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Porta veritatis, sive Compendiaria ad beatitudinem

Description:
Has been ascribed to Menasseh ben Israel (1604-57), who visited London in the mid-1650s and sold a manuscript of this work to Ralph Cudworth, the Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge. Cudworth passed this manuscript to his friend Richard Kidder, the Bishop of Bath and Wells. Kidder used the Porta veritatis as a source of Jewish objections to Christianity which he could refute in his Demonstration of the Messias (London, 1699). Kidder states in the preface to Part II of his work that he has reason to think Manasseh himself was the author of Porta veritatis. An article by J.M. Hillesum in Het Boek (1928) refutes the Manassah ben Israel attribution and suggests that the author was Rabbi Pinheiro [Duarte Pinheiro/Pinhel/Pinelli], an Italian marrano. Hillesum’s attribution is supported by Cecil Roth in his book, A Life of Menasseh ben Israel (1934). Richard Kidder willed his copy of the manuscript to Balliol College, where it still is (Ms. 251). David S. Katz, in his book Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England, 1603-1655, notes that in addition to the Balliol manuscript there is a copy of the Porta veritatis in the Harleian manuscripts at the British Library (MS. Harl. 3427-8).This copy at the Clark Library is bound in calf, with gold tooled spine and edges. Contains ownership signatures of Samuel Heywood and Harry Hall Squire. Also contains a lengthy note, on the verso of the front flyleaf, in the hand of Samuel Heywood about the manuscript.
Date:
1634
Resource Type:
text
Collection:
Early Modern English Manuscripts from UCLA’s Clark Library
Porta veritatis, sive Compendiaria ad beatitudinem