Jewish Troubadours And Minnesingers

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Title:     Jewish Troubadours And Minnesingers
Author: Gustav Karpeles [More Titles by Karpeles]

A great tournament at the court of Pedro I.! Deafening fanfares invite courtiers and cavaliers to participate in the festivities. In the brilliant sunshine gleam the lances of the knights, glitter the spears of the hidalgos. Gallant paladins escort black-eyed beauties to the elevated balcony, on which, upon a high-raised throne, under a gilded canopy, surrounded by courtiers, sit Blanche de Bourbon and her illustrious lord Dom Pedro, with Doña Maria de Padilla, the lady of his choice, at his left. Three times the trumpets have sounded, announcing the approach of the troubadours gathered from all parts of Castile to compete with one another in song. Behold! a venerable old man, with silvery white beard flowing down upon his breast, seeks to extricate himself from the crowd. With admiring gaze the people respectfully make way, and enthusiastically greet him: "Rabbi Don Santo! Rabbi Don Santo!"

The troubadour makes a low obeisance before the throne. Dom Pedro nods encouragement, Maria de Padilla smiles graciously, only Doña Blanca's pallid face remains immobile. The hoary bard begins his song:[41]

"My noble king and mighty lord,
A discourse hear most true;
'Tis Santob brings your Grace the word,
Of Carrion's town the Jew.

In plainest verse my thought I tell,
With gloss and moral free,
Drawn from Philosophy's pure well,
As onward you may see."[42]

A murmur of approval runs through the crowd; grandees and hidalgos press closer to listen. In well-turned verse, fraught with worldly-wise lessons, and indifferent whether his hortations meet with praise or with censure, the poet continues to pour out words of counsel and moral teachings, alike for king, nobles, and people.

Who is this Rabbi Don Santob? We know very little about him, yet, with the help of "bright-eyed fancy," enough to paint his picture. The real name of this Jew from Carrion de los Condes, a city of northern Spain, who lived under Alfonso XI and Peter the Cruel, was, of course, not Santob, but Shem-Tob. Under Alfonso the intellectual life of Spain developed to a considerable degree, and in Spain, as almost everywhere, we find Jews in sympathy with the first intellectual strivings of the nation. They have a share in the development of all Romance languages and literatures. Ibn Alfange, a Moorish Jew, after his conversion a high official, wrote the first "Chronicle of the Cid," the oldest source of the oft-repeated biography, thus furnishing material to subsequent Spanish poets and historians. Valentin Barruchius (Baruch), of Toledo, composed, probably in the twelfth century, in pure, choice Latin, the romance Comte Lyonnais, Palanus, which spread all over Europe, affording modern poets subject-matter for great tragedies, and forming the groundwork for one of the classics of Spanish literature. A little later, Petrus Alphonsus (Moses Sephardi) wrote his Disciplina Clericalis, the first collection of tales in the Oriental manner, the model of all future collections of the kind.

Three of the most important works of Spanish literature, then, are products of Jewish authorship. This fact prepares the student to find a Jew among the Castilian troubadours of the fourteenth century, the period of greatest literary activity. The Jewish spirit was by no means antagonistic to the poetry of the Provençal troubadours. In his didactic poem, Chotham Tochnith ("The Seal of Perfection," together with "The Flaming Sword"), Abraham Bedersi, that is, of Béziers (1305), challenges his co-religionists to a poetic combat. He details the rules of the tournament, and it is evident that he is well acquainted with all the minutiæ of the jeu parti and the tenso (song of dispute) of the Provençal singers, and would willingly imitate their sirventes (moral and political song). His plaint over the decadence of poetry among the Jews is characteristic: "Where now are the marvels of Hebrew poetry? Mayhap thou'lt find them in the Provençal or Romance. Aye, in Folquet's verses is manna, and from the lips of Cardinal is wafted the perfume of crocus and nard"--Folquet de Lunel and Peire Cardinal being the last great representatives of Provençal troubadour poetry. Later on, neo-Hebraic poets again show acquaintance with the regulations governing song-combats and courts of love. Pious Bible exegetes, like Samuel ben Meïr, do not disdain to speak of the partimens of the troubadours, "in which lovers talk to each other, and by turns take up the discourse." One of his school, a Tossafist, goes so far as to press into service the day's fashion in explaining the meaning of a verse in the "Song of Songs": "To this day lovers treasure their mistress' locks as love-tokens." It seems, too, that Provençal romances were heard, and their great poets welcomed, in the houses of Jews, who did not scruple occasionally to use their melodies in the synagogue service.

