History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 1 of 3. From the Beginning until the Death of Alexander I (1825). Dubnow Simon
devastating Christian hosts. The Bohemian Prince Vratislav robbed the immigrants on the way, but even this could not prevent many of them from leaving the country in which both people and Government were hostile to them (1098).
Beginning with this period there was a steady flow of Jews from the Rhine and Danube provinces into Poland, increasing in volume as a result of the Crusades (1146-1147 and 1196) and the severe Jewish persecutions in Germany. The accentuation of Jewish suffering in Germany during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the royal power was incapable of shielding its Kammerknechte against the fury of the fanatical mob or the degrading canons of the Church, drove vast numbers of Jews into Poland. Here the refugees sought shelter in the provinces nearest to the Austro-German border, Cracow, Posen, Kalish, and Silesia.
The first signs of discord between Christians and Jews are to be noticed in the second half of the twelfth century, when Poland fell asunder into several feudal Principalities, or "Appanages."22 The Prince of Great Poland, Mechislav III., the Old, in his desire to enforce law and order, found it necessary to issue, in 1173, strict injunctions forbidding all kinds of violence against the Jews and in particular the attacks upon them by Christian "scholars," the pupils of the ecclesiastic and monastic colleges. Those found guilty of such attacks were to be heavily fined. On the whole, the rulers were willing to take the Jews under their protection. Under Mechislav the Old, Casimir the Just, and Leshek the White, who reigned at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Jews farmed and administered the mint of Great and of Little Poland. On the coins struck by these Jews, many of which have come down to us, the names of the ruling princes are marked in Hebrew characters.23 At the very beginning of the thirteenth century (1203-1207) we hear of Jews owning lands and estates in Polish Silesia.
Such was the rise and growth of the Jewish colonies in Poland. As time went on, the commercial intercourse between these colonies and the West led to a spiritual relationship between them and the centers of Jewish culture in Europe. A contemporary Bohemian scholar of the Tosafist school, Rabbi Eliezer, informs us that the Jews of Poland, Russia, and Hungary, having no scholars of their own, invited their spiritual leaders from other countries, probably from Germany. These foreign scholars occupied the posts of rabbis, cantors, and school teachers among them, and were remunerated for their services. At the same time studious Polish Jews were in the habit of going abroad to perfect themselves in the sciences, as was also the case with the Jewish settlers in Russia. From the German mother country the Polish Jews received not only their language, a German dialect, which subsequently developed into the Polish-Jewish jargon, or Yiddish, but also their religious culture and their communal organization. All this, however, was in an embryonic stage, and only gradually unfolded in the following period.
2. The Charter of Prince Boleslav and the Canons of the Church
The importance of Jewish immigration for the economic development of Poland was first realized by the feudal Polish princes of the thirteenth century. Prompted by the desire of cultivating industrial activities in their dominions, these princes gladly welcomed settlers from Germany, without making a distinction between Jews and Christians. Nor did the native Slav population suffer inconvenience from this immigration, which, on the contrary, brought the first elements of a higher civilization into the country. In a land which had not yet emerged from the primitive stage of agricultural economy, and possessed only two fixed classes, owners of the soil and tillers of the soil, the Jews naturally represented the "third estate," acting as the pioneers of trade and finance. They put their capital in circulation, by launching industrial undertakings, by leasing estates, and farming various articles of revenue (salt mines, customs duties), and by engaging in money-lending. The native population, which medieval culture, with its religious intolerance and class prejudice, had not yet had time to "train" properly, lived at peace with the Jews.
The influence of the Church, on the one hand, and that of adjacent Christian Germany, on the other, slowly undermined this patriarchal order of things. The popes dispatched their legates to Poland to see to it that the well-known canonical statutes, which were permeated with implacable hatred against the adherents of Judaism, did not remain a dead letter, but were carried out in practice. During the same period the Polish princes, in particular Boleslav the Shy (1247-1279), endeavored to draw German emigrants into Poland, by bestowing upon them considerable privileges and the right of self-government, the so-called "Magdeburg Law," or ius teutonicum.24 The Germans, while settling in the Polish cities as merchants and tradesmen,25 and thus becoming the competitors of the Jews, imported from their native land into the new environment the spirit of economic class strife and denominational antagonism. The best of the Polish rulers were forced to combat the effects of this foreign importation, and found it necessary to encourage the economic activity of the Jews for the benefit of the country and to shield them against the insults of their Christian neighbors.
