39 - Jews in Byzantium

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Byzantium was founded in the seventh century bce as a Greek colony on the western shore of the Bosphoros. Renamed in 330 ce by Constantine I as New Rome, it was popularly known as Konstantinoupolis or I POLIS [also Kosta and later Hebrew Kushta]. Byzantium became the modern scholarly name for the Roman Empire after the seventh century, if not from 330, and is alternatively known as the East, or Christian, Roman Empire. While individual Jews had occasionally attained Roman citizenship, most Jews (as freemen) became Roman citizens with the decree of Emperor Caracalla in 212. This citizenship, as well as the recognition of Judaism as a “permitted religion” (religio licita), characterized the status of the Jews in Byzantium until its conquest by the Ottomans and determined the status of the Greek-speaking or Romaniote Jews of Istanbul [from the Greek eis ten polin] under the Ottomans.

The Roman Empire was reunited under the single rule of Constantine the Great (306–33) after his defeat of co-Caesar Maxentius near Rome in 312 and his co-emperor Sicinus at Chrysopolis in 323. The recognition of Christianity, first as the primus inter pares by Constantine and later as the official religion of the Empire by Theodosius I, led to the intermittent reduction of Jews to a second-class citizenship, a process which culminated in the reign of Justinian the Great (527–65). Justinian’s attempt to reconquer the western provinces of the Empire was only partially successful, and events of the seventh century, including the Muslim conquests and the rise of independent Germanic kingdoms in the West, continued the restriction of imperial control to the Balkans, southern Italy, and Anatolia.