on the difficulties of poetic composition in Hebrew, with examples of Hebrew verse translated into Latin, and another on Hebrew syntax. Finally, Biancuzzi goes through the alphabet giving abbreviations commonly found in Rabbinic texts. There are extensive tables of examples of Hebrew words with Latin glosses or transliterations, with their biblical or Talmudic appearances provided where appropriate.
The two pages of woodcut alphabets show Hebrew scripts as written by modern Jews in Arabia, Spain and Italy; Hebrew used in sacred texts; and antique Hebrew, both ‘ante’ and ‘post transitum fluvii’, i.e. before and after Abraham crossed the Euphrates. These apparently fanciful alphabets, supposedly derived from ancient coins – Biancuzzi invokes the famous numismatic collection of the Roman antiquarian Lelio Pasqualini (1549-1611) – must represent one of the very earliest attempts at the visual representation of antique, Abrahamic Hebrew, the existence of which had enticed scholars towards the end of the sixteenth century. There are also reproductions of Yahweh’s name in the ‘post-Euphrates’ script, examples of texts from coins and inscriptions, and from rabbinic texts from Italy, Arabia and Thessalonica in Greece. In reality these were probably Syriac, Amharic or Greek inscriptions from ancient Latin and Greek coins that scholars were eagerly adapting to their conception of a proto-Hebraic script.
Not in Steinschneider or Adams. BM STC It. C17 I, p. 116. USTC 4033444.In stock
