“Books Within Books” and the Typology of Hebrew Ashkenazi Scripts

Hebrew fragments discovered in the bindings of other books in various European collections are an unprecedented source of our knowledge of bookmaking practices in medieval Europe. To appreciate these fragmentary sources, it is essential to study their script and handwriting in order to place the manuscripts in their chronological and geographical context. While the progress of Hebrew palaeography allows to attribute a script quite easily to a large typological category (Ashkenazi, Oriental, Sephardi, etc.), a finer typology within these large geo-cultural zones is still a desideratum. The aim of this paper is to describe the palaeographical methods employed in the study of Ashkenazi fragments, and to present the first results of the fine typology into French/English, German and Italian Ashkenazi subgroups.