Paradisus Judaeorum

The Polish literary historian Stanisław Kot has provided the earliest printed attestation of part of the saying — "purgatory for townspeople, hell for peasants, and paradise for Jews" — in an anonymous 1606 Latin[13] text, one of two that are jointly known by the Polish title, Paskwiliusze na królewskim weselu podrzucone ("Pasquinades Planted at Royal Wedding Celebration"), in reference to the wedding of Sigismund III Vasa and Constance of Austria that had taken place on 11 December 1605.[1]

Of the two texts attributed to the same anonymous author, the part that became the proverb appeared in the "Regnum Polonorum est" ("The Kingdom of Poland Is").[lower-alpha 3] Parts of the text were quoted in Bishop Stanisław Zremba's 1623 work, "Okulary na rozchody w Koronie..."[13] and were included in a 1636 work by Szymon Starowolski.[15] The phrase, "heaven for the nobility", which became a regular part of the proverb, was added by the German Jesuit priest Michael Radau in his 1672 work, Orator extemporeneus; Polish-literature scholar Julian Krzyżanowski suggests that Radau had coined this phrase as early as 1641.[13]

Several variants of the 1606 pasquinade appeared in shorter Latin versions, by the Croat Juraj Križanić (1664),[16] the Italian Giovan Battista Pacichelli (1685),[17] and the Slovak Daniel Krman (1708-9).[18]

Kot thinks that the anonymous author of the 1606 pasquinade may have been inspired by examples of proverbs from other European countries.[19] Sixteenth-century England was depicted as "the paradise of women, the hell of horses, and the purgatory of servants".[20][21] Variants of this described France and Italy.

The first translation of the 1606 Polish pasquinade from Latin into Polish appeared in the 1630s. Kot translated it in 1937.[14]

The identity of the author is unknown. Kot wrote that he may have been a Catholic townsman, perhaps a priest jealous of the influence of Jews and others, such as Protestants and nobility, who somehow competed with Catholic townspeople.[4][22] Konrad Matyjaszek describes it as "expressing anti-gentry and anti-Jewish sentiments".[12] According to Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, it was political satire,

"a pasquinade critical of everything in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth—foreigners, immigrants, 'heretics,' peasants, burghers, and servants, and also Jews."[lower-alpha 4]

Kot writes that other versions in the 17th and 18th centuries criticized the clergy, Gypsies, Italians, Germans, Armenians, and Scots: groups were added or removed from the list, depending on the authors' allegiances.[lower-alpha 5]

Krzyżanowski sees the 1606 text as a satire on all of Polish society.[13] Some 17th- and 18th-century Polish authors, themselves either nobles or clients of the nobility, saw it as an attack on the nobility's Golden Freedoms and ascribed it to a foreign author, refusing to accept that a scathing criticism of Polish society could come from a Polish author. Kot writes that the pasquinades are some of the most pointed examples of self-criticism originating in Polish society and that the nobility's refusal to accept that such criticism could come from within that society reflects sadly on the deterioration of Polish discourse in the 18th and 19th centuries.[lower-alpha 6]

Over time, the 1606 pasquinade lapsed into obscurity, reduced to the popular proverb.[2][22][27] The proverb contrasts the disparate situations of four social classes in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The privileged nobility (szlachta) is at the top ("heaven for the nobility"), and the impoverished, usually enserfed peasantry are at the bottom ("hell for peasants"). The other two commonly named classes are the townspeople (or burghers) and the Jews. By the 16th century, the position of townspeople in the Commonwealth had been in decline (hence, "purgatory for townspeople"). The situation of the Commonwealth's Jews, while similar to that of the townspeople, was fairly secure and prosperous, particularly compared to the situation of Jews in most other European countries.[28][29] Due to its criticism of the nobility, the proverb was most popular among townspeople; much less so among the nobility, whose writers, if they referred to it, used it mainly in the context of Polish Jewry.[26] The proverb has been described as still (as of 2004) very popular in Poland, and as often influencing people's views about the situation of the social classes, particularly the Jews, in the Commonwealth.[22]

The origin of the phrase "paradisus Judaeorum" ("paradise of the Jews") has been described as antisemitic, and the 1606 pasquinade's author as having viewed Poland as being run by overprivileged Jews.[lower-alpha 2] In the centuries since, the phrase has lost its negative connotations and has been used to refer to the golden age of Jewish life in Poland.[28][30][31][32][33] The sixteenth-century rabbi Moses Isserles wrote a friend who had become a rabbi in Germany:

"You would be better off living with us in Poland on stale bread if need be, but safe".[lower-alpha 7]

John Klier titled a chapter in his book about Eastern European Jewish history "Poland–Lithuania: 'Paradise for Jews'".[35] Gershon Hundert writes:

"The Polish Jewish community was vibrant, creative, proud and self-confident [...]. Their neighbours knew this as well, referring to Poland as Paradisus Judaeorum [...]. The full expression went: 'Poland is heaven for the nobility, hell for the peasants and paradise for Jews'."[36]

The comparison has generally been described as exaggerated (Hundert himself writes that it was hyperbole[36]), as the Jewish situation in early modern Poland, while comparatively privileged compared to many other classes in the Commonwealth, and to the Jewish position in many other contemporary countries, was hardly idyllic.[28][29][37][30][22] Norman Davies says Jews "were widely denounced as the chosen instrument of 'the Polish lords'" in Ukraine.[38]

Paradisus Iudaeorum (Jewish Paradise) gallery, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, Poland

In the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews that opened in Warsaw in 2013, a gallery covering the "Golden Age of Polish Jewry" was named, "Paradisus Iudaeorum".[39] The gallery's name became a subject of discussion when in 2016 Joanna Tokarska-Bakir argued that its use for the gallery was disrespectful.[8][6] Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Program Director of the Core Exhibition of the POLIN Museum, says that the intention is to engage the reader in a complex debate going beyond a binary black-and-white oversimplification.[23] In 2017 Kamil Kijek wrote that, out of context, the phrase can indeed be confusing, but within a broader context it is representative of a much more complex, nuanced relationship between Jews and non-Jewish Poles.[40]

• Muszyński, Henryk (2017). "Polish-Jewish Relations Thirty Years after the Publication of the "Nostra Aetate" Conciliar Declaration". In Michnik, Adam; Marczyk, Agnieszka (eds.). Against Anti-Semitism: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Polish Writings. Oxford University Press. p. 293. ISBN 978-0-19-062452-1.