gave rise, was to
Bachya an exceeding joy. His book thrills the reader with the author's
own chastened enthusiasm. The "Heart Duties" of Bachya is the most
inspired book written by a Jew in the Middle Ages.

In part worthy of a place by the side of Bachya's treatise is an ethical
book written in the Rhinelands during the thirteenth century. "The Book
of the Pious" (_Sefer ha-Chassidim_) is mystical, and in course of time
superstitious elements were interpolated. Wrongly attributed to a single
writer, Judah Chassid, the "Book of the Pious" was really the combined
product of the Jewish spirit in the thirteenth century. It is a
conglomerate of the sublime and the trivial, the purely ethical with the
ceremonial. With this popular and remarkable book may be associated
other conglomerates of the ritual, the ethical, and the mystical, as the
_Rokeach_ by Eleazar of Worms.

A simpler but equally popular work was Yedaiah Bedaressi's "Examination
of the World" (_Bechinath Olam_), written in about the year 1310. Its
style is florid but poetical, and the many quaint turns which it gives
to quotations from the Bible remind the reader of Ibn Gebirol. Its
earnest appeal to man to aim at the higher life, its easily
intelligible and commonplace morals, endeared it to the "general reader"
of the Middle Ages. Few books have been more often printed, few more
often translated.

Another favorite class of ethical books consisted of compilations made
direct from the Talmud and the Midrash. The oldest and most prized of
these was Isaac Aboab's "Lamp of Light" (_Menorath ha-Maor_). It was an
admirably written book, clearly arranged, and full to the brim of
ethical gems. Aboab's work was written between 1310 and 1320. It is
arranged according to subjects, differing in this respect from another
very popular compilation, Jacob Ibn Chabib's "Eye of Jacob" (_En
Yaakob_), which was completed in the sixteenth century. In this, the
Hagadic passages of the Talmud are extracted without arrangement, the
order of the Talmud itself being retained. The "Eye of Jacob" was an
extremely popular work.

Of the purely devotional literature of Judaism, it is impossible to
speak here. One other ethical book must be here noticed, for it has
attained wide and deserved popularity. This is the "Path of the Upright"
(_Messilath Yesharim_) by Moses Chayim Luzzatto, of whom more will be
said in a later chapter. But a little more space must be here devoted to
a species