chapter 9 Two Seals of Muskinus the Jew (Moshe b. Yeḥiel, d. 1336), the Archbishop of Trier’s Negociator
Andreas Lehnertz
This paper examines Jewish seal usage in the medieval German Kingdom.1 To provide examples of this phenomenon, it discusses the two different seals of Moshe b. Yeḥiel (d. 1336), better known as Muskinus. Until his death, Muskinus served as a negociator (financier) in the financial administration of Baldwin of Luxembourg (1307–54), who was then the archbishop of Trier. As the head of Baldwin’s finance court and as a leading figure of the city’s Jewish community, Muskinus undoubtedly held an outstanding position. The fact that Muskinus used his personal seals for business dealings can be read as a sign of authority and status. Taking Jewish seals as indicators for social and legal interactions be- tween Jews and Gentiles, this paper aims to show how these seals functioned as expressions of their owner’s self-representation. In the 1330s, Muskinus, a prominent Jew from Trier and a parnas (commu- nity leader), sealed documents with his personal seal while he was employed
1 Work on this article was kindly supported by a Leo Baeck Fellowship I received from October 2014 to September 2015 as well as scholarship by the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes from October 2015 to September 2017. Drafts of this essay were discussed with the help of Professor Alfred Haverkamp, Professor Lukas Clemens, Dr. Jörg Müller, and Dr. Christoph Cluse (all Trier). Tom Bogusch, Sarah Woike, Markus Marschibois, Dr. Christoph Cluse (all Trier), and Nahum Schnitzer (Maaleh Adumim) provided advice on questions of English language. I also thank Laura Whatley and Charlotte Bauer for their criticism and thought- ful suggestions to improve this paper. The photographic material was kindly provided by Stadtarchiv Speyer, Arenberg Foundation Enghien, and Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier. The author of this essay completed his doctoral thesis on Jewish seals in the late medieval German Kingdom. Jewish seals cited in this article are taken from the online edition of An- dreas Lehnertz, “Judensiegel in Aschkenas (1273–1347),” in Corpus der Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden im spätmittelalterlichen Reich, ed. Alfred Haverkamp and Jörg R. Müller (Mainz and Trier: Mainzer Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2014): Judensiegel 1, accessed Septem- ber 20, 2015, http://www.medieval- ashkenaz.org/quellen/judensiegel.html; and Andreas Lehnertz, “Judensiegel in Aschkenas (1348–1390),” in Corpus der Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden im spätmittelalterlichen Reich, ed. Alfred Haverkamp and Jörg R. Müller (Mainz and Trier: Mainzer Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2015): Judensiegel 2, accessed September 20, 2015, http://www.medieval-ashkenaz.org/quellen/1348–1390/judensiegel-2.html.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/97890 0439144 4_011 Two Seals of Muskinus the Jew 243 in the archbishop of Trier’s financial administration. Two different seals of Muskinus still exist.2 His first and earliest seal is conveyed on a charter from 1330 (Figure 9.1). On its right side, its bilingual legend records in Hebrew, [(Moses, son of Master Ye]ḥiel) and in Latin, [S’(IGILLVM]) [משה ב׳׳ר י]חיאל MV[SKIN(I)] IV[D(EI)] ([Seal of] Mu[skinus], the Jew). The seal design fea- tures a heraldic shield which contains a leafy tree with a bird sitting in its up- per part, facing right and eating from the tree’s fruits. Muskinus’s second seal is not known from any record but survives as a bro- ken matrix, again with a bilingual legend (Figures 9.2 and 9.3–9.4). The Hebrew ([Moses, son of Master Yeḥi[el *) * משה ב׳׳ר יחי[אל] legend on the right reads and the Latin legend on the left: * S’(IGILLVM) MVSKINI IV[D(EI)] (Seal of Muskinus, the Jew). Its seal design bears a stylized Tree of Life with strong roots, branches and leaves in a symmetric shape. There are two birds of para- dise on the branches, again symmetrical, eating from the tree’s fruits. This article explores the two seals of Muskinus in a comparative case study. First, the phenomenon of Jewish seal usage in the medieval German Kingdom will be introduced. Why did Jews use seals and what are the discernable char- acteristics of Jewish seal usage? This will lead us to our case study of Muskinus as a seal owner in relation to his historical and social contexts. Who was he and why did he decide to use personal seals? Finally, we will come to better un- derstand Muskinus’s seals by exploring the peculiarities of his seals and their similarities with other contemporary Jewish and Christian seals. This paper will suggest that Jews in the medieval German Kingdom started to adapt Chris- tian seal usage as a result of their business contacts with Christian nobility and citizens.3 While seals clearly performed a legal function in the medieval
2 Judensiegel 1, no. 21, accessed September 20, 2015, http://www.medieval- ashkenaz.org/ JS01/CP1- c1–02rb.html, and Judensiegel 1, no. 33, accessed September 20, 2015, http://www .medieval-ashkenaz.org/JS01/CP1-c1–007b.html. Two other charters in which Muskinus announced his own personal seal are no longer extant: a bill from 1334 lists receipts and expenses of a customs post near the town of Oberlahnstein and mentions a quitancia sub sigillo Moskini (“Quittance under the seal of Muskinus”). See Judensiegel 1, no. 30b, accessed September 20, 2015, http://www.medieval-ashkenaz.org/JS01/CP1-c1–0024.html. The other charter from the same year is a quitclaim by Muskinus, issued meo pendente proprio sub sig- illo (under my aforementioned pendent seal). Cf. Judensiegel 1, no. 30a, accessed September 20, 2015, http://www.medieval-ashkenaz.org/JS01/CP1-c1–0023.html. 3 The striking similarity of Jewish seals to those of Christian citizens has already been sug- gested by Friedrich Battenberg, “Sonne, Mond und Sternzeichen: Das jüdische Siegel in Mit- telalter und Früher Neuzeit,” in Das Siegel. Gebrauch und Bedeutung, ed. Gabriela Signori (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007), 83–95; and by Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken “Rheinische Judensiegel im Spätmittelalter,” Archiv für Diplomatik 9–10 (1963/ 64): 415–25.