Product Code Database
The Jewish hat, also known as the Jewish cap, Judenhut (German language) or Latin language pileus cornutus ("horned skullcap"), was generally a cone-shaped pointed hat, often white or yellow, worn by Jews in Medieval Europe. Initially worn by choice, its wearing was enforced in some places in Europe after the 1215 Fourth Council of the Lateran for adult male to wear while outside a ghetto to distinguish them from others. Like the Phrygian cap that it often resembles, the hat may have originated in pre-Islamic Persia, as a similar hat was worn by Babylonian Jews.
Modern distinctive or characteristic Jewish forms of male headgear include the kippah (skullcap), shtreimel, spodik, kolpik, and ; see also Hasidic clothing.
By the end of the Middle Ages the hat is steadily replaced by a variety of headgear including exotic flared Eastern style hats, turbans and, from the fifteenth century, wide flat hats and large berets. In pictures of Biblical scenes these sometimes represent attempts to portray the contemporary dress of the time worn in the Holy Land, but all the same styles are to be seen in some images of contemporary European scenes. Where a distinctive pointed Jewish hat remains it has become much less defined in shape, and baggy. Loose turbans, wide flat hats, and berets, as well as new fur hat styles from the Pale of Settlement, remain associated with Jews up to the eighteenth century and beyond.
The first recorded instance of a “Jewish hat” or “Judenhut” was around the 11th century in the Flanders region. The wearing of these distinctive hats originate from European Christians who wore such hats before mandating that it become a symbol for European Jews. According to Sara Lipton, "The few surviving early medieval references to Jewish clothing likewise suggest that Jews dressed no differently from their Gentile neighbor".
In Europe, the Jewish hat was worn in France from the eleventh century, and Italy from the twelfth. The Gniezno Doors were probably made in Germany around 1175, and two Jewish merchants depicted on the doors wear them. Under Jewish law, observant Jews should keep their heads covered almost all the time,Although this may not yet have acquired the force of law at this period. See Roth op cit. and indeed men of all religious groups tended to wear hats when outside in the Middle Ages to a much greater extent than today.
Unlike the yellow badge, the Jewish hat is often seen in illustrated Hebrew manuscripts, and was later included by German Jews in their seals and coats of arms, suggesting that at least initially it was regarded by European Jews as "an element of traditional garb, rather than an imposed discrimination".Seals from Norman Roth, op cit. The hat is also worn in Christian pictures by figures such as Saint Joseph and sometimes Jesus (see below). However, once "made obligatory, the hat, hitherto deliberately different from hats worn by Christians, was viewed by Jews in a negative light". A provincial synod held in Breslau in 1267 said that since Jews had stopped wearing the pointed hats they used to wear, this would be made compulsory.
The Fourth Council of the Lateran of 1215 ruled that Jews and Muslims must be distinguishable by their dress (Latin "habitus"), the rationale given being: "In some provinces the dress of Jews and distinguishes them from Christians, but in others a degree of confusion has arisen, so that they cannot be recognised by any distinguishing marks. As a result, in error Christians have sexual intercourse with Jewish or Saracen women, and Jews and Saracens have intercourse with Christian women. In order that the crime of such an accursed mingling shall not in future have an excuse and an evasion under the pretext of error, we resolve that (Jews and Saracens) of both sexes in all Christian lands shall distinguish themselves publicly from other people by their dress. According to the testimony of scripture, such a precept was already made by Moses (Lev.19.19; Deut.22.5.11)".
Additional rules were imposed by local rulers at various times. The council decision was confirmed by the Council of Vienne of 1311–12. In 1267 the hat was made compulsory in Vienna. A doctor (Jacob Mantino) was given a temporary dispensation from wearing it in Venice in 1528, at the request of various distinguished patients (at the time in Venice each profession had special clothing rules). Pope Paul IV ordered in 1555 that in the Papal States it must be a yellow, peaked hat, and from 1567 for twenty years it was compulsory in Lithuania, but by this period it is rarely seen in most of Europe.Papal Bull Cum nimis absurdum. Lithuania, JE: "Yellow badge".
As an outcome of the Jewish Emancipation its use was formally discontinued, although it had been declining long before that, and is not often seen after 1500; the various forms of the yellow badge were far more long-lasting. This was an alternative form of distinguishing mark, not found in Europe before 1215, and later reintroduced by the Nazism. It was probably more widely required by local laws, for example English legislation concentrated on the badge, which took the form of the two Tablets of the Law. In some pictures from all parts of the Middle Ages, rabbis or other Jewish leaders wear the Jewish hat when other Jews do not, which may reflect reality.For example in the enigmatic illustrations to the Golden Haggadah of Darmstadt, of about 1300. See sacrifice illustration below also.
