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.

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.

History and versions

Polish literary historian Stanisław Kot provides the earliest printed attestation (pictured), which begins "Regnum Polonorum est Paradisus Judaeorum", in an anonymous 1606 Latin text, one of two that are jointly known by the Polish title, Paskwiliusze na królewskim weselu podrzucone ("Pasquils Planted at Royal Wedding"), referring to the wedding of Sigismund III Vasa and Constance of Austria that had taken place on 11 December 1605.

Of the two texts attributed to the same anonymous author, the part that became the enduring saying appeared in "Regnum Polonorum est" ("The Kingdom of Poland Is"). Parts of the text were quoted in Bishop Stanisław Zremba's 1623 "Okulary na rozchody w Koronie..." and were included in a 1636 work by Szymon Starowolski. The phrase, "heaven for the nobility", which became a regular part of the pasquil, only appeared in print towards the end of the century in the German Jesuit priest Michael Radau's 1672 Orator extemporeneus, though Polish-literature scholar Julian Krzyżanowski suggests that Radau had coined the phrase as early as 1641.

Kot writes that other versions, published in Poland in the 17th and 18th centuries, criticized the clergy, Gypsies, Italians, Germans, Armenians, and even Scots: groups were added or removed from the list, depending on the authors' views and allegiances.