Article:1.2.2

"Communal and Social Life - Urban Life" is not in the list (Communal and Social Life, Communal and Social Life - Urban Life, Communal and Social Life - Rural Life, Communal and Social Life - Social Margins, Communal and Social Life - Philanthropy, Culture, Culture - Art, Culture - Enlightenment, Culture - Literature, Culture - Music, ...) of allowed values for the "BelongsToTopic" property."Jews and Their Surrounding - Legal Status" is not in the list (Communal and Social Life, Communal and Social Life - Urban Life, Communal and Social Life - Rural Life, Communal and Social Life - Social Margins, Communal and Social Life - Philanthropy, Culture, Culture - Art, Culture - Enlightenment, Culture - Literature, Culture - Music, ...) of allowed values for the "BelongsToTopic" property.

Jews and Burghers in the Urban Environment

     Jews and Burghers in the Urban Environment

Jürgen Heyde

       Topics
       Communal and Social Life - Urban Life"Communal and Social Life - Urban Life" is not in the list (Communal and Social Life, Communal and Social Life - Urban Life, Communal and Social Life - Rural Life, Communal and Social Life - Social Margins, Communal and Social Life - Philanthropy, Culture, Culture - Art, Culture - Enlightenment, Culture - Literature, Culture - Music, ...) of allowed values for the "BelongsToTopic" property.Jews and Their Surrounding - Legal Status"Jews and Their Surrounding - Legal Status" is not in the list (Communal and Social Life, Communal and Social Life - Urban Life, Communal and Social Life - Rural Life, Communal and Social Life - Social Margins, Communal and Social Life - Philanthropy, Culture, Culture - Art, Culture - Enlightenment, Culture - Literature, Culture - Music, ...) of allowed values for the "BelongsToTopic" property.

       Period
       Before 1772

       Region
       Galicia

       NLI Code
       997013604473705171

Related Entries

• Article:1.1.2
• Article:1.2.1
• Article:1.3.1
• Article:1.4.4

Map

• Royal, Private, and Ecclesiastic Towns in 16th-18th centuries.

Urbanization in the south-eastern parts of the Polish kingdom continued from the Middle Ages well into the early modern period. In the early phase towns were founded mainly at the initiative of the monarch (“royal towns”). However, already in the 15th century more and more centers of noble and to a small degree ecclesiastical holdings (“private towns”) were founded. Founding privileges contained provisions about juridical structures and local self-government, about investments of the town lord in the urban infrastructure, and about the duties, taxes, and services of the inhabitants. These documents mostly addressed the burgher community and provided them with jurisdictional and economical self-government. They followed the initially granted to the German city of Magdeburg, which had been adopted in most cities in Poland and Lithuania. Jewish self-government was granted through the charters of rights called “general privileges” granted by the kings. In early modern times, municipal privileges occasionally included provisions for the settlement of Jews and the role of the Jewish community within the town. Jewish communities, on the other hand, acquired communal privileges in response to specific problems and constellations of their town.

Most founding privileges, especially the medieval ones, imagined the town as a legal and topographic entity dominated by the Catholic burgher community. An interesting exception is the privilege that the Polish king Casimir the Great issued to the town of Lviv in 1356. He included provisions for non-Catholic/non-burgher groups in order to integrate them into the new structures of local self-government. In principle, the document stated, law should be applied to “the whole town and everybody living in it.” It invited “all other nations in the city, namely Armenians, Jews, Saracens, Ruthenians and others” to apply this Magdeburg law to themselves as well. However, if they did not wish to use Magdeburg law, they were allowed to use the laws of their nations to settle and judge conflicts that arose among themselves. 1.2.2-Jews and Burgers-1

The 1356 Lviv privilege was the first time a town charter explicitly addressed the legal complexities of a multi-ethnic city, allowing the various inhabitants to find solutions on their own. In the following decades, the Ruthenians initially opted for the Magdeburg law. In the late 14^th century, the Armenians had their own bailiff under Armenian law, while the Jewish community opted out of the local framework for self-government as proposed in the town charter altogether. In 1367, when King Casimir confirmed the privilege for the Jews in Lesser Poland and Red Ruthenia, the Jews of Lviv “and the whole province of Ruthenia” acquired a separate confirmation including the statement that “the judge of the town” had no jurisdiction whatsoever over the Jews. The court of the Jewish community in Lviv was therefore subordinated directly to the royal Voivode, just like elsewhere in the kingdom. The municipality (the representation of the burgher community) was not willing to accept these forms of legal pluralism in the town. In 1444, the Lviv burghers acquired a royal privilege that allowed submitting all “foreign merchants in town, Greeks, Armenians, Saracens, Jews, or Muslims” to [law]. The Jewish and Armenian communities resisted their implied subjugation under the jurisdiction of the municipality. Decades later, in 1521, the Ruthenians joined them and constituted a politically active community as well.

