DAVID QIMHI’S SEPHER HA-SHORASHIM
Vellum, 11.375 x 9.125, ff. 192, double columns of 39 lines. 13th cent. ?, very well written, with points and marginal notes, some in Latin, of early 16th cent.
Donor, T. Baker. Wagstaff, 3468.
From Norwich Priory. At top of f. 1, in red capital Roman letters, is
X. CLXXXXII.
in the style characteristic of that house. X. CCXLIII occurs, not in red capitals, on p. 376.
Collation : 18 – 248 (7 a fragment).
On pp. 368 ff. the writing is extremely minute.
Text in double columns: marginal scholia and comment above and below.
It is the Book of Roots, the Hebrew dictionary which formed the second part of Qimhi’s Sepher ha-michlol.
Negative microfilm in St John's College Library.
In the 16th century this MS probably belonged to Robert Wakefield, King’s Reader of Hebrew at Cambridge. The handwriting of the notes is that used in books which certainly belonged to him. See Wakefield’s receipts for stipend in St John's College Archives D56.140 and 180. Robert Wakefield was a Fellow in the 1520s.
J. Olszowy-Schlanger, Les manuscrits hébreux dans l’Angleterre médiévale: étude historique et paléographique (Paris, 2003) p. 44.