Obj. ID: 1495
Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts  Italian Mahzor for High Holidays and Sukkot, North-Central Italy, late 14th century

Cod. Hebr. 172 is the second part of a Mahzor of the Roman rite, including prayers for High Holidays, Sukkot, various prayers for the life cycle, as well as piyyutim, selihot and prayers for various occasions and holidays (see: Content). Originally, the manuscript included the first part of the Mahzor, which included prayers from the special Shabbats till 9th of Av, now lost, as indicated by the alphabetic Hebrew numeration of this Mahzor starting from 226 (רכו) on fol. 1v. The manuscript ends with three additional single folios (fols. 207-209), on which later Hand 3 (fol. 207) and Hand 4 (fols. 208v-209) added missing texts. Other two additions are present within the manuscript: on original fols. 193v-195, Hand 1 has added a prayer by Isaac son of Benjamin son of Shlomo Finzi, who seems to have been active in Umbria during the 14th century, while on fols. 138-140 Hand 2 copied a prayer for protecting the community from tragic events, inserting two bifolia within quire XIV (see: Scribes; Quires). The main scribe of the manuscript was responsible also of some of the additions and corrections of the text (e.g. fols. 41v, 49, 51v, 60, 82v, 117v, 186v). Within the text, we can find later interpolations by Hand 5, who was the proof-reader (e.g. marginal additions on fols. 116-117 and added text on fol. 130v).

Although the manuscript has no colophon stating the name of the scribe, the date or the place of production, the manuscripts must have been produced after 1321, since the prayer for a public fast on fols. 190v-191 was instituted on a specific historical occasion (the date appearing in the annotation preceding the prayers on top of fol. 190v), when an expedition from the Jewish community of Rome was sent in that year to the court of Pope John XXII in Avignon, to try to rescind his decree of expulsion of the Jews of Rome (see: Milano, Ebrei d’Italia, pp. 148-149).

This manuscript is decorated from its beginning until fol. 176v with pen-work panels for titles, initial words and instructions. However, the scribe left space for three more initial word panels, or even illustrations, as indicated by the large spaces left empty before the Redemption of the First-Born (fol. 177), the Circumcision (fol. 178) and the Marriage ceremony (fol. 180) services, which were never filled.

The panels are decorated with flourishes that extend sometimes along the margins, with beads, foliate scrolls and “strung bead and circlet” motifs, all executed by one single artist. The artist usually works in a crude style, with thick frames for initial words of the main prayers and simplifies the forms, as in the decoration for single words within the text in almost each page, or in many of the initial word panels (e.g. fols. 42v, 44v, 45, 74, 77-77v, 143, 148-152v). He sometimes works more delicately as in the pen-work panels for the opening of New Year (fol. 1v), Sukkot (fol. 142) and Shemini Azeret (fol. 157) services and in a few other panels such as those on fols. 18, 19v, 50v, 91, 146v. The meeting points of the two types of work can be viewed in the panel for the title of Shemini Azeret (fol.157), where the red thick frame with stylized trefoils at the corners contrasts with the more delicate filigree work in violet ink that fills and outlines this panel.  

The style of the decoration is typical of the pen-work and filigree work of Italian Hebrew manuscripts during the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th century, and is very difficult to point to a precise school or area. It can well be considered a scribal work. Comparisons could be done amongst the Hebrew manuscripts with the scribal work in a mahzor for the entire year hold in Paris (Northern Italy, end of the 14th century, Bibliothèque Nationale, ms. Héb. 604, for example fol. 49v; see: Sed-Rajna, G. Les manuscripts Hébreux enluminés des bibliothèques de France, Leuven-Paris, 1994, no. 168), e.g. on fol. 49v, whose simple thin red ink stylized buds decorating the frames that outline the initial words recall those of our manuscript.

Stylistic comparison of similar tendrils and scrolls decorating the margins, with floral motifs, especially trefoils in spare-ground technique, dotted flowers, circlets and beads motifs, other floral motifs sparse in the margins, which we find in Cod. Hebr. 172 (e.g. on fols. 5, 19v, 146, 157), could be made with manuscripts decorated in Perugia in the workshop of Matteo di Ser Cambio, who was active in Central Italy between the 1350’s till 1377, such as a liturgical miscellany in a Private Collection (see: de Polo, "codice umbro", fig. 6). The pen-work flourishes, and particularly the trefoil motifs, which tend to look like acorns, are very common, on the other hand, to the Bolognese atelier of Niccoló da Bologna, such as the manuscript housed in Salzburg (Stiftsbibliothek St. Peter, Cod. A. XII, or a Missal in the PaulGettyMuseum(ms. 34), attributed to his workshop, active in the last quarter of the 14th century-beginning of the 15th century.

In conclusion, cod. Hebr. 172 is a mahzor of Roman rite for the entire year, now missing its first part, only partially decorated with simple pen-work ornamentations by the hand of the scribe himself, produced towards the end of the 14th century inNorthern-Central Italy.