National customs, then, took root in Israel; but that Jewish elements should have become incorporated into Spanish literature is more remarkable, may, indeed, be called marvellous. Yet, from one point of view, it is not astonishing. The whole of mediæval Spanish literature is nothing more than the handmaiden of Christianity. Spanish poetry is completely dominated by Catholicism; it is in reality only an expression of reverence for Christian institutions. An extreme naturally induces a counter-current; so here, by the side of rigid orthodoxy, we meet with latitudinarianism and secular delight in the good things of life. For instance, that jolly rogue, the archpriest of Hita, by way of relaxation from the tenseness of church discipline, takes to composing dansas and baladas for the rich Jewish bankers of his town. He and his contemporaries have much to say about Jewish generosity--unfortunately, much, too, about Jewish wealth and pomp. Jewish women, a Jewish chronicler relates, are tricked out with finery, as "sumptuously as the pope's mules." It goes without saying that, along with these accounts, we have frequent wailing about defection from the faith and neglect of the Law. Old Akiba is right: "History repeats itself!" ("Es ist alles schon einmal da gewesen!").

Such were the times of Santob de Carrion. Our first information about him comes from the Marquis de Santillana, one of the early patrons and leaders of Spanish literature. He says, "In my grandfather's time there was a Jew, Rabbi Santob, who wrote many excellent things, among them Proverbios Morales (Moral Proverbs), truly commendable in spirit. A great troubadour, he ranks among the most celebrated poets of Spain." Despite this high praise, the marquis feels constrained to apologize for having quoted a passage from Santob's work. His praise is endorsed by the critics. It is commonly conceded that his Consejos y Documentos al Rey Dom Pedro ("Counsel and Instruction to King Dom Pedro"), consisting of six hundred and twenty-eight romances, deserves a place among the best creations of Castilian poetry, which, in form and substance, owes not a little to Rabbi Santob. A valuable manuscript at the Escurial in Madrid contains his Consejos and two other works, La Doctrina Christiana and Dansa General. A careless copyist called the whole collection "Rabbi Santob's Book," so giving rise to the mistake of Spanish critics, who believe that Rabbi Santob, indisputably the author of Consejos, became a convert to Christianity, and wrote, after his conversion, the didactic poem on doctrinal Christianity, and perhaps also the first "Dance of Death."[43] It was reserved for the acuteness of German criticism to expose the error of this hypothesis. Of the three works, only Consejos belongs to Rabbi Santob, the others were accidentally bound with it. In passing, the interesting circumstance may be noted that in the first "Dance of Death" a bearded rabbi (Rabbi barbudo) dances toward the universal goal between a priest and an usurer. Santob de Carrion remained a Jew. His consejos, written when he was advanced in age, are pervaded by loyalty to his king, but no less to his faith, which he openly professed at the royal court, and whose spiritual treasures he adroitly turned to poetic uses.

Santob, it is interesting to observe, was not a writer of erotic poetry. He composed poems on moral subjects only, social satires and denunciations of vice. Such are the consejos. It is in his capacity as a preacher of morality that Santob is to be classed among troubadours. First he addressed himself, with becoming deference, to the king, leading him to consider God's omnipotence:

"As great, 'twixt heav'n and earth the space--
That ether pure and blue--
So great is God's forgiving grace
Your sins to lift from you.

And with His vast and wondrous might
He does His deeds of power;
But yours are puny in His sight,
For strength is not man's dower."

At that time it required more than ordinary courage to address a king in this fashion; but Santob was old and poor, and having nothing to lose, could risk losing everything. A democratic strain runs through his verses; he delights in aiming his satires at the rich, the high-born, and the powerful, and takes pride in his poverty and his fame as a poet:

"I will not have you think me less
Than others of my faith,
Who live on a generous king's largess,
Forsworn at every breath.

And if you deem my teachings true,
Reject them not with hate,
Because a minstrel sings to you
Who's not of knight's estate.

The fragrant, waving reed grows tall
From feeble root and thin,
And uncouth worms that lowly crawl
Most lustrous silk do spin.

Because beside a thorn it grows
The rose is not less fair;
Though wine from gnarlèd branches flows,
'Tis sweet beyond compare.