Within the medieval urban topography, there were no legal restrictions as to where Jews could settle or acquire property. Tax records and contracts for the sale of property indicate that Jews and burghers lived intermingled, and ownership of houses changed hands between both groups. In Kraków, Lviv, and many other cities, however, a distinct Jewish quarter or Jewish Street also existed and is visible on the map as well. In Lviv, the oldest tax records from the early 15^th century testify to the existence of ethnic quarters for the Armenian, Jewish, and Ruthenian populations, which maintained their location for centuries. In Kraków however, the oldest town records provide an insight into the formation of the Jewish quarter via property transactions in the first half of the 14^th century. It did not remain in its initial location near St. Anna’s church in the later university district. In 1469 the community negotiated a relocation of the quarter to the vicinity of St. Stephen’s church. After the great fire of 1494, King Jan Olbracht offered the community parcels of land in neighboring Kazimierz, where the community relocated for a second time. The move affected the self-identification of the Jews as residents of a separate town only for a short while. In the first decades of the 16^th century, Jews titled themselves as being “from Kazimierz,” but from the 1540’s the Kraków town records refer to them again as being “from Kraków.” Rabbi Mosheh Isserles, a resident of Kazimierz, wrote “here in Kraków” when he mentioned his community. 1.2.2-Jews and Burgers-2

Nevertheless, in the early modern period, the urban topography evolved differently from the way it had functioned during in the Middle Ages. The magistrates exerted their dominance over the urban space by providing services, such as maintaining the water supply, keeping the city’s walls and fortifications in good conditions, or by enforcing regulations for fire-prevention that included the Jewish quarter and other distinct settlements within the city walls. Constant migration into the town led to increased competition for properties, and the communities tried to safeguard their vested rights. In Lviv the municipality enforced rigorous restrictions against the sale of properties to Jews outside the Jewish quarter. When the municipality itself sold such a property to a Jew, after the great fire of 1527, the contract made sure that all taxes and obligations to the municipality and the Catholic church were still being paid by the new owner. In 1603 the Jewish elders acknowledged that all property transactions in the town had to be recorded and approved by the municipality. 1.2.2-Jews and Burgers-10

When the Jewish quarter in Kazimierz required an expansion, the community negotiated with the municipality of Kazimierz in 1553, 1583, and 1608. In addition, the kahal acquired a royal privilege granting the community the right of first refusal if a property was sold in the “Jewish town” – as the quarter came to be known in the 16^th century. The right to control immigration into the Jewish quarter was another provision safeguarding the autonomy of the kahal in matters of Jewish settlement. It was granted to the new community of Zhovkva and other private towns in the 17^th century in a bid to promote Jewish settlement in the Ruthenian parts of the kingdom.

In the 16^th and early 17^th centuries, a number of royal as well as private cities acquired rights to exclude Jews from settling in them, limiting Jewish presence to a few market days. These were known as Privilegium de non tolerandis Judaeis, the privilege of not tolerating Jews. In the southeastern parts these towns included Wieliczka, Biecz, Pilzno, Opoczno, Chęciny and Stężyca in Lesser Poland and Krasnystaw, Krosno, Drohobycz, Maheriv (all 16^th c.) and Szczucin (17^th c.) in Red Ruthenia. The latest case of such a privilege concerning the town of Białaczów was granted in 1787. There were, however, obstacles to enforcing such an exclusion. The municipality needed to ensure that burghers were not renting or selling houses to Jews. In adition, Jews could resettle in parts of the towns that did not belong to the municipality’s jurisdiction (“jurydyk”) but belonged rather to magnates or to the Church. Controlling Jewish presence in a town could prove difficult. In most cases, the ban on Jewish settlement was neglected after some time, especially in the second half of the 17th century after the Cossack and Swedish wars, when town lords and magistrates tried to attract new settlers to rebuild the economy.

Some towns, such as Przeworsk or Rzeszów issued ordinances limiting the number of Jewish dwellings, but likewise without success. Time and again, magistrates filed complaints to town lords or royal officials and often even received a confirmation of their position, but usually no measures were taken to enforce the restrictions. A peculiar case was the town of Zamość, founded in 1584 by the Polish Chancellor Jan Zamoyski. In 1588, Zamoyski issued a privilege to attract Sephardic Jews as settlers in order to promote long-distance trade with the Ottoman Empire. At the same time, he excluded Ashkenazi Jews as potential competitors of the Christian merchants and artisans in the city. In the second half of the 17^th century, his successors allowed Jews from Volhynia and Red Ruthenia to settle in the city.

Legal relations between Jews and Christians were just as manifold and fluid. In Jarosław, in 1571, the town lord decreed that there should be no more than two Jewish houses in the town. The Jews were under the jurisdiction of the municipal court but could appeal to the court of the noble town lord. In Przeworsk, which belonged to the same noblewoman, Jews were exempted from municipal jurisdiction and directly subjected to her own private court.

