OAJA Acts

Moreover, if any of the Jews shall dare to insult the Christian religion publicly or secretly, if any should endeavor by speaking to subvert the Christian faith or defend the falsehood of his sect, likewise if anyone escaping the correction of the Christian faith should throw himself upon the land under our reign to hide there or remove himself to be hidden in other regions and if anyone should provide in any way a hiding place to such transgressors or if he should be accessory to his flight, anyone who should be discovered transgressing against all these items should be shorn of his hair, flogged a hundred lashes, crushed in the adversity of exile, and his properties shall be returned to the prince’s power.

We decree, therefore, that all that is here encompassed should be applied by any priest in such a way that he shall not tolerate that any of the Jews should be protected in his rite by anyone; rather, that they should be taken out of the patronage of those whose favor is seen to protect them and put under his authority and administration for their salvation and that they should diligently instruct them what Catholic activity should be most advantageous for them.

No Christian, of whatever kind or honor, order or person, whether one of the religious or of the laics [layperson/non-clergy], shall be allowed to receive whatever favor he is offered against the faith of Christ from any Jew or Jewess or from their intermediaries, nor shall he implicate himself with favors offered him, against the rules of the Christian faith,… If anyone, nevertheless, corrupted by any offer of favors, should either cover up the admitted deviations of Jews of oppose in any way the destruction of such people’s wickedness, he shall be bound to the ancient rules of the fathers and shall pay to the fisc double of what he would be proven to have received from the Jew.

We decree in this order that if any of the bishops should scorn to apply all the said decrees against the Jews, either tempted by avarice or maliciously indifferent and negligent, and he should be seen to apply no censure of justice to deviations of perfidy detected or reported to him, he shall be placed under sentence of excommunication for three months, as well as forfeit from his personal property one pound of gold, which shall accrue to the fisc. And if he should not have property to compose with, he shall stay under sentence of an appropriate excommunication for six months. … This order shall be observed in regard to all the other clerics, namely, the presbyters, the deacons, and those clerics to whom the charge of these infidels has been delegated by the bishop, in the same way and according to the same order that has been established in regard to the bishops. The judges,… if they should not exercise legal punishment against the crimes of those Jews that would be revealed or reported to them shall be obliged to pay the fisc one pound of gold in the manner established for the bishops.

To give attention to those readings with which one is forbidden to agree is a proof of impiety rather than of piety. For this reason, if any of the Jews should read those books in which it is argued wickedly against the faith of Christ, or consider their doctrines, or keep them concealed in his house, he shall be publicly shorn of his hair and flogged a hundred lashes. He shall bind himself by an obligation, that he should never dare to have such books or doctrines with him nor be so bold as to consider them or take them up for study. … The teacher of [such] iniquity himself, if caught transgressing for the first time, shall be shorn of his hair, flogged, and obliged to undertake under oath that he would not teach the like to anyone. For it should happen [again] … all his property shall be transferred under the prince’s authority and he himself shall be shorn of his hair, flogged a hundred lashes and banished in a perpetual exile. Those infants or children shall be exempt of the above-mentioned sanctions and floggings only if they should be seen to have studied this doctrine of perfidy while still under the age of ten years.

As soon as the priests, deacons, or other members of the clerical order, and all judges, vested with authority, throughout the different provinces of the kingdom, ascertain that a body of Jews is within their jurisdiction, they must not delay to place said Jews under coercion and restraint, as required by our laws; and all errors which said Jews are unwilling to renounce, shall be brought to the knowledge of the king and the bishop, in order that they may be corrected.

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.