Sefer Agur, Jacob Landau, Rimini, Gershom Soncino: 1524

104 leaves ( 8 1/8 x 6 in.; 207 x 150 mm). Title within woodcut architectural frame; woodcut initial word panel. Title page and final leaf mounted, several leaves strengthened at gutter, a few marginal repairs, all expertly accomplished; modern foliation in pencil;very lightly soiled in spots; ex library stamps f.101-2. Modern half vellum over red cloth; gilt stamping.

Vinograd, Rimini 6; Habermann, Soncino, 77.

Sefer Agur is a concise halakhic compendium by Jacob ben Judah Landau, member of a prominent German rabbinic family who resettled in Naples in 1487. There he worked for a time as a proofreader at the press of Joseph Gunzenhauser, who printed the first edition of Landau’s Sefer Agur in 1491. The work relied primarily on the Tur of Jacob ben Asher and followed the arrangement of that work. Prominent mention is made, however, of later Ashkenazic decisors and their rulings, among them: Israel Isserlein, Jacob Weil, Joseph Colon, and the author’s father, Judah Landau. In the present edition, the text of Sefer Agur proper is followed by a subject index (ff. 87v-98r), as well as Sefer Hazon, a short composition on talmudic conundrums, which is absent in most copies (ff. 99r-102r). The incunable edition of the Agur was the first book to contain rabbinic approbations and these have been reprinted in the present edition (f. 1v). Rimini having only recently been reincorporated into the rule of the Papal States, it is no surprise that when Gershom Soncino elected to reprint the work in that city, his dating of the title page was rendered: “ in the third year of our lord Pope Clement VII (Giulio de' Medici, pope from 1523 to 1534), i.e. 1526.