Squalid and Overcrowded: Metz Ghetto Dwellers’ Vicissitudes Reflected in the Recueil des Loix, Coutumes, et Usages Observes par les Juifs de Metz

Abstract The squalid Metz ghetto was an inevitable by-product of Pope Paul IV ’s (1476–1559) antisemitic Cum Nimis Absurdum , which denied Jews a right to own land. By physically segregating Jews from their gentile counterparts and ordering them into ghettos that would be locked at night, Paul emphasized Jews’ rootlessness for having obstinately rejected the saviorship of Jesus Christ. Jewish ghettos spread all over European Christendom. This essay explores Jewish dwellers’ living conditions in a claustrophobic cage, where the most fortunate Jews could expect only a leasehold of a ramshackle house to which rooms could be added. Enacted in the 1740s, the Metz Recueil’s regulation of ghetto leasing practices highlighted Jews’ difficult adjustments to housing stock that shrank as newcomers arrived.