Hegesippus, De excidio iudeorum ('On the destruction of the Jews'), in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [north-east Italy (probably Padua), c.1460]

A magnificent manuscript, in almost flawless condition, of the greatest medieval text on the exile of the Jews. Probably the only copy in private hands.

provenance

1. Signed by the scribe Petrus Lomer (fol.185r), who also wrote Verona, Bib. Capitolare, Cod. CCXXXIV (221), Aegidius Romanus, with English decoration, and Padua, Bib. Capitolare, MS. C.78, Coluccio Salutati, illuminated in Padua. He also signed a manuscript named as 'Libellus Augustatis', which was lot 1531 in the G. F. Hart sale, Boston, 17 April 1890. A. Derolez (Codicologie des manuscrits en écriture humanistique, I, 1984, p.157) speculates that he may have been Venetian. His name and his work in the Verona manuscript, however, may suggest that he was English, or at least that he worked for the English market.

2. Franz-Joseph von Hahn (1699-1748), bishop of Bamberg and Arad, who had his fine collection of humanistic manuscripts and incunabula embellished by the 'Master of the Canonici Fakes' with spurious armorials, including Visconti (as here), Medici, Gonzaga, Bembo, Este, and others (cf. Pächt and Alexander, II, 1970, nos.761 and 819; A. C. de la Mare and L. Nuvoloni, Bartolomeo Sanvito, 2009, p.200; and especially H. Boese, 'Über die 1747 in Venedig verkaufen 'Sagredo-Handschriften', Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 66, 1986, pp.269-309). He then consigned the library to the Venetian bookseller Gianbattista Albrizzi, who added them surreptitiously to the sale of the library of the Venetian procurator Geraldo Sagredo, Venice, 1747.

3. William Ewart Gladstone (1809-98), prime minister, statesman, classicist; from his extensive library at Hawarden Castle (bookplate with shelfmark MM I 10); sale by his descendants, Christie's, 8 December 1982, lot 122.

4. Lawrence J. Schoenberg, LJS 237 (C. Black, Transformation of Knowledge, 2006, p.144, no.26); sold now for the benefit of the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Charitable Trust.

text

Hegesippus' De excidio iudeorum is the late classical Latin translation and adaptation of Josephus' History of the Jewish War, the fundamental account of the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the Jewish people in the first century AD. It has been edited by Ussani as Hegesippi qui dicitur historiae libri V, 1932. The author's strange name may be a misreading of 'Josephus'. The text was written from a Christian perspective in the late fourth century, soon after 370. It is most probably the version of Josephus cited by Jerome in a letter written between 386 and 400 (Epist. lxxi). The text follows Josephus' Jewish War as its main thread, incorporating episodes from his Jewish Antiquities, supplemented by allusions to Virgil, Sallust and Cicero, but is an original and interpretive work, as well as a significant milestone in the history of Christian interest in Jewish antiquity. It narrates at length the history of the Jews from the rule of Herod to the fall of Jerusalem, with chapters on Herod's disastrous reign, his murder of his wife Mariamme and his heir, the general plight of Judea under Roman rule, and the outbreak of rebellion to that oppression. It describes in horrifying detail the subsequent arrival of Vespasian and the Roman legions, and the siege of Jerusalem, looting of the temple and complete destruction of both on the orders of Emperor Titus. The account ends in a heart-rending lament addressed to the city itself: "All have been killed, both who lived within your walls and those who came to you from afar ... everything is laid bare, burnt to ashes from the roofs down, overthrown from the foundations ... the streets are empty of the living and are filled with the dead ... would that we had died, before we looked upon our sacred city destroyed by the hands of the enemy, and our ancestral temple consumed by flames". 

The text of Hegesippus is of primary importance as an early witness to the works of Josephus and their reception and use in late antiquity. The earliest version of Josephus' own account was written in his 'paternal tongue' (presumably Aramaic), but of this nothing survives. It was translated into Greek, most probably under his supervision, but the earliest manuscripts date to the tenth or eleventh century (the best being Paris, BnF.gr.1425 and Ambrosiana, D sup 50). One of the oldest manuscripts of the Greek text, probably of the first half of the eleventh century, was lot 816 in the Phillipps sale in these rooms, 26 November 1975. All these date from some six or seven hundred years after Hegesippus had used a copy of the text to produce his translation.

The text is extremely rare in private hands. As far as we are aware, only four other manuscripts of Hegesippus have been sold at public auction in the last century and a half, all from the Phillipps library. They are: (1) Phillipps MS 884, last sold in the Harold Baillie Weaver sale, 29 March 1898, lot 306; acquired in 1917 by the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, MS.Nh65; (2) Phillipps 3711, last sold in the George Dunn sale, 11 February 1913, lot 464; given in 1943 by L.M.Rabinowitz to the Beinecke Library, Yale University, MS 280; (3) Phillipps MS 2343, last sold in the Yates Thompson sale, 23 March 1920, lot 31, given in 1947 by Dyson Perrins to Winchester Cathedral, MS 20; and (4) Phillipps MS. 23029, last sold in our rooms 16 June 1908, lot 354, and acquired in 1984 by the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, their Lat.4º 999.