Mahzor (prayerbook for certain High Holidays), identified as the Rite of Montpellier, with many rare or unique piyyutim (liturgical poems), in Hebrew, manuscript on vellum and paper

An exceedingly important witness to the medieval liturgical history of the Jews of Languedoc, and most probably the only known manuscript to contain the rite of the Jews of Montpellier

provenance

1. Written by Languedoc Jews in exile, in the decades after the expulsion of 1394, perhaps in Avignon or another of the communities of the Comtat Venaissin under papal rule, or perhaps in Italy.

2. Owned by Jews in the vicinity of Modena in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, when the itinerant censors Luigi da Bologna (who was in the region of Modena in 1597-1602) and Giovanni Dominico Vistorini (who appears to have made two circuits near Modena, one in 1609 and another in 1620), added their signatures to fol. 233v (see W. Popper, The Censorship of Hebrew Books, 1899).

3. Acquired by the Italian scholar, Bible exegete and collector Samuel David Luzzatto (1800-65) immediately before April 1839. He translated the Ashkenazi prayerbook into Italian in 1821/2, published the Italian rite in 1829, and was appointed professor of the rabbinical college of Padua in the same year. This appointment allowed him to devote himself entirely to his studies and a long string of publications on Biblical commentary and historical and liturgical editions followed. See Jewish Encyclopedia 11, pp. 603-7; Samuel David Luzzatto 1800-1865: Exhibition on the Occasion of the 100^th Anniversary of his Death (in Jerusalem), ed. B. Yaron, 1966; and Rassegna Mensile di Israel, 32, 1966, nos. 9-10 (all articles dedicated to studies of Luzzatto) for further. His manuscript no. 9; paper tickets on front board and spine.

4. Acquired from his estate by the Polish-born scholar and book collector Solomon Zalman Hayyim Halberstam (1832-1900); his handwritten note on first flyleaf and additions of names of poets throughout in green-blue ink. The manuscript is recorded in his collection in Kohelet Shelomoh / Catalogue hebraischer Handscriften von S.J. Halberstam in Bielitz (ie. Bielsko, Poland), Vienna, 1890 (in Hebrew), as "A Mahzor According the Rite of Montpellier, ¼ Parchment. Another manuscript of this kind is unknown".

5. Acquired in the 1880s, along with many other manuscripts from Halberstam's collection, for the library of Sir Moses Montefiore, Bart. (1784-1885), financier, stockbroker, banker, sometime Sheriff of London and noted philanthropist, heralded after his death as "the most famous English Jew of his time, probably of all time". H. Hirschfeld, Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts of the Montefiore Library, 1904, no. 203, pp. 58-62 (with complete contents list). Montefiore sale in our New York rooms, 27-8 October 2004, lot 162.

text

The text is that of a Mahzor (prayerbook for certain High Holidays) for Hanukkah, special Sabbaths, Passover, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), with the additions of many piyyutim (liturgical poems) a number of which are unique to this manuscript.

The great Jewish liturgical scholar Leopold Zunz (1794-1886), one of the founders of Wissenschaft des Judentums ('the science of Judaism'), identified the rite of the community of Montpellier from the present manuscript (Die Ritus des synagogalen Gottesdienstes, geschichtlich entwickelt, 3^rd ed., 1919, p. 46-7, where comparison of the list of piyyutim for the first day of the 'Feast of the Weeks' shows his 'Ms. A' to be the present copy). Zunz records no other witness to this rite, or to any other from the surrounding region of Languedoc, and this is most probably the only known Mahzor to preserve the rite of the medieval community which once existed there. It had been brought to his attention by Luzzatto, who wrote to Zunz on 15 April 1839 to tell him of its unique features:

... [There] recently came into my possession another manuscript ... This too is of a Sephardic rite, containing many things that are found in the Oran Mahzor, but it also contains many things that are not extant in any other Mahzor, including the Order of Worship for the Day of Atonement by R. Joseph ben Avitur ... (S.D. Luzzatto's hebräische Briefe, gesammelt von seinem Sohne Dr. Isaias Luzzatto, 1883, III: p. 614)

