It is further decreed that the Jews have no right of unrestricted commerce, and can do no business in any locality, except with the special permission of the king or by agreement with the magistracies; in the villages they are forbidden to trade altogether. Pawnbroking and money-lending on the part of Jews are hedged about by a series of oppressive regulations. The capstone of the Piotrkov "constitution" is the following clause:

The fine for violating this regulation is fixed at one gulden.

The only articles of the "constitution" of 1538 which had serious consequences for the Jews of the Crown—the Jews of Lithuania were not affected by these regulations—were those barring them from tax-farming and subjecting them to commercial restrictions. The canonical law concerning a distinctive headgear was more in the nature of a demonstration than a serious legal enactment, since compliance with it, owing to the high state of culture among the Polish Jews and their important rôle in the economic life of the country, was a matter of impossibility. Behind this regulation lurks the hand of the Catholic clergy, which was alarmed at that time by the initial successes of the Reformation in Poland, and was in fear that the influence of Judaism might enhance the progress of the heresy. The excited imagination of the clerical fanatics perceived signs of a "Jewish propaganda" in the rationalistic doctrine of "Anti-Trinitarianism," which was then making its appearance, denying the dogma of the Holy Trinity. The specter of a rising sect of "Judaizers" haunted the guardians of the Church. One occurrence in particular engendered tremendous excitement among the inhabitants of Cracow. A Catholic woman of that city, Catherine Zaleshovska by name, the wife of an alderman, and four score years of age, was convicted of denying the fundamental dogmas of Christianity and adhering secretly to Jewish doctrines. The Bishop of Cracow, Peter Gamrat, having made futile endeavors to bring Catherine back into the fold of the Church, condemned her to death. The unfortunate woman was burned at the stake on the market-place of Cracow in 1539.

The following description of this event was penned by an eye-witness, the Polish writer Lucas Gurnitzki:

The well-known contemporary chronicler Bielski expresses himself similarly: "She went to her death as if it were a wedding."

During the same time there were rumors afloat to the effect that in various places in Poland, particularly in the province of Cracow, many Christians were embracing Judaism, and, after undergoing circumcision, were fleeing for greater safety to Lithuania, where they were sheltered by the local Jews. When the rumor reached the King, he dispatched two commissioners to Lithuania to direct a strict investigation. The officers of the King proceeded with excessive ardor; they raided Jewish homes, and stopped travelers on the road, making arrests and holding cross-examinations. The inquiry failed to reveal the presence of Judaizing sectarians in Lithuania, though it caused the Jews considerable trouble and alarm (1539).

Scarcely had this investigation been closed when the Lithuanian Jews were faced by another charge. Many of them were said to be on the point of leaving the country, and, acting with the knowledge and co-operation of the Sultan, intended to emigrate to Turkey, accompanied by the Christians who had been converted to Judaism. It was even rumored that the Jews had already succeeded in dispatching a party of circumcised Christian children and adults across the Moldavian frontier. The King gave orders for a new investigation, which was marked, like the preceding one, by acts of lawlessness and violence. The Jews were in fear that the King might lend an ear to these accusations and withdraw his protection from them. Accordingly Jews of Brest, Grodno, and other Lithuanian cities, hastened to send a deputation to King Sigismund, which solemnly assured him that all the rumors and accusations concerning them were mere slander, that the Lithuanian Jews were faithfully devoted to their country, that they had no intention to emigrate to Turkey, and, finally, that they had never tried to convert Christians to their faith. At the same time they made complaints about the insults and brutalities which had been inflicted upon them, pointing to the detrimental effect of the investigation on the trade of the country. The assertions of the deputation were borne out by the official inquiry, and Sigismund, returning his favor to the Jews, cleared them of all suspicion, and promised henceforward not to trouble them on wholesale charges unsupported by evidence. This pledge was embodied in a special charter, a sort of habeas corpus, granted by the King to the Jews of Lithuania in 1540.

All this, however, did not discourage the Catholic clergy, who, under the leadership of Bishop Gamrat, continued their agitation against the hated Jews. They incited public opinion against them by means of slanderous books, written in medieval style (De stupendis erroribus Judaeorum, 1541; De sanctis interfectis a Judaeis, 1543). The Church Synod of 1542 assembled in Piotrkov issued the following "constitution":

This is followed by seven more clauses containing various restrictions. The Jews are forbidden to keep Christian servants in their houses, particularly nursery-maids, to act as stewards of estates belonging to nobles ("lest those who ought to be the slaves of Christians should thereby acquire dominion and jurisdiction over them"), to work and to trade on Catholic holidays, and to offer their goods publicly for sale even on weekdays. It goes without saying that the rule prescribing a distinguishing Jewish dress is not neglected.

This whole anti-Jewish fabric of laws, which the members of the Synod decided to submit to the King, failed to receive legal sanction. Still the Catholic clergy was for a long time guided by it in its policy towards the Jews, a policy, needless to say, of intolerance and gross prejudices. These restrictions were the pia desideria of priests and monks, some of which were realized during the subsequent Catholic reaction.

