Oath More Judaico

The Oath More Judaico or Jewish Oath was a special form of oath, rooted in antisemitsm and accompanied by certain ceremonies and often intentionally humiliating, painful or dangerous, that Jews were required to take in European courts of law until the 20th century. More Judaico is Latin for "on/by the Jewish custom." The question of the trustworthiness of the Jewish oath was intimately connected with the meaning that Christian authorities assigned to the Kol Nidre prayer, recited by Jews on Yom Kippur, and the whole of the legislation regarding the oath was characteristic of the attitude of medieval states toward their Jewish subjects. The identification of Church and State seemed to render it necessary to have a different formula for those outside the state church.

The disability imposed on a Jew engaged in legal contention with a Christian dates back to Byzantine emperor Justinian I, who declared that neither Jews nor heretics should be admitted as witnesses against Christians; secular courts, however, did not recognize this disability. Thus, in the safe conducts issued by the Carolingian kings in the 9th century, Jews and Christians were treated as equals, and consequently the testimony of the former, whether given under oath or not, was as admissible as the latter. This was distinctly stated in the charter granted by Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV to the Jews of Speyer in 1090. The law of Duke Frederick II of Austria (1244), which served as a model for much other legislation on the Jews, merely required a Jew to swear "super Rodal" (by the Torah). Similar laws existed in England, Portugal, and Hungary; Hungary waived the requirement to swear on the Torah in trivial cases.

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