Year-Round Ashkenazi Rite Machzor – Two Parts – Venice, 1567

Year-Round Ashkenazi Rite Machzor – Two Parts – Venice, 1567

Year-round machzor, following Ashkenazi rite. Part I – Shabbat prayers, Yotzrot for the four Parashiot, selichot for fast days, and prayers for Purim, Pesach and Shavuot, and Part II – selichot and prayers for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret. Venice: Giorgio di Cavalli, 1567. Two parts in two volumes.
This machzor was based on two previous editions – Salonika, ca. 1550, with commentaries and laws by R. Binyamin HaLevi Ashkenazi; and Sabbioneta-Cremona, 1557-1560. The laws by R. Binyamin HaLevi were printed in the present edition with some omissions and many additions. It also features a lengthy commentary to the prayers and piyyutim, which includes the commentaries printed in the two previous editions and passages from the commentary of R. Avraham of Prague printed in the Prague 1549-1550 edition. The laws printed at the beginning of the machzor are titled here Maaglei Tzedek, as in the Sabbioneta-Cremona edition. In some subsequent editions, the entire commentary is titled Maaglei Tzedek, and later, the machzor itself became known as Machzor Maaglei Tzedek.
Many fine woodcut initial word panels.
In vol. I, pieces of paper with hand-drawn zodiac signs were pasted on the leaves of mussaf for the first day of Pesach (on leaves 150-152 – piyyut about the zodiacs).
Brief handwritten glosses in Italian script. Many censorship deletions (in vol. I, entire pages were deleted in the Yotzer for Parashat Zachor; and an entire piyyut was deleted in the Yotzer for the second day of Shavuot).

Two volumes. Vol. I: [3], 7-255, [3], 261-284 leaves. Vol. II: 88, [3], 94-291 [i.e. 293] leaves. 28.5 cm. Condition varies. Vol. I in fair-good condition, vol. II in fair condition. Stains, including dampstains and dark stains. Tears, including large open tears to title page of vol. I and to other leaves in both volumes, with significant damage to text, mostly repaired with paper (photocopy text replacement on title page of vol. I and several other leaves). Marginal paper repairs. Worming, affecting text, repaired in part with paper. Margins of several leaves trimmed with damage to headings and catchwords. Several leaves detached. Several leaves may have been supplied from a different copy. New bindings.

On the final leaf of the first volume, signature of the censor Dominico Irosolimitano – a Jewish convert to Christianity, who became a notable censor of Hebrew books in Italy. He compiled Sefer HaZikuk (Book of Expurgation) intended for Christian censors of Hebrew books.
A similar machzor was printed that year in the same press, according to Polish rite.
Giorgio di Cavalli's printer's device, depicting an elephant bearing a castle carrying soldiers, appears on the title pages of both volumes, (see: Yaari, Diglei HaMadpisim HaIvriim, image 32 and p. 136).