Notes of Italian Censors of the XVI-XVII Centuries in Manuscripts from the Book Collection of the Ginzburg Barons

Abstract

The article is devoted to the censors’ notes in the Jewish books that existed in the second half of the XVI - early XVII century on the territory of modern Italy. The material for the study was the family collection of the Ginzburg barons (the Russian State Library), in which about 500 manuscripts of the that period were preserved. The purpose of the article is to introduce into scientific circulation data on the censors of Jewish books on the basis of one of the largest collections of Judaica in the world. The main task of the study was to collect information about the censors from the notes they made in the manuscripts of the collection, and analyze them. There were 27 names of censors, including Domenico of Jerusalem, Giovanni Domenico Caretto, Camillo Yagel, Luigi da Bologna and Renato da Modena, who owned the vast majority of notes with names and information about their lives. The author comes to the conclusion that although the history of censorship of Jewish books has been studied enough, but research on this topic on the basis of rich collections of Judaism in Russia remains a matter of the future.