“This He Testified Before the Jewish Seniors of Lublin”: The Involvement of Jewish Communal Leaders in Polish Courts at the End of the 16th Century

• In Event: Power, Authority, and Law in Medieval and Early Modern Ashkenaz

Abstract

Leaders of the local Jewish community served as witnesses in a 1598 ritual murder trial at the Crown Tribunal in Lublin, both to the proceedings and to confessions by the accused Jews, who were being subjected to torture. This case marked the first time in Poland when an accusation of ritual murder ended with the conviction and execution of the accused. The presence of local Jewish elders was not, as Meir Balaban suggested, to aid the accused, but to add legitimacy to the ritual murder proceedings, which were contrary to directives of the Polish crown that had long declared all ritual murder accusations invalid. This paper analyzes the participation of the Lublin seniors in accounts of the trial that appeared in three early 17th-century antisemitic works, including Sebastian Miczyński’s Mirror of the Polish Crown. Consideration of the role of Jewish observers adds to our understanding of this significant trial, most recently considered by Magda Teter, who argued this was the first time traditional Jewish defenses against ritual murder accusations failed. Indeed, this trial represents not only a failure of traditional Jewish defenses, but also the co-optation of Jewish participation in regional Polish courts to add a veneer of legitimacy to the dubiously legal proceedings. A 1556 royal privilege given to the Jews of Lublin, like many similar privileges in other regions, stipulated that the community appoint elected Jewish representatives to take part in the judicial proceedings in the court of the regional noble governor, the wojewoda. This court, like its counterparts around Poland, had jurisdiction in any case where Jews were sued by Christians and was designed to protect Jews from being tried in hostile courts. Virtually none of the records of these courts have survived to the present, making it difficult to assess how the Jewish representatives functioned in the proceedings. Scholars like Adam Teller have argued that Jewish representatives were there to advise the judge, particularly regarding Jewish custom and law. The 1598 trial demonstrates not only the co-optation of Jewish leaders’ participation, but that this participation was viewed by Polish authorities as a normative, legitimate institutional practice.

Author

• Mikol Bailey, University of Maryland, College Park