The Monasteries and the Jews

The Jews of Regensburg had links to various Regensburg monasteries. For example, as early as 1210, the Jewish community purchased a plot of land from St Emmeram's Abbey, on which they created the Jewish cemetery.

Apart from such one-off business transactions, there was also regular contact. This document records the sale of a house in the west of the Jewish quarter by the Jew David and his wife on 8 May 1371. As the details indicate, the owner of this house was to pay rent of 25 Regensburg pfennigs to Obermünster Abbey. The abbey also had property in the Jewish quarter. Charges were due for the use of those houses.

There are also records of rental payments to other monasteries and abbeys. As well as the Obermünster, the list of houses from around 1350 includes the Niedermünster, the Mittelmünster St. Paul and the abbeys of Prüll and Rohr. Charges were also paid to the cathedral.

There were ties of another kind to the Dominican monastery: the theologian and Hebraist Petrus Nigri (c. 1435 – c. 1483) spent time with the Dominicans in Regensburg around Easter in 1474. He preached to Regensburg's Jews with the aim of bringing home to them their supposedly mistaken interpretation of the Old Testament. Nigri also penned anti-Jewish pamphlets.