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Volume 14: Cultures of Record Keeping: Creation, Preservation, and Use in the Early Modern Period, Fordham University, New York, August 16-17, 2017

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Volume 14: Cultures of Record Keeping: Creation, Preservation, and Use in the Early Modern Period, Fordham University, New York, August 16-17, 2017 EARLY MODERN WORKSHOP Cultures of Record Keeping: Creation, Preservation, and Use in the Early Modern Period Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Borg. Lat. 481, 425r, fragment Co-sponsored by American Academy for Jewish Research Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, Columbia University Center for Jewish Studies, CUNY-Graduate Center Jewish Studies, Fordham University Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Fordham University, New York August 16-17, 2017 EARLY MODERN WORKSHOP: Jewish History Resources Volume 14: Cultures of Record Keeping: Creation, Preservation, and Use in the Early Modern Period, Fordham University, New York, August 16-17, 2017 Welcome to the Early Modern Workshop 2017 on “History of Emotions/Emotions in History.” This year's Early Modern Workshop's theme is "Cultures of Record Keeping: Creation, Preservation, and Use in the Early Modern Period." Our discussions will focus on the creation, preservation, organization, collection, translation, and use of records, evidence, and information. We will discuss continuities and change between chronological periods --including medieval and modern, and different cultures and settings--Jewish and non- Jewish. The topic is vast, so our discussions will go in different directions: official record keeping, personal records, collection and organization of information. Even more than in our previous topic--history of emotions/emotions in history--there is such an abundance of work onrecords, and record keeping in non-Jewish historiography, but exceedingly little on Jewish record keeping. The workshop is a culmination of a year of reading and discussions, we are attaching a bibliography of what we have read at the end of the reader. The EMW is co-sponsored by: • American Academy of Jewish Research, • Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University, • Center for Jewish Studies at CUNY-Graduate Center, • Jewish Studies at Fordham University, and • Carolina Center for Jewish Studies at the UNC-Chapel Hill. The keynote address will be at Fordham Law School, 150 W 62nd St, New York, NY 10023, Room 2-01; the seminars will be at the Marino Hall, 45 Columbus Avenue, Conference Room 9th floor. On behalf of members of the 2017 organizing committee, welcome! Francesca Bregoli, CUNY, Queens College, and Graduate Center Elisheva Carlebach, Columbia University Debra Glasberg, New York University Joshua Teplitsky, SUNY Stony Brook Magda Teter, Fordham University EARLY MODERN WORKSHOP: Jewish History Resources Volume 14: Cultures of Record Keeping: Creation, Preservation, and Use in the Early Modern Period, Fordham University, New York, August 16-17, 2017 Table of Contents Randolph Head, “Regimes of Archival Authenticity: Treasuries, Sovereigns and Communities in The Formation and Ordering of Archival Records since The Middle Ages” 1 Rachel Furst, “Unrecorded Justice: The (Non)Archival Practices of Medieval Jewish Courts” 2 Verena Kasper-Marienberg, “Strategic Record Keeping And The Strive For Autonomy: Was There A Jewish Community Archive in Early Modern Frankfurt?” 20 Rena Lauer, “Taqqanot Qandiya and the Construction of Crete’s Jewish History” 35 Bernard Cooperman, “Linguistic and Formal Aspects of Jewish Record Keeping in Italy—A Comparative Investigation” 52 David Myers, “Counting and Recording Sins” 66 Debra Kaplan, “Documents, Records and Early Modern Border Crossings” 97 Shuki Ecker, “Construction, Reconstruction and Deconstruction: Stories about Records from the Ottoman Heartlands” 102 Anne Albert, “The Founding Documents of the Kahal Kadosh Talmud Tora, Amsterdam 115 Flora Cassen, “The Expulsion of the Jews from the State of Milan: Same Event- with Views from Different Archives” 158 Reading List for 2016-2017 191 EARLY MODERN WORKSHOP: Jewish History Resources Volume 14: Cultures of Record Keeping: Creation, Preservation, and Use in the Early Modern Period, Fordham University, New York, August 16-17, 2017 Regimes of Archival Authenicity: Treasuries, Sovereigns and Communities in the Formation and Ordering of Archival Records since the Middle Ages Randolph Head, University of California Abstract: Since late Antiquity, a key feature distinguishing those documents and records that we call archival among the broader circulation of texts in European society has been their status within implicit or explicit regimes of legal authenticity. Archival authenticity always remained closely tied to the distrbution of power in society, but simultaneously responded to both the accelerating production of authentic records as well as to the evolving demands from various kinds