This volume is an outgrowth of a 2018 symposium on the brothers Wakefield, Robert (ca. 1493/5–1537) and Thomas (?–1575), who were amongst the first early modern Englishmen to learn and teach Hebrew. The symposium, held at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto, featured contributions from James P. Carley, Joanna Weinberg, Theodor Dunkelgrun, Anthony Grafton and Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, three of whom have contributed chapters to this volume, as have Charles Burnett, Jessica Crown, Richard Rex, Saverio Campanini, Benjamin Williams and Herbert Kessler.

Robert Wakefield’s journey from Pontefract, Yorkshire, to the very heights of European Hebraic scholarship cannot be reconstructed in its entirety, owing to significant gaps in the historical record. We do not know where his educational journey began, for example, and on his embrace of the Hebrew language all we have is his own claim that this was inspired by ‘certain Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic books’ which had fallen into his hands, quite by chance (pp. 8–33 at p. 13). Whilst most contributions to this volume are focused on Robert’s Hebraism, Charles Burnett reconstructs Wakefield’s study of Arabic, revealing that he likely learned the language through contact with native speakers, rather than via classical or rabbinic sources, as G. J. Toomer has previously claimed (pp. 70–85).

About Thomas, who never published a major work, even less is known. None the less, Benjamin William’s contribution to this volume supplies us with a very detailed overview of his biblical scholarship, which is provided by his ‘Trinity Bible’, now in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, a quarto edition of the 1517 rabbinic Bible, which was published in 1521. This Bible, numerous photographs of which are helpfully supplied by Williams, is a truly remarkable artefact (pp. 198–236). Wakefield’s exegetical mission, which is revealed in a line of Menachem Recanati’s which he inscribed on the Bible’s title page, ‘great mountains are suspended from every single letter of the Torah’, saw him draw upon the medieval commentaries of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, David Kimchi, Nachmanides, Gersonides and Abraham Saba as well as the grammatical works of Kimchi and Isaac Nathan to provide copious annotations, which may or may not have been intended to form the basis of a major work (p. 203). He combined the insertion of comments derived from these works with those of various of the Church Fathers as well as such contemporary scholars as Martin Luther, Sebastien Munster and Johann Reuchlin (p. 206). Thomas’s annotations of the Cotton Genesis (British Library, London, ms Cotton Otho B. VI), too, have proved revealing. Thanks to them Herbert L. Kessler has been able to trace the provenance of this ‘antiquissimus codex’ from Venice to England to France and back again (p. 237–70).

Whilst, as Carley’s biographical sketch makes clear, little can be known about Robert’s early life and learning, the evolution of his scholarly career can be traced through his will, his annotations and, of course, his published works (pp. 8–33). Thanks largely to his co-option for the king’s cause in 1527, a number of his works have survived, beyond the Oratio, which was likely published shortly after (pp. 18–19). On the ‘King’s Great Matter’, Robert wrote the Kotser codicis, which he revealingly dedicated to Thomas Boleyn, the Syntagma, in which he argued that the case for the King was rooted in the case for the ‘infallible truth of Scripture’ in the Hebrew original and a Responsio to Fisher’s case against the royal divorce (pp. 12–20). These, as Richard Rex’s contribution to this volume argues, were likely drawn from a much larger work, which has not survived (pp. 86–110).

A fascinating artefact to the ferocity of the debate surrounding the ‘King’s Great Matter’ which has survived, however, is the subject of Saverio Campanini’s contribution to this volume (p. 111–31). Campanini attempts to reconstruct the defacement of a (likely medieval) Sefer Torah, believed to have been authored by Ezra himself, in Bologna. Now, whilst this act of religious vandalism might, Campanini speculates, have been the work of an agent of Henry viii, it could equally have been carried out by his opponents in the imperial party, who were as concerned with defending the Vulgate as they were with defending the honour of Catherine of Aragon.

The Robert who joined the King’s cause in 1527 emerges from this volume as a particularly interesting historical personality, whose singular quest to master the Hebrew language was much to the detriment of his ‘disposition, sight and health’ and even to his personal safety (p. 46). None the less, for him, to be able to ‘extract’ the secrets ‘from the most recondite sources of the Hebrews’, it was all worthwhile (pp. 34–49 at p. 44). This is the evangelising tone that Robert struck in his Oratio, given on the occasion of his employment as a Hebrew lecturer to the students of Cambridge University, which is helpfully contextualised herein by Crown (pp. 18–19). As Weinberg’s contribution to this volume makes clear, not only was Robert fluent in Hebrew but he was remarkably up-to-date in his engagement with its study, as is evidenced by frequent citations of Abraham de Balmes’s (d. 1513) newly-published work of Hebrew grammar, Peculium Abrae (pp. 34–49; 50–69 at p. 55). Olszowy-Schlanger’s chapter emphasises the sheer mastery of this address, pointing to its easy movement between the Hebrew Bible, the Talmudic corpus, a range of Bible commentaries, Maimonides’s philosophical classic, The guide of the perplexed in the Hebrew of Samuel Ibn Tibbon and various grammatical works (pp. 132–67). How Wakefield was able to achieve such proficiency in the language with no instruction at all remains somewhat of a mystery, however. Carley, who has contributed a list of all of the books known to have been owned or annotated by both brothers, has identified only one amongst them, Johann Reuchlin’s De rudimentis hebraicis (1506), which might have been of use to a beginner.

Whilst Robert’s initial acquisition of Hebrew cannot be traced, the development of his language skills through his annotated books and manuscripts certainly can. Olszowy-Schlanger’s remarkable contribution to this volume reveals him to have been a very dedicated collector of the latter by her uncovering of five manuscripts which contain notes in his hand; David Kimchi’s Sefer Shorashim (St John’s College, Cambridge, ms I.10), Rashi’s comments on the Latter Prophets and Hagiographa (Corpus Christi College, Oxford, ms 165), a Hebrew-Latin Grammar bound with a Hebrew-Latin-Old French biblical dictionary (Longleat House, Warminster, 21), a Hebrew Psalter (Lambeth Palace Library, London, ms 435) and a mahzor (Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Arch. Selden. A.3). The identification of these, mostly drawn from monastic libraries, is all the more significant given that Wakefield had alleged in his Syntagma (c. 1530) that his manuscript collection had been stolen by one Richard Collier, ‘now vicar of Sittingbourne’, who, Weinberg’s contribution to this volume reveals, turned out to be a pretty serious collector himself (pp.142, 55).

Weinberg’s contribution to this volume is a bracing analysis of Robert’s Hebraism, which, at least one contemporary had significantly undervalued (pp. 50–69, 14–15). Wakefield was, Weinberg amply demonstrates, a ‘remarkable Hebraist’, albeit a rather idiosyncratic one, who tended to move between languages without moving between typefaces. Whilst this was, of course, out of necessity, owing to a lack of Hebrew moveable type in England, it does make his published works rather difficult to follow, even for those of us with passable Hebrew (pp. 50–69).

Both brothers emerge from this volume as remarkable contributors to the rise of Hebraism in England, a cause which culminated in the publication of the King James Bible in 1611. Without the teaching and scholarship of the brothers Wakefield such a cause may never have been pursued. Indeed, much of the literature that would have inspired John Whitgift to argue for the very Bible translation which became the King James had once belonged to Robert Wakefield and, whilst Wakefield, as Richard Rex points out, may never have achieved the renown of a Gardiner or a Cranmer, his scholarly contribution, as this volume demonstrates, was none the less for it (pp. 180–97; 110).