Judah Bonsenyor’s "Book of Words and Proverbs by Sages and Philosophers"

This book presents the first annotated English translation of Judah Bonsenyor’s Book of Words and Proverbs by Sages and Philosophers (ca. 1294), a seminal work within the medieval Catalan sapiential tradition. Compiled at the request of King James II of Aragon, the book gathers proverbs of Arabic, Hebrew, and Eastern traditions which bring together a didactic purpose from wisdom and personal experience that has not lost its value to this day. The text was widely disseminated during the late Middle Ages from the eight Catalan manuscripts that have been preserved as well as from an early fifteenth-century Spanish translation.

This side-by-side annotated medieval Catalan to English translation is an essential resource for anybody interested in the proverbial genre from medieval Catalonia but not fluent in the language or trained in the gnomic literature field.