The Cover Page of the 1558 Mantua Book of the Zohar

This page describes the cover page of the first printed edition, the "editio princeps", of the Zohar published in Mantua, Italy in 1558. A high resolution image of this page is available here.

The following translation of the cover page and very interesting links and comments about it were made by a friend of mine.

This is the gate of the Lord (Psalm 118:20) THE BOOK OF THE ZOHAR on the Torah, by the holy, Godly, Rabbi Simon ben Yohai Z"L (of blessed memory), with Sitrei Torah (Secrets of the Torah), Midrash HaNeelam (The Hidden Midrash) and Tosefta (Addenda) on some of the chapters. (These are subsections of the Zohar.) (Also included are) notes, indicating the chapter and verse of the Biblical quotations and a glossary at the end of the book. Printed and proofread, with great care, by the young men, Emmanuel, the son of the honorable Gabriel, Y.Tz.V. (May God Protect Him), from Corropoli, a member of the Gallucci family and Abraham, Y.Tz.V., son of the honorable Rabbi Meshulam, ZT"L (May the memory of the righteous be a blessing) from Modena. HERE (in the city of) MANTUA the dominion of His Highness, our Lord, The Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga, may his glory and majesty be exalted. (Published) by the partners, the scribe Meyer Y.Tz.V., son of the honorable Rabbi Ephraim, ZT"L, from Padua, and Jacob, Y.Tz.V., son of the honorable Rabbi Naphtali, the Cohen, ZT"L, from Gazzola.

NOTES

The Mantua Zohar was printed in three volumes, the first in 1558, the second in 1559, the third in 1560. It was printed at the press of Tommaso Ruffinelli -- likely a printer of Christian books. An article in Ha'aretz says "On August 4, 1558, the first print edition of the Zohar appeared" The date of printing did not appear on the cover page, but rather elsewhere in the book. Gershom Scholem in his Bibliographia Kabbalistica (1927) gives the date as between 1558 and 1560 for the Mantua Zohar. The Mantua edition sets the standard for Zohar pagination. For example, the Stanford Pritzker Zohar uses Mantua volume and page numbers to point to Aramaic page numbers. The Library of Congress owns a fine copy of this edition printed on blue paper, "blue the color of old Jewish books", indicating it was a deluxe edition for a rich patron.

Many words throughout the page are highlighted with double strokes (gershayim). Many of these highlighted words are abbreviations for honorifics such as Y.Tz.V. and ZT"L. Others seem to be there just to give certain words more emphasis and dignity, such as the highlighting of the name Guglielmo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua or the honourable rabbis.

From the translator:

In modern Hebrew punctuation, a distinction is made between rounded quotation marks (mekhaot) and straight, apostrophe-like marks called Geresh (single) and Gershayim (double).

In traditional Hebrew books, such as the Mantua Zohar only the straight marks are used. Specifically the geresh is used to denote an abbreviation, consisting of a truncation of the full word. It is placed at the end of the truncation (R' for Rabbi). The gershayim are used to denote acronyms, i.e. the first letter of each word in a phrase and are place before the last letter (Z"L- of Blessed Memory).

Gershayim are also used in the transliteration of foreign language words and place names. On the Mantua title page, this usage seems to be inconsistent. I cannot explain why Padua and Gazzola do not have the gershayim.

See The 16th Century Hebrew Book (pdf) by Marvin J. Heller for other 16th century Italian frames with Solomonic columns -- plus a history of the Mantua and Cremona Zohars.

See Rabbi Judah Moscato and the Jewish Intellectual World of Mantua in the 16^th - 17^th Centuries (edited by Giuseppe Veltri, Gianfranco Miletto) for information about Mantua Hebrew Printing and Jacob ben Naphtali.

The entire curriculim of Jacob of Gazzuolo is marked by his collaboration with Christian printers, but this fact is not sufficient, in my view, to suppose any propensity toward Christianity. After all, it was a matter of necessity for many Jews to work for Christian printers who had the financial means and the political connections need to obtain the authorization to publish, as is shown by the long list of Christian printers of Hebraica, from Bomberg to Giustinian and Bragadin. .... The most felicitious year of activity enjoyed by Jacob of Gazzuolo coincide with his stay in Mantua, where he published, among many other titles (thirty-two are still extant), the main bulk of the classics of Jewish mysticism, which can roughly dated to the years 1558 - 1562.

The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice By Yaacob Dweck.

Paul Grendler estimated that the average press run of a book printed in Venice with ordinary or modest sales was 1,000 copies. The contract drawn up between Vincenzo Conti, the owner of the Cremona press, and Samuel ben Isaac of Verona and David ben Aharon Norliengen, two of the Jewish editors of the Cremona Zohar, stipulated that 675 copies of the Zohar would be printed. If one posits a similar press run for the Mantua Zohar, then roughly 1,300 printed copies of the Zohar had appeared at Italian presses in the middle of the sixteenth century, augmenting the manuscript copies of the Zohar already circulating in Italy. A survey of private Jewish libraries in sixteenth-century Mantua, a midsize Italian town with a relatively large Jewish community, found that one-tenth of all libraries contained copies of the Zohar. The printing of the Zohar led to a dramatic increase in the availability of the text.

Sefer Ha-Zohar – The Battle For Editio Princeps Jan Doktór & Magdalena Bendowska

Abstract
Sefer ha-Zohar appeared in print for the first time in Cremona in 1558, in the printing house of Christian printer Vincenzo Conti. It lacked the rabbinical approval or the introduction. The year of publication was not printed on title page, but it did appear at the end of the book, in the colophon preceding the Inquisition’s imprimatur: Friday rosh khodesh kislev of the year 5319 from the creation of the world, i.e., 21 November 1558. The Latin text of imprimatur was signed by censor Galeaz Guacius on 5 August 1558. Immediately after the publication of the “Christian” edition, as the Cremona book was referred to, it was decided to publish a “corrected” edition of Sefer ha-Zohar in the nearby Mantua, in the printing house of Tommasso Ruffinelli. The principal composition of the texts from the Cremona edition was retained, but with the omission of Midrash Ruth, Raya mehemna and some sections of Sefer ha-bahir, while Midrash neelam was moved to a different location in the book. A battle then began to determine which edition constituted editio princeps, i.e., contained the canonical text, binding for subsequent publishers. In Europe, the Cremona edition was considered the model one until the 18th century and it served as the basis for subsequent editions of the work: the 1623 Lublin edition and the 1684 Sulzbach edition. In 1715 and in 1728 the book was published twice in Amsterdam. On title page there was no mention of the Cremona, Lublin and Sulzbach editions. It was indicated that this was a repetition of the Mantua edition. This was evidence of the consensus of Jewish religious authorities, guaranteeing the editio princeps status to the Mantua edition. No-one has attempted to repeat the Cremona edition since then, it has been ignored or completely unknown. Some bibliographies do mention a Cremona edition, but only the second one, from the years 1559-60, presented as the second one after the Mantua edition. The Mantua edition retains the status of editio princeps, it is used to this day not only by religious Jews but also by historians.

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Title page for Sidra Shemot in the Mantua Zohar.