A Columbus biography in a polyglot Psalter

NOTED FOR COLUMBUS DAY: ‘Catholics in the New World: A Selection of 16th-18th Century Texts’ and ‘Religious Liberty and the Founding of America’ Reviews (JULIA M. KLEIN, WSJ). Published on 21 September, but I've been saving it for today.

As this city prepares for Pope Francis’ Sept. 26-27 visit, the conversation has focused on security cordons, ticketing snafus, travel nightmares and commercial paralysis. But on a less apocalyptic note, the visit also is spurring museums to exhibit treasures appealing to religious tourists. Two modest displays illuminate the Western Hemisphere’s checkered history of evangelism and tolerance. “Catholics in the New World: A Selection of 16th-18th Century Texts” at the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia includes the oldest surviving book printed in the New World (the 1543/44 “Doctrina Breve,” from Mexico City) and the first book printed in South America (the 1584 “Doctrina Christiana” from Lima, Peru).

An even earlier Old World text—a 1516 Genoese book of psalms in Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, Aramaic and Latin—features the first biography of Christopher Columbus. It seems both quirky and fitting that it appears as a commentary to Psalm 19’s verse, “their words reach to the ends of the world.”

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Past posts on Columbus and various PaleoJudaic matters are here and links.