Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Reflecting on German-Jewish History
- Part I The Legacy of the Middle Ages: Jewish Cultural Identity and the Price of Exclusiveness
- Part II The Social and Economic Structure of German Jewry from the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Centuries
- Part III Jewish-Gentile Contacts and Relations in the Pre-Emancipation Period
- Part IV Representations of German Jewry Images, Prejudices, and Ideas
- Part V The Pattern of Authority and the Limits of Toleration: The Case of German Jewry
- 15 German Territorial Princes and the Jews
- 16 Jews in Ecclesiastical Territories of the Holy Roman Empire
- 17 Jews in the Imperial Cities: A Political Perspective
- 18 Germans with a Difference? The Jews of the Holy Roman Empire during the Early Modern Era - A Comment
- Part VI Through the Looking Glass: Four Perspectives on German-Jewish History
- Index
16 - Jews in Ecclesiastical Territories of the Holy Roman Empire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2013
- Frontmatter
- Reflecting on German-Jewish History
- Part I The Legacy of the Middle Ages: Jewish Cultural Identity and the Price of Exclusiveness
- Part II The Social and Economic Structure of German Jewry from the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Centuries
- Part III Jewish-Gentile Contacts and Relations in the Pre-Emancipation Period
- Part IV Representations of German Jewry Images, Prejudices, and Ideas
- Part V The Pattern of Authority and the Limits of Toleration: The Case of German Jewry
- 15 German Territorial Princes and the Jews
- 16 Jews in Ecclesiastical Territories of the Holy Roman Empire
- 17 Jews in the Imperial Cities: A Political Perspective
- 18 Germans with a Difference? The Jews of the Holy Roman Empire during the Early Modern Era - A Comment
- Part VI Through the Looking Glass: Four Perspectives on German-Jewish History
- Index
Summary
At first glance, an investigation of “Jews in ecclesiastical territories” does not necessarily promise meaningful scholarly reward. Publications of the later eighteenth century regarded these territories as the embodiment of backwardness. In 1785, Philipp Anton von Bibra, a canon of Fulda, called for an inquiry into the current state of the ecclesiastical territories in the Holy Roman Empire. The information he collected from respondents amounted to a devastating assessment. When these territories were secularized in 1803, an act which abolished ecclesiastical states in Germany, it aroused little sustained opposition.
One of the harshest critics of the ecclesiastical territories was the legal scholar and former secretary of state of Hesse-Darmstadt, Friedrich Karl von Moser, son of the famous scholar of constitutional law, Johann Jakob Moser. In Uber die Regierung dergeistlichen Staaten in Deutschland, published in Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig in 1785, the younger Moser described the problem as follows:
If one wants to shed light on the deficiencies of ecclesiastical government, then one has to realize that many stem from the religious and hierarchical system of the Catholic Church, and, therefore, are common to both ecclesiastical and secular Catholic governments. Other deficiencies, however, owe their cause to the origins, longevity, incurability, and, if you will, the inviolability derived from the inherent constitution of ecclesiastical rule.
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- In and out of the GhettoJewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany, pp. 247 - 274Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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