Paradisus Judaeorum

"Regnum Polonorum est Paradisus Judaeorum" is the opening line of an anonymous 1606 Latin pasquil, or pasquinade (satire), which can be rendered in English as "The Kingdom of Poland is a Paradise for Jews", and which is composed of a series of two-word predicates designed to describe the Polish kingdom in an unflattering light. In 1937, Stanisław Kot surmised that the pasquil's author may have been a Polish Catholic townsman, perhaps a cleric, criticizing what he regarded as defects of the realm.

In time the Latin pasquil evolved into a Polish-language quadripartite saying, or byword – "Poland was heaven for the nobility, purgatory for townfolk, hell for peasants, paradise for Jews" – that pointed key social disparities within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795): privileged nobility, struggling townspeople, enserfed peasantry, and a relatively prosperous and self-governing Jewish community (Cf. kehila).

Interpretations of the 1606 pasquil's opening phrase "paradisus Judaeorum" generally concur that the anonymous author viewed the Jews as enjoying undue privileges in Poland. Other authors recast the phrase as a reference to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a safe haven for Jewish communities, particularly those who lived on the latifundia of magnates as lease-holders, lessees, and administrators.

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