Judah ben Jehiel (Judah Messer Leon)

Nofet Zufim (Flow of the Honeycomb: the art of rhetoric). [Mantua]: Abraham ben Solomon Conat, [1474–1475]



Royal 8vo, printed on quarter-sheets (8¼ x 5½ in.; 210 x 142 mm). Types 1:113 (sc.), 2:140 (sq.). 23 lines. collation: [1–7^{10 88 910 108 1110 128 1310 148 1510 168 1710 18–198]: 176 leaves, quires unsigned; complete; bifolium 14/3.6 supplied from another copy, quire 5 misbound between 6/9 (fol. 59) and 6/10 (fo.l 60),a  few scattered Hebrew manuscript notes, and three substantial Latin notes on 15/5v-6r, probably by Samson Cohen Modon (see provenance below); scattered light stains, crude cellotape patchings of marginal wormholes in about a dozen leaves, in one case with the cellotape lying over about three printed words, lower corner of last leaf missing, with partial lost of about five words, supplied in manuscript. A. The paper generally fresh and strong, and a large copy (British Library: 200 x 125 mm). Late seventeenth-century vellum, edges plain; endleaves renewed.}

Samson Cohen Modon, scholar and rabbi of Mantua, 1679–1727, author of Kol Mussar (Venice, 1721) and other works ("di Sansone sacerdote Modon," 7 May [16]95), with annotations apparently in his hand — Jakob Merzbacher, 1812–1883 (stamp, Bibliotheca Merzbacheriana, Monacensis), other of whose Hebrew incunables were acquired by the city library of Frankfurt — Elkan Nathan Adler (bookplate). Censors' signatures: Domenico Irosolimatano; Alessandro Scipione, 1597; Giovanni Dominico Carretto, 1617

Offenberg 80; Goff Heb-62; Hain 9370; Steinschneider 5724.1; Thes A7; Iakerson 13; BMC XIII 14 (C.50.b.15). See further A. K. Offenberg, "The Chronology of Hebrew Printing at Mantua in the Fifteenth Century," The Library 6th ser. 16 (1994) 298-315; Isaac Rabinowitz: The Book of the Honeycomb's Flow ... by Judah Messer Leon (Cornell, 1963).

Nofet Zufim (Flow of the Honeycomb: the art of rhetoric). [Mantua]: Abraham ben Solomon Conat, [1474–1475] Royal 8vo, printed on quarter-sheets (8¼ x 5½ in.; 210 x 142 mm). Types 1:113 (sc.), 2:140 (sq.). 23 lines. collation: [1–710 88 910 108 1110 128 1310 148 1510 168 1710 18–198]: 176 leaves, quires unsigned; complete; bifolium 14/3.6 supplied from another copy, quire 5 misbound between 6/9 (fol. 59) and 6/10 (fo.l 60),a few scattered Hebrew manuscript notes, and three substantial Latin notes on 15/5v-6r, probably by Samson Cohen Modon (see provenance below); scattered light stains, crude cellotape patchings of marginal wormholes in about a dozen leaves, in one case with the cellotape lying over about three printed words, lower corner of last leaf missing, with partial lost of about five words, supplied in manuscript. A. The paper generally fresh and strong, and a large copy (British Library: 200 x 125 mm). Late seventeenth-century vellum, edges plain; endleaves renewed.
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first edition, first printed work by a living jewish author; the second Hebrew book printed in Mantua. The first book from this press, by A. K. Offenberg's analysis, was the the extremely rare Behinat ha-Olam of Jedaiah Ha-Penini (Offenberg 75), [1474], whose colophon mentions not Conat himself, but his wife Estellina and a workman, Jacob Levi of Tarascon. Abraham Conat was a scribe and physician in Mantua, and was well acquainted with Judah Messer Leon, a widely travelled scholar who at this time was living as a teacher in Mantua. The Nofet Zufim, a treatise of Hebrew rhetoric, reflects Messer Leon's close acquaintance with the Christian humanist culture of his time. Closely related to the printed edition is a manuscript copy, now in the Ambrosiana, written in Ferrara by Menahem de Rossi and dated 12 October 1474. This manuscript includes, before the colophon, a verse commendation of Messer Leon by Conat: "I thank Thee, O God Eternal, for having caused Judah Messer Leon to create this work ...". The same verse commendation is included in the printed edition, which probably went to press not long after the Ferrara manuscript was completed.

This is the copy used as source text by the modern editor of the Nofet Zufim, Isaac Rabinowitz, who remarks at several places on the annotations, apparently by its seventeenth–eighteenth century owner Samson Modon, including one place where he accepts Modon's suggested emendation of a difficult passage.