Why are we displaying these manuscripts and not others?
We’re celebrating Philadelphia’s first massive book-digitization project, Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis, which was developed to widely and publicly share manuscripts written in Western Europe up to the year 1600. We’re excited that everything on view here can be seen online from cover to cover, but it is true that almost everything is from Christian traditions.
In Europe, depending on when in the long “medieval” period (500 to 1500) you look, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all thrived. Currently the Free Library of Philadelphia is co-leading a major project to digitize manuscripts from the Muslim world from Philadelphia and Columbia University, thanks to funding from the Council on Library and Information Resources made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. And Philadelphia’s great Hebraica and Judaica from all over the world also deserve attention. But by celebrating “BiblioPhilly,” as it was nicknamed, we hope to share with you how Philadelphia’s European manuscripts can still tell us stories today. We hope you’ll explore the diversity of cultural heritage we have here at the Free Library!
This book was commissioned by a rabbi in the Jewish cultural center of 13th-century Spain. On display is a portion of Sefer ha-Hilufim, a non-Biblical text that details the differences between the two major versions of the Biblical text. Arranged in arched columns, this shows the influence of Islamic Qur’an illumination in Spanish Hebrew manuscript production. The note in Hebrew on the bottom right says, “Curse you who erase God's name, bless you who recite this Bible.”
