Collection ID: 0002 | Metadata type: TEI | TEI XML | Data

Title

Secrets of wisdom.

Other related names

• Kaplan, Arnold Harvey, 1939-, donor
• Kaplan, Deanne, donor

Call number

MS 56, Codex 034.1
(420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106-3703, University of Pennsylvania, Library at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies)

Alternate identifiers

• bibid: 9977586822803681
• http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1123080948
• https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/catalog/81431-p3m61bv68

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania

Language

Dutch, with sections in Portuguese (f. 1r-11r, 14v-23r), Spanish (f. 12r-14r), and Hebrew (f. 31r-34r, 39r, 46v-48r); scattered words and phrases in Hebrew (f. 1r, 44v, 50v, 156v); sections, scattered recipes, and printed pages tipped in in French (for example, f. 70r-71v, 76r-78v, 129r-131r, 136v-138r); and occasional entries in English (for example, f. 30r, 60r) and Italian (for example, f. 37r)

Origin

Date

after 1685?-1835

Place

Netherlands?

Summary

Multilingual miscellany of culinary, medical, and household chemistry recipes; esoteric and alchemical notes; trade information and accounts; and family records, compiled over more than a century, possibly by members of one Sefardic family based in or near Amsterdam or Naarden. The oldest material at the beginning of the volume (f. 1r-23v) includes a medical treatise on the doctrine of signatures and a small group of prescriptions, both in Portuguese, and a biographical introduction to the reader in Spanish signed J.C.A., which refers to the arrival of Jewish physician Benedicto de Castro in Amsterdam in 1671 (f. 12r). An excerpt from the Amsterdamsche Courant dated 1797 relatively early in the volume (f. 40r) suggests that most of the volume was written in the 19th century before 1835. Esoteric content includes astrological references (f. 7v-9v); alchemical symbols (f. 10v-11r, 62v, 140v); a spell in Hebrew for killing an enemy (f. 34r); possible incantations (f. 50r); a magic square (f. 53v); reference to the angel Uriel (f. 98r); and page citations to items of alchemical interest in the diary of the French diplomat and physicist Balthasar de Monconys, published after his death in 1665 (f. 137r-138r), Twenty printed leaves with the running title Calendrier intéressant are pasted to leaves, covering recipes and notes (some printed leaves now loose and two missing from the sequence, f. 79v-90r). These are sequential leaves (p. 3-46) from a copy of Calendrier intéressant pour l'année ..., ou Almanach physico-économique, published by the Société Typographique of Bouillon from 1770 into the early 1780s. The pages here include references to the Calendriers of 1771 and 1772, so were likely printed in the years immediately following, but the writing on the pages beneath them is from the early decades of the 19th century (for example, a note on the death of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1821, f. 80r). A small amount of shipping, currency, and price information is scattered on a few leaves (Paris, Bordeaux, and Marseilles, f. 60r; Castilian weights, Livorno, Curaçao, New York, 131v-135r; Paris, Bordeaux, Geneva, Venice, Charlestown, New York, 148v-152v). The family records at the end of the volume (f. 171r-174r) document births and deaths, many with the family name Henriquez (or Henriques), from 1759 to 1835, not recorded in chronological order.

Notes

• Title from translation of caption title (f. 1r).
   

Extent

176 leaves : 155 x 100 mm bound to 160 x 105 mm +

Collation

Paper, 176 leaves; 1¹²⁻⁵ (-1, -2, -3, -4, -5) 2-11¹² 12¹⁰ 13-15¹² 16⁴ (last leaf is pastedown); modern foliation in pencil, [i-ii, 1-102 (paginated 1-204), 103-174], lower right recto. Pagination, where present, is early, in ink, upper outer corners; references in this record are to modern foliation.

Support

Paper

Binding

Original (late 17th-century) vellum.

Layout

Ruled for accounts in five columns, with a narrow column on the left, a wide second column for details, and three narrow columns on the right for amounts, but very few pages are used in this way (for example, f. 87v, 171r); octavo format.

Decoration

4 small diagrams in ink (astrological triangles (f. 7v), Zodiac Man (f. 9r), magic square (f. 53v), clock (f. 63v)); alchemical symbols (f. 10v-11r).

Script

Written in early modern cursive (f. 1r-23v) by one hand and modern cursive (f. 24r-174v) by multiple hands.

Provenance

• Purchased for the Penn Libraries 2013 by Arnold and Deanne Kaplan (Winner's Auctions & Exhibitions (Jerusalem), 12 June 2013, lot 145) (Collectify accession no. 2013.11.08.00012).
   

Subjects topical

• Jews--Netherlands--History--Sources
• Alchemy--Early works to 1800
• Alchemy
• Chemistry--Early works to 1800
• Chemistry
• Medicine--Formulae, receipts, prescriptions--Early works to 1800
• Medicine--Formulae, receipts, prescriptions
• Jews
• History
• Netherlands

Genres

• Codices (bound manuscripts)
• Accounts
• Diagrams
• Recipes
• Manuscripts, Portuguese--17th century
• Manuscripts, Spanish--17th century
• Manuscripts, Hebrew--18th century
• Manuscripts, French--18th century
• Manuscripts, Dutch--18th century
• Manuscripts, Dutch--19th century
• Manuscripts, European
• Sources

Licenses

• Text

  These images and the content of Library at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies MS 56, Codex 034.1: Secrets of wisdom. are free of known copyright restrictions and in the public domain. See the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark page for usage details, http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/.

  URL

  http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

• Text

  Metadata is ©2025 University of Pennsylvania Libraries and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License version 4.0 (CC-BY-4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. For a description of the terms of use see the Creative Commons Deed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

  URL

  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode

Table of contents

• fol. 1r — Title from translation of caption title
• fol. 12r — Introduction to the reader in Spanish, signed J.C.A, referring to the arrival of Jewish physicial Benedictio de Castro in Amsterdam 1671
• fol. 34r — A spell in Hebrew for killing an enemy
• fol. 40r — Excerpt from the Amsterdamsche Courant dated 1797
• fol. 50r — Possible incantations
• fol. 79v — Leaves from Calendrier intéressant pour l'année…, ou Almanach physico-économique, published by the Société Typographique of Bouillon
• fol. 137r — Page citations from the diary of Bathasar de Monconys
• fol. 171r — Henriquez (Henriques) family records

Decorations

• fol. 7v — Astrological references
• fol. 9r — Astrological references
• fol. 10v — Alchemical symbols
• fol. 11r — Alchemical symbols
• fol. 53v — Magic square
• fol. 62v — Alchemical symbols
• fol. 140v — Alchemical symbols