Abstinence in Medieval Northern France: A Comparison of “A Slave for Seven Years” in Sefer ha-ma‘asim to “The Life of St. Alexis

  • Rella Kushelevsky
Chapter
Part of the The New Middle Ages book series (TNMA)

Abstract

Sefer ha-ma‘asim (A Book of Tales) is a large compilation of stories from northern France preserved in a single manuscript from the thirteenth century.1 The compilation, with its 69 stories covering 78 pages (39 leaves) includes a varied selection of sources and literary genres. Each story begins with the graphically accentuated phrase “ma‘aseh be-”—“A tale of,” or if you wish, “Once there was”—that adorns the manuscript’s beautiful and clear Ashkenazic script. Some stories that entered the collection were known to the medieval exegetes and can be found among the commentaries of Rashi and the Tosafists. Many were recopied over the years, and they were apparently recounted and read aloud on various occasions before listeners, as was the accepted practice with the poetry and narratives of the period. The stories—some of which were exempla and others novellas or brief narratives containing romantic elements—are deeply rooted in the cultural expanse in which they were created or adapted. Their study in the cultural context of Ashkenaz, and especially of northern France, can contribute both to the research of this compilation as a literary creation as well as to the historical study of various types of discourse in which the stories participate.

Keywords

Thirteenth Century Eleventh Century Wedding Ceremony Bodleian Library Latin Version 
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Notes

