The word “Mahzor,” means “cycle" and is familiar to most Jews as the term used for the prayer book for the High Holidays and festivals. However, in medieval times, the term Mahzor was used to refer to prayer books that contained the complete cycle of prayers for the entire year.

The Mahzor Vitry is an 11th-century composition by Rabbi Simcha of Vitry (just south of Paris), a disciple of Rashi, which incorporates texts and directions pertaining to daily prayers, as well as prayers for the holidays and other special days on the Jewish calendar. It also includes liturgical poems, descriptions of messianic times, and legal sections on marriage, holidays, and ritual slaughter, among other topics. The work is the earliest comprehensive record of the practices of Jews in Ashkenaz (at the time, northern France and the Rhineland). 

This manuscript, completed in 1204 is the oldest, most complete surviving manuscript of this work. 

This page is one of the most telling in the entire manuscript. To begin with, it includes, written at the top using micrography (tiny Hebrew) but in very bold letters, the name of the scribe—Eliezer bar Shmuel.  

Below this, we see two primitively sketched scenes, a hunting party on the left and a pea-hen with her chick on the right. The hunting scene, which includes a knight on horseback, a man blowing a hunting horn, and another man about to kill a stag (in a non-kosher fashion!), is a clear expression of the comfort of the “artist” in medieval French culture.