BARTOLOCCI, GIULIO°

BARTOLOCCI, GIULIO° (1613–1687), Italian Christian Hebraist and bibliographer. Bartolocci was taught Hebrew by the convert Giovanni Battista Jonah Galileo (formerly Judah Jonah of Safed), and in 1651 became professor of Hebrew language and rabbinic literature at the Collegium Neophytorum (for Jewish converts) in Rome; at the same time he served as scriptor hebraicus in the Vatican Library. He is remembered above all for his Bibliotheca Magna Rabbinica… de scriptoribus et scriptis hebraicis, ordine alphabetico hebraice et latine digestis (Heb. title Kiryat Sefer), a comprehensive bibliography of Jewish books (Rome, 4 vols., 1675–93). The last volume was edited by Bartolocci's student Carlo Giuseppe Imbonati, who added a fifth volume, Bibliotheca Latina-Hebraica (1694; all 5 vols. repr. 1969), containing a bibliography of Latin works by Christian authors on the Jews or on Judaism. Bartolocci's work is the first systematic, all-inclusive bibliography of Jewish literature. It served as the basis for Wolf's Bibliotheca Hebraea and for subsequent works in the field. Some of the works which Bartolocci regarded as most important he presents in full, in the Hebrew (or Aramaic) original and in Latin translation. Among these are the Antiochus Scroll, Alphabet of Ben Sira, and Otiyyot de-Rabbi Akiva. Occasionally, he gives biographies of important writers. His biographies of biblical commentators, such as Rashi, Ibn Ezra, David Kimḥi, Gersonides, and Abrabanel, were published also in A. Reland's Analecta Rabbinica (Utrecht, 1702). His work still retains some importance. Other works by Bartolocci remain in manuscript.

bibliography:

G.M. Mazzuccheli, Gli Scrittori d'Italia, 2 (1763), 468; Roth, Italy, 394; Milano, Italia, 681; Steinschneider, in: zhb, 2 (1897), 51 no. 99.

[Cecil Roth]