2009/01/01 by Ferenc Postma, A.J.C. Verheij · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Aesthetics #Archaeology #Art #Classics #German #Historical and Linguistic Studies #History #Honour #Judaism #Literature #Medieval and Classical Philosophy #Order (exchange) #Period (music) #Poetry #Point (geometry)
paper · doi:10.1163/187502109790213023
published in Zutot 6(1), 35-47 (Brill)
openalex publication_date 2009/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
In the academic circles of seventeenth-century Europe, it was fashionable to own an album amicorum (German: Stammbuch), a pocket book in which one's friends would enter proverbs, short poems, dedications and the like.Not only personal friends, but specifically professors and public personalities as well were often invited to 'write a few words' in honour of the album's owner-whose purpose it was to collect and boast as many of these contacts as possible, in order to build his personal network in the Republic of Letters.It is therefore only logical that also some so-called album inscriptions by Menasseh ben Israel (1604-1657), rabbi, printer, diplomat, 1 and one of the leading Jewish intellectuals in his day, should have survived.In fact, at this point we have collected seven such inscriptions, spanning a period of ten years (1645-1655) and all written in Amsterdam, which we present below.