Accusations of ritual murder, executions

Three imperial cities of Swabia — Ravensburg, Lindau, Überlingen — were seized in quick succession by ritual murder accusations, following the same pattern: arrest of the community, torture, confessions, the stake.

Emperor Sigismond, who held the Jews as belonging to his chamber, sent the cities mandates forbidding them to render judgment without him and recalling the imperial privileges. The town councils overrode these: they no longer needed the protection of the Empire as much as the Empire needed their money, and Jewish credit had ceased to be indispensable.

That decade opened the era of urban expulsions in southern Germany: where a trial did not suffice, the council voted for expulsion — and the Jews of southern Germany moved toward the countryside and the lordships, where they would remain until the nineteenth century.