History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Volume 1 [of 3] / From the Beginning until the Death of Alexander I (1825)

The Jews owning houses in the Christian quarter shall be compelled to sell them within the shortest term possible.

Further injunctions prescribe that the Jews shall lock themselves up in their houses while church processions are marching through the streets; that in each city they shall possess no more than one synagogue; that, "in order to be marked off from the Christians," they shall wear a peculiarly shaped hat, with a horn-like shield (cornutum pileum), and that any Jew showing himself on the street without this headgear shall be subject to punishment, in accordance with the custom of the country.

The Christians are forbidden, under penalty of excommunication, to invite Jews to a meal, or to eat and drink with them, or dance and make merry with them at weddings and other celebrations. The Christians are barred from buying meat and other eatables from Jews, since the sellers might treacherously put poison in them.

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

The Jewish emigration from Western Europe assumed especially large proportions in the first part of the fourteenth century. The butcheries perpetrated by the hordes of Rindfleisch and Armleder, and the massacres accompanying the Black Death, forced a large number of German Jews to seek shelter in Poland, which was then undergoing the process of unification and rejuvenation. In 1319, King Vladislav[28] Lokietek[29] laid the foundation for the political unity of Poland by abolishing the former feudal divisions, and his famous son Casimir the Great (1333-1370) was indefatigable in his endeavors to raise the level of civil and economic life in his united realm. Casimir the Great founded new cities and fortified old ones, promoted commerce and industry, and protected, with equal solicitude, the interests of all classes, not excluding those of the peasants. He was styled the "peasant king," and the popular commendation of his efforts in the upbuilding of the cities was crystallized in the saying that Casimir the Great "found a Poland of wood and left behind him a Poland of stone."

A ruler of this type could not but welcome the useful industrial activity of the Jews with the liveliest satisfaction. He was anxious to bring them in close contact with the Christian population on the common ground of peaceful labor and mutual helpfulness. He was equally quick to appreciate the advantages which the none too flourishing royal exchequer might derive from the experience of Jewish capitalists. Such must have been the motives which actuated Casimir when, in the second year of his reign (1344), he ratified, in Cracow, the charter which Boleslav of Kalish had granted to the Jews of Great Poland, and which he now extended in its operation to all the provinces of the kingdom.

On later occasions (1346-1370) Casimir amplified the charter of Boleslav by adding new enactments. In view of the hostility of the municipalities and the clergy towards the Jews, the King found it necessary to insist in particular on placing Jewish legal cases under his own jurisdiction, and taking them out of the hands of the municipal and ecclesiastic authorities. The Jews were granted the following privileges: the right of free transit through the whole country, of residing in the cities, towns, and villages, of renting and mortgaging the estates of the nobility, and lending money at a fixed rate of interest, the last pursuit being closed to Christians by virtue of canonical restrictions, and therefore left entirely in the hands of the Jews. The Polish lawgiver was equally solicitous about enforcing respect for the Jew as a human being and drawing him nearer to the Christian in private life, in violent contradiction with the tendency of the Church to isolate the infidels from the "flock of the faithful." "If the Jew," runs one of the clauses of Casimir's charter, "enters the house of a Christian, no one has a right to cause him any injury or unpleasantness. Every Jew is allowed to visit the municipal baths in safety, in the same way as the Christians,[30] and pay the same fee as the Christians."

Casimir was equally interested in ordering the inner life of the Jews. The "Jewish judge," a Christian official appointed by the king to try Jewish cases, was enjoined to dispense justice in the synagogue or some other place, in accordance with the wishes of the representatives of the Jewish community. The rôle of process-server was assigned to the "schoolman," i. e. the synagogue beadle. This was the germ of the future system of Kahal autonomy.

It seems that in the fateful year of the Black Death (1348-1349) the Polish Jews too were in great danger. On the wings of the plague, which penetrated from Germany to Poland, came the hideous rumor charging the Jews with having poisoned the wells. If we are to trust the testimony of an Italian chronicler, Matteo Villani, some ten thousand Jews in the Polish cities bordering on Germany met their fate in 1348 at the hands of Christian mobs, even the King being powerless to shield the unfortunates against the fury of the people. A vague account in an old Polish chronicle relates that in the year 1349 the Jews were exterminated "in nearly the whole of Poland." It is possible that attacks on the Jews took place in the border towns, but, judging by the fact that the Jewish chroniclers, in describing the ravages of the Black Death, make no mention of Poland, these attacks cannot have been extensive. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt that, threatened with massacres in Germany, large numbers of Jews fled to the neighboring towns of Poland, and subsequently settled there.

