Byzantine Laws on the Jews

Until the Emperor Constantine the Great arrived, the Jews felt no complaint at being minorities in their own lands. When Constantine the Great decided to free the Christian believers and the religious movement began to change in their favour, this new religion, called Christianity after the Council of Nicaea (İznik), spread rapidly throughout the Roman Empire, until the Emperor Theodosius I declared that this religion would be the official religion of the Empire. Up to the second Theodosius, who issued the 'Codex Theodosianus', in which we see the laws — some protecting the synagogues that already existed, others prohibiting their restoration and the building of new ones — at certain times Christians were punished for destroying or vandalizing synagogues, and at other times they were supported by the Byzantine authorities of the period.

With the Emperor Theodosius I, the Jews were considered a minority and began to have restrictions in the practice of the Halakha. A decree of Constantine in the year 331 says that the leaders of the synagogue would be exempt from public obligations so as to practise the laws of the Jews. This type of decree shows us that at the beginning of the Byzantine reign the synagogues were on the same level as the Christian churches. In 397 a law promulgated by the Emperor Arcadius speaks of the 'illustrious patriarchs', the 'archisynagogues', the 'experts of the religion', without making clear who is meant, who would also be exempt from public obligations. The first official law came in 393 from the Emperor Theodosius I, saying: 'To the governors and military commanders of the East of the empire: the Jewish sect is not prohibited by any law.' He says this as a reminder that there had been attacks on synagogues in certain places, without specifying the sites or the persons who carried them out in the name of the Christian religion.

Antisemitism began with the famous priest 'John Chrysostom', 'St Jean Chrysostome', meaning 'Golden Mouth', with his eight sermons treating the synagogues as theatre and brothel, a place of thieves and beasts. In 388 synagogues were burned and no one was imprisoned. Measures were taken by the Emperors Arcadius in 397, Theodosius II in 412 and Honorius in 423 to protect synagogues and Jews. These measures were taken only in some parts of the Empire and not in the whole Roman territory. It is not well known whether this protection was given out of love for the Jews or to maintain the Roman peace. In any case, after the year 415 the emperors prohibited the building of new synagogues and encouraged the destruction of synagogues in places with a small Jewish population.

There is the known decree of Theodosius II against Gamaliel, a rabbi of Constantinople, stripping him of his status of 'Honorary Prefect' without mentioning why he was punished. Other prohibitions that came with this decree were the prohibition on circumcising Christians, on having Christian slaves, and on judging disputes between Jews and Christians. The decree ends with these words: 'No new synagogue shall be built; those that exist shall remain as they are.' In the decree of the year 438 we read this: 'They shall not dare to build a new synagogue, for if they do they shall pay a fine of 50 pieces of gold; but they should know that they have permission to repair the ruins of abandoned synagogues.' From this decree one understands that they did not want ruins to be seen in the city and did not want Christians to use these abandoned spaces.

In the 6th century, in the time of the Emperor Justinian, who built the famous Santa Sophia, the Jews of 'Amida', the city today called 'Diyarbakır', had to make a large donation to protect their synagogue and so that the Christians could build churches. In this same period, between the 4th and 6th centuries, archaeologists are today finding in the north of Israel, in Upper Galilee, ruins of synagogues with artistic mosaic motifs like those of the synagogue of Sardis/Sart. It is believed that this protection, weak as it was, of the synagogues and of the Jews in general was meant to maintain the Roman peace and avoid trouble over reactions against the Jews. Adapted and adjusted from an article by Catherine Hezser.