General

Title

Vatican City (Vatican City State), Vatican Library: Ms. ebr. 530 III - Recto

Manuscript name

Classical Ilan

Summary

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.

Support material

parchment

Main language

Rabbinic Hebrew

Hand description

Byzantine

Identifier

Ms. ebr. 530 III

NLI identifier

990001954850205171

Repository

Vatican Library

Country

Vatican City State

Settlement

Vatican City

Page number

171

Colophon

"ליל ב' ר"ח שבט שנת א'ר'י'ה' נכתב זה האילן לבחור הנחמד שמו ר' ירמיא נומיקו בר משה יצ"ט תולעת קטנה שלמה אשטרוק בכה"ר אליה זלה"ה ונפרעתי ממנו ביום זה ..."

Research literature

J. 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).

Creation time

Date

1451