The Jewish hat, also known as the Jewish cap, Judenhut (German) or Latin pileus cornutus ("horned skullcap"), was a cone-shaped pointed hat, often white or yellow, worn by Jews in Medieval Europe. Initially worn by choice, its wearing was enforced in some places in Europe after the 1215 Fourth Council of the Lateran for adult male Jews to wear while outside a ghetto to distinguish them from others. Like the Phrygian cap that it often resembles, the hat may have originated in pre-Islamic Persia, as a similar hat was worn by Babylonian Jews.
Modern distinctive or characteristic Jewish forms of male headgear include the kippah (skullcap), shtreimel, spodik, kolpik, and kashkets; see also Hasidic clothing.
Europe
Shape
The shape of the hat is variable. Sometimes, especially in the thirteenth century, it is a soft Phrygian cap, but rather more common in the early period is a hat with a round circular brim—apparently stiff—curving round to a tapering top that ends in a point, called the "so-called oil-can type" by Sara Lipton. Smaller versions perching on top of the head are also seen. Sometimes a ring of some sort encircles the hat an inch or two over the top of the head. In the fourteenth century a ball or bobble appears at the top of the hat, and the tapering end becomes more of a stalk with a relatively constant width. The top of the hat becomes flatter, or rounded (as in the Codex Manesse picture). The materials used are unclear from art, and may have included metal and woven plant materials as well as stiffened textiles and leather.
By the end of the Middle Ages the hat is steadily replaced by a variety of headgear including exotic flared Eastern style hats, turbans and, from the fifteenth century, wide flat hats and large berets. In pictures of Biblical scenes these sometimes represent attempts to portray the contemporary dress of the time worn in the Holy Land, but all the same styles are to be seen in some images of contemporary European scenes. Where a distinctive pointed Jewish hat remains it has become much less defined in shape, and baggy. Loose turbans, wide flat hats, and berets, as well as new fur hat styles from the Pale of Settlement, remain associated with Jews up to the eighteenth century and beyond.
History
The origin of the hat is unclear, although it is often seen as ultimately evolving from the same origin as the mitre, perhaps from late Roman styles, which may themselves derive from the hats of ancient Persian clergy. Hats worn (by Pharaoh's advisors, among others) in the illustrations to the Old English Hexateuch, a manuscript of around 1030, have been seen as an early form, and they appear in the Mosan Stavelot Bible of 1097.
The first recorded instance of a “Jewish hat” or “Judenhut” was around the 11th century in the Flanders region. The wearing of these distinctive hats originate from European Christians who wore such hats before mandating that it become a symbol for European Jews. According to Sara Lipton, "The few surviving early medieval references to Jewish clothing likewise suggest that Jews dressed no differently from their Gentile neighbor".
In Europe, the Jewish hat was worn in France from the eleventh century, and Italy from the twelfth. The Gniezno Doors were probably made in Germany around 1175, and two Jewish merchants depicted on the doors wear them. Under Jewish law, observant Jews should keep their heads covered almost all the time, and indeed men of all religious groups tended to wear hats when outside in the Middle Ages to a much greater extent than today.
Unlike the yellow badge, the Jewish hat is often seen in illustrated Hebrew manuscripts, and was later included by German Jews in their seals and coats of arms, suggesting that at least initially it was regarded by European Jews as "an element of traditional garb, rather than an imposed discrimination". The hat is also worn in Christian pictures by figures such as Saint Joseph and sometimes Jesus (see below). However, once "made obligatory, the hat, hitherto deliberately different from hats worn by Christians, was viewed by Jews in a negative light". A provincial synod held in Breslau in 1267 said that since Jews had stopped wearing the pointed hats they used to wear, this would be made compulsory.