Setting the boundaries of punitive jurisdiction – a new reading of a query by the Mahamad of the Sephardic congregation of London to the attorney general and its political implications (1707)

Abstract

Focusing on the wording and actual implementation of the sanction of Herem, this article explores the punitive policy of the Sephardic community of London in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Suggesting a new reading of a 1707 petition by the wardens of the congregation to the attorney general, this article claims that the royal attorney general’s opinion that the use of excommunication by the congregation might be problematic, initiated a gradual change in the wording of the by-laws of the community, almost excluding the word Herem, replacing it with milder formulas.