Clothing laws for Jews

The Fourth Lateran Council, in the year 1215, was gathered by Pope Innocent III. Some laws or canons resulting from the council were aimed at the Jews. Canon 68 forced Jews to wear a Jewish badge and hat.

Jews were ordered to wear badges by kings of Castile, Alfonso X and John II, King Louis IX of France, Count Alphonse of Poitou, King Edward of England, kings of Portugal, Afonso IV and John III, King Frederick II of Sicily, and King Andrew II of Hungary.

In 1222, Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton ordered Jews to wear a badge.

The Synod of Narbonne in 1227 ordered Jews to wear a badge in canon 3: “That Jews may be distinguished from others, we decree and emphatically command that in the center of the breast (of their garments) they shall wear an oval badge, the measure of one finger in width and one half a palm in height.”

The Diocesan Council at Mainz in 1229 ordered Jews to wear cone hats.

Thomas Aquinas’s letter to Margaret of Flanders in the year 1271 discusses how a ruler should deal with Jews: “Finally you ask whether it is good that Jews throughout your province are compelled to wear a sign distinguishing them from Christians. The reply to this is plain: that, according to a statute of the general Council, Jews of each sex in all Christian provinces, and all the time, should be distinguished from other people by some clothing. ...”,

In 1418, a church council in Salzburg ordered Jewish women to wear bells.

Pope Paul IV’s 1555 bull, cum nimis absurdum, renewed all canonical restrictions against the Jews and enforced the wearing of the Jewish hat. Its name comes from the bull's first words (English: “Since it is absurd and utterly inconvenient that the Jews, who through their own fault were condemned by God to eternal slavery ...”).