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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.
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Latin

A Latin-Alphabet Inscription in a Hebrew Pentateuch

A Latin-Alphabet Inscription in a Hebrew Pentateuch

Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Cod. Levy 19 is a liturgical Pentateuch manuscript copied in Brussels in 1309. It was the fruit of a collaboration between three or four Jewish artisans: the scribe Itzḥak b. Eliahu Hazzan from Oxford, who copied (and probably also vocalised) the main text; an anonymous scribe, who copied part of the masorah parva and left the rest unfinished; the scribe-artist Yehudah haKohen, who copied and decorated the masorah magna; and a scribe-artist, who corrected the text, carried out most of the decorations and left a versified colophon in Hebrew where he referred to himself as ‘עקוד המור’ (aqud hamor, ‘the bound [person] of [Mount] Mor[ia]’; a circumlocution for the name Itzḥak).[1] It is not immediately clear whether the first and fourth, both named Itzḥak, were the same person, since the scripts that can be safely attributed to each of the two are at different registers and exhibit many similarities but also a few differences. Since these differences could potentially be explained by the different sizes and types of nibs used, it is at least possible that the scribe Itzḥak b. Eliahu from Oxford also decorated the manuscript. This would explain why in the artist’s colophon, he makes the claim that he completed the writing and the decoration together (ציור והכתיבה שילמתי יחד), a statement that would sound exaggerated if he added no other textual component than the corrections.

In this article, I focus on one particular marginal addition made by the artist (whom I will provisionally call ‘aqud hamor’ to distinguish him from the scribe Itzḥak, since it has not yet been proven that the two were the same person). This addition is situated near the end of the manuscript, at f. 529r, in the book of Ecclesiastes.

Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Levy 19, f. 529r. (© Bodleian Library, University of Oxford)

At the bottom left of the folio, a dragon similar to those in the initial word panels is drawn in ink and touching the elongated descender of the nun sofit in Rashi’s Commentary above with its tongue. The dragon is clearly in the hand of aqud hamor and can be compared with a similar small dragon (drawn in ink but with red highlights) at the end of a quire at f. 252v, the only other instance of a marginal drawing that has no obvious connection to the text. But what sets the dragon on f. 529r apart is the writing underneath its feet; it is done in the same shade of ink and with the same nib as the dragon drawing, in what appears to be Latin script. This writing is the only instance of Latin script being used in this book, and there is very little evidence, in general, of Jewish scribes writing in Latin script during this period.[2]

The ductus of the script is unlike either of the main Latin script types used in northwestern Europe during this period: compared to Gothic textualis, the letters are significantly wider and rounder in shape, and the strokes lack shading altogether; compared to Gothic cursiva, the body of the letter is proportionally too large relative to the length of the descender, and the presence of serifs (not a feature of the cursiva script) is likewise surprising. Even within the word itself, the register of the script fluctuates: the four letters on the left have carefully detached strokes, with small serifs at the end of each stroke, while the other half of the word is written in a more current manner, with ligatures between the letters (in the case of the fifth and sixth letters, the ligature actually precludes a straightforward identification of the letters). Apart from confirming that the word was probably written in the usual Latin direction, from left to right, this change in currency confirms that the letters were written by someone who was relatively inexperienced in writing in Latin script, even though he clearly had great facility with the quill. The peculiar dimension and shape of the letters may have been influenced by Hebrew (aqud hamor’s Hebrew script also tends to be elongated horizontally, with pronounced serifs), though the superficial resemblance this script bears to Carolingian script (much more than to the Gothic scripts) might not have been a complete coincidence.

While in the absence of other examples of Latin letters written by the same scribe, any reading of the word cannot avoid some degree of uncertainty, it is possible to read the word tentatively as either ‘cropccon’ or ‘cropocon’—the fifth letter is the most ambiguous, since the main body of the letter resembles the letter c but there is an additional dot to the right, reminiscent of a dagesh, which is connected by a ligature to the next letter. This additional dot could either be an otiose stroke (in which case the fifth letter should be read as c) or a not-entirely-successful attempt to close off the letter o, as the scribe tries to form a ligature with the next letter.

