Paradisus Judaeorum

"Regnum Polonorum est Paradisus Judaeorum" is the opening line of an anonymous 1606 Latin pasquil, or pasquinade (satire), which can be rendered in English as "The Kingdom of Poland is a Paradise for Jews", and which is composed of a series of two-word predicates designed to describe the Polish kingdom in an unflattering light. In 1937, Stanisław Kot surmised that the pasquil's author may have been a Polish Catholic townsman, perhaps a cleric, criticizing what he regarded as defects of the realm.

In time the Latin pasquil evolved into a Polish-language quadripartite saying, or byword – "Poland was heaven for the nobility, purgatory for townfolk, hell for peasants, paradise for Jews" – that pointed key social disparities within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795): privileged nobility, struggling townspeople, enserfed peasantry, and a relatively prosperous and self-governing Jewish community.

Interpretations of the 1606 pasquil's opening phrase "paradisus Judaeorum" generally concur that the anonymous author viewed the Jews as enjoying undue privileges in Poland. Other authors recast the phrase as a reference to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a safe haven for Jewish communities, particularly those who lived on the latifundia of magnates as lease-holders, lessees, and administrators.

History and versions

Polish literary historian Stanisław Kot provides the earliest printed attestation (pictured), which begins "Regnum Polonorum est Paradisus Judaeorum", in an anonymous 1606 Latin text, one of two that are jointly known by the Polish title, Paskwiliusze na królewskim weselu podrzucone ("Pasquils Planted at Royal Wedding"), referring to the wedding of Sigismund III Vasa and Constance of Austria that had taken place on 11 December 1605.

Of the two texts attributed to the same anonymous author, the part that became the enduring saying appeared in "Regnum Polonorum est" ("The Kingdom of Poland Is"). Parts of the text were quoted in Bishop Stanisław Zremba's 1623 "Okulary na rozchody w Koronie..." and were included in a 1636 work by Szymon Starowolski. The phrase, "heaven for the nobility", which became a regular part of the pasquil, only appeared in print towards the end of the century in the German Jesuit priest Michael Radau's 1672 Orator extemporeneus, though Polish-literature scholar Julian Krzyżanowski suggests that Radau had coined the phrase as early as 1641.

Kot writes that other versions, published in Poland in the 17th and 18th centuries, criticized the clergy, Gypsies, Italians, Germans, Armenians, and even Scots: groups were added or removed from the list, depending on the authors' views and allegiances. In various versions of the pasquil, phrases appear in varying order and sometimes do not appear at all; there are also some minor changes in wording. Juraj Križanić, for example, writes "paradisus Hebraeorum" ("paradise for Hebrews") rather than "paradise for Jews". A five-part variant appears in Palatinum Reginae Liberatis (c. 1670) by the Polish Jesuit Walenty Pęski[pl], who omits mention of the townspeople, instead adding "purgatory for royalty" and "limbo for clergy". Another five-part 1861 German variant ("Polen ist der Bauern Hölle, der Juden Paradies, der Burger Fegefeuer, der Edelleute Himmel, und der Fremden Goldgrube" – "Poland is hell for peasants, paradise for Jews, purgatory for townspeople, heaven for the nobility, and goldmine for foreigners") includes the 1606 pasquil's "goldmine for foreigners", which did not make it into the modern saying that only lists the nobility, townspeople, peasants, and Jews.

Samuel Adalberg's 1887 paremiology records a four-part version ("Polska niebem dla szlachty, czyśćcem dla mieszczan, piekłem dla chłopów, a rajem dla Żydów" – "Poland is heaven for the nobility, purgatory for townspeople, hell for peasants, and paradise for Jews") that is closest to the 1606 original, differing from its opening lines only in the order of the phrases and in including "heaven for the nobility".

Three variants of the 1606 pasquil appeared in shorter Latin versions, by the Croat Juraj Križanić (1664), the Italian Giovan Battista Pacichelli (1685), and the Slovak Daniel Krman[sk] (1708-9). The first translation of the 1606 Polish pasquil from Latin into Polish appeared in the 1630s. Kot himself translated it in 1937 and Krzyżanowski did in 1958.

Pasquil

The identity of the author is unknown. Kot wrote that he may have been a Catholic townsman, perhaps a priest jealous of the influence of Jews and others, such as Protestants and nobility, who competed with Catholic townspeople. Konrad Matyjaszek describes it as "expressing anti-gentry and anti-Jewish sentiments" According to Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, it was political satire, "a pasquinade critical of everything in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth—foreigners, immigrants, 'heretics,' peasants, burghers, and servants, and also Jews."

