Once known as the “Schocken Italian Haggadah,” the manuscript described and discussed in this beautiful volume had long been accessible to scholars under the shelf number MS 24085 in the stunning Schocken Library on Balfour Street in the Talbiye neighborhood of Jerusalem, which was designed by Erich Mendelsohn in 1934. Several illuminated gems from that library were sold during the early 2000s and found their way into private collections. Although the whereabouts of the “Schocken Haggadah” remain unknown and scholars (apart from the authors of the volume under review) no longer have access to it, there is now at least this new facsimile that can be studied. Regrettably it, too, leaves the current location of the book in complete secrecy. No longer associated with the Schocken collection, the manuscript is now known as the “Lombard Haggadah,” alluding to its origin in Milan. In April 2019, it was on view for one week at the Les Enluminures Gallery in New York, founded and headed by manuscript scholar Sandra Hindman, who also edited and published The Lombard Haggadah.
The late Yael Zirlin, who studied the manuscript in the 1980s, attributed it to the atelier of Giovannino de Grassi (d. 1398) in Milan and discussed a variety of stylistic and possible iconographic sources. Among other points, she realized that those responsible for the artistic embellishments of the book must have consulted a haggadah from Iberia, as it shares several imageries with a thirteenth-century Hebrew manuscript from Castile (Or. MS 2727 in the British Library).[1] The Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem keeps a file with images and information on the haggadah under discussion, and one of the researchers at the Center engaged in some unpublished research.[2] All in all, however, not much is known about this book, and especially after its disappearance into private hands, it has somewhat fallen out of the focus of recent scholarship. The current facsimile volume is thus an extremely welcome contribution, and even if scholars still do not have access to the original, it will now reappear on the radar of students of Jewish book culture.
After a very concise historical sketch of Jewish life in late medieval Lombardy by Flora Cassen (Chapter One), Milvia Bollati introduces the reader to the de Grassi workshop (Chapter Two), which received several commissions from Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Milan and others connected with his court. A group of manuscripts associated with de Grassi’s workshop includes several copies of the Tacuinum sanitates,a Latin adaptation of an eleventh-century Arabic treatise by the Nestorian scholar Al-Mukhtar ibn al-Hassan ibn Butlan, entitled “The Maintenance of Health.” The atelier also produced several Books of Hours and some Arthurian material, all richly illuminated, truly courtly products. In her very fine study, Bollati guides the reader carefully through a detailed discussion of stylistic parallels to several different models, especially to the Tacuinum group, and offers some brief thoughts about how we might imagine Christian illustrators designing an image cycle of specific Jewish interest and concern.
The third and longest chapter, authored by Marc M. Epstein, discusses the iconography of the marginal illustrations. A key sentence in the Haggadah (on fol. 26r of the “Lombard Haggadah”) based on the Mishnah (Pesahim 10:5) reads as follows: “In each and every generation, one must see oneself as if one, personally, had come out of Egypt.” Several illuminated haggadot from the late Middle Ages, our manuscript included, illustrate this sentence with a figure looking in a mirror. Epstein quite compellingly takes off on this pun to present the entire illustration program as a “mirror,” not of Jewish life in late fourteenth-century Lombardy, but rather as some sort of mirror of the images the patron viewer would encounter in his field of view that presents his world, where he appears “fashionable and wealthy, master of many servants (90).” As many scholars before him dealing with haggadah decoration, Epstein shows that the illustration program is helpful in fulfilling the precept of retelling the story of liberation (Exod. 13:8).
After a brief survey of what is known about illuminated haggadot, Epstein turns to the iconography of the “Lombard Haggadah,” noting that it merges Iberian Jewish and Ashkenazi traditions, and that it uses both well-known conventions and unique imageries. He successfully tackles several riddles that up to that point had remained unanswered. His suggestion that the figure on fol. 9r represents the fourth son (“who does not know to ask”) is very interesting. The image shows a man leaving an architectural structure and was commonly read as a depiction of the Exodus (on a very similar image, see below). It follows the portrayals of the other three sons (the Wise, the Wicked, and the Simple), but since it does not resemble any of the commonly employed formulas for the iconography of the fourth son in other haggadot, earlier scholarship assumed that there was no corresponding image. Epstein’s interpretation of that figure as the fourth son, “who can be taught only by concrete experience – the experience of leaving Egypt (95),” makes sense.
