Oath of Jews

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Oath of Jews in a Schwabenspiegel manuscript , MS Brussels 14689–91, f. 204r, from Diebold Lauber's workshop , around 1425

The Jewish oath or (Iuramentum Iudaeorum) More Iudaico (Latin) was an oath that Jews had to take in legal disputes with non-Jews in a form prescribed by the Christian side, which was often discriminatory. It was common in parts of Europe from the early Middle Ages to the end of the 19th century . In France and Austria the oath of Jews was abolished in 1846, in Prussia on March 15, 1869. The Jewish oath is to be distinguished from the Jewish oath that was used in internal Jewish business dealings.

history

For non-Christians in Christian European countries, the Christian formulas used for legal questions had no validity, which is why special oaths were in use for these population groups since the early Middle Ages. In the Jewish oath, the Germanic-Christian oath was combined with the Talmudic to secure the oath . The oath had to be taken in or in front of the synagogue or in front of the court, touching the Torah and repeatedly invoking God and numerous self-conspiracy formulas. Reference was made to Old Testament punishments for breaking the oath. In the late Middle Ages , the oath was supplemented by a discriminatory, regionally varying ceremony, whereby the swearing party wore a rope around his neck or had to take the oath while standing on a bloody animal skin or a pig skin (see Judensau ).

Byzantium

An oath of Jews in Christian countries goes back to the year 531, when there was a trial in Byzantium between a Jewish convert and several Jews. The latter had to gird themselves with thorns before taking the oath, step into the water and spit at the circumcised limb three times. Around 1026 the implementation under Emperor Constantine VIII was softened insofar as the person to be sworn in had to gird himself with thorns and hold the legal role in his hand.

German Empire

Depiction of a German Jew taking the Jewish oath (17th century)

The oldest German-speaking Jewish oaths are passed down from Görlitz and in the Erfurt Jewish oath from the 12th century. Regional Jewish oaths have been handed down for other German cities, including Augsburg , Braunschweig (15th century), Dortmund , Frankfurt am Main , Cologne (1448), Landshut (14th century), Magdeburg , Munich , Nuremberg and Worms . According to the Sachsenspiegel , which was written between 1220 and 1235, the swearing party had to stand barefoot on a sheepskin during the oath. The Schwabenspiegel , written down around 1275, contains regulations for wearing special clothing, consisting of a Jewish hat and coat. The swearer had to stand on a pig's skin.

The oath of Jews was abolished in most of the German states in the first half of the 19th century, for example in Baden in 1814 , in Kurhessen in 1828 , in Oldenburg in 1829 , and in Württemberg in 1832 . Rabbi Zacharias Frankel 's writing, The oath of Jews in theological and historical context (Leipzig 1840), presented to the Saxon state parliament, caused the repeal of the outdated Jewish oath in Saxony and other German states.

Austria

After the Fridericianum of Duke Friedrich II of Austria, enacted in 1244 , Jews only had to swear an oath of super Rodal , i.e. on the Torah. Corresponding legislation has been adopted with minor changes for Hungary , Bohemia , Poland and Lithuania . In Austria, the oath of Jews was abolished on November 30, 1846.

France

From the medieval Arles it is handed down from the time around 1150 that a wreath of thorns was placed around the neck of the swearing person and that a twig of thorns was drawn along his hips during the oath. In 1839 the French rabbi Lazare Isidor refused to open the synagogue in Phalsbourg to take an oath of the Jews. He was charged, but found in the lawyer and politician Adolphe Crémieux a capable defense attorney who rejected the oath of Jews as unlawful. The oath of Jews was then abolished in France in the same year. In Belgium it had already been repealed in 1836.

Examples

Erfurt Jew oath

Facsimile of the Erfurt Jewish Oath, Old Synagogue, Erfurt

The Erfurt Jew oath goes back to Archbishop Konrad von Wittelsbach . The Archbishop of Mainz has demonstrably been practicing since the 13th and 14th. Century established a protective rule over all German Jews. The text reproduced after Wackernagel read:

“Des dich dirre sculdegit des bistur innuldic. So help you. The god of heaven and earthen scuf. loub. flowers. unde grass. the da uore nine was. Unde whether you're wrong sveris. daz you the earth uirslinde. di datan unde abiron uirslant. Unde whether you're wrong sveris. because you are addicted to musel. di naamannen liz unde iezi marveled at. Unde whether you sweris wrong. daz the e uirtilige di got moisy gave you. in the mountain synay. You got the same writing with your sinen uingeren on the stone table. Unde whether you sweris wrong. daz you uellin alle di scrift. the scribed sint to the uunf book moisy. This is the Jews that di biscof Cuonrat dirre stat gave. "

The New High German transmission according to Herchert is reproduced below:

“You are innocent of what he blames you for, if God help you, the God who created heaven and earth, leaves, flowers and grass that did not exist before. And if you swear wrongly that the earth devoured you that Datan and Abiran devoured you. And if you swear wrongly that you have been attacked by the leprosy that left Naeman and befell Gehazi . And if you swear wrongly that the laws that God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, which God himself wrote with his fingers on the stone tablet, will destroy you. And if you swear wrongly that all the scriptures that are written in the five books of Moses will bring you down. This is the Jews' oath that Bishop Konrad gave this city. "

The Erfurt Jewish Oath is the oldest verifiable oath of this kind in the German language and stands at the beginning of a tradition of numerous German-language formulas. It does not yet contain any dishonorable additives such as those mentioned in the Schwabenspiegel.

