Bibles & sacred texts - facsimiles - Omi

OMI - Old Manuscripts & Incunabula • tel 212/ 758-1946 • fax 593-6186 • www.omifacsimiles.com • immels@earthlink.net Biblical texts, p.24
13th c. Worms Mahzor. Jüdische National- u. Universitätsbibliothek Jerusalem, MS
4º 781/1.
[Jerusalem, Jewish National & University Library, 4º 781/1]
London, 1985. 32 x 45 cm, 450 pp + commentary.
The Worms Mahzor, among the oldest known Ashkenazi prayer books for high holidays in
existence, is believed to have been written in its entirety during the Middle Ages. It was
completed in 1272 in the Rhine area of Germany and was in the possession of the cantors
of the famous Worms Synagogue (Rashi Sahul) for more than 650 years. It is written on
large sheets of parchment in square, calligraphic Ashkenazi script with vowels. The pages
are illustrated with the spectacular characteristics of the South German style of the period.
Commentary volume by a team of experts in Judaic studies. Limited edition of 330 copies,
bound in full leather with wood boards, after the original.
1479 The Rothschild Haggadah. A Passover Compendium from the Rothschild
Miscellany.
[Jerusalem, Israel Musuem]
[0-948223-189] London, 2000. 16 x 21 cm, 2 vols, 44, 79 pp.
Commissioned by Moses ben Yekutiel Hacohen and written and decorated in northern Italy
in 1479, this Haggadah is unrivalled in richness and scope. Although medieval haggadahs
are among the most extensively decorated of all types of Hebrew MSS, the Rothschild
Haggadah, stands out for its elegant and elaborate illustrations of the Passover story and the
richness of its marginal texts. The MS comprises the Ashkenazi Passover eve service as we
know it today (except for Grace after Meals which was deliberately omitted by the scribe),
provided as the main text in the center of the page. In the margins is Maimonides' Hilkhot
Hamez Umatsah ("Laws Concerning Leavened and Unleavened Bread"), a classical survey
of Passover and its ceremonies. In addition the book includes the section devoted to the
piyyutim—the liturgical poems and songs—for all four evenings of the festival of
Passover, also exquisitely illuminated; in its margin one finds a medieval text on weights
and measures. Commentary and translations by Raphael Loewe, Jeremy Schonfield & Iris
Fishof. Limited edition of 550 copies, bound in full vellum, with slipcase.
$ 850
12th c. Millstätter Genesis- und Physiologus-Handschrift.
[Klagenfurt, Kärnten Landesarchiv, Sammelhs. 6/19]
[3-201-00744-7] Codices Selecti, X. Graz, 1967. 13 x 20 cm, 2 vols, 334, 52 pp.
This well-known source, a composite MS copied between 1120 and 1160 in the environs of
Kämten (southern Bavaria), is one of the earliest examples of an illustrated codex in
Middle High German. Of great literary and philological importance its texts include
Genesis and Exodus and chapters entitled Physiologus, Vom Rechte, Die Hochzeit,
Millstätter Sündenklage, Paternoster, and Die verstümmelten Anfangsverse der Dichtung
'Das himmlische Jerusalem'. The illustrations preserve a pictorial recension of Genesis
which relates to the Cotton Genesis fragments in the British Library, a mosaic cupola at St.
Mark's in Venice, and the Genesis frontispiece of the Carolingian bibles created in Tours.
The MS is key for any research on the full Genesis cycle, as well as the treatment of the
Physiologus text and illustrations of Latin and Greek texts that gave rise to the 12th-c.
bestiary MSS. Commentary by A. Kracher. Monochrome facsimile, bound in full leather
with slipcase.
€ 240