How the identity of the author of ‘The Monk’s Haggadah’ was uncovered makes for a gripping detective story
By RALPH AMELANThe Monk’s Haggadah(photo credit: PR)
WHAT SORT of Haggada do you choose to read at the Seder table? Some prefer texts rich in commentaries and notes, to arm themselves for argument and study. Others refuse to be parted from wine-stained Haggadot that have been in the family for years. The aesthetically inclined participant finds that profusely illustrated publications infuse the familiar words with new meanings.Among this last group are those with a historic bent, who search out reproductions of classic medieval or Renaissance-era Haggadot. They pore over the sumptuously colored and decorated editions, marveling at the worlds and attitudes that unfold with close examination of the way artists then envisaged slavery and freedom.What sort of person would a Jew of the 15th century consider a Wicked Son? What did forced labor look like? How were women portrayed? Illustrations give us clues to enter into the minds of Seder participants no longer able to tell us about themselves and their beliefs.Therefore, the publication of a reproduction of a late 15th-century Haggada ought to be welcome news. Indeed it is – the calligraphy is bright and clear, the illustrations fresh and vibrant, a credit to the publisher. It should have a place on a wellstocked Jewish bookshelf.But not at the Seder table.This Haggada, unusually, has a prologue, also written in the late 15th century.And, thoughtfully, it contains a recipe for matza.“[T]he previously mentioned six cakes of unleavened bread are prepared before the others in a very special way with the blood of Christian infants.”“If there is fresh blood, the head of the household sprinkles some drops – more or fewer drops, depending on how much he has – into the prepared batter, even though, they say, a single drop will suffice.If there is no fresh blood, he grinds dried blood into powder, and then hydrates and sprinkles it…” To the traditional four questions, this text forces us to add a fifth. Why is this Haggada different from all other Haggadot? The answers are delivered by three scholars who between them worked for over a decade to first bring the Haggada to light, then to tease some information from the few clues they had. Their lively and fascinating accounts provide the lay reader with glimpses of the luck and good fortune that occasionally attends academic inquiry.David Stern, the Moritz and Josephine Berg Professor of Classical Hebrew Literature at the University of Pennsylvania (and a personal friend), first took note of the Haggada in the Institute for Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, attracted by the unusual presence of a Latin text and Latin inscriptions.(The original manuscript is in the Bavarian State Library.) Then a colleague, Christoph Markschies, the Chair of Ancient Christianity at Berlin’s Humboldt University, assisted in translating the text, and realized that the author of our (unsigned) prologue was a monk with exceptionally dark views about Jewish religious practices (even contending that Christian blood is placed in the ceremonial wine), yet, paradoxically, well-informed about other aspects of Passover ritual.How his identity was uncovered makes for a gripping detective story. With apologies for the spoiler, the cleric turned out to be a Dominican, Friar Erhard von Pappenheim. He was a scholar and a Hebraist, belonging to a Catholic circle characterized by Markschies as taking a “perverse mélange of interest in Jewish customs, ritual and literature, combined with anti-Jewish attitudes and practices and violence against Jews.”Apparently an existing Haggada text reached the then very extensive library of the Benedictine monastery of Tegernsee, Bavaria, sometime toward the close of the 15th century, and the abbot asked Erhard, presumably because of his familiarity with Hebrew, to write a prologue and a translation explaining, for a Christian audience, the meaning of the text. “The Monk’s Haggadah” thus came into being.Stern reveals the surprising and extensive grasp Erhard had of his subject and the Hebrew language. His antipathy toward Jews was no doubt taken from common Christian thinking of the time, but belief in the blood libel was far from being generally accepted.However, von Pappenheim explains that he had access to the court records of the 1475 trial and confessions of the Jews of the Italian town of Trent to the false charge that they had ritually murdered a two-year-old Christian boy.The fact that the confessions had been extracted under torture does not appear to have affected his belief in their value as a vital source of information.The torturers doubtless knew what they wanted the luckless Jews to confess to. Their confessions became evidence of their truth, rather than evidence of the dark imaginings of their interrogators.The Haggada holds yet more surprises.The illustrations that seemed entirely typical of Ashkenazi German-Italian Haggadot of the period turned out not to be so, once Sarit Shalev-Eyni, Professor of History of Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, had taken a close look at them.Many of the illustrations do draw on traditional models. For example, the Wicked Son is depicted in other Haggadot as a soldier about to dispatch an unarmed victim, although the (anonymous) artist of our Haggada seems to have given him a generous, even impractical, amount of ironmongery.And, as you can see from the examples here, the artist displays considerable skill.But two images in particular are startling.The phrase “by an outstretched arm” (Deuteronomy 26:8) was normally illustrated by a detached arm with a sword, a conventional representation of God delivering his people.Our Haggada shows instead the sword being wielded by a human figure seated on a throne. Moreover, as Shalev-Eini points out, “[t]hese facial features are typical of figures representing Christ in contemporary fifteenth- century art.”The second, illustrating the phrase “Here is the bread of distress” (ha lachma anya) shows a man and a woman on either side of the word “ha” each holding a matza. The man “is distinctly making the gesture of the Christian benediction over it with his right hand.”Here, and in other illustrations, Jewish ritual is apparently being intentionally depicted with Christian associations. This fits with von Pappenheim’s view, expressed in his prologue, that the Passover Seder is a forerunner of the Christian Eucharist. The scribe or scribes, likely Jewish, wrote an entirely conventional text, but the illustrations are too contrary to basic Jewish law and custom to have ever been intended for use at the Seder table.With the publication of this Haggada, the tables have been turned. Von Pappenheim wrote his prologue in order to give its clerical audience a view of Jewish custom and practice. The three scholars have now given us insights, based on the same Haggada, into at least one current of educated Christian thought about Jews and Judaism in the late 15th century. The observers have become the observed.Yet von Pappenheim does not emerge from this scrutiny as badly as he might have done. His prologue has a bookish air. “There is no indication that he spoke to, let alone knew with any familiarity, other Jews,” notes Stern. Yet there is little passion in his repulsive denunciations. For him, Jews are wicked, evil, even dangerous, but not really threatening. Our monk is no proto-Nazi.Apparently, even Jews have their uses. After ruminating again on the blood libel, he adds, “all the same the execrable blindness of the chosen people ought to be pitied and bewailed. And because I think nothing is so evil that an orderly soul cannot pick out from it and take away for itself something useful, I consider their diligence in such utterly useless matters a great rebuke to our own negligence in regard to some practices that are truly beneficial.”In almost his closing words, he adds, “Indeed, we strive and pray for reconciliation with all our enemies, even the Jews.” No doubt it never entered this orderly soul’s head that he just might be going about it the wrong way.
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