Agreements between neighbours. The ‘ugody’ as a source on Jewish-Christian relations in early modern Poland

Abstract

The following essay studies the importance of formal agreements (ugody or kontrakty) between representatives of Jewish communities and Christian burghers in early modern Poland. As a specific genre of legal document, these agreements, or contracts, are a unique source for understanding Jewish-Christian relations and the integration of Jews into local social fabrics. These contracts also reflect the importation and continuity of legal traditions that originated in German territories and arrived in Eastern Central Europe, and they corroborate suggestions that there was significant improvement in the legal status of the Jews in Eastern Europe as opposed to that under which they previously had lived in the West. The ugody document, finally, the emergence of what I have called elsewhere the contractual character of Polish-Jewish relations in the early modern period. (See Francois Guesnet, “Politik der Vormoderne—Shtadlanut am Vorabend der polnischen Teilungen,” Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 1 (2002), pp. 235–255, and more recently idem, “Political Culture of Polish Jewry: A Tour d’Horizon,” Report of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies 2007–2008, pp. 61–76, 67–68.)