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Body Parts, Veins and Pathologies in Judeo-Italian and Latin in Hebrew Characters

Body Parts, Veins and Pathologies in Judeo-Italian and Latin in Hebrew Characters[1]

This short study focuses on the analysis of medical terms in Judeo-Italian and Latin in Hebrew characters that pertain to body parts, veins, conditions and illnesses, discovered in a fifteenth-century Hebrew medical miscellany copied in Provence: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms Hébreu 1181 (hereafter siglum P). At the back of this manuscript, on folio 264v, is an illuminated ink drawing of a Homo signorum et venarum (zodiac and vein man), namely, a naked (circumcised here) man adorned with the signs of the zodiac on various parts of his body. This illustration is accompanied by red lines stemming from different locations on the body and leading to short Hebrew guidelines on letting blood, which describe the veins to incise for various illnesses and bodily dysfunctions.[2]  It is the sole known surviving example in a Hebrew manuscript of zodiacal melothesia.[3]

Zodiac and Vein Man. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms Hébreu 1181, fol. 264v.

The illustration of a zodiac and vein man belongs to an iconographical tradition well-known in medical astrology[4] but found predominantly in Latin and vernacular medieval manuscripts, mainly of Western Europe.[5] Consequently, considering the great number of witnesses these languages preserved from the Middle Ages,[6] the fact that only one image of a Homo signorum et venarum in a medieval Hebrew manuscript is known today is even more remarkable.

Summary of the recently published parallel-text edition and commentary

The bloodletting injunctions surrounding this image were recently the object of a parallel-text edition and commentary, in an attempt to identify their path of textual transmission and likely place of production. In the study, the Paris manuscript was compared with three nearly identical sources, with slight variations in spelling and wording, all produced in Italy. These sources include: in Hebrew, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms Vat. ebr. 376, 15th century, textual format (hereafter siglum V);[7] in Italian, Padua, Biblioteca Universitaria, Ms 604, 14th century, figurative format (hereafter siglum Pa);[8] and in Latin, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Ms Clm 10268, 14th century, figurative format (hereafter siglum M).[9]

The recent study of manuscript P began with an overview of the humoral theory and its relation to phlebotomy. Next, a chronological survey of treatises on phlebotomy and their literary genres was outlined, describing in particular a last genre, which appeared during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Western Europe. It consisted of anonymous independent treatises of a popular and empirical character, laid out in textual or figurative formats in Latin and European vernaculars,[10] as well as textual formats in Hebrew and Yiddish.[11] The bloodletting precepts in all four manuscripts were identified as belonging to this last group of literary genres. A parallel-text edition and tabular comparison then illustrated the identical, similar, or divergent bloodletting precepts appearing in P and in the three comparable texts in Hebrew, Italian and Latin (V, Pa and M). The results demonstrated that taking into consideration the numerous identical and similar precepts between P, V, Pa and M, as well as the minor scribal errors, omissions and additions in all manuscripts, all four texts were copied through intermediary Italian and Latin channels, from a common older Latin source. Furthermore, since Pa and M were both copied during the first half of the fourteenth century in Padua[12] and share much identical and similar content, phrasing and wording with P and V, it was suggested that these Hebrew versions, produced a century later, during the first half of the fifteenth century in Italy, may also have been copied in Padua or its surroundings.

Italian production of the Zodiac and Vein Man in P

It is noteworthy to mention that the last text of the manuscript — a summary of the treatise De Judiciis astronomiae (or De astrologiae) by the Catalan physician Arnald de Villanova (ca. 1240–1311), in Hebrew translation by Solomon ben Abraham Avigdor from Provence (b. 1384), titled Panim ba-Mishpaṭ (fols. 265v–266r),[13] was copied in an Italian square script, instead of the Provençal-Sephardic script used for the previous texts in the manuscript. Furthermore, the ink drawing of the zodiac and vein man (fol. 264v), enhanced with watercolours, is accompanied, on the top of the following folio 265r, by an ink drawing of the bust of a man, also painted, and whose left eye contains an enlarged cross-section, surmounted by the title: ‘image of the eye (with) its membranes and its humors’ (צורת העין כתנותיו וליחותיו).[14] These two images laid out on blank pages of the manuscript also feature an Italian script but in book hand, differing from the text Panim ba-Mishpaṭ on the following folios. The volume, therefore, must have travelled from Provence to Italy at some point after 1430, perhaps some ten to twenty years afterward, since the drawings date to between 1440 and 1450.[15] Several medical recipes and brief owners’ notes appear in Italian book hand scripts on the flyleaves at the end of the volume (fols. 268v–269r), also attesting to the peregrination of the manuscript. Consequently, the illustration of the zodiac and vein man (fols. 264v) and text (fols. 265v–266r) were copied in Italy later than the rest of the manuscript.

Use of Italo-Romance and vulgarised Latin in Hebrew characters in texts P and V and their similarity to the Italian and Latin comparable texts Pa and M

A considerable number of terms in Italo-Romance and vulgarised Latin in Hebrew characters[16] are included in the bloodletting precepts of P and its lacunary and identical sister-text V.[17] Both Hebrew texts are compared to the Italian (in Pa) and Latin (in M) versions of the same terms, listed and described below.

