Medieval Sensorium – Anthropologic Trajectory of Olfactory Experience

The olfactory sense, like all the senses, was constructed in medieval religious cultures, based on medical knowledge preserved and transferred from Greek antiquity, primarily the works of Galen and Aristotle.^{Footnote 2} What emerged was a mechanics of the inner economics of the sensual perception, “saturated sensorium”,^{Footnote 3} in which smell, among the other senses, was used to allure or repel a specific group of people based on the unique odor of the persons. More specifically, olfaction was part of a religious epistemology, where it functioned as a revelatory marker of belonging that situated the scented body in a hierarchy of odors: the aroma of sanctity and good deeds was contrasted with the stench of sin or the malodor of a demonic presence, which often disclosed the hidden qualities or misconduct of the soul, which emitted a scent.^{Footnote 4} Prior to being deemed ontologically pleasant or offensive, each smell penetrated the body and was expelled as a breath, vapor, or a bodily liquid, which could then be evaluated according to theological or medical knowledge. Such a gradation of olfactory experiences paved the way to a general abhorrence of sensing the by-products of bodily secretions, primarily feces, as will be seen in the Pietistic narrative discussed below.

In late antique Christianity, ancient Mediterranean olfactory codes were adapted to dovetail with both theological argumentation and previously advanced rites advising the use of fragrant oil, spices, and incense. The stench of a disintegrated corpse, in contrast with the heavenly fragrances of Paradise or of the Garden of Eden, provoked a cultural discomfort. The sweetness of pure sanctity contradicted the artificially generated seductive perfumes that adorned the foul soul, a variation on the ancient topos of the body as a sack of excrement. The putrid smell generally evoked an association with moral degeneration and evil. However, a certain dissonance in the hierarchy of smells and their valuation can be discerned in an example of the malodor of the ascetics, whose bodies reeked as a result of their intensive self-castigating practices and the severe illnesses brought on by such a lifestyle. Challenging for the sensual experience of the community was a transgressive incongruity between the stench exuded by the body of an ascetic over the course of his or her abstemious career and the fragrant aroma of Christ, although this paradox was alleviated by the emission of a sweet fragrance on the deathbed. This opaque distribution of scents arising from an extreme exercise of the monastic virtue of humility found its fullest expression in the hagiographical legends of Simeon the Stylite (d. 459).^{Footnote 5}

Anointing oil held a privileged place within the medieval sensorium, especially in Byzantine culture, where it was conceived as a means of communicating with the divine or emphasized the status of being chosen, since the savior-messiah was conceived as the “anointed one.” The holy oil, an odoriferous substance, habitually known as myron, was mixed with dust, pebbles, or bones to produce an apotropaic balm often encapsulated in amulets or small containers called encolpia. In this cultural landscape, the holy oil was recommended for use to exorcise a demon, as for instance in the sixth-century Life of Daniel the Stylite. In medieval Europe, a specific magical balm was called “witch ointment” since it might empower individuals of both sexes to cover great distances during nocturnal flights while endowing them with the supernal faculties of invisibility and invulnerability.^{Footnote 6}

Standards for commenting on the olfactory experience were established in rabbinic literature with a technical vocabulary that was linked to the incense offerings in the Temple, going back to the Hebrew Bible and the adoption of the metaphor of the female body as a fragrant garden of delights in the Song of Songs.^{Footnote 7} A foul odor appears as one of the crucial features attributed to the religious “other,” a “bad smell” (ba’ash, באש), assigned to one’s enemies.^{Footnote 8} Additionally, the Christian doctrine of incarnation was successively put into question, as for instance in the Toledot Yeshu literature or in the polemical Niṣaḥon ha-Yashan, in which Mary’s womb was described as having a bad smell.^{Footnote 9} Images of Jesus’s excretion during his mundane life sparked scatological controversies, both among Christian theologians and Jewish polemicists such as redactors of Niṣaḥon ha-Yashan.^{Footnote 10} Further, the belligerent foul stench purportedly exuded by Jewish bodies, infamously known as foetor Judaicus, was affiliated with both the planetary influence of Saturn and with leprosy. This was a theological weapon used against the Jewish minority in medieval Europe.^{Footnote 11}

