When the manuscript was created, the Jews of Aragon and Catalonia formed one of the largest communities in Europe, and Barcelona was home to a flourishing centre of manuscript illumination, linked to the Court and influenced by Italian and French styles.

Of all categories of Jewish prayer book, the Passover Haggadah is the most extensively and richly decorated. The narrative, the rabbinic elaboration, the family meal, the symbolic foods and the fact that the story is told to children, all provide added incentives for imaginative illustration. The manuscript’s large size and clear script indicates that it was intended to be used and enjoyed at the Passover table.

When the manuscript was created, the Jews of Aragon and Catalonia formed one of the largest communities in Europe, and Barcelona was home to a flourishing centre of manuscript illumination, linked to the Court and influenced by Italian and French styles.

Of all categories of Jewish prayer book, the Passover Haggadah is the most extensively and richly decorated. The narrative, the rabbinic elaboration, the family meal, the symbolic foods and the fact that the story is told to children, all provide added incentives for imaginative illustration. The manuscript’s large size and clear script indicates that it was intended to be used and enjoyed at the Passover table.

The Barcelona Haggadah is outstanding for the rich decorative and representational illustrations: 128 of its 322 pages are ornamented with fanciful figures and pictorial scenes providing fascinating insights into Jewish life in mediaeval Spain. Music and the arts flourished in the Jewish community in Barcelona and Jewish musicians played a vital role in drawing the Jews and Christians closer together. In the manuscript, twenty-eight different instruments appear in the illustrations. More intimate details, such as depictions of the meal, take us straight into a Jewish home of the period, while the synagogue scene reflects fourteenth-century conditions and traditions.

The large, clear script designed to be read easily by children and by candlelight, is populated with zoomorphic figures in improbable situations highlighting the sense of light-heartedness and freedom associated with Passover. The text of the Haggadah occupies 180 pages; the remaining leaves contain liturgical poems and prayers for the Passover festival listed below.

A manuscript as splendid as this must always have been treasured by its owners. We know that it was sold by Shalom Latif of Jerusalem to Rabbi Moses ben Abraham of Bologna in 1459 for fifty gold ducats, and that it therefore left Spain before the expulsion of the Jews. The manuscript also bears the signature of an ecclesiastical censor: ‘Visto per me Fra. Luigi del Ordine de San Dominico 1599’ (Seen by me, Brother Luigi of the Order Saint Dominic 1599.)

Similarly, it was owned by Jehiel Nahman Foà in the seventeenth century and later by Mordecai and Raphael Hayyim, two members of the Ottolenghi family. The British Museum bought it in 1844. The auctioneer’s description is attached to the inside front cover of the manuscript and reads. “Agada, that is the Prayers used by the Jews at their Meals during Easter”

The Facsimile

Introduction

The facsimile, made by craftsmen from the finest materials, is designed to be used and enjoyed for many generations to come. Every detail no matter how small, was reproduced preserving the aura of the original manuscript.

Paper

From its inception, the Barcelona Haggadah facsimile was planned as a lavish and accurate copy. The vellum of the original manuscript was measured for its average weight and opacity, and a special uncoated, neutral pH paper was milled to simulate the feel of the original. Several years of research and development culminated in the production of a paper that reproduces the opacity, texture and thickness of the vellum on which the manuscript was written.

Photography

Crucial to the production of a fine facsimile is the quality of the original photography. This was undertaken by Laurence Pordes, Senior Photographer at The British Library, who expertly lit and photographed the manuscript using a large-format plate camera and a specially made batch of Kodak Ektachrome film.

Colour Separation and Printing

The facsimile is printed in up to twelve different inks, demanding great care and attention by the master printers, colour separators and our own quality-control team. Once the images had been colour-separated by laser scanners, the painstakingly slow and precise hand-work required to make the colour separations necessary for the first proofs could begin.

These proofs were then compared with the original manuscript at The British Library in London by the separators, the publisher and the printer. Corrections were made and new proofs were produced and compared again to the original. This process was repeated up to four times for each page to ensure an exact likeness prior to printing.

Each printed page is exactly the same size as the original. Every single sheet is printed under the close and critical supervision of the publishers, who moved to Italy for the duration of the printing and personally approved each page.

Commentary Volume

The extensive commentary volume has been designed to be used with the facsimile The entire text of the manuscript has been translated and contains several renowned scholars’ chapters discussing all aspects of the original manuscript. The commentary volume contains several translations into English of poems by Yehudah Halevi and others for the first time.

The Contents
Introduction – Jeremy Schonfield
The Making of the Book, A Codicological Study – Malachi Beit-Arie
The Decoration – Evelyn Cohen
The Binding of the Haggadah and of the Facsimile –Leila Avrin
The Owners – Diana Rowland-Smith
The Poems – Menachem Schmelzer
Translations of the Poems and Targumin – Raphael Loewe
The Haggadah and ‘Amidoth – David Goldstein and Jeremy Schonfield
Bibliography

The commentary volume is edited by Dr Jeremy Schonfield (Mason Lecturer at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies; Lecturer at the Leo Baeck College, Centre for Jewish Education, London).

Contents of the commentary volume:

1. Introduction – Dr Jeremy Schonfield
2. The Making of the Book – A Codicological Study. Professor Malachi Beit-Arié discusses the codicology and palaeography of the manuscript
3. The Decoration – Dr Evelyn M. Cohen discusses the art history and decoration.
4. The Binding of the Haggadah and of the Facsimile – Dr Leila Avrin
5. The Owners – Dr Diana Roland-Smith describes the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of the manuscript.
6. The Poems – A Literary Study. Dr Menachem Schmelzer explains the liturgical content of the manuscript and discusses the poems following the Haggadah section.

7. Translation of the Texts – The Poems and Targumim, Professor Raphael Loewe translated the rhyming couplets of the manuscript’s poems retaining the same metre as that in the original. Several of these poems had never been translated before and include a poem by Judah Halevi.

8. The Haggadah and ‘Amidoth, David Goldstein, Curator of Hebrew Manuscripts and Printed Books at The British Library and Dr Jeremy Schonfield – The Barcelona Haggadah was David Goldstein’s favourite among all the Hebrew manuscripts in the great collection for which he was responsible, and he encouraged the publishers to produce the present facsimile.
9. Musicologist, Yaacov Snir, has kindly permitted the inclusion of part of his thesis on the musical instruments depicted in the illuminations
10. Extensive Bibliography

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The Barcelona Haggadah Facsimile