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A history of the burning of the Talmud in Italy. It was during the Counter-Reformation in Italy in the middle of the 16th century that the attacks on the Talmud had the most far-reaching consequences. In the reactionary climate, a quarrel broke out between rival Christian printers of Hebrew books in Venice. One of them, with the connivance of certain apostates, denounced the works produced by his competitor as containing matter offensive to the Holy Catholic Church. It developed into a wholesale attack on Hebrew literature. After a council of cardinals had examined the matter, the pope issued a decree (August 1553) designating the Talmud and related works as blasphemous and condemning them to be burned. On Sept. 9, 1553, the Jewish New Year, a huge pyre was set up in the Campo de' Fiori in Rome of Hebrew books that had been seized from Jewish homes. Subsequently the Inquisition ordered all rulers, bishops, and inquisitors throughout Italy to take similar action. The orders were obeyed in the Papal States, particularly in Bologna and Ravenna, and in Ferrara, Mantua, Urbino, Florence, and Venice, the center of Hebrew printing, and also in 1559 in Cremona. Representations by the rabbis gained a reprieve of the indiscriminate destruction. A papal bull issued on May 29, 1554, specified that while the Talmud and works containing blasphemies of Christianity were to be burned, other Jewish works were to be submitted for censorship. The Talmud was included in the first Index Expurgatorius in 1559. The ban against publication of the Talmud, with certain excisions or without them, under a different name, was temporarily lifted (1564) by Pius IV. However, confiscation of Hebrew works continued in Italy, especially in the Papal States, down to the 18th century. The same was the case in Avignon and the papal possessions in France. Renewed interdictions were issued by popes Gregory XIII (1572–85) and Clement VIII (1593). The burning in Rome was commemorated by an annual public fast day observed on the eve of Sabbath of hukkat (Shibbolei ha-Leket 263). The events in Italy were described by the contemporary chronicler Joseph ha-Kohen in Emek ha-Bakhah and by a number of other writers. Mattathias Delacrut, who managed to escape with his own books to Brest-Litovsk, relates that in Venice over 1,000 complete copies of the Talmud, 500 copies of the code of Isaac Alfasi, and innumerable other works were burned. Judah b. Samuel Lerma lost all the copies of his newly printed Lehem Yehudah in Venice and had to rewrite it from memory. The burning also aroused protest in Christian circles. The Hebraist Andrea Masio openly voiced his resentment of the pope's ruling, saying that the cardinals' report condemning a literature of which they knew nothing was as valueless as a blind man's opinion of color.
Abraham b. Joseph Hayyim Yaari (Wald, 1899–1966), bibliographer, historian, translator, and librarian. Yaari was born in eastern Galicia and settled in Palestine in 1920. He taught at a Tel Aviv school, and worked in the Hebrew National and University Library from 1925. Beginning his literary career by publishing reviews and articles on education, Yaari later specialized in literary studies, bibliography, and the history of Jewish settlement in Palestine. He rediscovered little-known Hebrew books, especially those printed in the oriental countries, see e.g., his Reshimat Sifrei Ladino (1934) and Ha-Defus ha-Ivri be-Arzot ha-Mizrah (1936–40). He published letters, memoirs, travel descriptions from hitherto unknown manuscripts, and many bibliographies which he supplemented by comprehensive introductions.
Among Yaari's works are: Sheluhei Erez Yisrael (1951), a comprehensive anthology concerning the emissaries of Erez Israel; Iggerot Erez Yisrael (1934, 19502), an anthology of letters relating to Erez Israel from the Babylonian Exile to modern times; Diglei ha-Madpisim ha-Ivriyyim (1943), about Hebrew printers' marks; Zikhronot Erez Yisrael (2 vols., 1947), 120 memoirs from the 17th–20th centuries in Palestine (abridged English version, The Goodly Heritage, 1958), Ha-Mahazeh ha-Ivri ha-Mekori ve-ha-Meturgam... (19562), a bibliography of plays presented in Hebrew and in Hebrew translation; Bibliografyah shel Haggadot Pesah (1960), a major work describing 2,717 different editions of the Passover Haggadah; Toledot Hag Simhat Torah (1964), describing customs of the festival in various communities in different eras; and the posthumously published Ha-Defus ha-Ivri be-Kushta (1967), a history of Hebrew printing in Constantinople (Istanbul) from 1504. He also translated many writers into Hebrew and was one of the editors of the bibliographical journal Kiryat Sefer.
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