3. Liberalism and Reaction in the Reigns of Sigismund Augustus and Stephen Batory

Sigismund I.'s successor, the cultured and to some extent liberal-minded Sigismund II. Augustus (1548-1572), followed in his relations with the Jews the same principles of toleration and non-interference by which he was generally guided in his attitude towards the non-Christian and non-Catholic citizens of Poland. In the first year of his reign Sigismund II., complying with the request of the Jews of Great Poland, ratified, at the general Polish Diet held at Piotrkov, the old liberal statute of Casimir IV. In the preamble of this enactment the King declares that he confirms the rights and privileges of the Jews on the same grounds as the special privileges of the other estates, in other words, by virtue of his oath to uphold the constitution. Sigismund Augustus considerably amplified and solidified the self-government of the Jewish communities. He bestowed large administrative and judicial powers upon the rabbis and Kahal elders, sanctioning the application of "Jewish law" (i. e. of Biblical and Talmudical law) in civil and partly even criminal cases between Jews (1551). In the general voyevoda courts, in which cases between Jews and Christians were tried, the presence of Jewish "seniors," i. e. of duly elected Kahal elders, was required (1556). This liability of the Jews to the royal or voyevoda courts had long constituted one of their important privileges, since it exempted them from the municipal, or magistrates' courts, which were just as hostile to them as the magistracies themselves.

This prerogative—the guarantee of greater impartiality on the part of the royal court—was limited to the Jews residing in the royal cities and villages, and did not extend to those living on the estates of the nobles or in the townships owned by them. Sigismund I. had decreed that "the nobles having Jews in their towns and villages may enjoy all the advantages to be derived from them, but must also try their cases. For we [the King], not deriving any advantages from such Jews, are not obliged to secure justice for them" (1539). Sigismund Augustus now enacted similarly that the Jews living on hereditary Shlakhta estates should be liable to the jurisdiction of the "hereditary owner," not to that of the royal representatives, the voyevoda and sub-voyevoda. As for the other royal privileges, they were extended to the Jews of this category only on condition of their paying the special Jewish head-tax to the King (1549). The split between royalty and Shlakhta, which became conspicuous in the reign of Sigismund Augustus, had already begun to undermine the system of royal patronage, more and more weakened as time went on.

The relations between the Jews and the "third estate," the burghers, did not improve in the reign of Sigismund Augustus, but they assumed a more definite shape. The two competing agencies, the magistracies and the Kahals, regulated their mutual relations by means of compacts and agreements. In some cities, such as Cracow and Posen, these compacts were designed to safeguard the boundaries of the ghetto, outside of which the Jews had no right to live; in Posen the Jews were even forbidden to increase the number of Jewish houses over and above a fixed norm (49), with the result that they were obliged to build tall houses, with several stories. In other cities, among which was included the city of Warsaw,[51] the magistracies managed to obtain the so-called privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis, i. e. the right of either not admitting the Jews to settle anew, and confining those already settled to special sections of the city, away from the principal streets, or keeping the Jews away from the city altogether, allowing only the merchants to come on business and stay there for a few days. However, in the majority of Polish cities the protection of the King secured for the Jews equal rights with the other townspeople. For, as one of the royal edicts puts it, "inasmuch as the Jews carry all burdens in the same way as the burghers, their positions must be alike in everything, except in religion and jurisdiction." In some places the King even went so far as to forbid the holding of the weekly market-day on Saturday, to safeguard the commercial interests of the Jews, who refused to do business on their day of rest.

With all the estates of Poland the Jews managed reasonably to agree save only with the Catholic clergy. This implacable foe of Judaism doubled his efforts as soon as the signal from Rome was given to start a reaction against the growing heresy of Protestantism and to combat all other forms of non-Catholic belief. The policy of Paul IV., the inquisitor on the throne of St. Peter, found an echo in Poland. The Papal Nuncio Lippomano, having arrived from Rome, conceived the idea of firing the religious zeal of the Catholics by one of those bloody spectacles which the inquisitorial Church was wont to arrange occasionally ad maiorem Dei gloriam. A rumor was set afloat that a poor woman in Sokhachev, Dorothy Lazhentzka by name, had sold to the Jews of the town the holy wafer received by her during communion, and that the wafer was stabbed by the "infidels" until it began to bleed. By order of the Bishop of Khelm three Jews who were charged with this sacrilege and their accomplice Dorothy Lazhentzka were thrown into prison, put on the rack, and finally sentenced to death. On learning of these happenings, the King sent orders to the Starosta of Sokhachev to stop the execution of the death sentence, but the clergy hastened to carry out the verdict,[52] and the alleged blasphemers were burned at the stake (1556). Before their death the martyred Jews made the following declaration:

These protestations of a monotheistic faith were silenced by the executioner, who stopped "the mouths of the criminals with burning torches."

Sigismund Augustus was shocked by these revolting proceedings, which had been engineered by the Nuncio Lippomano. He was quick to grasp that at the bottom of the absurd rumor concerning the "wounded" host lay a "pious fraud," the desire to demonstrate the truth of the Eucharist dogma in its Catholic formulation (the bread of communion as the actual body of Christ), which was rejected by the Calvinists and the extreme wing of the Reformation. "I am shocked by this hideous villainy," the King exclaimed in a fit of religious skepticism, "nor am I sufficiently devoid of common sense to believe that there could be any blood in the host." Lippomano's conduct aroused in particular the indignation of the Polish Protestants, who on dogmatic grounds could not give credence to the medieval fable concerning miracle-working hosts. All this did not prevent the enemies of the Jews from exploiting the Sokhachev case in the interest of an anti-Jewish agitation. It was in all likelihood due to this agitation that the anti-Jewish "constitution" adopted by the Diet of 1538 was, at the insistence of numerous deputies, confirmed by the Diets of 1562 and 1565.

