Lot 196
  • 196

BABYLONIAN TALMUD, TRACTATE NIDDAH, VENICE: DANIEL BOMBERG, 1520

Estimate
12,000 - 18,000 USD
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Description

91 folios (12 7/8 x 9 in.; 330 x 228 mm) (collation: i-x8, xi6, xii5) on paper. Manuscript marginalia on ff. 26v, 36v; dedicatory inscription on f. 91r; pen trials on ff. [1r], 68r, 90r, 91v; illegible owner’s stamp on ff. 37v, 89v. Slight scattered staining (heavier on ff. 12r-16v); minor worming throughout (more prominent on ff. 79r-[84v]), mostly marginal but at times affecting individual words; repairs in lower-outer corner on f. 8, in lower and outer edges on f. 80, in gutters on ff. 87-91, and in upper-outer corner of f. 91; light wear to outer edges of ff. 21, 65, 72; small holes in outer margins on ff. 31, 47, in lower margin on f. 66, and at center on f. 71; dampstaining in upper quadrant more prominent on ff. 71v-91v. Modern boards; title, place, printer’s name, and date lettered in gilt on spine; modern paper flyleaves and pastedowns.

Catalogue Note

Niddah (Menstruant), the seventh tractate in the order Tohorot, explores, in ten chapters, the laws governing the ritual impurity caused by various discharges from women’s bodies, including during menses, after childbirth or miscarriage, etc. Along the way, it deals with the development of children from the embryo stage through age 20. Because of the prohibition against intercourse with a niddah, the treatise remains of practical relevance even in a post-Temple era, when most of the other laws of ritual impurity have fallen into deseutude. Indeed, the penultimate page of the volume (f. 90b) features a short guide to the laws women nowadays should be careful to observe. The present copy’s final leaf (f. 91a) includes a manuscript inscription noting that this treatise was part of a complete set of the Bomberg Talmud donated on Rosh Hashanah 5311 (1550) to the beit midrash (study house) for the poor in Reggio. Provenance

Talmud Torah of Reggio (f. 91a)

Literature

A.M. Habermann, Ha-madpis daniyyel bombirgi u-reshimat sifrei beit defuso (Safed: The Museum of Printing Art, 1978), 34 (no. 26).

Vinograd, Venice 26