General

Title

Vatican City, BAV, MS Vat.ebr. 530 III

Manuscript name

Vatican City, BAV, MS Vat.ebr. 530 III

Summary

The striking ilan preserved in the Vatican library exhibits a top edge cut in a manner that retains the natural contours of the animal skin while suggesting something like a peaked roof. According to the colophon on its verso, this intriguing artifact was drafted in Crete in the year 1451. Its text, in a Byzantine script, is an anonymous commentary on the sefirot likely authored by Joseph Gikatilla or one of his disciples. Sefirotic names, appellations, and associations are featured in its medallions, with more extensive discussions inscribed in the nearest available spaces. In these spaces, each sefirah is described in a few hundred words that address the reader in the second person, sharing the secret of each: its essential characteristics, its role in the overall system, the “unerasable” divine name and biblical figure to which it corresponds, elements from Sefer yeẓirah, and more. Matters of sefirotic positioning and spatial relationships are also emphasized throughout the short treatise. Thus not only are the qualities of each sefirah attended to but also their networking; an accounting of the channels that connect them to one another is integral to the presentation. Adapted from J. H. Chajes, The Kabbalistic Tree (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2022).

Layout

Byzantine script; copied by Solomon Astruc b. Elijah for Jeremiah b. Moses Nomico, Candia (Crete), 1451

Support material

parchment

Form

http://vocab.getty.edu/page/aat/300028629

Identifier

MS Vat.ebr. 530 III

Repository

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

Country

http://ontologi.es/place/VAT

Settlement

Vatican City

Dimensions

Measure

1 sheet

Width

60.0 cm

Height

70.0 cm

Creation time