CHRISTIANIZATION 197central government. One of the Jewish leaders was the son-in-law of Litorius,
an important, rather surprisingly Jewish (or ex-Jewish) imperial official, the
governor of the Balearics.^45 The climax of the story is the conversion of Theod-
orus, “even now” patron of the city, formerdefensorand leader of the Jews.
Apparently his position had been unproblematic previously, but the intrusion
of Severus and his followers into the affairs of Magona had made it untenable.
His conversion is fairly openly described as an attempt to recover his prestige
and power, and it is a successful attempt.^46 Theodorus publicly promises to
convert and is given a tumultuous and heartfelt welcome by his Christian
fellow citizens: “some ran to him affectionately and caressed his face and neck
with kisses; others embraced him in gentle arms, while still others longed to
join right hands with him or to engage him in conversation” (16.17–18).This
story can be used to confirm the hypothesis that in broad terms, and in ideol-
ogy if not always in practice, the Jews of the Roman Empire were given a
choice—they could live as socially isolated communities, with internal hierar-
chies of dependence, under the protection of the emperor, or they could be
integrated into the social fabric of the cities, but only as Christians.^47 The
story also informs us that it was not uncommon in late antiquity, at least for
a time, for Jews to have it both ways—to function both as discrete communi-
ties and as components of their towns—a situation I believe was relatively
uncommon in the second and third centuries.^48 It is worth adding that Sev-
erus’s forcible conversion was a violation of imperial laws, which conse-
quently can be seen as not always successful attempts to regulate an often
violent and disordered reality.
also to be orthodox Christians (CJ 1.55.8). For discussion, see S. Bradbury,Severus o fMinorca:
Letter on the Conversion o fthe Jews(Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), pp. 32–34.
(^45) On the remarkable career and problematic religious identity of this man, see Bradbury,
Severus, 34–37.
(^46) 16.24–25, a Jew who has already converted tells the panic-stricken Theodorus, “If you truly
wish to be safe and honored and wealthy, believe in Christ, as I too have believed. Right now
yo uare standing and I am seated with bishops; if yo usho uld believe, yo uwill be seated and I
will be standing before you.”
(^47) Cf. the discussion in P. Brown,The Cult o fthe Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Chris-
tianity(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 102–5, which attempts, not very con-
vincingly, to account for the marginalization of the Jews and others in terms tacitly borrowed
from Mary Douglas. See the criticism of Carlo Ginzburg, “La conversione degli ebrei di Minorca
(417–418),”Quaderni Storici79 (1992): 277–89. I am not suggesting, of course, thatindividual
Jewish communities, even apart from that of Minorca, were actually given such a choice: on
Clermont and Orle ́ans, in 576 and 585 respectively, see Brennan, “The Conversion of the Jews.”
(^48) The tendency of late antique Jews, especially but not exclusively in the western empire, to
bury their dead without separation from Christians, but in graves marked iconographically as
Jewish, may serve at least as a metaphor for, if not a proof of, the diffusion of this transitional
condition; see the important discussion in Rutgers,Hidden Heritage, pp. 83–91. This phenome-
non is attested even in Palestine; and note alsoBeth Shearim2.164, the epitaph, probably of the
later fourth century, of an apparentvir clarissimus—a low ranking senator—who was also an
archisynagogue in Beirut.