RACIAL PROFILING, 1509: The Jewish pawnbroker.

From a nasty diatribe against the Jews by the convert Johann Pfefferkorn:

When someone comes to a Jew with an article to be pawned, the Jew knows that that person is under duress.

• The Christian shows him a ring, expecting a certain amount of money for it. The Jew inspects it all round and replies: No, I cannot lend you that much. The Christian is in desperate need for money and says: How much then will you lend me? Then the Jew turns the pawn back and forth, inspecting it closely and, after a long examination, says: A ring, of all things! And he names a small sum he is willing to lend on it, say, one gulden.
• The Christian takes the gulden in the hope that he will soon be able to redeem his pawn, but he becomes poorer by the day, and when one year is over and the Christian does not redeem his pawn, which is worth much more than the loan, it has passed by default to the Jew for the small sum he lent for it.
•  If the Christian comes before the year is over to settle his account, interest has accrued on it and his debt now amounts to 1 gulden, 34 pence, and 8 hellers. The Christian cannot pay and begs the Jew to let the interest accrue together with the initial loan at the usual rate. Then the Jew replies: With pleasure, but you need to bring me more collateral. And that is what the Christian does. 
• The second year, the original loan plus the interest amounts to 2 gulden and 46 pence and 4 hellers. The Christian cannot pay it and begs the Jews, as before, to let the interest accrue. But if he cannot bring him more collateral, the Jew takes the pawn into the city and publicly offers it for sale. Thus the Christian is embarrassed before a number of people, and so he brings everything he has in his house and privately hands it over to the Jew. Now that the Jew has for one gulden goods valued at a hundred gulden or more, the poor Christian has nothing left to pawn and runs away and must live in poverty for the rest of his life. This happens a great deal and often.

(Image from The Calculation of Ruprecht Kolperger, 1491)

A DESCRIPTION OF PASSOVER RITES, 1509.

Cover image of Pfefferkorn's book

This description comes from a booklet entitled How the Blind Jews celebrate their Easter (Wie die blinden Juden yr Ostern halten). The author, Johann Pfefferkorn, was a German Jew who converted to Christianity.  The book clearly shows his anti-Semitic bias, but provided German readers with an early (the first?) account of Jewish religious practices.  

• The flour to be used in the holy meal must be ground with a clean and newly-hewn grindstone and kept in freshly-washed bags. … The houses of the Jews are very smelly and unclean, but at the time of this feast they are quite determined to cleanse all rooms in their houses and to sweep them clean, also to scour clean their utensils, especially pots and bowls, and anything else used in the preparation of food, although they do not use them at this time. Rather, they have dishes specially kept from year to year for this feast. They also polish to a sheen all the silver and pewter dishes…Then they bring them to the rabbi for inspection, whether they are clean and right for use in this feast.
• On the second day before Easter, after sundown, the head of the household himself goes with a lit candle from room to room and zealously searches the whole house, and if he finds anything unclean, he collects it and burns it to ashes.
• On the day before Easter, after sundown, they make dough [of clean flour and water fetched from a stream], but without salt or yeast… The head of the household himself takes the dough and with his own hands fashions three cakes.
• When the cake has been eaten in the proper manner, each person takes up his prayer book. Then, on the command of the father of the family, the door is opened and someone riding a donkey, which has been ordered for this purpose, comes into the room. All who sit there loudly recite the words of the [79^th] psalm, like this: “O Lord pour out your wrath over the nations that do not acknowledge you” – meaning us Christians.
• Around midnight they go to bed and that night act very unchastely, for each of them hopes that the Messiah will be born of him.

 (For Pfefferkorn's anti-Semitic campaign and the resulting controversy with Reuchlin, see my book: The Case against Johann Reuchlin. Religious and Social Controversy in Sixteenth-Century Germany)