CINQUARBRES, Jean.
De re grammatica Hebraeorum opus.
Paris, apud Jacobum Bogardum, 1546£2,350.00
FIRST EDITION. 4to. pp. 176. Roman and Hebrew letter. T-p with woodcut printer’s device, typographical ornament. Woodcut initial. Light marginal foxing to first and last few ll., blank upper margin a little browned and with small light waterstain at end. A good, very well margined copy in c.1700 limp vellum on five alum-tawed supports, yapp edges, recased, edges sprinkled red. One or two contemp. marginalia.
First edition of this scarce Hebrew grammar by Jean Cinquarbres (1514-87), also known as Quinquarboreo, a French Hebraist at the Collège Royale de France in Paris, where he worked alongside Jean Mercier (c.1510-70). They were part of a second generation of Hebrew studies following François Vatable (d.1547) and his circle. The grammar goes through the alphabet and its accents, nouns, verbs and their tenses, and pronouns, with sections on changes of punctuation and the function of the seven ‘servile’ or changeable letters, finally dealing with numbers. Cinquarbres’ examples have a distinctly royalist tone, perhaps chosen to indicate his loyalty and that of the Collège, e.g. ‘purple robes’, ‘King of France’, ‘royal lands’, ‘royal sceptre’, etc., as well as his fixation on wine: ‘wine, or sicera’, ‘adulterated wine’, ‘vinitor vinearum’, i.e. viticulturist, etc., and, perhaps related, ‘sleep of the teacher’.
OCLC notes three copies in the US, at Folger, UPenn and Michigan. USTC adds LoC. Not in Steinschneider. This ed. not in Adams or BM STC Fr. USTC 195806.In stock
