500 years after the expulsion of Spain’s Jews, medieval Bible comes home
Priceless volume that survived centuries after exile of its persecuted owners finally returns to Galicia
On a summer’s day in 1476 a scribe called Moses Ibn Zabarah put the finishing touches to an enormous and magnificently illustrated Hebrew Bible commissioned by the son of a wealthy Jewish family from Galicia, north-western Spain.
“The blessed Lord grant that he study it, he and his children and his children’s children throughout all generations,” he wrote.
The Bible, whose pages teem with dragons, monkeys, peacocks, intricate geometric patterns and a slightly alarmed Jonah entering the whale’s mouth head first, took 10 months to complete and would have demanded careful study.
But the scribe’s wish was