Christian scholastic traditions developed against the backdrop of an Aristotelian division of the five senses. They viewed the common sense (sensus communis) as a principle which synthesized all the perceptual modalities often conflated with each other for fabricating a unified bodily sensation. In order to establish a synchronized sensory experience, both the data gathered via sensiblia propria (known also as sensiblia particularia—hence through the senses, for example olfaction or gustation), and that collected via sensiblia communia (“common sensibilities”—universal perceptual categories such as, for example, movement) were taken into consideration.^{Footnote 12} Transient senses, smell, taste and touch, collaborated with each other and were judged to be generally inferior to visual or aural perception. Thomas Aquinas placed the olfactory sense hierarchically below vision and hearing, as the perception of an odor required the internal processing of an object and its subsequent exhalation to perceive the scent.^{Footnote 13}

The Phenomenology of Smell and Religious Experience

The philosophical oeuvre of Maurice Merleau-Ponty explores vicissitudes of perception by viewing every human being as “perpetual sensorium commune”:^{Footnote 14} by giving prominence to the lived body, conceived of as a unique locus providing for the synthesis of the sensed, where the perceiver (an embodied subject) merges with the perceived object in an inter-sensory unity reaching beyond any reflective analysis and intellectualism. Assuming every sensation encapsulates within itself a “seed of dream or depersonalization,”^{Footnote 15} this French thinker compares all-pervading sensation to an experience of the sacrament of communion, operating not only on a symbolic plane as a spiritual gift of grace, but also by embracing the real presence of God made material in consecrated bread and wine destined for consumption.^{Footnote 16} By framing sensory perception as a communication, or even a communion, between the body and the world, he invigorated phenomenological approaches to the senses and sensuality: approaches which have often been examined against the backdrop of spirituality and aesthetics, including the olfactory experience as an expression of both time and sexuality.

In keeping with Cézanne’s locution, the “odor of the landscape”^{Footnote 17} can be configured by the sense of smell, even if the landscape is only painted on the canvas. In the medieval texts about she-demons or lilioth (analyzed below), the literal sense of what would otherwise seem to be the metaphoric use of a phrase will become evident. This can be grasped as a close parallel to Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts on communion, understood strictly as a palpable experience of the divine presence inherent to the act of consuming consecrated bread and wine. The sensation is replenished when each sensible thing links the perceiver to other sensible givens. This occurs in order to complete the perception of a thing entangled within a certain symbolism, a completion which remains unachievable: for instance, a patient seeing a devil even reports being able to see its sulfurous odor.^{Footnote 18} Both hallucinations and myths, as argued by Merleau-Ponty, are rooted in the same phenomenon of decomposition of space, a shrinkage in the space experienced as an abolition of distance between sentient subject and sensed object, causing a delirious or mythic experience of oneness between human beings and their world.^{Footnote 19} A similar disintegration of space via its initial subdivision into domains of mortals, demons, angels, and God, will be apparent in the story of mortal trespassers defecating on roads destined for lilioth and anointed nocturnal travelers invisible to demonic eyes.

Before embarking on the lilioth-episode, it is worth mentioning two monographs pertinent to the topic of olfactory experience which provide diverse methodological frameworks for a scholar of senses and sensuality. While in Tasten, Riechen, Schmecken: Eine Ästhetik der anästhesierten Sinne (2005) Mădălina Diaconu implements findings from the phenomenology of perception and focuses her investigation on the aesthetic qualities attributed to olfactory and gustatory systems chiefly in the French and German cultures, ^{Footnote 20} Abraham Ofir Shemesh’s The Fragrance of Paradise: Scents, Perfumes and Incense in Jewish Tradition (2017) offers a lengthy study on the sense of smell in Jewish sources. ^{Footnote 21} Shemesh places special emphasis on religious literature, while dedicating substantially less space to the examination of mystical sources, kabbalistic literature, and magical practices in which diverse scents and perfumes are discussed or recommended. Some references are made to the writings of the German Pietists, particularly Sefer Ḥasidim and Sefer ha-Roqeaḥ, as well as Sefer Gematriot. In this article, my intention is to consolidate the phenomenological approach with the textual one, so as to examine the medieval text through the lens of the phenomenology of olfactory experience, while bearing in mind hallucinatory impressions garbed in a fairy-tale aesthetics elicited by this source.

