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A Jewish Knight in Shining Armour: Messianic Narrative and Imagination in Ashkenazic Illuminated Manuscripts

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A Jewish Knight in Shining Armour: Messianic Narrative and Imagination in Ashkenazic Illuminated Manuscripts A JEWISH KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOUR: MESSIANIC NARRATIVE AND IMAGINATION IN ASHKENAZIC ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS Sara Offenberg The artistic and textual evidence of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Ashkenaz reveals an imagined reality from which we learn that some Jews imagined themselves as aristocrats and knights, despite the fact that the actuality of their everyday lives in medieval Ashkenaz was far from noble or chivalric.1 In recent years, the imagined identity of Jews portraying themselves as knights has received the attention of scholars, most recently Ivan G. Marcus, whose study focuses on the self-representation of Jews as knights, mainly in written sources.2 Marcus discusses the dissonance between actual Christian knights in the Middle Ages, whom he identifies with the crusaders, and the fact that Jews considered themselves knights. He explains that Jewish self-comparison to knights seems to have begun in the shared religious frenzy that started with Pope Urban II’s speech at Clermont on 27 November 1095, for an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem, that later came to be called the First Crusade.3 This phenomenon, which began after the First Crusade, reached a climax during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Jewish written and artistic form. A number of Hebrew manuscripts contain scenes of knights. They portray characters of a noble and aristocratic nature, as shown in the research of Sarit Shalev-Eyni, who focused on the study of manuscripts made around the Lake Constance region in the fourteenth century.4 In this paper, I shall investigate the significance of warriors and knights illustrated in Hebrew manuscripts from thirteenth-century Ashkenaz with regard to the battle these warriors are symbolically fighting and the incongruity between art and reality, with a focus on Jewish imaginative ideas of the messiah. In this paper I shall discuss biblical exegesis, piyyutim (liturgical poems),5 commentary on the piyyutim, and the writings of Hasidei Ashkenaz (the German Pietists). With regard to these texts, I will examine the imagined messianic narrative through scenes of warriors, with a focus on two Ashkenazi illuminated manuscripts. 1 Sara Offenberg, “Resisting Conversion or the True Aristocrat: Jews Imagining Themselves in Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts,” in Sefer ha-Yovel for Burton D. Morris, ed. Menachem Butler (New York) (forthcoming). 2 Ivan G. Marcus, “Why is this Knight Different? A Jewish Self-Representation in Medieval Europe,” in Tov Elem: Memory, Community and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Societies: Essays in honor of Robert Bonfil, eds. Elisheva Baumgarten, Amnon Raz- Krakotzkin, Roni Weinstein (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2011), 139-152. 3 Ibid., 144. 4 Sarit Shalev-Eyni, Jews among Christians: Hebrew Book Illumination from Lake Constance (London: Harvey Miller, 2010), 85-92. Gabrielle Sed-Rejna studied the knights illustrated in the French manuscript Mishneh Torah in the Kaufmann collection, made in 1296 (also called Codex Maimuni). Budapest, Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Kaufmann Collection, Ms. A.77, vol. II. See the manuscript on the web site: http://kaufmann.mtak.hu/index-en.html (accessed January 22, 2013). Gabrielle Sed-Rajna, “The Illustrations of the Kaufmann Mishneh Torah,” Journal of Jewish Art 6 (1979): 64-77. 5 Henceforth, I shall refer to liturgical poems by the Hebrew term piyyut. 1 Warriors, especially knights, are portrayed in Ashkenazic manuscripts both in miniature paintings and in micrography. For example, a micrography of two knights is displayed in an Ashkenazi bible made in the second half of the thirteenth century (London, British Library Or. 2091, fol. 203a).6 The page contains three columns of text. On the right, the last verses from Isaiah 66:21-24 are written, while the two other columns contain the beginning of Ezekiel 1:1-23. The masorah micrography portrays the four creatures from Ezekiel's vision. On the upper masorah line we see, from right to left, the upper bodies of an eagle, a man wearing a helmet and chain armour, a lion and an ox. The masorah on the lower margins creates a rectangular frame containing the full bodies of the creatures from Ezekiel’s vision in a different order: the lion on the right faces the ox, and the man dressed in full armour and holding an object in each arm faces the eagle, whose wings are spread. Most portrayals of the four creatures in Jewish art follow the Christian convention of displaying the creatures with wings, making the human figure usually appears like an angel. The choice to portray the human figure in full armour and actually as a knight can be explained by the tradition of seeing