Sefer Maharil ספר מהרי"ל
The customs and rulings of the Maharil, taken down after him by a student. From here nearly all of them passed into the Rema's glosses on the Shulchan Aruch.
A book its author did not write. Rabbi Zalman of St. Goar recorded his teacher for years: what he did, what he said, which custom he kept and why. Out of those notes the compendium was formed.
Hence its peculiarity: it is not arranged as a code but follows the round of the year and the occasions of life, and it contains much that a code does not take in—how exactly they sang, how they stood, what they did not do. And precisely that turned out to be needed: when the Rema wrote the Mapah, Ashkenazi custom had to be found somewhere in writing, and he found it here.
Printed in 1556, a hundred and twenty-nine years after the death of the man it is about.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Sefer Maharil — the compendium of customs itself, by the round of the year
Scholarship
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, "Moellin, Jacob ben Moses" — Zalman of St. Goar as the recorder; the 1556 printing; the passage of the customs to the Rema
Basis: documents and evidence.