Language:
English
Year of publication:
1994
Titel der Quelle:
Jewish Historical Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
34 (1994-1996) 209-224
Keywords:
Jews History Middle Ages, 500-1500
;
Clothing and dress
;
Hair
;
Jews Social life and customs
;
Christianity and antisemitism History To 1500
Abstract:
Two Latin documents (appended on pp. 220-221) provide the basis for a discussion of papal restrictions on Jewish dress and about the implementation or non-implementation of such papal legislation by the English Church in the 13th century. Jews were supposed to dress differently from Christians, partly in order to prevent miscegenation, but the form of distinction was not fixed (e.g. at times Jews were required to wear a badge in the form of tablets). While dress restrictions reflected social distinctions in other realms also, the one against Jews allowed for and/or encouraged discrimination, recalling dress codes for lepers, prostitutes, and heretics. Jews resisted the dress code; those who could afford to were willing to pay for a dispensation. This became a source of income for secular authorities; the practice was condemned by the Church. Some English clerics exhibited tolerance, i.e. preference for material benefits to be gained through dispensations. Denies that the Jewish badge was actively imposed in England in 1218-53, when pressure from the Church led Henry III to require Jews to wear the tabula. Although the legislation of 1215 was not primarily designed to humiliate Jews, the Jewish badge became a symbol of the declining fortunes of European Jewry.
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