Date of first printing
The date at which printing in Hebrew began can not be definitely established. There is a whole series of works without date or place (12-21) which experts are inclined to assign to Rome (where Latin printing began in 1467), and any or all of these may be before the first dated work, which is an edition of Rashi's commentary on the Pentateuch, published in Reggio,Places of printing
Hebrew books were produced in the fifteenth century only in the Italian and Iberian peninsulas, though several of the printers were of German origin, as Abraham Jedidiah, the Soncinos, Ḥayyim ha-Levi, Joseph and Azriel Gunzenhauser. The period under review was perhaps the nadir of Jewish fortunes in Germany. Expulsions occurred throughout the land, and it is not to be wondered at that no Hebrew presses were started in the land of printing. In all there are known seventeen places where Hebrew printing took place in the fifteenth century—eleven in Italy, three in Spain, and three in Portugal, as may be seen from the following list, which gives in chronological order the places, the names of the printers, and numbers (in parentheses) indicating the works printed by each, the numbers having reference to the table on pp. 578, 579. Italy.Table of incunabula
Printers
As to the personal history of the printers enumerated in the list above very few details are known. Abraham Conat was a physician whose wife also was interested in printing; she produced the first edition of the "Beḥinat 'Olam." Garton, Cusi, and Giacon appear to have produced their works as a labor of love rather than for profit. Abraham dei Tintori, the Soncinos, and the Gunzenhausers, on the other hand, seem to have regarded their craft as a means of livelihood, The Soncinos, indeed, printed books in other characters than Hebrew (see Soncino family), as did also Abraham d'Ortas. There does not appear to have been much competition, though it is remarkable how invariably the choice of publishers fell within a limited class of works. In one case, however, two printers of the same city opposed each other with an edition of the same work. In August 1490, Joseph Gunzenhauser produced at Naples an edition of Ḳimḥi's "Shorashim"; on 11 February 1491, the same work was produced, as Zedner states, by Isaac b. Judah b. David Katorzi, who, according to Proctor, was also the printer of the Naples Naḥmanides of 1490. It would seem also that the two Pentateuchs of Hijar, 1490, were produced by rival printers.Typographical details
All forms of Hebrew type were used in this period, the square, the Rashi or rabbinic (in which the first dated work was entirely printed), and the so-called "Weiberteutsch" (in which the later Yiddish works were printed); a primitive form of this last had already been used in the Psalms of 1477. Different sizes of type were used as early as the Ṭurim of Piove di Sacco, which uses no less than three. The actual fonts have not yet been determined, and until this is done no adequate scientific treatment of the subject is possible. A beginning, however, has been made by Proctor. Generally speaking, a more rounded form was used in Spain and Portugal (perhaps under the influence of Arabic script) than in the Italian presses, whose types were somewhat Gothic in style. It has been conjectured that the Spanish printers used logotypes in addition to the single letters. The Soncinos and Alantansis used initials, in other presses vacant spaces were left for them to be inserted by hand. Vowel-points were only used for Scripture or for prayer-books, and accents seem to have been inserted for the first time in the Bologna Pentateuch of 1482 (25). Special title-pages were rare; colophons were usually short. Borders were used by the Soncinos, as well as by Toledano at Lisbon and D'Ortas in the Ṭur of 1495 (see Borders; Colophon; Title-Page). Illustrations were only used in one book, the "Mashal ha-Ḳadmoni" (75). Printers' marks appear to have been used only in Spain and Portugal, each of the works produced in Hijar having a different mark. Of the number of copies printed for an edition the only detail known is that relating to the Psalms with Ḳimḥi in 1477, of which three hundred were printed. If this number applies to many of the incunabula, it is not surprising that they are extremely rare at the present day. Twenty of them exist only in a single copy; most of the rest are imperfect through misuse or have been disfigured by censors.Location
A majority of the examples still extant exist in seven public libraries (British Museum, London; Columbia University, New York; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Bodleian, Oxford; Frankfort City Library; Biblioteca Palatina, Parma; Asiatic Museum, St. Petersburg) and seven or eight private collections (E. N. Adler, London; Dr. Chwolson, St. Petersburg; A. Freimann, Frankfort; Dr. M. Gaster, London; Baron Günzburg, St. Petersburg; H. B. Levy, Hamburg; Mayer Sulzberger, Philadelphia). The numbers included in each of these collections are given in the following lists, with the letters by which they are indicated in the table on pp. 578, 579. Each of the following lists has been checked and authenticated by the librarian or owner of the collection, and is here published for the first time. The remaining locations are mentioned in the table only in sporadic instances, and do not profess to exhaust the incunabula contained in such collections as those of Amsterdam, Berlin, Breslau, Carlsruhe, Munich, etc. Dr. N. Porges of Leipsic and Dr. Simonsen of Copenhagen are also understood to have collections. see table But few details are known as to the actual prices paid for some of these works. It would appear that Reuchlin paid three Rhine gulden for the Naples Naḥmanides of 1490 and the Former Prophets with Ḳimḥi (Soncino, 1485), and twice as much for the Soncino Bible of 1488. A note at the end of De Rossi's copy of the Guadalajara Ḳimḥi of 1482 states that three carline were paid for it in 1496 by the owner of that date.Choice of books
The subject-matter of the works selected for the honors of print was on the whole what might have been anticipated. First came the Bible text, either a part (19, 30, 49, 68, 74, 77, 84, 91, 92, 93) or the whole (51, 76, 94). A large number of Bible commentaries was printed, including those of Abraham ibn Ezra (53), Baḥya ben Asher (87), David Ḳimḥi (6, 22, 37, 40, 46, 83), David ibn Yaḥya (82), Immanuel of Rome (39), Levi b. Gershon (4, 11, 16), Naḥmanides (14, 59, 72), and Rashi (1, 12, 25, 28, 44, 48): some of the works contained a combination of commentaries (43, 65, 79, 88). Then came the Mishnah (86) and parts of the Talmud (29, 30, 56, 57, 58, 60, 90). As further aids to these were grammars (54, 85), Ḳimḥi's Bible lexicon (21, 73, 78), and the Talmud lexicon of Nathan b. Jehiel (13). Next in popularity to Bible and Talmud came the halakic works, especially the codes of Jacob b. Asher (2, 3, 5, 27, 35, 45, 64, 67, 98)—the most popular single work—Maimonides (18, 71), and Moses de Coucy (15, 55), together with the "Agur" (89) and Kol Bo (69). To these may be added the solitary volume of responsa, that ofReferences
Jewish Encyclopedia Bibliography
* De Rossi, ''Annales Hebræo-Typographici'', section xv., Parma, 1795; * Cassel and Steinschneider, ''Jüdische Typographie'', in Ersch and Gruber, Encyc. section ii., part 28, pp. 33–37; * M. Schwab, ''Les Incunables Orientaux'', Paris, 1883; * Chwolson, ''Reshit Ma'ase ha-Defut be-Yisrael'', Warsaw, 1897; * Berliner, ''Ueber den Einfluss'', Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1897; * Simonsen, ''Hebraisk Bogtryk'', Copenhagen, 1901; * Proctor, ''Index of Printed Books in the British Museum'', 1901; * Freimann, Ueber Hebräische Inkunabeln, in ''Central-blatt für Bibliothekswesen'', 1902, vol. xix. (printed separately, Leipsic); * Leone Luzzatto, in ''Vesillo'', 1900, pp. 296 et seq.G. J.External links
*