The four texts in P, V, Pa and M provide clear evidence of contacts between Christian and Jewish physicians and surgeons, and a cultural transfer of medical and surgical literature — and more precisely, texts on phlebotomy from Latin-into-Hebrew and Italian-into-Hebrew texts which, by the fourteenth century, were largely overshadowing Arabic-into-Latin translations in the medieval West.[18] In a recent study, Cyril Aslanov explains that in Provence and Spain, but also in Italy, “the Latin and the vernacular cultures formed a continuum, a fact that is reflected in the existence of an intermediate register,” which he labels an “interlanguage”. This term refers to “an intermediate space between a speaker’s first and second (acquired) languages, which exists while he or she is still in the process of acquiring active mastery of the latter” and “a zone of interference between two languages that come into contact, e.g., Hebrew and Romance vernaculars in the context of traditional Jewish diglossia.”[19] Aslanov goes on to observe that medieval Jewish translators living in Romance-speaking areas, who had assimilated to the spoken vernacular — that is, Italo-Romance in Italy in our case — were likely also to comprehend written material in Latin and in volgare illustre (written vernacular), since both followed similar syntactic and grammatical patterns, and that the latter would have functioned as a bridge between the spoken vernacular and Latin.[20] However, as these Jewish scholars regarded Hebrew as their sole literary language, they depended on a Hebrew superstratum, rather than a Latin one, in their translations, leading them to perceive all Romance languages indiscriminately as laʿaz (foreign language as a Romance vernacular). From this heteroglossic perspective, Aslanov suggests that they “tended to blur the boundaries among several dialects and included Latin as part of their indistinct medley of languages,” which could “explain their habit of quoting Latin words in a vulgarised form, that is, without the Latin declension ending or with a different ending, more appropriate to the vernacular than to Latin.”[21] Furthermore, a certain hybridization of the Latin/Vulgar interlanguage with Hebrew takes place, as we shall see below.

             The Italo-Romance and vulgarised Latin terms in Hebrew characters, as well as hybrid Hebrew-Italian and Hebrew-Latin ones found in the precepts of P and V, have been organized in the following categories, according to chronological order of the numbered precepts in the aforementioned edition on which this present short study is based: the names of parts of the body, the names of veins and the names of illnesses and conditions (some variants of the same terms found in different places in the edition are located in the footnotes). They are compared here to the Italian and Latin counterparts found in the texts in Pa and M, where present.

Names of parts of the body:

Chin (Lat. mentus): P n°7: המינטן (ha-menṭon) / V sent. 9: המונטוניא (ha-monṭoni ͗a) / Pa n°6a–6b: mento[22] / M: mento

Jaw (Lat. maxilla): P n°7: המשיל’ (ha-maśil) / V sent. 9: משיל (maśil) / Pa n°6a–6b: maxille / M: maxillarum

Throat (Lat. guttur, gula): P n°9: הגוצו  (ha-gotso)[23] / V sent. 8: גוטא (guṭ ͗a)[24] / Pa n°9,14: golla, glotior[25]/ M: guturis, galys

Diaphragm (Lat. diaframa): P n°11: דיאפלימא (di ͗aflem ͗a)[26] / Pa n°17: diaflammata / M: diaframatibus

Stomach (Lat. stomachus): P n°13: והאסטומכא (ve-ha-͗esṭomac ͗a)[27] / Pa n°15: stomaco / M: stomaci

Muscles (Lat. musculi): P n°25: ולמוסקולי (u-le-musqoli)

Groin (Lat. inguen, inguina): P n°29: לאינגינלי (l ͗inguinali) / Pa n°30: languinaia[28]/ M: anguinalli

Knee (Lat. genu): P n°30: יינוקלו (genoqelu/genuqulu)[29] / Pa n°26: cenochi / M: genibus

Kidney (Lat. ren): P n°30: הריני (ha-reni) / M: renum

Hips (Lat. coxis): P n°35: האנקא (ha- ͗anq ͗a) / Pa n°27: ancha[30]

In these examples, many of the terms in P constitute a hybridization of Hebrew-Italian, with a Hebrew prefix of either ha- (הא), e.g.:המינטן (ha-menṭon), הריני (ha-reni), האנקא (ha- ͗anq ͗a) or le/li), e.g.: ולמוסקולי (u-le-musqoli/musquli), לאינגינלי (l ͗inguinali), followed by the Italo-Romance variant in Hebrew characters. The termהגוצו  (ha-gotso) used in P is spelled gozzo in Italian and is an abbreviation of gorgozza, which is the area of the throat. Conversely, V has opted for a vulgarised Latin variant of throat with גוטא (guṭ ͗a), from guttur in Latin. Lastly, the term יינוקלו (genoqelu/genuqelu) stems from the Latin genuculo, which is the singular dative or ablative declension of genuculum.

