Cont'd.

In the reaffirmation of 1334, King Casimir III the Great decreed:

... we ... wish to bring to the attention of all persons ... that ... certain of our Jews from our realm ... showed a privilege given to them by the most serene Duke Boleslaus of happy memory ... we have considered the privilege and its statutes with the exhaustive deliberation of our royal majesty  ... and have not found ... anything which should displease our majesty ... we order and command the renewal ... declaring it acceptable, pleasing, and firm.

Eastward migrations continue

The Crusades, the Inquisition, and in 1348, the bubonic plague, spurred Jews to migrate eastward.  (Observing the kosher laws is believed to have kept the Jews from suffering the plague as much as the rest of the population, and for that, they were persecuted.)

Burned charter recopied
A fire destroyed the city of Poznan, where the original Charter of 1264 was kept.  The Charter was burned.  And so in 1453,  King Casimir IV of the Jagellon dynasty reaffirmed the Charter, noting that "the rights [in the Charter] had also been reduced to ashes at the time when our city of Poznan was consumed by engulfing fire...."         Below: Poznan

Poznan

Now the content of these rights thus copied follows word for word and is as follows ...

The "aforesaid Casimir" continued 

... we renew, ratify, and confirm ... wishing that the Jews themselves, whom we preserve as a special treasure for ourselves and our kingdom, should acknowledge that in the time of our happy reign they were benefited by us ...

Eighty-six years later, in 1539, Sigismund I [The Great], and third son of Casimir IV, ratified the Charter still again, at the request of "certain duly appointed elder Jews." King Casimir's 1453 re-ratification, "written on parchment ..." had been presented to King Sigismund and was found to be "intact throughout."  And so King Sigismund ordered it recopied,  


to be entered word for word in the present book [of the acts of the town of Poznan] and to be inscribed therein letter for letter.

The Fortress of Poznan, according to Pogonowski, is where the recopied version of the 1264 Charter ratified by King Sigismund in 1539 is preserved. The civil liberties it memorializes were key to the flourishing of the Jews.

Political landscape changes
 When the Grand Duke of Lithuania married the youngest daughter of a nephew of  Poland's Casimir III [The Great], the political landscape changed. 

In 1410, their armies defeated the crusading Teutonic Knights in the Battle of Grunwald; in 1459, Prussia entered into a Confederation with Lithuania and Poland. 

Left: Until 1764, Poland's kings were coronated at Wawel Castle
in Krakow.

Socio-economic shifts
By the 1500s, Polish and Lithuanian nobility had intermarried, and the nobles had become more powerful, while the peasants were reduced to serfdom.  As the richer nobles gained even more strength, the minor nobles disappeared into a lower class.

 Below: Ivan the Terrible
 Meanwhile, Ivan the Terrible, Czar of Muskovia, was threatening from the East.  It was against this backdrop that the Confederation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland underwent major changes. 

From confederation to commonwealth 

The 1569 Union of Lublin created a unified Polish-Lithuanian state in which the nobles were actually the rulers.  "The nobles owned the towns and ran the country, and they were given coats of arms by the monarch," said Minsk-born Dmitriy Levit, a participant in the Belarus special interest group on www.JewishGen.org and a passionate devotee of the history of the region prior to 1772.

In 1648, the Cossack uprising led by Bohdan Chmielnicki created havoc. Then, during the war from 1654 to 1667 against invaders from the south and the east ["Moskovia"], the Lithuanian economy was ruined, according to Levit.  The loss of life was more than 50%, and in the eastern part, more than 70%, he says.

"Rech Pospolita," which translates roughly to "The People's Republic," eventually expelled the Russian invaders.  Lithuania did rebuild, but according to Levit, it never regained it's dominance in the association the Kingdom of Poland and the Dukedom of Lithuania had become. 

1588 Statute of the Great Dukedom of Lithuania  
We have to thank Levit, not only for introducing us to the 1588 Statute "of the Great Dukedom of Lithuania," but also for translating a section of particular interest.  With its focus on the knights, it reflects a change in the social fabric.  Non-knights are referred to only as "Christians of the lower status."  While the remaining nobles were growing in power, the lesser nobility disappeared. 

1588 Statute ... Part 12, Article 7

Regarding "Rights and responsibilities of the Jews."   

If a Jew has killed, wounded or beaten another Jew, then his trial should be held in the Jewish court, under its laws.  If a knight has killed a Jew and was caught where the crime took place, then the knight must be beheaded... [emphasis added]

If a knight is convicted of either killing or robbing a Jew and has neither a homestead nor does service for anyone, but instead plays the dice and drinks, then even if he were not caught at the place of the crime, he must be beheaded...
If a Jew or a Jewess has converted to Christianity, then they and their descendants must be treated as knights....

Above: Image of the 1588 Statute's first page, courtesy of Dmitriy Levit

When the monarchy was strong, Jewish rights were acknowledged and the most effectively protected.  

From the Charter of 1264 until the first partition of Poland in 1772 is a huge segment of history compared with the comparatively short history of the United States: from 1776 to the present. That makes particularly notable the long stretches during this period, especially prior to the 17th century, when Jewish life was nurtured and prospered.  However, as the power and influence of the Catholic clergy grew, conditions for Jews worsened, and the region sunk into disarray. 



 

Poland's golden age ends

As a country, Poland was obliterated. Russia found itself with an enormous population of Jews which it did not want.  Its response was to create the "Pale of Settlement." The Pale restricted Jews to the western portion of Russia, which consisted largely of the lands it had annexed from Poland and Lithuania. 

Restrictions and deteriorating conditions made the 19th century profoundly miserable for Jews there.   A wave of pogroms that began in 1881 spurred emigration to the United States and elsewhere. 

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