Such examples of this hat-wearing can be seen nearly 350 years after the Fourth Lateran Council. Regions divided into many states, such as Renaissance Italy and Germany, had local laws in this as in other fields, leading to difficulties for travellers who might not be aware of the local regulations. For example, in Italy a Leone Segele was arrested in Lodi for wearing a black hat, as was acceptable in his home city of Genoa, instead of a yellow one, required in Lodi. These dress codes became a normal part of what it meant to be a Jew living inside Catholic dominated European societies.
In a late addition to local rulings, the very strict and locally unpopular Counter Reformation Pope Paul IV ordered in 1555 that all Jews in Rome were required to wear the yellow hat "under the severest penalties." When he died, his statue, erected before the Campidoglio just months before, had a yellow hat placed on it (similar to the yellow hat Paul IV had forced Jews to wear in public). After a mock trial, the statue was decapitated. It was then thrown into the Tiber.
However, in Christian art the wearing of the hat can sometimes be seen to express an attitude to those wearing it. In one extreme example in a manuscript of the Bible moralisée, an illustration shows the rod of Aaron, which has turned into a serpent, turning on the Pharaoh's magicians (Exodus, 7:10-12); Moses and Aaron do not wear the hat but the Egyptian magicians do, signifying not that they are Jews, but that they are like Jews, i.e. on the wrong side of the dispute. The paired roundel below shows two clerics confronting a group of hat-wearing Jews, and has a Latin caption explaining "Moses and Aaron signify good prelates who, in explaining the words of the Gospel, devour the false words of the Jews". In another scene showing the conversion of Jews and other non-Christians at the end of the world, a series of figures show different stages of removing their hats to signify the stages they have reached in their conversion, so that "the hat does not just identify Jews; it functions independently of its placement to signify infidelity and recalcitrant Jewishness".ONB Codex 1179, f. 181a Other scenes in Christian art where some characters often wear it include the Circumcision of Christ and Saint Helena Finding the True Cross, where the medieval legend specified a Jewish character. The Jewish hat worn in reality was probably less pointy than is usually shown in art.
William III the Brave (1425–1482) of Meissen, minted a silver groschen known as the Judenkopf Groschen. Its obverse portrait shows a man with a pointed beard wearing a Judenhut, which the populace took as depicting a typical Jew.Saurma no. 4386
Islamic scholars cited the Pact of Umar in which Christians supposedly took an obligation to "always dress in the same way wherever we may be, and… bind the zunar wide round our waists". Al-Nawawi required dhimmis to wear a piece of yellow cloth, a belt, and a metallic ring inside public baths.Al-Nawawi, Minhadj, quoted in Bat Ye'or (2025). 9780838639436, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/Associated University Presses. ISBN 9780838639436
p. 91
Regulations on dhimmi clothing varied frequently to please the whims of the ruler. Although the initiation of such regulations is usually attributed to Umar I, historical evidence suggests that the Abbasid caliphs pioneered this practice. In 850, the caliph al‑Mutawakkil ordered Christians and Jews to wear both a sash called a zunnar and a distinctive kind of shawl or headscarf called a taylasin. (The Christians had already been required to wear the sash.) He also required them to wear small bells in public baths. In the eleventh century, the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, whose various extreme decrees and actions are usually attributed to mental illness, ordered Christians to put on half-meter wooden crosses and Jews to wear wooden golden calf—a reference to the episode of the golden calf recounted in Exodus 32:1–4 in the Torah—around their necks. In the late twelfth century, Almohad ruler Abu Yusuf ordered the Jews of the Maghreb to wear dark blue garments with long sleeves and saddle-like caps. His grandson Abdallah al-Adil conceded to appeals from the Jews, relaxing the required clothing to yellow garments and turbans. In the sixteenth century, Jews of the Maghreb could wear only sandals made of rushes and black turbans or caps with an extra red piece of cloth.Bat Ye’or (2002), pp. 91–96
Ottoman Empire continued to regulate the clothing of their non-Muslim subjects. In 1577, Murad III issued a firman forbidding Jews and Christians from wearing dresses, turbans, and sandals. In 1580, he changed his mind, restricting the previous prohibition to turbans and requiring dhimmis to wear black shoes; Jews and Christians also had to wear red and black hats, respectively. Observing in 1730 that some Muslims took to the habit of wearing Kippah similar to those of the Jews, Mahmud I ordered the hanging of the perpetrators. Mustafa III personally helped to enforce his decrees regarding clothes. In 1758, he was walking incognito in Istanbul and ordered the beheading of a Jew and an Armenians seen dressed in forbidden attire. The last Ottoman decree affirming the distinctive clothing for dhimmis was issued in 1837 by Mahmud II. Discriminatory clothing was not enforced in those Ottoman provinces where Christians were the majority, such as Greece and the Balkans.
|
|
