History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 1 of 3. From the Beginning until the Death of Alexander I (1825). Dubnow Simon

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      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:

      We have never stabbed the host, because we do not believe that the host is the Divine body (nos enim nequaquam credimus hostiae inesse Dei corpus), knowing that God has no body nor blood. We believe, as did our forefathers, that the Messiah is not God, but His messenger. We also know from experience that there can be no blood in flour.

      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,"СКАЧАТЬ