The bibliography to Andreas Masius’ edition, with commentaries, of the book of Joshua: Iosvae Imperatoris Historia, illustrata atq[ue] Explicata ab Andrea Masio
(Antwerp: Christopher Plantin 1574)

Andreas Masius (Lennik near Brussels 1514 – Zevenaar 1573), is justly known as a groundbreaking scholar of the Syriac language and of Syriac Christianity, but his learning and scholarly competence were significantly broader and deeper.  As I hope to show in a monograph in preparation, Masius was the consummate Renaissance biblical humanist of the generation following Erasmus.  He was educated at the university of Louvain, first in Latin, Greek and Hebrew at the trilingual college there, and then in philosophy, theology and law.  He embarked on a diplomatic career, but remained dedicated to the noble vocation of the independent scholar.  Before the age of 30, two of the foremost Christian Hebraists of the first half of the 16th century, Sebastian Münster and Paul Fagius, had sung the praises of his Hebraic erudition and dedicated works to him.  As a diplomat in Rome, Masius had ample opportunity to build a substantial private library of manuscripts and printed works, and to meet Jews, Muslims and Oriental Christians with whom to study Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac and Arabic.  He pursued these interests with groundbreaking scholars like Johan Albrecht Widmanstadt and Guillaume Postel, and had access to the oriental collections of the Vatican library through its director, his friend Cardinal Cervini (later the President of Congregation of Theologians at Trent, and eventually Pope Marcellus II), for whom he collected Hebrew manuscripts.  In 1558, at the age of forty-four, he retired to an estate in the east of the Low Countries, where he devoted the last fifteen years of his life primarily to contemplation, study, and the composition of numerous works of biblical and philological scholarship, most printed by his friend Christopher Plantin in Antwerp.

The Hebrew bibliography presented here was added by Masius as an appendix to his polyglot edition of the book of Joshua, Iosvae Imperatoris Historia, printed posthumously in 1574.  In spite of the brevity of its descriptions, this bibliography has much to tell us about Christian readership of the Hebrew book in the 16th century.

Firstly, it reveals the depth, breadth, and sophistication of Masius’ grasp of Jewish literature.  Contrary to the mere Christian Kabbalist a recent study has portrayed him to be,¹ we see Masius discovering various traditions of post-Christian Jewish scholarship, Talmudic, philosophical, kabalistic, halakhic, midrashic, homiletic.  We see him recognizing and distinguishing between rabbi’s of late antique Babylon and of medieval France, between the Judeo-Arabic Andalusia of Ibn Ezra and Jehuda ha-Levi, as well as the massoretic tradition as introduced and explained to Christian scholars by Elijah Levita.  We see him deciphering and identifying (some of) the Hebrew topographical names for European locales, and trying to reconstruct the chronology of the composition of various parts of the Talmud and the rabbinic tradition.

Secondly, the bibliography offers a sense of the reach and impact of Hebrew typography in the sixteenth century.  Whether acquired from Jewish scholars in Rome, printers in Venice, the fair at Frankfurt or elsewhere, it shows us the kind of Hebrew and Aramaic library which, by the 1560’s, a dedicated Christian Hebraist with sufficient connections and funds could acquire.  It is not just a snapshot of his own library, but at the same time also a panorama of the flourishing Hebrew book in the early modern period.  It was this flourishing, in Italy above all, that made Masius’ sophisticated grasp and use of the multiplicity of Jewish literature possible in the first place.

Thirdly, though he refers here and there to ‘Jewish superstitions’, Masius’ descriptions of his Hebrew books and their authors are strikingly free of polemic and full of praise for the learning and wisdom of such authors as Joseph Albo, Moses Maimonides, Elijah Levita, Gersonides and Jedaiah ha-Penini.  In 1553, the Talmud and other Hebrew books were burned on a massive scale throughout Italy, and from his contemporary correspondence we know how movingly he lamented what he saw as a great loss for Christian scholarship.² Masius disagreed vehemently with the Talmudic sages of Babylon on numerous matters, but only after having read them.  Condemning a book without knowing its contents, he wrote, is like letting blind men judge colors.  His reference in print to the Talmud would get him into some serious trouble, and may very well have contributed to his defrocking.  The knowledge of the Talmud he displays here tells us much about the mentality with which he approached Jewish literature.

Finally, in the pages of this bibliography, and in the immense work of biblical scholarship to which it is an appendix, we encounter a Catholic biblical scholar who has built an entire library of Jewish literature from Babylon to Lisbon, putting it to scholarly use and arguing for its relevance to the community of Christian scholars.  He appears to have no qualms or reservations for doing so, theological or otherwise, nor does he offer an apology.  There is a stubborn idea in modern studies of early modern Christian Hebraism according to which the Council of Trent brought an end to Catholic Hebrew scholarship, henceforth practiced nearly exclusively in the Protestant North and in Switzerland.  Masius’ case clearly belies this idea.

