364 brian a. catlos
neighboring peoples in Palestine and cultures they encountered in the eastern
Mediterranean and Near East, whether as merchants and colonists (for example,
Hellenistic culture) or subject peoples (as with Egypt and Persia). Hence, in order to
establish a patron-client relationship with the Jewish principalities of Palestine, the
Romans were obliged to give Hebrew monotheists a pass. Moreover, Hebrew religion
had an explicit ethnic—indeed, genealogical—concept of membership, and was develop-
ing a juridical orientation that required that those who identified as Jews (at least in
Judea) should be subject to Jewish, rather than Roman law—a law conceived of as
anchored in an exclusive, narrowly-defined religious identity.
In short, under Roman rule Jews came to comprise a distinct, ethno-religious
minority: subject to their own laws, maintaining a distinct linguistic and religio-
cultural tradition, and conceived of by non-Jewish Roman citizens on increasingly
antagonistic terms. As Judaism became increasingly politicized, Judea tilted towards
revolt. Violent clashes between Jews and pagans in Caesarea sparked the Jewish–
Roman War of 66 ce—the first in a series of uprisings in Palestine and across the
eastern Mediterranean. These rebellions established a popular perception of Jews as
traitorous, and laid the foundations for their formal marginalization and severe
repression with the legal reforms of the Empire in the fourth through the sixth centuries
(see also Astren, this volume).
Meanwhile, Christianity was coalescing clandestinely in the Mediterranean lands as
an array of varying interpretations colored by native cultural sensibilities. With its
establishment as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 325 ce by Constantine
(306–337), Christianity came to be explicitly associated with imperial power and
legitimacy, and through the medium of a series of ecumenical councils, beginning
with that of Nicaea (325), adopted a proscriptive view towards orthodoxy that privi-
leged Helleno–Roman Orthodoxy and the Greco–Roman clergy. Theology came to
be bound up with politics and law. Competing Christianities within the Empire were
characterized as heretical and proscribed. In the eastern Mediterranean these confes-
sional communities, including the “Jacobite” Syriac Church and the Coptic Church
in Egypt, developed into pseudo-national cultures characterized by their identifica-
tion with a specific region, the use of a distinct liturgical language, and their domina-
tion by local native elites. Like the Georgian and Armenian Churches, these were
developing a political character, albeit one not associated with an independent princi-
pality. Their disenchantment with Helleno–Roman orthodoxy was deepened as a
consequence of Justinian’s (527–565) aggressive centralizing policies, to the point
that when the Sassanids overran Byzantine Syria and Egypt, some local Christians
viewed Persian domination with indifference or relief.
The disintegrating Latin Empire in the western Mediterranean came under the
control of Germanic “barbarian” tribes, such as the Lombards, Vandals, and Visigoths,
who identified with the Arian confession, outlawed at Nicaea. These ruled over con-
stituencies that were nominally Catholic–Orthodox. In the numerical minority, these
ruling cliques maintained their language and religious orientation, as well as their
distinct legal and folk customs, ruling over much larger Roman–Christian “minori-
ties,” as castes apart. The Roman minorities, and particularly the ecclesiastical elite,
retained influence because of their size, legal autonomy, economic weight, and their
role in providing an institutional-administrative structure. Hence, structures of
accommodation developed. By the late sixth century, Arianism was in abeyance; the