OAJA Acts

It must seem to the Christian society as an unbearable crime that the Jewish nation, ever rebellious and impious toward the Lord, should have Christian slaves bound to its service and that in a travesty of our religion a honorable member of Christ is humiliated before the sons of the damned … We concede them [the Jews] only this, out of our usual piety, that any Jew shall have permission to sell Christian slaves, according to the tenor of the said law, from the first year of our reign (namely, from the calends of February until the sixtieth day) not without the knowledge of the priest and the judges to whose territories they are known to belong;… Once the sixtieth day after the calends of February has been completed, no Jew shall be allowed to have a Christian slave, neither a freeborn nor a servant. … Jews, however, who shall dare to hold, to have, to conceal or to free Christian slaves after the expiry of the above-mentioned time limit or even dare to delay putting into effect in any way whatsoever this law of our serenity shall either forfeit half their property to our fisc, or else, if they should be more humble persons without means to compose with the fisc, they shall be shorn of their hair and flogged one hundred lashes.

The foregoing laws have been framed by us with care and diligence, and having attempted in them to adapt the punishment to the guilt of the offender, as, for instance, where we have sentenced certain of them to lose their property, and be driven into exile, we now hereby reserve the following privileges of mercy for ourselves, and our successors, to wit: that if any Jew, after having been ensnared by the devil, should come to his senses, and profess belief in the Holy Trinity;… [the king] shall have authority to return his property to said Jew, and to recall him from exile. If, however, any such Jew, after having professed himself to be a Christian, should return to the vomit of his error, he shall be condemned to punishment, without any hope of pardon; and said punishment shall be proportionate to the proof of his hypocrisy, and the degree of his guilt, and whether he undergoes a capital penalty, or one of less severity, no mercy shall, under any circumstances, be shown him.

The perfidious deceit of the Jewish deviation often turns more vehemently callous in crime the more frequently it strives to oppose the laws instituted against it. For this reason, although we are going to lay down laws anew against their numerous deviations, we have considered it right, nevertheless, to present firstly those constitutions promulgated by our lords and predecessors against their transgression … the Jews should not celebrate Pascha according to their custom, neither shall they dare join together in nuptial contract according to their custom, and that they should not practice the circumcision of the flesh, neither should they discriminate in food according to their custom, and that they should not arraign Christians to a judicial investigation, neither should they testify against Christians, and that no Jew should circumcise a Christian slave; laws concerning the Christian slaves who were sold by the Jews or are known to have been given freedom, how they should obtain the status of liberty, and that Christian slaves should not serve Jews in any way, on the prohibition on all Christians that no one should dare to defend or protect a Jew out of any conspiracy or favor, and on the Judaising Christians.

Christian slaves shall not be subjected to the control of Jews unless the latter are openly proved to be Christians, use Christian food, and contract marriage according to Christian customs. Any of said persons, however, who, after having made confession and been sworn, thereby dedicating themselves to Christianity, as aforesaid, are found to have broken their promises by the practice of any rite of the Jewish sect; for the reason that they dared to profane the name of God, and pollute themselves with the filth of Jewish error, shall forfeit all their property to the king, shall each receive a hundred lashes, and, having had their heads shaved, shall be subjected to the miseries of exile which they have so justly deserved.

If any of the Jews, therefore (that is, one of those who have not been baptized yet) either should delay being baptized, or should not surrender his sons or servants to the priest to be baptized, or should remove himself or his sons and servants from baptism, or if any of them should still be without the grace of baptism after one year counted from the issue of this law, the one transgressing in all these - whoever the detected man should be - shall be shorn of his hair, flogged one hundred lashes, and punished with the mandatory punishment of exile. His properties, however, should be under the prince’s power, so that if his further unyielding life should show him to be incorrigible, they shall remain in perpetuity under the power of the man to whom the prince would wish to grant them.

If slaves of Hebrews, who are consecrated to the title of the holy religion, should never reveal henceforth that they are Christians, enticed by some persuasion on the part of their masters in order that they should remain under the yoke of their masters, since they would despise the grace of the freedom they were offered, they shall be held in all manners bound in the chain of perpetual slavery to the man who shall receive them from the prince. If anyone of the Christians should make this deed known, he shall receive five solidi for any Christian slave, namely from the man who shall be convicted for keeping them with him after these decrees were given.

[We] decree that the following shall be observed: that when any Jew celebrates the Passover according to the rites of his religion, he shall receive a hundred lashes, be scalped, and be driven into perpetual exile, and his property shall be confiscated for the benefit of the royal treasury. Whoever shall circumcise either a Jew or a Christian, shall be mutilated; and his property shall be confiscated
for the use of the royal treasury. Should any woman presume to practise the operation of circumcision, or should present anyone to another person to be circumcised, she shall have her nose cut off, and all her property shall be given to the king. They, also, shall undergo a similar penalty who cause a Christian man or woman to renounce the faith of Christ, or induce anyone to return to the practice of the false doctrines of the Jews.

None of the Jews shall exercise any charge or authority of administration, command, compulsion, coercion, or punishment over Christians from the first year of our reign,… unless the prince should permit it for some reason of public benefit. If any of the Jews, however, should receive authority from someone and compel, punish, or coerce any Christian, or dare to rage against him, or endeavor to inflict upon him anything contrary to the prohibitions in the laws or attempt to refer to false rules that are not in the law, he shall either forfeit half his property, which should be accrued to the fisc, or (if he should not have any property) he shall be shorn of his hair and receive one hundred lashes. As for those, however, who would permit them to exercise this authority over Christians, a nobleman shall be forced to pay the fisc ten pounds of gold, but smaller and less worthy persons shall forfeit five pounds of gold paid to the fisc. And if they should not have resources to compose with, they shall be shorn of their hair and subjected to a hundred lashes.

If any of the Jews should practice according to his custom or dare to celebrate the new moon celebrations, the Feasts of Tabernacles, Sabbaths, holidays, or solemnities of the other feasts of his rite, he shall be short of his hair, flogged a hundred lashes and punished by the mandatory adversity of exile. His properties shall return to the prince, so that he would restore them to him some time if he should perfectly convert, or, if the Jew should persist in evils, he would grant them to the utility of others to whom it would be lawful to grant.

If any slave of the Jews, entangled in their service and in their customs, should wish to escape to the grace of Christ, no one shall retain him in the chains of slavery, no one shall oppose such a man, he shall have no hindrance to faith from anyone; for as soon as he shall prove himself to be Christian in a declaration and in a sworn attestation and report clearly his masters’ prevarications, he shall be immediately freed from any chain of slavery, released by his master with his entire personal property, and given freedom.

If a Jew or Jewess should exercise any agricultural or weaving work on Sundays or should manage works of any sort in houses, fields, or such like, with the exception of those works allowed by the honorable custom of the noble Christians, the presumptuous person doing this shall be shorn of his hair and flogged a hundred lashes. And if, perchance, their slaves or bondwomen should be discovered occupied in the above-mentioned works on these days and on similar days, they too shall suffer a similar sentence; their masters, however, if they should permit tier slaves to do these works, shall be forced to render to the fisc one hundred gold solidi.