Overview of Miqdash Me’at Manuscripts: A Paleographical and Philological Analysis

The Miqdash Me‛at (The Little Temple), a poem of almost 5000 lines written in terza rima, is the most important work of Moshe of Rieti (1388-after 1460), the leading Jewish philosopher-poet in Italy in the first half of the 15th century.

The text tells of a journey in the afterlife that is reminiscent of Dante`s Paradise, the main Italian poet of the 14th century, and had an influence on other Italian Jewish authors after Rieti.

Although the author announces the poem to be arranged in three parts following the structure of the Temple of Jerusalem, only the first two have come down to us. Nevertheless, there is no consistency in the order of the chapters.

Despite the importance of this text from a philosophical and literary point of view, until today no commented critical edition of the Miqdash Me‛at has been published.

Within the framework of my PhD thesis at the INALCO (Paris), I am working on the critical edition of the Miqdash Me‛at, and to establish a family tree for the tradition of the transmission of the text.

My contribution at the World Congress of Jewish Studies will be an overview of the over 60 manuscripts of the Miqdash Me‛at existing today and preserved in archives and libraries all around the world – some of which include the integrality of the text, some are partial and others have only one chapter (Me‛on ha-Shoalim).

In particular, I intend to introduce their specificity from a paleographical and philological perspective.

I will finally present the manuscripts that have been discharged for the critical edition and those that have particular importance for the establishment of the history of the transmission of this text, which is of great interest for Italian Jewish poetry, philosophy and literature in the 15th, 16th and 17th century.