Statute of Kalisz

It led to the formation of a separate court and safety for persecuted Jews which attracted Jewish immigrants from across Europe to Poland.

The statute was issued by the Duke of Greater Poland Bolesław the Pious on September 8, 1264 in Kalisz.

It was at a time when rulers in Western Europe forced Jews to emigrate (England in 1290, France in 1290, Spain in 1492).

Jewish subjects in Poland were freemen allowed to trade, rather than serfs, and so further enjoyed the country's religious toleration codified by the Warsaw Confederation of 1573.

The Polish aristocracy developed a unique social contract with Jews, who operated as arendators running businesses such as mills and breweries, and certain bureaucratic tasks to the exclusion of non-Jews, especially tax collection.

After Poland expanded into Eastern Orthodox Ukraine, the introduction of the system was a partial cause of the Cossacks' anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648.

Romuald Hube analyzed source documents and claimed that both the original and its authenticated copies could not be found and that the text was a forgery from the 1400s done for political purposes.

[6] In the 1920s, Polish-Jewish artist and activist Arthur Szyk (1894–1951) illuminated the Statute of Kalisz in a cycle of 45 watercolor and gouache miniature paintings.

[7] In addition to the original Latin, Szyk translated the text of the Statute into Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish, Italian, German, English, and Spanish.

[8] In 1929, Szyk's Statute miniatures were exhibited throughout Poland, namely in Łódź, Warsaw, Kraków, and Kalisz.