- Shelfmark:
-
Ms. ebr. 530 III, Recto
Vatican Library, Vatican City, Vatican City State - Dimensions:
- ca. 70 × 60 cm
- Material:
- parchment
- Handwriting:
- Byzantine
- Page Number:
- 171
- Main Language:
- Rabbinic Hebrew
- Former Shelfmark:
- 530 III, Catalogue Allony-Loewinger Vatican, Vatican City, Vatican City State
- About the MS:
- 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.
- Colophon:
- "ליל ב' ר"ח שבט שנת א'ר'י'ה' נכתב זה האילן לבחור הנחמד שמו ר' ירמיא נומיקו בר משה יצ"ט תולעת קטנה שלמה אשטרוק בכה"ר אליה זלה"ה ונפרעתי ממנו ביום זה ..."
- Type:
- Classical ilan, Classical
- Research Literature:
-
- J. H. Chajes, The Kabbalistic Tree (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2022), 43, 57–58. Nehemya Allony and David S. Loewinger, The List of Photocopies of Hebrew Manuscripts in the Institute: Part III, Hebrew Manuscripts in the Vatican Library (Jerusalem: 1968). Benjamin Richler, ed., Hebrew Manuscripts in the Vatican Library: Catalogue, palaeographical and codicological descriptions by Malachi Beit-Arié and Nurit Pasternak, Studi e Testi 438 (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2008).
- NLI Record:
- NLI Record
- Hebrew Text:
- {prevLink} {text} {nextLink}
- Translation:
- {translation}
- Feature:
-
{feature}
{featureDefinition} - Parent feature:
-
{parentFeature}
{parentFeatureDefinition}
{moduleAnnotationsField}
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{connectedField}
- Zone Name
- {zoneName} {relatedField}
- Similar Objects:
- {similar}