It does indeed include a number of fascinating unique features. Much of the liturgy here is drawn from the Catalonian rite, and this accords well with other documentary records of the religious practices of the Languedoc Jews (eg. the rules of prayer in Sefer ha-Eshkol by Rabbi Abraham ben Isaac [ed. S. Albeck and published 1935-8, fol. 19r], who was president of the rabbinic court of the Languedoc town of Narbonne, in which the version of the benediction on peace for the Morning Prayer after the priestly blessing is שים שלום, identical to the custom of Spain and Catalonia), but crucially in the present manuscript on fols. 113r and 121v in the Morning Prayer, the last benediction of the Amidah differs from that of the Spanish custom, but agrees with that of Provençal custom: : שלום רב על עמך תשים לעולם, כי אתה מלך אדון כל השלום ('Much peace put upon your people for ever, for you are the King and Lord of all peace...'; for other Provençal witnesses, see the Mahzor manuscript according to the rite of Avignon and Carpentras, now Jerusalem, Jewish National and University Library, Ms. Heb. 4o 1394, fol. 54v, and Seder ha-Tamid, prayers for the whole year according  to the rite of the four communities of the Comtat Venaissin, Avignon, Carpentras, Cavaillon and l'Isle, 1767, part I, fol. 65v).

The present manuscript is also an extremely important record of many rare or unique piyyutim, and contains over seventy rare liturgical poems from Spain, Provence and Languedoc, some unknown from any other source. Luzzatto's principal interest in the manuscript lay in these texts and he listed it among the sources used to compile his Luah ha-Paytanim u-Fiyyuteyhem ('Table of Poets and their Piyyutim according to all rites'), published in Ozar Tov, 1877-78 (as a supplement to Magazin für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums, 1878), with the present manuscript as p. 3, item. 9: "Montpellier MS. in my possession". The Spanish poets include Joseph ibn Abitur (fols. 48v: Nishmat Israel Amkha; 49v: Nishmat le-Shabbat ve-Pessakh; 50v: Nishmat Yedidim; 74r: Nishmat Yeshurun; 148v: Reshut le-Barukh she-Amar), Solomon ibn Gabirol (fol. 46b: Shfal ru'akh, shfal berekh ve-koma; 80r: Mitzvat aseh; 109r: le-Adir norah tehilot; 121r: Aromemkha; 143v: Tokhekha; 161v: She'eh zikhron dati; 168r: Adonay ma adam halo basar vadam), Moses ibn Ezra (over 30 examples including the rare Zulat, Az bekom hatzar, probably by him, and others such as 56v: Adonay shkhinatekha; 154r: Asirey tikvatam, 164a: Kol ha-Meyakhlim; 170r: Serafim ve-kedoshim; 182r: Azamra le-mefik), as well as poems by Isaac ibn Ghiyath, Judah Halevi, Abraham ibn Ezra and the great Catalan philosopher and physician Rabbi Moses ben Nahman or 'Nahmanides' (including his exceedingly rare Ofan for the first day of Passover, which has been preserved only here on fol. 54r and in two other manuscripts: London, British Library Add. 14,761 & Vatican, Rossiana Collection 342). To these are added compositions by regional poets of Provence and Languedoc, including the twelfth-century author of ha-Maor Zerahiah ben Isaac ha-Levi Gerondi of Narbonne and Lunel (39r-43r: a piece for Shabbat Ha-Gadol before Passover and a verse); and his brother Berechiah (including the latter's rare Kerova for Shabbat Para on 29v-33v: Bokhen levavot yo'etz u-mi-yafer, an especially rare Kerova which exists in only a few manuscripts, and was probably practiced only in Catalonian and Languedoc rites); Isaac ben Zerakhya ha-Levi Gerondi (with 10 poems including the extremely rare Kaddish in Hebrew and Aramaic on fol. 14r, opening Gadol El ba-Adama; and a Loveh on 77r opening Zahav zahav zahav, both of which are known only from this manuscript); and the Provençal poet Rabbi Todros, whose work Mi Kamokha ve-eyn kamoka (fols. 63v-4v) for the first day of Passover, is recorded only in the present manuscript (see Zunz, Literaturgeschichte der synagogalen Poesie, 1865, p. 345; he is perhaps Todros of Beaucaire whom H. Gross in Revue des Etudes Juives, 19, 1889, pp. 265 & 273, identifies as the Tauros de Bellicardo who appears in a Latin document of 1277 as one of the five dignitaries of the Jewish community). This manuscript has been used a primary source for numerous scholarly editions of the religious poems of both Spanish and Provencal Hebrew poets: see for example, D. Jarden, The Liturgical Poetry of Rabbi Solon ibn Gabirol, 1972, p. 672; M. Schmelzer on Isaac ibn Ghiyath, in Papers in Medieval Hebrew Literature Presented to A.M. Halbermann, 1977, p. 330; I. Levin, The Religious Poems of Abraham ibn Ezra, 1975, I: p. 17; I. Meiseles, Shirat Ha-Maor: the Poems of Rabbi Zerahya Ha-Levy, 1984.

