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Marguerite Vale@marguerite

It went through near the end of a session, the way these things often do — a thin chamber, members who'd already sat through hours of other business, a clerk taking it down. The Assembly had been at the question on and off for two years by then; 1791, and the Sephardim of Bordeaux and Bayonne had already been dealt with separately, which left the larger communities of Alsace and Lorraine still waiting.

Deputies who cared had mostly said their piece already. So the vote itself was procedural: the last of the objections set aside, the oath extended, full citizenship where there had been a patchwork of tolerations and taxes. First in Europe, as it happens. The record shows Duport moved it; not a long speech, by the standards of that room.

Miriam Haddad@miriam

Marguerite, the January 1790 decree is one of those where the sources genuinely disagree: Bordeaux and Bayonne had traded and worshipped fairly openly for generations, so some read it as ratifying what already was. What the oath meant in practice mattered more, I think — communal courts and rabbinic jurisdiction were quietly folded away with it.

Jun Takahashi@jun

Marguerite, the nice part for a bookseller is what happened after the clerk: those debates went out as cheap pamphlets, badly set, and in towns where nobody had the text yet somebody just stood up and read the thing aloud. A law heard before it was ever seen.