I manoscritti ebraici copiati in Sicilia e i loro colophon come testimonianza del background culturale di Flavio Mitridate

In this study, the author tries to show the cultural background in which the Young Flavius Mithridates lived and formed himself through the mirror offered by the Hebrew manuscripts copied in Sicily in the XIV and XV centuries. The article opens with a survey of the paleographic features of some letters written by Sicilian Jews in the X and XI centuries (some of which were discovered in the Cairo Genizah), and then moves to an examination of the extant manuscripts which contain a colophon indicating the time and place where the manuscript was copied, and which can be therefore traced back Sicily with a fair degree of certainty. Special attention is devoted to the autograph manuscripts produced by Farāğī ben Šabbetai Abū l-Farağ, i.e. Mithridates’ father, and to the notes that Mithridates himself wrote down on those very same manuscripts. Yet, the survey also includes the manuscripts copied by Sicilians scribes after the expulsion in the other Mediterranean region. The article provides the text of all colophons and an Italian translation thereof. From this survey there emerges a picture of Sicily as a place where Jews read and copied a vast amount of rabbinic, kabbalistic, astronomical, astrological, mathematic and other sciences and Kabbalistic works. This study therefore offers further evidence of the fact that during the XIV-XV centuries Sicily was a veritable cultural hub where the Arabic and Jewish learning flourished in the golden age of Sefarad was preserved