David I. Shyovitz. A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. 325 pp.

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz by David I. Shyovitz David Malkiel David I. Shyovitz. A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. 325 pp. doi:10.1017/S036400941800065X Historical scholarship of the past few decades has sought to liberate the image of medieval Ashkenazic Jewry from the grip of Wissenschaft thinking, which portrayed it as xenophobic and ignorant. David Shyovitz's A Remembrance of His Wonders takes this scholarly movement in a new direction. Shyovitz argues that far from shunning the natural order, the German Pietists reflected deeply on natural phenomena that inspire marvel because they appear to defy explanation. The Pietists, chiefly Judah the Pious, collected these wonders in texts that often begin with "a remembrance of His wonders" (Psalm 111:4), in order to derive theological conclusions from seemingly aberrant forces of nature. The theological import derived from remembrances revolves around God's existence and omnipotence, and typically is learned a minore ad maius, from the physical order to the recondite divine realm. Shyovitz interprets these lessons propounded by the Pietists as implying a powerful current of skepticism among the rank and file of medieval Ashkenaz, which also challenges the traditional historiographical image. Indeed, Jeremy Cohen and Avraham Grossman have put forward similar arguments in different contexts, and yet I can imagine the Pietists propagating material of this sort for the edification and spiritual well-being of their audience without conjuring an atmosphere involving a crisis of faith. The interrogation of nature through its wonders is a familiar trope from the travel writing of Gerald of Wales and others, which treats home-bound readers to descriptions of bizarre creatures encountered at the geographical limits of the world, liminal phenomena in liminal locales. Thinking about events and behaviors that lie at the edge of the natural realm offered a way to conceptualize the natural [End Page 465] order and where its boundaries fall. Thus, the interest the Pietists show in the workings of nature situates them squarely in the context of medieval science, which, as Lynn Thorndike has shown, did not distinguish between science and magic, the natural and occult. More startling is the Pietists' methodology, which combines observation and experimentation. They instruct readers how to produce certain results, and their thinking is refreshingly modern for not being rooted in the classical tomes of Aristotle, Galen, and others. Judah the Pious takes his place among Albert the Great and other medieval thinkers whose empiricism anticipated the scientific revolution. A Remembrance of His Wonders also posits a high degree of cultural integration, with knowledge of the natural order—including the occult—derived not only from rabbinic tradition (e.g., sources about magnets, salamanders, etc.), but also from contemporary Christian writings, including bestiaries, lapidaries, encyclopedias, and "books of secrets." Once again, the book confounds the image of Ashkenazic Jewry as insular, although Yitzhak Baer, Joseph Dan, and others have suggested possible connections to Berthold of Regensburg or Caesarius of Heisterbach and acknowledged the presence of Germanic folklore in the Pietists' writings. Remembrances from the natural world are the subject of the first chapter; the remaining four focus on the human being, especially the body. We are thus cautioned that the Pietists' well-known asceticism does not imply disdain for the body; rather, the idea of man as microcosm stimulates intense scrutiny of the body's form and processes, from which the Pietists derive practical advantage, such as for divination or to fashion a golem. This fascination with the human form seems to sit well with the Ashkenazic tradition of divine corporealism, a tradition closely associated with Moses Taku, though true also for Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquières. Shyovitz's overall thesis of intense Ashkenazic acculturation is supported here by evidence that the microcosm idea circulated widely in twelfth-century Europe, at the cathedral school of Chartres or, closer to home, in the writings of Hildegard of Bingen. We are also treated to sources from visual art, including the Noah Window of the Chartres Cathedral (fig. 8). The Pietists' theory of the soul supports Shyovitz's argument about their interest in...