The thief will then be exposed in public. An incantation must then be spoken out loud, after which one must hammer a nail into the eye. It then explains that with the help of God the thief will be revealed in the same way that God cured Tobit of his blindness. One must draw an eye on the wall of a room, write the name of the suspected thief in the outer circle of the eye, and then write a conjuration in the inner circle. In our examination we will track the Yiddish spell’s sources for both the text and its illustration of the eye.Ģ Short Description of the Yiddish Spell in MS 371Īt the top of folio 27r, a drawing of an eye appears, which is then followed by the written instructions of how to catch a thief. 371 is slightly different from other versions of this spell written in other languages, which we will delve into below. 8 There is no indication about the identity of the scribes or the owner of this manuscript. 7 The manuscript contains 37 folios written in one column, in Ashkenazic semi-cursive script by several hands. This Yiddish spell for catching a thief is found in the Vatican Library in a manuscript of medical remedies and spells from the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries (Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Vat.ebr. This spell for catching a thief in the Yiddish language has different components, which we would like to bring to light in our article. 6 In this article we would like to discuss a Yiddish variant of this spell that was not examined until today. 5 Much research has been devoted to this spell encountered in, among others, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, English, and German texts. There are many late examples which show its popularity and wide diffusion, probably from Egypt to Byzantium, to Italy and then to a large part of western Europe even as far as Iceland. The final step to identify the thief consists of hammering a nail into a painted eye on the wall. One has to speak out various magical incantations and summon up the help of God and demand justice. 4 The spell in general includes instructions on how to identify a thief with the drawing of an eye on the wall. One of the procedures of magically exposing a thief with the combination of a painted eye on the wall, also known as the Eye of Abraham, has already been identified in the early medieval period. 3 If you were living in the middle ages and wanted to catch a thief, you most probably chose one of the several magical options available. 2 According to Benati, the rituals involving supernatural help against theft can be mainly divided into three groups: (1) those aimed at preventing theft from taking place (2) those aimed at stopping the thief and recovering stolen property (3) those aimed at identifying and also punishing the person responsible for the theft. From the medieval and well into the early modern period, there were various magical spells against theft that were passed on.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |