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Antiquity

Septimius Severus forbade conversion to Judaism under severe penalty

202·Empire romain

Toll
toll not established

The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.

Septimius Severus prohibited, throughout the Roman Empire, conversion to Judaism, by a constitution that the Historia Augusta reports alongside a similar prohibition targeting Christianity. Circumcision remained lawful for the sons of Jews, but performing it on a convert became a crime equated with castration.

The measure did not target the cult itself, tolerated as an ancestral religion, but its propagation: Judaism remained legal and ceased to be shareable. This distinction between a permitted religion and a religion that may not recruit would run through the entirety of Christian imperial law.

Period :
Antiquity
Type :
Forced conversion
Region :
Western Europe
Country :
Empire romain
Sources

Histoire Auguste, Vie de Septime Sévère ; Digeste ; Paul, Sentences.

At the same place6

  1. 72Legal Persecutiontoll not established
  2. 98Nerva and then Trajan maintain the *fiscus judaicus*, the tax of two drachmas paid to the Capitol since 70 as punishment for the revolttoll not established
  3. 249-251Persecution of Deciusinconnu
  4. 315Constantine punishes with death the attack on converts to Christianity and forbids Jews from owning Christian slavestoll not established
  5. 339Constantius II punishes by death the marriage of a Jew with a Christian woman from imperial manufactories and the circumcision of a slavetoll not established
  6. 388-393Theodosius forbade mixed marriages (388) then Jewish courts in civil matters; synagogues burned were no longer rebuilt at the expense of the culpritstoll not established

Event 53 of 2483, in chronological order · Antiquity: 88 events in the catalogue

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