Monk’s Haggadah

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.

“This book wonderfully proves the value of collaborative research. The introduction describes how this collaboration came about and is by itself a little masterpiece. Like a detective story, it chronicles how the researchers gradually came to recognize that the Haggadah and its Latin—and very Christian—preface constitute one of the most remarkable testimonies in both image and word of the complex character of Jewish-Christian relations in the fifteenth century. Yet the manuscript, even after the collaborators’ fascinating findings, remains enigmatic and indeed mysterious. This is simply an extraordinary book about an extraordinary artifact.”—William Jordan, Princeton University, “Jewish-Christian relations in the Middle Ages represent a challenging and often painful subject that defies easy categorization in terms of what too often is called, in anodyne, even evasive, terms, the ‘Judeo-Christian’ tradition. This brilliant collaboration between three experts in their respective fields uncovers an exceptional, yet also exemplary, case of a hybrid haggadah that, although written by a Jewish scribe, was adapted in a variety of ways for use by Christian monks both during and after its production. A testimony to interdisciplinary research, the book uncovers an astonishing episode in the long history of Christian Hebraism. University professors, Christian humanists, Bavarian monks, and anonymous artists are the cast of characters that make of this study a fascinating piece of detective work and a reminder of the complexity of any effort to capture historical truth. Especially admirable is the editors' willingness to consider multiple solutions to the conundrum the Tegernsee Haggadah presents. The reader is invited to think along with the editors. In the process, a world of Jewish-Christian interaction more complex than commonly imagined is revealed with precision and eloquence.”—Jeffrey Hamburger, Harvard University , “The Tegernsee Haggadah in Munich is a truly unique book. This edition reproduces an unusual illuminated manuscript. It also includes both a detailed description of the book and a meticulous reconstruction of its production, its history, and its eventual function as—amazingly enough—a study book for monks in order to familiarize themselves with Jewish rituals. Containing a Latin treatise, it was supposed to teach the monks to read the Haggadah within the framework of contemporary blood libels. David Stern, Sarit Shalev-Eyni, and Christoph Markschies leave no stone unturned in unraveling the story of an extraordinary artifact, and the somewhat unusual role a book could play in the Jewish-Christian coexistence of late medieval Europe.”—Katrin Kogman-Appel, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, “The Monk’s Haggadah is at once a beautiful facsimile edition of a remarkable Haggadah manuscript and also a collaborative edition, translation, and analysis of text, image, and material object. . . . This is the first full-length study of the manuscript, and David Stern’s introduction describes the collaboration that brought the volume into being. It makes for a great story, and Stern tells it as the intellectual adventure it clearly was. Fourteen years in the making, The Monk’s Haggadah represents quite an achievement and demonstrates the power of multidisciplinary collaborative work.”—Deeana Klepper, H-Net, “In his moving and surprisingly gripping introduction to The Monk’s Haggadah, Harvard scholar David Stern describes the journey that he and his talented co-editors, Christoph Markschies and Sarit Shalev-Eyni, took in uncovering the mysteries of the manuscript and creating this handsome critical version. . . . Together with transcriptions and translations of the Prologue, text, and marginalia, the new book contains marvelous essays that make it a comprehensive account of the 500-year life of this mysterious manuscript.”—Philip Getz, Jewish Review of Books

David Stern is the Moritz and Josephine Berg Professor of Classical Hebrew Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Christoph Markschies is the Chair of Ancient Christianity at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Sarit Shalev-Eyni is Professor of History of Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.