Mahzor (Festival Prayer Book) for the Three Pilgrimage Festivals and Special Sabbaths According to the Rite of Candia, [15th century]

A beautifully produced, extremely rare example of a minority prayer usage.

Jews have been living in Anatolia, Greece, and the Balkans—the lands of the former Rhomania (Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantium)—since antiquity. With time, these Greek-speaking communities came to be known as Romaniotes or Gregos and developed their own distinctive customs and prayer rite. The latter, while closely related to both the ancient Palestinian and the Italian usages, included a number of unique features, such as the incorporation of Greek into the ritual, as well as a completely different set of haftarot (lections from the Prophets) from those read in other congregations. The Romaniote minhag spawned several sub-rites in various locales, including Corfu, Kaffa (present-day Feodosia, Crimea), Kastoria, Sicily/Apulia, and Candia.

Candia is the name by which the island of Crete came to be known after its conquest by the Republic of Venice in 1205-1212, in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. Jews had apparently been living there since the second century BCE, and toward the end of the Middle Ages the Jewish population of Candia reportedly numbered about six hundred families employed as merchants, tailors, cobblers, bakers, dyers, silk weavers, lawyers, physicians, etc. Perhaps because of Crete’s strategic location in the Mediterranean, the Candiote minhag was markedly influenced by the German and especially the French rites. Yet it also maintained a distinctly Romaniote flavor; for example, the poem by Shemariah ben Elijah Ikriti (the Cretan) of Negroponte (ca. 1260-after 1345) recited before calling up the hatan torah (man honored with finishing the liturgical reading of the Torah on Simhat Torah) contains four titles for God in a mixture of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek: shallit be-ouranos (Ruler of Heaven), pandokrator (Almighty), bore kozmon (Creator of the Cosmos), and malka ton paddon (King of Earth) (see here, ff. 257v-258r).

The present lot is a well-preserved, rare example of a Candia-rite mahzor containing the liturgy for the three pilgrimage festivals, special Sabbaths, Hanukkah, Purim, weddings, circumcisions, and some fast days. It is rich in piyyutim (liturgical poems) and has been used by numerous scholars for their critical editions of these literary creations. Many of the piyyutim, as well as the Passover Haggadah, are accompanied by lengthy commentaries, perhaps (in the case of the Haggadah) originally compiled by Rabbi Zedekiah ben Abraham Anav, the thirteenth-century Italian author of the Sefer shibbolei ha-leket. In addition, some pages (e.g., ff. 44v-46r) contain marginalia by Eliezer Mordo, a prominent rabbi, leader, and physician of the Corfu Jewish community.

By 1795, the volume had been acquired by Matsliah Solomon Montefiore, son of Judah Raphael Montefiore, who served as a mohel in Urbino and Pesaro between 1782 and 1822 (see MS Montreal, Judah Elberg Collection 299). After entering Solomon Joachim Halberstam’s library under the shelf mark 353, it was purchased on behalf of a different Montefiore (Moses) for his college in Ramsgate (shelf mark 220). It survives today as one of only a small number of examples of Candiote mahzorim.

Contents

ff. 1v-4v: Shabbat be-reshit;

ff. 4v-10r: Shabbat hanukkah;

ff. 10r-13r: Shabbat rosh hodesh;

ff. 13r-22r: fast of 10 Tevet;

ff. 22v-25v: Shabbat shekalim;

ff. 25v-32r: Shabbat zakhor;

ff. 32r-36r: fast of Esther;

ff. 36v-38v: Purim eve;

ff. 38v-40r: Shabbat parah;

ff. 40r-42r: Shabbat ha-hodesh;

ff. 42r-51r: Shabbat ha-gadol;

ff. 51v-57v: first night of Passover;

ff. 57v-75v: Passover Haggadah;

ff. 76r-106v: first day of Passover;

ff. 107r-108r: second night of Passover;

ff. 108r-116r: second day of Passover;

ff. 116r-121v: Shabbat hol ha-mo‘ed;

ff. 122r-137r: seventh day of Passover;

ff. 137r-138r: eighth night of Passover;

ff. 138v-152r: eighth day of Passover;

ff. 152v-154v: the Sabbath before Shavuot;

ff. 155r-165r: first day of Shavuot;

ff. 165r-166r: second night of Shavuot;

ff. 166r-186v: second day of Shavuot;

ff. 187r-190r: fast of 17 Tammuz;

ff. 190v-193r: first night of Sukkot;

ff. 193r-210v: first day of Sukkot (ff. 203v-210v: hosha‘not);

f. 211r-v: second night of Sukkot;

ff. 212r-219r: second day of Sukkot;

ff. 219r-223r: Shabbat hol ha-mo‘ed;

ff. 223r-226r: Hosha‘na Rabbah;

ff. 226r-228r: first night of Shemini Atseret;

ff. 228v-244v: first day of Shemini Atseret;

ff. 245r-246r: second night of Shemini Atseret;

ff. 246r-264v: second day of Shemini Atseret;

ff. 265r-273v: wedding service and Shabbat hatan;

ff. 273v-278r: circumcision;

ff. 278v-279v: miscellaneous piyyutim;

f. 280r: ofan for Shabbat shekalim;

f. 280v: ofan for Shabbat parah.