The problem is that neither ‘cropccon’ nor ‘cropocon’ is immediately recognisable as a word from any language widely spoken or written in the vicinity of Brussels at the beginning of the 14th century.[3] This fact is significant in itself: the possibility should at least be considered that the form, rather than corresponding precisely to an existing word yet to be identified by me, might not have been a familiar word or phrase. It could have been a deliberate coinage by aqud hamor, or an unintentionally corrupted version of an existing word. Since the manuscript does not contain any other writing in Latin, or any inscription in Hebrew of a similar nature that accompanies a drawing, it seems to me that the only category of contextual information that could guide one’s interpretation of this inscription is the manuscript page itself.[4]

The bifolium (ff. 524, 529) where the annotation is found is situated at the fourth and ninth positions of a sexternion, which is the 43rd quire of the manuscript (ff. 521-532). Most of the quires are sexternions. The drawing of the dragon and the inscription are placed at the lower left corner of the recto, which means that it is easily visible when one leafs through the manuscript. The dragon’s tongue touches the final letter of the word ‘סופן’ (‘their end’) from Rashi’s commentary on Ecclesiastes 9:3: ‘וְאַחֲרָיו אֶל הַמֵּתִים. וְסוֹפָן יוֹרְדִין לְגֵיהִנֹּם’ (‘and then to the dead: and they ultimately [lit. their end] descend to Gehinnom’).[5] The end of the Targum for Ecclesiastes 9:3 coincides with the end of the second text column, and the Hebrew text of Ecclesiastes 9:4 begins on the verso.

Considering the negative implications both of the biblical verse and Rashi’s interpretation, it is reasonable to rule out the hypothesis that the Latin-script word was an encoded signature by the scribe. If aqud hamor intended to leave a self-referential inscription, Ecclesiastes 9:3 is just about the least appropriate place that he could have chosen. On the other hand, it also seems unlikely that the dragon and the inscription were intended as a gloss on Rashi’s explanation, ‘and they ultimately descend to Gehinnom’, considering the fact that, in rabbinic literature, the presence of dragons or any other creature is never mentioned in relation to Gehinnom, which is characterised simply as a fiery furnace. Since the drawing and the inscription are placed towards the end of Ecclesiastes, well past the halfway point of the book, we may also rule out the possibility that the drawing and the inscription served to mark a numerically significant point in the text.

An examination of the dragon itself allows one to rule out a few more possibilities. First of all, it should be noted that the dragon is by far the most common figural motif employed by aqud hamor—I count a total of 62 complete dragons (excluding hybrids with dragon’s bodies and dragon’s heads attached to non-figural elements such as the feet of a menorah) drawn in his hand. Considering the ubiquity of dragons in this manuscript, it is improbable that the inscription accompanying one small monochrome dragon drawing near the end of the manuscript should read anything as generic and straightforward as ‘dragon’.

But it is possible that a more specific description was intended. While all of aqud hamor’s dragons have more or less the same protruding forehead, drop-shaped eye, stack of wrinkles between the brow ridge and the nose, wavy long ears and flame-like tongue, there is some variation in the anatomy of their bodies. All the dragons are bipedal, but some have wings and others do not; out of the flightless dragons, the majority have smooth backs, while a few others have humps (either spaced-out like a camel’s or pressed together like thick wrinkles) or spiky projections on their backs. In general, the winged dragons tend to be used to fill larger gaps, the flightless and smooth-backed dragons tend to be used for smaller, irregularly shaped gaps (including the strokes of the spare-ground letters, and the narrow strips of space around the initial words for the parashiyot), while the flightless dragons with humped or spiky backs are used indiscriminately for both purposes. Formally speaking, both of these latter types occupy a middle ground between the other two varieties, being bulkier and more structurally complex than the smooth-backed dragons but less time-consuming to draw and requiring less space than the winged dragons. The smooth-backed dragons, with their ability to fill small and irregular spaces, are the most common variety (32/62); the winged dragons are the second most common (17/62); the hump-backed and spiky-backed dragons are the least common, at 9/62 and 4/62 respectively.

