Normative Entwicklungen der christlich-jüdischen Beziehungen in Frankfurt im Spätmittelalter

Abstract Social historical research assumes that Jewish living conditions of the imperial city Frankfurt had substantially deteriorated since their ghettoization in 1462. This deterioration announced itself normatively thirty years before against the backdrop of ecclesiastical demand for visible division regarding clothing and housing. It is a fact less known. This development had started with citizenship no longer being granted by the city council to Jews but they were mere inhabitants (»Beisassen«) protected by »Stättigkeit« which was then valid for all Jews. By which, in its first general version 1424, the old state of rights was still mirrored in order to limit successively from 1439 the rights of Frankfurt’s Jews. Finally, in the version of 1474, the council abandoned its autonomous municipal statuary law for ruling Jewish matters as far as it was not in accord with »Christian order« and »common law« which is canon law and Roman law, »Ius Commune«. So this meant in fact that the council submitted to the norms of Adversus-Judaeos of Papal church. The continuing imperial »Kammerknechtschaft« (Chamber serfdom) which was to secure the influence of emperor and empire could not keep back this process of detoriation of law.