The articles of this anti-Semitic "constitution" were also embodied in the "Lithuanian Statute" promulgated in 1566. This "statute" interdicts the Jews from wearing the same style of clothes as the Christians and altogether from dressing smartly, from owning serfs or keeping domestics of the Christian faith, and from holding office among Christians, the last two restrictions being extended to the Tatars and other "infidels." The medieval libels found a favorable soil even in Lithuania. In 1564 a Jew was executed in Bielsk, on the charge of having killed a Christian girl, though the unfortunate victim loudly proclaimed his innocence from the steps of the scaffold. Nor were attempts wanting to manufacture similar trials in other Lithuanian localities. To put an end to the agitation fostered by fanatics and obscurantists, the King issued two decrees, in 1564 and 1566, in which the local authorities were strictly enjoined not to institute proceedings against Jews on the charge of ritual murder or desecration of hosts. Sigismund Augustus declares that experience and papal pronouncements had proved the groundlessness of such charges; that, in accordance with ancient Jewish privileges, all such charges must be substantiated by the testimony of four Christian and three Jewish witnesses, and that, finally, the jurisdiction in all such cases belongs to the King himself and his Council at the General Diet.

Soon afterwards, in 1569, the agreement known as the "Union of Lublin" was concluded between Lithuania and the Crown, or Poland proper, providing for closer administrative and legislative co-operation between the two countries. This resulted in the co-ordination of the constitutional legislation for both parts of the "Republic,"[53] which, in turn, affected injuriously the status of the Jews of Lithuania. The latter country was gradually drawn into the general current of Polish politics, and hence drifted away from the patriarchal order of things, which had built up the prosperity of the Jews in the days of Vitovt. Sigismund Augustus died in 1572, three years after the conclusion of the Union of Lublin. The Jews had good reason to mourn the loss of this King, who had been their principal protector. His death marks the extinction of the Yaghello dynasty, and a new chapter begins in the history of Poland, "the elective period," when the kings are chosen by vote. After a protracted interregnum, the Shlakhta elected the French prince Henry of Valois (1574), one of the instigators of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. This election greatly alarmed the Jews and the liberal-minded Poles, who anticipated a recrudescence of clericalism; but their fears were soon allayed. After a few months' stay in Poland, Henry fled to his native land to accept the French crown, on the death of his brother Charles IX. The throne of Poland fell, by popular vote, to Stephen Batory (1576-1586), the valorous and enlightened Hungarian duke. His brief reign, which marks the end of the "golden age" of Polish history, was signalized by several acts of justice in relation to the Jews. In 1576 Stephen Batory issued two edicts, strictly forbidding the impeachment of Jews on the charge of ritual murder or sacrilege, in view of the recognized falsity of these accusations[54] and the popular disturbances accompanying them.

Stephen Batory even went one step further in pursuing the principle, that the Jews, because of their usefulness to the country on account of their commercial activity, had a claim to the same treatment as the corresponding Christian estates. In ratifying the old charters, he added a number of privileges, bearing in particular on the freedom of commerce. The King directed the voyevodas to protect the legitimate interests of the Jews against the encroachments of the magistracies and trade-unions, who hampered them in every possible manner in their pursuit of trades and handicrafts.

Stephen Batory intervened on behalf of the Jews of Posen, who had long been oppressed by a hostile magistracy. Setting aside the draconian regulations of the city fathers, the commercial rivals of the Jews, he permitted the latter to hire business premises in all parts of the city and ply their trade even on the days of the Christian festivals. Anticipating the possibility of retaliatory measures on the part of the townspeople, the King impressed upon the magistracy the duty of safeguarding the inviolability of life and property in the city, at the risk of incurring the severest penalties in the case of neglect (1577). All these warnings, however, were powerless to avert a catastrophe. Three months after the promulgation of the royal edict the Jewish quarter in Posen was attacked by the mob, which looted Jewish property and killed a number of Jews. Ostensibly the riot was started because of the refusal of the Jews to allow one of their coreligionists, who was on the point of accepting baptism, to meet his wife. In reality this was nothing but a pretext. The attack had been prepared by the Christian merchants, who could not reconcile themselves to the extension of the commercial rights of their competitors. Batory imposed a heavy fine on the Posen magistracy for having failed to stop the disorders. Only when the members of the magistracy declared under oath that they had been entirely ignorant of the plot was the fine revoked.

As far as the Jews are concerned, Stephen Batory remained loyal to the traditions of a more liberal age, at a time when the Polish populace was already inoculated with the ideas of the "Catholic reaction" imported from Western Europe—ideas which in other respects the King himself was unable to resist. It was during his reign that the Jesuits, Peter Skarga and others, made their appearance as an active, organized body. Batory extended his patronage to them, and intrusted them with the management of the academy established by him at Vilna. Was it possible for the King to foresee all the evil, darkness, and intolerance which these Jesuit schools would spread all over Poland? Could it have occurred to him that in these seats of learning, which soon monopolized the education of the ruling as well as the middle classes, one of the chief subjects of instruction would be a systematic course in Jew-baiting?

