Disordered Books and Dynamic Archives: Rabbinic Scholarly Practices in Early Modern Ashkenaz

AJS Review ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-75
Author(s):  
Tamara Morsel-Eisenberg
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Dynamic Activity ◽  
Modes Of Transmission ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
Modern Learning ◽  
Shed Light

This article examines early modern learning through Ashkenazic responsa. Beyond explicit evidence from published responsa collections, implicit insights dwell in what these publications lack. These missing features shed light on sixteenth-century scholarly practices. The works’ organizational inconsistencies must be understood in context of learned archives. Such an adjustment offers a corrective to the regnant narrative, which views the introduction of print as a sharp rupture from earlier modes of transmission. This article suggests instead that the culture of printed books coexisted with older approaches, and that print was complemented by more disorderly and unconstrained forms of transmission. Comparing rabbinic “paper-ware” with contemporaneous humanist practices highlights the rabbi's working papers, focusing on a culture's dynamic activity rather than its stable output. This shift in perspective allows us to see rabbinic writings not merely as a collection of books but as a mode of scholarship.

scholarly journals Hebrew Incunabula in the National Library of Israel as a Source for Early Modern Book History in Europe and Beyond

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Book History ◽  
Valuable Resource ◽  
National Library ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Vast Amount ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Books ◽  
Shed Light

Hebrew incunabula from the collection of the National Library of Israel contain a vast amount of manuscript annotations, many of them of historical, philological, linguistic, and palaeographical interest. The paper presents a few examples of owners’ notes that shed light on the history of books in early modern Jewish communities. From the book owned by the well-known rabbi Moses Alashkar, to a reference to the participation of rabbi Mordecai Dato in a family ceremony, and the extensive glosses of Samuel Lerma, to the joyful message of an unnamed Jew whose daughter had been released from captivity. Such material is a valuable resource for research on the distribution and use of early Hebrew printed books in Europe and beyond.

Medical Topics in the De anima Commentary of Coimbra (1598) and the Jesuits’ Attitude towards Medicine in Education and Natural Philosophy

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Sander
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
De Anima ◽  
Universities And Colleges ◽  
Jesuit Universities ◽  
Modern Learning ◽  
Jesuit College

Early-modern Jesuit universities did not offer studies in medicine, and from 1586 onwards, the Jesuit Ratio studiorum prohibited digressions on medical topics in the Aristotelian curriculum. However, some sixteenth-century Jesuit text books used in philosophy classes provided detailed accounts on physiological issues such as sense perception and its organic location as discussed in Aristotle’s De anima II, 7–11. This seeming contradiction needs to be explained. In this paper, I focus on the interst in medical topics manifested in a commentary by the Jesuits of Coimbra. Admittedly, the Coimbra commentary constituted an exception, as the Jesuit college that produced it was integrated in a royal university which had a strong interest in educating physicians. It will be claimed that the exclusion of medicine at Jesuit universities and colleges had its origin in rather incidental events in the course of the foundation of the first Jesuit university in Sicily. There, the lay professors of law and medicine intended to avoid subordination to the Jesuits and thereby provoked a conflict which finally led the Jesuit administration to refrain from including faculties of medicine and law in Jesuit universities. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, a veritable Jesuit animosity towards medicine emerged for philosophical and pedagogical reasons. This development reflects educational concerns within the Society as well as the role of commentaries on Aristotle for early-modern learning.


scholarly journals Annotating the Affections

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-216
Author(s):  
Kirk Essary
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
New Testament ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Emotion Words ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Historical Semantics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Shed Light

A key problem in the history of emotions arises from the shifting meaning of emotion terms throughout history and from the difficulty in translating emotion terms from one language to another. Erasmus’ New Testament and Annotations offer scholars interested in the ‘historical semantics of emotion’ invaluable insights into sixteenth-century emotions discourse and the translation of emotion terms from Greek into Latin. This paper examines some of the more problematic cases in order to shed light on how Erasmus handles the difficulties that are attendant to translating emotion words, and also considers the influence of Erasmus’ NT and Annotations in early modern Greek-to-Latin lexicons, a feature of his reception that has not been acknowledged to date.

Sixteenth-Century Jewish Makers of Printed Books and the Shaping of Late Renaissance Jewish Literacy

2019 ◽  
pp. 45-68
Author(s):  
Pavel Sládek
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Printing Press ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Late Renaissance

This chapter looks at the medium of printed books that was introduced into Jewish culture soon after its emergence in the mid-fifteenth century. It discusses the arrival of the presses that were run by different members of the Jewish Soncino family in Italy and elsewhere at the beginning of the 1480s, wherein a wide variety of genres appeared in print. It also describes the Soncino editions that were distinguished among printers by the accuracy and beauty of their typefaces. The chapter mentions the early printed book that was seen as a radical innovation in the age of complex cultural transformations both within and outside Jewish society. It recounts how the 'knowledge explosion' that was spurred by the rise of the printing press was a key factor in the formation of early modern Jewish cultural history.

scholarly journals Sixteenth-Century Polymaths in the Print and Publishing Business in Basel: An Intersection of Interests and Strategies (1472–1513)

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Valentina Sebastiani ◽  
Wendell Ricketts (translator)
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Publishing Business

