A fragment of Abraham Avigdor's translation of Gerard de Solo's Practica from the Cairo Genizah: edition and analysis with special regard to the Old Occitan elements

Headnote

ABSTRACT The subject of this article is an eight-page manuscript preserved in the Cairo Genizah (Ms. Cambridge T-S K14.14), which we identified as a fragment of a mid-15th century copy of Abraham Avigdor's Hebrew translation of Gerard de Solo's Practica super nono Almansoris. Besides the edition and translation of the fragment, we discuss the historical and textual background of Abraham Avigdor's work. A special focus of the article lies in the extensive use of Latin and, in particular, Old Occitan medical terminology in Avigdor's text, as evidenced in the fragment. This issue is discussed against the background of the Jewish-Christian contact and collaboration that took place in the medical centers of Southern France during the 14th century.

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1.Introduction

In this article, we provide a commented edition and translation of Ms. Cambridge T-S K14.14.1 This fragmentary manuscript contains a medical text, mostly in Hebrew, but with some phrases in Latin and numerous words in Latin and in the autochthonous Romance language of Southern France, Old Occitan,2 all written in Hebrew characters.

The manuscript was probably copied in the south of France or in Italy (Siena) in the middle of the fifteenth century3 and contains a text "describing ailments of the ears, nose and throat, and problems due to external bodies and parasites (including leeches) in these organs."4 Our close scrutiny of the text allowed us to identify it as a partial copy of the Hebrew translation by Abraham Avigdor (Provence, 1351-1402) of the Practica super nono Almansoris, i.e., Gerard de Solo's commentary on the Liber nonus ad Almansorem.5 The entire Hebrew translation has been preserved in several manuscripts, of which one of the oldest is Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. hebr. 296, hailing from the year 1395, i.e., when Abraham Avigdor was still alive, and copied by Hananya ben Hayyim in Tarascon, a city between Arles and Avignon. The Genizah fragment contains the following chapters (in Hebrew: saar 'chapter'): on pus due to an abscess in the ear (Sacar de sanie auris, Ms. Munich hebr. 296, fol. 84r); on tinnitus (Saar ba-havarah u-va-selilah, fol. 84v and Sa'ar de sonitu aurium, fol. 84v);6 on hearing loss (Sa'ar bi-kvedut ha-sema\ fol. 85r, and Sa'ar de gravitatis auditus, fol. 85v); on worms (and...