Auction 1 - Rare Hebrew Books, Manuscripts & Rabbinic Letters
Lot 50:
Description
Second edition of the classic supercommentary to Rashi by R. Eliyahu Mizrahi (c. 1450/1455-1526), the leading Romaniote rabbi and halakhic authority of Ottoman Constantinople. The edition is a major Bomberg production and includes, on fol. 280b, a schematic printed map of Eretz Israel with Hebrew captions. Mizrahi’s map first appeared in the Venice 1523 edition and is among the better-known early Hebrew maps connected with biblical geography.
This copy offers unusually rich evidence of ecclesiastical censorship. The words כשר שבמצרים הרוג on fol. 99b have been blotted out, as have ערל and גוי on fol. 97a. The final leaves bear several censorial attestations, including Fra Luigi da Bologna (1599), Camillo Jaghel (1613), another censor dated 1616, and an additional earlier or contemporary review note on the preceding leaf. The title-page also bears a correction note beginning ‘Corr. da fra…’
The final leaf preserves a Hebrew-Italian medical or segulah recipe beginning בס״ד סגולה על… for the treatment of what appears to be scrofula (סקרופילי / scrofula), copied with the formula מצאתי כתוב and using vernacular Italian pharmaceutical terminology. Stamp of Aviezri Wolf, Jerusalem.
Copy: Complete copy, attractive clean copy, no worming or staining. Modern half leather binding. Ownership inscriptions on title-page, map on fol. 280b; censor signatures on final leaves; Hebrew-Italian medical recipe on final leaf.
Provenance: The collection of Abraham Lieberman, Flatbush, Brooklyn NY
Opening price: $1000
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