Jewish Badge

On May 10, 1267, Vienna's church ordered all Jews to wear a distinctive garb. Muslims were the first to order distinctive clothing for non-Muslims. This custom of forced identification of minority groups took it to its infamous conclusion with the Nazis. A short excerpt:

"ITALY

Presumably the order of the Lateran Council was reenacted in Rome very soon after its promulgation in 1215, but it was certainly not consistently enforced. In 1221–22 the "enlightened" emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen ordered all the Jews of the Kingdom of Sicily to wear a distinguishing badge of bluish color in the shape of the Greek letter τ and also to grow beards in order to be more easily distinguishable from non-Jews. In the same year the badge was imposed in Pisa and probably elsewhere. In the Papal States the obligation was first specifically imposed so far as is known by Alexander IV in 1257: there is extant a moving penitential poem written on this occasion by Benjamin b. Abraham *Anav expressing the passionate indignation of the Roman Jews on this occasion. The badge here took the form of a circular yellow patch a handspan in diameter to be worn by men on a prominent place on the outer garment, while women had to wear two blue stripes on their veil. In 1360 an ordinance of the city of Rome required all male Jews, with the exception of physicians, to wear a coarse red cape, and all women to wear a red apron. Inspectors were appointed to enforce the regulation. Noncompliance was punished by a fine of 11 scudi; informers who pointed out offenders were entitled to half the fine. The ordinance was revised in 1402, eliminating the reward for informing and exempting the Jews from wearing the special garb inside the ghetto. In Sicily there was from an early period a custos rotulae whose function it was to ensure that the obligation was not neglected. Elsewhere in Italy, however, the enforcement was sporadic, although it was constantly being demanded by fanatical preachers and sometimes temporarily enacted. The turning point came with the bull Cum nimis absurdum of Pope Paul *IV in 1555, which inaugurated the ghetto system. This enforced the wearing of the badge (called by the Italian Jews scimanno, from Heb. siman) for the Papal States, later to be imitated throughout Italy (except in Leghorn), and enforced until the period of the French Revolution. In Rome, as well as in the Papal States in the south of France, it took the form of a yellow hat for men, a yellow kerchief for women. In the Venetian dominions the color was red. In Candia (Crete), then under Venetian rule, Jewish shops had to be distinguished by the badge. David d'Ascoli, who published in 1559 a Latin protest against the degrading regulation, was severely punished and his work was destroyed."