La storia notturna di Scholem

In Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition, Gershom Scholem mentions an exorcism against Lilit ("an old charm against Lilit as striga") preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Michael 9 (Neubauer 1531), 79r. This article examines the contents of the Bodleian manuscript, which enables the reconstruction of various aspects of German Jewish Pietism during the 13th-14th centuries, including the employment of angelic cosmologies and apotropaic practices aimed at warding off demons. Secondly, the article focuses on the charm identified by Scholem to emphasize how Oxford Ms. Michael 9 provides a philological conjecture that can be traced back to the history of the Lilit myth, by giving a rare attestation, in Hebrew, of the term 'striga'. This tradition displays a significant reception history. In the eighteenth century, the Jewish convert Paolo Medici explicitly attests it once more, when he mentions (by making reference to the tradition handed down by the Ben Sira Alphabet) the typically Jewish observance of placing apotropaic formulas in the room of the puerpera.