Introduction

This Hebrew entry is one of a few entries in a collection of practical potions, spells and amulets found in a manuscript copied by a Jewish Ashkenazi scribe in the fifteenthcentury south Italian city of Trani. It describes in full detail how to make use of magical means not only to cast a spell on members of a household in order to break-in and steal goods, but also how to use magic in order to obtain important information about the household vault, with all its gold and silver valuables.

As scholars of crime in medieval Europe have noted, theft and thieving were by far the most common crime in medieval times. In the urban environment, where most Jews in medieval Europe lived, food, produce and livestock were stolen as a matter of course. Outside the towns, theft from wayfaring individuals in the countryside was also rather common, and travel was considered by many to be unsafe, especially if one carried valuables or money. As William Chester Jordan so aptly described the situation especially with regard to the high and later Middle Ages: “Theft in a society where surpluses were low was not a petty crime unless the coveted article or money was trivial in value, and theft then as now was often accompanied by serious physical violence. As a felony, therefore, it merited corporal punishment. Habitual thievery, by this logic, deserved the ultimate sanction, death.”