The goshawk, know, can soar on high,
Yet low he nests his brood.
A Jew true precepts doth apply,
Are they therefore less good?

Some Jews there are with slavish mind
Who fear, are mute, and meek.
My soul to truth is so inclined
That all I feel I speak.

There often comes a meaning home
Through simple verse and plain,
While in the heavy, bulky tome
We find of truth no grain.

Full oft a man with furrowed front,
Whom grief hath rendered grave,
Whose views of life are honest, blunt,
Both fool is called and knave."

It is surely not unwarranted to assume that from these confessions the data of Santob's biography may be gathered.

Now as to Santob's relation to Judaism. Doubtless he was a faithful Jew, for the views of life and the world laid down in his poems rest on the Bible, the Talmud, and the Midrash. With the fearlessness of conviction he meets the king and the people, denouncing the follies of both. Some of his romances sound precisely like stories from the Haggada, so skilfully does he clothe his counsel in the gnomic style of the Bible and the Talmud. This characteristic is particularly well shown in his verses on friendship, into which he has woven the phraseology of the Proverbs:

"What treasure greater than a friend
Who close to us hath grown?
Blind fate no bitt'rer lot can send
Than bid us walk alone.

For solitude doth cause a dearth
Of fruitful, blessed thought.
The wise would pray to leave this earth,
If none their friendship sought.

Yet sad though loneliness may be,
That friendship surely shun
That feigns to love, and inwardly
Betrays affections won."

The poem closes with a prayer for the king, who certainly could not have taken offense at Santob's frankness:

"May God preserve our lord and king
With grace omnipotent,
Remove from us each evil thing,
And blessed peace augment.

The nations loyally allied
Our empire to exalt,
May God, in whom we all confide,
From plague keep and assault.

If God will answer my request,
Then will be paid his due--
Your noble father's last behest--
To Santob, Carrion's Jew."

Our troubadour's poetry shows that he was devotedly attached to his prince, enthusiastically loved his country, and was unfalteringly loyal to his faith; that he told the king honest, wholesome truths disguised in verse; that he took no pains to conceal his scorn of those who, with base servility, bowed to the ruling faith, and permitted its yoke to be put upon their necks; that he felt himself the peer of the high in rank, and the wealthy in the goods of this world; that he censured, with incisive criticism, the vices of his Spanish and his Jewish contemporaries--all of which is calculated to inspire us with admiration for the Jewish troubadour, whose manliness enabled him to meet his detractors boldly, as in the verses quoted above:

"Because beside a thorn it grows,
The rose is not less fair;
Though wine from gnarlèd branches flows,
'Tis sweet beyond compare.

A Jew true precepts doth apply,
Are they therefore less good?"

History does not tell us whether Pedro rewarded the Jewish troubadour as the latter, if we may judge by the end of his poem, had expected. Our accounts of his life are meagre; even his fellow-believers do not make mention of him. We do know, however, that the poor poet's prayers for his sovereign, his petitions for the weal and the glory of his country were not granted. Pedro lost his life by violence, quarrels about the succession and civil wars convulsed the land, and weakened the royal power. Its decline marked the end of the peace and happiness of the Jew on Castilian soil.

As times grew worse, and persecutions of the Jews in Christian Spain became frequent, many forsook the faith of their fathers, to bask in the sunshine of the Church, who treated proselytes with distinguished favor. The example of the first Jewish troubadour did not find imitators. Among the converts were many poets, notably Juan Alfonso de Bæna, who, in the fifteenth century, collected the oldest troubadour poetry, including his own poems and satires, and the writings of the Jewish physician Don Moses Zarzal, into a cancionera general. Like many apostates, he sought to prove his devotion to the new faith by mocking at and reviling his former brethren. The attacked were not slow to answer in kind, and the Christian world of poets and bards joined the latter in deriding the neophytes. Spanish literature was not the loser by these combats, whose description belongs to general literary criticism. Lyric poetry, until then dry, serious, and solemn, was infused by the satirist with flashing wit and whimsical spirit, and throwing off its connection with the drama, developed into an independent species of poetry.

The last like the first of Spanish troubadours was a Jew,[44] Antonio di Montoro (Moro), el ropero (the tailor), of Cordova, of whom a contemporary says,

"A man of repute and lofty fame;
As poet, he puts many to shame;
Anton di Montoro is his name."