Boleslav of Kalish, surnamed the Pious, who ruled over the territory of Great Poland, was a prince of this kind. In 1264, with the consent of the highest dignitaries of the state, he promulgated a statute defining the rights of the Jews within his dominions. This charter of privileges, closely resembling in its contents the statutes of Frederick of Austria and Ottocar of Bohemia, became the corner-stone of Polish-Jewish legislation. Boleslav's charter consists of thirty-seven paragraphs, and begins with these words:
The deeds of man, when unconfirmed by the voice of witnesses or by written documents, are bound to pass away swiftly and disappear from memory. Because of this, we, Boleslav, Prince of Great Poland, make it known to our contemporaries as well as to our descendants, to whom this writing shall come down, that the Jews, who have established themselves over the length and breadth of our country, have received from us the following statutes and privileges.
The first clause of the charter prescribes that, when civil and criminal cases are tried in court, the testimony of a Christian against a Jew is to be accepted only if confirmed by the deposition of a Jewish witness. The following clauses (§§ 2-7) determine the process of law in litigation between Christians and Jews, involving primarily pawnbroking; the rules prescribed there protect equally the interests of the Jewish creditor and the Christian debtor. Lawsuits between Jew and Jew do not fall within the jurisdiction of the general municipal courts, but are tried either by the prince himself or by his lord lieutenant, the voyevoda26, or the special judge appointed by the latter (§ 8). The Christian who has murdered or wounded a Jew answers for his crime before the princely court: in the former case the culprit incurs "due punishment," and his property is forfeit to the prince; in the latter case he has to satisfy the plaintiff, and must in addition pay a fine into the princely exchequer (§§ 9-10).
This is followed by a set of paragraphs which guarantee to the Jew the inviolability of his person and property. They forbid annoying Jewish merchants on the road, exacting from them higher customs duties than from Christians, demolishing Jewish cemeteries, and attacking synagogues or "schools" (§§ 12-15). In case of a nocturnal assault upon the home of a Jew, the Christian neighbors are obliged to come to his rescue as soon as they hear his cries; those who fail to respond are subject to a fine (§ 36).
The rights and functions of the "Jewish judge,"27 who is appointed to try cases between Jew and Jew, sitting "in the neighborhood of the synagogue or in some other place," are set forth elaborately (§§ 16-23). The kidnaping of Jewish children with the view of baptizing them is severely punished (§ 27). The charter further prohibits charging the Jews with the use of Christian blood for ritual purposes, in view of the fact that the groundlessness of such charges had been demonstrated by papal bulls. Should nevertheless such charges be raised, they must be corroborated by six witnesses, three Christians and three Jews. If the charges are substantiated, the guilty Jew loses his life; otherwise the same fate overtakes the Christian informer (§ 32). All these legal safeguards were, in the words of the charter, to remain in force "for all time."
The Polish lawgiver was evidently anxious to secure for the Jews such conditions of life as might enable them to benefit the country by their commercial activity, while enjoying liberty of conscience and living in harmony with the non-Jewish population. Boleslav's
[The most important of these were: Great Poland, in the northwest, with the leading cities of Posen and Kalish; Little Poland, in the southwest, with Cracow and Lublin; and Red Russia, in the south, on which see p. 53, n. 2. In 1319 Great Poland and Little Poland were united by Vladislav Lokietek (see p. 50), who assumed the royal title. His son Casimir the Great annexed Red Russia. Thenceforward Great Poland, Little Poland, and Red Russia formed part of the Polish Kingdom, with Cracow as capital, though they were administered as separate Provinces. On the Principality of Mazovia, see p. 85, n. 1.]
Some coins bear the inscription משקא קרל פולסקי, "Meshko (= Mechislav) Król Polski," "Meshko, king of Poland," or ברכה משקא, "Benediction [on] Meshko." Other coins give the names of the Jewish minters, such as Abraham, son of Isaac Nagid, Joseph Kalish, etc.
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