A Jewish Knight in Shining Armor? Professor Sara Offenberg (Department of the Arts, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) discusses illuminated Hebrew manuscripts depicting knights in armor. Are these Jewish or Christian knights? What crossover existed between the two cultures? Join Professor Offenberg as she explores these questions and more.

If you would like to learn more, you can read Professor Offenberg’s book: Up In Arms, Images of Knights and the Divine Chariot in Esoteric Ashkenazi Manuscripts of the Middle Ages.

Interview Audio

A transcript of the lecture is also provided below.

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Transcript

Introduction

Okay, thank you very much for having me here, and thanks Kiana for inviting me. I'm Sarah Offenberg, from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Let's talk about a Jewish knight in shining armor—something like that. 

Illuminated manuscripts and chivalry

So I'm looking at illuminated manuscripts, which is my field. You can see knights all over the place, or not only knights but warriors, and make the difference between the two. You'll notice them only when you're starting looking for them, but they're everywhere from the 13th to the 15th century in Western Europe. But what does it mean that we find knights in these manuscripts? 

So at the beginning, I thought perhaps they're all bad. I have the same joke, as always, good knight, bad knight. I liked it, And I keep repeating it like I'm 98. All right. But I really like it, because that's the way I work. I see a warrior in a Jewish manuscript. And then I think, is he a good guy or a bad guy? And I start by actually reading what is in there. But we should always think about the entire society; the Jews were living in Europe in a Christian society. So let's take a look at that. 

I'm using the term chivalry from most recent books published. Knights usually are connected with chivalry, and chivalry was performative. And those who sought to follow it did so for an audience. This is something that we should keep in mind when we're looking at manuscripts as well, because they have an audience of readers and viewers. And chivalry began life as a set of values widely shared by an aristocratic warrior elite. So that's where warriors come to mind. And although they operated within a Christian framework, we should remember that essentially they were secular.  So with this in mind, when it comes to Hebrew illuminated manuscripts, it broadens our point of view.

Jews were very much aware of this mechanism of self representation of social rank and of social codes. In a sense, this word-term of chivalry might include the Jews as well, at least from a Jewish perspective, of self belonging to a chivalric social strand. They imitated, and at times, even attached original adapted spiritual meanings to the borrowed symbols; you can see some of them here.

Now in this talk today, I'll focus on a few case studies of different genres of literary works for Hebrew illuminated manuscripts produced in Ashkenaz, which are French and German lands, and I'll use the term Ashkenaz from the 13th to the 15th century.  So I'll start with this—I'll go chronologically. From the Michael Mahzor—it's called Michael Mahzor because it's a prayer book held in the the Michael collection at Oxford. And what we're seeing here is a liturgical point. The initial of the liturgical point here for the great Shabbos, which is the Shabbat before Passover. So it's very relevant for today. And it deals with the way we should clean our dishes before Passover feast. It’s fascinating! A good storytime.

Since it's not clear enough, in order to understand it, there are many commentaries on the liturgical points, because lots of liturgical points are not that easy to understand even in the Middle Ages.  But what I was interested in is what about the knight? What does a knight have to do with it?

First Example of Knights in Jewish Manuscripts

So I started by reading the entire rhetorical poem as well as the poems before that and afterwards. And then I stumbled upon the word here, daharat, which is the code for understanding the illumination. Now, what we see here is a warrior knight, a horse, and a few more animals that can be explained according to the text to each poem. But I'm interested in the knight itself. Why is it represented here? And as I said, it is related to the word, daharat, which is converted from the word for galloping, for ‘horse gallops’ from Judges. 

Now, it's not enough to just see one word and connect it to the illustration. But as I said, we should read also commentaries on this liturgical point. And in most manuscripts, and we have 12 commentaries on this specific liturgical point from Ashkenaz. And in most manuscripts of the period’s commentary, the word arat, galloping, is the object of an elaborate explanation, which includes the biblical quotation and comments that the Avirim, which are Knights of Israel, that is the Knights of Israel who are galloping with one another. So the knight we're seeing here is actually a Jewish knight. It is the Knights of Israel. So here we have a positive one. And it's just something that I want to start with, just to get a glimpse of how I'm working.