Kot thinks the anonymous author of the 1606 pasquil may have been inspired by pasquils from other European countries. A similar sixteenth-century saying had depicted England as "the paradise of women, the hell of horses, and the purgatory of servants". Variants of it had described France and Italy.

The pasquil became popular abroad, where it was generally seen as critical of the Commonwealth in its entirety. Some 17th- and 18th-century Polish authors, themselves either nobles or clients of the nobility, saw it as an attack on the nobility's Golden Freedoms and ascribed it to a foreign author, refusing to accept that a scathing criticism of Polish society could come from a Polish author. Kot writes that the pasquils were some of the most pointed examples of self-criticism originating in Polish society and that the nobility's refusal to accept that such criticism could come from within that society reflects sadly on the deterioration of Polish discourse in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Saying

Over time, the 1606 pasquil lapsed into obscurity, reduced to a popular saying (often described as a proverb) that described the historical Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795) as "heaven for the nobility, purgatory for townspeople, hell for peasants, paradise for Jews." The saying contrasts the disparate situations of four social classes in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Therein, the privileged nobility (szlachta) figures at the top ("heaven for the nobility") along with the Jews ("paradise for the Jews"), the townspeople (or burghers) are in the middle, and the impoverished, usually enserfed peasantry are at the bottom ("hell for peasants").

By the 16th century, the position of townspeople in the Commonwealth had been in decline (hence, "purgatory for townspeople"). The situation of the Commonwealth's Jews, while similar to that of the townspeople, was fairly secure and prosperous, particularly compared to the situation of Jews in most other European countries. The comparison of the Jewish and noble classes has generally been described as exaggerated, as the Jewish situation in early modern Poland, while privileged compared to that of many other classes in the Commonwealth, and to the Jewish position in many other contemporary countries, was hardly idyllic.

Due to its criticism of the nobility, the saying was most popular among townspeople; much less so among the nobility, whose writers, if they referred to it, used it mainly in the context of Polish Jewry. The saying has been described as still (as of 2004) very popular in Poland, and as often influencing people's views about the situation of the social classes, particularly the Jews, in the Commonwealth.

Jewish paradise

Several scholars and public figures have commented on the Latin phrase "paradisus Judaeorum" ("Jewish paradise", or "paradise for Jews") which forms part of the above saying. Some authors have read the phrase as a comment on the favorable situation of Jews in the Kingdom of Poland (and subsequently in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth), a polity that was notable for having granted Jews special privileges in the 1264 Statute of Kalisz while Jews faced persecution and murder in western Europe.

For that reason, the phrase has subsequently been used to refer to what has been called a golden age of Jewish life in Poland. John Klier, in his book about Eastern European Jewish history, titles a chapter about the history of the Jews in Poland, "Poland–Lithuania: 'Paradise for Jews'"; and Gershon Hundert likewise uses the phrase in the title of his 1997 article "Poland: Paradisus Judaeorum", published in the Journal of Jewish Studies, in which he writes:

"The Polish Jewish community was vibrant, creative, proud and self-confident [...]. Their neighbours knew this as well, referring to Poland as Paradisus Judaeorum [...]. This is hyperbole of course[.] [...] Jews were the objects of continuous animosity on the part of significant elements of the population."

There is little doubt that the original phrase was antisemitic, related to the Jewish arendator privilege in the Polish Kingdom and Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Piotr Konieczny maintains that the expression has mostly lost its originally "xenophobic and antisemitic" connotations, and identifies this change as an example of linguistic reclamation.

In the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which opened in Warsaw in 2013, a gallery covering the "Golden Age of Polish Jewry" is named "Paradisus Iudaeorum". The phrase appears as epigram in that gallery, which ends in a "Corridor of Fire symbolis[ing] the Khmelnytsky Uprising" (1648-1657)". Joanna Tokarska-Bakir has criticized the gallery name, maintaining that "a 17th-century polemic[al] concept condemning the rampant prevalence of infidels" as the name for the gallery is disrespectful. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Program Director of the Core Exhibition of the POLIN Museum, responded that the intention is to engage the viewer in a complex debate going beyond a binary black-and-white oversimplification. Kamil Kijek wrote (in 2017) that, out of context, the phrase can be confusing, but within a broader context it represents a much more complex, nuanced relationship between Jews and non-Jewish Poles.

Latin texts

Notes

Further reading

• Rosman, Murray Jay (1990). . Harvard University Press for the Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.