Signifying Old Texts and their Networks: Jewish Cultures of the Book through Notarial Deeds, 1500-1700
The project SION-Digit-Sfarim, in partnership with the archives of the Gironde and Venice, aims at localising, cataloguing, digitising, transcribing and exploiting a representative corpus of notarial deeds, 1500-1700, pertaining to the lives, objects, transfers and transactions of Jews, sometimes retraceable to generations long before the actual deeds, within the geographical triangle Venice-Bordeaux-Amsterdam, interconnected by a strong circulation of persons and objects. An important part of these notarial deeds lists book collections: libraries recorded in post-mortem inventories, donations or renouncements. Thus, the documents constitute precious sources for reconstructing the circulation of ancient texts – indeed, we find Hebraica next to Greek, Latin and vernacular texts – from one generation to another. Retrieving a large quantity of source material, this project will offer scientific grounds for the evaluation of book culture in Jewish milieux, the reception of ancient texts, Jewish readership as well as Jewish book ownership.