Names of veins:

Jugular veins (Arab. widāğīyya/ approximative latinized variant guidoch;[31] Lat. guide): P n°8: גווידי (guide)

Axillary vein (Lat. asselaris): P n°11: אצילירים (͗atsilirim)[32]

Circular vein (Lat. circularis): P n°11: צירקולים (tsirqulim) / Pa n°17: circular / M: circhularis[33]

Basilic vein (Lat. basilica): P n°12, 18: בסיליקא (basiliq ͗a) / Pa n°16, 23: basilica del ficao[34] / M: bassilicha[35]

Hepatic vein (Lat. hepatica): P n°12: איפאטיקא (͗epaṭiq ͗a) / M: epaticha[36]

Cephalic vein (Lat. cephalica): P n°14, 20, 21: ציפאליקא (tsef ͗aliq ͗a)[37] / V n°13: ציפאליקא (tsef ͗aliq ͗a) / Pa n°14, 20: vena de la testa[38] / M: cephalica[39]

Salvatella vein (Arab. širyān/ approximative latinized variant: sceylen;[40] Lat. salvatella): P n°21: הסַלְוָטילא (salvaṭel ͗a)[41]

Saphenous vein (Lat. saphene): P n°34: הצפיני (ha-tsafene) / Pa n°28: saphene / M: saphene

In the vein category, only the axillary, circular and saphenous veins in P utilize a hybridization of Hebrew and vulgarised Latin, with a suffix -im (ים) for אצילירים (͗atsilirim) and for צירקולים (tsirqulim), and a prefix ha- (הא) for הצפיני (ha-tsafene). 

Names of illnesses and conditions:

Migraine (Lat. emicranea, emigrane): P n°1, 4: ולמיגראניאה (u-le-migr ͗ani ͗ah) / V sent. 1: ולמיגרנא (u-le-migran ͗a) / Pa n°1a–1b: migragna / M: emigrane

Ophthalmia (Lat. ophtalmia)[42]: P n°1, 31: ולאוטולמיא (u-le- ͗oṭolmi ͗ah) / V sent. 1:ולאוטולמיא (u-le- ͗oṭolmi ͗ah) /Pa n°1a–1b: postema dei ochi[43] /M: vissui occulorum

Styes (Lat. bothor): V sent. 5: בוטור (boṭor)[44]

Rheumatism (Lat. rheuma): P n°8: ולריאומה (ha-re ͗umah) / V sent. 7: ולריאה  (u-le-re ͗ah)[45]

Quinsy (Lat. squinantia)[46]: P n°8, 9: ולאישקנינציאה (u-l- ͗eśqinintsi ͗ah) / V sent. 7: ולְסקויננציאה (u-le-squinintsi ͗ah)[47] / Pa n°9: squinancia[48] / M: essquilencie

Tumor (Lat. tumeo): P n°9: ולטימוני (u-le-ṭimone) / V sent. 9: ולטומוניא (u-le-ṭomoni ͗a)[49] / M: tumefaçionibus

Difficulty breathing (Lat. anhelitus): P n°11: אניליטו (͗aneliṭo) / M: difficulta in anelitus

Hepatic (Lat. hepaticus): P n°16: לאפאטיצי (le- ͗ep ͗aṭitsi) / M: eppactis

Paralysis (An. Gr. παράλυσις / parálusis): P n°18: פרליסי (paralisi)[50]

Atrophy (An. Gr. ατροφία /atrophia): P n°24: לאיטרופיצי (le- ͗irofitsi)

Melancholy (An. Gr. μελαγχολία / melankholía): P n°25: מלינקוניצי (melinqonitsi)

Tympanites (An. Gr. τύμπανιτες / tumpanites): P n°27: לטינפנינו (le-ṭinpanenu)

Sciatic (nerve) (An. Gr. ἰσχιαδικός /iskhiadikós) (Lat. sciaticus): P n°35: השיאטיק/ השיטיקא(ha-śi ͗aṭiq/ ha-śi ͗aṭiq ͗a) / M: sciatic

For the words ולמיגרנא (u-le-migran ͗a) in V,ולמיגראניאה (u-le-migr ͗ani ͗ah) in P, and ולטומוניא (u-le-ṭomoni ͗a) in V, all three are spelled according to a phonological feature in Italian, i.e., the suffixes -na,  -nia  or -niah  (with a final ‘he’ (ה) as in Hebrew), denoting their singular feminine form. The same can be observed in the terms אניליטו (͗aneliṭo), with an -o suffix in singular masculine form, and in ולטימוני (u-le-ṭimone) in P, with a suffix in -e for the feminine plural form. Furthermore, the following adjectives in P, לאפאטיצי (le- ͗ep ͗aṭitsi), פרליסי (paralisi), לאיטרופיצי (le- ͗iṭrofitsi) and מלינקוניצי (melinqonitsi), all have suffixes in -i, corresponding to the plural masculine form. Again here, many terms in both P and V contain Hebrew hybridization prefixes ha- (הא) or le-) in almost all the Italo-Romance and vulgarised Latin words in the list, as well as the Hebrew possessive pronoun suffix -nu (נו) in לטינפנינו (le-ṭinpanenu). Lastly, the term ולאישקנינציאה (u-l- ͗eśqinintsi ͗ah) in P includes a prothetic vowel -e, resembling the Latin version in M with essquilencie, but absent from the Italian version squinancia in Pa.

