Luah ha-Dikduk (Tabula in Grammaticen Hebraeam), Nicolas Clénard, Louvain: Thierry Martens, 1529, bound with: Ex Variis Libellis Eliae Grammaticorum …, Jan van Campen, Louvain: Thierry Martens, 1528

104 + 128 pages (7 5/8 x 5 1/2 in.; 195 x 142 mm). Two works bound in one volume. Text in Latin and Hebrew, printer's device on final leaf of each work, ownership inscription and library stamp on title page of Ex Variis…. Some browning and dampstaining. Seventeenth-century red morocco gilt; gilt turn-ins, spine gilt in compartments with floral motif, edges gilt; covers scuffed, spine rubbed at head and foot.

Dominican Convent at Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, library stamp on title.

Vinograd, Louvain 1; Bakelants & Hoven, 1.

TWO WORKS BOUND TOGETHER

Rare first edition of Clénard's Hebrew grammar. Clénard was among the first generation of pupils at the Collegium Trilingue Lovaniense, the college founded in 1517 by the humanist Jérôme de Busleyden. Clenardus' methodical and clearly presented Hebrew grammar proved to be enormously popular and became a standard text, reissued many times over the next century. Like Clénard, the Dutch Hebraist and theologian Jan van Campen studied at the Collegium, where he later became Professor of Hebrew. His treatise on masoretic Hebrew, the second work in this volume, was published in the same year as Levita’s Hebrew grammar, from which Van Campen borrowed liberally.

Martens was the leading printer in Louvain during the first third of the sixteenth century and oversaw a number of books specifically for the Collegium. Both of these titles would have been particularly suitable as Hebrew was one of the college's three languages.