Secret Passageways and Trebuchet Trick Shots: Medieval News Roundup

This week's news for medievalists features the mystery of how books were being stolen from a medieval monastery's library, and the plans to build an Anglo-Saxon house.

Finally, check out our Instagram page, where you can see some of the photos we have been taking, such as this fun picture from Southwark Cathedral:

Gutenberg, Executions, Medicis, Vikings, Hobbits and more - medieval news roundup

A medieval news roundup for the weekend...

If you are a fan of Marshall McLuhan or have an interest in the history of printing, this interview from the Columbia Journalism Review might interest you. In this post, entitled The future is medieval, they talk with Thomas Pettitt and Lars Ole Sauerberg from the University of Southern Denmark about their “Gutenberg Parenthesis” idea. It deals with how digital media will be tipping the scales between oral and print communication, the first change we have seen since Gutenberg started his printing machine. It includes some talk about the medieval period, such as:

The Middle Ages was not strong on membership of communities. They were not obsessive about inside versus outside. They didn’t emphasize, “I’m a denizen of this town, I’m a citizen of this country, I belong in this nation, behind these frontiers.” They saw themselves rather like Hobbits (Tolkien was a medievalist). Hobbits knew their relatives to the seventh degree: second cousins three times removed, and so on. In the Middle Ages people saw themselves as part of a network of connections. They knew their family trees. They knew with whom they were related. They identified themselves as a node in a network and they saw pathways, connections to other people in their extended family. They also saw themselves in terms depending on their profession. If they were in the Church, they saw themselves in the Church hierarchy as being a priest here, subject to the archdeacon here, subject to the bishop there, and the archbishop and the pope. You could have status by being the servant to a servant to someone important.

You can also listen to this talk they were part of from MIT:

Slate magazine offers this fascinating excerpt from The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century, by Joel F. Harrington. It details how 16th century executioners performed their task. For example:

During his own 45-year career and 187 recorded executions with the sword, Meister Frantz required a second stroke only four times (an impressive success rate of 98 percent), yet he dutifully acknowledges each mistake in his journal with the simple annotation botched. 

The New York Times has a short article about how nine children from the wealthy and poweful Medici family have been found to have rickets, a disease caused by a lack of Vitamin D and usually associated with the poor. In this case, "the researchers said the children were probably deprived of sunlight, which spurs the body to make vitamin D. Wealthy children of that time were often tightly swaddled and kept inside, with suntans discouraged as signs of low standing."

Sticking with the Medici's, Three Pipe Problem (a great blog) has an interview with Edward Goldberg, who does extensive research on that family and on the Jewish community in Renaissance Italy.

ScienceNordic reports that a 1200 year old Carolingian coin has been discovered in Norway. Jon Anders Risvaag, from NTNU University Museum, explains “Two factors make this find stand out. Firstly, this coin is older than the Carolingian coinage reform, and so far the oldest coin from Charlemagne’s reign found in Norway. Secondly, this coin was not found in a grave, in contrast to almost all other coins from Charlemagne and his successors that have been found in Norway.”

If you are interested in the Vikings, go over to Medieval Histories, where Karen Schousboe has written several posts about the Norsemen, including an indepth review of an exhibition Vikings 2013 at the National Museum in Copenhagen.

Finally, the CBC (our public broadcaster here in Canada), has this article Film, TV tourism spikes with Game of Thrones, The Hobbit. Fans seem to be heading to Northern Ireland, Dubrovnik and New Zealand to check out the beautiful backdrops to their favourite shows/movies. New Zealand tourism is cashing on in the Hobbit (like they did with Lord of the Rings movies) with their "100% Middle-earth, 100% Pure New Zealand" campaign.

Medieval Painting Hints at Ties Between Blacks and Jews

The anonymous 16th-century painter who recorded a scene of everyday life at the king’s fountain (Chafariz d’El Rei) in Lisbon depicted an impressive range of people and animals. In addition to a swan, a seal, fish, horses, dogs and birds, the artist also included more than 150 human figures. There’s so much going on in the busy scene along Lisbon’s port that Joaneath Spicer, the James A. Murnaghan Curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, can be forgiven for initially overlooking an important detail. Only after she had finished working on the exhibition catalog did Spicer notice how many Jews appeared in the work.