It may be mentioned in this connection that from about the same time dates the origin of the Jewish community of Lvov (Lemberg),[31] the capital of Red Russia, or Galicia, which had been added to his dominions by Casimir the Great.[32] In 1356 Casimir, in granting the Magdeburg Law to the city of Lemberg, bestowed upon the local Jews the right "of being judged according to their own laws," i. e. autonomy in their communal affairs, a privilege accorded at the same time to the Ruthenians, Armenians, and Tatars.

Casimir the Great's attitude towards the Jews was thus a part of his general policy with reference to foreign settlers, whom he believed to be useful for the development of the country. This, however, did not prevent certain evil-minded persons, both then and in later ages, from seeing in these acts of rational statesmanship the manifestation of the King's personal predilections and attachments. Rumor had it that Casimir was favorably disposed towards the Jews because of his infatuation with the beautiful Jewess Estherka. This Jewish belle, the daughter of a tailor, is supposed to have captured the heart of the King so completely that in 1356 he abandoned a former favorite for her sake. Estherka lived in the royal palace of Lobzovo, near Cracow. She bore the King two daughters, who were brought up by their mother in the Jewish religion, and two sons, who were educated as Christians, and who subsequently became the progenitors of several noble families. Estherka was killed during the persecution to which the Jews were subjected by Casimir's successor, Louis of Hungary. The whole romantic episode presents a mixture of fact and fiction in which it is difficult to make out the truth.

Similarly blurred reports have come down to us concerning the persecutions by the new ruler, Louis of Hungary (1370-1382). During the reign of this King, when, as the Polish historians put it, justice had vanished, the law kept silent, and the people complained bitterly about the despotism of the judges and officials, an attempt was made to rob the Jews of the protection of the law. Nursed as he was in the Catholic traditions of Western Europe, Louis persecuted the Jews from religious motives, threatening with expulsion those among them who had refused to embrace the Christian faith. Fortunately for the Jews his reign in Poland was too ephemeral and unpopular to undo the work of his famous predecessor, the last king of the Piast dynasty. Only at a later date, during the protracted reign of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Yaghello, who acquired the Polish crown by marrying, in 1386, Louis' daughter Yadviga, did the Church obtain power over the affairs of the state, gradually undermining the civil status of the Jews of Poland.

4. Polish Jewry During the Reign of Yaghello

With the outgoing fourteenth century, Poland was drawn more and more into the whirlpool of European politics. Catholicism served as the connecting link between this Slav country and Western Europe. Hence the influence of the West manifested itself primarily in the enhancement of ecclesiastic authority, which, being cosmopolitan in character, endeavored to obliterate all national and cultural distinctions. The Polish king Vladislav Yaghello (1386-1434), having been converted from paganism to Catholicism, and having forced his Lithuanian subjects to follow his example, adhered to the new faith with the ardor of a convert, and frequently yielded to the influence of the clergy. It was during his reign that the Jews of Poland suffered their first religious persecution in that country.

The Jews of Posen were charged with having bribed a poor Christian woman into stealing from the local Dominican church three hosts, which supposedly were stabbed and thrown into a pit. From the pierced hosts, so the superstitious rumor had it, blood spurted forth, in confirmation of the Eucharist dogma. Nor was this the only miracle which popular imagination ascribed to the three bits of holy bread. The Archbishop of Posen, having learned of the alleged blasphemy, instituted proceedings against the Jews. The Rabbi of Posen, thirteen elders of the Jewish community, and the woman charged with the theft of the holy wafers, became the victims of popular superstition; after prolonged tortures they were all tied to pillars, and roasted alive on a slow fire (1399). Moreover, the Jews of Posen were punished by the imposition of an "eternal" fine, which they had to pay annually in favor of the Dominican church. This fine was rigorously exacted down to the eighteenth century, as long as the legend of the three hosts lingered in the memory of pious Catholics.

As in the West, religious motives in such cases merely served as a disguise to cover up motives of an economic nature—envy on the part of the Christian city-dwellers of the prosperity of the Jews, who had managed to obtain a foothold in certain branches of commerce, and eagerness to dispose in one way or another of inconvenient rivals. Similar motives, coupled with religious intolerance, were responsible for the anti-Jewish riots in Cracow in 1407. In that ancient capital of Poland the Jews had increased in numbers in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and, by their commercial enterprise, had attained to prosperity. The Cracow burghers were jealous of them, and the clergy found it improper that the doomed sons of the Synagogue should live so tranquilly under the shelter of the benevolent Church. A silent but stubborn agitation was carried on against the Jews, their enemies merely waiting for a convenient opportunity to square accounts with them.

