Documents on Jewish History in Austira vol. 3

A remarkably high number of medieval sources on the history of Jews can be found in Austria. This huge amount of sources provide information on the economic, legal and personal situation of the Jews as well as on the interactions between Christians and Jews. Therefore, the Institute for Jewish History in Austria has engaged in preparatory work to publish this source material. In the course of the FWF-projects P 15638 and P 18453-G08, the first two volumes of these sources were published by Eveline Brugger and Birgit Wiedl. In the course of the follow-up projects "Documents on Jewish History in Eastern Austria 1387-1404" (P 21236-G18) and "Documents on Jewish History in Southern and Western Austria 1387-1404" (P 21237-G18), research for volume three was completed and the volume prepared for publication. Charters as well as historiographic and literary sources containing references to both Jews and Austria were collected and processed according to scientific criteria. This material includes a considerable number of texts which have not been published at all or treated with regard to the Jewish aspect yet. Research was carried out in archives both in Austria and abroad; furthermore, previously published material was also collected. The resulting manuscript consists of a chronological series of 722 document summaries. The apparatus includes information about the form the text was preserved in (original, copies), former publications in printing (full text or summaries) or online as well as the literature that is relevant to the respective document. Additionally, an extensive index was added to make the source texts accessible to the reader, as well as scientific commentaries of those documents that required further explanation. Given the volume`s topic, the Jews mentioned in the source texts were the main focus of these commentaries. The sources which were collected and processed in preparation of the third volume cover a period of time for the Austrian Jews that has until now only been summarily dealt with due to the extensive source material. Therefore, any comprehensive study of this period basing on the entirety of the source material is now made possible for the first time by the finished volume. The sources show the consequences of the policy of the dukes Albrecht III and Leopold III which had shifted towards financial exploitation, who still acted as protectors of their Jewish subjects yet occasionally used force against them. The source material also provides insights into the general social and economic situation of the Austrian Jews during this period and their interaction with their Christian surroundings.