The artist depicted at least half a dozen Jewish men — the women’s religious identities are more difficult to discern — including two Jewish policemen hauling away a black man who appears, according to the wall text, to be “drunk and sheepish.” The latter figure and several other Africans explain the painting’s appearance in the exhibit “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe,” which is at the Walters through January 21. It subsequently travels to the Princeton University Art Museum, where it will be shown from February 16 to June 9.


“I was really unaware of the presence of so many Jews in this painting until I began to blow up details of a photo in preparation for installing the work,” says Spicer, who recognized the Jewish figures from research she conducted for a 1996 article, “The Star of David and Jewish Culture in Prague around 1600,” which appeared in The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery. “This is the only image I know of — certainly painting from this period that purports to show Jews from life.”

Click here tor read this article from the Jewish Daily Forward

Israeli library unveils medieval manuscript collection discovered in Afghanistan

A trove of ancient manuscripts in Hebrew characters rescued from caves in a Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan is providing the first physical evidence of a Jewish community that thrived there a thousand years ago.

 On Thursday Israel's National Library unveiled the cache of recently purchased documents that run the gamut of life experiences, including biblical commentaries, personal letters and financial records. 

Researchers say the "Afghan Genizah" marks the greatest such archive found since the "Cairo Genizah" was discovered in an Egyptian synagogue more than 100 years ago, a vast depository of medieval manuscripts considered to be among the most valuable collections of historical documents ever found.

 The Afghan collection gives an unprecedented look into the lives of Jews in ancient Persia in the 11th century. The paper manuscripts, preserved over the centuries by the dry, shady conditions of the caves, include writings in Hebrew, Aramaic, Judea-Arabic and the unique Judeo-Persian language from that era, which was written in Hebrew letters.

Click here to read this article from NPR

“In the beginning”...bringing the scrolls of Genesis and the Ten Commandments online

A little over a year ago, we helped put online five manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls—ancient documents that include the oldest known biblical manuscripts in existence. Written more than 2,000 years ago on pieces of parchment and papyrus, they were preserved by the hot, dry desert climate and the darkness of the caves in which they were hidden. The Scrolls are possibly the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century.

Today, we’re helping put more of these ancient treasures online. The Israel Antiquities Authority is launching the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, an online collection of some 5,000 images of scroll fragments, at a quality never seen before. The texts include one of the earliest known copies of the Book of Deuteronomy, which includes the Ten Commandments; part of Chapter 1 of the Book of Genesis, which describes the creation of the world; and hundreds more 2,000-year-old texts, shedding light on the time when Jesus lived and preached, and on the history of Judaism.

Click here to read this article from Google

The medieval Jewish poet who preceded Chaucer

Rare poems documenting the persecution of Norwich's medieval Jewish community, in the period preceding the expulsion from England in 1290, are being given a new lease of life thanks to the work of a dedicated group of residents.

The East Anglia town was one of the hubs of Jewish life in medieval Britain, along with York and London. It became notorious in 1144 when the first recorded "blood libel" occurred there, following the discovery of the bloodied body of William of Norwich on the outskirts of the town, and persecution and attacks on the Jewish community remained common in the subsequent 150 years.

It is estimated that up to 150 Jews were living in the town in the 13th century, among them Rabbi Meir Ben Eliahu, a poet known as "Meir of Norwich" who wrote at least 20 poems.

Little is known about Rabbi Meir and it is not clear whether or not he completed his writing after fleeing England, but his connection to the town is made clear in one poem, where the initial lines are an acrostic that spell: "I am Meir, son of Rabbi Eliahu, from the city of Norwich which is in the land of isles called Angleterre. May I grow up in the Torah of my Creator and in fear of him; Amen, Amen, Selah."

Click here to read this article from TheJC.com

Archaeologists unearth ruins of 1,500-year-old Jewish town in southern Israel

Israeli archaeologists digging on the route of a planned highway have found new ruins from a 1,500-year-old Jewish town, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Sunday.

