First edition of the only complete Pentateuch commentary written in Renaissance Portugal — by the sitting Inquisitor of Lisbon, who printed his office on the title-page: "haereticae pravitatis apud Inclytam Olysipponem Inquisitoris." Folio (29.5 × 20.3 cm), main text in two columns. Genesis with the imprint "Olyssipone apud Iohannem Barrerium Regium Typographum … M.D.LVI"; the four later books from the press of João Blávio of Cologne, himself styled typographum regium on the Leviticus title (Anselmo 141, 320–323, correcting Barbosa Machado's attribution of all five parts to Barreira). Architectural woodcut title-pages to parts II–V, large woodcut printer's devices, and woodcut initials throughout. The preliminaries carry the machinery of official sanction: the dedication to the Cardinal-Infante D. Henrique — then Inquisitor General of Portugal — the licence of the Dominican provincial João de Salinas, and the imprimatur "Subiit Sanctae Inquisitionis examen." Letters of Jerónimo Osório (the "Portuguese Cicero") and Jerónimo de Brito precede Exodus; a letter of the humanist André de Resende to Cardinal Henrique precedes Leviticus.

Collation: Genesis, (4) ll., 315, (1) pp., (8) ll. (incl. errata), *4 A–T8 V6 A8. Exodus, (4), 96 ll., *4 A–M8. Leviticus, (2), 67 ll., []2 A–G8 H–I6. Numbers, (2), 86 ll., ¶2 A–K8 L6. Deuteronomy, (3 [of 4, without the blank ¶1, as recorded by Adams and Anselmo]), 69, (1) ll., []2 ¶2 A–H8 I6. The recorded misnumberings present. Complete with all five errata and final leaves.

AN INQUISITOR'S HEBREW BIBLE

Oleaster built his commentary not on the Vulgate but on the ultra-literal Latin version of the Hebrew by his fellow Dominican Sanctes Pagnino of Lucca (Lyon, 1527/28) — the version contemporaries faulted for rendering "word for word" (verbum verbo reddere, Engammare) — and announced his standard on the title-page: Hebraica veritas exactissime explicatur, "the Hebrew truth most exactly explained." Each chapter gives a philological exposition ad litteram followed by a separate moral commentary ad mores; his preface explains the design: "Noluimus autem literalem sensum simul cum spirituali tractare: ne lector alteri intentus, alteri deesset" — the literal sense must not be smothered by the spiritual. Sixteen opening canons lay down rules for exegesis — Hebrew semantics (ain, eye, hence a spring, "an eye of water"; yad, hand, hence power), three lists of hebraisms, the four distinct Hebrew verbs of creation, and a warning against kabbalistic readings born of ignorance of the language (Rodrigues, Biblos LV; Coelho, CADMO 11).

The rabbis are cited by name on his pages: Rashi as "Rabbi Scelomonis," David Kimhi "in suis radicibus" (the Sefer ha-Shorashim), the Targum as "Chaldaeus interpres," even Rabbi Akiva. Challenged for it, the Inquisitor answered: "Tell me, good man: if a Greek word were in dispute, whom should we ask its meaning if not the Greeks? … I cite them [the rabbis] when the meaning of Hebrew expressions is in doubt … though they are radically blind in what touches the mysteries of Christ, they are not so in those other questions where the sense depends on the meanings" (trans. from Nunes Carreira, Mare Liberum 10). Two months after Trent declared the Vulgate authentic (decree Insuper, 8 April 1546) — a session he had attended as one of the three theologians João III sent to the Council — he catalogued the Vulgate's corruptions (saeculum for saeculo, fontem for fortem, malitia for militia), questioned Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch as a whole, and concluded it was better to follow the Hebrew than to spend time correcting the Latin — shielding himself with the professed loyalty: "We, though we interpret another version, hold it [the Vulgate] as authentic" (Coelho).

