CLEYNAERTS, Nicolas. (With) CALIGNY, Alain Restauld de.
Tabula in grammaticen Hebraeam. (With) Institutiones Hebraicae.
Paris, Excudebat Christianus Wechelus, 1544. 1545.£2,250.00
8vo. pp. 155 [iii] (ii). 73 [v] (ii). Roman and Hebrew letter. Publisher’s printed device to t-ps and last rectos. Woodcut initials. First quire of first work lightly waterstained, occasional very light marginal foxing, very good copies in modern limp vellum, soiled. Significant contemp. annotations and corrections in several hands to first work, slightly trimmed, a few somewhat later annotations to second work, though one or two apparently matching one hand from first.
Two very rare Hebrew grammars, the first a scarce edition of Cleynaert’s extremely popular Hebrew grammar, first published 1529, bound with the second recorded edition (‘tertia editio’ on title-page) of a rare grammar first published 1541. Both are aimed at beginners, starting with the alphabet. However, while Cleynaert spends a great deal of time on nouns and their declinations – his book must have been useful to learners principally because of its extensive tables of declinations, with attention to the changes in accents or punctuation – before moving onto verbs, de Caligny moves straight onto verbs, only then dealing with nouns as they are used in relation to verbs, adverbs, pronouns and prepositions, etc.
Cleynaerts, a wonderfully prolific author, was an eccentric figure who saw linguistic scholarship as a means of peaceful mediation between Christians, Jews and Muslims, as well as a means to proselytization. Educated at Leuven in his native Brabant, he first travelled in Spain, where he applied in vain to read Arabic manuscripts in the library of the Inquisition, before going to Fez in Morocco, where he insisted on living in the Jewish (rather than the official Christian) quarter. Despite suffering abuse from local Jews, he found some who were willing to teach him Arabic in return for tuition in Latin, but was unsuccessful in his attempts to buy Arabic books from the bookstalls of the Great Mosque, since non-Muslims were banned. He returned to Granada after just over a year, having suffered a great deal, and died there in 1542. He is buried in the Alhambra. De Caligny, about whom much less is known, was a Hebraist of Vatable’s and Mercier’s circle in the Collège Royale de Paris.
This copy shows engagement by several readers. One contemporary annotator demonstrates an understanding of Hebrew grammar, expressed in contradictions of Cleynaert, notably over pronunciation of diphthongs and certain syllables (p. 16). Another, the most extensive, clearly applied his studies to Talmudic or biblical scholarship, given references to the Psalms, Book of Ruth, etc.
I: This ed. unrecorded in the US in OCLC. USTC gives the Newberry but apparently in error. II: OCLC finds a single copy of this ed. in the US, at the Hebrew Union College in Ohio. Neither in Steinschneider. I: This ed. not in Adams or BM STC Fr. USTC 153811. II: Adams C227. Not in BM STC Fr. USTC 149412.In stock