On one occasion, on the third day of Easter, the priest Budek, who had gained the reputation of an implacable Jew-baiter, delivered a sermon in the Church of St. Barbara. As he was about to leave the pulpit, he suddenly announced to the worshipers that he had found a notice on the pulpit to this effect: "The Jews living in Cracow killed a Christian boy last night, and made sport over his blood; moreover, they threw stones at a priest who was going to visit a sick man, and was carrying a crucifix in his hands." No sooner had these words been uttered than the people rushed into the Jewish street, and began to loot the houses of "Christ's enemies." The royal authorities hastened to the rescue of the Jews, and by armed force put an end to the riots. But several hours later, when the bells of the town hall began to ring, summoning the members of the magistracy to a meeting, for the purpose of punishing the instigators of the disorders, some one in the crowd shouted that the magistracy was inviting the Christians to another attack upon the Jews. Thereupon the rabble came running from all parts of the city and began to slay and plunder the Jews, setting fire to their houses. Some Jews sought refuge in the Tower of St. Anne, but the mob set fire to the tower, and the unfortunate Jews had to surrender. A number of them, to save their lives, adopted Christianity, while the children of the slain were all baptized. Many Christians, according to the testimony of the Polish historian Dlugosh[33], grew rich on the money plundered from the Jews.

One cannot fail to perceive in all these catastrophes the influence of neighboring Germany[34]. It was from Germany that the clerical reaction which followed upon the struggle of the Church with the reformatory Huss movement penetrated to Poland. The Synod of Constance, which condemned Huss, was attended by the Archbishop of Gnesen, Nicholas Tromba, who appeared at the head of a Polish delegation. On his return, this leading dignitary of the Polish Church presided over the proceedings of the Synod of Kalish (1420), which had also been convened in connection with the Huss movement.

At the suggestion of this Archbishop, the Council of Kalish solemnly ratified all the anti-Jewish enactments which had been passed by the Councils of Breslau and Buda (Ofen),[35] but had seldom been carried out in practice. These laws, as will be remembered, forbade all intercourse between Jew and Christian, and ordered the Jews to live in separate quarters, to wear a distinctive mark on the upper garment, and so forth. At the same time the Jews were required to pay a tax in favor of the churches of those diocesan districts "where they now live, and where by right Christians ought to live," this tax to correspond to "the losses inflicted by them upon the Christians." These injunctions were issued as special instructions to the members of the clergy in all the dioceses.

The ecclesiastic tendencies gradually forced their way into secular legislation. The fanatics of the Church exerted their influence not only on the King but also on the landed nobility, the Shlakhta,[36] which at that time began to take a more active interest in the affairs of the state. At the convention of the Shlakhta in Varta[37] (1423) King Vladislav Yaghello sanctioned a law forbidding the Jews to lend money against written securities, only loans against pledges being permitted. The ecclesiastic origin of this enactment is betrayed in the ugly manner in which the law is justified in the preamble: "Whereas Jewish cunning is always directed against the Christians and aims rather at the property of the Christian than at his creed or person...."

5. The Jews of Lithuania during the Reign of Vitovt

An entirely different picture is presented at that time by Lithuania, which, in spite of its dynastic alliance with Poland, retained complete autonomy of administration. The patriarchal order of things, which was nearing its end in Poland, was still firmly intrenched in the Duchy of Lithuania, but recently emerged from the stage of primitive paganism. Medieval culture had not yet taken hold of the inhabitants of the wooded banks of the Niemen, and the Jews were able to settle there without having to face violence and persecution.

It is difficult to determine the exact date of the first Jewish settlements in Lithuania. So much is certain, however, that by the end of the fourteenth century a number of important communities were in existence, such as those of Brest, Grodno, Troki, Lutzk, and Vladimir, the last two in Volhynia, which, prior to the Polish-Lithuanian Union of 1579, formed part of the Duchy. The first one to legalize the existence of these communities was the Lithuanian Grand Duke Vitovt, who ruled over Lithuania from 1388 to 1430, partly as an independent sovereign, partly in the name of his cousin, the Polish King Yaghello. In 1388 the Jews of Brest and other Lithuanian communities obtained from Vitovt a charter similar in content to the statutes of Boleslav of Kalish and Casimir the Great, and in 1389 even more extensive privileges were bestowed by him on the Jews of Grodno.

In these enactments the Lithuanian ruler exhibits, like Casimir, an enlightened solicitude for a peaceful relationship between Jews and Christians and for the inner welfare of the Jewish communities. Under the laws enacted by Vitovt the Jews of Lithuania formed a class of free citizens, standing under the immediate protection of the Grand Duke and his local administration. They lived in independent communities, enjoying autonomy in their internal affairs as far as religion and property are concerned, while in criminal affairs they were liable to the court of the local starosta[38] or sub-starosta, and, in particularly important cases, to the court of the Grand Duke himself. The law guaranteed to the Jews inviolability of person and property, liberty of religion, the right of free transit, the free pursuit of commerce and trade, on equal terms with the Christians. The Lithuanian Jews carried on business on the market-places or in shops, they plied all kinds of trades, and occasionally engaged in agriculture. Men of wealth lent money on interest, leased from the Grand Duke the customs duties, the revenues on spirits, and other taxes. They held estates either in their own right or in the form of land leases. The taxes which they paid into the exchequer were adapted to the character of their occupations, and on the whole were not burdensome. Aside from the Rabbanite Jews there existed in Lithuania Karaites, who had immigrated from the Crimea, and had established themselves in the regions of Troki and Lutzk.

