Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Hunt. Add. E

General
Title
The Great Parchment
Manuscript name
Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Hunt. Add. E
Summary
Early in the sixteenth century, an old ilan was acquired by the Italian humanist and philosopher Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo (1472–1532). The text it bore was the idiosyncratic introduction to the sefirot Iggeret sippurim (Letter of stories) and Reuben Ṣarfati’s commentary on it, the “Commentary on the Great Parchment”—making it, therefore, “the” Great Parchment. The ilan subsequently found its way to the library of Catherine de’ Medici (1519–1589), the Italian noblewoman who became queen of France. Manuscripts from Catherine’s collection arrived at the royal library of Paris in 1599. It was there that the great scholar Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614) discovered the ilan. The old parchment, which by then may have celebrated its bicentennial, was in such poor condition and so difficult to read that Casaubon found it impossible to decipher. He therefore commissioned the Scottish Hebraist James Hepburn (1573–1620) to undertake its reproduction in 1606 or early 1607. Hepburn was a fine artist and a learned Hebraist with a penchant for Christianity-validating syncretistic prisca theologia (ancient theology). Hepburn is referred to in the colophon added later to the parchment as “the young brother Jacob Ḥebroni, the Scot.” This is in keeping with his self-reference on the engraving entitled Virga Aurea (Golden rod), an iconotextual feast that praises the Virgin in a kabbalistic whirlwind of seventy-two different alphabets. Hepburn prepared it with the engraver Philippe Thomassin (1562–1622) and printed it in Rome in 1616, while serving as curator of Oriental manuscripts in the Vatican. Hepburn’s reproduction of the old ilan displays no few decorative embellishments. For additional information, see J. H. Chajes, The Kabbalistic Tree, pp. 47–51.
Layout
1
Support material
parchment
Form
http://vocab.getty.edu/page/aat/300028629
Identifier
MS Hunt. Add. E
Alternative identifier
Repository
Oxford, The Bodleian Library
Country
http://ontologi.es/place/UK
Settlement
Oxford
Dimensions
Measure
1 membrane
Width
75.0 cm
Height
108.0 cm
Creation time
... Translation
... Commentary
... Object