Books by Ilona Steimann
Turnhout: Brepols, 2020
'Jewish Book – Christian Book: Hebrew Manuscripts in Transition between Jews and Christians in th... more 'Jewish Book – Christian Book: Hebrew Manuscripts in Transition between Jews and Christians in the Context of German Humanism' is intended as a contribution to the history of the production, circulation, and reception of Hebrew materials outside of a Jewish context.
An intriguing development in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century Christian Hebraism is how and why Christian scholars came to produce their own Hebrew books. 'Jewish Book – Christian Book' offers a novel examination of this phenomenon in light of nearly unknown Hebrew manuscripts produced by German Hebraists in that period. Anticipating Hebraist printed editions, the Hebraist manuscript copies of Jewish texts represent one of the earliest attempts of Christians to independently form a stock of Jewish literature, which would meet their scholarly needs and interests, and embody a unique encounter of Jewish and Christian views of the Hebrew text and book. How Hebraist copyists coped with the inherent 'Jewishness' of the Hebrew texts and in what ways they transformed and adapted them both textually and materially to serve Christian audience are among the key questions discussed in this study.
PhD Thesis by Ilona Steimann
This study examines Christian collecting of Hebrew books in the pre-Reformation German milieu. It... more This study examines Christian collecting of Hebrew books in the pre-Reformation German milieu. It focuses on the collection of nine biblical and liturgical Hebrew codices from the library of the Nuremberg physician and humanist, Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514), who was well known in his time as the compiler of the Nuremberg Liber chronicarum. Schedel’s Hebraica collection is one of a few extant Christian collections of Hebrew books which survived from ca. 1500. Its extensive study is therefore highly important for understanding early Christian Hebraism and its different strains, one of which was manifested in collecting Hebrew books by humanists, such as Schedel, who did not have any actual command of the Hebrew language.
Papers by Ilona Steimann
Corpus Masoreticum Working Papers, 8, 2024
The present study deals with two Ashkenazi Bibles, the Volterra Bible from 1294 (today in the Vat... more The present study deals with two Ashkenazi Bibles, the Volterra Bible from 1294 (today in the Vatican) and the Berio Bible from around 1300, which has hitherto erroneously been dated to 1438 (today in the Biblioteca Civica Berio in Genoa). Both codices are of a monumental size, and each was copied by several masoretes. Designed to shed light on the work of medieval Ashkenazi masoretes, this study reconstructs how these manuscripts were produced, examines the division of copying tasks, and discusses a group of related masoretic Bibles copied by the same masoretes. Careful analysis of the ways in which these masoretes cooperated with each other suggests that there may have been workshops in medieval Ashkenaz that specialized in writing the Masorah and vocalization.
Between Manuscript and Print: Transcultural Perspectives, ca. 1400–1800, edited by Sylvia Brockstieger and Paul Schweitzer-Martin, 2023
Mediterranean Historical Review, 2023
This article focuses on a large group of Hebrew manuscripts that members of the Jewish community ... more This article focuses on a large group of Hebrew manuscripts that members of the Jewish community in Candia sold to an anonymous Christian in 1541–1543. Not only selling Jewish books to Christians on such a large scale was unusual in the Jewish context, but also many aspects of the acquisition remain unknown. Largely based on the owners’ entries and purchase notes found in the acquired manuscripts and other documentary sources, this study examines the circumstances of the acquisition and its details from both Jewish and Christian perspectives and scrutinizes how each of the parties involved approached the acquisition.
Premodern Jewish Books, their Makers and Readers in an Era of Media Change, ed. by Katrin Kogman-Appel and Ilona Steimann, 2024
Personal Manuscripts: Copying, Drafting, Taking Notes, ed. by Jürgen Paul and David Durand-Guedy, 2023
Paratexts of Hebrew manuscripts that German monastic scholars copied by their own hand for their ... more Paratexts of Hebrew manuscripts that German monastic scholars copied by their own hand for their own use around 1500 offer valuable insight into their methods of working. In these paratexts, Christian copyists not only commented on the Jewish texts they copied, but also provided information about their textual exemplars. The emphasis placed on the exemplars may have been caused by the copyists' growing awareness of each copy being different necessitating efforts to make the chain of succeeding copies retrievable. However, the practice of referring to Jewish manuscripts used as exemplars brings with it more diverse issues, such as the status of originals and the processes of authentication of the copies, as well as the question of the Christian copyist's own role in transmitting Jewish texts to the Christian audience. || 1 Grafton 1999a, 30.
