Manuscripts
Item
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Country
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US
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Language of name of institution
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eng
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Contact information: postal address
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613 West 155th Street, New York, NY 10032
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Contact information: phone number
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01 (212) 926-2234 (general information)
01 (212)926-2234 ext. 251 (Rare Books and Manuscripts)
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Contact information: email
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info@hispanicsociety.org (general information)
oldbooks@hispanicsociety.org (Rare Books and Manuscripts)
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Reference number
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MS
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Type of reference number
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Archival reference number
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Title (official language of the state)
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Manuscripts
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Language of title
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eng
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Creator / accumulator
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The Hispanic Society of America
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Date note
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11th century/20th century
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Language(s)
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heb
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lat
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por
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spa
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Extent
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more than 250,000 units
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Type of material
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Textual Material
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Scope and content
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The Hispanic Society of America holds a remarkable and diversified collection of manuscripts, including 250 poetry manuscripts from the 15th-17th centuries, holograph letters and manuscripts from hundreds of writers, Medieval charters, holograph royal letters, sailing charts, letters patent of nobility, illuminated Bibles, books of hours, choir books, as well as celebrated historical, scientific, and literary manuscripts.
One of the ex-libris of this collection is a Hebrew Bible with massorah magna and parva, illuminated in Lisbon between 1492 and 1497 (MS B 241). This Bible was found in Fez in the early 16th century. Later, in 1618, it was purchased by Jacob Curiel, alias Duarte Nunes da Costa (1587-1665) in Pisa. It was one of the two Medieval Iberian Bibles used by Joseph Athias to compose the critical apparatus of his translation of the Bible, published in 1667. In 1830, the manuscript became part of David Henriquez de Castro's (1826-1898) library in Amsterdam. The Manuscripts collection of the Hispanic Society of America includes another Iberian illuminated Bible, produced by the Andalusian school in 1472 (MS HC 371/169).
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Archival history
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The manuscript collection of the Hispanic Society of America has been composed and enriched along the history of this library and museum by gifts and acquisitions. The original collection was formed by the Society's founder, Archer Milton Huntington (1870–1955), who, since his youth, nourished a particular interest in Hispanic culture and started to collect books and manuscripts. In 1890, his personal Spanish library already numbered almost 2,000 books. The plan to found a Spanish museum in the USA dates back to this time. Since 1892, he undertook voyages to Spain, during which he acquired numerous books and manuscripts for his library. In 1897, his father gifted him an estate named "Pleasance", in Baychester, New York, where he built a mansion to instal his ever-growing library. In a trip to Spain in 1898, Huntington took knowledge of the library of the Marquis of Jerez de los Caballeros in Seville and his collection of rare books. Only in 1902, after his father's death, Huntington inherited enough resources to purchase the invaluable library of the Marquis of Jerez de los Caballeros. The illuminated Bible (MS B 241) mentioned above (see Scope and content) was also part of the collection of the Marquis, who had taken its hold after the death of David Henriquez de Castro.
After the purchase of the Jerez library, most of the acquisitions to the Society's library were made by Huntington personally. He preferred to purchase whole catalogued collections prepared expressly for the Society by the antiquarian book dealer Karl W. Hiersemann of Leipzig. For ten years, from the founding of the Society until the outbreak of World War I, he dealt almost exclusively with Hiersemann, adding books and manuscripts by the tens of thousands to the library. The outbreak of World War I in Europe effectively brought to an end Huntington’s active pursuit of acquisitions for the Hispanic Society. After the War, his efforts were focused on forming a professional staff to conserve and research his collections. In the late 1920s, he hired a group of young women to work in the Library Department, all freshly graduated with degrees in library science from colleges such as Simmons in Boston or Gallaudet in Washington, D.C. After only a few months as librarians, Huntington assembled them one day and told them of his plans to form a Museum Department composed of specialist curators for each major area within the collections. Along with Clara Louisa Penney, bibliographer in Manuscripts and Rare Books, they began to research and catalogue the Hispanic Society’s collections, a seemingly endless task that would take them some 50 years to complete.
In the years that followed, the collections of the Society continued to grow through purchases and gifts, many from its founder, although Huntington himself no longer made any major acquisitions. As would be expected, in his final years he became less involved in the daily operations of the Society, yet he retained total administrative authority until his death in 1955.
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(source: The Hispanic Society of America website)
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Administrative / Biographical history
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On May 18, 1904, Archer Milton Huntington founded the Hispanic Society of America, in New York City, with the mission of providing a "free public library, museum and educational institution, containing objects of artistic, historic, and literary interest,” for the purposes of the “advancement of the study of the Spanish and Portuguese languages, literature, and history, and advancement of the study of the countries wherein Spanish and Portuguese are or have been spoken languages”. After years of dedication to forming an invaluable collection of Hispanic art and literature, Huntington purchased a plot of land in upper Manhattan and, in little more than a year after the Society's foundation, the building to accomodate the library and museum was erected on Audubon Terrace in Washington Heights. Two more years were spent in the careful arrangement of the collections, all directly supervised by Huntington himself. On January 20, 1908, the Hispanic Society was officially inaugurated. A second building, on the north side of the Audubon Terrace, was added in 1930.
Today, the museum holds more than 18,000 works from prehistoric times to the 20th century, including paintings by Diego Velázquez, El Greco, Francisco de Goya, and Joaquín Sorolla. The Manuscripts and Rare Books collections are among the most extensive outside Spain, containing more than 250,000 manuscripts, documents, and letters, along with 30,000 books printed before 1830, including some 250 incunabula. In addition to rare books, the Hispanic Society maintains a modern research library on the literature, fine arts, geography, history, and cultures of Spain, Portugal, Latin America, and the Philippines, now comprising over 300,000 volumes plus 1,500 periodicals dating from the 19th century up to the present.
In 2017, the museum was closed for renovations and the main building remains closed in 2022.
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(source: The Hispanic Society of America website)
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Access points: document types
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Bible
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Access, restrictions
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Appointments are required for the study of manuscripts.
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Author of the description
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Carla Vieira, 2022
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Bibliography
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Afonso, Luís Urbano. 2014. “A Escola de Lisboa no contexto dos manuscritos sefarditas iluminados tardo-medievais.” In O livro e as interações culturais judaico-cristãs em Portugal no final da Idade Média. Série monográfica “Alberto Benveniste.” Lisbon: Cátedra de Estudos Sefarditas Alberto Benveniste : ARTIS, Instituto de História da Arte, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa.
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Dunkelgrün, Theodor. 2012. “Like a Blind Man Judging Colors Joseph Athias and Johannes Leusden Defend Their 1667 Hebrew Bible.” Studia Rosenthaliana 44: 79–115. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44713676.
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Metzger, Thérèse. 1977. Les Manuscripts Hébreux Copiés et Décorés à Lisbonne Dans Les Derniers Decénnies Du XVe Siècle. Paris: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian; Centro Cultural Português.
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Moita, Tiago. 2017. “O Livro Hebraico Português Na Idade Média: Do Sefer He-Aruk de Seia (1284-85) Aos Manuscritos Tardo-Medievais Da ‘Escola de Lisboa’ e Aos Primeiros Incunábulos.” PhD thesis, Lisboa: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa.
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Narkiss, Bezalel. 1969. Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts. Jerusalem, New York: Macmillan.
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Sed-Rajna, Gabrielle. 1970. Manuscrits hébreux de Lisbonne; un atelier de copistes et d’enlumineurs au XVe siècle. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.