4. Shlakhta and Royalty in the Reigns of Sigismund III. and Vladislav IV.

The results of the upheaval which accompanied the extinction of the Yaghello dynasty assumed definite shape under the first two kings of the Swedish Vasa dynasty, Sigismund III. (1588-1632) and Vladislav IV. (1632-1648). The elective character of royalty made the latter dependent on the Shlakhta, which practically ruled the country, subordinating parliamentary legislation to the aristocratic and agricultural interests of their estate, and almost monopolizing the posts of voyevodas, starostas, and other important officials. At the same time the activity of the Jesuits strengthened the influence of clericalism in all departments of life. To eradicate Protestantism, to oppress the Greek Orthodox "peasant Church," and to reduce the Jews to the level of an ostracized caste of outlaws—such was the program of the Catholic reaction in Poland.

To attain these ends draconian measures were adopted against the Evangelists and Arians.[55] The members of the Greek Orthodox Church were forced against their will into a union with the Catholics, and the rights of the "dissidents," or non-conformists, were constantly curtailed. The Jesuits, who managed to obtain control over the education of the growing generation, inoculated the Polish people with the virus of clericalism. The less the zealots of the Church had reason to expect the conversion of the Jews, the more did they despise and humiliate them. And if they did not altogether succeed in restoring the medieval order of things, it was no doubt due to the fact that the structure of the Polish state, with its irrepressible conflict of class interests, did not allow any kind of system to take firm root. "Poland subsists on disorders," was the boast of the political leaders of the age. The "golden liberty" of the Shlakhta degenerated more and more. It became a weapon in the hands of the higher classes to oppress the middle and the lower classes. It led to anarchy, it undermined the authority of the Diet, in which a single member could impose his veto on the decision of the whole assembly (the so-called liberum veto), and resulted in endless dissensions between the estates. On the other hand, one must not forget that, while this division of power was disastrous for Poland, the absolute concentration of power after the pattern of Western Europe, in the circumstances then prevailing, might have proved even more disastrous. Under a system of monarchic absolutism, Poland might have become, during the period of the Catholic reaction, another Spain of Philip II. Disorder and class strife saved the Polish people from the "order" of the Inquisition and the consistency of autocratic hangmen.

The championship of Jewish interests passed by degrees from the hands of royalty into those of the wealthy parliamentary Shlakhta. Though more and more permeated by clerical tendencies, the fruit of Jesuit schooling, the nobility in most cases held its protecting hand over the Jews, to whom it was tied by the community of economic interests. The Jewish tax-collector in the towns and townlets, which were privately owned by the nobles, the Jewish arendar[56] in the village, who procured an income for the pan[57] from dairying, milling, distilling, liquor-selling and other enterprises—they were indispensable to the easy-going magnate, who was wont to let his estates take care of themselves, and while away his time in the capital, at the court, in merry amusements, or at the tumultuous sessions of the national and provincial assemblies, where politics were looked upon as a form of entertainment rather than a serious pursuit. This Polish aristocracy put a check on the anti-Semitic endeavors of the clergy, and confined the oppression of the Jews within certain limits. Even the devout Sigismund III., who was subject to Jesuit influence, continued the traditional rôle of Jewish protector. In 1588, shortly after his accession to the throne, he confirmed, at the request of the Jews, their right of trading in the cities, though not without certain restrictions which the demands of the Christian merchants had forced upon him.

Nevertheless the economic struggle in the cities continues with ever-increasing fury, manifesting itself more and more in the shape of malign religious fanaticism. In many cities the municipalities arrogate to themselves judicial authority over the Jews—the authority of the wolves over the sheep—contrary to the fundamental Polish law, which places all litigation between Jews and Christians under the jurisdiction of the royal officials, the voyevodas and starostas. The king, appealed to by the injured, has frequent occasion to remind the magistracies that the Jews are not to be judged by the Magdeburg Law, but by common Polish law, in addition to their own rabbinical courts for internal disputes. A pronouncement of this nature was issued, among others, by King Sigismund III., when the Jews of Brest appealed to him against the local municipality (1592). Their appeal was supported by the head of the Jewish community, Saul Yudich (son of Judah), contractor of customs and other state revenues in Lithuania, who wielded considerable influence at the Polish court. He bore the title of "servant of the king," and was frequently in a position to render important services to his coreligionists.[58] But where the Jewish masses were not fortunate enough to possess such powerful advocates in the persons of the big tax-farmers and "servants of the king," their legitimate interests were frequently trampled upon. The burghers of Vilna, in their desire to dislodge their Jewish competitors from the city, did not stop at open violence. They demolished the synagogue, and sacked the Jewish residences in the houses owned by the Shlakhta (1592). In Kiev, where the Jews had been settled in the Old Russian period,[59] the burghers were endeavoring to secure from the King the privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis (1619).