Ars Judaica, 2022
The meanings of books and book collections are inscribed in their trajectories, their material fo... more The meanings of books and book collections are inscribed in their trajectories, their material forms, and the ways owners and users interacted with them. To shed light on these rarely addressed aspects of book culture, this article examines the tangible dimensions of Jewish book collections in medieval Ashkenaz. By analyzing a range of sources, including Ashkenazi booklists, registers of Jewish property compiled by Christians, and manuscripts that were owned by Ashkenazi Jews, it provides new insights into the material, spatial, and temporal factors that may have affected the dissemination and preservation of knowledge.
Corpus Masoreticum Working Papers, 2023
This essay focuses on the Jonah Pentateuch (BL, Add. MS 21160) and the way it was produced. It id... more This essay focuses on the Jonah Pentateuch (BL, Add. MS 21160) and the way it was produced. It identifies the masorete as Isaac of Bressuire, who also wrote the Masorah in another Pentateuch, preserved in Parma (Biblioteca Palatina, MS Parm. 2338-2339). The study then explores a group of related French manuscripts from the early fourteenth century that display similar codicological and palaeographical features and traces their subsequent history in Piedmont in the second half of the fifteenth century. Further, based on palaeographical and textual evidence, it looks at the unique aspects of the local Masoretic tradition of west-central France and the way it was spread.
Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, 2022
U nlike jars that were used in the ancient world to protect scrolls from damage and loss, binding... more U nlike jars that were used in the ancient world to protect scrolls from damage and loss, bindings as we know them today were a product of making books in the form of a codex, a design that developed in the first few centuries of Christianity. At the beginning of the medieval period, Jews' adoption of the codex as their main book form made bindings integral to Jewish book culture. 1 The technique, materials, and artistic style of bindings varied greatly across time and space, producing diverse forms ranging from limp covers for small codices, which were often intended for private use, to massive, luxuriously decorated bindings made of leather on wooden boards, which were associated with the manuscripts' public functions and wealthy patrons. The purpose of the bindings was much
Hebrew Between Jews and Christians, ed. by Daniel Stein Kokin, 2022
The phenomenon of Hebraism has always been seen as closely connected to the study and some degree... more The phenomenon of Hebraism has always been seen as closely connected to the study and some degree of mastery of the Hebrew language. In his article on the twelfth-century Hebraists, Michael Signer distinguished between "lexical Hebraism" and "cultural Hebraism," based upon whether Christian scholars could directly approach Hebrew texts themselves ("lexical Hebraism") or depended on Jewish interlocutors ("cultural Hebraism").1 Similarly, regarding the seventeenth-century Christian Hebraists, Matt Goldish defined three levels of Hebraism, primary based on the degree of mastery of the Hebrew language. His categories encompassed Hebraists who could fluently read talmudic and rabbinic literature in its original Hebrew and Aramaic, those who had mastered biblical Hebrew but floundered in rabbinic writings, and those who could read some Hebrew but accessed Hebrew literature primarily in Latin and vernacular translations.2 Finally, for Aaron Katchen, the term "Hebraist" refers to one interested in the Hebrew text of the Scripture and Jewish exegesis, regardless of whether he possesses any specific knowledge of the Hebrew tongue.3 Around 1500, when the key figure of this paper, the Nuremberg physician and humanist Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514), well known as the compiler of the Nuremberg Weltchronik, collected his Hebrew books, all levels of Christian Hebraism could be found in the German milieu. Its highest level was represented, for instance, by the famous German jurist, scholar, and Hebraist Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), who had an excellent command of the Hebrew language, owned an impressive collection of Hebrew books, and published in 1506 a Hebrew grammar in Latin, Rudimenta linguae hebraicae.4 Standing at the lowest level of Hebraism
European Genizah: Newly Discovered Hebrew Binding Fragments in Context, ed. by Andreas Lehnardt, 2020
European Journal of Jewish Studies, 2018
This article focuses on the requisite sacred objects utilized in the ceremony of the Jewry-oath i... more This article focuses on the requisite sacred objects utilized in the ceremony of the Jewry-oath in Christian Europe. The objects, upon which Jewry-oaths were taken, were crucial for the oaths’ validity, but their nature and materiality remained invisible in the relevant primary sources. On the basis of the only extant example of such an object, a Hebrew Pentateuch which survived together with a recently-discovered fifteenth-century Nuremberg Jewry-oath, the article addresses Jewish and Christian conceptions of the sacredness of material entities and elucidates how these conceptions impinged upon the role of the objects in the oath-taking ceremony.
Renaissance Quarterly , 2017
Acquiring Hebrew books was a common practice among Christian humanists. More surprising, perhaps,... more Acquiring Hebrew books was a common practice among Christian humanists. More surprising, perhaps, is that a large group of Hebrew manuscripts was produced for a Christian library. A Jewish scribal workshop organized by Johann Jakob Fugger (1516–75) in Venice—here analyzed for the first time—is one of the rarest examples of this phenomenon that emerged out of Renaissance book culture. To understand Fugger’s extensive bibliophilic enterprise, this essay examines the circulation and dissemination of Hebrew texts from the Jewish bookshelf among Christians, the relationships between Christian patrons and Jewish scribes, and the role of manuscripts as agents of
print and as objects of collecting.