The tailor-poet was exposed to attacks, too. A high and mighty Spanish caballero addresses him as

"You Cohn, you cur,
You miserable Jew,
You wicked usurer."

It must be admitted that he parries these thrusts with weak, apologetic appeals, preserved in his Respuestas (Rhymed Answers). He claims his high-born foe's sympathy by telling him that he has sons, grandchildren, a poor, old father, and a marriageable daughter. In extenuation of his cowardice it should be remembered that Antonio di Montoro lived during a reign of terror, under Ferdinand and Isabella, when his race and his faith were exposed to most frightful persecution. All the more noteworthy is it that he had the courage to address the queen in behalf of his faith. He laments plaintively that despite his sixty years he has not been able to eradicate all traces of his descent (reato de su origen), and turns his irony against himself:

"Ropero, so sad and so forlorn,
Now thou feelest pain and scorn.
Until sixty years had flown,
Thou couldst say to every one,
'Nothing wicked have I known.'

Christian convert hast thou turned,
Credo thou to say hast learned;
Willing art now bold to view
Plates of ham--no more askew.
Mass thou hearest,
Church reverest,
Genuflexions makest,
Other alien customs takest.
Now thou, too, mayst persecute
Those poor wretches, like a brute."

"Those poor wretches" were his brethren in faith in the fair Spanish land. With a jarring discord ends the history of the Jews in Spain. On the ninth of Ab, 1492, three hundred thousand Jews left the land to which they had given its first and its last troubadour. The irony of fate directed that at the selfsame time Christopher Columbus should embark for unknown lands, and eventually reach America, a new world, the refuge of all who suffer, wherein thought was destined to grow strong enough "to vanquish arrogance and injustice without recourse to arrogance and injustice"--a new illustration of the old verse: "Behold, he slumbereth not, and he sleepeth not--the keeper of Israel."

* * *

A great tournament at the court of the lords of Trimberg, the Franconian town on the Saale! From high battlements stream the pennons of the noble race, announcing rare festivities to all the country round. The mountain-side is astir with knights equipped with helmet, shield, and lance, and attended by pages and armor-bearers, minnesingers and minstrels. Yonder is Walther von der Vogelweide, engaged in earnest conversation with Wolfram von Eschenbach, Otto von Botenlaube, Hildebold von Schwanegau, and Reinmar von Brennenberg. In that group of notables, curiously enough, we discern a Jew, whose beautiful features reflect harmonious soul life.

"Süsskind von Trimberg," they call him, and when the pleasure of the feast in the lordly hall of the castle is to be heightened by song and music, he too steps forth, with fearlessness and dignity, to sing of freedom of thought, to the prevalence of which in this company the despised Jew owed his admission to a circle of knights and poets:[45]

"O thought! free gift to humankind!
By thee both fools and wise are led,
But who thy paths hath all defined,
A man he is in heart and head.
With thee, his weakness being fled,
He can both stone and steel command,
Thy pinions bear him o'er the land.

O thought that swifter art than light,
That mightier art than tempest's roar!
Didst thou not raise me in thy flight,
What were my song, my minstrel lore,
And what the gold from Minne's store?
Beyond the heights an eagle vaunts,
O bear me to the spirit's haunts!"

His song meets with the approval of the knights, who give generous encouragement to the minstrel. Raising his eyes to the proud, beautiful mistress of the castle, he again strikes his lyre and sings:

"Pure woman is to man a crown,
For her he strives to win renown.
Did she not grace and animate,
How mean and low the castle great!
By true companionship, the wife
Makes blithe and free a man's whole life;
Her light turns bright the darkest day.
Her praise and worth I'll sing alway."

