The Monk's Haggadah: A Fifteenth-Century Illuminated Codex from the Monastery of Tegernsee, with a prologue by Friar Erhard von Pappenheim (Dimyonot: Jews and the Cultural Imagination)

In 1489, a magnificent illustrated Passover Haggadah was sent as a bequest to the Monastery of Saint Quirinus at Tegernsee in southern Germany. Shortly afterwards, the monastery&;s librarian sent the book to a Dominican friar named Erhard von Pappenheim, a Hebraist and expert on Jewish practice, and asked him to write a prologue. In response, Erhard wrote a remarkable treatise that is arguably the earliest quasi-ethnographic account of Jewish practice in early modern Europe and an extraordinary window onto a fifteenth-century Christian&;s perception of Jews and Judaism. The Monk&;s Haggadah brings together a facsimile edition of the codex in color, a critical edition of the Latin text of Erhard&;s prologue, an English translation of the Latin text, and a translation of the Hebrew text of the Haggadah. Additionally, the volume&;s editors provide historical context, explore the codicology, illustration, and patronage of the volume, and describe its Christian theological background. An absolutely unique document, this Haggadah stands to change many long-held conceptions about Jewish-Christian relations in the late Middle Ages and early modernity.