Jews, Christians, and Violent Crime: Two Cases from Lublin’s Castle Court at the Turn of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Jews, Christians, and Violent Crime: Two Cases from Lublin’s Castle Court at the Turn of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Summary/Abstract: This article describes two capital cases involving Jews heard in the Lublin castle court at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the case from 1596, a Christian man staying in a Lublin suburb, who posed as a subject of a Princess Zbaraska, was executed for having attempted to murder a Jewish merchant after ten Christian witnesses testified against him. In the sec- ond case, which took place ten years later, in 1606, three members of the Lublin Jewish community were accused of murdering and robbing a Jewish convert to Christianity who was the subject of the magnate Janusz Ostrogski. The complaint implicated the Jewish community of Lublin as a whole and referred to the accused as being innately disposed to violence against the Christian faith. Both cases illus- trate the complex position of Jews within the evolving legal and social situation in post-Union Lublin, as well as the ways Jews were conceived of by their Christian neighbors.

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