Infamous Decree - Historical Context

Historical Context

Napoleon Bonaparte initially won allegiance of the Jews when in 1797 he saved Jews in Ancona, Italy from eradication. He officially chose two High Priests of the Jewish Nation and seven councillors to the High Priests. He allegedly encouraged Jews to reclaim Jerusalem in 1799 with the help of his army in a letter to a rabbi in Jerusalem, but the letter is suspected by many to be a forgery. He in no way acted against the Jews until the early 19th century, when he passed a series of three decrees, one of which was christened the Infamous Decree. Some, such as author Franz Kobler, attribute Napoleon’s change in attitude to Napoleon’s new attachment to France and his new found desire to protect the interests of the French people. When he was the hero of the Jews, he still was an “ardent patriot” of his home island of Corsica.

In France in the early 19th century, Jewish moneylenders were accused of usury in Alsace, France as well as of abusing other rights given to them in their emancipation in 1791 under Louis XVI. Napoleon sided with popular French opinion, though it was not completely accurate; the Jews were not the sole perpetrators, and not all Jews were perpetrators. Though he desired equality for the Jews, he called them “the most despicable of men” and proclaimed he did not want their number to increase in an 1808 letter to his brother Jerome.

Napoleon issued an imperial decree in 1806 that suspended payment of debts owed to Jewish moneylenders for one year to warn against usury to the supposedly degenerate Jewish population and called a conference with Jewish leaders. The group he conferred with was dubbed the Great Sanhedrin. and met in 1807.

Though the first meeting of the Great Sanhedrin on February 4, 1807 was ceremonial and solemn, the group was largely ineffective as nothing was done during the month they met to ameliorate the conditions on the Jews that would be imposed by the coming decrees. During the eight sessions, the Great Sanhedrin was forced to condone intermarriage between Frenchmen and Jews in order that the Jewish people might be absorbed in to France, since Jews were considered substandard citizens and needed to be either absorbed or expelled. The group also had to support other actions to assimilate the Jews by removing their Jewish ties, such as approving military service to attach young Jewish men to France rather than to their religion and ethnic background. Such measures were a prelude to the passing of the three decrees on March 17, 1808.