The dragon that appears above the inscription is of the rarest, spiky-backed type, with two small, flat projections on its back and a short, pig-like tail. Its fangs (a feature possessed by less than half of aqud hamor’s dragons) and claws, on the other hand, are meticulously drawn. While medieval European dragon lore did not produce a crystallised and widely recognised typology, the flightless, non-threatening stature of the dragon in question in combination with the emphasis on its teeth and claws suggests that it is most likely of the creeping, poisonous variety, whereas to winged dragons were usually attributed the ability of breath fire.[6]

It is possible that the inscription was a comment on the specific physical characteristics of the dragon. The first part of the word, ‘cropo-’, could be related to the Middle Dutch crupen (‘to crawl’) or the Middle English crepen (also spelt cropen; ‘to crawl’).[7] The remaining part of the word, ‘-con’, does not make any sense on its own in this context, but it can be read as a conflation of the second syllables of the Latin draco (‘dragon’), the Old French dragon (‘dragon’) and the Middle English dragon/dragoun (‘dragon’)—in both of the latter cases, the variant dracon is occasionally attested, no doubt under the influence of the Latin spelling. Could it be the case that the scribe coined this word, ‘cropo-con’, as a playful description of the creeping dragon he had just drawn?

To assess the probability of such a coinage happening in Brussels in 1309, at the hand of a Jewish scribe-artist, several acknowledgements should be made. First of all, the phenomenon of lexical blending (known since the 19th century primarily as ‘portmanteaus’)—whereby a new word is fashioned from parts (rather than the entirety) of two source words, so that the resulting blend refers to both source words simultaneously—is not well-attested in the pre-modern period, though there have been some isolated attempts to identify and analyse potential examples of lexical blending in medieval texts.[8] But ‘crocopon’ differs from the other medieval examples of lexical blending in one key respect: more than simply mixing two words, it quite possibly also mixes two different languages (though there is the possibility that both parts come from Middle English). For this practice, we have the analogous case of macaronic compositions in both verse and prose dating from the 12th century onwards, although in such cases it is entire words or phrases, rather than parts of words, that are mixed with those from another language.[9] To state that ‘cropocon’ may have been a macaronic lexical blend, uniting two linguistics practices that have otherwise only been attested separately, requires a bold conceptual leap.

But there are several factors that justify such a leap. The inscription accompanies an informal, non-illustrative drawing at the bas-de-page, a site where other playful, experimental treatments of small pieces of text by the illuminator are known from the same period. For instance, one may cite the ‘tu es asinus’ caption written in mirror image in the Rutland Psalter (Salisbury and London [?], c1260-1270; London, British Library, MS Add 62925, f. 37r), or the onomatopoeic gloss ‘queck’ accompanying an image of a goose being carried away by a fox in the Gorleston Psalter (Suffolk, c1310-1324; London, British Library, MS Add 49622, f. 190v). By virtue of its being placed in such an informal codicological context, the word ‘cropocon’ invites an adventurous rather than plain reading, and it would have been odd if the scribe chose to write something more ordinary and self-explanatory.

Additionally, the relative novelty of the Latin script in the context of Hebrew manuscript production, as well as the complex mesh of linguistic situations aqud hamor had to navigate on a daily basis—living in a duchy where Dutch, French and Latin were spoken, and either working closely with another Jew from England or being of English origin himself—probably paved the way for irreverent interlingual experimentation much more readily than in the case of a Christian living in Brussels at the same time. Just as adding an inscription to a marginal drawing, far removed from the centre of the page, gave the scribe-artist a certain degree of freedom, so being at the fringes of Latin written culture, knowing the alphabet but rarely having to write it in a professional capacity, gave him a different kind of freedom. In this connection, it is worth asking who the target audience might have been—going back to the high visibility of the drawing and the inscription when one leafs through the manuscript, it is unlikely that aqud hamor intended the joke only for himself. Instead, we may imagine aqud hamor’s colleagues, or indeed the patron Ḥayyim b. Ḥayyim and his family, noticing the inscription and pondering over it. It is difficult to say whether they were all able to decode it easily, but one assumes that they were in a much better position to do so than any present-day scholar. Their shared amusement by the ‘riddle’, which required knowledge of several vernaculars including those not spoken locally, may have fostered, in however limited a way, a sense of solidarity among members of this highly heterogeneous community, made up of native Brabantian Jews as well as recent immigrants from England and France.[10]

I will finish by suggesting another possible interpretation that may well coexist with the one already proposed. The consonantal similarity (with a minor change in order) of ‘cropocon’ to the name of the zodiac sign Capricorn/Capricorne/Capricornus has been the first thought of many to whom I showed the inscription. While there is insufficient resemblance between the creeping dragon and common pictorial representations of Capricorn (in Christian calendars and Hebrew maḥzorim) during this period—either as a goat, or as a hybrid with the frontal port of a goat and a serpent-like tail—it is possible that the word ‘Capricorn’ provided aqud hamor with the necessary phonetic substrate on which to build his neologism. Since the copying of the manuscript was completed on 19 October 1309 in the Julian calendar, and the decoration could only have begun thereafter, it is possible that the drawing and the inscription were added during the month of December, when the sun moved into the sign of Capricorn. But the scribe would have been familiar with this word with or without the coincidence.