Gold und Bücher lieb ich sehr ... 480 Jahre Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg. Katalog zur Cimelien-Ausstellung vom 19. Oktober bis 15. Dezember 2017, ed. by Karl-Georg Pfändtner, 2017
Jewish Manuscript Cultures: New Perspectives, ed. by Irina Wandrey, 2017
The main aim of this article is to provide an overview of how German humanists and Hebraists for... more The main aim of this article is to provide an overview of how German humanists and Hebraists formed their Hebraica collections around 1500, ranging from less than a dozen Hebrew codices to several hundred volumes in mid-16th-century humanist libraries. The period in question is actually one of the earliest encounters that Christians had with a great number of Jewish books, and reflects earlier Christian conceptions of Jewish literature as well as predetermining those to come.
First, the article analyses the modes and channels for the acquisition of Hebraica by Christians and the difficulties involved in such a task, which had serious implications for the scope and character of Christian Hebraica collections. It then traces the dissemination of Jewish texts among Christians according to the texts’ genres and discusses their Christian uses. Christian additions to and modifications of Hebrew texts reflected polemics, appreciation and appropriation, and as a whole effected the transition of the Hebrew book from a Jewish to a Christian object.
Gli ebrei nel Salento. Secoli IX-XVI, ed. Fabrizio Lelli. , 2013
Two illuminated Haggadot from Venetian Candia that were not thoroughly studied until now are the ... more Two illuminated Haggadot from Venetian Candia that were not thoroughly studied until now are the rarest extant examples of the Hebrew illuminated manuscripts produced in the Romaniot milieu. Their illustrative cycle is a compilation of different models, originated in Sepharad and Ashkenaz, although they incorporate many local Candiot characteristics. The study of these Haggadot reveals the complexity of the Jewish cultural background in Candia in the sixteenth century.
Book Reviews by Ilona Steimann
Renaissance Quarterly, 2019
Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin , 2016
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Books by Ilona Steimann
An intriguing development in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century Christian Hebraism is how and why Christian scholars came to produce their own Hebrew books. 'Jewish Book – Christian Book' offers a novel examination of this phenomenon in light of nearly unknown Hebrew manuscripts produced by German Hebraists in that period. Anticipating Hebraist printed editions, the Hebraist manuscript copies of Jewish texts represent one of the earliest attempts of Christians to independently form a stock of Jewish literature, which would meet their scholarly needs and interests, and embody a unique encounter of Jewish and Christian views of the Hebrew text and book. How Hebraist copyists coped with the inherent 'Jewishness' of the Hebrew texts and in what ways they transformed and adapted them both textually and materially to serve Christian audience are among the key questions discussed in this study.
PhD Thesis by Ilona Steimann
Papers by Ilona Steimann
print and as objects of collecting.
First, the article analyses the modes and channels for the acquisition of Hebraica by Christians and the difficulties involved in such a task, which had serious implications for the scope and character of Christian Hebraica collections. It then traces the dissemination of Jewish texts among Christians according to the texts’ genres and discusses their Christian uses. Christian additions to and modifications of Hebrew texts reflected polemics, appreciation and appropriation, and as a whole effected the transition of the Hebrew book from a Jewish to a Christian object.
Book Reviews by Ilona Steimann
An intriguing development in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century Christian Hebraism is how and why Christian scholars came to produce their own Hebrew books. 'Jewish Book – Christian Book' offers a novel examination of this phenomenon in light of nearly unknown Hebrew manuscripts produced by German Hebraists in that period. Anticipating Hebraist printed editions, the Hebraist manuscript copies of Jewish texts represent one of the earliest attempts of Christians to independently form a stock of Jewish literature, which would meet their scholarly needs and interests, and embody a unique encounter of Jewish and Christian views of the Hebrew text and book. How Hebraist copyists coped with the inherent 'Jewishness' of the Hebrew texts and in what ways they transformed and adapted them both textually and materially to serve Christian audience are among the key questions discussed in this study.
print and as objects of collecting.
First, the article analyses the modes and channels for the acquisition of Hebraica by Christians and the difficulties involved in such a task, which had serious implications for the scope and character of Christian Hebraica collections. It then traces the dissemination of Jewish texts among Christians according to the texts’ genres and discusses their Christian uses. Christian additions to and modifications of Hebrew texts reflected polemics, appreciation and appropriation, and as a whole effected the transition of the Hebrew book from a Jewish to a Christian object.