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The New York Public Library, Dorot Jewish Division
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Bookplate of Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, in Psalterium Hebraicum
by Agsotino Giustiniani
(Genoa, 1516).
This pioneering polyglot version of the book of Psalms is all the rarer because the learned bishop who was its author digressed to criticize fellow-Genoan Christopher Columbus for his service to Spain and to reproach the pope for his recognition of the Spanish claim to the American continent. It was ordered, as a result, that the book be "carefully sought out in all places it has been sent to" so that it might be "destroyed and utterly extinguished;" it was to be "burned by the public hangman." A son of King George III, the Duke of Sussex was among the leading British bibliophiles, philosemites and freemasons of the early-nineteenth century, and the great library that he formed at Kensington Palace was famed for its bibles and Hebraica.
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