History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 1 of 3. From the Beginning until the Death of Alexander I (1825). Dubnow Simon
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 Dlugosh33, grew rich on the money plundered from the Jews.
One cannot fail to perceive in all these catastrophes the influence of neighboring Germany34. 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
[Lvov, written in Polish Lwów, is used by the Poles and Russians; Lemberg is used by the Germans.]
[Before Casimir the Great Red Russia formed an independent Principality (see p. 42, n. 1). The identity of Red Russia with Galicia has been assumed in the text for the sake of convenience. In reality Red Russia corresponds to present-day
Jan Dlugosz, called in Latin Johannes Longinus [author of
The recently published records of the court proceedings in the Cracow pogrom of 1407 show that its principal instigators were German artisans and merchants who resided in that city.