The remains of two Jewish ritual baths and two public buildings were uncovered in a salvage dig ahead of the paving of a new section of Israel’s Highway 6, a north-south toll road eventually slated to run much of the length of the country.

Both of the public buildings feature raised platforms along the walls facing Jerusalem, archaeologists say — a trademark feature of Jewish houses of prayer.

The highway will be rerouted to preserve the ruins, the IAA statement said.

Click here to read this article from The Times of Israel

Israeli scholar overhauls Hebrew Bible to correct errors; first time in 500 years

For the past 30 years, Israeli Judaic scholar Menachem Cohen has been on a mission of biblical proportions: Correcting all known textual errors in Jewish scripture to produce a truly definitive edition of the Old Testament.

His edits, focusing primarily on grammatical blemishes and an intricate set of biblical symbols, mark the first major overhaul of the Hebrew Bible in nearly 500 years.

Looking at thousands of medieval manuscripts, the 84-year-old Cohen identified 1,500 inaccuracies in the Hebrew language texts that have been corrected in his completed 21-volume set. The final chapter is set to be published next year.

The massive project highlights how Judaism venerates each tiny biblical calligraphic notation as a way of ensuring that communities around the world use precisely the same version of the holy book.

Click here to read this article from the Toronto Star

Inscription reveals ancient Jewish toilet in Cologne

Archaeologists in Cologne, Germany have uncovered a fascinating 13th-century Hebrew inscription on a lintel stone in the basement of a home near the city’s ancient synagogue. The Hebrew inscription reads “This is the window through which the feces are to be taken out.”

 The inscription was discovered in December 2011 on the lintel above a walled-up window in the cellar of Lyvermann House, which was built in about 1266 and belonged to a wealthy Jewish family that lived right near the synagogue. Behind the wall was a cesspool, six meters deep.

 According to Prof. David Assaf of Tel Aviv University’s Jewish History Department, “Such a serious-amusing inscription has never been found anywhere, not before and not since.”

Click here to read this article from Haaretz

‘Crossing Borders: Manuscripts from the Bodleian Libraries’ comes to New York this fall

The Jewish Museum in New York will be featuring over 60 medieval Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin manuscripts this fall as it presents a new exhibition based on works found in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. Crossing Borders: Manuscripts from the Bodleian Libraries will be running from September 14, 2012 through February 3, 2013.

 Included will be the splendid Kennicott Bible as well as two works in the hand of Maimonides, one of the most prominent Jewish philosophers and rabbinic authorities. This presentation showcases a selection from the Bodleian’s superb holdings within the larger context of the history of medieval Christian Hebraism – the study by Christian scholars of the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic sources, which first received full expression in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As Protestantism took hold in the sixteenth century, Hebraist trends resurged, sparking interest in the collecting of Hebrew books, and propelling the formation of the Bodleian’s outstanding Hebraica collection.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

Medieval Jewish Cemetery Discovered In Oxford, England

According to a BBC report , a Jewish cemetery from the Medieval Period has been unearthed under the Rose Garden, near the Oxford Botanic Garden by historian Pam Manix, who made the discovery while researching the archives of Magdalen College in Oxford. A new memorial stone will be erected at the historic site to commemorate Oxford’s Medieval Jewish community.

 The cemetery was established outside the city in accordance with both Jewish law and Christian doctrine. Although it was originally located close to where Magdalen College stands today, the burial ground later moved across the street to an area that currently houses the Oxford Botanic Garden.

 “Their story is little known and pinpointing the location is an important historic breakthrough,” Dr. Evie Kemp from Oxford Jewish Heritage told the BBC.

Click here to read this article from The Algemeiner

The Medici Code: tales of medieval daring found in Hebrew manuscript

It is a story which out-Dan-Browns Dan Brown, a tale of Italian mediaeval courts, spies, intrigue, and, at its heart, an extraordinary Jewish scholar, Abraham Ben Mordecai Farissol.

Farissol, who lived between 1469 and 1528, was the author of a remarkable manuscript, Iggeret Orhot Olam, or Treatise on the Ways of the World. On July 10, Sotheby's in London is selling Farissol's work, the only one in private hands, and famous as the first Hebrew manuscript to mention America and the possibility of Native Americans being one of the lost tribes of Israel.