Furthermore, I wish to stress two aspects examined in Shemesh’s monograph as particularly relevant for purposes of the present study. The first is the concept of a foul or evil odor, which could be emitted by either a plant or the body of an evildoer. In one such case, a malodorous herb was automatically excluded from a ritual action, as illustrated in Sefer Ḥasidim in the example of fetid pine-splinters, which could not be used as ritual spices (besamim) in the havdalah ceremony.^{Footnote 22} In another story encapsulated in this collection, the stench of the corpse of a sinner could be discerned by a pietist.^{Footnote 23} This cemetery episode displays basic imagery found in the works of the German Pietists: good and evil are considered on the ontological level, and the distinction between the two becomes perceptible through various senses in the daily lives of a devout community set within a non-Jewish environment and beset by internal transgressors. The second element appears as an interplay of scent and demonic possession. In Sefer Gematriot, an incense of galbanum is suggested as a remedy for possession by a malicious spirit.^{Footnote 24} This recipe demonstrates that demons were considered to have a specific scent and a sense of smell.

Do Lilioth Have a Sense of Smell? Olfactory Sense in The Book of the Divine Name

Although mystical experience was often considered for its visionary characteristics, the sense of smell along with the gustatory sense played a significant role in the construction of spiritual experiences.^{Footnote 25} It can also be said that contact with the divine was described as a synesthetic process, a feast for all the senses.^{Footnote 26} In the discursive accounts, metaphors related to the senses appear as the most common form of expression in conveying mystical experiences. Furthermore, in magical practices, such as the elaborate recipe to cure various ailments, the senses, which were classified by the scientists and philosophers as primitive, emerged as relatively more dominant.

The participation of gustatory and olfactory senses in medieval Christian culture was reflected in accounts on myroblytes, sweet-smelling holy women (female ascetics), whose bodies discharged a Holy Myron-like scented liquid, despite their ascetic practices regarding the consumption of food that often provoked a certain bodily stench.^{Footnote 27} A parallel with the aroma of sanctity associated with eucharistic piety can be found in the fragrance of the apple field, understood to be a name for the divine presence, Shekhinah, in the zoharic literature. The pleasant smell of Shekhinah, designated as the Holy Apple Orchard, perceived by Isaac, persuaded him to bless Jacob, whose clothing emitted a supernatural aroma.^{Footnote 28}

Curiously enough, in the esoteric teachings of the German Pietists, the olfactory experience gained ground, not primarily in the context of ascetic practices or sacred rituals, but above all, in the magical and demonological frame of reference. In Sefer ha-Shem, the “Book of the Divine Name,” which is the most esoteric and rich work composed by Eleazar of Worms, the main composer of pietist texts, night she-demons, lilioth, possess the sense of smell.^{Footnote 29} The relevant passage appears in various textual versions across the manuscripts of the German Pietist writings and so will be presented in a synoptic edition in the appendix to this article. At this juncture I will discuss the version preserved in Ms. Munich, the Bavarian State Library, Hebr. 43, fol. 215a:

These female demons can smell two types of scent through their olfactory perception: the pleasant fragrance given off by the male body as well as the foul odor of excrement [טנופת אדם]. The third kind of scent discussed is a miraculous ointment applied as a flying balm by mortals of both sexes. The employment of an analogous magical flying salve enabling nocturnal travels was attested in Latin sources contemporary to Sefer ha-Shem. The most pertinent description of such a phenomenon, named in Latin cursus, was offered by theologian and scholastic Roland of Cremona (d. 1259) in his Summa, ergo Roland’s observations might have resonated magical recipes for invisibility and invulnerability gathered in the compendium entitled Liber vaccae, “the Book of the Cow.” In accordance with his testimony, individuals of both sexes confessed to have smeared their own bodies with a certain ointment, a procedure which permitted them to fly and copulate with each other as well as with beasts.^{Footnote 31}

