Shifra Baruchson-Arbib. La culture livresque des juifs d'Italie a la fin de la Renaissance.

(Documents, etudes et repertoires, 66.) Paris: CNRS Editions, 2001. 296 pp. illus. bibl. index. 45 [euro]. ISBN: 2-271-05933-X.

Dr. Shifra Baruchson-Arbib presents her thesis through an in-depth analysis of special lists requested by Mantuan authorities in 1595, by which the inventories of 430 private Jewish libraries existing at the time were catalogued. That such a detailed testament of Jewish literary activity should issue from Mantua is not unusual. The ruling family of Mantua, the Gonzagas, had been in power since 1328, and from that point provided nearly three centuries of brilliant and creative leadership and an unimagined cultural preeminence that was out of proportion to both their population and resources. Each Gonzaga ruler felt it an obligation to make Mantua a haven where writers and artists of the highest caliber could practice their crafts with full sponsorship. Such support for Jewish participants did not include obligatory adherence to the Roman Catholic faith. Jews had been a component of the Mantuan population since the thirteenth century and had thoroughly permeated the economic framework of Mantuan life by the sixteenth century. The open-mindedness cultivated by the Gonzagas in their relations with the Jews in their midst was a sensible as well as a politically correct choice to make. It continued throughout the sixteenth century, a time of great political upheaval in Italy, where in 1516, Venice became the first of many Italian cities to segregate their Jewish citizens. The Gonzagas proceeded against custom in preserving the liberties of its Jews.

The election of Pope Clement VIII in 1592 signaled a hardening of the Catholic attitude against Jews in general, their book-collecting in particular. This attitude took specific form three years later, in 1595, at which time Jews who owned private book collections were obligated to draw up the lists of their contents, with a view toward the authorities censoring all objectionable material from them. The ultimate decision in 1610 to confine the Mantuan Jewish population within walls further curtailed these activities. Basically, the first few decades of the seventeenth century saw the gradual death of the golden age of Jewish cultural contributions, a time when the Catholic church was finally able to gain the upper hand in the matter of subjugating areas of Jewish influence.

This atmosphere is important to acknowledge in an analysis of the content of these 1595 lists that Baruchson-Arbib presents. Jews clearly had not only the inclination toward book learning, but also the encouragement of their rulers to do so. In delineating this literary activity, Baruchson-Arbib gives a short presentation describing the reading habits of the sixteenth century population at large, against which the immense literary movement in Jewish society may be viewed. Interest in books was a very slow-growing process as the general European population was illiterate and even when able to read, not inclined to purchase and collect books. Baruchson-Arbib laments the lack of documentation supporting the reading habits of Christians in the pre-industrial era and at the same time notes the particular emphasis given by Jews to analytical reading and study, a fact that would certainly incline them to be active participants in both printing and collecting books.

The lists are introduced and indicate a wide variety of subject matter in the works catalogued. Alongside works in Hebrew are many others in Italian, German, and Spanish, even Italian works transliterated in Hebrew letters. Among the families maintaining collections are those of rabbis, bankers, doctors, as well as people active in the general community, and many of those who were involved in theatrical production for both their own communities and the Gonzaga court. Synagogues, artisans, even a publisher and a charitable concern contributed lists as required by law. They are evaluated on their exhaustiveness of presentation, percentages available in the categories established, and contain very specific descriptions of the documents' subject matter. The precedence of liturgical and biblical texts to secular ones, such as those covering philosophy, grammar, and the fine arts, is clarified.

In addition, the books and manuscripts are subdivided according to title, type, and date of creation but with the cultural and social levels of the books' owners and their communities of origin kept in mind. Where the population involved was able to maintain its individuality as Jews, the lists prove extensive, as those provided by German Jews show. Where a group assimilated almost to the point of invisibility, as with the Spanish Jews, the lists are pathetically small.

An additional chapter limits its examination to the genre of foreign literature, which has a perceptible presence in 17.7% of the libraries catalogued. It is interesting to note that the names of the following authors, all of whom are central to an examination of Renaissance literary culture, regularly recur in these lists: Guarini, Tasso, Ariosto, Petrarch, Aristotle, Cicero, Terence, Groto, Aretino, and Giraldi-Cinthio.

Shifra Baruchson-Arbib closes her book by examining the essential difficulty that one encounters in these lists. She notes many areas of concern which are difficult if not impossible to develop. Two of the most obvious include establishing how many Jews owned books after the invention of the printing press, and how the printed format may have helped certain texts to circulate with greater ease. There is one area of concern not noted, which allows for greater analysis. This is the extent to which the contents of the Jewish libraries in Mantua reflect the manner in which Jews in Italy were able to traverse their own cultural boundaries and the open-minded way they maintained their collections of reading material.

In essence, the strength of Dr. Baruchson-Arbib's book is also its chief weakness. It is a most valid point of scholarship to analyze these library listings in the manner presented, and she is to be lauded for gifting us with this effort, but such detailed work firmly closes the door to the basic way to view the 1595 lists. Jews at that time very much lived their lives not only as members of a religious group but as citizens within a very vital and ever-changing society, whether or not their professions allowed them direct interaction with their Christian neighbors. Any scholar attempting an analysis of Jewish book culture of this era owes it to posterity to connect said population much more intimately to the political and social forces to which they were prey. The dedication to learning evinced by the people compiling these lists was a process that paralleled the attempt of the ruling classes to isolate Jews from pursuing such learning. How fascinating a path it would be to examine these lists from just such a perspective! One can hope that Dr. Baruchson-Arbib may augment her present efforts by taking up this challenge.

WENDY S. BOTUCK

New York City