Accordingly the position of the Jews was more favorable in Lithuania than in Poland. Jewish immigrants, on their way from Germany to Poland, frequently went as far as Lithuania and settled there permanently. Lithuania formed the extreme boundary in the eastward movement of the Jews, Russia and Muscovy being almost entirely closed to them.

6. The Conflict between Royalty and Clergy under Casimir IV. and His Sons

The conflict of tendencies in the Polish legislation concerning the Jews manifested itself with particular violence in the reign of Casimir IV., the third king of the Yaghello dynasty. The attitude of Casimir IV. (1447-1492), who was imbued with the ideas of the humanistic movement then in vogue, was at first that of a wise ruler, the guardian of the common interests of his subjects. As Grand Duke of Lithuania he had followed the liberal Jewish policies of his predecessor Vitovt. He protected the personal and communal rights of both the Rabbanite and Karaite Jews—to the latter he granted, in 1441, the Magdeburg Law—and he frequently availed himself of the services of enterprising Jewish financiers and tax-farmers to increase the revenues of the state.

Having accepted the Polish crown, Casimir was resolved to rule independently and to disregard the designs of the all-powerful clergy. Shortly after his coronation, in August, 1447, while the King was on a visit to Posen, the city was devastated by a terrible fire. During the conflagration the ancient original of the charter which Casimir the Great had bestowed upon the Jews was lost. A Jewish delegation from the communities of Posen, Kalish, and other cities petitioned the King to restore and ratify the old Jewish privileges, on the basis of copies of the charter which had been spared. Casimir readily granted the request of the deputies. "We desire"—he announces in his new charter—"that the Jews, whom we wish to protect in our own interest as well as in the interest of the royal exchequer, should feel comforted in our beneficent reign." Corroborating as it did all the rights and privileges previously conferred upon the Jews—liberty of residence and commerce, communal and judicial autonomy, inviolability of life and liberty, protection against groundless charges and attacks—the charter of Casimir IV. was a direct protest against the canonical laws only recently reissued for Poland by the Council of Kalish, and for the whole Catholic world by the great Council at Basle. In opposition to the main trend of the Council resolutions, the royal charter permitted the Jews to associate with Christians, and exempted them from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastic law courts (1453).

The King's liberalism aroused the resentment of the Catholic clergy. The leader of the clerical party was the energetic Archbishop of Cracow, Cardinal Zbignyev Oleshnitzki, who openly headed the forces arrayed in opposition to the King. He denounced Casimir bitterly for granting protection to the Jews, "to the injury and insult of the holy faith."

In his letter Oleshnitzki refers to the well-known agitator and Jew-baiter, the Papal Legate Capistrano, who had come to Poland from Germany in the fall of 1453. With this "scourge of the Jews" as his ally Oleshnitzki started a campaign against Jews and heretics (or Hussites). On his arrival in Cracow Capistrano delivered on the market-place incendiary speeches against the Jews, and demanded of the King persistently to revoke the "godless" Jewish privileges, threatening him, in case of disobedience, with the tortures of hell and terrible misfortunes for the country.

At first the King refused to yield, but the march of events favored the anti-Jewish forces. Poland was at war with the Teutonic Order.[39] The first defeat sustained by the Polish troops in this war (September, 1454) gave the clergy an opportunity of proclaiming that the Lord was chastising the country for the King's disregard of Church interests and for his protection of the Jews. At last the King was forced to listen to the demands of the united clergy and nobility. In November, 1454, the Statute of Nyeshava[40] was promulgated, and by one of its clauses all former Jewish privileges were rescinded as "being equally opposed to Divine right and earthly laws." The reasons for the enactment, which were evidently dictated by Oleshnitzki, were formulated as follows: "For it is not meet that infidels should enjoy greater advantages than the worshipers of our Lord Christ, and slaves should have no right to occupy a better position than sons." The Varta Statutes of 1423 and the former canonical laws were declared in force again. Clericalism had scored a triumph.

This anti-Jewish tendency communicated itself to the people at large. In several towns the Jews were attacked. In 1463 detachments of Polish volunteers who were preparing for a crusade against the Turks passed through Lemberg and Cracow on their way to Hungary. The disorderly crowd, consisting of monks, students, peasants, and impoverished noblemen, threw itself on the Jews of Cracow on the third day of Easter, looted their houses, and killed about thirty people. When Casimir IV. learned what had happened, he imposed a fine on the magistracy for having failed to forestall the riots. Similar disorders were taking place about the same time in Lemberg, Posen, and other cities.