In contrast to this presumably fragrant aroma of an ointment at least operating as a pheromone to attract other nocturnal travelers and unnamed creatures, feces represent the by-products of metabolism secreted by the human body. A particular attractiveness of the scent of a man for lilioth bears a certain sexual connotation, established on the basis of their olfactory perception: The she-demons found the odor of human flesh to be especially charming to their own “noses.” Therefore, the smell of the male body operates here as a pheromone, for the desires of the flesh are translated into an olfactory experience best expressed in its signature bodily scent, which can occasionally be perceived even in the absence of the odoriferous body, thus as a phantomatic fragrance. This interrelation between sexual energy, eroticism, and senses, chiefly the olfactory sense, is suggested in Merleau-Ponty’s pertinent remark: “Sexuality emanates like an odor or a sound from the bodily region that it occupies most specifically.”^{Footnote 32} This interpretative approach can be reinforced by other sources that surface in the references to lilioth. In another major work of the German Pietists, Sefer ha-Kavod, “Book of the Divine Glory,” the topic of the lilioth is addressed in the framework of punishment for having a carnal relationship with one of them. On the fol. 135a of the Ms. Oxford, The Bodleian Library, 1567 (Opp. 540), we read the following comment:

This fragment indicates that lilioth intended that carnal relationships between them and male mortals be kept secret. There is a certain fear discernible among the she-demons, who decide to kill the fruit of their intercourse with humans in order to cloud the issue. The same economy of vulnerabilities is exposed in an excerpt from The Book of the Divine Name dedicated to the olfactory experience of lilioth. A man who left his house to go on a journey is exposed to danger as the lilioth can smell fluids secreted by his body or his excrement. His humanity makes him vulnerable when facing the demonic forces. Furthermore, he might have been contaminated with feces according to the ways of lilioth, hence entering the territory of demonic influences. Such a crossing of the borders between species can result in the soul of a mortal conceiving offspring from its relation to the demonesses, as displayed in The Book of the Divine Name. As hazardous for the pietistic community, the child of half-human and half-demonic provenance must be killed by the lilioth, thus fulfilling their traditional role of cold-blooded baby-slaughterers.^{Footnote 34} This act would protect the female demons from the hunt against them, as the killing of the baby destroys the evidence of their deeds and thus reduces the tension between demonic and human areas of activity.

The textual traditions of the German Pietists appear in various formulations, from the works attributed to Judah the Pious, some of them based on texts possibly composed by him, to the works of Eleazar of Worms, based on oral teachings he apparently received from R. Judah. The early fourteenth-century Ashkenazi Kabbalist, R. Menaḥem Ṣiyyoni, drew from the pietistic heritage while offering the following summation of demons and lilioth in his commentary on the Torah, which echoes the passages presented above:

This passage offers a synthesis of German Pietist traditions, detailing the rules by which demons and lilioth operate, especially when they cross paths with humans who leave a scent from intercourse or do not conceal the smell of excrement left on the road. Ṣiyyoni’s passage touches upon the subconscious attack of lilioth in the thoughts or dreams of humans as well as the actual attack of lilioth during travel. He further articulates part of their anthropology, that lilioth can mate with humans and that hybrid forms are produced who become kings or princes amongst the demonic forces. The inverse is also true, that some humans have a demonic side and are inherently half-demonic, blurring the boundaries between the two species. Members of this third species were categorized as users of the flying balm, however, with one restriction: they were compelled to return to their mortal condition before dawn in order to avoid competing in flight with the winged demons, such as lilioth were imagined to be.

It is clear that, from the early German Pietists and onward through Ṣiyyoni’s writing, contemporary folklore from the Christian surroundings was a constituent part of their traditions, as the Ashkenazi esotericists were part of the surrounding culture. And so, the hazards arising from intimate contacts between demons and mortals were most frequently addressed both by the German Pietists and by Christian writers in the thirteenth century in the geographic area of Middle Europe, designated in Jewish sources as Ashkenaz.^{Footnote 37}

