Worms privilege (Jews)

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The Worms privilege was an imperial privilege granted by Henry IV to the Worms Jews in 1090 to prevent further pogroms .

The Worms privilege guaranteed the Jews:

  • Protection of life and property,
  • Freedom from economic activity and religious practice,
  • the right to employ Christian domestic staff,
  • the autonomy of the Jewish community in internal Jewish legal matters as well
  • binding rules of procedure for disputes between Jews and Christians .

Henry IV did not want to protect the personal integrity of the Jews with these rights - for example out of Christian charity  - rather he intended to protect the coffers of the Reich from tax losses as a result of feared Jewish pogroms . In addition, Jewish property should not be plundered, but should go to the respective territorial rulers.

With the Worms privilege , Heinrich IV created a pioneering legal statute , a collection of legal norms that were to shape the relationship between Jews and Christians for centuries, both positively and negatively, and which established the legal status of Jews as imperial servants in the Holy Roman Empire . The importance of the Worms privilege is also shown by the following Transsumpte of Frederick I from 1157 and that of Frederick II from 1236 to the Transsumpte of the Archbishop of Cologne in 1360 as part of the resettlement of Jews in Cologne after the persecution of the plague.

literature

proof

  1. Franz-Josef Ziwes: Studies on the history of the Jews in the central Rhine region during the high and late Middle Ages (= research on the history of the Jews. Department A: Treatises. Vol. 1). Hahn, Hannover 1995, ISBN 3-7752-5610-5 , p. 72, (at the same time: Trier, Universität, Dissertation, 1992).