Antiquity
Legal persecutions of the Theodosian Code
388-439·Empire romain d'Orient
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
prohibition of mixed marriages (388), exclusion from public office and civil service (418), prohibition of building new synagogues (439)
The Theodosian Code gathers a century of imperial legislation, and several of its titles explicitly target Jews. In 388, marriages between Jews and Christians are equated with adultery; in 418, access to public office and civil service is closed off; in 439, the construction of new synagogues is forbidden, with existing ones merely tolerated.
This corpus orders no violence: it establishes a legal inferiority, enduring in nature, which would be taken up by Byzantine legislation and then, through canon law, by the Christian kingdoms of the West. The Eastern Roman Empire thus set the juridical framework within which communities would live until the Arab conquest.
- Period :
- Antiquity
- Type :
- Persecution
- Region :
- Near and Middle East
- Country :
- Empire byzantin
*Codex Theodosianus*, livre XVI ; Amnon Linder, *The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation*.