>>> On July 22, 2019, the Metropolitan Museum of
Art at the Cloisters unveiled a small exhibition:
“The Colmar Treasure: a Medieval Jewish Legacy”.
The Met Cloisters is the branch of the museum
devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe.
>>> It’s my very strong feeling that the Cloisters
is the public face in the United States of the
medieval world. Our architecture makes it
pretty clear that we’re going to be talking about
castles and kings and monks because we're
somewhere between a monastery -- looking like
a monastery and looking like a castle.
>>> Colmar is a small town located in the north
France, not far from the German border. In 1863,
a small group of treasure was discovered inside a
hotel wall. The jewelry was dated back to the
13th and 14th century. It belonged to a
Jewish family, who never came to collect it.
>>> This particular treasure, it's been linked
always to the black death, right? And other exhibitions
have been called Treasures of the Black Death.
>>> The Colmar Treasure, from the Musée de Cluny,
Paris, is now displayed alongside select works
from the Met Cloisters and other organizations.
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The most significant piece of jewelry is a golden
Jewish ceremonial ring, which was only worn at
the wedding ceremony. The golden hexagon on the
ring represents the lost temple in Jerusalem,
the Hebrew letters on it spell “mazel tov”,
meaning “congratulations”. The belt was also for the
wedding ceremony.
Colmar’s record shows,
around the 1340s, there was a lively Jewish community
living side by side with its Christian neighbors
before the Black Death hit Europe. The plaque killed
30 to 60% of the population. Facing an unknown cause
of death, everyone panicked. The Church pointed the
finger at the Jewish community.
>>> What our records show, is that there probably was
a mass burning.
>>> In December 1348, a Jewish man, while being
tortured, falsely confessed to the poisoning of the towns
water supply. And in early 1349 the Jews of Colmar
were put to death, many were burned alive.
>>> And this wasn't just in Colmar. This occurred
in other cities along the Rhine in the same region and also
there are examples in Italy and there are examples in
Belgium of that same phenomenon occurring.
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>>> This prayer book from the Met Cloister shows
three elegant men on horseback, unexpectedly
encountering their own images in death.
The owner of the book, Bonne of Luxembourg, was the
sister of the Holy Roman Emperor, who died in 1349
of the Black Death plague.
>>> We included that to really emphasize how
pervasive the impact of the plague was.
>>> This black onyx ring was rare then.
This “Hands and Faith” pattern ring was probably for mourning.
A book written in Hebrew around 1290 asserts that
if a person wants to talk to his dead friend in
his dreams, he should put on an onyx ring.
>>> We have some coins right behind you there.
Those are the coins that were found with the treasure.
There are around three hundred of them.
Actually, at this time, the monetary circumstance
are still quite complex.
>>> Throughout history, Colmar has been a wine city.
Different types of coins were used for trade
with different regions.
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>>> Another object, which is surprising, is a little
tiny pen, which you would have used in combination
with an ivory plaque, like the one that you see,
from our collection,
and on the back, it’s blank. The surface is slightly
carved in so that it’s indented. They would have
put a thin layer of wax there and then you use the
silver tip to write notes. It’s kind of a junior high
meets texting in the 14th century.
The Jewish population, along the Rhineland,
some of them, quite a few of them, came into the
Rhineland in the early 14th century, when they were
kicked out of the kingdom of France, and they
became involved with the translation of romances,
romance stories from French into German.
>>> The inscriptions on this jewel box attest to
the cultural obsession with romantic notions.
>>> A long time, decades, we thought that this
treasure was the only evidence of the Jewish
community of Colmar. But quite recently a wonderful
scholar from France, she's been studying Christian
printed books, which on their inside pages, has,
as their end pages, bits and pieces of 14th century
Hebrew manuscript. Now, how does that happen?
After the Jewish community was killed, in Colmar,
their property remained and so their books passed
to the local religious institutions and they used
the end papers from those earlier Hebrew manuscripts
to form the end papers of their books and the
library in Colmar was kind enough to lend us this one,
which is the only one with a fully illuminated
page from the early 14th century.
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>>> For over 600 years the Colmar treasure was hidden
inside the walls and bearing witness to a once
lively Christian and Jewish community that
lived side by side. This exhibition reminds us of
the painful tragedy of the dark ages and the progress
we have made by showing this Jewish treasure at
the Met Cloisters today.
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