Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection
Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection
SEFER MITSVOT HA-GADOL (THE GREAT BOOK OF COMMANDMENTS), RABBI MOSES BEN JACOB OF COUCY, VENICE: DANIEL BOMBERG, 1522
Auction Closed
November 20, 08:47 PM GMT
Estimate
3,000 - 5,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
SEFER MITSVOT HA-GADOL (THE GREAT BOOK OF COMMANDMENTS), RABBI MOSES BEN JACOB OF COUCY, VENICE: DANIEL BOMBERG, 1522
250 folios (12 1/4 x 8 1/4 in.; 310 x 219 mm) (collation: i-x8, xi10, xii-xxxi8 [final two blanks removed]) on paper. Divisional title on f. [91r]; decorated initial word panels on ff. [7v, 96r]; marginalia in pen through f. [19v], sporadic thereafter. Slight scattered staining; dampstaining; light browning; minor worm tracks in gutters of ff. [18-51], mostly repaired and mostly not affecting text. Modern half-calf over board; spine in five compartments with raised bands; title, place, and date lettered on spine; modern paper flyleaves and pastedowns.
A fine copy of the third edition of this classic exposition of Jewish law.
The author of this work, Rabbi Moses ben Jacob of Coucy, is among the most distinguished of the Tosafists, the great legal scholars produced by French and German Jewry during the twelfth through fourteenth centuries. R. Moses, who participated in the 1240 Disputation of Paris, also traveled widely in France and Spain, exhorting the masses to renew their commitment to living according to Jewish law. His most lasting literary achievement is the extensive and important work Sefer mitsvot ha-gadol (also known by its acronym Semag), which is based in large part on Maimonides’ Mishneh torah. R. Moses, in correcting for the general lack of sources in the Mishneh torah, fills his own work with copious citations from the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds and the various aggadic midrashim, as well as from the works of early French and German authorities. Another practical distinction between the Mishneh torah and the Semag is the varied arrangement of the precepts. In addition to dividing between negative and positive commandments, the Semag separates those precepts which are applicable in our time from those which are not.
Provenance
Aaron Ashkeloni, 5521 [1761] (f. [1r])
Abraham Ibn Nahmias (ff. [1v, 2r])
Literature
A.M. Habermann, Ha-madpis daniyyel bombirgi u-reshimat sifrei beit defuso (Safed: The Museum of Printing Art, 1978), 42 (no. 73).
Chaim and Betzalel Stefansky, Sifrei yesod: sifrei ha-yesod shel ha-sifriyyah ha-yehudit ha-toranit (n.p.: Chaim and Betzalel Stefansky, 2019), 69 (no. 214).
Vinograd, Venice 66