The Jews were a significant part of the community of the Languedoc from at least 465 AD onwards when crowds of weeping Jews are reported at the funeral of Bishop Hilarius of Arles, singing Hebrew psalms in honour of the bishop (a practice subsequently forbidden by the Council of Narbonne in 589). In the early Middle Ages they were granted allodial rights, and thus could settle permanently and found communities, and the Jewish community there underwent great expansion in the tenth century. The region was visited around 1165 by Benjamin of Tudela, who describes "HarGaash which is called Montpellier" as "a place well suited for commerce ... [being close to the sea and receiving] men from all quarters, from Edom, Ishmael, the land of Algarve [ie. Portugal], Lombardy, the dominion of Rome the Great, from all the lands of Egypt, Palestine, Greece, France, Asia and England". There were there, he notes, "scholars of great eminence ... [and] they have among them houses of learning devoted to the study of the Talmud", and "among the community are men both rich and charitable, who lend a helping hand to all that come to them". In similar tones Rabbi Simeon ben Joseph Duran wrote to his family in Perpignan in verse (now preserved in Oxford, Bodl. Heb. MS. 280, letter 3): "Great mount of Montpellier ... The wall of lore and faith surrounds it ... the sciences exult in its streets. On its dwellings the flocks of sages rest and feed on exegesis, Talmud and Mishnah". Much of Jewish life in Languedoc was focussed on Montpellier, and the modern city's archives still hold the largest numbers of documents pertaining to medieval Jews in the region. Montpellier's community survived the initial persecutions that followed the Albigensian crusade in the thirteenth century, as the city's officials refused to allow Simon de Montfort's crusading army to enter the city, and in fact mounted a major defensive operation against him. However, protection given to Montpellier's Jews diminished quickly when the city was given to the French king in 1348, and the Jewish inhabitants were expelled, like other French Jews, by Charles VI in 1394. The present manuscript would appear to have been written in exile, perhaps in Avignon or another of the communities of the Comtat Venaissin under papal rule, or perhaps in Italy, by Jews who could still remember the community of Montpellier, and were probably continuing to use their own religious rite while in exile. The vast number of the of piyyutim in the present volume might also suggest an attempt to document and preserve what had been a vibrant art-form for the Languedoc Jews, then scattered across southern Europe. As such, it is an extremely important witness both to the liturgical rite of the community there, and to the final days of their existence.

Sotheby's gratefully acknowledges information used in this catalogue taken from a scholarly report on the manuscript prepared for the current owner by Prof. Shlomo Zucker of Jerusalem.