In conclusion, this famous and sole known surviving image of a zodiac and vein man with surrounding bloodletting precepts (P), and its lacunary identical sister-text (V), both including body parts, veins and pathologies, enunciated in Italo-Romance and vulgarised Latin terms in Hebrew characters, with Hebrew hybridization for some of them, convey the breadth of medical terminology used by Italian Jewish physicians and surgeons, not only in written but probably also in spoken form. It is noteworthy to conclude that the study of medieval Hebrew primary sources, such as the manuscripts examined here, ultimately provides modern research with more evidence of the rich cultural transfers of medical and surgical literature in Latin and Italian into Hebrew that took place in Northern Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.


[1] This short analysis is based upon a recent publication by the author: “A Zodiac and Vein Man in a Medieval Hebrew Manuscript: Edition and Commentary,” Sudhoff’s Archiv. Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Journal for the History of Science and Medicine), 107.2 (2023), p. 131–203.

[2] The manuscript has been described in the following catalogues: Hermann Zotenberg, Catalogue des manuscrits hébreux et samaritains de la Bibliothèque impériale (Paris: 1866), p. 217; Michel Garel, D’une main forte. Manuscrits hébreux des collections françaises (exhibition catalogue, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, galerie Mansart, 1991–1992) (Paris : 1991), n°137, p. 187; Gabrielle Sed-Rajna and Sonia Fellous, Les manuscrits enluminés des bibliothèques de France (Paris, Louvain: 1994), p. 76–78. For a recent description of the manuscript, see Isserles, “A Zodiac and Vein Man,” p. 142–147.

[3] Assigning the twelve zodiacal signs to various parts of the body (e.g., Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms Ashmole 391, ca. 1440, fol. 3r; London, British Library, Arundel Ms 251, 15th c., fol. 46r). See also the association of the seven planets (e.g., Edinburgh, Royal Observatory, Ms Crawford 9145, 1464, fol. 73v). On melothesia, see Otto E. Neugebauer, “Melothesia and Dodekatemoria,” in: Astronomy and History: Selected Essays (New York: 1983), p. 352–357, and Justine Isserles, “Bloodletting and Medical Astrology in Hebrew Manuscripts from Medieval Western Europe,” Sudhoffs Archiv: Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 101.1 (2017), p. 19–22.

[4] Considered part of the judicial branch of astrology, medical astrology provided specific prognostications on a patient’s health and the right time for performing an action. Furthermore, these predictive aspects interacted with the classical theories of humoral medicine; see Isserles, “Bloodletting and Medical Astrology,” p. 19–27.

[5] For examples, see Isserles, “A Zodiac and Vein Man,” p. 132, n. 7.

[6] Carl Sudhoff, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chirurgie im Mittelalter. Graphische un textliche Untersuchungen in mittelalterlichen Handschriften (Leipzig: 1914), vol. 1.

[7] Isserles, “A Zodiac and Vein Man,” p. 147–148.

[8] Id., p. 148–151.

[9] Id., p. 151–152.

[10] For examples, see Sudhoff, Beiträge.

[11] See Isserles, “A Zodiac and Vein Man,” p. 140–141.

[12] In addition, Pa contains three words which are part of the Paduan dialect. These are sora, a dialectal variant of sopra; beldelo, a dialectal variant of budello; and petenegio, a dialectal variant of petenecchio; Dizionario tascabile del dialetto veneziano come viene usitato anche nelle provincie di Padova, di Vicenza, di Treviso coi termini toscani corrispondenti or ora abbreviato e ridotto a comodità di tutti (Padua: 1847), p. 17, 89, 119.

[13] See Moritz Steinschneider, Die Hebraeischen Uebersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher. Ein Beitrag zur Literaturgeschichte des Mittelalters, Meist nach Handschriftlichen Quellen (Berlin: 1893), p. 489. The work was translated from Latin into Hebrew in 1393; see Mauro Zonta, “Medieval Hebrew Translations of Philosophical and Scientific Texts. A Chronological Table,” in: Gad Freudenthal (ed.), Science in Medieval Cultures (Cambridge: 2012), p. 17–73 (esp. p. 62). See also Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms Hébreu 1061, fols. 197r–209v, which contains the whole treatise (Zotenberg, Catalogue, p. 195).

[14] The text includes Latin medical terms in Hebrew characters, formed by a hybridization of Hebrew and Latin such as ketoneṭ qoniṭivah (כתונת קונייטיבה), ‘conjunctive membrane,’: ‘cornea’ (qorne ͗ah/קןרניאה) or ‘uvea’ (͗uve ͗ah /אוביאה). On sketches of eye anatomy, see Luke Demaitre, Medieval Medicine. The Art of Healing, from Head to Toe (Santa Barbara (CA): 2013), p. 155–156.

[15] Garel, D’une main forte, p. 178.

