A Newly Discovered Fragment from the European Genizah: The Earliest Account Book of a Jewish Moneylender in Italy

In my proposed lecture I will present an original manuscript of the European Genizah containing the earliest account book of a Jewish moneylender in Italy (1407-11). This manuscript, now stored at the Corpus Christi College Library in Oxford, is the oldest known volume of its kind, and sheds new light on the economic history of the Jews, questions of credit in north Italy, Jewish-Christian economic relations, material culture through references to pawned objects, as well as the history of accounting practices. It is a fine example of the European Genizah as its paper leaves were dismembered and reused to bind a different book of Italian origin. As with thousands of other fragments found in bindings across Europe, the recycling of codices paradoxically assured their survival. The sheets of the ledger were discovered, detached and conserved when the manuscript was restored at the end of the 19th century, and remain well preserved and legible.

Italian Renaissance archives are rich in holdings, but moneylending registers from Italy are very rare. Hebrew registers of this kind were compiled by Jewish lenders both for their personal use and as evidence to present in court in the case of litigation. As such they were archived only for the duration of the transactions recorded in them, rather than for the later use.

The study of this original register involves entering the history of the Hebrew manuscript book, retracing its evolution, following its mobility across Europe, and examining the ways and forms of its conservation. Analysing the book offers a unique opportunity to enrich our knowledge of Jewish Studies in Europe, since it spans the fields of Jewish economy, culture, society and history, with a special emphasis on the Jewish experience in Western Europe during the Renaissance.