Obj. ID: 1498
Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts  Vienna Sefer Mordecai, Austria, 1392

The Vienna Sefer Mordecai was copied in Germany or Austria in 1392 by three different scribes; one who copied the first two quires and  two other scribes who shared the rest of the text between themselves: Barukh who copied the 3rd to the 22nd quires and Shalom who copied the last nine quires of the manuscript. In fact, Barukh started to copy the text on the first page of the 23rd quire but for reasons unknown, Shalom replaced him in his work and moved this quire to the end of the manuscript (Barukh's text appears on fol. 242) and started to copy the same text on a new quire, now the 23rd quire (see: Contents, above) and continued from that point on until the end of the manuscript. Shalom also signed the manuscript with a colophon which states that he copied the manuscript for Shemarya ben Moshe on March 9th, 1392. 

This Sefer Mordecai is a later copy of an halakhic compendium by Mordecai ben Hillel Ha-Kohen (1240(?) - 1298), author and rabbinic authority in Germany, who died in Nuremberg a martyr’s death in the Rindfleisch massacres, together with his wife and five children. Mordecai’s fame rests on this Sefer Mordecai, always referred to as “The Mordecai.”  This gigantic compendium consists of elaborations on Talmudic problems in the style of the tosafot.

“The Mordecai” spread quickly and many manuscripts were produced with this text. The history of the spread of "the Mordecai" and the transmigrations of its many versions in manuscript and in print is one of the most complicated in all rabbinic literature. Because of the book’s tremendous scope, two main compilations of extracts, the “Austrian” and the “Rheinish”, were made from it within a few decades, mainly reflecting regional laws and customs, and differing greatly from one another. The Rheinish version includes the views of many French and English scholars, and the customs of the German communities. These customs had spread eastward as far as Poland, but were not accepted west of Germany. The Austrian version reflects the minhag of southeastern Europe including the customs of Austria, Hungry, Bohemia, Saxony, and Moravia, and mentions many Austrian scholars. According to research on some of the tractates of Sefer Mordecai (Bava Kamma, Rosh ha-Shana, Yom Kippur, Sukkah, Bezah, Ta’anit and Megillah) in various manuscripts, and amongst them, our manuscript, scholars came to the conclusion that our manuscript belongs to the Austrian version (Sefer Mordecai Ha-Shalem, Mif'al Torat Hokhmei Ashkenaz, Mahon Yerushalayim,(Teachings of the Torah Sages of Ashkenaz), a Project of the Jerusalem Institute. 1989, 1992, 1995, 1997).

The Vienna Sefer Mordecai is lavishly illuminated with many decorated initial words and with some rich panels (see: Decoration Program, above). This is a typical to many other manuscripts of Sefer Mordecai of this period and region that we know of, which are mostly not illuminated or include simple decoration around the initial words only e.g. Sefer Mordecai, E. France, Besancon, 1397 (Cambridge - University Library Add. 490, 1), Sefer Mordecai, Ashkenaz, 1403 (Paris, Ecole Rabbinique 39), Sefer Mordecai, Ashkenaz, 1418 (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, heb. 407), Sefer Mordecai, Ashkenaz, 1459 (Toronto, University of Toronto, Ms Friedberg 5-011) and two Sefer Mordecai, Ashkenaz, after 1500 (Oxford, Bodleian Library Ms Mich. 582, 583). However, we know of another Sefer Mordecai  that is also highly illuminated probably produced in Vienna, in  1373/4 (Budapest, Budapest, Szèchènyi Nationalbiblioteck, Cod. Hebr. 1; see: Fingernagel, Niederösterreichischen Randleistenstils). Like the Vienna Sefer Mordecai, the Budapest manuscript has a similar decoration program with decorated initial word panels for every opening of a tractate and with smaller panels for opening of subtitles. The panels of the tractates in the Budapest manuscript however, are more elaborate and include burnished gold letters within very large panels and also include a frame for the entire column. Thus we can conclude that most important illuminated examples of Sefer Mordecai are the Vienna Sefer Mordecai and the Budapest Sefer Mordecai, both produced in the last decades of the 14th century. 

Stylistically the initial word panels in our manuscript on fols. 208v and 221v should be compared with a similar panel of another halakhic text, the SeMaK, produced in Nuremburg in 1392 (London, British Library, Add. 18684, fol. 12). In both manuscripts the initial words are filled with animals and foliate motives, commonly appearing in Ashkenazi manuscripts (see for example: ÖNB, Cod. Hebr. 163, fol. 2v, cat. XXX), however in both manuscripts the letters set within a panel are filled with a unified background of repeated pattern (in the Vienna manuscript with scrolls while in the Nuremburg SeMaK with flowers). Similar panels, in motives but not is style,  with a unified background of large scrolls and repeated patterns can also be found in the Erna Michael Haggadah, Germany (Middle Rhine), ca. 1400 (Israel Museum, 180/58, fol. 35v). The decoration of the Erna Michael Haggadah (fols. 52v, 65v) could also be compared to the monochrome panels of theVienna manuscript on fols.  56, 58v and59. In both manuscripts dragons, hybrids and humans, depicted on a monochrome background, almost merge with the background. 

Some initial words in our manuscript are decorated with dragons (fols. 56, 59, 97) or with a man fighting a dragon (fols. 58v, 65v, 208v), similar to the binding decoration.