Volume I Part 6 (1/2)
[49] The parliamentary order of Poland was somewhat complicated. Each region or _voyevodstvo_ (see above, p. 46, n. 1), of which there were about sixty in Poland, had its own local a.s.sembly, or _sejmik_ (p.r.o.nounced _saymik_), _i. e._ little Diet, or Dietine. Deputies o these Dietines met at the respective _sejms_ (p.r.o.nounced _saym_), or Diets, of one of the three large provinces of Poland: Great Poland, Little Poland, and Red Russia. The national _sejm_, representing the whole of Poland, came into being towards the end of the fifteenth century. Beginning with 1573 it met regularly every two years for six weeks in Warsaw or in Grodno. Before the convocation of this national all-Polish Parliament, all local Dietines a.s.sembled on one and the same day to give instructions to the deputies elected to it.
[50] [Gnesen as seat of the Primate; Cracow as capital.]
[51] [Warsaw was originally the capital of the independent Princ.i.p.ality of Mazovia. After the incorporation of Mazovia into the Polish Empire, in 1526, Warsaw emerged from its obscurity and in the latter part of the sixteenth century became the capital of united Poland and Lithuania, taking the place of Cracow and Vilna.]
[52] According to another version, they forged the contents of the royal warrant.
[53] [With the gradual weakening of the royal power, which, after the extinction of the Yagh.e.l.lo dynasty, in 1572, was transformed into an elective office, the favorite designation for the Polish Empire came to be _Rzecz_ (p.r.o.nounced _Zhech_) _Pospolita_, a literal rendering of the Latin Res _Publica_. The term comprises Poland as well as Lithuania, which, in 1569, had been united in one Empire.]
[54] They are referred to in his edicts as _calumniae_.
[55] [The Arian heresy, as modified and preached by Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), an Italian who settled in Poland, became a powerful factor in the Polish intellectual life of that period. Because of its liberal tendency, this doctrine appealed in particular to the educated cla.s.ses, and its adherents, called Socinians, were largely recruited from the ranks of the Shlakhta. Under Sigismund III. a strong reaction set in, culminating in the law pa.s.sed by the Diet of 1658, according to which all ”Arians” were to leave the country within two years.]
[56] [_Arendar_, also _arendator_, from medieval Latin _arrendare_, ”to rent,” signifies in Polish and Russian a lessee, originally of a farm, subsequently of the tavern and, as is seen in the text, other sources of revenue on the estate. These arendars being mostly Jews, the name, abbreviated in Yiddish to _randar_, came practically to mean ”village Jew.”]
[57] [Literally, _lord_: the lord of the manor, n.o.ble landowner.]
[58] There is reason to believe that he is the hero of the legendary story according to which an influential Polish Jew by the name of Saul Wahl, a favorite of Prince Radziwill, was, during an interregnum, proclaimed Polish king by the Shlakhta, and reigned for one night.
[59] [See pp. 29 _et seq._ Kiev was captured by the Lithuanians in 1320, and remained, through the union of Lithuania and Poland, a part of the Polish Empire until 1654, when, together with the province of Little Russia, it was ceded to Muscovy.]
[60] See p. 55.
[61] [Stephen Batory inst.i.tuted two supreme courts for the realm: one for the Crown, _i. e._ for Poland proper, and another for Lithuania. The former held its sessions in Lublin for Little Poland and in Piotrkov for Great Poland (see p. 164).]
[62] A second edition of the book appeared in 1636.
[63] [In addition to the regular Diets, which a.s.sembled every two years (see above, p. 76, n. 1), there were held also Election Diets and Coronation Diets, in connection with the election and the coronation of the new king. The former met on a field near Warsaw; the latter were held in Cracow.]
[64] [Moghilev on the Dnieper, in White Russia, is to be distinguished from Moghilev on the Dniester, a town in the present Government of Podolia.]
CHAPTER IV
THE INNER LIFE OF POLISH JEWRY AT ITS ZENITH
1. KAHAL AUTONOMY AND THE JEWISH DIETS
The peculiar position occupied by the Jews in Poland made their social autonomy both necessary and possible. Const.i.tuting an historical nationality, with an inner life of its own, the Jews were segregated by the Government as a separate estate, an independent social body. Though forming an integral part of the urban population, the Jews were not officially included in any one of the general urban estates, whose affairs were administered by the magistracy or the trade-unions. Nor were they subjected to the jurisdiction of Christian law courts as far as their internal affairs were concerned. They formed an entirely independent cla.s.s of citizens, and as such were in need of independent agencies of self-government and jurisdiction. The Jewish community const.i.tuted not only a national and cultural, but also a civil, ent.i.ty.