Jacob’s image engraved upon the throne in Ezekiel’s vision.7 This notion is rooted in the Aramaic version of Gen. 28:12 regarding Jacob’s dream, where the angels climbed up the ladder to view his image engraved upon the throne.8 The knight in this micrography illustrates the verse: Abir Jacob, meaning Jacob the Knight. In Genesis 49:24, Jacob is called a knight, and he is called by this term twice in Isaiah 49:26, 60:16 and in Psalms 132:2, 5. In Psalm 132, the notion of Jacob the knight appears with regard to the Lord's promise to restore the Messiah from the house of David, and the Psalm mentions the Lord's throne. The tradition of Jacob’s image engraved upon the throne was studied at length by Elliot R. Wolfson, who explored both mystical and sexual aspects of this motif in rabbinic literature and in the writings of Hasidei Ashkenaz (also with references to the Zoharic literature), and who describes in detail how this motif evolved and was utilized in the commentaries on Ezekiel’s chariot.9 The narrative of Jacob engraved upon the throne was literally portrayed in the micrography, as we can see in the depiction of Jacob the Knight dressed in full armour. An illumination of Jacob engraved upon the throne is illustrated in the Leipzig Mahzor, Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, Ms. V 1102/I, fol.31a, made in Worms around 6 George Margoliouth, Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: ‎ Trustees of the British Museum, ‎ 1899), sign. 117; Therese and Mendel Metzger, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages: Illuminated Hebrew Manuscripts of the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries (New York: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1982) 269, 271; Ilana Tahan, Hebrew Manuscripts: The Power of Script and Image (London: British Library, 2007) 133-135. See also the British Library website: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=19263&CollI D=96&NStart=2091 (accessed January 22, 2013). 7 On this idea in relation to the verse Abir Jacob see Eleazar of Worms (Rokeach), A Commentary on the Jewish Prayerbook, eds. Moshe and Yehudah Hershler, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Machon HaRav Hershler, 1992), II, sign. 81, 522 (Hebrew). 8 E. G. Clarke, trans., Targum Pseudo-Jonathan of the Pentateuch: Text and Concordance (Hoboken, N.J.: ‎ ‪ Ktav Pub. House, ‎ 1984), 33; David J. Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel’s Vision (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [P. Siebeck], ‎ 1988), 121. 9 Elliot R. Wolfson, Along the Path: Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism, and Hermeneutics (Albany: ‎ ‪State University of New York Press, 1995), 1-62. 2 1310, as studied by Katrin Kogman-Appel.10 Jacob is represented by the human figure, as one of the four creatures that illustrate the initial panel of the piyyut El Mitnase for tractate Shekalim.11 The four creatures are illuminated in separate medallions around the initial word El (God) of the piyyut, which is decorated with a balance surrounded by two dragons, and above the initial panel a dog is chasing a hare. The human figure displayed as a hooded man holding a book is different than any portrayal in Jewish or Christian art.12 According to Kogman-Appel, the image reflects ideas based on the mystical writings of Hasidei Ashkenaz, especially those of Rabbi Elazar of Worms, regarding a vision of the human figure of Jacob engraved on the throne.13 In the Leipzig Mahzor, the human figure can be interpreted as representing the image of Jacob, but the scribes of the Bible micrography went even further by portraying Jacob according to the verse that describes him in the biblical passages, representing him as “Jacob the Knight”. The knights in Jewish writings portray the more spiritual aspects of noble warriors. According to Marcus, “the Jewish writers portray Jews as knights of the God of Israel in contrast to the Christian knights and rabble who travel toward a worthless goal.”14 In discussing passages from the Sefer Hasidim of Rabbi Judah the Pious, Marcus states that the Jewish writer sees the positive value of the knightly code of honour and valorous behaviour, but implies that the Jewish pietist, without expecting any reward, should behave in this manner and serve the lord fearlessly.15 As opposed to the war-like nature of the images in the micrography, the illumination for El Mitnase depicts the pietistic nature of Jacob with regard to the meaning of the piyyut. I wish to further elaborate on the piyyut El Mitnase by focusing on a scene that illustrates two warriors in the Michael Mahzor, the earliest dated illuminated Mahzor, and examining their relation to the messianic narrative. The piyyut “El Mitnase” for tractate Shekalim, based on Exodus 30:11-16, describes the raising of money (shekalim) for building the desert tabernacle. In the Michael Mahzor, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Mich. 617, fol. 4a,16 made in Ashkenaz in 1258, the text is decorated with a rectangular frame, while the initial panel displays an unusual upside-down scene.
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