Dr Timothy Bolton, Sotheby's specialist in mediaeval manuscripts, can barely contain his excitement about the manuscript, probably written in 1524. There are only five known copies of the Farissol manuscript - one in Oxford, one in Budapest, one in Parma and one in Florence - but the Sotheby's example is the only one which scholars say carries a delicious "extra" - a sketch of America, almost certainly added to the manuscript by Farissol himself, after the scribe Joseph ben Abraham Finzi Delinyago presented him with the finished version.

Click here to read this article from TheJC.com

A deathbed will from medieval Cairo

In April 1143, a well off Egyptian woman made some out-of-the-ordinary requests from her deathbed.

Anyone who elects to leave instructions in a will obviously has something to bequeath that is worth recording. After S.D. Goitein discovered numerous testaments in the Cairo Geniza, he published the texts of a number of wills in the Sefunot annual in their original Judaeo-Arabic with his Hebrew translation, and some appear in English in his five-volume work, A Mediterranean Society (i.e. see vol. 5:153-155 for the case below).

The wife of Abu Nasr, a highly successful merchant from Aleppo, made a deathbed statement in April, 1143. Her family, namely her parents and brother, all resided in the three-story house that she owned.

Two years earlier, this building had been given to her as a gift by her father, Abu ’l-Muna, who had been careful about legalizing the transfer and documented the transaction with the Muslim authorities. This gift included the clear condition that as long as he, his wife and son lived, they could never be evicted from the apartment on the third floor. He made certain to have his son-in-law present when this stipulation was made, so that it could not be changed or challenged at a later date. If the two men were to have a falling out, it would not be farfetched to imagine that Abu Nasr might attempt to be rid of his in-law’s presence.

Click here to read this article from The Jerusalem Post


See also Bodleian Libraries Cairo Genizah collection now available online

2,000 year-old gold and silver hoard uncovered in Israel

The Israel Antiquities Authority reports they have uncovered a spectacular 2,000 year-old gold and silver hoard during an archaeological excavation in southern Israel.

The hoard includes jewelry and silver and gold coins from the Roman period, and was recently exposed in a salvage excavation in the near the city of Qiryat Gat. The treasure trove comprising some 140 gold and silver coins together with gold jewelry was probably hidden by a wealthy lady at a time of impending danger during the Bar Kokhba Revolt.

Click here to read this article from History of the Ancient World

Fourth-century Hebrew inscription discovered in Portugal

Archaeologists of the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena found one of the oldest archaeological evidence so far of Jewish Culture on the Iberian Peninsula at an excavation site in the south of Portugal, close to the city of Silves (Algarve). On a marble plate, measuring 40 by 60 centimetres, the name “Yehiel” can be read, followed by further letters which have not yet been deciphered.

The Jena Archaeologists believe that the new discovery might be a tomb slab. Antlers, which were found very close to the tomb slab in the rubble gave a clue to the age determination.

“The organic material of the antlers could be dated by radiocarbon analysis with certainty to about 390 AD,” excavation leader Dr. Dennis Graen of the Jena University explains. “Therefore we have a so-called ‘terminus ante quem’ for the inscription, as it must have been created before it got mixed in with the rubble with the antlers.”

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

The ideal medieval Jewish woman

Whenever one reads about Jewish women in medieval Ashkenaz, the name of Dolce of Worms is certain to appear. (Dolce is derived from the Latin for pleasant or charming). Her life is described in the famous elegy composed by her widowed husband which is his version of “A Woman of Valor” (Proverbs 31). This poetic composition is preceded by two paragraphs in prose that provide graphic details of her death in 1196.

The poem contains the author’s name, R. Elazar, in an internal acrostic; its content portrays an ideal woman who seems to have been involved in an unbelievable number of activities. Dolce and Elazar were German Jewish pietists, known as Hasidei Ashkenaz. Thus the emphasis in the elegy on her piety, her God-fearing lifestyle and her saintliness are part and parcel of the values of this society.