It formed a Jewish city within a Christian city, with its separate forms of life, its own religious, administrative, judicial, and charitable inst.i.tutions. The Government of a country with sharply divided estates could not but legalize the autonomy of the Jewish Kahal, after having legalized the Magdeburg Law of the Christian urban estates, in which the Germans const.i.tuted the predominating element. As for the kings, in their capacity as the official ”guardians” of the Jews, they were especially concerned in having the Kahals properly organized, since the regular payment of the Jewish taxes was thereby a.s.sured. Moreover, the Government found it more to its convenience to deal with a well-defined body of representatives than with the unorganized ma.s.ses.
As early as the period of royal ”paternalism,” during the reign of Sigismund I., the king endeavored to extend his fatherly protection to the Jewish system of communal self-government. The appointment of Michael Yosefovich as the ”senior” of the Lithuanian Jews, with a rabbi as expert adviser[65], was designed to safeguard the interests of the exchequer by concentrating the power in the hands of a federation of Kahals in Lithuania. On more than one occasion Sigismund I. confirmed the ”spiritual judges,” or rabbis (_judices spirituales_, _doctores legis_), elected by the Jews in different parts of Poland, in their office. In 1518 he ratified, at the request of the Jews of Posen, their election of two leading rabbis, Moses and Mendel, to the posts of provincial judges for all the communities of Great Poland, bestowing upon the newly-elected officials the right of instructing and judging their coreligionists in accordance with the Jewish law. In Cracow, where the Jews were divided into two separate communities--one of native Polish Jews and another of immigrants from Bohemia,--the King empowered each of them to elect its own rabbi. The choice fell upon Rabbi Asher for the former, and upon Rabbi Peretz for the latter, community, and when a dispute arose between the two communities as to the owners.h.i.+p of the old synagogue, the King again intervened, and decided the case in favor of the native community (1519). In 1531 Mendel Frank, the rabbi of Brest, complained to the King that the Jews did not always respect his decisions, and brought their cases before the royal starostas.
Accordingly Sigismund I. thought it necessary to warn the Jews to submit to the jurisdiction of their own ”doctors,” or rabbis, who dispensed justice according to the ”Jewish law,” and were given the right of imposing the ”oath” (_herem_, excommunication) and all kinds of other penalties upon insubordinates. In the following year the King appointed as ”senior,” or chief rabbi, of Cracow the well-known scholar Moses Fishel--who, it may be added parenthetically, had taken the degree of Doctor of Medicine in Padua--to succeed Rabbi Asher, referred to previously. Pursuing the same policy of centralization, the King, a few years later, in 1541, confirmed in their office as chief rabbis (_seniores_) of the whole province of Little Poland two men ”learned in the Jewish law,” the same Rabbi Moses Fishel of Cracow, and the famous progenitor of Polish Talmudism, Rabbi Shalom Shakhna of Lublin.
In the same measure, however, in which the communal organization of the Jews gained in strength, and the functions of the rabbis and Kahal elders became more clearly defined, the Government gradually receded from its att.i.tude of paternal interference. The _magna charta_ of Jewish autonomy may be said to be represented by the charter of Sigismund Augustus, issued on August 13, 1551, which embodies the fundamental principles of self-government for the Jewish communities of Great Poland.
According to this charter, the Jews are ent.i.tled to elect, by general agreement,[66] their own rabbis and ”lawful judges” to take charge of their spiritual and social affairs. The rabbis and judges, elected in this manner, are authorized to expound all questions of the religious ritual, to perform marriages and grant divorces, to execute the transfer of property and other acts of a civil character, and to settle disputes between Jews in accordance with the ”Mosaic law” (_iuxta ritum et morem legis illorum Mosaicae_) and the supplementary Jewish legislation. In conjunction with the Kahal elders they are empowered to subject offenders against the law to excommunication and other punishments, such as the Jewish customs may prescribe. In case the person punished in this manner does not recant within a month, the matter is to be brought to the knowledge of the king, who may sentence the incorrigible malefactor to death and confiscate his property. The local officers of the king are enjoined to lend their a.s.sistance in carrying out the orders of the rabbis and elders.
This enactment, coupled with a number of similar charters, which were subsequently promulgated for various provinces of Poland, conferred upon the elective representatives of the Jewish communities extensive autonomy in economic and administrative as well as judicial affairs, at the same time insuring its practical realization by placing at its disposal the power of the royal administration.
The firm consolidation of the _regime_ of the self-governing community, the _Kahal_, dates from that period. In this appellation two concepts were merged: the ”community,” the aggregate of the local Jews, on the one hand, and, on the other, the ”communal administration,” representing the totality of all the Jewish inst.i.tutions of a given locality, including the rabbinate. The activity of the Kahals a.s.sumed particularly large proportions beginning with the latter half of the sixteenth century.
All cities and towns with a Jewish population had their separate Kahal boards. Their size corresponded roughly to that of the given community.