While the lilioth became impregnated by their mortal lovers, Christian demonology preserved the concept of demonic manipulations of human seed that resulted from nocturnal emissions. The malignant spirits were accused of creating their own mortal bodies by using the wasted sperm to inseminate the women.^{Footnote 38} As for the German Pietists, the most perilous possibility was engendering an impure cross-offspring, demonic beings with human traits. Regarding such offspring as a threat to the boundaries of the pietistic community, Christian clergy regarded the potential for demon-human liaisons as a danger to the virginity of innocent girls and a temptation to break the vow of celibacy imposed upon monks and nuns. Therefore, they interpreted such intercourse though the lens of the dogmas of the Christian faith. Interestingly, the preacher and contemporary of Judah the Pious of Regensburg, Caesarius of Heisterbach, compiler of Dialogus miraculorum (written between 1219 and 1223) showed a predilection to discuss at length evil intrusions into both the secular and cleric domains, especially carnal knowledge of the demonic and human.^{Footnote 39} He was convinced that the demons were incapable of entering the soul (anima) of mortals, thus their intellect.^{Footnote 40} According to Caesarius, the malevolent spirits occupy the human body (rather than the soul, which was viewed as a locus of the dwelling of the Holy Spirit), entering it through its natural cavities and entrails, which might contain the excreta (in concavitatibus eius et in invisceribus ubi stercora continentur).^{Footnote 41} The story of a virgin who was persecuted by a male demon for refusing to marry him illustrates a specific affinity of malignant spirits towards bodily waste, which often bordered on coprophilia. The demonic predator insisted on contaminating her meal by putting some filth on her plate and, while she was eating, scattered excrement (stercora) and “broken pots full of dirt” in her domicile.^{Footnote 42} If the excreta in this example provided by Caesarius might be identified as pars pro toto of evil temptation, another attempt to weaken the steadfast abnegation of marriage in order to remain in the preferable condition of virginity, in the Jewish narrative, it is precisely the human odor that attracted the lilioth to seek interaction with the male mortals who discharged it. In the shared cultural landscape of medieval Germany, it is possible to decipher the image of lilioth as a demonized incarnation of Christian women who might have been found desirable by Jewish men, thus possessing a certain magnetism that would ruin the intercommunal boundaries. On the other hand, in Christian narratives, the Jewish male turned into an incubus fornicating with the Christian virgin and impregnating the deflowered girl.^{Footnote 43}

The Smell of Evil, the Smell of Disgust

The citation presented above from The Book of the Divine Name concerning the ability of lilioth to smell their prey was founded upon the opposition of pleasant and foul scents. While the scent of anointment was considered a fragrance and a ritual sort of perfume, the discharges of the human body emitted a malodor. A question that arises from a reading of the passage above may be formulated as follows: Do malevolent spirits find mortal excrement to be an amiable aroma? The question could also be reversed: Do the demons have a foul odor to humans?

If assuming that several pejorative features are attributed to each phenomenon associated with evil, then the answer is yes, the demons have an unpleasant smell. This hypothesis is confirmed already in the sources preceding the period in which the medieval German Pietists were active. The pseudepigraphic text, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, which emerged in the Hellenistic period and dates back to the late second century BCE, encapsulates the distinction between good and evil spirits, and the first class is defined as anti-sexual in nature. The spirit of smell was listed as one of the spirits bestowed to humankind in the act of creation. Many of the spirits responsible for human faults and the arousal of carnal desire are described as linked to the group of these primordial, instinctive spirits.^{Footnote 44}

Genesis Rabbah, one of earliest Midrashic collections on Genesis, introduced a misogynist view of the scent emitted from the female body. According to the first account of the creation of human beings, Adam was created from earth, material that never rots, in contrast to Eve, who was fashioned from his rib. The bone, without salt after three days, starts to give off a malodor, as testified in this source.^{Footnote 45} The association of the female body with the source of dirt and foul smell gained popularity in Jewish, Pagan, and Christian writings in late antiquity, whereas this tendency continued to be predominant in the medieval period.^{Footnote 46} In chapter forty-two of Genesis Rabbah, an unpleasant scent was said to be emitted from the mouth of Rabbi Eliezer, the smell antagonistic to the fragrance emerging from Torah learning.^{Footnote 47} That is, the smell was first deemed as pleasant or foul based on its use and location. If connected explicitly with holiness, even if unfragrant, the scent would become a perfume. In another midrash, Seder Rabbah de-Bereshit, the angels were reported to bathe themselves in fire before they would praise the Holy One with their song. Their ritual ablution helps to counterbalance the smell of human beings, impure women with all their bodily discharges, which reaches the angels in the heavenly place.^{Footnote 48} This theme returns in the Hekhalot literature, where the angels reject the scent of a male human, impeding his ascent on high.^{Footnote 49}