[16] Transliteration system for Hebrew and Judeo-Italian: א = ͗; ב = b/v; ג = g;  ד= d;  ה= h ; ו|וו = au/o/u/v;  ז= z; ח = ḥ;  ט= ṭ; יי|י = g (sound ‘dg’)/i/yi/e/ei; כ|ך = k/kh;  ל= l;  מ|ם= m;  נ|ן= n;  ס= s;  ע=ʿ;  פ|ף= p/f; צ|ץ= ts;  ק= q;  ר = r; ֹש= sh;  שֹ= ś;  ת= t. This system is based on Randall K. Barry, compiler and editor. ALA-LC Romanization Tables: Transliteration Schemes for Non-Roman Scripts. Washington, D.C., 1997. Updated at www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html.

[17] Although the bloodletting precepts in V are incomplete and only include thirteen rules (sentences 1–13), they are not only identical but are also very useful for the understanding of the Hebrew texts because they supplement portions of phrases and words missing in P, which is not as complete a copy of these instructions as V. The precepts shared by P and V pertain to the head, the neck and the right arm and hand.

[18] As Freudenthal notes on page 113, “The proportion of medical works in the total corpus of works translated from Latin to Hebrew in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries abruptly increased when Latin medicine began to overshadow its Arabic forebear in the fourteenth century;” see Gad Freudenthal, “The Father of the Latin-into-Hebrew Translations. ‘Doeg the Edomite.’ The Twelfth-Century Repentant Convert,” in: Resianne Fontaine, Gad Freudenthal (eds.), Latin-into-Hebrew: Texts and Studies (Leiden: Boston: 2013), vol. 1, p. 105–119.

[19] See Cyril Aslanov, “From Latin into Hebrew Through the Romance Vernaculars: The Creation of an Interlanguage Written in Hebrew Characters,” in: Latin-into-Hebrew, vol. 1, p. 69–84 (esp. p. 71–72).

[20] Id., p. 72–73.

[21] See Aslanov, “From Latin into Hebrew,” p. 74, 78.

[22] Emanuele Ventura, La “Chirurgia Magna” di Bruno da Longobucco in volgare. Edizione del codice Bergamo MA 501, commento linguistico, glossario latino-volgare (Berlin, Boston: 2020), p. 559 s.v. mentus.

[23] P n°14: ושגוצו (u-she-gotso); see Ventura, La “Chirurgia Magna,” p. 546 s.v. guttur.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Variant of glotidor, meaning ‘throat’; ibid.

[26] Variant of the Italian word diaflama or diaflamma, an older anatomical term for diaphragm; see Ventura, La “Chirurgia Magna, p. 538 s.v. diafragma.

[27] P n°18: לאסטומכא (l ͗esṭomac ͗a).

[28] Id., p. 547–548 s.v. inguen, inguinalis.

[29] Variant of the Latin genu or genuculum, becoming in Italian ginocchio or cenochi as in Pa; see Id., p. 545, s.v. ginocchio.

[30] See Ventura, La “Chirurgia Magna,” p. 523 s.v. anca.

[31] See guidoch for the jugular veins in Arabic, and their Italian counterparts vene guide (giugulari) del collo or also vene organiche in Mario Tabanelli, La chirurgia italiana nell’alto medioevo (Florence: 1965), vol. 2, p. 1059, 1016–1017.

[32] The word אצילי for axillary vein is used in Natan ha-Meati’s (Rome, 13th c.) Hebrew translation of Avicenna’s Canon, and is another name for the basilic vein: והבסיליק הוא בזרוע למטה מן הגיד האמצעי לעמת הלב ויקרא גם כן האצילי  (‘the basilic vein; this is the one situated on the inner side termed also the axillary vein…’). While the axillary vein and its benefits are indeed mentioned in Avicenna’s Canon (see English translation by Mones Abu-Asab, Hakima Amri, Marc S. Micozzi, Avicenna’s Medicine: A New Translation of the 11th-Century Canon with Practical Applications for Integrative Health Care (Toronto: 2013), p. 380) and Galen’s On the Anatomy of the Veins and Arteries (in Peter Brain, Galen on Bloodletting. A Study of the Origins, Development and Validity of his Opinions, with a Translation of the Three Works (Cambridge: 1986), p. 141), it is rarely mentioned in an image of a vein man or a treatise on bloodletting (e.g., one exception being the Latin term acellari found in the treatise on bloodletting in Arnaldus de Villanova, Tractatus de Consideracionibus Operis Medicine Sive de Flebotomia, Luke Demaitre (ed.), Praefatione et Commentariis Hispanicis et Anglicis Instruxerunt Pedro Gil-Sotres et Luke Demaitre (Barcelona: 1988) (Arnaldi de Villanova Opera Medica Omnia, vol. IV), p. 158).

[33] The axillary vein is called the ‘circular vein’ by P, Pa and M because it encircles the clavicle, and it originates lower down from the union of the basilic and brachial veins.

[34] See vena del figado in Ventura, La “Chirurgia Magna,” p. 582 s.v. vena.