In sixteenth-century Europe the business of printing created small intellectual communities that had the ability to manage the exigencies of the market and those of culture. In this process of continual negotiation between the interests of publishers, authors, and readers, how did men of letters lend their erudition to the service of printing? How were they able to elicit the interest of printers in publishing their works? And, above all, to what extent did their collaboration with printers impact their careers? This brief investigation analyzes the work of polymaths such as Johann Heynlin, Conrad Leontorius, Konrad Pellikan, Sebastian Brant, Jacob Wimpfeling, and Johann Reuchlin—who, acting as translators, proofreaders, and literary and typographical experts, collaborated with the Basel printer Johann Amerbach—in order to shed light on the fruitful reciprocity of printing and erudition that shaped the careers of early modern scholars and erudites. Dans l’Europe du XVIe siècle, l’imprimerie a créé de petites communautés d’intellectuels en mesure de tenir compte aussi bien des exigences culturelles que de celles du marché. À travers la continuelle négociation entre les intérêts des éditeurs, des auteurs et des lecteurs, comment ces hommes de lettre ont-ils mis leur érudition au service de l’imprimerie ? Comment arrivaient-ils à intéresser les éditeurs à leur travail ? Et surtout, dans quelle mesure leur collaboration avec ces éditeurs a-t-elle influencé leur carrière ? Cette brève enquête analyse le travail de savants polymathes tels que Johann Heynlin, Conrad Leontorius, Konrad Pellikan, Sebastian Brant, Jacob Wimpfeling et Johann Reuchlin, qui ont travaillé en tant que traducteurs, correcteurs d’épreuves, et d’experts typographes et littéraires avec l’imprimeur bâlois Johann Amerbach. Elle met ainsi en lumière la collaboration fructueuse de l’imprimerie et de l’érudition et son impact sur la carrière des intellectuels et des érudits de cette époque.

Crafting Piety for Success: Gülşeniye Literature and Culture in the Sixteenth Century*

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-75
Author(s):  
Side Emre
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Early Literature ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Political Environments ◽  
Close Textual Analysis ◽  
Rare Opportunity ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract Today, scholarship on Islamic mysticism mostly prioritizes the poetry and mystical teachings of famous Sufi masters, with limited efforts to historically contextualize them. One of the sub-branches of the Halvetī order, the Gülşeniye, while being an influential participant in early modern Ottoman politics and society, presents the historian of Sufism with a rare opportunity to approach this gap. Despite offering a wide range of untapped literary, hagiographical, and historical sources, studies on the Gülşeniye remain in the margins. Through Gülşeniye literary production, including poetry and hagio-biographies by dervish-authors, this article explores the mystical thought and piety of İbrāhīm-i Gülşeni (d. 940/1534), the founder of the Gülşenī order of dervishes in Egypt. Close textual analysis of sources reveals that Gülşenī’s inspirations formed the contours of the order’s early literature and culture. I argue that the Gülşeniye literary corpus, and the culture formed alongside it, was a product of changing socio-political environments, not a replica of the doctrines of the order’s founder. The shifts in the corpus unveil the order’s changing practical priorities and shed light on how the Gülşeniye secured a stable niche for itself in Ottoman Egypt in the sixteenth century.

scholarly journals Early Modern English Scientific Manuscripts in the Hunterian Collection: A Physical Description of Gul, MS Hunter 135

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesús Romero-Barranco
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Physical Description ◽  
The Third ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Manuscript Production ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
English Manuscript ◽  
Shed Light

RESUMEN: El presente artículo ofrece un análisis codicológico y paleográfi co del manuscrito Hunter 135, un volumen del siglo XVI que contiene cinco tratados de los cuales el segundo y la mitad del tercero son objeto de estudio (chirvrgia libri, ff. 34r-73v; y medica qvaedam, ff. 74r-121v). La descripción física no solo ha permitido aportar la posible fecha de composición del manuscrito sino que también ha hecho posible el análisis de las técnicas en la producción de manuscritos en el Periodo moderno temprano (1500-1700).ABSTRACT: The present article provides a codicological and palaeographic analysis of MS Hunter 135, a sixteenth-century volume containing fi ve treatises, the second and approximately half the third being the object of study (chirvrgia libri, ff. 34r-73v; and medica qvaedam, ff. 74r-121v). The physical description has not only shed light on the likely date of composition of the witness but also on the different practices in early Modern English manuscript production.

[I] ‘did write this Wyll with my own hand’

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 66-77
Author(s):  
Vassiliki Markidou
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Early Modern London ◽  
First Time ◽  
Shed Light

This article attempts for the first time to shed light on the politics of simulation and dissimulation in Isabella Whitney’s ‘Wyll and Testament’. It also argues that the poem both reflects its creator’s awareness of the celebrated English historical and topographical narratives and deviates from them by crucially omitting a seminal part of London’s history, namely its Troynovant tradition. In so doing, as well as by defining a paradoxical urban landscape, Whitney presents a tale not of the (mythic) founding of the English capital with its patriarchal and nation-building connotations, but of its (satiric) bequeathal by benevolent femininity, as such offering its reader a different angle from which to explore and interpret early modern London.

FINANCIAL REPORTING AND STEWARDSHIP ACCOUNTING IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY SPAIN

1986 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patti A. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Financial Reporting

This paper examines an early modern contribution to the literature on stewardship accounting, the Tratado de Cuentas or Treatise on Accounts, by Diego del Castillo, a sixteenth-century Spanish jurist.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
History Of Collecting ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Renaissance

This chapter explores the material culture of everyday life in late-Renaissance Paris by setting L’Estoile’s diaries and after-death inventory against a sample of the inventories of thirty-nine of his colleagues. L’Estoile and his family lived embedded in the society of royal office-holders and negotiated their place in its hierarchy with mixed success. His home was cramped and his wardrobe rather shabby. The paintings he displayed in the reception rooms reveal his iconoclastic attitude to the visual, contrasting with the overwhelming number of Catholic devotional pictures displayed by his colleagues. Yet the collection he stored in his study and cabinet made him stand out in his milieu as a distinguished curieux. It deserves a place in the early modern history of collecting, as his example reveals that the civil wars might be a stimulus as much as a disruption to collecting in sixteenth-century France.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document