The sufferings of the Jews in the Byzantine Empire were revived by Leo the Isaurian, who seems to have tried to recover the confidence of the clergy, forfeited by his iconoclastic proclivities, by a zealous persecution of those eternal enemies of Orthodoxy. In 723 he issued a decree threatening with terrible penalties all Jews who refused to be baptized. Some submitted to the ordeal in order to save their lives; others preferred to seek safety in voluntary exile, or glory in self-inflicted martyrdom; many burning themselves to death in their synagogues.
Under Leo’s successors, though the Jews continued to be excluded from public offices, they were allowed full freedom in the exercise of their religion and the pursuit of commerce. Basil, however, in the middle of the ninth century, renewed the endeavours of the Church to convert the infidels, and under his auspices public disputations were held between Christian and Hebrew theologians; the persuasive eloquence of the former being strengthened by promises of political preferment to converts. Many Jews hastened to profit by this opening to power. ♦886♦ But on the Emperor’s death they exhibited an equal alacrity in returning to the old faith. ♦900♦ Whereupon Leo the Philosopher ordered that backsliders should be put to death as traitors to the Church. This severity, however, was relaxed under his unphilosophical successors.
Benjamin of Tudela, that invaluable guide to the mediaeval Jewry, who visited Constantinople about the middle of the twelfth century,[37] describes the condition of his co-religionists as follows: “They are forbidden to go out on horseback, except Solomon of Egypt, who is the King’s physician, and through whom the Jews find great alleviation in the persecution. For the persecution in which they live is heavy.... The Christians hate the Jews, be they good or bad, and lay upon them a heavy yoke. They beat them in the streets and hold them in a state of cruel slavery. But the Jews are rich and kind, loving mercy and religion, and they endure patiently the persecution. The quarter in which they live separately is called Pera.”[38]
Briefly, the history of Israel in the Eastern Empire is a story of ecclesiastical persecution tempered at times by imperial protection, until the Turkish conquest deprived the Christians of the means of oppression. Somewhat better conditions prevailed in the West.
The Jews continued to live in Rome, Ravenna, Naples, Genoa, and Milan, devoted to the peaceful pursuit of commerce, long after persecution had commenced in the East. Ambrosius, Bishop of Milan, it is true, denounced and derided the infidels, but he was prevented from an active demonstration of his theories on the subject by the firmness of Theodosius I. ♦399♦ This Emperor’s feeble successor, Honorius, forbade the collection of the Jewish Patriarch’s tax in Italy; but the order was revoked five years later. In all the cities mentioned the Jews formed separate, semi-autonomous communities, their only complaint being their exclusion from judicial and military dignities, which they did not covet, and the prohibition to build new synagogues or to own Christian slaves. The latter law, though bitterly resented by the Jews, was perfectly justified from the Christian, or indeed from an equitable, point of view. The Jews were large slave-dealers and slave-owners, and it was their custom to convert their slaves to Judaism in order to avoid the presence of Gentiles under their roofs. All slaves who refused to be circumcised were, in obedience to the Talmud, sold again. It was, therefore, the duty of the Church to protect these helpless brutes in human form against proselytism. On the other hand, from the standpoint of the Jews, the prohibition was a severe blow at their power of competition, as in that age slave labour was, if not the only, certainly the most usual kind of labour available.
♦489♦
The conquest of Italy by Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, and the principles of toleration upon which, though a Christian and a heretic and a hater of Hebrew “obduracy,” this prince based his rule, seemed to promise a perpetuation of the prosperity of Israel. How enlightened Theodoric’s administration was is shown by the following incident. The Jews of Genoa, on asking for permission to repair their synagogue, received from the King this reply: “Why do you desire that which you should avoid? We accord you, indeed, the permission you request; but we blame the wish, which is tainted with error. We cannot command religion, however, nor compel anyone to believe contrary to his conscience.”[39] But the fanaticism of Theodoric’s orthodox subjects, denied an outlet against the Arian conquerors, vented itself on the Jews, who suddenly found themselves exposed to the ferocity of the Italian rabble, were insulted and robbed, and saw their synagogues looted and burnt, until the civil authorities intervened, stopped the havoc, and forced the aggressors to make reparation for the losses inflicted upon their fellow-townsmen, thereby earning the cordial anathemas of the whole Catholic world.
Thus ended the fifth century. Nor did the position of the Jews deteriorate in the sixth. ♦536♦ How happy and wealthy they continued to be in Italy under the Ostrogothic rule is proved by the brave resistance which they opposed to Justinian’s general, Belisarius, in his conquering progress through the peninsula, and more especially at Naples. Byzantine domination over Italy ceased in 589, when the greater part of the country fell under the power of the Lombards, who also left the Jews in peace. Outbursts of popular intolerance disgraced the Italian peninsula from time to time, but, as a rule, Israel was able to secure official indulgence with the wealth which it amassed under the interested protection of the Popes. ♦590–604♦ Gregory the Great, although he persecuted the Manichaean heretics of Sicily and ordered the reclamation of the pagan peasants of Sardinia “etiam cum verberibus,” and although, in his anxiety to extinguish slavery, he revived the ordinance of the Emperor Constantius and impressed upon the princes of Austrasia and Burgundy the necessity of forbidding the possession of Christian slaves by Jews, yet laid down the principle that no other means than friendly exhortation and pecuniary temptation should be employed in the conversion of the latter, and he sheltered them from the aggressive piety of the inferior bishops.
In Gaul Jews must have settled at a very early period, though the origin of their colonies is lost in the mists of unrecorded time, and no sure evidence of their presence in that province is extant before the second century. Whether the first Jewish settlers north of the Alps arrived as prisoners of war or as peddlers, they make their appearance in history as Roman citizens, and as such they were treated with respect by the Frankish and Burgundian conquerors, who allowed them to practise agriculture, medicine, and trade without let or hindrance, until the introduction of Christianity. The advent of the Cross here, as elsewhere, proved fatal to the sons of Israel. Nor could it be otherwise. Time had passed on, the Roman Empire had been swept away, and a new order of things had sprung into existence. Younger races dominated the regions over which the Roman eagle once spread his proud wings, and the worship of one God, the God of the Jews, had dethroned the many deities of paganism. The Jew alone had remained the same. Despite lapse of time and all vicissitudes, the Hebrew of Western Europe still was a faithful facsimile of his Asiatic forefathers. Like them he continued hemmed in by an iron circle which he would not overstep and into which he reluctantly admitted outsiders. The Jews everywhere dwelt apart, suspicious and suspected. Jewish writers glory in this arrogant and dangerous isolation: “In spite of their separation from Judaea and Babylonia, the centres of Judaism, the Jews of Gaul lived in strict accordance with the precepts of their religion. Wherever they settled they built their synagogues and constituted their communities in exact agreement with the directions of the Talmud.”[40] Such constancy, admirable in itself, was, from a practical point of view, pregnant with perils which were not slow in declaring themselves.
In 465 the Council of Vannes forbade the clergy to participate in Jewish banquets, because it was considered beneath the dignity of Christians to eat the viands of the Jews, while the Jews refused to partake of the viands of the Christians. This was the commencement of an active display of antipathy destined to endure down to our own day.