Religious Diversity 505
from public offices (honores and dignitates) and from service in the army.
Other legislation placed limits on Jewish slaveholding, forbade new synagogue
construction, prohibited Jews from proselytizing, and in general attempted to
inscribe and enforce boundaries separating Jews and Christians.10 In a rhetori-
cal shift detectable by the late 4th and the early 5th centuries, Christian leg-
islation began to describe Judaism using increasingly antagonistic terms that
evoked notions of corruption, defilement, and sacrilege, and to associate Jews
with other marginalized groups such as pagans and eventually heretics.11 But
despite the growing restrictions imposed upon them, Jews nevertheless con-
tinued to enjoy legal recognition and protection in the later Roman period.12
Anti-Jewish laws were unevenly enforced while other legislation protected
synagogues from Christian attackers and granted peaceful Jews the full protec-
tion of the state.13
Jews in Late Antiquity also found ways to transgress the limitations placed
upon them. Recent archaeological and epigraphic work have convincingly
demonstrated that, notwithstanding important cultural and religious differ-
ences and legal restrictions, Jews formed relationships with their pagan and
Christian neighbours to a greater degree than had previously been thought
and shared with them many of the same political and social expectations.14
Jews were also granted the right to employ the lex Judaeorum—that is, Jewish
communities had a degree of legal autonomy with regards to civil matters. And
in certain circumstances Jewish curiales enjoyed exemptions from the onera
usually imposed on this class.15
The ambivalent position of the Jew in late Roman society—at once disad-
vantaged and protected—remained largely unchanged in Theoderic’s Italy.
Indeed, although it is tempting to ascribe the particularly modern quality of
religious tolerance to Theoderic, the essentials of his Jewish policy closely
10 Roman laws pertaining to the Jews are collected in Linder, Jews in Roman Imperial
Legislation.
11 Linder, “Legal Status of the Jews”, pp. 149–53; Salzman, “ ‘Superstition’ in the Codex
Theodosianus”, pp. 176, 182.
12 Millar, “Christian Emperors”, pp. 4–8.
13 For example, Codex Theodosianus (hereafter cited as CT) 16.8.13 (397), ed. Mommsen/
Meyer, a law of Honorius and Arcadius allowing Jews to live by their own (religious) law;
CT 16.8.21 (412/418) (Codex Justinianus 1.9.14, ed. P. Krüger, Berlin 1877), a law of Honorius
and Theodosius II protecting synagogues from attack.
14 See, for example, the collection of essays in Goodman, Jews in a Graeco-Roman World. On
Rome see Rutgers, Jews in Late Ancient Rome.
15 At least up to 383. Bachrach, “Jewish Community”, p. 403; Rabello, “Legal Condition of the
Jews”, pp. 731–3.