Judaic Treasures of the
Library of Congress:
Women of Italy In the making of the Jewish book, women have played a role as publishers, printers, patrons, and writers. The first woman involved in printing Hebrew books was Estellina, the wife of the physician Abraham Conat, who introduced Hebrew printing in Mantua and published six Hebrew books there in 1474-77. A printing press had been established in that cultured city in 1471 and others followed. As David W. Amram writes in his The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy At one of these presses Conat caught the inspiration to print Hebrew books, and communicated it to his worthy helpmeet, Estellina. She printed on her own account. . . "Investigation of the World" by Jedaiah Bedersi and in the colophon she writes, "I Estellina, wife of my master my husband, the honored Rabbi Abraham Conat, may he be blessed with children and may his days be prolonged, Amen! wrote this book, 'Investigation of the World"' . . . She "wrote" the book, as her husband said, "with many pens without the aid of a miracle," for the art had not yet invented the word "printing" by which to define itself. It seems clear that she had a hand in the printing and proofreading, both of which the word "wrote" connotes. It is most fitting that the Mantua of the Gonzagas, rulers who were patrons of the arts, be the place where a Jewish woman entered into Hebrew bookmaking. The Jews of that city were the most integrated into the general culture of any contemporary Jewish community, women as well as men. "The libraries of the women of Mantua," Shlomo Simonsohn writes in his | |
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