In the very last item, almost as an appendix to his appendix, Masius goes even one step further:

Praeter istos libros, habeo poetas aliquot Hebraeos: & inter eos R. Immanuelis magnum volumen suauissimis versiculis rhythmicorum more factis plenum. Sed istos & grammaticos pervulgatos, nihil attinet commemorare.

Besides these books, I have a number of Hebrew poets, and among them [is] a great volume by rabbi Immanuel, filled with the loveliest verses composed metrically. But it is of no interest to mention them or the commonly known grammarians.

Quite certainly this ‘magnum volumen’ contained the Mahbarot of the great poet Immanuel ben Solomon of Rome, also known as Manuello Romano or Manuello Giudeo (c. 1261- c. 1335).  Immanuel composed poetry in both Italian and Hebrew (he wrote the first Petrarchan sonnets in Hebrew), and his work reflects both the Judeo-Arabic influence of the Andalusian maqama’s as well as that of his Italian contemporary, Dante.  If Masius recognized that Immanuel’s 28th mahberet was modeled on the Divina Commedia, he doesn’t mention it here.  However, before saying that it is of no interest to mention them, Masius mentions them: he took pleasure in noting the pleasure he took in reading Hebrew poetry, whether of use for scholarship or not.  It is as open-minded and as non-polemical an attitude towards Jewish culture as could be found anywhere in the sixteenth century, anywhere in Christendom.

Notes on the texts:

In the Latin transcription, I have written ligatures and abbreviations full-out, the latter between square brackets.  In the English translation, whenever Masius notes a word first in Hebrew and then gives his Latin translation, I have transliterated the Hebrew phonetically and set it in cursive, and translated the Latin rather than the Hebrew, even where Masius’ translation is infelicitous or mistaken, to preserve and present his own understanding of the Hebrew in my translation, too.

In a letter of 17 September 1571, Christopher Plantin writes to Masius to tell him he had received a ‘billet’ to be added to his catalogue of books at the end of his Joshua and that he had handed it over to his son-in-law.  By 1570, the Joshua-manuscript was already in Antwerp, and as it waited for approbations to be printed, Masius was still sending updates to the bibliography, an indication of its importance to him.  Plantin’s son-in-law, Franciscus Raphelengius, had been working as a corrector for Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac for Golden Compasses, and was now also emerging as a significant scholar of oriental languages in his own right.  The printing of Masius’ Joshua was in competent and sympathetic hands.  In the bibliography, Masius sometimes refers to himself in the first person, sometimes he is called Masius in the third person.  The latter instances might well reflect Raphelengius’ incorporation of Masius hand-written additions.

Here and there, Masius notes that a given book in his collection was in manuscript rather than in print.  This does not necessarily imply, however, that in all other cases his copy was a printed edition.  There are a few cases in which the editio princeps of a given text in Masius’ list only appeared after his death.  In these cases, therefore, even where he doesn’t mention it, Masius’ copy must have been a manuscript.  Conversely, it cannot be ruled out that Masius’ copy of a given book was in manuscript, even if he doesn’t mention it to be, and even if an edition had appeared in print during his lifetime.  Indeed several texts Masius owned in manuscript (Abraham ibn Ezra’s commentary on the Prophets, Immanuel of Rome’s Mahbarot), had indeed already appeared in print in several editions by Masius’ day.  I have attempted to identify each title in his list, and to ascertain whether the book in question had been printed during his lifetime, and in which editions, in order to establish, at least, whether he could have acquired the book in a printed edition.

Select Bibliography

M. Rooses, J. Denucé, M. van Durme, (eds.) Correspondance de Christophe Plantin (Antwerp, 1883-1918), 9 volumes.
M. Lossen, Briefe von Andreas Masius und seinen Freunden 1538 bis 1573 (Leipzig 1886)
H. de Vocht, ‘Andreas Masius (1514-1573)’ in: Miscellanea Giovanni Mercati IV (Rome 1946), 425-441
L. Voet, The Plantin Press, 1555-1589. A Bibliography of the works printed and published by Christopher Plantin at Antwerp and Leiden (1980-1983).
J. Perles, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Hebräischen und Aramäischen Studien (Munich 1884)
M. Heller, Printing the Talmud: a history of the earliest printed editions of the Talmud (Leiden, 1992)
A. Hamilton, Arab Culture and Ottoman Magnificence in Antwerp’s Golden Age (Oxford and New York, 2001)
Th. Dunkelgrün, ‘De Hebreeuwse Handschriften van het Museum Plantin-Moretus’
in De Gulden Passer 86 (2008), 7-28.

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