The hostility of the burgher class, which was made up of Germans to a considerable extent, manifested itself with particular intensity in the old hotbed of anti-Semitism, in Posen. Attacks on the Jewish quarter on the part of the street mob and "lawful" persecutions on the part of the magistracy and trade-unions were a regular feature in the life of that city. In the case of several trades, as, for instance, in the needle trade, the Jewish artisans were restricted to Jewish customers. In 1618 a painter employed to paint the walls of the Posen town hall drew all kinds of figures which were extremely offensive to the Jews, and subjected them to the ridicule of an idle street mob. Two years later the local clergy spread the rumor, that the table on which the famous three hosts had been pierced by the Jews in 1399[60] had been accidentally discovered in the house of a Jew. The fictitious relic was transferred to the Church of the Carmelites in a solemn procession, headed by the Bishop and the whole local priesthood. This demonstration helped to inflame the populace against the Jews. The crowd, fed on such spectacles, lost the last sparks of humanity. The scholars of the Jesuit colleges frequently invaded the Jewish quarter, making sport of the Jews and committing all kinds of excesses, in strange contradiction to the precept of the Gospels, to love their enemies, which they were taught in their schools.

Based on malicious fabrications, ritual murder trials become endemic during this period, and assume an ominous, inquisitorial character. Cases of this nature are given great prominence, and are tried by the highest Polish law court, the Crown Tribunal,[61] without any of the safeguards of impartiality which had been provided for such cases by the ancient charters of the Polish kings, and had been more recently reaffirmed by Stephen Batory. In 1598 the Tribunal of Lublin sentenced three Jews to death on the charge of having slain a Christian boy, whose body had been found in a swamp in a near-by village. To force a confession from the accused the whole inquisitorial torture apparatus was set in motion, and execution by quartering was carried out with special solemnity in Lublin. The body of the youngster, the involuntary cause of the death of innocent victims, was transferred by the Jesuits to one of the local churches, where it became the object of superstitious veneration. Trials of this kind, with an occasional change of scene, were enacted in many other localities of Poland and Lithuania.

Simultaneously a literary agitation against the Jews was set on foot by the clerical party. Father Moyetzki published in 1598 in Cracow his ferociously anti-Jewish book entitled "Jewish Bestiality" (Okrucieństwo Żydowskie), enumerating all ritual murder trials which had ever taken place in Europe and particularly in Poland, and adding others which were invented for this purpose by the author.[62]

A Polish physician, named Shleshkovski, accused the Jewish physicians, his professional rivals, of systematically poisoning and delivering to death good Catholics, and declared the pest, raging at that time, to be a token of the Divine displeasure at the protection granted to the Jews in Poland (Jasny dowód o doktorach żydowskich, "A Clear Argument Concerning Jewish Physicians," 1623).

But the palm undoubtedly belongs to Sebastian Michinski, of Cracow, the frenzied author of the "Mirror of the Polish Crown" (Zwierciadlo korony Polskiej, 1618). As a docile pupil of the Jesuits, Michinski collected everything that superstition and malice had ever invented against the Jews. He charged the Jews with every mortal sin—with political treachery, robbery, swindling, witchcraft, murder, sacrilege. In this scurrilous pamphlet he calls upon the deputies of the Polish Diet to deal with the Jews as they had been dealt with in Spain, France, England, and other countries—to expel them. In particular, the book is full of libels against the rich Jews of Cracow, with the result that the sentiment against the Jewish population of that city rapidly drifted towards a riot. To forestall the possibility of excesses the King ordered the confiscation of the book. The incendiary attacks of Michinski also led to stormy debates at the Diet of 1618. While some deputies eulogized him as a champion of truth, others denounced him as a demagogue and a menace to the public welfare. The Diet showed enough common sense to refuse to follow the lead of a writer crazed with Jew-hatred; yet the opinions voiced by him gradually took hold of the Polish people, and prepared the soil for sinister conflicts.

Sigismund III.'s successor, Vladislav IV., was not so zealous in his Catholicism and in his devotion to the Jesuits as his father. He exhibited a certain amount of tolerance towards the professors of other creeds, endeavored to uphold the ancient Jewish privileges, and made it, in general, his business to reconcile the warring estates with one another. However, the strife between the religious and social groups had already eaten so deeply into the vitals of Poland that even a far more energetic king than Vladislav IV. would scarcely have been able to put an end to it. Instead of harmonizing the conflicting interests, the King sided now with one, now with another, party. In 1633 Vladislav IV. confirmed, at the Coronation Diet,[63] the basic privileges of the Jews, granting them full freedom in their export trade, fixing the limits of their judicial autonomy, and instructing the municipalities to take measures for shielding them against popular outbreaks. But at the same time he forbade the Jewish communities to erect new synagogues or establish new cemeteries, without obtaining in each case a royal license. This restriction, by the way, may be considered a privilege, inasmuch as an attempt had been made by Sigismund III. to make the right of erecting synagogues dependent on the consent of the clergy.

