The disability imposed on a Jew engaged…

The disability imposed on a Jew engaged in legal contention with a Christian dates back to Emperor Justinian I, who in the early sixth century had decreed from Constantinople that neither Jews nor heretics should be admitted as witnesses against Christians; secular courts, however, did not recognize this disability.

Thus, in the safe conducts issued by the Carolingian kings in the ninth century, Jews and Christians were treated as equals, and consequently the testimony of the former, whether given under oath or not, was as admissible as the latter.

This is distinctly stated in the charter granted by Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV to the Jews of Speyer in 1090.

The law of Duke Frederick II of Austria (1244), which served as a model for much other legislation on the Jews, merely required a Jew to swear "super Rodal" (by the Torah).

Similar laws exist in England, Portugal, and Hungary; Hungary had waived the requirement to swear on the Torah in trivial cases.

There were, however, some older laws that prescribed certain practices intended to mock Jews in court.

By the time Paul IV issues the papal bull requiring all Jews to live in ghettos and restricting economic relations with Christians to the selling of used clothes, the Oath More Judaico, or Jewish Oath, established a thousand years earlier, has become standardized throughout Europe.

A decidedly aggressive change takes place when, in 1555, the German imperial court procedure (Reichskammergerichtsordnung) prescribes a form of oath that, with some alterations, forms a model to subsequent legislation.

Horrible are the terms in which the swearer calls down upon himself all the curses of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the ten plagues of Egypt, the leprosy of Naaman and Gehazi, the fate of Dathan and Abiram, etc.