As far as Casimir IV. was concerned, the clerical policy, artificially foisted upon him, did not alter his personal readiness to shield the Jews. But under his sons, the Polish King John Albrecht and the Lithuanian Grand Duke Alexander Yaghello, the anti-Jewish policy gained the upper hand. The former ratified, at the Piotrkov Diet of 1496, the Nyeshava Statute with its anti-Jewish restrictions. John Albrecht is also credited with the establishment of the first ghetto in Poland. In 1494 a large part of the Polish capital of Cracow was destroyed by fire, and the mob, taking advantage of the prevailing panic, plundered the property of the Jews. As a result, the Jews, who at that time were scattered over various parts of the city, were ordered by the King to move to Kazimiezh,[41] a suburb of Cracow, and to live there apart from the Christians. Kazimiezh became, in consequence, a wholly Jewish town, leading throughout the centuries a life of its own, and connected with the outside world by mere threads of economic relationship.

While the throne of Poland was occupied by John Albrecht, his brother Alexander ruled over Lithuania as grand duke. At first Alexander's attitude towards the Jews was rather favorable. In 1492 he complied with the petition of the Karaites of Troki, and confirmed the charter of Casimir IV., bestowing upon them the Magdeburg Law, and even supplementing it by a few additional privileges. Various items of public revenue, especially the customs duties, were as theretofore let to the Jews. Alexander also paid the Jewish capitalists part of the money advanced by them to his father. In 1495, however, the Grand Duke suddenly issued a decree ordering the expulsion of all the Jews from Lithuania. It is not known whether this cruel action was due to the influence of the anti-Jewish clerical party, and was stimulated by the news of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, or whether it was prompted by the financial dependence of the ruler on his Jewish creditors, or by the general desire to enrich himself at the expense of the exiles. As a matter of fact Alexander confiscated the immovable property of the expelled Jews in the districts of Grodno, Brest, Lutzk, and Troki, and a large part thereof was distributed by him among the local Christian residents. The banished Jews emigrated partly to the Crimea (Kaffa), but the majority settled, with the permission of King John Albrecht, in the neighboring Polish cities. However, when a few years later, after the death of his brother, Alexander accepted, in addition, the crown of Poland (1501), he allowed the Jews to return to Lithuania and settle in their former places of residence. On this occasion they received back, though not in all cases, the houses, estates, synagogues, and cemeteries previously owned by them (1503).

By the beginning of the fourteenth century Polish Jewry had become a big economic and social factor with which the state was bound to reckon. It was now destined to become also an independent spiritual entity, having stood for four hundred years under the tutelage of the Jewish center in Germany. The further development of this new factor forms one of the most prominent features of the next period.

CHAPTER III
THE AUTONOMOUS CENTER IN POLAND AT ITS ZENITH (1501-1648)

1. Social and Economic Conditions

In the same age in which the Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal were wending their steps towards the Turkish East, bands of Jewish emigrants, fleeing from the stuffy ghettos of Germany and Austria, could be seen wandering towards the Slavonian East, towards Poland and Lithuania, where, during the period of the Reformation, a large autonomous Diaspora center sprang into life. The transmigration of Jewish centers, which is so prominent a feature of the sixteenth century, found its expression in two parallel movements: the demolished or impoverished centers of Western Europe were transplanted to the countries of Eastern Europe on the one hand, and to the lands of contiguous Western Asia on the other. Yet the destinies of the two Eastern centers—Turkey and Poland—were not identical. The Sephardim of Turkey were approaching the end of their brilliant historic career, and were gradually lapsing into Asiatic stupor, while the Ashkenazim of Poland, with a supply of fresh strength and the promise of an original culture, were starting out on their broad historic development. The mission of the Sephardim was a memory of the past; that of the Ashkenazim was a hope for the future. After medieval Babylonia and Spain, no country presented so intense a concentration of Jewish energy and so vast a field for the development of a Jewish autonomous life as Poland in the sixteenth and the following centuries.[42]

The uninterrupted colonization of Slavonian lands by Jewish emigrants from Germany, which had been going on during the Middle Ages, prepared the soil for the historic process which converted Poland from a colony into a center of Judaism. The large Jewish population settled in the towns and villages of Poland and Lithuania formed, not a downtrodden caste, nor a homogeneous economic class, as in Germany, but an important social entity, unfolding its energy in many departments of social-economic life. It was not tied down to two exclusive occupations, money-lending and petty trade, but it participated in all branches of industrial endeavor, in production and manufacture, not excluding rural avocations, such as land tenure and farming. The men of wealth among the Jews farmed the tolls (transit and customs duties) and the excise (state taxes collected on wine[43] and other articles of consumption), and frequently attained to prominence as the financial agents of the kings. When, at a later date, the Jews were hampered in the business of tax-farming, their capital found a new outlet in the lease of crown and Shlakhta estates, with the right of "propination,"[44] or liquor traffic, attached to it, as well as in working the salt mines, in timbering forests, and opening up the other resources of the soil. The big merchants were busy exporting agrarian products from Poland into Austria, Moldavo-Wallachia, and Turkey. The lower classes engaged in retail trade, handicrafts, farming, vegetable-growing, gardening, and, in some places, particularly in Lithuania, even in corn-growing.

