Sefer ha-Roke'ah, Eleazer ben Judah of Worms, Cremona: Vicenzo Conti, 1557

88 [of 96] leaves(12½ x 7¼ in.; 318 x 184 mm), lacking ff. 73-78, 85 and final blank. Printed on blue paper (ff.37,42,77-91on white paper.) Printer's ornaments on title; three mends in blank portions of title, waterstains and some spotting; ownership stamps on title, censor's signature (Domenico Irosolomitano) on title page. Old half cloth; backstrip gone, covers and edges rubbed.

Thora-Lehranstalt (Yeshiva), Frankfurt-am-Main—their stamp on title and endpapers and shelflabel on front pastedown; Salmia Foa—inscription on title page

Vinograd, Cremona 14; Benayahu, Cremona 8

88 [of 96] leaves(12½ x 7¼ in.; 318 x 184 mm) lacking ff.73-78, 85 and final blank. Printed on blue (ff.37,42,77-91on white) paper;. Printer's ornaments on title; three mends in blank portions of title, waterstains and some spotting; ownership stamps on title, censor's signature (Domenico Irosolomitano) on title page. Old half cloth; backstrip gone, covers and edges rubbed.
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printed on blue paper

Sefer ha-Roke'ah is an early imprint of Vincenzo Conti, who in 1556 established the first Hebrew press at Cremona, then a center of Jewish scholarship. Conti began printing in Cremona in 1556, two years after the Hebrew presses of Venice had either ceased printing or greatly reduced their production in the wake of the burning of the Talmud. Although Cremona, in the Duchy of Milan, was part of the domain of Phillip II of Spain, nevertheless, the atmosphere was sufficiently tolerant at the time to permit a Hebrew press to operate there, addressing a growing need that the other Hebrew presses, in Sabbioneta and Ferrara, were unable to satisfy.

Though it was Daniel Bomberg who had introduced the practice of printing deluxe editions of Hebrew books on blue paper as early as 1519, later printers of Hebrew books followed his example, among them Vicenzo Conti, who produced blue paper copies of half a dozen works in the late 1550s.  At around the same time, perhaps under Conti's influence, rival Jewish printers in Mantua began to use blue paper, as well as parchment, for their own deluxe copies. The Mantua blue paper copies of the Zohar, the classic work of Jewish mysticism, led to the mistaken view that kabbalistic texts were always printed on blue paper.

After the publication of the first Index of Prohibited Books in 1559, Conti's output suffered enormously at the hands of the Catholic Church. Although the civil authorities had permitted Conti to operate a Hebrew press, and even initially resisted the Dominicans' efforts to curtail its operations, their efforts proved futile and in 1559, more than a thousand volumes were confiscated from the Conti press.

In this edition of Sefer ha-Roke'ah, cross references to the Talmudic sources in the text have been placed in the margins. The anonymous editor, perhaps not satisfied that this improvement would garner him sufficient acceptance of this new edition, vehemently railed against the earlier 1505 Fano imprint of the same work. He complained bitterly that the earlier edition was rife with errors. He insisted however that this was the fault not of the author, Eleazer ben Judah of Worms, or the editor, Yehudah Yaaleh of Pesaro. Instead he accuses the pressmen of  Gershom Soncino, insinuating that as they may not have been Jewish, they might therefore have been responsible for the shoddy work in the earlier edition and "used [Soncino's] scepter and then hid behind his skirts. He goes so far as to call the earlier edition an example of "hillul hashem" (lit. desecration of [God's] name), quoting from Ecclesiastes 1:15, "that which is crooked cannot be made straight.