[1] The place name, spelt ‘אוכשונפורט’ (Okhsonfort), could either be Oxford (spelt ‘Oxenford’ in Middle English and ‘אושינפורט’ or ‘אושנפורט’ in Hebrew deeds) or Ochsenfurt in Franconia (spelt ‘אוחשנוורת’ in the Memorbuch of Nuremberg). These two towns are almost exactly equidistant (around 405km) from Brussels, and both have well-documented histories of Jewish settlement up to the late thirteenth century, as well as significant episodes of persecution during the 1290s. I consider Oxford to be the more likely solution of the two since the phenomenon of expelled English Jews settling in Brussels after crossing the channel is better known, while it would have been counterintuitive for persecuted Franconian Jews to travel so far northwards to join a relatively small community, rather than eastwards or southwards to Poland or northern Italy which were more common destinations.

[2] See Eva De Visscher, ‘Hebrew, Latin, French, English: Multilingualism in Jewish-Christian Encounters’, in Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter (eds.), Multilingualism in Medieval Britain (c. 1066-1520): Sources and Analysis, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 15 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), pp. 89-103 at p. 93.

[3] I have not been able to find a satisfactory reading of the inscription (either as a single word or as a phrase) in Hebrew or Medieval Latin. I thank Sandra Hajek, Henrike Lähnemann, Sjoerd Levelt, Eugenia Vorobeva and Daniel Wakelin for confirming that it does not correspond to any recognisable formulation in Old French, Middle High German, Middle Dutch, Old Norse and Middle English respectively, and also for their enthusiasm about this ‘riddle’. In addition, I thank Henry Baxter, Branton DeMoss, Mimi Eisenbruch and Alicia Vergara Steinmann for helpful discussions on the interpretation of the drawing and the inscription.

[4] The only other annotation of a similar format accompanies a framed drawing of Job covered with sores: ‘זה איוב השחון’ (‘this is the boil-covered Job’, f. 600v). Here, however, the correspondence between the text and the image, and between the image and its particular location in the manuscript (beginning of the book of Job), is straightforward.

[5] The whole verse (Ecclesiastes 9:3) is as follows: זֶ֣ה ׀ רָ֗ע בְּכֹ֤ל אֲשֶֽׁר־נַעֲשָׂה֙ תַּ֣חַת הַשֶּׁ֔מֶשׁ כִּֽי־מִקְרֶ֥ה אֶחָ֖ד לַכֹּ֑ל וְגַ֣ם לֵ֣ב בְּֽנֵי־הָ֠אָדָ֠ם מָלֵא־רָ֨ע וְהוֹלֵל֤וֹת בִּלְבָבָם֙ בְּחַיֵּיהֶ֔ם וְאַחֲרָ֖יו אֶל־הַמֵּתִֽים׃

That is the sad thing about all that goes on under the sun: that the same fate is in store for all. (Not only that, but men’s hearts are full of sadness, and their minds of madness, while they live; and then—to the dead!)

[6] See Martin Arnold, The Dragon: Fear and Power (London: Reaktion Books, 2018), p. 116.

[7] I am grateful to Sandra Hajek for suggesting this possible interpretation to me.

[8] See Britt Mize, ‘Did Deliberate Lexical Blending Occur in Old English?’, Peritia 27 (2016), pp. 99-120. My definition of lexical blending is borrowed from this article.

[9] See for example Siegfried Wenzel, Macaronic Sermons: Bilingualism and Preaching in Late-Medieval England (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), and more recently Herbert Schendl, ‘Code-Switching in Late Medieval Macaronic Sermons’, in Multilingualism in Medieval Britain, pp. 153-169.

[10] See Christoph Cluse, Studien zur Geschichte der Juden in den mittelalterlichen Niederlanden (Hannover: Verlag Hahnsehe Buchhandlung, 2000), pp. 31-32.

Ms Celeste Pan
DPhil student at the OCHJS researching decorated manuscripts from medieval Ashkenaz