The economic activity of the Jews, entwined with the material life of the country by numerous threads, was bound to produce a similar variety of form also in their legal condition. Considering the peculiar caste structure of the Polish state and the relative political freedom enjoyed in that semi-constitutional country by the "governing classes"—the landed nobility, the clergy, and partly the burghers—the legal position of the Jews was of necessity determined by the conflict of political and class interests. Bridled by an oligarchic constitution, the royal power was bound to clash with the vast privileges of the landed magnates, the big Shlakhta. The latter, in turn, on the one hand fought the claims of the petty rural Shlakhta, and on the other resisted the advance of the Christian urban estates, the business men, and craftsmen, who were a powerful factor, owing to their municipal autonomy and their well-organized guilds. The fight was carried on in the Diets, municipalities, and law courts. Within this conflict of economic interests the clergy of the dominant Catholic Church pursued its own line of attack. Having been weakened during the Reformation, it now renewed its strength in consequence of the Catholic reaction and the arduous endeavors of the Jesuits.

These estates differed in their relation to the Jews, each in accordance with its own interests. Medieval ideas had already taken such deep root in the Polish people that, despite the constitutional character of the country, a humane and lawful attitude towards the Jews was out of the question. They were appraised according to the advantages they could bestow upon this or that class, and since in many cases what was advantageous to one class was disadvantageous to another, a conflict of interests was unavoidable, with the result that the Jews were the objects of protection on the one side and the targets of persecution on the other.

The Jews of Poland were favored by two powers within the state, by royalty and in part by the big Shlakhta. They were opposed by two others, the clergy and the burghers. Aside from the interests of the exchequer, which was swelled by regular and irregular imposts upon the Jews, the kings derived personal benefits from their commercial activities. They valued the financial services of the Jewish tax-farmers, who paid large sums in advance for the lease of customs duties and state revenues or for the tenure of the royal domains. These contractors and tenants became, as a rule, financial agents of the kings, owing to their ability to advance large sums of money, and were incidentally in a position to exert their influence upon the court in the interest of their coreligionists. The high nobility in turn appreciated the usefulness of the Jewish farmers and tenants to their estates, which they themselves, with their aristocratic indifference and indolence, knew only how to mismanage. The protection which this class accorded the Jews, principally at the Diets controlled by them, was in exact proportion to the services rendered by the Jews as middlemen between them and the peasants. The magnates accordingly were entirely indifferent to the welfare of the rest of Jewry, the toiling masses of the Jewish population.

Uncompromising hostility to the Jews marked the attitude of the urban estates, the merchants and artisans of the burgher class, with a considerable sprinkling of German settlers, whose influence was clearly noticeable. These organized tradesmen and handicraftsmen looked upon the Jews as their direct competitors. The magistracies, acting as the organs of municipal self-government, placed severe restrictions upon the Jews in the acquisition of real estate and in the pursuit of business and handicrafts, while the trade-unions occasionally set the riotous mobs at their heels. Still more resolute was the agitation of the Catholic clergy, which frequently succeeded in influencing legislation in the spirit of ecclesiastic intolerance.

The interaction of all these forces shaped the legal and social status of the Polish-Lithuanian Jews in the course of the sixteenth and in the beginning of the seventeenth century, at a time when Poland was passing through the zenith of her political prosperity. The vacillations and upheavals in the position of the Jews were conditioned by the shifting of forces in the direction of the one or the other above-mentioned factors in the course of history.

2. The Liberal Régime of Sigismund I.

The opening years of the sixteenth century found the Jews fully restored to the rights of which their enemies had attempted to rob them at the end of the preceding century. Alexander Yaghello, the very same Lithuanian Grand Duke who, from some obscure motive, had banished the Jews from his dominions in 1495,[45] found it necessary to call them back as soon as he ascended the throne of Poland, after the demise of his brother. In 1503, "having consulted the lords of the realm," King Alexander announced his decision to the effect that the Jews exiled from Grodno and other cities of Lithuania should be allowed to return and settle "near the castles and in the localities in which they had lived formerly," and should be given back the houses, synagogues, cemeteries, farms, and fields, which had previously been in their possession. The reasons for this change of front may easily be traced to the vast economic importance of the Jews of the Polish Kingdom, which had shortly before, in 1501, entered into a closer union with Lithuania, and to the invaluable services of the Jewish tax-farmers, on whom the royal budget to a large extent depended.

