Safe Conducts: From Passport to Currency

• In Event: Reading Formulaic Texts from Early Modern Ashkenaz: Three Case Studies in Law and Economics

Abstract

In order to travel from one jurisdiction to the next, Jews in Ashkenaz required safe conducts. Called TIRUIM in Hebrew and GELEITSBRIEFE in German, these permits granted the bearer the right to travel in or through a given region. Archives are filled with requests and permissions for safe conducts, as well as the actual documents used for travel purposes.

While safe conducts have been used by historians to study Jewish mobility, my paper will explore these highly stylized official documents specifically through the lens of economic history. Various sources, both printed and manuscript, indicate that communal officials purchased safe conducts “in bulk” and that in some cases, they were required to do so. Payment for these documents was levied on community members as a tax, and special appointees were designated to oversee the payment and distribution of safe conducts. Moreover, these documents were at times used in lieu of currency, as bills of exchange, especially as instruments to transport funds that were pledged to charity across regions. My analysis of the safe conduct will consider how the regulation and use of safe conducts as more than just a passport for travel in early modern German KEHILLOT. I plan to compare the use of safe conducts to other contemporary means of guaranteeing the transfer of funds from one region to another.

author

• Debra Kaplan, Bar-Ilan University