Second Example of Knights in Jewish Manuscripts

And now for something that I've just started working on it, even though I am very much familiar with this manuscript—it's called the London Miscellany or the North French Hebrew Illuminated Miscellany. It was produced in northern France, around 1280. And it's a very large book. Well, it's small, but it has over 700 pages. And it contains various texts, over 80 different texts. Among others, we see this one, which is the Aramaic translation of the Haftarah for the first day of Passover. So today is the first day of Passover, and the Haftarah is the Torah portion that we read on this day. And what you see here is the translation into Aramaic. Long sentences, but what does the knight have to do with it? 

Okay, so the first thing we should do is look at the actual Haftarah and how it is portrayed in this specific manuscript. A few pages before that, you see this—and it is from Joshua. “At that time,” the Lord said to Joshua, “make flint knives for yourselves and again circumcise the children of Israel a second time.” Usually, the audience will go “ouch,” like this. Once when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing before him, drawn sword in hand. Joshua went up to him, and asked him, "Are you one of us or our enemy?" So for me, it's the same question. Are you a good knight or a bad one?

So if we think about the swords, we can say, okay, it could be a sword of flint knives. Okay, that could be one explanation, and Joshua was just before the battle of Jericho, so it makes sense that he is wearing knightly gear. You can see that he even has full knightly gear, except for a helmet.

But the dragon—what does a dragon to have to do with this? I have a lot of questions like this. Usually when we see a dragon and the knight, most of us think of St. George slaying the dragon, but here it doesn't make much sense since it's a Jewish manuscript. And even though they're copying from a Christian manuscript, I thought perhaps there's something more to that.

Now, I must say that it doesn't mean that every illustration in the margins obviously has something that is connected to the text, but sometimes it does. And I think here that's it is an associative motif for something that it is larger and understood by the Jews at the time. In order to explain this, I'm going to a later manuscript, also from Ashkenaz but from the 15th century and a Haggadah. It's read on Passover Eve, it's the second Nuremberg Haggadah of 15th century Ashkenaz. And you can see here on the right, sort of a dragon eating Moses, and it is based on Exodus 4 when Zipporah and Moses were on their way. Now the illustrations have put the text just above that, and it is explained here according to Rhashi's commentary that the angel that came before Moses became a kind of serpent and swallowed him.

Now, there's an idea that sometimes the angel of death is portrayed as a serpent or as a dragon. So he tried to swallow Moses from his head to his thigh, and also again swallowed him from his legs to that place. And his wife Zipporah thus understood that this had happened on account of the delay in the circumcision of her son. So that's why she just took out the knife and circumcised them both. So when we're looking at a dragon eating Moses, or the illustration from the London Miscellany, we actually understand that by circumcising the people of Israel, it's like fighting the dragon, which means the dragon represents the angel of death rather than an actual dragon.

So here for the Ashkenazi Jews, even though it was made in France, this manuscript is connected to the Hasidic Ashkenaz, to the German Pietist movement. The ideas of other Midrashim, of other commentaries such as Rhashi’s commentary were very much part of the intellectual world. If we look at the entire opening of the London Miscellany, where the Haftarah for Passover is written, and we see here the fighting figures, and here is the part from Joshua. We can explain the swords from another source, not only related to slaying the dragon or circumcision, but according to what is written here at the bottom and around the main text. And it's from Psalms, and it mentions swords. It was not by their sword that they took the land. So, it is not my sword that gives me victory.

So, the emphasis here is that the Lord says to Israel, David, or other guys, it is not by the power of the sword. So the sword here is not a motif of salvation, on the contrary.

And what we are seeing here is an early example of fighting with sword and buckler—a buckler is a sort of round shield, a small round shield of a specific type. I guess some of you in the audience are familiar with this, but I’ll just talk a bit about it.

Sword and Buckler

So when we are looking at sword and buckler for most people, most scholars of medieval art or medieval fighting, we think of this manuscript, a manuscript that is now housed at Leeds, Manuscript 133, which is a manual for fighting with sword and buckler, and these latest editions are highly recommended. So what we have here is the earliest copy of a manual of fighting with sword and buckler from the 1320s. What I would like to talk about in the next few minutes is this thing.

This manuscript, it's Hebrew illuminated, an illustrated manuscript of the Bible. And here we have again, fighting people with sword and buckler. But it is earlier than the Christian one—it is from 1304. And if any of you heard, by chance, my talk two and a half months ago in the National Library, sorry, I'll just repeat some of the things.

