Classics and Religious Studies

 

Title

Christian Hebrew Printing in the Sixteenth Century: Printers, Humanism and the Impact of the Reformation

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

January 2000

Comments

Published in Helmantica: Revista de Filología Clásica y Hebrea v.51 / nr.154 (Enero–Abril [January-April] 2000), pp. 13-42. Edited by Santiago García Jalón de la Lama.
Copyright © 2000 Editorial Universitas, Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca. Used by permission.
http://www.publicaciones.upsa.es

Abstract

Christian printers of Hebrew books have long been recognized as a crucial factor in the spread of Christian Hebraism in early modern Europe. Their works have traditionally been listed together with Jewish books in bibliographies such as Moritz Steinschneider's catalogue of books on Hebrew language instruction, and the Bodleian library's collection Hebrew imprints since both contain Hebrew type, but grouping them together also blurs their distinctive features. Yet the business of Hebrew printing for Christians differed in character from Jewish printing in a variety of ways. In this essay I will analyze the geographic distribution of non-Jewish Hebrew printing firms in sixteenth-century Europe and the kinds of books they produced, identify the most important Hebrew printers and the reasons for their success in this specialized field, and consider several effects of the Reformation upon Christian Hebrew printing.

In this article, the author firstly examines the circumstances of printing and publication of Hebrew books among Christians in the 16th century; for this purpose, he makes use of statistics, adding some remarks. Next, he focuses on the Reformation as one of the outstanding factors to the development of Christian printing involved in the edition of Hebrew works.

En este articulo, el autor examina, en primer lugar, las circunstancias de impresión y publicación de libros hebreos en círculos cristianos en el siglo xvi, sirviéndose para ello de datos estadísticos comentados. A continuación, centra su exposicion en la Reforma como uno de los factores decisivos para el desarrollo de las prensas cristianas involucradas en la edicidn de obras hebreas.