One of these "royal financiers" was the wealthy Yosko,[46] who farmed the customs and tolls in nearly half of Poland. To stimulate the endeavors of his financier, King Alexander exempted Yosko and his employees from the authority of the local administration, placing him, after the manner of court dignitaries, under the jurisdiction of the royal court. But, taken as a whole, the King was even now far from friendly to the Jews. In 1505 he permitted the inclusion of the ancient charter of Boleslav of Kalish, the magna charta of Jewish liberties, in the code of organic Polish laws, which was then being edited by the chancellor John Laski. But he was careful to point out that he did not thereby intend to ratify Boleslav's charter anew, but allowed its reproduction "for the purpose of safeguarding [the Christian population] against the Jews" (ad cautelam defensionis contra Judaeos).

Alexander's successor, Sigismund I. Yaghello (1506-1548), King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, favored a more liberal policy towards his Jewish subjects. Though a staunch Catholic, Sigismund was free from the spirit of anti-Jewish clericalism, and he endeavored to the best of his ability to live up to the principle proclaimed by him, that "equal justice should be meted out to the rich and mighty lords and to the meanest pauper." This lofty principle, so little compatible with the policy of class discrimination, could, however inadequately, be applied only there where the power of royalty was not handicapped by the mighty Shlakhta and the other estates. The only part of the Polish Empire where such a condition still existed in the time of Sigismund I. was Lithuania, the patrimony of the Yaghellos. There the royal, or rather the grand ducal, authority was more extensive and its form of manifestation more patriarchal than in the provinces of the Crown, or Poland proper. By intrusting a large part of the public tax contracts and land leases to the Jewish capitalists, the King could feel easy in his mind as to the integrity of his budget. The general contractor of the customs and other state revenues in Lithuania, Michael Yosefovich (son of Joseph), a Jew from Brest-Litovsk, exercised occasionally also the functions of grand ducal treasurer, being commissioned to pay out of the collected imposts the salaries of the local officials as well as the debts of his royal master.

Prompted by the desire of rewarding the services of his financier and at the same time putting the communal affairs of his Jewish subjects in better order, Sigismund appointed Michael Yosefovich to serve as the elder, or, to use the official term, the "senior," of all Lithuanian Jews (1514). The "senior" was invested with far-reaching powers: he had the right of conferring directly with the king in all important Jewish affairs, dispensing justice to his coreligionists in accordance with their own laws, and collecting from them the taxes imposed by the state. He was to be assisted by a rabbi or "doctor," an expert in Jewish law. Whether the Lithuanian Jews acknowledged Michael Yosefovich as their supreme authority is open to doubt. The wealthy contractor, whom the will of the King had placed at the head of the Jews, could not in point of fact preside over their autonomous organization and their judiciary and rabbinate, since what was required was not officials, but men with special knowledge and training. All Michael could do was to act as the official go-between, representing the Jewish communities before the King and defending their rights and privileges as well as their commercial and fiscal interests. In any event Michael was more useful to his coreligionists than his brother Abraham Yosefovich, who, likewise a tax-farmer, sacrificed his Judaism for the sake of a successful career. King Alexander conferred upon Abraham the rank of Starosta of Smolensk, while Sigismund raised him to the exalted position of Chancellor of the Lithuanian Exchequer. Abraham and his offspring were soon lost in the ranks of the higher Polish nobility.

In agricultural Lithuania with its patriarchal conditions of life the antagonism between the classes was in its infancy, and as a result the right of the Jews to freedom of transit and occupation was but rarely contested. They lived in the towns and villages, and were not yet so sharply marked off, in language and mode of life, from the Christian population as they became afterwards. The Jewish communities of Brest, Grodno, Pinsk, and Troki, the last consisting principally of Karaites, who had a municipality of their own, were important Jewish centers in the Duchy, and enjoyed considerable autonomy. The rabbi of Brest, Mendel Frank, received from the King extensive administrative and judicial powers, including the right of imposing the herem and other penalties upon the recalcitrant members of the community (1531).