So, this manuscript. It's a three volume manuscript, a huge Bible, produced in German lands, Ashkenaz, in 1304. And what we see here is all of the decoration are masorah figurata, which are all micrography, which is figurative or just plain floral decorations made here at the bottom of the page. And it is made out of the script of the masorah, which explains the way you should pronounce the Bible reading. And I will go into details later.

Now, I should mention that the most cutting edge study research is presently being conducted by a group headed by Dr. Hanna Liss from the Heidelberg Center for Jewish Studies, and that's on their website. It's fantastic. They're working on it. It's a 12 years research project. And it's amazing, but the specific manuscript that I'm going to talk about is not part of this project. So I had something to contribute. Okay, so this opening—the pages we see on both sides, warriors. I won’t call them knights because they are not. And it is the text from Jeremiah.

So what I wish to demonstrate here is that the iconography of the Masorah Figurata was adopted from German fight books, which are books of instructions, usually with illustrations, dealing with the fencing arts.

The genre of fight books flourished in the late Middle Ages, mainly the German speaking lands, and we have some 90 surviving manuscripts. It's amazing that out of 36 German fencing masters mentioned by name, it is remarkable that three of them are described as Jews. And the most known one is Jude Lew. And you can see this edition that I always go back to. These are the main research on the subject, the latest ones—the journal Acta Periodica Duellatorum, this is the latest issue. And I'm so thrilled to say that in the next issue, that will come out in May, I'm publishing an article there on this subject. So I'm just super excited. Thanks. I'm amazed when I get accepted. Okay. And Late Medieval and Early Modern Fight Books is a wonderful book. And of course, don't forget the websites, just go and browse through it. It's marvelous.

So I'm using these studies in order to understand a bit my manuscripts. Without them I couldn’t. The portrayal of the fighting men in the Ashkenazi Bible from 1304 predates the earliest illuminated fencing manual, which is MS I. 33, probably from Franconia, around 1320. And it is also known for the woman at the end, who fights and actually wins the battle.

For people who are familiar with the Leeds manuscript, they are also familiar with this manuscript, the Codex Manesse, produced in Zurich around 1320, but perhaps earlier. This it seems was for a long period, you can see from 1300 to 1340. And the iconography of the fighting figures is very much similar to the one in the Leeds manuscript.

Now from the same time and place from Zurich, we have another Hebrew manuscript, which portrays also fighting with sword and buckler,

and it is a specific type of fighting, I should stress that—it's not just, well I’ll get some shield and sword. And on this subject, you can see it as well in this related manuscript, which is the Tripartite Mahzor, and you can see here as well, fighting figure with sword and buckler.

So we have a Hebrew illuminated manuscripts from the same time a place of the Codex Manesse and the Leeds manuscript, from even the same area of the Codex Manasse. But the one I'm interested in is earlier. So my point here is that in this Hebrew manuscript, we can see earlier traditions that throughout time just got lost or just appeared again only domestically, but survived. But I should stress again and again, it's not as if the Christian manuscripts copied from Jewish manuscripts it was the other way around. Jews copied from their neighbors, from the Christians. Interesting to see what they copied.

So the micrography forming verses are from Jeremiah. Let's start by looking at the verses themselves. And most of the words are related to Jeremiah 11:22. "The young man shall die by the sword.” So the sword is stressed again and again. And it is extremely important here, because it relates the text and the image.

And the image itself is made out of different verses of the Massorah, the way that we should pronounce it. The main text we can see here that it's from different parts of the Bible. It's from Samuel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, etc. But what does it mean?

Now, the figures with a sword, as the text implied, were designed to arouse fear in the hearts of the viewers, as they may reflect fear of the Christian neighbors. And I think what I haven't said so far is that fighting with sword and buckler isn't the sort of fighting of the nobility; it is related also for the lower strata of society. So, for the Jews living in urban-space Europe, like Germany, they were afraid of their neighbors using a sword and buckler. Now it is illustrated also in a Christian manuscript, where you can see the difference between knights and regular warriors holding sword and buckler. It is a different type of fight and weapons.

