Liturgical minhagim books: The increasing reliance on written texts in late medieval Ashkenaz

The Hildik, Klausner and Tyrnau liturgical minhagim books, produced in the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, demonstrate that medieval Ashkenaz was moving toward a greater reliance on written texts. During this period, there was a proliferation of ritual guides, including works that were accessible to educated people who were not rabbinic scholars. Thus, a growing, albeit still small, segment of Ashkenazic society was using written works, rather than oral traditions, as sources of practical guidance. Liturgical minhagim books, handbooks that focus on liturgical practice, are particularly user-friendly due to their brevity and practical orientation. This genre was an outgrowth of the first known Ashkenazic written liturgical guides, late eleventh and twelfth-century scholarly mahzorim, particularly Mahzor Vitry.;A comparison of three interrelated minhagim books produced during a two-century span demonstrates the effects of this greater abundance of practical guides. The authority of the written word increased and ritual practice became somewhat more standardized. Although, like the greater availability of accessible genres, these developments are generally attributed to the advent of print, they began to emerge in the late medieval period.;The proliferation of written sources of ritual guidance in medieval Ashkenaz paralleled the growing reliance on written documents in medieval Western Europe as a whole. Improvements in manuscript technology, including the use of paper, lowered book production costs. In Christian Europe, as in Ashkenaz, new more popular genres were composed.;The production of liturgical minhagim books is also related to the communal upheavals in late medieval German Jewish society. Minhagim books, sources of regional custom, provided guidance when enormous settlement growth in the thirteenth and early fourteenth century, followed by expulsions in the post-Black Plague period, disrupted the transmission of local customs.;Klausner's minhagim, a composite work, exemplifies the medieval practice of adapting older works to changing norms while maintaining a semblance of continuity with the past. The particular fluidity of Ashkenazic texts was related to the view of halakhic tradition as open-ended and the emphasis on communal custom. Thus, although the inscription of customs led to a degree of standardization, some of the flexibility of the oral past was retained.