This week I'm doing a special What If episode of obscure rabbis you need to meet.

It goes like this:

WHAT IF the very first words published in the Western world with moveable type were printed by a Jew in Hebrew?

His name was Davin de Caderousse.

Well, maybe. https://t.co/NQO5WUAOD9

You know this guy? Who invents this thing?

Got him the title of "Man of the Millennium." According to A&E anyway, which ranks Elvis over Kant, Elizabeth I & Faraday, so grain of salt (to say the least).
https://t.co/Vkqb5NPmCm

Yup, Gutenberg.

But have you met Procop Waldvogel? https://t.co/s4XOWTN2H8

So here's how this goes down.

Obviously great inventions, influential people, life-changing ideas don't emerge out of a vacuum. Moveable type being no exception.

Historians' heads tend to explode when people start talking about "the first" anything for a very particular reason

That reason is, define your criteria and also please explain HOW YOU KNOW THAT. Oh, it's complicated? WHO KNEW. Wait, it's us, we knew. There is no first. It's a false construct.

Ahem.

So, like, before the first Bible popped off Gutenberg's press, lots of stuff was happening.

For one thing, there were a plethora of small incremental inventions and refinements of techniques (for example, in metalworking) that Gutenberg tinkered with for years (as a raucous lawsuit from 1439 indicates).

Others tinkered, too.

One of them was a silversmith from Prague

In 1444, the silversmith, Procopius, set up shop in Avignon. We know this because in 1890, a priest & art historian, PH Requin, published 23 notarized documents he found in an archive in Provence.

Available here: https://t.co/r2HuDcdY9d

In this archive: https://t.co/8W2YhQbAxC

The 23 documents told a remarkable story.

(Published by Requin the following year as Origines de l'imprimerie en France, here: https://t.co/5rVfYKB4is)

On July 4th, Procopius agreed to make alphabetic "forms" for an associate. What these "forms" were is not entirely clear.

He also took on apprentices to whom he taught "the knowledge and practice of [artificial] writing," including one Davin (aka David) de Caderousse, a Jew.

Some two years later, on 10 March 1446, Procopius agreed to make 27 Hebrew alphabetic forms for de Catarousse in fine iron. https://t.co/fwBTFud0ZB

In exchange, de Caderousse, a dyer, promised to instruct Procopius in the arts of dyeing (possibly related to making ink). He also pledged not to reveal the secret of his master's artificial writing.

Procopius seems to have fulfilled his commitment. De Caderousse did not.

As a result de Caderousse was ordered to return the Hebrew letters to Procopius

According to Cecil Roth, he never managed to print anything.

According to Febvre & Martin, none of the documents are technical enough to indicate that what Procopius had fashioned was moveable type https://t.co/98iWecH3AM

But then, guess what turned up as bookbinding?

Well, the leaves are privately held so we have to go with the handful of scholars who examined them.

Their verdict: these piyyutim in Rashi script were printed in Avignon c 1446.

Read press here: https://t.co/X3UEDOMFZ2 https://t.co/4AOQVtKsxc

In contrast, Gutenberg seems to have gotten cranking (printing smaller pieces before the Vulgate) in the early 1450s.

But does this mean anything?

De Caderousse subsequently disappears from the historical record.

So could he really be "the first"? Does it even matter?

This What If exercise, I'd suggest, matters in two big ways.

First, it matters to human history. Not the fact that facts can be slippery & sometimes we get things wrong. Rather, that celebrity is always reductionist. There is always more to the story. Knowledge is collaborative

Second, de Caderousse's lost printing matters to Jewish history. Like all incunabula, it whispers to us what is important. Here's your chance to print the very first words in Hebrew. What do you choose? Avinu Malkeinu.

Maybe.

But first, twelfth, doesn't matter.

Sometime very early in the history of mechanical type in the West, a Jew swore secrecy and procured precious metal letters (or perhaps a plate) and set them painstakingly to paper.

And the words he chose are ancient, stirring, filled with hope and longing. Unforgettable.

Addendum: I meant this only as a speculative exercise highlighting the indeterminacy of world-changing moments & the inherently complex and collaborative way they happen. There's a good reason we have double-blind peer review, and the discovered leaves have NOT been subject to it

In addition, researchers would need to examine the archival materials transcribed by Requin (either the originals or good reproductions of them). There are lots of open questions and none of the claims about printing in Avignon in the 1440s should be accepted as conclusive.