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Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal
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1749-081 Lisboa
Portugal
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The Cervera Bible : a Treasure of the National Library of Portugal in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
News | November
The Cervera Bible (Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Lisbon, Ms. IL. 72) is the central piece on exhibition in the Medieval Europe Gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from November 22, 2011 to January 16, 2012.
The codex is among the oldest and most significant Sephardi Bibles that survived the destruction of most of the Jewish communities in the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon since 1391 and the expulsion of the
Jews from Spain, in 1492, and from Portugal, in 1498.
Extremely rare example of the Iberian Hebrew paleography of its time, the Cervera Bible is a manuscript on parchment in Hebrew language and characters executed in Cervera (Lerida, Spain) in 1299-1300.It consists of 451 folios (2 columns, 31 lines).
Profusely illuminated in gold and color with motifs of Mozarabic and  Judaic religion, comprises the Old Testament books, the massorah (the body of textual criticism of the Scriptures with notes on writing, vocabulary and variant sources, pronunciation and other comments) and a grammatical treatise by Rabi David Qimhi (1160?-1235?).
Besides its antiquity and high technical and artistic quality, remarkable features of identity give this Bible a special place in the lineage of Sephardi bibles.
It is one of the few examples of signed and dated Hebrew manuscripts bearing not only the name of the scribe (Samuel Ben Abraham ibn Nathan) but also, which is a rare exception, the illuminator’s identitiy (Joseph Asarfati), each of themhaving its own colophon page.
The scribe’s colophon (f. 434) mentions the place (Cervera,  Catalonia) and date of the beginning (30 July 1299) and termination (19 may 1300) of the work; originally, it included also the identity of the patron which was later erased, probably due to a change of owner. Furthermore, the massorah scribe is also identified (Josue ben Abraham ibn Gaon), being inscribed in twenty places of the text.
These characteristics relate the Cervera bible to other important Hebrew manuscripts such as the Paris Bible (BNF, Paris, ms. Hébr.  20, made in Tudela, Spain, 1301), which massorah was also written by the same scribe (ibn Gaon), and overall to the famous Kennicott Bible (Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Kenn. 1, executed in La Coruna, Spain, 1476) for which the Cervera Bible served as the direct model.
Produced at the distance of 176 years, the Kennicott Bible shows an
evident parallel with the Cervera Bible, reflecting not only its style but
also the imagery, even in the most rare features such as the full page for the artist's colophon, showing the name written in large zoomorphic and anthropomorphic letters, that exists in both bibles.
In the Metroplolitan Exhibition, the pages of the Cervera Bible will be turned weekly, giving viewers the rare opportunity to see several of its beautiful illustrations.The images in this page show the folios that will be exhibited.
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