FROM CENSOR TO CENSURED

No one in Portugal knew censorship better: Azambuja compiled the first printed index of prohibited books in Portugal (the rol of 1551, Lisbon, Germão Galharde — thirteen titles of Erasmus among its entries), signed it, and in August 1551 summoned Lisbon's eleven booksellers before the Holy Office to inventory their stock (Révah; Bethencourt, p. 174). After his death in 1563 the same machinery turned on his book. The Spanish Inquisition ordered the excision of his criticisms of the Vulgate and his defense of the Hebrew text; the Lyon reprints were issued pre-cut — the 1588 edition advertising itself as corrected according to Quiroga's Index Expurgatorius. Modern scholarship confirms the practice in surviving copies: the prologue "was struck from many exemplars by the Inquisitorial censorship … especially the passage in which Azambuja explains his preference for the translation of Sanctes Pagnino over the Vulgate" (Soares Pereira, Univ. do Minho). The Indexes' own instructions for this book survive: the 1584 Quiroga Index Expurgatorius (fol. 134v) orders the preface passage "Neque mihi obijcias … omitto in vulgata editione" deleted; the 1612 Index repeats it, noting the passage "in editione Lugduni … iam expunctum est"; the 1632 Zapata Index reclassifies the work "corrigenda" with deletions through Genesis, Exodus (an eleven-line annotation at Exodus 20), and Leviticus 26, closing with the caution "cavendum in Editione Olysiponensi, ubi Oleaster serpenti attribuebat quendam rationis usum & facultatem naturalem sermonis"; the 1707 Vidal Marín Index carries the program forward. Only the Lisbon first edition gives the text as the Inquisitor dared to write it.

THIS COPY: THE CENSORS' OWN RECORD

The present copy is a physical archive of that history. The Genesis title-page carries four dated expurgation inscriptions spanning one hundred and twenty-two years, three of them signed by their censors: "Expurgado en Alcalá por m.do de los SS. Inq.es a 2 de Febrero de 1585" (the Quiroga campaign, signed); "iten está expurgado segun el expurgatorio que publicaron los SS. inquisidores del año de 1612" (the Sandoval y Rojas Index, signed); "Está conforme al expurg.º de este año 1632" (the Zapata Index), signed "Juan Ant.º"; and "Está conforme al expurgatorio del año de 1707" (the Vidal Marín Index), signed Lorenzo de Cárdenas. A Latin censor's note on the title warns of Oleaster's reading of the serpent — "In hac editione cavendum est ubi autor attribuit serpenti … vocis usum, et facultatem naturalem sermonis…" — the censor transcribing onto the book the printed caution of the 1632 and 1707 Indexes themselves, word for word; the same formula was entered in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal's copy (Coelho). The copy's censored passages answer the Indexes' orders book by book: lines scored on the prologue leaves *3 verso and *4 recto with a small overslip pasted over text on *4 recto — the preface deletion ordered in 1584; twelve lines scored in Exodus, where the 1632 Index orders an eleven-line annotation at Exodus 20 deleted; four lines scored in Leviticus, where it orders deletions at Leviticus 26; with old ink annotations of working readers in all five parts. At the head of the title an early inscription, "Para el P.e Cipriano Suarez"; above the imprint, "Del Colegio de la Comp.ª de Jesús de Alcalá, del aposento del P. Predicador" — the Jesuit College of Alcalá, where the 1585 expurgation was carried out; later the oval stamp of the Biblioteca de los PP. Franciscanos, Balaguer, and a smaller stamp lettered "A.s."

One further life of this book deserves record. In Mexico in the early 1590s the condemned crypto-Jew Luis de Carvajal the Younger, set by his Franciscan warden to alphabetize "Oleaster's moralities on the Pentateuch," found in the Inquisitor's commentary — at the exposition of the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4 — the Thirteen Articles of Maimonides: "In this book the Lord revealed to Joseph the holy Thirteen Articles which are the principles of our faith and religion and which are unknown in the lands of our captivity" (Cohen, American Jewish Historical Quarterly 55, p. 302). Carvajal adopted them as his creed and died at the stake in 1596. The Inquisitor's Hebrew learning was authentic enough to carry Maimonides to a martyr; the censors' pens on the present title-page are the other side of the same coin.

