Petrus Niger, Stern des Meschiah, Esslingen, 1477, modern calf

From the Collection of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

NIGER, PETRUS

Contra perfidos Judaeos de conditionibus veri Messiae [German] Stern des Meschiah. Esslingen: Conrad Fyner, 20 December 1477

Median 4to (224 x 145mm.), 322 leaves, the first quire (containing the Grammar) bound between quires 39 and 40, 28 lines, gothic type, large woodcut historiated initials, smaller outline lombard initials, two full page woodcuts (Niger disputing with Jews; Christ’s entry into Jerusalem), each repeated, two smaller in-text woodcuts regarding the Divine Name, woodcut Hebrew letters in the grammar section, a few pages with rubricator’s marks, some early quire numbering in brown ink, nineteenth-century marbled sheep by J. Macdonald Co. of Norwalk, Conn., gilt edges

A considerably revised and expanded German version of Niger’s Contra perfidos Judaeos, a rabidly anti-Jewish text issued by the same press on 6 June 1475, which contains one of the earliest appearances in print of Hebrew characters. Niger was a Dominican of wide travels who had knowledge of Hebrew and the Jewish religion (he may have been of Jewish origin and an early convert to Christianity), and was an active preacher; the first woodcut shows a disputation between Christian and Jewish scholars, probably based on one that Niger held at Regensburg in 1474. This woodcut, probably by an Ulm artist, is an early depiction of contemporary Jews as seen by the artist, wearing their distinctive ring badges and with obvious visual differences from the Christian scholars on the right of the image. The Hebrew grammar contained within this book was not superseded until Reuchlin's influential work of 1506.

LITERATURE:

ISTC in00258000

PROVENANCE:

Arthur C. Lamport, presentation inscription to; The Jewish Theological Seminary