Beschreibung:

SEFER HA-MITSVOT (BOOK OF THE COMMANDMENTS) AND MISHNEH TORAH (HALAKHIC CODE), RABBI MOSES MAIMONIDES, VENICE: MARCO ANTONIO GIUSTINIANI, 1550-1551 2 parts in 3 volumes: Vol. 1 (Sefer ha-mitsvot and Sefer madda-Sefer zemannim): 272 folios (15 5/8 x 10 in.; 397 x 256 mm) (collation: i4, i-v8, vi6, i2, ii-xxviii8, xxix4) on paper; Vol. 2 (Sefer nashim-Sefer tohorah): 311 of 313 folios (15 5/8 x 10 1/4 in.; 395 x 259 mm) (collation: xxix4, xxx-xxxviii8, xxxix6 [xxxix2,7 lacking], xl-xlviii8, xlix6, l-lxvi8, lxvii5) on paper; Vol. 3 (Sefer nezikin-Sefer shofetim): 239 folios (15 1/2 x 10 1/4 in.; 395 x 261 mm) (collation: lxvii3, lxviii-xcvi8, i4) on paper. Two elaborate architectural title pages; decorative initial word panels on 1:[1r], 2v, 10r, [36v], 77r, 2:229r, 315v, 394r, 421v, 452v, 479v, 491v, 3:534v, 586v, 655r, 733v; printer’s mark featuring an image of the Temple in Jerusalem on 1:[1v], 24v, 2:title page, [390v], 3:[768v], [772r]; printed diagrams on 1:52r-v, 54v. All volumes bound in modern tan blind-tooled leather, slightly worn around edges; spines in five compartments with raised bands; title, place, and date lettered in gilt on spines; stained paper edges; modern paper flyleaves and pastedowns. A near-complete, well-preserved copy of a controversial edition of Maimonides’ magnum opus. Rabbi Moses Maimonides (Rambam; 1038-1204) began writing the Mishneh torah in about 1170 in response to the persecutions visited upon Jewish communities in Europe and elsewhere and the resulting decline in halakhic knowledge. The work set out to organize all the halakhic material scattered throughout the Mishnah, Tosefta, midrashim, and Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds into fourteen synthetic books (emphatically not commentaries), which were then subdivided into eighty-three treatises comprising a total of 982 chapters. This included even those laws no longer applicable in the post-Temple era, as well as those observed only in the Land of Israel—a major innovation when compared with previous halakhic compendia. Rambam titled his project Mishneh torah (lit., Repetition of the Torah), “because a person will first read the Written Torah [Bible] and later read this, and in that way he will know the entire Oral Torah without having to consult any other book in between.” Following its initial publication ca. 1180, the Mishneh torah would go on to exercise enormous influence on Jewish thought and practice, especially after Rabbis Jacob ben Asher (ca. 1270-1340) and Joseph Caro (1488-1575) elected to use it as one of the pillars upon which they structured their own vastly important halakhic codes, the Arba‘ah turim and Shulhan arukh, respectively. The Mishneh torah was first printed circa 1473-1475 in Italy (probably Rome), then in other cities in Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and Turkey. In 1524, the master Venetian printer Daniel Bomberg produced a beautiful, well-edited Mishneh torah in two large volumes as part of his entrepreneurial program to issue new editions of some of the most important Jewish texts: the Rabbinic Bible, the two Talmuds, and the halakhic compendia of Rabbis Isaac Alfasi, Moses of Coucy, Jacob ben Asher, and, of course, Maimonides. He intended to repeat the feat starting in 1546, but due in part to fierce competition from a rival Venetian printer, Marco Antonio Giustiniani, his hopes were frustrated and his publishing house shuttered in 1549. In 1550, the new printing firm established by Alvise Bragadini came out with a Mishneh torah to which Maimonides’ treatise enumerating the 613 biblical commandments, known as Sefer ha-mitsvot, was appended for the first time (based on the Constantinople, ca. 1510-1525 edition). The Mishneh torah text largely mirrored, page-by-page, that of the aforementioned 1524 edition but was further edited and glossed by one of the most prominent Ashkenazic rabbis living in Italy at the time, Rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen (Maharam of Padua; 1482-1565), and his son, Rabbi Samuel Judah (1521-15