SONCINO (SONCINI, SONCINATI) - Enciclopedia Cattolica, Vol. XI, p. 577

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

SONCINO (SONCINI, SONCINATI). - A given name derived from a locality in the Cremonese region and adopted by a family of itinerant Jewish printers whose activity, with various interruptions, spanned the years 1483–1547.

The founder was Giosuè Salomone, son of the physician and rabbi Jisra'el Náthán ben Sélomôn, originally from Speyer, who settled in Soncino. He began printing in that place in 1483–84 with the work Massekheth Bêrâkhôth (“Treatise on Benedictions”), continuing until 1488. From 1489 to 1492 some of his editions of the Pentateuch were printed in Naples.

Gêrôôm (Girolamo: c. 1460–1534), grandson of the above, greatly advanced the printing and dissemination of notable Hebrew works, issuing them in numerous places owing to his continual changes of residence. His activity, begun in Brescia between 1491 and 1494, continued at Barco (1496–97) under the protection of the Counts Martinengo; from 1501 to 1519 his books occasionally bear the imprint of Fano, Pesaro, and Ancona, this being the most fruitful period of his career. In 1518 he printed in Ortona a Marittima an anti-Judaic volume by Pietro Galatino; between 1520 and 1527 he printed in Rimini and Cesena. Perpetually subject to restrictions and persecutions, in 1529 he went to Salonika, where his son Mosè had established a press in 1521; he then moved on to Constantinople, where, after his death (1534), the printing activity was continued by his other son Eleazar until 1547. Girolamo was an exceptionally skilled printer and an excellent Hebraist; all his editions, including those in Italian and Latin, are noteworthy for the accuracy of their texts and the perfection of their typography. The Hebrew editions of the Soncinos number about 140.

Bibl.: G. Z. Antonucci, Catal. di opere ebraiche, greche, latine ed ital. stampate dai celebri tipografi S. ne' secc. XV e XVI, ed. C. Giannini - Z. Re, 3rd ed., Fermo 1870; F. Sacchi, I tipografi ebrei di S., parte 1ª (unica pubblicata), Cremona 1877; M. Soave, Dei S. celebri tipografi italiani nei secc. XV e XVI, Vescovato 1868; N. Manzoni, Ann. tipografici dei S., Bologna 1883–86 (fundamental work, left incomplete; only part 1 of vol. II, part 2 of vol. III, and part 2 of vol. IV were published); A. Freimann, Die Sonninten Drucke in Salonicchi und Constantinopel, in Zeitsch. für hebräische Bibel., 9 (1905), pp. 21–25; G. Castellani, Gerolamo S., in La bibliofilia, 9 (1907), pp. 23–31; D. W. Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy, Philadelphia 1909; A. Freimann, Thesaurus typographiae Hebraicae saeculi XV, Berlin 1924–31; S. Magrini, Perché un tipografo ebreo del '500 stampò un'opera antigiuadica, in Rass. mensile di Israel, 10 (1935), pp. 126–32.