Illuminating Micrography: The Catalan Micrography Maḥzor MS Heb 8°6527 in the National Library of Israel by Dalia-Ruth Halperin (review)

The Catalan Micrography Mahzor (hereafter, “the Maḥzor”), held at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, is a vocalized piyyutim maḥzor for Rosh ha-shanah and Yom Kippur decorated with micrography. While the term “maḥzor” (“cycle”, pl. maḥzorim) in modern usage refers to a prayer book designed for usage on the Jewish High Holidays (Rosh ha-shanah, “New Year’s Day” and Yom Kippur, “The Day of Atonement”), in pre-modern times, the term simply indicated “prayer book”, whether meant for usage on holidays, Sabbaths, or weekdays, and was a parallel to the terms siddur and seder, i.e. “order (of prayers)”. A “piyyutim maḥzor” is a maḥzor that contains only the additions to the statutory prayers and the piyyutim (liturgical poems; sing., piyyut) that were to be recited on the occasions for which the particular maḥzor was designated, and not the statutory prayers themselves. For the present volume, those occasions were the High Holidays. Other types of maḥzorim include the full liturgical contents of any given service, that is: the statutory prayers, the additions to the statutory prayers for the specific holidays, and the piyyutim. A piyyutim maḥzor would be used in a worship service in conjunction with the fuller liturgy for the specific holiday. That fuller liturgy would be accessed either by referring to another prayer book or to liturgical texts memorized by the worshiper. The maḥzor under review contains an extensive collection of piyyutim with the additions to the statutory prayers at the end of the manuscript. The editor of this edition of the the Maḥzor, Dahlia-Ruth Halperin, surmises that it “is unlikely that any worshipper held the manuscript open to both sections and kept turning pages back and forth with the flow of the service. A more plausible hypothesis is that the liturgical structure suggests that the Maḥzor was intended for the use of a cantor or a scholar, who had the statutory prayers committed to memory…” (56).

This maḥzor is decorated with micrography. Micrography is the singular Jewish scribal art, deriving from the Middle Ages, in which minuscule letters form adornment and ornamentation to the text. The earliest examples of micrography are in Hebrew Bibles from the tenth century in the Middle East. According to Halperin, because micrography was found exclusively in Hebrew Bibles, “this manuscript is unique” (23) since it is a prayer book decorated with micrography. That statement is not quite accurate. While micrography is mainly found in medieval Hebrew Bibles, it is also found in a number of medieval maḥzorim as well. A strict interpretation of the second commandment forbade the use of images. Therefore, this particular form of illumination–using miniature letters–became popular in Jewish religious literature because it avoided painting or drawing images. The texts that form the micrography in this Maḥzor derive mainly from Psalms, a passage from a section on the holiday Rosh ha-shanah in the Babylonian Talmud commentary by Rabbi Isaac ben Jacob ha-Kohen Alfasi (11^th c., Northern Africa), a passage from II Samuel 22 – 23:9, and two passages from a piyyut by Rabbi Solomon ibn Adret (13^th c., Barcelona).

Its decoration plan includes twenty-three full page panels in two quires, thirty-six marginal micrography decorations, principally candelabra trees, and two initial word panels, which include titles written in gold. Halperin’s analyses of the codicological and paleographical evidence of the manuscript reveal that the text and the micrography were produced as a single unit by one hand – the scribe and the micrographer were one and the same. The Maḥzor includes 154 goatskin pages, measuring 198 x 157 millimeters, bound in twenty original quires, but the end is missing.

The dating and location of production of...