f toleration and non-interference by which he was generally guided in his attitude towards the non-Christian and non-Catholic citizens of Poland. In the first year of his

mmunities. He bestowed large administrative and judicial powers upon the rabbis and Kahal elders, sanctioning the application of "Jewish law" (i. e. of Biblical and Talmudical law) in civil and partly even criminal cases between Jews (1551). In the general voyevoda courts, in which cases between Jews and Christians were tried, the p

from them, but must also try their cases. For we [the King], not deriving any advantages from such Jews, are not obliged to secure justice for them" (1539). Sigismund Augustus now enacted similarly that the Jews living on hereditary Shlakhta estates should be liable to the jurisdiction of the "hereditary owner," not to that of the royal representatives, the voyevoda and sub-

ove a fixed norm (49), with the result that they were obliged to build tall houses, with several stories. In other cities, among which was included the city of Warsaw,[51] the magistracies managed to obtain the so-called privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis, i. e. the right of either not admitting the Jews to settle anew, and confining those already settled to special sections of the city, away from the principal streets, or keeping the Jews away from the city altogether, allowing only the merchants to come on business and stay there for

ceived the idea of firing the religious zeal of the Catholics by one of those bloody spectacles which the inquisitorial Church was wont to arrange occasionally ad maiorem Dei gloriam. A rumor was set afloat that a poor woman in Sokhachev, Dorothy Lazhentzka by name, had sold to the Jews of the town the holy wafer received by her during communion, and that the wafer was stabbed by the "infidels" until it began to bleed. By order of the Bishop of Khelm three Jew

redimus hostiae inesse Dei corpus), knowing that God has no body nor blood. We believe, as did our forefathers,

e silenced by the executioner, who stopped "the

d by the Calvinists and the extreme wing of the Reformation. "I am shocked by this hideous villainy," the King exclaimed in a fit of religious skepticism, "nor am I sufficiently devoid of common sense to believe that there could be any blood in the host." Lippomano's conduct aroused in particular the indignation of the Polish Protestants, who on dogmatic grounds could not give crede

even in Lithuania. In 1564 a Jew was executed in Bielsk, on the charge of having killed a Christian girl, though the unfortunate victim loudly proclaimed his innocence from the steps of the scaffold. Nor were attempts wanting to manufacture similar trials in other Lithuanian localities. To put an end to the agitation fostered by fanatics and obscurantists, the King issued two decrees, in 1564 and 1566, in which the local authorities were strictly enjoined not to insti

tus died in 1572, three years after the conclusion of the Union of Lublin. The Jews had good reason to mourn the loss of this King, who had been their principal protector. His death marks the extinction of the Yaghello dynasty, and a new chapter begins in the history of Poland, "the elective period," when the kings are chosen by vote. After a protracted interregnum, the Shlakhta elected the French prince Henry of Valois (1574), one of the instigators of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. This election greatly alarmed the Jews and the liberal-minded Poles, who anticipated a recrudescence of clericalism; but their fears were soon alla

atment as the corresponding Christian estates. In ratifying the old charters, he added a number of privileges, bearing in particular on the freedom of commerce. The King directed the voyevodas to

safeguarding the inviolability of life and property in the city, at the risk of incurring the severest penalties in the case of neglect (1577). All these warnings, however, were powerless to avert a catastrophe. Three months after the promulgation of the royal edict the Jewish quarter in Posen was attacked by the mob, which looted Jewish property and killed a number of Jews. Ostensibly the riot was started because of the refusal of the Jews to allow one of their coreligionists,

It was during his reign that the Jesuits, Peter Skarga and others, made their appearance as an active, organized body. Batory extended his patronage to them, and intrusted them with the management of the academy established by him at Vilna. Was it possible for the King to foresee all the evil, darkness