This is the first comprehensive study of the images in five profusely illustrated Yiddish books that were produced in sixteenth-century Italy: a manuscript of Jewish customs illustrated by its scribe, and two books of customs, a chivalric romance, and a book of fables, all printed at Christian presses in Venice and Verona.The long-neglected manuscript includes more than one hundred drawings, here reproduced for the first time, which are strikingly inventive and full of a joie de vivre that gives the lie to the lachrymose view of Jewish history.This volume, which explores how Yiddish imagery...

One of the first volumes to explore the intersection of economics, morality, and culture, this collection analyzes the role of the developing monetary economy in Western Europe from the twelfth to the seventeenth century. The contributors scholars from the fields of history, literature, art history and musicology investigate how money infiltrated every aspect of everyday life, modified notions of social identity, and encouraged debates about ethical uses of wealth. These essays investigate how the new symbolic system of money restructured religious practices, familial routines, sexual...