In the large cities of Poland proper the position of the Jews was not nearly so favorable. Here commercial life had attained a higher stage of development than in Lithuania, and in many lines of business the Jews competed with the Christians. Taking advantage of the autonomy granted to the estates in the shape of the Magdeburg Law, the Christian business men and handicraftsmen, represented by their magistracies and trade-unions, were constantly endeavoring to restrict their rivals in their commercial pursuits. This was particularly the case in Posen, Cracow, and Lemberg, the leading centers respectively of the three provinces of Great Poland, Little Poland, and Red Russia (Galicia). In Posen the Jews were hampered by the burgomaster and the aldermen in carrying on their business or in displaying their goods in stores outside the Jewish quarter. When the Jews protested to the King, he warned the authorities of Posen not to subject their rivals to any hardships or to violate their privileges (1517). The Christian merchants retorted that the Jews occupied the best shops, not only in the center of the town, but also on the market-place, where formerly only "prominent Christian merchants, both native and foreign [German], had been doing business," and where, in view of the concentration of large masses of Christians, the presence of Jews might lead to "great temptations," and even to seduction from the path of the "true faith." The reference to religion, used as a cloak for commercial greed, did not fail to impress the devout Sigismund, and he forbade the Jews to keep stores on the market-place (1520). The professors of Christian love in Posen similarly forbade their Jewish fellow-citizens to buy foodstuffs and other articles in the market until the Christian residents had completed their purchases. A little later the King, in consequence of the influx of Jews into Posen, gave orders that no new Jewish settlers be admitted into the city, and that no houses owned by Christians be sold to them, without the permission of the Kahal elders. The Jews were to be restricted to definite quarters and to be denied the right of building their houses among those belonging to Christians (1523).

The same was the case in Lemberg. Yielding to the complaints of the magistracy about the competition of the Jews, the King restricted their freedom of commerce in several particulars, barring them from selling cloth in the whole of [Red] Russia and Podolia, except at the fairs, and limiting their sale of horned cattle to two thousand head per year (1515). The Piotrkov Diet of 1521 passed a law confining the trade of the Lemberg Jews to four articles, wax, furs, cloth, and horned cattle. These restrictions were the result of the widespread agitation which the pious Christian merchants had been conducting against their business rivals of other faiths. The magistracies of the three cities of Posen, Lemberg, and Cracow, attempted to form a coalition for the purpose of carrying on a joint economic fight against Jewry. In Cracow and its suburb Kazimiezh[47] the Jews had to endure even harsher restrictions in business than in the other two metropolitan centers of Poland.

Competition in business occasionally resulted in physical violence and street riots. Anti-Jewish attacks were taking place in Posen and in Brest-Kuyavsk,[48] and outbreaks were anticipated in Cracow. Representatives of the last Jewish community made their apprehensions known to the King. Sigismund issued a decree in 1530 denouncing in vehement terms the insolence of the rioters, who were hoping for immunity, and rigorously forbidding all acts of violence, under penalty of death and confiscation of property. To allay the fears of the Jews he ordered the burghers of Cracow to deposit the sum of ten thousand gulden with the exchequer as security for the maintenance of peace and safety in the city. The burgomasters, aldermen, and trade-unions were warned by the King that in all their differences with Jews "they should proceed in a legal manner, and not by violence, by resorting to force of arms and inciting disorders."

The King was powerless, however, to shield the Jews against other unpleasant manifestations of the Polish class régime, such as the extortions of the officials. The highest dignitaries of the court no less than the local administration were ever ready to fish in the troubled waters of the conflict of classes. The second wife of Sigismund, Queen Bona Sforza, an avaricious Italian princess, sold the offices of the state to the highest bidder, while the courtiers and voyevodas were just as venal on their own behalf. The queen's favorite, Peter Kmita, Voyevoda of Cracow and Marshal of the Crown, managed to accept bribes simultaneously from the Jewish and the Christian merchants, who lodged complaints against each other, by promising both sides to defend their interests before the Diet or the King.

During the fourth decade of the sixteenth century the Jewish question became the object of violent disputes at the Polish Diets, the deputies of several regions having received anti-Jewish instructions.[49] Now the controlling factor in the Polish Diets was the Shlakhta, whose attitude towards the Jews was not uniform. The big Shlakhta, the magnates, the owners of huge estates and whole towns, were favorably disposed towards the Jews who lived in their domains, and added to their wealth as farmers and tax-payers. But the petty Shlakhta, the struggling squires, who were looking for places in the civil and state service, arrayed themselves on the side of the burgher class, which had always been hostile to the Jews. This petty Shlakhta bitterly resented the fact that the royal revenues had been turned over to Jewish contractors, who, as collectors of customs and taxes, attained to official dignity, and gradually forced their way into the ranks of the nobility. The income from the collection of the revenues and the influence connected with it this Shlakhta regarded as its inalienable prerogative. The clergy again saw in this enhancement of Jewish influence a serious menace to the Catholic faith, while the urban estates had a vital interest in limiting the commercial rights of the Jews.

At the Piotrkov Diet of 1538 the anti-Jewish agitation was carried on with considerable success. It resulted in the adoption of a statute, or a "constitution," containing a separate Jewish section, in which the old canonical laws cropped out: