Tractatus de imposturis et ceremoniis Iudaeorum nostri temporis

An illustration shows a decorative printer's mark, symbolizing the work's production in the late 16th century.
seeing that they pray evilly against those from whom they receive nothing but favors. Isaac of Cologne testifies that his mother was ejected from the synagogue by the Rabbis under that name, so that she would not hear the execrations with which they were denouncing her son because of the apostasy, as they call it. Burgensis and Nicolaus de Lyra explain those execrations at length. I do not speak of things unknown, but bring forward those things which I myself have read, seen, and experienced. They deceive us under the guise of friendship, they pray for every misery and calamity upon us, they draw our money to themselves through usury, they pass off counterfeit coins for good ones, they forge wills, and finally, they defraud us in every way. A Jew named Hirsch was acting as a physician in the court of the Duke of Bavaria, who had acquired a fairly famous name for himself through his art. Having been called at one time to a noblewoman lying gravely ill, he asked which apothecary was to provide the medicines and demanded the lady's seal, so that the apothecary—who was to prepare the precious medicine—might be assured of his good faith. Having received it, he wrote up false codicils with two witnesses added in the name of that woman, by which she would bind herself to the Jew as a creditor for having received a large sum of money to be used, which was to be returned shortly. After the death of the lady, therefore, the heirs are defrauded of a large sum of money; for credit was given to the adulterated codicils through the intervention of the seal. The matter becomes known thus. One of the false witnesses, having obtained impunity for the crime, moved by I know not what injury, reveals the whole matter to the prince, who had long since suspected something of the sort, just as it had been enacted. The fraudster is condemned to death; the accuser, having first had his hands cut off, is finally forced to break his throat with a noose; for this was the most just punishment for such most impudent scoundrels. Another, a certain one far worse than this, did this in Prague in Bohemia; when this commerce existed between him and all the thieves and robbers of that region—that whatever they stole, they would offer to be redeemed by him, the concealer of crimes—he had known how to win over the minds of the priests with his flatteries so that...