To neutralize the place of filth on which the human being is standing, the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 94a and Megillah 3a) recommends the recitation of verses of the Torah together with the additional formula, “The goat of the slaughterhouse is fatter than I,” so that the demon will harm the goat instead of the human. The stench of the cesspool already caused spiritual torment for the sectarians of Qumran, so that they would build toilet facilities properly distanced from the cult location in their permanent settlements. They were advised, in accordance with the instructions included in the Temple Scroll, to bury the excrement in a covered pit outside the camp.^{Footnote 50} The disgust associated with fecal matter was shared by the German Pietists in medieval Ashkenaz, who even considered contact with a child or stepping in excrement during a walk to the synagogue as an event that defiled them.^{Footnote 51} Impurity caused by defecation or urination might have elicited the stench of the body of each member of the pious community as explicitly articulated in the pietistic manual, Sefer Ḥasidim.^{Footnote 52} Although imposing more stringent norms of purity than those found in rabbinic sources and commanding the burial of excreta in order to neutralize a source of potential contamination, the Pietists believed in a panentheistic God, whose immanence was absolute, even in feces.^{Footnote 53} The mode of treatment of excrement depicted in the writings of the German Pietists affords the following conclusion: that bodily waste was perceived as emitting a stench and could serve as an indicator of the presence of lilioth for whom the malodor of the feces preceded the expected aroma of a male body. Thus, for these she-demons, the anticipated pleasure of carnal intercourse with a human trespasser made even the stench discharged by his excrement less repugnant, or, rather, the lilioth failed to classify this odor as an unpleasant smell due to their own demonic reek.^{Footnote 54}

Scent in Folklore – The Sense of Smell in Fairy Tales

The theme of detecting the smell of humans in medieval German Pietism is closely tied to their environment dominated by Christian models of narration. In several accounts included in his Dialogus miraculorum, Caesarius of Heisterbach referred to olfactory experience as a sign of either the most precious quality, communication with the divine and its presence, or a demonic intrusion. Sweet scent, generally associated by Christians with the aroma of virginity and particularly with the Virgin Mary, was reported to come out of the tomb of Marcadellus, a pious man who was unjustly executed,^{Footnote 55} while a sweet-smelling myrrh-like odor also wafted from the hands of a virtuous monk.^{Footnote 56} Moreover, evoking Christ’s nostrils, Caesarius credits the prophets with the ability to smell the future.^{Footnote 57} Malodors unveiled the presence of malignant spirits, as in the story of the novice Theobald, who after drinking dirty evil-smelling water, became the subject of the devil’s attacks.^{Footnote 58} According to Caesarius, the stench suggests a certain temptation, as in the case of the filth that the demon put on the dish of the girl or in the example of the wife of Henry Wied, the duchess of Saxony, who plunged into the murky stinking water of a local pond, thus breaking her husband’s command not to immerse herself in this polluted body of water.^{Footnote 59} The marvelous character of the episodes contained in Dialogus harmonizes well with the content of both the stories recounted in the name of Judah the Pious and the popular fairy tales representing the same genre of magical narratives anchored originally in oral traditions and phenomenologically situated in the same register of magical thinking.

One among them, “Little Red Riding Hood,” officially penned for the first time by Charles Perrault in 1697 under the title “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge,” gave special significance to the sense of smell.^{Footnote 60} The Brothers Grimm presented a variation on this tale, expanding it with Red Riding Hood’s encounter with a second wolf. This time, Little Red Riding Hood cooperated with the grandmother, so that together they filled a trough with the water in which sausages had been cooked. The smell of sausages attracted the wolf, causing him to fall into the trap.^{Footnote 61} The fairy tale exposes the working of the olfactory sense. If activated, it is able to localize the source of potential pleasure, thereby operating “as taste at a distance,” as observed by Kant.^{Footnote 62} The same type of pleasure experienced by the wolf, the desire to devour, thus gaining carnal knowledge of a human, was sought by the lilioth in other narratives. In keeping with the common imagery regarding these she-demons, whose vampiric characteristics found their confirmation in the writings of the German Pietists, the nutritive scent of human bodies motivated the lilioth to organize an orgiastic degustation of the blood of mortals. At this point, sexual desire encounters the cannibalistic and coprophagic in localizing the human not only as an erotic toy, but also a feast for the palate and the nose, too.