It seems as though Dolce never sat still for a moment, or at least not according to her husband’s account. She engaged in the usual wifely activities expected of an Orthodox woman, cooking for her family and allowing her learned husband to be totally involved in Torah study and good deeds and encouraging her sons to study. This might seem to have been enough to occupy her time, but Elazar was nowhere near finished. As it turns out, Dolce was busy spinning thread for tefillin and for binding books as well as scrolls. According to this report, she sewed approximately 40 Torah scrolls and prepared the wool for prayer shawl fringes.

Click here to read this article from the Jerusalem Post

Israel's Other Temple: Research Reveals Ancient Struggle over Holy Land Supremacy

The Jews had significant competition in antiquity when it came to worshipping Yahweh. Archeologists have discovered a second great temple not far from Jerusalem that predates its better known cousin. It belonged to the Samaritans, and may have been edited out of the Bible once the rivalry had been decided.

Clad in gray coat, Aharon ben Ab-Chisda ben Yaacob, 85, is sitting in the dim light of his house. He strikes up a throaty chant, a litany in ancient Hebrew. He has a full beard and is wearing a red kippah on his head.

The man is a high priest -- and his family tree goes back 132 generations. He says: "I am a direct descendent of Aaron, the brother of the prophet Moses" -- who lived perhaps over 3,000 years ago.
Ab-Chisda is the spiritual leader of the Samaritans, a sect that is so strict that its members are not even allowed to turn on the heat on the Sabbath. They never eat shrimp and only marry among themselves. Their women are said to be so impure during menstruation that they are secluded in special rooms for seven days.


Click here to read this article from Der Spiegel

University of Oxford and Vatican to digitize 1.5 million pages of historical texts

A collaboration between the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana at the Vatican will bring historical texts dating back to the Middle Ages into the digital era. 1.5 million pages from both collections will be digitised and made publicly available.

The Bodleian Libraries and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana will embark on a new collaborative digitisation project with the aim of opening up repositories of medieval and early modern texts and making a selection of their remarkable treasures freely available online to researchers and the general public worldwide.

The digitised collections will be in three subject areas: Greek manuscripts, 15th-century printed books (incunabula) and Hebrew manuscripts and early printed books. These areas have been chosen for the strength of the collections in both libraries and their importance for scholarship in their respective fields. The project will span four years and will result in approximately 1.5 million pages being made available in digital format

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

Remembering China’s forgotten Jewish community at Passover

It should therefore come as no surprise that Chinese and Persian Jewish scholars, Fook-Kong Wong and Dalia Yasharpour, have just jointly published a well-annotated reproduction of the Passover Haggadah of that now defunct Jewish community of indigenous Jews in Western China who once lived and prospered in the city of Kaifeng. As the community most probably came from Persia before establishing itself there more than a thousand years ago, the Haggadah and its commentary makes use of Hebrew, Aramaic and the Judeo-Persian language.

The rise of the Islamic empire in the 8th century AD and the subsequent urbanization of the Jews of Islam created of this once agricultural people a religious minority that was spread across both the Islamic and Christian worlds during late antiquity and the early middle ages. Medieval Arab geographers of the time describe one group of Jewish traders called the Radanites, who were said to have trading networks that included both France and China at either end.

Click here to read this article from the National Post

Birds’ Head Haggadah – scholar gives new insights into Jewish medieval text

The Birds’ Head Haggadah, a manuscript dating from around the year 1300, is considered one of the most interesting and mysterious pieces of Jewish art from the Middle Ages. In “Birds Head Revisited: Identity, Politics and Polemics the Birds’ Head Haggadah”, a special lecture held at the University of Toronto last month, Professor Marc Michael Epstein offered some new insights into this work, the earliest surviving illustrated version of the Haggadah text.

Readers of this particular Haggadah, which is a collection of prayers, illustrations, and stories recited on the Jewish holiday of Passover, will immediately notice that all of the illustrated Jewish figures are not depicted as people, but appear to have bird’s heads on the bodies of human beings. Epstein, Professor of Religion at Vassar College, explains that the figures are drawn to be Griffins, which were very popular figures in medieval Jewish literature.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net