Uncompromising hostility to the Jews marked the attitude of the urban estates, the merchants and artisans of the burgher class, with a considerable sprinkling of German settlers, whose influence was clearly noticeable. These organized tradesmen and handicraftsmen looked upon the Jews as their direct competitors. The magistracies, acting as the organs of municipal self-government, placed severe restrictions upon the Jews in the acquisition of real estate and in the pursuit of business and handicrafts, while the trade-unions occasionally set the riotous mobs at their heels. Still more resolute was the agitation of the Catholic clergy, which frequently succeeded in influencing legislation in the spirit of ecclesiastic intolerance.
The interaction of all these forces shaped the legal and social status of the Polish-Lithuanian Jews in the course of the sixteenth and in the beginning of the seventeenth century, at a time when Poland was passing through the zenith of her political prosperity. The vacillations and upheavals in the position of the Jews were conditioned by the shifting of forces in the direction of the one or the other above-mentioned factors in the course of history.
2. The Liberal Régime of Sigismund I.
The opening years of the sixteenth century found the Jews fully restored to the rights of which their enemies had attempted to rob them at the end of the preceding century. Alexander Yaghello, the very same Lithuanian Grand Duke who, from some obscure motive, had banished the Jews from his dominions in 1495,45 found it necessary to call them back as soon as he ascended the throne of Poland, after the demise of his brother. In 1503, "having consulted the lords of the realm," King Alexander announced his decision to the effect that the Jews exiled from Grodno and other cities of Lithuania should be allowed to return and settle "near the castles and in the localities in which they had lived formerly," and should be given back the houses, synagogues, cemeteries, farms, and fields, which had previously been in their possession. The reasons for this change of front may easily be traced to the vast economic importance of the Jews of the Polish Kingdom, which had shortly before, in 1501, entered into a closer union with Lithuania, and to the invaluable services of the Jewish tax-farmers, on whom the royal budget to a large extent depended.
One of these "royal financiers" was the wealthy Yosko,46 who farmed the customs and tolls in nearly half of Poland. To stimulate the endeavors of his financier, King Alexander exempted Yosko and his employees from the authority of the local administration, placing him, after the manner of court dignitaries, under the jurisdiction of the royal court. But, taken as a whole, the King was even now far from friendly to the Jews. In 1505 he permitted the inclusion of the ancient charter of Boleslav of Kalish, the magna charta of Jewish liberties, in the code of organic Polish laws, which was then being edited by the chancellor John Laski. But he was careful to point out that he did not thereby intend to ratify Boleslav's charter anew, but allowed its reproduction "for the purpose of safeguarding [the Christian population] against the Jews" (ad cautelam defensionis contra Judaeos).
Alexander's successor, Sigismund I. Yaghello (1506-1548), King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, favored a more liberal policy towards his Jewish subjects. Though a staunch Catholic, Sigismund was free from the spirit of anti-Jewish clericalism, and he endeavored to the best of his ability to live up to the principle proclaimed by him, that "equal justice should be meted out to the rich and mighty lords and to the meanest pauper." This lofty principle, so little compatible with the policy of class discrimination, could, however inadequately, be applied only there where the power of royalty was not handicapped by the mighty Shlakhta and the other estates. The only part of the Polish Empire where such a condition still existed in the time of Sigismund I. was Lithuania, the patrimony of the Yaghellos. There the royal, or rather the grand ducal, authority was more extensive and its form of manifestation more patriarchal than in the provinces of the Crown, or Poland proper. By intrusting a large part of the public tax contracts and land leases to the Jewish capitalists, the King could feel easy in his mind as to the integrity of his budget. The general contractor of the customs and other state revenues in Lithuania, Michael Yosefovich (son of Joseph), a Jew from Brest-Litovsk, exercised occasionally also the functions of grand ducal treasurer, being commissioned to pay out of the collected imposts the salaries of the local officials as well as the debts of his royal master.
Prompted by the desire of rewarding the services of his financier and at the same time putting the communal affairs of his Jewish subjects in better order, Sigismund appointed Michael Yosefovich to serve as the elder, or, to use the official term, the "senior," of all Lithuanian Jews (1514). The "senior" was invested with far-reaching powers: he had the right of conferring directly with the king in all important Jewish affairs, dispensing justice to his coreligionists in accordance with their own laws, and collecting from them the taxes imposed by the state. He was to be assisted by a rabbi or "doctor," an expert in Jewish law. Whether the Lithuanian Jews acknowledged Michael Yosefovich as their supreme authority is open to doubt. The wealthy contractor, whom the will of the King had placed at the head of the Jews, could not in point of fact preside over their autonomous organization and their judiciary and rabbinate, since what was required was not officials, but men with special knowledge and training. All Michael could do was to act as the official go-between, representing the Jewish communities before the King and defending their rights and privileges as well as their commercial and fiscal interests. In any event Michael was more useful to his coreligionists than his brother Abraham Yosefovich, who, likewise a tax-farmer, sacrificed his Judaism for the sake of a successful career. King Alexander conferred upon Abraham the rank of Starosta of Smolensk, while Sigismund raised him to the exalted position of Chancellor of the Lithuanian Exchequer. Abraham and his offspring were soon lost in the ranks of the higher Polish nobility.
In agricultural Lithuania with its patriarchal conditions of life the antagonism between the classes was in its infancy, and as a result the right of the Jews to freedom of transit and occupation was but rarely contested. They lived in the towns and villages, and were not yet so sharply marked off, in language and mode of life, from the Christian population as they became afterwards. The Jewish communities of Brest, Grodno, Pinsk, and Troki, the last consisting principally of Karaites, who had a municipality of their own, were important Jewish centers in the Duchy, and enjoyed considerable autonomy. The rabbi of Brest, Mendel Frank, received from the King extensive administrative and judicial powers, including the right of imposing the herem and other penalties upon the recalcitrant members of the community (1531).
In the large cities of Poland proper the position of the Jews was not nearly so favorable. Here commercial life had attained a higher stage of development than in Lithuania, and in many lines of business the Jews competed with the Christians. Taking advantage of the autonomy granted to the estates in the shape of the Magdeburg Law, the Christian business men and handicraftsmen, represented by their magistracies and trade-unions, were constantly endeavoring to restrict their rivals in their commercial pursuits. This was particularly the case in Posen, Cracow, and Lemberg, the leading centers respectively of the three provinces of Great Poland, Little Poland, and Red Russia (Galicia). In Posen the Jews were hampered by the burgomaster and the aldermen in carrying on their business or in displaying their goods in stores outside the Jewish quarter. When the Jews protested to the King, he warned the authorities of Posen not to subject their rivals to any hardships or to violate their privileges (1517). The Christian merchants retorted that the Jews occupied the best shops, not only in the center of the town, but also on the market-place, where formerly only "prominent Christian merchants, both native and foreign [German], had been doing business," and where, in view of the concentration of large masses of Christians, the presence of Jews might lead to "great temptations," and even to seduction