Though on the whole desirous of respecting the rights of the Jews, nevertheless, in individual cases, the King acted favorably on the petitions of various cities to restrict these rights, and occasionally revoked his own orders. Thus in June, 1642, he permitted the Jews of Cracow to engage freely in export trade, but two months later he withdrew his permission, the Christian merchants of Cracow having complained to him about the effectiveness of Jewish competition. Complying with the application of the burghers of Moghilev on the Dnieper,[64] he confirmed, in 1633, his father's orders concerning the transfer of the Jews from the center of the city to its outskirts, and subsequently, in 1646, sanctioned the decision of the magistracy prohibiting the letting of houses to them in a Christian neighborhood. The law forbidding Jews to engage in petty trade on the market-place effected in some cities a substantial rise in the prices of necessaries, and the Shlakhta petitioned the King to repeal this prohibition for the city of Vilna. Vladislav complied with the petition, but, to please the Vilna municipality, he imposed at the same time a number of severe restrictions on the local Jews, making them liable to the municipal courts in monetary litigation with Christians, confining their area of residence to the boundaries of the "Jewish street," and barring them from plying those trades which were pursued by the Christian trade-unions (1633). The same policy was responsible for the anti-Jewish riots which took place about the same time in Vilna, Brest, and other cities.

Nothing did more to accentuate these conflicts than the preposterous economic policy of the Polish Government. The Warsaw Diet of 1643, in endeavoring to determine the prices of various articles of merchandise, passed a law compelling all merchants to limit themselves by a public oath to a definite rate of profit, which was fixed at seven per cent in the case of the native Christian (incola), five per cent in the case of the foreigner (advena), and only three per cent in the case of the Jew (infidelis). It is obvious that, being under the compulsion of selling his goods at a cheaper price, the Jew on the one hand was forced to lower the quality of his merchandise, and on the other hand was bound to undermine Christian trade, and thereby draw upon himself the wrath of his competitors.

As for the Polish clergy, true to its old policy it fostered in its flock the vulgar religious prejudices against the Jews. This applies, in particular, to the Jesuits, though, to a lesser degree, it holds good also in the case of the other Catholic orders of Poland. A frequent contrivance to raise the prestige of the Church was to engineer impressive demonstrations. In the spring of 1636, when a Christian child happened to disappear in Lublin, suspicion was cast upon the Jews, that they had tortured the child to death. The Crown Tribunal, which tried the case, and failed to find any evidence, acquitted the innocent Jews. Thereupon the local clergy, dissatisfied with the judgment of the court, manufactured a new case, this time with the necessary "evidence." A Carmelite monk by the name of Peter asserted that the Jews, having lured him into a house, told a German surgeon to bleed him, and that his blood was squeezed out and poured into a vessel, while the Jews murmured mysterious incantations over it. The Tribunal gave credit to this hideous charge, and, after going through the regular legal proceedings, including the medieval "cross-examinations" and the rack, sentenced one Jew named Mark (Mordecai) to death. The Carmelite monks hastened to advertise the case for the purpose of planting the terrible prejudice more firmly in the hearts of the people.

Another trial of a similar nature took place in 1639. Two elders of the Jewish community of Lenchitza were sentenced to death by the Crown Tribunal on the charge of having murdered a Christian boy from a neighboring village. Neither the protestation of the Starosta of Lenchitza, that the case did not come within the jurisdiction of his court, nor the fact that the accused, though put upon the rack, refused to make a confession, were able to avert the death sentence. The bodies of the executed Jews were cut into pieces and hung on poles at the cross-roads. The Bernardine monks of Lenchitza turned the incident to good account by placing the remains of the supposedly martyred boy in their church and putting up a picture representing all the details of the murder. The superstitious Catholic masses flocked to the church to worship at the shrine of the juvenile saint, swelling the revenues of the Bernardine church—which was exactly what the devout monks were after.

While the Church was engineering the ritual murder trials for the sake of "business," the municipal agencies, representing the Christian merchant class, acted similarly for the purpose of ridding themselves of the Jews and getting trade under their absolute control. This policy is luridly illustrated by a tragic occurrence, which, in the years 1635 to 1637, stirred the city of Cracow to its depths. A Pole by the name of Peter Yurkevich was convicted of having stolen some church vessels. At the cross-examination, having been put upon the rack, he testified that a Jewish tailor, named Jacob Gzheslik, had persuaded him to steal a host. Since the Jew had disappeared and could nowhere be found, Yurkevich was the only one to bear the death penalty. But before the execution, in making his confession to the priest, he stated—and he repeated the statement afterwards before an official committee of investigation—the following facts:

But Yurkevich's statement had no effect. He was convicted on the strength of his original affidavit, though it had been squeezed out of him by trickery and torture, and he was burned at the stake. As for the Jews of Cracow, they had to bear the penalty in the shape of a riot, the mob attacking the Jewish ghetto and seizing forty Jews, who were carried off to be thrown into the river. Seven men were drowned, while the others saved themselves by promising to embrace Christianity (May, 1637).