The Rindfleisch Massacres

What were they so afraid of? the manuscript does produce only six years after the 1298 riots known as the Rindfleisch Massacres. Throughout these riots, hundreds of Jews were massacred, were murdered. So it may find in this micrography, an echo of the pogrom's outcome, especially as the texts of Jeremiah and the micrography-forming verses tell of severe judgment and harsh prophecy. And the emphasis is on the sword that brings upon that. So when looking at this Hebrew manuscript, for scholars such as myself studying Hebrew illuminated manuscripts and Jewish Christian-relations, it is interesting because we can see the way they reflect their fear of their neighbors. And at the same time, they also copied from them the same iconography, probably using model books, or example books.

And for scholars of military stuff, we can use Hebrew manuscripts to try to see earlier than the Leeds manuscript displaying fighting with sword and buckler. And it has already started by other scholars such as Cornelius Berthold, who I'm so grateful that he shared his yet unpublished paper. He shared it with me before, and he already saw some earlier examples also in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts. 

The Four Sons

Let's lighten things up. Let's go to Haggadah. And here, we're going to the 15th century, also Ashkenaz. This is part of the reading which usually the kids like to read during Passover Eve. And it’s about the four sons: the scholar, the smart one, the wicked, the innocent, and the one who doesn't know how to ask. Now usually the four sons are portrayed one next to the other or in the same proportion. But here in this manuscript, now held at the John Rylands University Library, you can see that the wise son is smaller. The wicked son, which I'll address in a minute, is larger than life, larger than the text, and is the most important one here. We should say that throughout the Middle Ages, usually the wicked son is portrayed as a warrior, as a knight. And the third one, the innocent one is portrayed with the joker’s, the fool's, hat.

Now, this one, at first glance, we see a knight. He has an armor on—it even has a crown instead of a helmet. He even has a cape which makes me remember The Dark Knight, that comes to my mind. He has a sword, but it’s a specific type of sword, a sword that was used by all classes, not only noble knights. It hints at a lesser rank of a warrior. It is sort of a way to make him look a bit ridiculous, because his upper gear is more like a knight, but lower is of upper-lower status. And I guess you already noticed his stockings falling down. That is part of the thing that makes him look so ridiculous. And in some of the literature we find the idea of the manly legs and the knightly legs of warriors with cuts in their pants, so that they show that they were in the battlefield. But here it goes to the absurd, because they fall down, it's just like they took his trousers off.

Now, in another text in the same manuscript, we see a commentary on the word nekhar, which is foreigner. And it is based on Onkelos's translation of Exodus, where the Lord said “Moses and Aaron, this is the law of Passover offering—no foreigner shall eat it.” So Onkelos explained that the foreigner was the son that converted. Now in our manuscript, next to the main text, we see that the commentary goes on to say that he, the foreigner, is like the wicked son who converted. The image here might might well be a caricature of an apostate Jew, who is not just wicked, he is wicked because he converted to Christianity. And it is related to the entire theme of illustrations in this Haggadah. So that's another bad knight. 

The Camps of the Israelites

But I'd like to finish with this. It's a Bible from Ashkenaz as well, from the 15th century. And here we have the opening of Numbers. Here's the text of the Bible, and here's Rhashi's commentary on it. And we see two knights. You see two knights holding pennants, their swords, and shields.

And before I'm talking about them, let's just take a quick look at a Christian manuscript portraying the same idea of the camps of the Israelites, where they're camping out according to their tribes, from four points north, south, east, west, around the Ark of the Covenant. And it is portrayed in the same manner also in an earlier manuscript from Ashkenaz, also around the Lake Constance region. And so Rachel Levine has wrote about it, as well as Mark Epstein—I used his drawing here of the council of Israel, of the tribes from all four corners. And here I just want to say that they have only the pennants but without any weapons.

What you see in this manuscript from the 15th century, there are only two knights and they are fully armed. Now what they are wearing is Italian armor. It is complete Italian armor of the time, every part of an Italian armor of that time is illustrated here. And for me, it is interesting, the details. I like it that they go into specific details to portray the knights here, which are the Knights of Israel, of the people of Israel.

I'll just say that there is a difference between the German gear and Italian armor, but at that time, even though it was produced in Germany, they used also Italian. So the knife on the left bears an oval, shield, painted red, with a Jewish hat on in the center, and the red is connected to Rhashi's commentary of the tribe of Reuben and goes much beyond the scope of this lecture.