[35] On the origins of the naming of the basilic and cephalic veins, see Linda E. Voigts, Michael R. McVaugh, A Latin Technical Phlebotomy and its Middle English Translation, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 74.2 (1984), p. 1–69 (esp. p. 2 with n. 2).

[36] A common assumption going back to Antiquity, adopted by Galen, and subsequently by the great scholars of medieval humoral medicine, was that the basilic vein in the elbow of the right arm was venesected for illnesses related to the liver, hence the use of the appellation “hepatic” (in Brain, Galen on Bloodletting, p. 142). Likewise, the basilic vein in the elbow of the left arm was venesected for illnesses of the spleen (see P n°18; Pa n°22 in the recent publication), hence the term ‘splenetic’; see Villanova, Tractatus, p. 158: Nam Basilica in dextro specialiter epatica vocatur, basilica vero in sinistro splenetica dicitur nomine speciali.

[37] P n°22: מיזבליקא (mi-zevaliq ͗a).

[38] See vena del capo, vena de la testa in Ventura, La “Chirurgia Magna,p. 583, s.v. vena.

[39] Also called the vena nigra (black vein) by Avicenna, Liber Canonis (Venice: 1507), Lib. I, Fen 4, Chap. 20, fol. 75r, because of its deeper location in the arm. It is also called the cardiaca because it evacuates blood directly from the heart and stomach; Villanova, Tractatus, p. 98–99.

[40] See Id.,p. 100.

[41] This term was vocalised in the manuscript. Compare with P n°22: הסלווטילה (ha-salvaṭelah).

[42] This condition can be related to an inflammation of the eye, with runny eyes and accumulation of crust, possibly making it difficult to see in daylight, as mentioned above; see Demaitre, Medieval Medicine, p. 159.

[43] Aposteme of the eyes (localized swelling).

[44] Latin loan word of bothor in Hebrew characters, found in Avicenna’s Latin translation of the Canon, within an instruction regarding the two angular veins in the corner of the eyes (Iuvamentum vero flebothomie ipsorum duarum existit in dolore capitis, et in dolore emigraneo et ophtalmia antiqua et lacrymis, et panno et scabie palpebrarum et earum bothor et noctilopis); see Avicenna, Liber Canonis, Lib. I, Fen 4, Cap. 20, fol. 76r–v; Isserles, “A Zodiac and Vein Man,” p. 157.

[45] The scribe of V wrote the word lung (ולריאה), instead of ולריאומה  (u-le-re ͗umah) as in P. This could be a spelling mistake or perhaps not; see Isserles “A Zodiac and Vein Man,” p. 161, P n°8 and V sent. 7, lines 13–16.

[46] Known in English as quinsy, it is an outdated term for angina, pharyngitis; see Villanova, Tractatus, p. 103, 154.

[47] V n °8: ולסקויננ’ (u-le-squinin’).

[48] See Ventura, La “Chirurgia Magna, p. 298–299, 732 s.v. squinantia.

[49] Ṭomoni ͗a, or the variant in plural form ṭimone, as in P, are possibly vulgarised Latin variants from the Latin verb tumeo, meaning ‘to swell;’ Ventura (2020), p. 740 s.v. tumor.

[50] Compare with the term פארלייא (parali ͗a) found in a fifteenth-century bloodletting treatise from Ashkenaz in Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, Ms RIV 2, fols. 45r/v (esp. fol. 45v).

Dr Justine Isserles (EPHE-PSL, SAPRAT, Paris). Her main areas of research in which she has published focus on the material aspect of Hebrew manuscripts, as well as the cultural, calendrical, halakhic, liturgical, linguistic and medical history of medieval Jewry in Western Europe.
Categories
Italian Judeo-Italian

A Rare Judeo-Italian Ledger of a Jewish Pawnshop in Medieval Bologna (Ms. Oxford, Corpus Christi College Library 469)

Despite the rich holdings of medieval Hebrew manuscripts of Italian origin preserved in many libraries around the world,[1] Jewish moneylending registers are rare—and, even more so, are those written in Judeo-Italian, an ancient language in danger of extinction and mostly known from early writings. It is in this context that we find an early-15th-century Jewish pawnshop’s account book that has survived the hurly-burly of life and speaks to us today, offering an original perspective on bookkeeping practices, Jewish-Christian financial networks as well as credit systems in a fascinating combination of history, economics and linguistics.

The manuscript ledger, now held at the Corpus Christi College Library in Oxford, is the earliest known volume of its kind, and was kept by two moneylenders, who practiced pawnbroking business in the Bologna area during the years 1407-1411.[2] The book is limited to debtors’ accounts, combining the functions of a borrowers’ ledger and loans register. The account for each loan is headed with details of the borrower’s name, the amount advanced and witnesses. Sometimes, guarantors are recorded, followed by particulars of the items left in pledge, as well as of repayment of the borrower or someone on his behalf. Most of this information is reported in Judeo-Italian (basically Italian of the time or vernacular inserted into the Hebrew text and written in Hebrew characters), using a specific vocabulary to describe each pledge. As is often the case with daily-life documents of a personal nature, the writing is idiosyncratic and the linguistic mixture between Hebrew and the local dialect does not make for easy reading.