RARITY

Of the greatest rarity complete. Even Cambridge's collections hold only Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Adams O-153–154); the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal's own copies are recorded as imperfect or defective (BNP Catálogo 389–393); not in NUC, Darlow & Moule, or King Manuel; the USTC records the later Antwerp (1568–69) and Lyon editions. The Lisbon printing is even textually distinct: its title reads exactissime explicatur where the Continental reprints substitute ad unguem enucleatur. A complete five-part copy in contemporary vellum, uncensored in the press and censored only by hand — the two states of the book's history in a single volume.

CONDITION

Very good antiquarian condition. Contemporary limp vellum, vertical manuscript short-title on the spine, old-style fore-edge title; vellum worn, with tears at head and foot of spine and an old numbered sticker at the foot. Genesis title dampstained at the lower corner; occasional light spotting; a few leaves browned. Worming confined to blank margins — lower margins from Genesis G7 to Exodus E7, inner margins from Numbers K1 to Deuteronomy B5 — never affecting text. The censorship evidence described above and the early annotations are original to the copy's history and form part of its documentary value. An exceptionally honest, complete copy.

PROVENANCE

Early inscription "Para el P.e Cipriano Suarez" at the head of the title; the Jesuit College of Alcalá ("Del Colegio de la Comp.ª de Jesús de Alcalá, del aposento del P. Predicador"), where the first expurgation was performed in 1585; expurgated by the Inquisition in four dated campaigns (1585, signed; 1612, signed; 1632, signed "Juan Ant.º"; 1707, signed Lorenzo de Cárdenas); Biblioteca de los PP. Franciscanos, Balaguer, oval stamp on title and smaller stamp lettered "A.s." Documentary provenance retained in our records and supplied privately to the purchaser.

LITERATURE

Anselmo 141, 320–323; Adams O-153–154; Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Livros quinhentistas portugueses 9–13; BM Portuguese Pre-1601 STC, p. 4; BNP, Catálogo dos impressos de tipografia portuguesa do século XVI, 389–393; Barbosa Machado, Bibliotheca Lusitana II, 483–4; A. A. Martins Marques, Theologica II/1 (1966), and Lusitania Sacra 7; I. S. Coelho, CADMO 11; M. A. Rodrigues, Biblos LV (1979); A. Vilela, Brotéria 78 (1964); J. Nunes Carreira, Mare Liberum 10 (1995); V. Soares Pereira, "André de Resende e Jerónimo de Azambuja"; F. Bethencourt, História das Inquisições (1994); I. S. Révah, La censure inquisitoriale portugaise au XVIe siècle (1960); J. M. de Bujanda, Index des livres interdits, VI–IX; W. Popper, The Censorship of Hebrew Books (1899); M. Engammare, "Sante Pagnini, traducteur ad litteram"; M. A. Cohen, AJHQ 55 (1966), and The Martyr (1973); H. Hailperin, Rashi and the Christian Scholars (1963); J. F. Meirinhos, "Editores, livros e leitores em Portugal no século XVI" (2006). Primary: Index et catalogus librorum prohibitorum (Madrid, 1583) and Index librorum expurgatorum (Madrid, 1584), fol. 134v; Index librorum prohibitorum et expurgatorum (Madrid, 1612); Zapata, Novus index (Seville, 1632), pp. 494–5; Vidal Marín, Novissimus index (Madrid, 1707), II. Cl.

The Inquisitor of Lisbon's Hebrew Pentateuch, complete in first edition — approved by the Inquisition, then expurgated by the Inquisition in four signed and dated campaigns across one hundred and twenty-two years, and the documented book through which Maimonides' Thirteen Articles reached a crypto-Jewish martyr in Mexico.