Beschreibung:

HEBREW PENTATEUCH AND 'FIVE SCROLLS'. CODEX MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM. [France, mid-13th century]. 310 x 220 mm. 261 leaves (of 264): 1-13 8(lacking 13/6) 14 4; 15-24 8(lacking 24/5) 25 4; 26-34 8(without 34/8 blank). Modern pencilled foliation 1-261. On thick vellum with clearly distinguishable hair and flesh sides, arranged according to Gregory. Double column, 22 lines. Ruled in blind with a sharp hard point, bifolium by bifolium on the hair side: 23 horizontal lines for the Biblical text; three vertical lines each in the inner margins, between columns, and in the outer margins (the last cropped); three narrower horizontal lines in upper margins and four in lower margins for the Masorah magna , which was not copied; written area of Biblical text: 215 x 155 mm. Prickings visible in top margins (elsewhere cropped). The blind ruling occasionally supplemented with colored plummet on the flesh side (ff. 79v, 99v, 104r, 216r, 227v). Written by a single skilled, professional scribe in dark brown ink in a square Ashkenazic (Franco-German) script, with vocalization and accent signs. Marginal corrections and annotations by the original scribe and others (occasionally cropped). Justification of line-ends accomplished by stretching or compressing the last letters, by anticipating the next word (in many cases the last letter of the beginning of the following word is executed in a stunted shape), and by inserting graphic fillers. (The margins trimmed to reduce the size of the bookblock from an original measurement of perhaps 400 x 250 mm, f. 1r blank and the lower blank margin of f. 2r discolored from contact with the board of an earlier binding, faint dampstain to upper margins, ca. 30 leaves with stains to lower blank corners, strips cut from the lower blank margin of f. 1 and the outer blank margins of 6 other leaves, blank margins partially cut from 5 other leaves and re-attached by early sewing, small natural flaws to ca. 20 leaves, early repairs to lower blank corners of ca. 10 leaves.) Binding : 15th-century Italian dark brown blind-tooled goatskin over wooden boards, covers tooled to a geometrical pattern with knotwork tools, roll-tooled border enclosing a central panel formed by a smaller roll-tool, the panel divided into two equal squares by a roll-tooled band, each enclosing two small squares of repeated circular knotwork tools on upper cover, and a center- and corner-piece design on lower cover, spine tooled to an overall diaper pattern by intersecting diagonal double fillets, each lozenge decorated with a single small circle tool, evidence of two fore-edge clasps, original plain parchment pastedown endleaves (possibly a 15th- or 16th-century remboîtage, worn with some loss to leather, but apparently unrestored). Contents : Genesis (ff. 1v-60v), Exodus (ff. 60v-107v, lacking 1 leaf after f. 101: Ex 35:35-36:21); Leviticus (ff. 108r-143r), Numbers (ff. 143v-190v, lacking 1 leaf after f. 183: Num. 31:10-31:36); Deuteronomy (ff. 191r-232r, partial interlinear Latin translation on f. 191r, colophon to Pentateuch on f. 232r: "This Pentateuch has been examined and checked; from it one may copy the Torah of Moses"), Song of Songs (ff. 232r-236r), Ruth (ff. 236r-239v), Lamentations (ff. 239v-244r), Ecclesiastes (ff. 244r-252v), Esther (ff. 252v-261v). Localization and Dating : The manuscript shows a combination of codicological features which are typical of dated Franco-German Hebrew manuscripts prior to the last third of the thirteenth century, when there was a shift in techniques of parchment preparation, pricking and ruling. In addition, the manuscript manifests other typical Ashkenazic scribal traditions such as the pattern of ruling, writing between the lines, and the devices for producing even lines and left margins. The kind of parchment employed and the partial experimental use of plummet to reinforce the ruled lines are characteristic of the late twelfth century and the first third of the thirteenth century. However, the Fre