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116CHAPTER FOUR
Syrwq S' §yz'#p yS wmwq yd wrbyl w'
O LIBRO DE KOMO SE FAZEN AS KORES
(PARMA MS. 1959)1. I
NTRODUCTION
The text known as
O libro de komo se fazen as kores
'The Book on How toMake Colors' is the best-known Hebraicized Portuguese manuscript, the onlyone to be specifically mentioned in more general studies of pre-expulsionPortuguese Jewry (Ferro Tavares 1992: 146). The earliest printed reference to itappears in Zunz (1876), though the only substantial study of the text was notundertaken until well into the twentieth century. Based on a photograph of the manuscript at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, the text wastranscribed and translated by Blondheim (1929), with a Romanizationappearing in Blondheim (1930). However, this edition contained only a fewnotes of commentary, along with a number of hesitations with respect toindividual transcriptions, transliterations, and translations.Based on my first-hand consultation of the manuscript at the BibliotecaPalatina in Parma (Italy), the present edition addresses these errors, andexpands on excerpts first published in Strolovitch (2000c) to include athorough philological commentary on the entire text. The Romanizationpresented in this chapter also corrects several of Blondheim's errors, most of which consist of unwarranted Castilianizations
1
of several forms, as well as a
 
1
Although the spelling of some forms is, in principle, ambiguous with regard to a givenSpanish-versus-Portuguese feature, Blondheim does not actually justify these Romanizations(see chapter 7 § 4.3 for clearer examples of Castilianisms in Judeo-Portuguese).
 
117small number of characters that he plainly misread. It also departssignificantly in form from his, since I have used the system of transcriptiondescribed in the previous chapter, which more faithfully preserves thedistribution of Hebrew graphemes and disregards some conventions of Roman-letter Portuguese writing. I do, however, owe a great deal toBlondheim for his translation, which provides the English meaning of manyrather obscure elements and compounds.
As kores
contains 45 chapters, varying in length from single sentences toseveral folios, each of which provides instructions for the preparation of inksand dyes, as well as practical information on how to best apply them inmanuscript illumination. The text is bound together with ten othermanuscripts which, based on similarities of format, justification, number of lines, and other features – and in spite of their varied subject matter – wereprobably designed as a unified volume (Metzger 1977). In her discussion of Hebrew manuscript production in late fifteenth-century Portugal, Metzgerdevotes a lengthy introductory footnote to the debate over the date andauthorship of 
As kores
. Although a colophon reveals the name of Abraham ben Judah ibn Hayyim writing at Loulé in Portugal, the year of composition orcopy is given only as "22." Blondheim (1929) takes this to be the year 5022 inthe Hebrew calendar, that is 1262 in the Gregorian, a date that would place thetext among the earliest examples of Judeo-Romance (beyond individualglosses). Yet the writing style and language clearly places the extant copylater than the thirteenth century. Metzger does contend, however, that despiteits distinct Portuguese character, it was probably not a manual used by thescribes and illuminators of what she considers a "Lisbon school" of practitioners.
 
1182. O
VERALL LINGUISTIC CHARACTER
Like the larger astrological text
O libro de ma‹ gika
in chapter 5 (and mostnon-liturgical Judeo-Romance writing), diacritic vocalization is used in only ahandful of words. The use of the four
matres lectionis
'
 
a,
 
h
 
a#,
 
w
 
o/u,
 
and
y
 
e/i
isgenerally more robust than in
O libro de ma‹gika
(chapter 5), and with rareexception only /a/ is left implicit and unspelled, most often in Arabicloanwords (cf. chapter 3 § 2.4.2). The double-duty of 
b 
 
b
 ,
g
 
 g,
and
p
 
 p
 ,representing both plosives as well as the corresponding spirants
v, ¸g,
and
 f,
isindicated less than consistently by a diacritic apostrophe (as opposed to
rafeh)
.Nevertheless,
As kores
does offer the most wide-ranging adaptation of Hebrewscript for writing Portuguese, in terms of both orthographic variation andoverall linguistic structure. While most of these features are discussed inspecific detail in the commentaries on individual items in § 5, one aspect of itsadaptation of Hebrew script is worth highlighting in advance.
2.1. Sibilants
As noted in the previous chapter (§ 2.3.2), the spelling of sibilants in Judeo-Portuguese, as in the Roman-letter orthography of the time, is quitevariable. Further adding to this variation,
As kores
is the only text in the Judeo-Portuguese corpus to make any significant use
c
 
ß
for vernacular
2
words. Itoccurs most often in final position, where the rest of the corpus would have
z
z
(usually corresponding to <z> in the modern orthography):
 
2
Along with a number of items in this text,
c
 
is used in the spelling of several Arabic andGreco-Latin loanwords in
O libro de ma‹ gika.
Given their technical nature, however, it not clearto what extent they would have been part of the colloquial language, so that the question of adistinct pronunciation as indicated by this letter may not be pertinent.
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