This elegant illuminated copy of the Sefer Moreh Nevukhim (Guide to the Perplexed) by Moses Maimonides was produced in Christian Spain in 1292. It is a copy of the Hebrew translation of the work made in 1204 by Samuel ben Judah Ibn Tibbon (1150-1230). The manuscript arrived in Italy either after the Jewish persecutions of 1391 or the ensuing expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian peninsula in 1492. It was in the possession of the renowned Bolognese Sforno family before reappearing in the early 17th century in the hands of the Italian Jewish apostate and inquisitor Renato da Modena. After more than a century, the manuscript reappeared in the possession of Johann Caspar Ulrich (1705-1768) a Protestant theologian, who donated it in 1762 to the Bibliotheca Ecclesia Carolina, the chapter library of the reformed Grossmünster church of Zurich. In 1835, when the chapter was dissolved, the books and manuscripts of the chapter library became part of the new Cantonal Library in Zurich. Finally in 1917, the holdings of this library, among others, formed the new Zentralbibliothek, where the manuscript still remains today. (iss)

Online Since: 03/19/2020