Now here's a Jewish hat at the center, and the same appears on the panels. It's a specific Jewish hat, which although initially intended by Christian authorities as a derogatory sign, over the years the Jewish hat became so closely associated to Jewish male public attire that it was appropriated by Jews and became a symbol of Jewish pride. So much that they use the same symbol to put them on their seals and pennants, not only in illustrated manuscripts but also we know from seals that they used the Jewish hat as part of their symbols. And yet what I am curious about not only in this manuscript but others that I’ve studied as well is the details. What does it matter if they have the pennant here, and we see that chainmail and every little part of it? Were they wearing them or not? 

Conclusion

Okay, so in order to conclude some of my assumptions, for the Jewish patrons, this self-identification elevated their status, even if only in their own eyes, and informs us about the way they viewed their surrounding society and themselves within its social and spiritual strands. Beyond the interest of fighting reference to Jews in German fight books, it is extremely important that they are positioned in such prominent places of fencing masters. Thus we may assume that the images which are found in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts are not so far fetched in terms of Jewish knights, or at least for some Jews, for the way they perceived themselves. It may be that the patrons of some manuscripts, containing images of knights in a positive context, belonged not only to an intellectual elite, but also to a social rank of martial arts masters, glorifying their skills and knowledge 

However, it is important to stress this, that our conclusion here could not be implemented for all portrayals of warriors and knights in Jewish art, but each work of art should be studied in-depth and then reach a conclusion. And as in Christian society, the visual aspects of the social stratum is very much present for some Jewish patrons, describing medieval Jewish connotations between social honors gained in battlefield and the present Jewish identity, may provide a patron of the glory he could not fully earn in the dominant society. Thank you.

Q&A 

Questioner 1 

Hi Sarah, good to see you. And so nice to hear your talk. It's great to see what you're working on. I have a question about the Northern French Miscellany. Or in general, I have questions about the illuminators, and the collaboration between the illuminators and the patrons. So the patrons were Jewish. But what do you say about the illuminators, who I only can really speak to the Northern French Miscellany, which I learned mostly from your book, that they were, to a large part, Christian. So how do you think that inter-religious collaboration, when it came to Jewish material culture, might have influenced the knight and the meaning behind it, and the dragon?

Professor Offenberg 

I think it worked just as in other manuscripts. In other workshops, I should say. The North French, the London Miscellany was produced in Paris, in the most noble workshops, Christian workshops. And there was a person on behalf of the Patron, perhaps the scribe, that instructed the illuminators, what to illustrate. And just as in Christian manuscripts, where the patron sometimes even draw something. But most of the images are based on Christian ideas, except for, as you know, when they change the iconography, when something is different. There, we can say that there was actually the hand of the patron, or at least the saying, “I want to see this thing, and not that.” The best example is the Queen Godot with a large crown instead of the miter, The Binding of Isaac, which is bounded by both arms and legs, but only one one arm and one leg. So I think for them, it was part of the way they lived. It's not so separated as we can call it.

Questioner

And you don't think that the Christian illuminators may have had influence on how things may have looked? Or I guess they they don't necessarily have an influence on the meaning, but don't you think they could go rogue and just kind of draw a dragon?

Professor Offenberg 

Sometimes? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Just like anywhere in the world. But when they did so, the best example is the Mishneh Torah from the Kauffman Collection, which Evelyn Cohen studied, and she's shown by ultraviolet lighting, you can see that it was drawn in the beginning, just as as if Jesus is giving the law to Moses, and afterwards it was painted over. So if it had some religious ideas [shrug]. But for example, in the margins, when it comes to the love story, it is at most times related to the text. But the dragon, only because of the second Haggadah, that’s what some of my associates are thinking. So I think that's the way they were probably thinking.

Questioner

I do have another question, if I can ask. So when it comes to chivalric culture, you focus a lot on the knights, and you've really illuminated what's going on there. Have you looked at all into the the women in chivalric culture? And I know, we've talked about this before, but like the noble women in the illuminations, and can you speak at all to matters of gender, or any new insights that you've had lately?

Professor Offenberg 

Um, the only thing in the latest I showed from the Ryan's, with the wicked son. I focused on the Patron from day one, the woman patron there. She is noble, and when it comes to Ecclesia et Synagoga. That's where you can find the noble, ecclesia, and the humble, synagoga, the broken one, but both are portrayed more aristocrtically. But it's something that I haven't gone into. So that's on you.

Questioner

I know, we have to talk about it. We have to catch up.

 Professor Offenberg 

If there aren't any questions, I think we can wrap it up? Thank you so much.

Professor Sara Offenberg

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