THE SWEDISH CONNECTION 333
child circumcised, and shall not be buried in a Jewish graveyard. Nevertheless, should
such a person deliberately attempt to settle here in the Jewish quarter, no houseowner
shall venture to admit him, under the same penalty, together with the payment of 30
florins to the governor, and 15 florins to Charity, and the confiscation of the house by the
community.^4
More seriously, in the provinces of the south and east, Jewish entrepreneurs
associated themselves to their lasting detriment with the arenda system,
whereby landed estates were leased out to agents and managers. It was a system
which suited the purposes of the great magnates, of absentee landlords, and of
all impoverished noblemen who did not care to manage their estates in person.
By putting their affairs into the hands of a leaseholder, the landowners could
raise a loan, assure themselves of a steady income to make the repayments, and
divert the animosities of their peasants. For his part, the leaseholder took pos-
session not merely of the economic management of the estate but also of all the
feudal rights, dues, and jurisdictions attached to it. A typical agreement of 1594
listed the items in detail:
[Prince Piotr Zabrzeski hereby leases all his possessions] ... in the district of
Krzemieniec, including the old and new city of Krzemieniec, New Zbaraz and Kolsec
with all the settlements appertaining to these estates, together with the noble boyars, the
burghers, and the serfs of those cities and villages ... all their debts, obligations and priv-
ileges, with the arendas, taverns, tolls, ponds, the mills and their revenues, the manors,
the various tithes paid by the boyars, burghers and serfs of those districts, together with
all the other revenues, to Mr Mikolaj Wransowicz and to Efraim the Jew of Miedzyboz,
for the amount of 9,000 zloties of the Polish currency, for three years.^5
In this way, the Jewish arendator became the master of life and death over the
population of entire districts, and, having nothing but a short-term and purely
financial interest in the relationship, was faced with the irresistible temptation
to pare his temporary subjects to the bone. On the noble estates, he tended to
put his relatives and co-religionists in charge of the flour-mill, the brewery, and
in particular of the lord's taverns, where by custom the peasants were obliged to
drink. On the church estates, he became the collector, of all ecclesiastical dues,
standing by the church door for his payment from tithe-payers, baptized infants,
newly-weds, and mourners. On the estates of the starostas, he became in effect
the Crown Agent, farming out the tolls, taxes, and courts, and adorning his
oppressions with all the dignity of royal authority. In 1616, well over half the
Crown Estates in the Ukraine were in the hands of Jewish arendators. In the
same era, Prince Konstanty Ostrorog was reputed to employ over 4,000 Jewish
agents. The result was axiomatic. The Jewish community as a whole attracted
the opprobrium directed originally at its most enterprising members, and
became the symbol of social and economic exploitation. Their participation in
'the oppressive practices of the noble-Jewish alliance' provided the most
important single cause of the terrible retribution which was to descend on them
on several occasions in the future, particularly in 1648-55, and in 1768. Yet for