Moses Belinfante’s Handwritten Psalms in 18th-Century Barbados

This image shows the title page of a manuscript copy of the book of Psalms, hand written in Barbados and based on a printed copy that had been produced in Amsterdam by David de Castro Tartas a century earlier. As the title page announces, the volume also included a list of psalms that would be said in the liturgy over the course of the year. When Moses Cohen Belinfante sat down to write this copy of the Psalms, he could have chosen to purchase one of many available versions, either in Hebrew or in a Spanish translation. But he opted to write it out by hand, painstakingly. Belinfante was a trained scribe, and he produced some lavishly decorated copies for wealthy benefactors, including another copy of the Psalms printed by de Castro Tartas. This version, however, was likely made for his personal use. Belinfante’s scribal activity illuminates how printing and manuscript production coexisted for centuries after the invention of the printing press.