Alternative IdentifiersCatalogue Allony-Loewinger Vatican: 530 III
Vatican City (Vatican City State), Vatican Library: Ms. ebr. 530
Catalogue Allony-Loewinger Vatican: 530 III
Provenance
Owner InformationVatican Library
Current or Former Ownercurrent
Provenance Place
Provenance Settlement Information (English)Vatican City
Provenance Country Information (English)Vatican City State
Research LiteratureJ. H. Chajes, The Kabbalistic Tree (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2022), 43, 57–58.
Nehemya Allony and David S. Loewinger, The List of Photocopies of Hebrew Manuscripts in the Institute: Part III, Hebrew Manuscripts in the Vatican Library (Jerusalem: 1968).
Benjamin Richler, ed., Hebrew Manuscripts in the Vatican Library: Catalogue, palaeographical and codicological descriptions by Malachi Beit-Arié and Nurit Pasternak, Studi e Testi 438 (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2008).
Notes (English)The striking ilan preserved in the Vatican library exhibits a top edge cut in a manner that retains the natural contours of the animal skin while suggesting something like a peaked roof. According to the colophon on its verso, this intriguing artifact was drafted in Crete in the year 1451. Its text, in a Byzantine script, is an anonymous commentary on the sefirot likely authored by Joseph Gikatilla or one of his disciples. Sefirotic names, appellations, and associations are featured in its medallions, with more extensive discussions inscribed in the nearest available spaces. In these spaces, each sefirah is described in a few hundred words that address the reader in the second person, sharing the secret of each: its essential characteristics, its role in the overall system, the “unerasable” divine name and biblical figure to which it corresponds, elements from Sefer yeẓirah, and more. Matters of sefirotic positioning and spatial relationships are also emphasized throughout the short treatise. Thus not only are the qualities of each sefirah attended to but also their networking; an accounting of the channels that connect them to one another is integral to the presentation.