CHAPTER IV
THE INNER LIFE OF POLISH JEWRY AT ITS ZENITH

1. Kahal Autonomy and the Jewish Diets

The peculiar position occupied by the Jews in Poland made their social autonomy both necessary and possible. Constituting an historical nationality, with an inner life of its own, the Jews were segregated by the Government as a separate estate, an independent social body. Though forming an integral part of the urban population, the Jews were not officially included in any one of the general urban estates, whose affairs were administered by the magistracy or the trade-unions. Nor were they subjected to the jurisdiction of Christian law courts as far as their internal affairs were concerned. They formed an entirely independent class of citizens, and as such were in need of independent agencies of self-government and jurisdiction. The Jewish community constituted not only a national and cultural, but also a civil, entity. It formed a Jewish city within a Christian city, with its separate forms of life, its own religious, administrative, judicial, and charitable institutions. The Government of a country with sharply divided estates could not but legalize the autonomy of the Jewish Kahal, after having legalized the Magdeburg Law of the Christian urban estates, in which the Germans constituted the predominating element. As for the kings, in their capacity as the official "guardians" of the Jews, they were especially concerned in having the Kahals properly organized, since the regular payment of the Jewish taxes was thereby assured. Moreover, the Government found it more to its convenience to deal with a well-defined body of representatives than with the unorganized masses.

As early as the period of royal "paternalism," during the reign of Sigismund I., the king endeavored to extend his fatherly protection to the Jewish system of communal self-government. The appointment of Michael Yosefovich as the "senior" of the Lithuanian Jews, with a rabbi as expert adviser[65], was designed to safeguard the interests of the exchequer by concentrating the power in the hands of a federation of Kahals in Lithuania. On more than one occasion Sigismund I. confirmed the "spiritual judges," or rabbis (judices spirituales, doctores legis), elected by the Jews in different parts of Poland, in their office. In 1518 he ratified, at the request of the Jews of Posen, their election of two leading rabbis, Moses and Mendel, to the posts of provincial judges for all the communities of Great Poland, bestowing upon the newly-elected officials the right of instructing and judging their coreligionists in accordance with the Jewish law. In Cracow, where the Jews were divided into two separate communities—one of native Polish Jews and another of immigrants from Bohemia,—the King empowered each of them to elect its own rabbi. The choice fell upon Rabbi Asher for the former, and upon Rabbi Peretz for the latter, community, and when a dispute arose between the two communities as to the ownership of the old synagogue, the King again intervened, and decided the case in favor of the native community (1519). In 1531 Mendel Frank, the rabbi of Brest, complained to the King that the Jews did not always respect his decisions, and brought their cases before the royal starostas. Accordingly Sigismund I. thought it necessary to warn the Jews to submit to the jurisdiction of their own "doctors," or rabbis, who dispensed justice according to the "Jewish law," and were given the right of imposing the "oath" (herem, excommunication) and all kinds of other penalties upon insubordinates. In the following year the King appointed as "senior," or chief rabbi, of Cracow the well-known scholar Moses Fishel—who, it may be added parenthetically, had taken the degree of Doctor of Medicine in Padua—to succeed Rabbi Asher, referred to previously. Pursuing the same policy of centralization, the King, a few years later, in 1541, confirmed in their office as chief rabbis (seniores) of the whole province of Little Poland two men "learned in the Jewish law," the same Rabbi Moses Fishel of Cracow, and the famous progenitor of Polish Talmudism, Rabbi Shalom Shakhna of Lublin.

In the same measure, however, in which the communal organization of the Jews gained in strength, and the functions of the rabbis and Kahal elders became more clearly defined, the Government gradually receded from its attitude of paternal interference. The magna charta of Jewish autonomy may be said to be represented by the charter of Sigismund Augustus, issued on August 13, 1551, which embodies the fundamental principles of self-government for the Jewish communities of Great Poland.

According to this charter, the Jews are entitled to elect, by general agreement,[66] their own rabbis and "lawful judges" to take charge of their spiritual and social affairs. The rabbis and judges, elected in this manner, are authorized to expound all questions of the religious ritual, to perform marriages and grant divorces, to execute the transfer of property and other acts of a civil character, and to settle disputes between Jews in accordance with the "Mosaic law" (iuxta ritum et morem legis illorum Mosaicae) and the supplementary Jewish legislation. In conjunction with the Kahal elders they are empowered to subject offenders against the law to excommunication and other punishments, such as the Jewish customs may prescribe. In case the person punished in this manner does not recant within a month, the matter is to be brought to the knowledge of the king, who may sentence the incorrigible malefactor to death and confiscate his property. The local officers of the king are enjoined to lend their assistance in carrying out the orders of the rabbis and elders.

This enactment, coupled with a number of similar charters, which were subsequently promulgated for various provinces of Poland, conferred upon the elective representatives of the Jewish communities extensive autonomy in economic and administrative as well as judicial affairs, at the same time insuring its practical realization by placing at its disposal the power of the royal administration.

The firm consolidation of the régime of the self-governing community, the Kahal, dates from that period. In this appellation two concepts were merged: the "community," the aggregate of the local Jews, on the one hand, and, on the other, the "communal administration," representing the totality of all the Jewish institutions of a given locality, including the rabbinate. The activity of the Kahals assumed particularly large proportions beginning with the latter half of the sixteenth century.

All cities and towns with a Jewish population had their separate Kahal boards. Their size corresponded roughly to that of the given community. In large centers the membership of the Kahal board amounted to forty; in smaller towns it was limited to ten. The members of the Kahal were elected annually during the intermediate days of Passover. As a rule the election proceeded according to a double-graded system. Several electors (borerim), their number varying from nine to five, were appointed by lot from among the members of all synagogues, and these electors, after taking a solemn oath, chose the Kahal elders. The elders were divided into groups. Two of these, the rashim and tubim (the "heads" and "optimates"), stood at the head of the administration, and were in charge of the general affairs of the community. They were followed by the dayyanim, or judges, and the gabbaim, or directors, who managed the synagogues as well as the educational and charitable institutions. The rashim and tubim formed the nucleus of the Kahal, seven of them making a quorum; in the smaller communities they were practically identical with the Kahal board.

