Mystics > The precise copyist
GIKATILLA, JOSEPH BEN ABRAHAM (b. 1248).
Sefer ha-orah.
Scribe: Mosheh Barzilai
Manuscript in Hebrew on parchment.
Italy, 1405.
MS X893 G363
Rare Book and Manuscript Library
This collection of kabbalistic works was copied in 1405 from a manuscript from 1325 that is now housed in Florence, Italy, at the Biblioteca Laurenziana (Plut. II 41). We know this because the scribe, Mosheh Barzilai, was quite exact in his work – so exact, in fact, that he included the date of the original manuscript in this one! The colophon on the right shows the 1325 date, and the exact phraseology from the Florence manuscript, while the colophon on the left, from the very end of the book, shows a date of 1405.