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

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 second 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 illustrate 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.