  1. 1.
    Oxford, Bodleian Library, Or. 135 (Neubauer, 1466), ff.300a—339b. This article is the fruit of research under the sponsorship of the Israeli Academy of Sciences (no. 6470, 2008–2012) on Sefer ha-ma‘asim in preparation of a critical edition. For a number of studies on the compilation as a whole and on the manuscript copied in it, see Eli Yassif, “Sefer ha-ma‘asim,” Tarbiz, 53 (1984): 409–429 and his “‘Penai’ ve-‘ruaḥ reḥavah’: halakhah u-ma‘aseh be-hithavvut ha-sippur ha-‘ivri be-shalhé yemé ha-benayim,” Kiryat Sefer 62 (1988–1989); 887–892.Google Scholar
  2. See as well Malachi Beit-Arie, “Ketav yad Oxford Bodl. Or. 135: be-shulé ma’amaro shel E. Yassif,” Tarbiz 54 (1984): 631–634. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Elisheva Baumgarten, my colleague and partner for the research of Sefer Ha-ma‘asim, for her helpful comments all along our mutual work. Special thanks to Tovi Bibring for her help with locating and translating a selection of vernacular versions of “The Life of Alexis,”which are a major contribution to this chapter.Google Scholar
  3. 6.
    Theodore Albeck ed., [Midrash] Bereshit rabbah (Jerusalem, 1995), 34:6, 326–327; BT Yevamot 63b. Also notable in this context is the exemption from having to go out to war given in the Bible to a groom in the first year of marriage (Deut. 20:7).Google Scholar
  4. 9.
    There are many versions of the legend. The partial selection here represents versions of one story and not literary adaptations that digress considerably from the core of the story. For a survey of the history of the legend and its versions in Syriac, Greek and Latin, as well as in old French from the eleventh century, based on MS Hildesheim, see Carl J. Odenkirchen, The Life of St. Alexis, Classical Folia Editions (Brookline, 1978), 92–141;Google Scholar
  5. Gaston Paris and Léopold Pannier, eds. La vie de Saint Alexis, Poème du XIe siècle et renouvellements des XIIe, XIIIe et XIVe siècles (Paris, 1887) [1872]. Additional versions that I will refer to later are: Acta Sanctorum, Julii, Vol. IV, 251–253, which appears along with a translation into English in Odenkirchen, 34–51; “The Golden Legend” by Jacobus de Voragine, which is very similar to the Acta Sanctorum version.Google Scholar
  6. In translation into English: Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, Readings on the Saints, #94, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton, 1995), 1: 371–374. These two later sources, Acta Sanctorum and The Golden Legend, make it possible to reconstruct the ancient Latin version that we do not have. Additional versions relevant to the discussion are: (1) a version from the thirteenth century in old French (MS Paris 2162 marked as MS P), published in Charles E. Stebbins, A Critical Edition of the 13th and 14th Centuries Old French Poem Versions of the ‘Vie de Saint Alexis’ (Tübingen, 1974), 21–63. A comparison of this version to the original Latin source in Acta Sanctorum can be found on pages 73–81; (2) a version from the twelfth century in MS S (Fr. 12471), 222–260, can be found in the above edition of Paris and Pannier, La vie de Saint Alexis, 222–60; (3) a version from the thirteenth century based on MS B (M) Imp.fr 1553, which is different from the version in MS Paris, as in Paris and Pannier, 279–317.Google Scholar
  7. 10.
    Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage, Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton, 1993), 7, 105–106.Google Scholar
  8. 11.
    For a full survey of the development of the legend and how it became accepted, including a comprehensive bibliographical appendix of the existing scholarship on it, see Louk J. Engels, “The West European Alexis Legend,” in The Invention of Saintliness, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (London and New York, 2002), 93–144.Google Scholar
  9. 15.
    Compare a similar conflict between the ideal of chivalrous virtu and love for a woman in the well-known romance by Chrétien de Troyes, Erec and Enide. See: Chrétien de Troyes, Erec and Enide, translated with an introduction by Dorothy Gilbert (Berkeley Los Angeles and Oxford, 1992), vv. 2432–2459, 115–116. I thank Anne Lester for pointing this out.Google Scholar
  10. 18.
    Emma Campbell, “Clerks and Laity,” The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature, ed. Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay (Cambridge, 2008), 215–219.Google Scholar
  11. 31.
    See Haggai Ben Artzi, “Ha-perishut be-sefer ḥasidim,” Da’at 11 (1983): 39–45.Google Scholar
  12. 32.
    Avraham Grossman, Ve-hu yimshol bakh? Ha-isha be-mishnatam shel ḥakhmé yisra’el bie-yemé ha-benayim (Jerusalem, 1990), 174–211.Google Scholar
  13. 33.
    Ibid., 183–188, in response to J. Baskin, “Mabbat ḥadash ‘al ha-ishah ha-yehudiyyah be-ashkenaz,” in Harimi ba-koaḥ kolekh [Lift Up Your Voice], ed. Renée Levine Melammed (Tel Aviv, 2001), 72–84.Google Scholar
  14. 34.
    On periods of abstinence in the context of marriage, albeit not related to the Pietists of Ashkenaz, but rather to Ḥasidism of the modern age, see Ada Rapoport-Albert, “‘Al ha-nashim ba-ḥasidut u-mesoret ha-betulah mi-Ludmir,” in Tsaddik ve-‘edah, ed. David Assaf (Jerusalem, 2001), 499–503.Google Scholar
  15. 35.
    David Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages, A Critical Edition of the Niẓẓahon Vetus with an Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Philadelphia, 1979), 27. And see his reference in n. 71 to the relevant sources in his edition. In the note, Berger qualifies this determination as a hypothesis that is difficult to prove unequivocally. I would like to thank Judah Galinsky for referring me to this source.Google Scholar
  16. 36.
    See Ivan G. Marcus, Piety and Society, The Jewish Pietists of Medieval Germany, (Leiden, 1981).Google Scholar
  17. 40.
    Joseph Dan, “Hishtakkefut kiddush ha-shem ba-sifrut ha-‘iyyunit shel ḥasidut ashkenaz,” in Milḥemet kodesh u-martirologiya be-toldot yisra’el u-ve-toldot ha-‘amim” (Jerusalem, 1967), 122.Google Scholar

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© Elisheva Baumgarten and Judah D. Galinsky 2015

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  • Rella Kushelevsky

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