STRASBOURG

Extremely rare decree issued by the Council of Strasbourg at the end of the Thirty Years’ War. The first part concerns accusations against Jews using deceitful trading practices at the weekend market taking place outside Strasbourg’s Metzger Thor or ‘Butcher’s Gate,’ at which cattle were traded, and at a cloth market also held on roads outside the city. The Jewish merchants are accused of buying goods up cheaply from each other and then selling them at an exorbitant markup.  

The second part of the decree prohibits Jewish traders from operating within the precincts of the city or outside, except when horse-trading (Pferdhandels), though this is restricted to the city’s Rossmarkt. Anyone who contravenes the regulations, especially by trading in livestock, will forfeit their goods and be refused the right to trade with the guild (presumably Jews are implicitly excluded by the act); five schillings will be awarded to those who notify the authorities of illegal dealing. However, Jews are not prohibited from entering the city with goods, so long as they are properly declared.  

Earlier persecutions of Jews in Strasbourg included the notorious Strasbourg massacre of 1349, in which the Jewish population was publicly burnt to death. Jews were officially expelled from Strasbourg in the same year and were not readmitted until the late eighteenth century, though they continued to participate in city life; many simply moved into rural areas. In 1570 Strasbourg’s magistrates banned Jewish commerce in the city and its territories, a law which elicited a response from the Alsatian Jews who appealed directly to Maximilian II. Clearly commerce between Jews and Christians continued, however, since further decrees were issued in 1616, 1628, 1639 and (this one) in 1648 (Debra Kaplan, Beyond Expulsion: Jews, Christians, and Reformation Strasbourg (Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 90-92).