Figure 1 – Courtesy Corpus Christi College Library, Oxford, Ms. 469, f. 1r.

Among the various clauses of the condotte—the bilateral agreements that regulated the relations between local authorities and Jewish moneylenders—there was one specifying that Jewish lenders had to keep regular records of transactions undertaken. Although at first Jewish pawnbrokers used to draw up ledgers in Judeo-Italian, following the notorious bull Cum nimis absurdum (“Since it is completely senseless …”) issued in 1555 by Paul IV Carafa, they were forced to abandon Hebrew characters and adopt Latin or Italian as the official language for their registers in order to be checked by Christian authorities.[3]

Today considered an example of immaterial Jewish heritage, Judeo-Italian was employed as a literary vehicle in the medieval period and survived to the end of the 16th century in local dialects spoken in the ghettos. It should be noted that the evolution of Judeo-Italian and its sub-dialects surely must have been influenced by the development of the Italian language itself, which became standardised in later times. As is known, Italian emerged in the 14th century from the Florentine vernacular thanks to the work of the “Supreme Poet” Dante Alighieri, rightly considered the father of the Italian language, and coexisted with a myriad of dialects for centuries up to the present day. Similarly, in Judeo-Italian we also can find a vast array of sub-categories of local dialects, such as Judeo-Roman, Judeo-Venetian, Judeo-Florentine or Judeo-Emilian (the language adopted in the manuscript under consideration herein).

The dialectal varieties, both within the Italian language itself and in its Jewish variants, reflected the social, cultural and political differences of the Peninsula, which could be divided into a number of oligarchic regimes and boundaries, where lineages, princes, governors and factions colluded and collided over the centuries. Despite the causes of disunity, these Italian states ended up sharing linguistic and cultural factors, which led to the Italian national movement, achieved by the Risorgimento and the eventual political unification in 1861.

The register contains a large number of words in Judeo-Italian and Judeo-Emilian, mainly used to indicate the items left in pledge as a security for the repayment of loans, such as household utensils, silver sets, private belongings, books, farm tools, weapons, jewels, precious metals, gemstones and even some sets of knightly armour. In particular, a huge quantity of clothing was left as a pledge: tunics (יופיטי – giuppetti), overgowns (יורניי giornee), cloaks (גבאני – gabani), hose (קלצי calzi), shirts (קמישי camise) and dresses (קוטי cotte) formed a fraction of the inventory.

Names, patronymics, provenance or city of origin and profession of the borrowers are written in Judeo-Italian, being essentially a transliteration in Hebrew characters of Italian names, such as Bartolomeo of Joani, tailor (Bartolomeo di Joani, sarto); Tomaso of Jacomino, wool producer from [the parish of] Saint Michael (Tomaso di Jacomino, lanarolo di San Michele); and Luca of Franceschino from Fossolo and his son Joani (Luca di Franceschino da Fossolo e suo figlio Joani).

Jewish moneylenders were able to write fluently in the sacred language of their fathers, using specific terminology or formulas borrowed from the rabbinic-normative tradition with its Talmudic debates and conclusions, which came to them through the legal compendia of Maimonides. One could therefore wonder why the register was written mainly in Judeo-Italian instead of Hebrew. The answer may lie in the fact that the Jews who lived in medieval Italy did not speak Hebrew, having adopted the predominant dialects of the place, thus creating a mixture of Italian, vernacular, Latin and Hebrew, which represented the ideal Jewish-Italian cultural combination.

The ledger gives us a reliable insight into the reality in which Jewish creditors lived: a busy pawnshop active in Bologna at the beginning of the 15th century, in a period when the conflict between the Guelfs and Ghibellines led to the domination of the city by a series of signori. It was frequented by a diverse clientele—in most cases lowly customers, but also members of the higher echelons of Christian society, in addition to many clergymen and bishops, who sometimes even pledged sacred objects—which benefited from the services of lenders. It certainly had to be a jumbled ambiance, a place of discussion and encounter, where different people and traditions overlapped, and in which, at least, the language could express itself and evolve freely as a result of a perfect Jewish-Italian symbiosis without borders as well as religious, ethnic or political limits.


[1] About a half of all the extant complete Hebrew manuscripts bear evidence of Italian provenance either because they were copied in Italy during the Renaissance, or because they were brought to Italy by Jewish immigrants. For further information see: B. Richler, Hebrew Manuscripts: A Treasured Legacy, Cleveland-Jerusalem, 1990, pp. 66-67 and 76-77; C. Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, trans. N. de Lange, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 8-11; B. Richler, Italy, the “Breadbasket” of Hebrew Manuscripts inS. Simonsohn-J. Shatzmiller (eds.), The Italia Judaica Jubilee Conference, Leiden-Boston, 2013, pp. 137-141; M. Perani, Italia “paniere” dei manoscritti ebraici e il loro esodo, nel contesto del collezionismo in Europa tra Otto e Novecento in Il collezionismo di libri ebraici tra XVII e XIX secolo, Supplemento al vol. 82, Nn. 2-3 (2016) de «La Rassegna Mensile di Israel», pp. 63-91.

