Clothing laws for Jews

Badges and hats
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. Popes Honorius III, Gregory IX, Alexander IV, Martin V, Eugenius IV, Benedict XIII, and numerous councils renewed the badge requirement.

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

Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton at the Council of Oxford in 1222 and the Synod of Narbonne in 1227 ordered Jews to wear a badge. In the third canon from the Synod of Narbonne: “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, the Vienna Council of 1267, and Pope Paul IV’s 1555 bull, “Cum nimis absurdum”, ordered Jews to wear the Jewish hat.

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

Thomas Aquinas
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. ...”,