of authorities. This talk will begin by tracing the shifting regimes of authenticity that characterized diverse archival accumulations and their ordering in repositories, from distributed medieval treasuries through centralizing early modern chancelleries, culminating in the rupture between philological and sovereignty-based archival authority around 1700. I will then turn to the role that communities played in the authentication and recognition of archival material under each regime, drawing on contemporary theories of ‘community archives’ to develop a richer understanding of the formation and survival of counter-archives as well as archives in early modern Europe. Related readings: Flinn, Andrew. “Community Histories, Community Archives: Some Opportunities and Challenges,” Journal of the Society of Archivists 28, 2 (2007), p. 151-176. Head, Randolph. “Documents, archives and proof around 1700,” The Historical Journal 56, 4 (2013), pp. 909-930. Friedrich, Markus. "Das Alte Reich und seine Archive im Spiegel reichspublizistischer und reichrechtlicher Literatur: Ius archivi, gerichtliche Beweiskraft und konfessionspolitische Indienstnahme," in Reichsstadt – Reich – Europa: Neue Perspektiven auf den Immerwährenden Reichstag zu Regensburg (1663-1806), ed. Harriet Rudolph and Astrid Schlachta, pp. 411-429. Jenkinson, Hilary. “Jewish History and Archives,” Transactions (Jewish Historical Society of England) 18 (1953-55), pp. 53-62. Lodolini, Elio. "Giurisprudenza della Sacra Rota Romana in materia di archivi (secc. XIV- XVIII)," Rassegna degli Archivi di Stato 42, 1 (1982), pp. 7-33. Nussdorfer, Laurie. Brokers of Public Trust: Notaries in Early Modern Rome. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2009. Rodriguez de Diego, José Luis. "Archivos del Poder, archivos de la Administración, archivos de la Historia (s. XVI-XVII)," in Juan José Generelo and Ángeles Moreno López, eds., Historia de los Archivos y del la Archivistica en España, pp. 29-42. Schulte, Petra. "Fides Publica: Die Dekonstruktion eines Forschungsbegriffes," in Petra Schulte, et al., eds., Strategies of Writing: studies on text and trust in the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 15-36. EMW 2017 1 EARLY MODERN WORKSHOP: Jewish History Resources Volume 14: Cultures of Record Keeping: Creation, Preservation, and Use in the Early Modern Period, Fordham University, New York, August 16-17, 2017 Unrecorded Justice: The (Non-)Archival Practices of Medieval Jewish Courts Rachel Furst, Ludwig Maximilians Universität (LMU) Munich Sefer Zikhron Yehudah, Responsum No. 92 Introduction In the summer of 1298, a wave of anti-Jewish violence incited by a German nobleman named Rindfleisch swept through Franconia and the neighboring vicinities. In Würzburg, local burghers joined gangs of murderous knights to massacre nearly 900 Jews. Among the victims was Simeon ben Jacob (R. Shim’on ben R. Ya’akov), a resident of Worms who had come to Würzburg to pay and collect business debts. Following the riots, three witnesses reported that they had seen Simeon’s dead body; and on the basis of these testimonies, the Jewish court in Worms declared Simeon’s wife a widow and granted her permission to remarry, which she soon did. Some time later, the father of Simeon’s widow, acting as her legal representative, appeared before a second Jewish court in Speyer to claim her ketubah payment from Simeon’s estate, only part of which had been allocated to her in Worms. This time, the widow’s claim was contested by Simeon’s heir, his son from a previous marriage. He was represented by his own agent, a well-known scholar by the name of R. Yedidyah ben Israel of Nürnberg. On behalf of his client, R. Yedidyah asserted that the witnesses to Simeon’s death in Würzburg were invalid because they had been apostates living as Christians at the time of the massacre, which discredited their testimony even though they subsequently repented. A protracted court battle ensued, involving judges, scholars, and rabbinic decisors from Germany, Austria, and even northern Spain. The testimony of the witnesses, the original court ruling from Worms, the endorsement of the court in Speyer, and three sets of counter-claims written and presented by the representatives of the widow and the heir were preserved in Sefer Zikhron Yehudah, an anthology of responsa collected by R. Yehudah ben Asher of Toledo, son of the famous R. Asher ben Yehiel (known as “Rosh,” c. 1250–1327). The learned opinions of several prominent scholars that were solicited by the court in Speyer and the ultimate ruling of the Speyer beit din were recorded there as well. As one of the judges on the Speyer court, it is likely that R. Asher brought this complete file with him when he emigrated from Germany to Spain several EMW 2017 2 years after the case in question, and thus the records made their way to the hands of his son, R. Judah. Indeed, the dossier also contains a long responsum penned by R. Asher himself when
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