Antiquity
Order of forced baptism by Heraclius; imitated by Dagobert in Gaul (633)
632·Empire byzantin
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
Toward the end of his reign, Heraclius ordered the forced baptism of the Jews of the empire. The measure, the first of such scope undertaken by a Christian emperor, was imitated in the West: Dagobert imposed it in the Frankish kingdom the following year, and Visigothic Spain was already pursuing the same policy.
Its effect is known through a singular text, the *Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati*, a dialogue composed shortly afterward in Carthage, depicting forcibly baptized Jews discussing their situation among themselves. The text is also one of the very first to mention the appearance of a prophet among the Arabs.
The baptisms had no lasting effect: the Arab conquest shortly afterward removed from Byzantine authority the provinces where the bulk of the empire's Jewish population lived.
- Period :
- Antiquity
- Type :
- Forced conversion
- Region :
- Near and Middle East
- Country :
- Empire byzantin
*Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati* ; Théophane le Confesseur ; Frédégaire.