278 Jacoby
Socio-Legal Condition and Popular Attitudes: The Byzantine
Antecedents
The Jewish individual and collective condition in Byzantium was shaped by
three factors: the Church, the state, and popular attitudes. The Church desired
the conversion of the Jews, yet facing continuous Jewish existence ascribed
to it a theological and symbolic significance: namely, the Jewish people, dis-
persed among Christians, deprived of the Temple in Jerusalem and of politi-
cal independence, were being collectively punished for their denial of Christ
and proved thereby the veracity of the Christian creed. The Byzantine Church
enhanced the perception of Jewish “otherness” by its theology, polemical writ-
ings, preaching, hagiographic tales, and visual representations. Its impact in
the social marginalisation of the Jews was decisive.
The theological considerations of the Church were translated into practi-
cal measures by the state. The Jews were set apart from other subjects of the
emperor by imperial legislation, which sanctioned, institutionalised and
strengthened Jewish marginalisation by legal, social and fiscal discrimina-
tion. The state barred Jews from public office and imposed various restric-
tions upon social interaction with Christians, as well as heavy collective
taxes.124 Jews were nevertheless considered free, unless enslaved as a result of
war or piracy, and were governed by the common laws and the common courts.
They lived according to their customs and were allowed internal jurisdiction
in civil cases between themselves, in accordance with their own laws.125 On
the whole there were no political, religious or cultural impediments to their
mobility or to their choice of economic pursuits. Collective taxation and inter-
nal jurisdiction imply the existence of communal organisation, although we
have no direct information about its nature or operation. Jewish residential
segregation was enforced before the Fourth Crusade in Constantinople and
possibly also in Thessalonica, yet apparently not elsewhere.126 Except for short
periods of persecutions and some rare cases of expulsion from specific cities,
the Jews enjoyed in the empire the status of a tolerated minority.
In the empire Greek popular attitudes toward the Jews were largely moulded
by the Byzantine Church and the social marginalisation implemented by the
124 Jacoby, “Jews and Christians,” p. 261, on taxation.
125 Angeliki E. Laiou, “Institutional Mechanisms of Integration,” in Studies on the Internal
Diaspora of the Byzantine Empire, ed. Hélène Ahrweiler and Angeliki E. Laiou (Washington
DC, 1998), pp. 168–71, 179.
126 Jacoby, “Les Juifs de Byzance,” pp. 129–33. On Thessalonica, see also Jacoby, “Foreigners,”
pp. 123–24.