Provenance 

Jacob Vita Recanati di Pesaro (f. 1r)

Matsliah Solomon Montefiore 5555 1795 (f. 1r)

Menahem ben Moses Alkostatin (f. 1v)

Solomon Joachim Halberstam (identifications and marks in pencil in his hand interspersed throughout)

Physical Description

280 of at least 292 folios (10 1/4 x 8 5/8 in.; 261 x 217 mm) (collation: i-xv⁸, xvi¹ [xvi_2-4 or _2-8 lacking], xvii¹¹ [xvii₁ lacking], xviii⁴, xix¹², xx⁴, xxi² [xxi_3-4 or _3-12 lacking], xxii¹⁰ [xxii_1-2 lacking], xxiii⁴, xxiv¹², xxv⁴, xxvi² [xxvi_3-4 lacking], xxvii⁷ [xxvii₁ lacking], xxviii-xxxv⁸, xxxvi⁷ [xxxvi₈ lacking], xxxvii-xxxviii⁸) on parchment; premodern foliation in pen in Arabic numerals in upper-outer corners of rectos (ff. 1-10); modern foliation in pen (ff. 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 280) and pencil (remainder) in Arabic numerals in upper-outer corners of rectos (ff. 11-280); written in elegant Byzantine square (titles and incipits) and semi-cursive (text body) scripts in brown ink; single-column or poetically laid out text of twenty-five lines per page; ruled in blind; prickings occasionally visible in outer edges; justification of lines via dilation or contraction of final letters, insertion of space fillers, use of anticipatory letters, and suspension of final letters; occasional horizontal catchwords in lower margins (e.g., ff. 37v, 68v, 69v, 72v, 80v, 81v, 88v, 130v, 134v, 138v, 146v, 190v, 249v); Tiberian vocalization of liturgical text (rubrics unvocalized); Tetragrammaton usually abbreviated to two yodin followed by a wavy line, sometimes to a yod-vav-yod sequence followed by a wavy line; commentary on ff. 43r-46v, 51v-53v, 58r-70r, 72v-73v, 74v, 77r-82r, 83v-84r, 85v-88r, 97r-104r, 110v-112v, 117v-122v, 124r-130v, 139r-148r, 158r-v, 166r-168v, 190v-191r, 193v-194r, 195r-197r, 203v-210r, 212r-216v, 226r-v, 228v-231v, 234v-242v; corrections and marginalia in primary and secondary hands (in Latin characters on f. 19r); extended marginal notes on ff. 24r-26r; marginal pen and pencil notations and identifications by Halberstam. Enlarged incipits; periodic flourishing of titles or incipits; manicules on ff. 11v, 45r; the Song of the Sea (Ex. 15) laid out to look like brickwork on ff. 133v-134r; interlace border pattern on ff. 152r; Montefiore library stamp on ff. 1r, 280v. Probably lacking at least 12 folios internally, plus an unknown number at the end of the volume; Scattered staining and creasing; occasional ink transfers and smudging; some abrasion of text (more intense on f. 198v), sometimes leaving a green hue; gutters intermittently strengthened (minor worming in gutters of ff. 67-76, 96-97); small repairs near upper- or lower-outer corners of ff. 1-2, 61-62, 265-280 and in lower edge of f. 168; natural holes in upper margins of ff. 52, 62, in lower margins of ff. 109, 128, 193, 248, in outer margins of ff. 146, 240, and in the middle of f. 219; puncture near lower edge of ff. 169-174. Three-quarters morocco over cloth boards, slightly worn and scuffed; Hebrew title and Montefiore shelf mark (no. 220) lettered in gilt on green lettering pieces on spine; modern paper flyleaves and pastedowns.

Literature 

Tova Beeri (ed.), He-hazan ha-gadol asher be-bagdad: piyyutei yosef ben hayyim albaradani (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2002), 278.

Giacomo Corazzol, “Gli ebrei a Candia nei secoli XIV-XVI: l'impatto dell'immigrazione sulla cultura della comunità locale” (PhD diss., Bologna University, 2015), 116-119.

Nicholas de Lange, “Hebrew/Greek Manuscripts: Some Notes,” Journal of Jewish Studies 46,1-2 (Spring-Autumn 1995): 262-270, at p. 265.

Shulamit Elizur (ed.), Piyyutei rabbi pinhas ha-kohen (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 2004), 448.

Jonah Fraenkel (ed.), Mahzor shavu‘ot lefi minhagei benei ashkenaz le-kol anafeihem (Jerusalem: Koren; New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 2000), lvii, lxiv.

Aharon Gabbai, “Mippui nussahei ha-tefillah,” Ha-ma‘yan 242 (Tammuz 2022): 156-184, at pp. 176-179.

Ernst Daniel Goldschmidt, “Al mahzor romanya u-minhago,” Sefunot 8 (1964): 205-236.

Solomon Joachim Halberstam, Kohelet shelomoh (Vienna: A. Fanto, 1890), 70-79 (no. 353).

Hartwig Hirschfeld, Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew MSS. of the Montefiore Library (London: Macmillan and Co.; New York: The Macmillan Company, 1904), 70-71 (no. 220).

Isaac Meiseles (ed.), Shirat ha-mitsvot: azharot rabbi eliyyahu ha-zaken (Jerusalem, 2001), 24, 26, 63-64.

Cecil Roth, Venice (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1930), 294-304.

Leon J. Weinberger (ed.), Anatologyah shel piyyutei yavan, anatolyah ve-ha-balkanim (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1975), 128-132, 235.

Leon J. Weinberger (ed.), Shirat yisra’el be-i keretim (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1986), 5, 191.

Leon J. Weinberger (ed.), Reshit ha-paytanut ba-balkanim: kol shirei mosheh bar hiyyah, yosef kalai, ve-yitshak bar yehudah (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1988), 66, 211.

Leon J. Weinberger (ed.), Shirat ha-kodesh la-rabbaniyyim ve-kara’im bi-derom mizrah eiropah (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1991), 198, 250-252, 847.

Leon J. Weinberger, Jewish Hymnography: A Literary History (Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1998), 256-257, 349-367, 443.