The first Hebrew types are generally supposed to have appeared in 1475, in a work printed by Conrad Fyner, at Esslingen in Wirtemburg, entitled _Tractatus contra perfidos Judæos_. In Pheibia, in Austrian Italy, also in 1475, a Hebrew work in four folio volumes, entitled the _Arba Turim of Rabbi Jacob ben Ascher_, is stated by De Rossi[123] to have been printed; while in the same year, a few months earlier, at Reggio in Italy, appeared Salamon Jarchi’s _Commentary on the Pentateuch_, by Abraham ben Garton ben Isaac. The type of this last-named work (which Schwab[124] considers without doubt to be the first Hebrew book printed) is in the Rabbinical character, somewhat rudely cut, but neat. Numerous other Hebrew works followed, earlier than 1488, at which date the first entire Hebrew _Bible_ was printed at Soncino, by a family of German Jews. This rare Bible is printed with points, and is neat and regular in appearance. The volume itself is highly decorative, and shows a considerable amount of typographical skill on the part of its Jewish printers. Hebrew printing did not spread very rapidly. De Rossi mentions several works printed at Constantinople during the fifteenth century, as also in the Italian towns to which the family of Soncino printers carried the art. Aldus was possessed of some rude Hebrew characters; but it was Bomberg, who established his Hebrew press in Venice in 1517, who raised the fame of that already famous city by the excellence of his types and workmanship. But as late as 1520, at Naples, in a treatise on the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin letters, by De Falco, the Hebrew words, for lack of types, were written in by hand. In Western Europe, France was next to Italy in producing Hebrew type. Mention is made of an _Alphabetum Hebraicum et Græcum_, printed by Gilles de Gourmont in 1507; and in 1508 that able typographer, whose distinction as {63} the first cutter of Greek type in France we have already noticed, produced, under the conduct of his patron, Tissard, a Hebrew _Grammar_, together with the _Oratio Dominica_, and other passages in the sacred language. The types made use of were ill-formed and imperfect. Although thus early initiated, Hebrew printing made little or no progress for some years. Jodocus Badius showed a few lines in 1511; and in 1516 Gourmont printed an _Alphabetum Hebraicum et Græcum_. In 1519, Augustino Giustiniani, a native of Genoa, who had already distinguished himself by superintending the production of Porrus’ _Polyglot Psalter_ at that city in 1516, being invited to Paris by the King, caused new punches and matrices of the Hebrew to be made by Gourmont. The work took a year and a half to complete; when, in 1520, was published the _Grammar_ of the Rabbi Moses Kimhi, the first wholly printed Hebrew work produced in Paris. From this time Hebrew printing made steady progress in France. Most of the printers possessed types, the Wechels and the Estiennes being the most distinguished in their use of them.