The lady inclines her fair head in token of thanks, and the lord of castle Trimberg fills the golden goblet, and hands it, the mark of honor, to the poet, who drains it, and then modestly steps back into the circle of his compeers. Now we have leisure to examine the rare man.--

Rüdiger Manesse, a town councillor of Zürich in the fourteenth century, raised a beautiful monument to bardic art in a manuscript work, executed at his order, containing the songs of one hundred and forty poets, living between the twelfth and the fourteenth century. Among the authors are kings, princes, noblemen of high rank and low, burgher-poets, and the Jew Süsskind von Trimberg. Each poet's productions are accompanied by illustrations, not authentic portraits, but a series of vivid representations of scenes of knight-errantry. There are scenes of war and peace, of combats, the chase, and tourneys with games, songs, and dance. We see the storming of a castle of Love (Minneburg)--lovers fleeing, lovers separated, love triumphant. Heinrich von Veldeke reclines upon a bank of roses; Friedrich von Hausen is on board a boat; Walther von der Vogelweide sits musing on a wayside stone; Wolfram von Eschenbach stands armed, with visor closed, next to his caparisoned horse, as though about to mount. Among the portraits of the knights and bards is Süsskind von Trimberg's. How does Rüdiger Manesse represent him? As a long-bearded Jew, on his head a yellow, funnel-shaped hat, the badge of distinction decreed by Pope Innocent III. to be worn by Jews. That is all! and save what we may infer from his six poems preserved by the history of literature, pretty much all, too, known of Süsskind von Trimberg.

Was it the heedlessness of the compiler that associated the Jew with this merry company, in which he was as much out of place as a Gothic spire on a synagogue? Süsskind came by the privilege fairly. Throughout the middle ages the Jews of Germany were permeated with the culture of their native land, and were keenly concerned in the development of its poetry. A still more important circumstance is the spirit of tolerance and humanity that pervades Middle High German poetry. Wolfram von Eschenbach based his Parzival, the herald of "Nathan the Wise," on the idea of the brotherhood of man; Walther von der Vogelweide ranged Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans together as children of the one God; and Freidank, reflecting that God lets His sun shine on the confessors of all creeds, went so far as to repudiate the doctrine of the eternal damnation of Jews. This trend of thought, characterizing both Jews and Christians, suffices to explain how, in Germany, and at the very time in which the teachers of the Church were reviling "the mad Jews, who ought to be hewn down like dogs," it was possible for a Jew to be a minnesinger, a minstrel among minstrels, and abundantly accounts for Süsskind von Trimberg's association with knights and ladies. Süsskind, then, doubtless journeyed with his brother-poets from castle to castle; yet our imagination would be leading us astray, were we to accept literally the words of the enthusiastic historian Graetz, and with him believe that "on vine-clad hills, seated in the circle of noble knights and fair dames, a beaker of wine at his side, his lyre in his hand, he sang his polished verses of love's joys and trials, love's hopes and fears, and then awaited the largesses that bought his daily bread."[46]

Süsskind's poems are not at all like the joyous, rollicking songs his mates carolled forth; they are sad and serious, tender and chaste. Of love there is not a word. A minnesinger and a Jew--irreconcilable opposites! A minnesinger must be a knight wooing his lady-love, whose colors he wears at the tournaments, and for whose sake he undertakes a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The Jew's minstrelsy is a lament for Zion.

In fact what is Minne--this service of love? Is it not at bottom the cult of the Virgin Mary? Is it not, in a subtle, mysterious way, a phase of Christianity itself? How could it have appealed to the Jew Süsskind? True, the Jews, too, have an ideal of love in the "Song of Songs": "Lo, thou art beautiful, my beloved!" it says, but our old sages took the beloved to be the Synagogue. Of this love Princess Sabbath is the ideal, and the passion of the "Song of Songs" is separated from German Minne by the great gap between the soul life of the Semite and that of the Christian German. Unbridled sensuousness surges through the songs rising to the chambers of noble ladies. Kabbalistic passion glows in the mysterious love of the Jew. The German minstrel sings of love's sweetness and pain, of summer and its delights, of winter and its woes, now of joy and happiness, again of ill-starred fortunes. And what is the burden of the exiled Hebrew's song? Mysterious allusions, hidden in a tangle of highly polished, artificial, slow-moving rhymes, glorify, not a sweet womanly presence, but a fleeting vision, a shadow, whose elusive charms infatuated the poet in his dreams. Bright, joyous, blithe, unmeasured is the one; serious, gloomy, chaste, gentle, the other.

Yet, Süsskind von Trimberg was at once a Jew and a minnesinger. Who can fathom a poet's soul? Who can follow his thoughts as they fly hither and thither, like the thread in a weaver's shuttle, fashioning themselves into a golden web? The minnesingers enlisted in love's cause, yet none the less in war and the defense of truth, and for the last Süsskind von Trimberg did valiant service. The poems of his earliest period, the blithesome days of youth, have not survived. Those that we have bear the stamp of sorrow and trouble, the gifts of advanced years. With self-contemptuous bitterness, he bewails his sad lot:

"I seek and nothing find,--
That makes me sigh and sigh.
Lord Lackfood presses me,
Of hunger sure I'll die;
My wife, my child go supperless,
My butler is Sir Meagreness."