Frankfurt oath of Jews

At the request of the Frankfurt Council, the Frankfurt businessman Salomon Neustadt had to take the following discrediting oath in 1800 in order to prove economic claims against a business partner. The text has been handed down in the StA Ffm Ugb D 90, reproduced here from Kasper-Holtkotte:

"Jud I swear you by the one living and all-powerful God, Creator of the heavens and the earth and all things and by his Torah and law that He gave to his servant Moyse on Mount Sinay that you should say and forbid whether this book is present be the book on which a Jew can and should take and exercise a proper oath to a Christian or a Jew. Jud I truly announce to you that we Christians worship the one almighty and living God, who created heaven and earth and all things, and that apart from this we have no other God, neither honor nor worship. I am telling you this for this reason and for the reason that you do not think that you are excused before God for a false oath by believing and believing that we are Christians of a wrong faith and worshiping strange gods, which is not, and because the Nezin, or captains of the people of Israel, were guilty of keeping what they swore to the men of Giffan; who nevertheless served the foreign gods, you owe us Christians much more than to swear to those who worship a living and almighty God and to keep a true and unmistakable oath. That is why Jud I ask you if you believe that someone desecrates and blasphemes Almighty God by swearing a false and untruthful oath. Jud I also ask you whether, out of well-considered courage and without any malice or deceit, you want to appeal to the one living and almighty God as a witness of the truth that you do not speak untruth, falsehood or deceit in this matter, which is why an oath is imposed on you or if you want to use some white, then say the Jew - Yes! Addnay Eternal Almighty God a Lord over all Melachim one God of my peoples who you gave us the holy Torah, I call on you and your holy name Adonay and your Almighty, that you help me confirm my oath, which I am now to take, And where I will swear wrongly or fraudulently, I am deprived of all graces of the eternal God and all the punishments and curses which God has inflicted on the cursed Jews will be imposed on me, and my soul and body no longer have a part in the promise which God has done to us, and I am not supposed to take part in masses or in the promised earth of the holy soul. Country. I also promise and testify to the eternal God Adonay that I will not covet, ask or accept any explanation, interpretation, acceptance or forgiveness from any Jew or other people, where with this oath of mine I will now do so, deceive some people . Amen."

The Frankfurt rabbi Leopold Stein published a memorandum in June 1847 aimed at the abolition of the Jewish oath in Frankfurt.

"Great Braunschweig Oath of Jews"

The Braunschweig oath of Jews is handed down in a collective manuscript from the 2nd half of the 15th century. The manuscript stored in the Wolfenbüttel Duke August Library comes from the library of the Brunswick town clerk Gerwin von Hameln and shows a depiction of a Jew with a typical hat and clothing, which has the yellow rings that have been prescribed since 1434 . The formula of the oath was valid in the Principality of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel . It is not known whether the oath was also used in the city of Braunschweig. The Jewish oath of all ages, handed down through trial protocols, existed there. These oaths had to be sworn in the synagogue, and when leaving the synagogue, the sworn had to wear a hat.

literature

  • Thea Bernstein: The history of the German Jewish oath in the Middle Ages . Phil. Diss. (Mach.) Hamburg 1922
  • Guido Kisch: Research on the legal and social history of the Jews in Germany during the Middle Ages , Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1978, pp. 137–185 (Chapter III: Studies on the history of the Jewish oath in the Middle Ages ).
  • Christine Magin: "How it umb the Jews quite steadily": The status of the Jews in late medieval German law books . Wallstein, Göttingen 1999, p. 291ff., ISBN 3-89244-258-4 .
  • HG von Mutius: Judeneid in Lexikon des Mittelalters , Vol. V., Sp. 789, Munich 2003
  • Zvi Sofer: The certification of an oath Bible. The oath according to Jewish custom, more judaico in Theokratia , Volume III, yearbook of the Judaicum Delitzschianum Institute, Leipzig 1977
  • Volker Zimmermann: The development of the Jewish oath. Studies and texts on the legal position of the Jews in the Middle Ages. Lang, Bern [u. a.] 1973 (= Europäische Hochschulschriften, Series 1, Volume 56), ISBN 3-261-00055-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ HG von Mutius: Judeneid in Lexikon des Mittelalters , Vol. V., Munich 2003, Col. 789
  2. ↑ a b Zvi Sofer: The certification of an oath Bible. The oath according to Jewish custom, more judaico in Theokratia , Volume III, Yearbook of the Judaicum Delitzschianum Institute, Leipzig 1977, p. 233.
  3. ↑ Isaak Markus Jost: History of the Israelites from the time of the Maccabeans to our days , Berlin 1847, pp. 200–201.
  4. ↑ Cilli Kasper-Holtkotte: In the West News: Migration and its Consequences: German Jews as Pioneers of Jewish Life in Belgium, 18./19. Century , 2003, p. 398.
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Stammler, Karl Langosch, Kurt Ruh : Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters , Berlin 1980, pp. 574-576.
  6. ^ Wilhelm Wackernagel : German reading book: Th. I. Altdeutsches reading book , 1859, p. 318.
  7. ↑ Gaby Herchert: Law and Validity , 2003, p. 57.
  8. ↑ Cilli Kasper-Holtkotte: In the West News: Migration and its Consequences: German Jews as Pioneers of Jewish Life in Belgium, 18./19. Century , 2003, pp. 223-224.
  9. ↑ Leopold Stein: The oath "more Judaico", as such is still in practice in the courts of the free city of Frankfurt , Frankfurt 1847
  10. ↑ Cord Meckseper (Ed.): Stadt im Wandel Volume 1 , Stuttgart 1985, pp. 503–504.

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