Moreover, a privilege granted by the town lord did not automatically provide an uncontested legal framework for the relations between Jews and non-Jews. In Biłgoraj, the owner Zbigniew Gorayski issued a founding privilege for the (already existing) town in 1634, in which he declared that nobody should be living in the town at their own discretion but only in accordance with [Law]. Without this there would be no benefits or settlement, and any resident must share the duties of the burghers, Christians and Jews alike. All conflicts should be judged before the town court, including criminal cases; only special cases were reserved for the court of the town lord. Already in 1616, however, the same nobleman had issued a privilege for the Jews in Biłgoraj in which he stated “To ensure that these Jews, my subjects, would not be harmed in any way, I will appoint them a judge, to whom they will add an elder of theirs, whenever a court is due, with exception to appellations to my court.” This provision echoed the structure of Jewish jurisdictional self-government in medieval royal privileges and opened the space for the eventual claim that the Jews should not be subjected to the Magdeburg Law court. Some town lords voiced concerns that Jews might not be treated equally or fairly before municipal courts and therefore exempted them.

The legal framework for Jews and burghers was subject to constant (re-)negotiation, not least because of changing economic conditions in the second half of the 17^th century and throughout the 18^th century, which opened possibilities of migration between urban centers in search of better conditions. Even within the same town, this openness offered possibilities for litigants to choose a court that might offer better chances of winning a trial. For example, a conflict between Jews about the renewal or acquisition of a lease might be taken before a non-Jewish court in order to lessen the chances that the interests of the kahal might weigh on the verdict.

Relations between Jews and Christians often involved the town lord or other non-Jewish authorities. When burghers tried to restrict Jewish trade or crafts, the Jewish communities acquired documents strengthening their position. Sometimes Jews organized themselves in separate guilds, but there were also common organizations that tried to balance the economic and religious dimensions of such congregations, as in the case of Rzeszów. There, in the ordinance for the merchant guild (“German guild”) of 1714, the town lord decreed that once every three months all members of the guild must attend a religious service to honor deceased members. Regardless of confessional differences, Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists had to participate, but the Jewish guild members were explicitly exempted. The wish to include Jewish merchants in the economic organization prevailed over the town lord’s religious fervor. 1.2.2-Jews and Burgers-7

When burghers and Jews involved the town lord or other Christian authorities in the negotiation of conflicts, the specific issues that were dealt with were often less important than maintaining or readjusting the balance of power between the two groups. Another form of conflict management were direct agreements (ugody) between the kahal and the municipality. These concerned concrete questions ranging from trade and propinacja to the maintenance of the town walls or the supply of drinking water. 1.2.2-Jews and Burgers-5 Ugody were based on the acceptance of the other party as a trustworthy partner and on the willingness to reach a lasting solution to a clearly defined problem. The earliest ugody contracts are dated to the late 16^th century, and the last one stems from the late 18^th century in the period of partitions. In an example from 16^th century Przemyśl, the council and kahal settled a conflict over the renovation of the town’s fortifications. The Jews left the organization of this task to the burghers and agreed to pay a contribution towards it. Both sides understood that the agreement allowed them to avoid a costly trial before the town lord’s court. They acknowledged each other as responsible partners with regard to affairs concerning the town as a whole. 1.2.2-Jews and Burgers-6.

In spite of being predominantly urban dwellers, the Jews were not part of the urban burghers’ community. Jews were treated as aliens permitted to live in cities under certain conditions but deprived of municipal civil rights. However, the most important factor for the living conditions of urban Jews was not their relations with the municipality but the legal status of the town itself: royal, private, or ecclesiastic, or the nature of the legal enclave (jurydyka) inside the royal town where Jews settled. Thus, inside one town two or more Jewish communities could exist living with different rights, as in Lviv, for example, or different individual Jews living in different enclaves inside one town might live in different conditions, as in Kraków. 1.2.2-Jews and Burgers-8

Select Bibliography

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Guesnet, François, “Agreements between Neighbours: The ‘Ugody’ as a Source on Jewish-Christian Relations in Early Modern Poland,” Jewish History 24, Nr. 3/4, (2010): 257–270.

Hundert, Gershon David, The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatów in the Eighteenth Century . Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

Hundert, Gershon David. “The Kehilla and the Municipality in Private Towns at the End of the Early Modern Period.” In The Jews in old Poland, 1000‒1795, edited by Antony Polonsky, Jakub Basista, and Andrzej Link-Lenczowski. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1993, 174–185.

Kaźmierczyk, Adam, Żydzi w dobrach prywatnych w świetle sądowniczej i administracyjnej praktyki dóbr magnackich w wiekach XVI-XVIII . Kraków: Księgarnia akademicka, 2002.

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Węgrzynek, Hanna, “The Role of Legal Settlements in Developing Christian-Jewish Relations in Polish towns and Cities,” In Jewish self-government in Eastern Europe (Polin 34), edited by François Guesnet, and Antony Polonsky, 99-116. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press 2022.

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