‘Maimonides Revised: The Case of the “Sefer Miswot Gadol”'

The Sefer Miṣwot Gadol (The Great Book of the Commandments) of R. Moses b. Jacob of Coucy (mid-thirteenth century), is one of the central works of halakhic codification stemming from Franco-German (Ashkenazic) Jewry in the High Middle Ages. It has long had a reputation for being one of the classic compilations of the tosafist age, a period of efflorescence of talmudic scholarship which spanned the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Its influence both as a legal source and schoolbook was wide-ranging, as the large number of extant manuscripts of the work, as well as the intensive work of annotation and commentary that it inspired, bear witness.