The scent of the human body also lured a giant, or, alternatively, an ogre, portrayed in the British tale “Jack and the Giants,” the most prominent among the cycle of Jack stories, published for the first time at the beginning of the eighteenth century.^{Footnote 63} As demonstrated in recent scholarship, motifs known from the Arthurian legends were incorporated into this “fairy tale,” a fact that places the roots of the story in question.^{Footnote 64} The two-headed giant utters the tale in a memorable couplet: “Fee-fi-fo-fum, / I smell the blood of an Englishman, / Be he alive, or be he dead / I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.”^{Footnote 65} A version of the spell “Fie, foh, and fum,” enlarged with the phrase “I smell the blood of a British man,” had already appeared in Shakespeare’s drama King Lear.^{Footnote 66} The giant from the fairy tale “Jack and the Giants,” with his thirst for human blood, can be classified as a cousin of lilioth, the vampiric she-demons inhabiting the imagery of the German Medieval Pietists. Again, the sense of smell enabled the giant to locate Jack, his potential victim and meal.

Appendix: The Sense of Smell amongst Lilioth—Variant Readings from Manuscript Witnesses to The Book of the Divine Name

In the above analysis and interpretation of the fragment from The Book of the Divine Name (Sefer ha-Shem) I have presented the version preserved in Ms. London, The British Library, Add. 27199, accompanied by my translation. It is an earlier variant of the passage on lilioth who are gifted with the olfactory sense, which I have identified in the manuscripts investigated. Ms. London, Add. 27199 was written on paper largely in Ashkenazi semi-cursive script. It was copied by Elias Levita,^{Footnote 68} the distinguished grammarian and lexicographer, at the request of Cardinal Aegidio de Viterbo.^{Footnote 69} In the table below, I have juxtaposed the reading from Ms. London, Add. 27199 with that of Ms. Munich, The Bavarian State Library 81, which is another copy of the esoteric anthology, Sode Razayya, attributed to Eleazar of Worms, the major disciple of Judah the Pious and the most prolific author amidst the medieval German Pietists. Furthermore, Ms. Munich 81, copied in Ashkenazi script, was written in 1555 by the scribe Moshe Gad ben Tuvia from the Jewish community in Cracow (Lesser Poland) on request of the Christian hebraist Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter.^{Footnote 70} When comparing two textual variants of the lilioth episode in Ms. London, Add. 27199 and Ms. Munich 81, one can conclude, that Ms. London, copy in 1515, served as a template for the production of Ms. Munich 81.

Several fragments from The Book of the Divine Name, including the lilioth passage interpreted above, were copied in another Munich manuscript, namely Ms. Munich, The Bavarian State Library 43. In line with Steinschneider’s findings, Ms. Munich 43 was written in Ashkenazi script, presumably in the sixteenth century and contains both philosophical as well as esoteric texts: Sefer ha-Yesodot by Isaac Israeli, some writings of Maimonides, Sefer ha-Mispar by Ibn Ezra, Abraham Abulafia’s Sefer ha-Yashar, Shiʻur Qomah, portions from Sode Razayya reflecting the Divine Names,^{Footnote 71} the problem of the emanation of the Glory [kavod] and the image of the Heavenly Throne, Asher ben David’s Sefer ha-Yiḥud, Abraham ben Shem Tov Bilbago’s Derekh Emunah. The esoteric miscellanea from Sode Razayya were preceded by the prophetic work of Abraham Abulafia, Sefer ha-Edut, whereas the portion presented in the table below can be considered as the version of The Book of the Divine Name (Sefer ha-Shem).

In the edition of the lilioth episode presented below, I have included a later variant of this story from Ms. Oxford, Michael 385, completed in 1710.^{Footnote 72} This manuscript also reflects traditions transmitted in the name of Isaac Luria Ashkenazi (the Ari) who died in 1572. For comparison’s sake I have included the version printed in Eisenbach’s recent edition of Sode Razayya.