[2] Today, kept separately from its “host volume” under the shelfmark CCC 469, the manuscript is a fine example of what has been called the “European Genizah” as its leaves were dismembered and reused to bind a different book of Italian origin. In particular, the leaves were part of a number of manuscripts compiled by Robert Proctor. Bibliographer, expert on incunabula and early typography, Robert Proctor became Junior Librarian of Corpus Christi College in 1891 and had permission to dismantle the boards of the volume which formerly hosted the account book, leaving them as separate leaves which had been bound together in a modern binding in the late 19th or early 20th century. See P.E. Pormann, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, D.S. Brewer, Oxford, 2015, p. 111.

[3] «[…] 8. Nec in libris rationum et computorum, quae cum christianis pro tempore habebunt, aliis, quam latinis literis et alio quam vulgari italico sermone, uti possint, et si utantur, libri huiusmodi contra christianos nullam fidem faciant […]». The full text of the edict may be consulted on Bullarum Diplomatum et Privilegiorum Sanctorum Romanorum Pontificum, Taurinensi editio, 1860, VI, pp. 498-500.

Dr Elena Lolli
Research Fellow, OCHJS; Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellow; Research Associate, Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Categories
Italian Judeo-Spanish

MS. Canonici Oriental 6: A Judeo-Spanish Copy of an Italian Bestseller

Sometime before 1580, somebody transliterated a Spanish translation of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso into Hebrew letters (aljamiado). This took place somewhere in the Ottoman Empire, probably in Anatolia. At some point later on, four folios were added to the transliteration containing an epitaph for a woman composed in Patras (present day Greece) in 1580.

MS. Canonici Or. 6 © Bodleian Libraries

The question is ‒ why would somebody go to the trouble of doing this? The Orlando Furioso was one of the undisputed bestsellers in Renaissance Europe. An Italian epic romance in verse, it was first published in 1516, and then again in a revised edition in 1521 as well as in a revised and enlarged edition in 1532. Soon it had been translated into several European languages ‒ French, Spanish (1549), English (1591) and German. The first Spanish translation, by Jerónimo de Urrea, was reprinted ten times in the first 34 years. Two complete translations more would be published before the end of the sixteenth century.

The volume took as its main characters Orlando (Roland) and the other paladins of Charlemagne’s court at war with the Saracen army that had invaded France. The work in its final version comprised forty-six cantos (forty-five in the Spanish translation) with 4,842 stanzas (4,902 in the Spanish translation), which makes for an astonishing 38,736 (39,216) lines in total. The appetite for chivalric romance in the sixteenth century was clearly limitless.

The work itself originally had been published well after the expulsions of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, and the Spanish translation even more so. Still, several generations after the 1492 Expulsion, Jews of Sephardi origin continued reading the same works as their Christian contemporaries; this phenomenon took place not only in the West, but also, as our work shows, in the Eastern Mediterranean. For, indeed, it was in the Ottoman Empire that the manuscript under discussion herein was produced, according to Malachi Beit-Arié. Adolph Neubauer, the Hebraica Curator who produced the Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, thought the work was written in transliterated Italian and had been written somewhere in the Italian peninsula. This is a plausible guess, but does not stand up to a closer examination of the manuscript. Laura Minervini, an Italian scholar, studied it more recently and wrote about it.

It is very unlikely that an Italian Jew would want to read the Orlando Furioso in Spanish. Furthermore, a Sephardi descendant of those expelled from Iberia residing in the Italian lands would not need to read the work in Hebrew letters, in the unlikely case that they could not read the Latin alphabet.

The work offers a fascinating view into a world where Jews in the Ottoman Empire kept up with the reading preferences of their contemporaries in the Hispanic world, yet found it more congenial to read them in the Hebrew alphabet. Curiously, the work was transliterated following the source word for word, with no attempt to “judaise” the original’s Christian phrasing, as is often the case for similar works. The very world described in the Orlando Furioso, a world of valiant Christian and Muslim knights (some of them women), ladies, sorcerers, flying steeds, enchanted castles and exotic lands would seem totally alien to traditional Jewish culture, and yet somebody clearly saw it as worth the effort to produce this transliteration. Thirty-six of the Spanish translation’s forty-five cantos were transliterated, with the only apparent difference between the two being the suppression of thirty-eight of the seventy-two stanzas added by Urrea to Canto 34 (35 in the Italian original), eulogising the great figures of Spanish history.

The Spanish Orlando Furioso in Hebrew letters (aljamiado) gives us a glimpse of a world of which very little has remained, where the descendants of Jewish exiles from the Iberian Peninsula read a widely successful Italian chivalric romance in a Spanish translation written in Hebrew letters, comprising thousands of stanzas relating the wildly improbable adventures of knights and ladies. For all these reasons and specificities, it throws light on a fascinating corner of Jewish life.

Dr César Merchán-Hamann
Fellow Librarian & Director of the Leopold Muller Memorial Library, Bodleian Libraries; Victor Blank Curator of Hebraica & Judaica, Bodleian Library