Süsskind von Trimberg's poems also breathe the spirit of Hebrew literature, and have drawn material from the legend world of the Haggada. For the praise of his faithful wife he borrows the words of Solomon, and the psalm-like rhythm of his best songs recalls the familiar strains of our evening-prayer:

"Almighty God! That shinest with the sun,
That slumb'rest not when day grows into night!
Thou Source of all, of tranquil peace and joy!
Thou King of glory and majestic light!
Thou allgood Father! Golden rays of day
And starry hosts thy praise to sing unite,
Creator of heav'n and earth, Eternal One,
That watchest ev'ry creature from Thy height!"

Like Santob, Süsskind was poor; like him, he denounced the rich, was proud and generous. With intrepid candor, he taught knights the meaning of true nobility--of the nobility of soul transcending nobility of birth--and of freedom of thought--freedom fettered by neither stone, nor steel, nor iron; and in the midst of their rioting and feasting, he ventured to put before them the solemn thought of death. His last production as a minnesinger was a prescription for a "virtue-electuary." Then he went to dwell among his brethren, whom, indeed, he had not deserted in the pride of his youth:

"Why should I wander sadly,
My harp within my hand,
O'er mountain, hill, and valley?
What praise do I command?

Full well they know the singer
Belongs to race accursed;
Sweet Minne doth no longer
Reward me as at first.

Be silent, then, my lyre,
We sing 'fore lords in vain.
I'll leave the minstrels' choir,
And roam a Jew again.

My staff and hat I'll grasp, then,
And on my breast full low,
By Jewish custom olden
My grizzled beard shall grow.

My days I'll pass in quiet,--
Those left to me on earth--
Nor sing for those who not yet
Have learned a poet's worth."

Thus spake the Jewish poet, and dropped his lyre into the stream--in song and in life, a worthy son of his time, the disciple of Walther von der Vogelweide, the friend of Wolfram von Eschenbach--disciple and friend of the first to give utterance, in German song, to the idea of the brotherhood of man. Centuries ago, he found the longed-for quiet in Franconia, but no wreath lies on his grave, no stone marks the wanderer's resting-place. His poems have found an abiding home in the memory of posterity, and in the circle of the German minnesingers the Jew Süsskind forms a distinct link.

In a time when the idea of universal human brotherhood seems to be fading from the hearts of men, when they manifest a proneness to forget the share which, despite hatred and persecution, the Jew of every generation has had in German literature, in its romances of chivalry and its national epics, and in all the spiritual achievements of German genius, we may with just pride revive Süsskind's memory.--

On the wings of fancy let us return to our castle on the Saale. After the lapse of many years, the procession of poets again wends its way in the sunshine up the slope to the proud mansion of the Trimbergs. The venerable Walther von der Vogelweide again opens the festival of song. Wolfram von Eschenbach, followed by a band of young disciples, musingly ascends the mountain-side. The ranks grow less serried, and in solitude and sadness, advances a man of noble form, his silvery beard flowing down upon his breast, a long cloak over his shoulder, and the peaked hat, the badge of the mediæval Jew, on his head. In his eye gleams a ray of the poet's grace, and his meditative glance looks into a distant future. Süsskind von Trimberg, to thee our greeting!

FOOTNOTES

[41] Cmp. Kayserling, Sephardim, p. 23 ff.

[42] Translation by Ticknor. [Tr.]

[43] Cmp. F. Wolf, Studien zur Geschichte der spanischen Nationalliteratur, p. 236 ff.

[44] Cmp. Kayserling, l. c. p. 85 ff.

[45] Livius Fürst in Illustrirte Monatshefte für die gesammten Interessen des Judenthums, Vol. I., p. 14 ff. Cmp. also, Hagen, Minnesänger, Vol. II., p. 258, Vol. IV., p. 536 ff., and W. Goldbaum, Entlegene Culturen, p. 275 ff.

[46] Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, Vol. VI., p. 257.

[The end]
Gustav Karpeles's essay: Jewish Troubadours And Minnesingers

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