The sphere of the Kahal's activity was very large. Within the area allotted to it the Kahal collected and turned over to the exchequer the state taxes, arranged the assessment of imposts, both of a general and a special character, took charge of the synagogues, the Talmudic academies, the cemeteries, and other communal institutions. The Kahal executed title-deeds on real estate, regulated the instruction of the young, organized the affairs appertaining to charity and to commerce and handicrafts, and with the help of the dayyanim and the rabbi settled disputes between the members of the community. As for the rabbi, while exercising unrestricted authority in religious affairs, he was in all else dependent on the Kahal board, which invited him to his post for a definite term. Only great authorities, far-famed on account of their Talmudic erudition, were able to assert their influence in all departments of communal life.

The Kahal of each city extended its authority to the adjacent settlements and villages which did not possess autonomous organizations of their own. Moreover, the Kahals of the large centers kept under their jurisdiction the minor Kahals, or prikahalki,[67] as they were officially called, of the towns and townlets of their district, as far as the apportionment of taxes and the judicial authority were concerned. This gave rise to the "Kahal boroughs," or gheliloth (singular, galil). Often disputes arose between the Kahal boroughs as to the boundaries of their districts, the contested minor communities submitting now to this, now to the other, "belligerent." On the whole, however, the moderate centralization of self-government benefited the Jewish population, since it introduced order and discipline into the Kahal hierarchy, and enabled it to defend the civil and national interests of Judaism more effectively.

The capstone of this Kahal organization were the so-called Waads,[68] the conferences or assemblies of rabbis and Kahal leaders. These conferences received their original impetus from the rabbis and judges. The rabbinical law courts, officially endowed with extensive powers, were guided in their decisions by the legislation embodied in the Bible and the Talmud, which made full provision for all questions of religious, civil, and domestic life as well as for all possible infractions of the law. Yet it was but natural that even in this extensive system of law disputed points should arise for which the competency of a single rabbi did not suffice. Moreover there were cases in which the litigants appealed from the decision of one rabbinical court to another, more authoritative, court. Finally lawsuits would occasionally arise between groups of the population, between one community and another, or between a private person and a Kahal board. For such emergencies conferences of rabbis and elders would be called from time to time as the highest court of appeal.

Beginning with the middle of the sixteenth century these conferences met at the time of the great fairs, when large numbers of people congregated from various places, and litigants arrived in connection with their business affairs. The chief meeting-place was the Lublin fair, owing to the fact that Lublin was the residence of the father of Polish rabbinism, the above-mentioned Rabbi Shalom Shakhna, who was officially recognized as the "senior rabbi" of Little Poland. As far back as in the reign of Sigismund I. the "Jewish doctors," or rabbis, met there for the purpose of settling civil disputes "according to their law." In the latter part of the sixteenth century these conferences of rabbis and communal leaders, assembling in connection with the Lublin fairs, became more frequent, and led in a short time to the organization of regular, periodic conventions, which were attended by representatives from the principal Jewish communities of the whole of Poland.

The activity of these conferences, or conventions, passed, by gradual expansion, from the judicial sphere into that of administration and legislation. At these conventions laws were adopted determining the order of Kahal elections, fixing the competency of the rabbis and judges, granting permits for publishing books, and so forth. Occasionally these assemblies of Jewish notables endorsed by their authority the enactments of the Polish Government. Thus, in 1580, the representatives of the Polish-Jewish communities, who assembled in Lublin, gave their solemn sanction to the well-known Polish law barring the Jews of the Crown, of Poland proper, from farming state taxes and other public revenues, in view of the fact that "certain people, thirsting for gain and wealth, to be obtained from extensive leases, might thereby expose the community to great danger."

Towards the end of the sixteenth century the fair conferences received a firmer organization. They were attended by the rabbis and Kahal representatives of the following provinces: Great Poland (the leading community being that of Posen), Little Poland (Cracow and Lublin), Red Russia (Lemberg), Volhynia (Ostrog and Kremenetz), and Lithuania (Brest and Grodno). Originally the name of the assembly varied with the number of provinces represented in it, and it was designated as the Council of the Three, or the Four, or the Five, Lands. Subsequently, when Lithuania withdrew from the Polish Kahal organization, establishing a federation of its own, and the four provinces of the Crown[69] began to send their delegates regularly to these conferences, the name of the assembly was ultimately fixed as "the Council of the Four Lands" (Waad Arba Aratzoth).

The "Council" was made up of several leading rabbis of Poland,[70] and of one delegate for each of the principal Kahals selected from among their elders—the number of the conferees altogether amounting to about thirty. They met periodically, once or twice a year, in Lublin and Yaroslav (Galicia) alternately. As a rule, the Council assembled in Lublin in early spring, between Purim and Passover, and in Yaroslav at the end of the summer, before the high holidays.