Another intriguing feature of the “Lombard Haggadah” is a depiction of a man with the four species ritually used during the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot), which was interpreted as an error on the part of the Christian artist. Epstein, however, observes that the image appears adjacent to the hallel prayer (fol. 27r), which is recited on all three pilgrimage festivals. Very convincingly, he suggests that haggadot could also have been used for other pilgrimage holidays, especially in households where the haggadah might have been the only liturgical manuscript available.
Not all of Epstein’s readings are convincing, however. Mainz (where the apparently earliest Ashkenazi illuminated haggadah was produced) is not in Franconia (69), but in the Middle Rhine area, and British Library Or. MS 2737 is not from Provence (76), but most likely from Castile.[3] As others before him, Epstein is intrigued by the repeated appearance of male figures in mi-parti costumes (consisting of trousers and short mantles) and identifies them as Christian servants in “liveries” (67). What the patron thus sees in the “mirror” would be, among other things, the servants in his surroundings. As attractive as this interpretation might be in terms of how the visual language works in this manuscript, from the point of view of what we know about the cultural context, it is not very convincing. Mi-parti wear was quite fashionable, but it did not make trousers and short mantles into livery. In the “Lombard Haggadah” the mi-parti style also appears in some of the older men’s mantles as well as in some women’s robes.
It is true that late medieval Jewish halakhists, especially in the German Lands did indeed much to discourage overly fashionable and exuberant wear (similarly they also disliked the extravagantly long pointed shoes often seen in the “Lombard Haggadah”).[4] It is indeed likely that in regions north of the Alps, where the halakhists’ positions in this matter were strict, mi-parti costumes in Jewish book art were meant to represent non-Jews (as is the case, for example in the Second Nuremberg Haggadah[5]). But this was not necessarily the case in Italy, where the levels of Jewish acculturation to the Christian environment were high and common fashions were more often shared than not. Future research may reveal more information about the clothing norms among Italian Jews. Either way, worn and enjoyed by all social strata, this costume was in no way typical of servants. A look at the highly original depiction of the Exodus (fol. 28r) in fact demonstrates this point: the image is unusual, as the notion of Exodus is represented by only one Israelite striding out of an architectural setting – symbolically depicting Egypt; it underscores, as it were, the transition from slavery to freedom. The man is wearing the short-mantled mi-parti costume and one wonders why in this image of freedom, the main protagonist would be shown in the visual code of a non-Jewish servant rather than of a free Israelite.
Epstein is well aware of some of the contradictions his assumption implies and in fact notes in his conclusions how strange it is that the man performing the qiddush would wear a servant’s livery. Moreover, why would the man raising the matsah and the maror be a Christian servant? It is the seder leader’s task to raise the matsah and the maror while reciting the section about Rabban Gamliel (fol. 23v–26r): “Whoever does not explain these three things on Passover has not fulfilled his obligation. They are: the Passover sacrifice, the unleavened bread, and the bitter herbs.”[6] The mi-parti was a highly popular contemporary fashion: Would it not be natural that a Christian illuminator simply depicted these men in the most fashionable outfit? It is also significant, that the Wicked Son, who is always understood as gentile, in fact, does not wear the mi-parti costume in the Lombard Haggadah (fol. 8r).
The Lombard Haggadah joins a series of affordable facsimile editions of haggadot published in recent years. They are a very welcome addition to the bookshelf of many a bibliophile and do much to bring medieval manuscripts that are locked up in libraries and private collections and accessible only to a few scholars closer to a general readership, and thus contribute to making medieval book culture more tangible. The editor and the authors are to be congratulated on producing such a fine volume.
[1] Yael Zirlin, “The Schocken Italian Haggadah of c. 1400 and its Origins,” Jewish Art 12/13 (1986–1987): 55–72.
[2]https://cja.huji.ac.il/browser.php?mode=set&id=23782, accessed August 23, 2020.
[3] See Julie Harris, “Love in the Land of Goshen: Haggadah, History, and the Making of British Library MS Oriental 2737,” Gesta 52/2 (2013): 161–80, who convincingly attributes the manuscript to Toledo and whose paper is in fact cited by Epstein, who apparently disagrees, but does not say on what grounds.
[4] See for ex., Israel ben Petahya Isserlein, Sefer trumat hadeshen (Warsaw: n.p., 1882), 296.
[5] London, private collection of David Sofer, fol. 9v.
[6] The translation follows David Stern in: Katrin Kogman-Appel and David Stern, The Washington Haggadah Copied and Illustrated by Joel ben Simeon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 138.