Publisher's Synopsis
Published in 1803, this is the first part of a three-volume descriptive catalogue of the Hebrew codices in the personal library of Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi (1742-1831), professor of oriental languages at the University of Parma. Each codex is numbered and its contents briefly described in Latin. Volume 1 includes an introduction (in Latin) and descriptions of codices 1-346 from a total of 1,377. De Rossi was an important collector of manuscripts and incunabula, and an authority on Hebrew typography and textual variants. The manuscripts described in this catalogue were obtained as a result of his exhaustive researches into variant readings of the Old Testament, the results of which he published in Variae lectiones veteris testamenti (1784-8). He also produced groundbreaking studies of printed Hebrew texts, and a catalogue of Jewish anti-Christian polemics, Bibliotheca judaica antichristiana (also reissued in this series).
