History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Volume 1 [of 3]: From the Beginning until the Death of Alexander I (1825)Dubnow, Simon
History
History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Volume 1 [of 3]: From the Beginning until the Death of Alexander I (1825)
Dubnow, Simon
Jews -- Poland -- History; Jews -- Russia -- History; Poland -- History; Russia -- History
These prohibitions are followed by the ancient canonical enactments
forbidding the Jews to keep Christian servants, nursery-maids, and
wet-nurses, and barring them from collecting customs duties and
exercising any other public function. A Jew living unlawfully with a
Christian woman is liable to imprisonment and fine, while the woman is
subject to a public whipping and to banishment from the town for all
time.
The Church Council which held its sessions in Buda (Ofen), in Hungary,
in 1279, was attended by the highest ecclesiastic dignitaries of Poland.
This Council ratified the clause concerning the "Jewish sign,"
supplementing it by the following details: The Jews of both sexes shall
be obliged to wear a ring of red cloth sewed on to their upper garment,
on the left side of the chest. The Jew appearing on the street without
this sign shall be accounted a vagrant, and no Christian shall have the
right to do business with him. A similar sign, only of saffron color, is
prescribed for "Saracens and Ishmaelites," _i. e._ for Mohammedans. The
law barring Jews from the collection of customs and the discharge of
other public functions is extended by the Synod of Buda to the
"sectarians," to the Christians of the Greek Orthodox persuasion.
In this manner the condition of the Jews of Poland in the thirteenth
century was determined by two factors operating in different directions:
the temporal powers, actuated by economic considerations, accorded the
Jews the elementary rights of citizenship, while the ecclesiastic
powers, prompted by religious intolerance, endeavored to exclude the
Jews from civil life. As long as patriarchal conditions of life
prevailed, and Catholicism in Poland had not yet assumed complete
control over the country, the policy of the Church was powerless to
inflict serious damage upon the Jews. They lived in safety, under the
protection of the Polish princes, and, except for the German immigrants,
managed to get along peaceably with the Christian population. But the
clerical party was looking out for the future, taking assiduous care
that "the new plantation on the soil of Christianity" should develop
along the lines of the older plantations, and was scattering the seeds
of religious hatred in the patient expectation of a plentiful harvest.
3. RISE OF POLISH JEWRY UNDER CASIMIR THE GREAT
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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