Rocca, Samuele. In the Shadow of the Caesars: Jewish Life in Roman Italy. Leiden: Brill, 2022.XIII+345 pp., ISBN: 9789004517042 (original) (raw)
BRILL eBooks, 1995
Perhaps the most remarkable fact about sixteenth century Roman Jewry is that Jewish women freely owned and disposed of property. 1 That they did so is a marker signifying the essence of Roman Jewish society, its emphasis on individual initiative, which was the primary device Roman Jews invoked to cope with unending personal, interpersonal, communal, and even external pressures. To open an essay-indeed, to introduce a book-with such a statement is perhaps unusual. The introduction to a register of notarial acts drawn in the sixteenth century would more normally begin with a traditional discussion of the structure of the Roman Jewish community or with a recounting of its venerable history, of the shocks it received through the waves of immigration from Spain, France, Germany, and Sicily between 1492 and 1541, and of its increasing difficulties with the papal establishment. There is also the matter of culture and learning, and of the leadership of the rabbis and of the parnassim. Nonetheless, the significance of these matters was continuously being affected by the above social fact and, hence, the need to place it on center stage. Rome's was not a heroic Jewish community. It did not know martyrdom, nor throughout its millennial existence were its members ever directly attacked or expelled (jews did suffer during the sack of Rome by I. For example, Archivio Storico Capitolino, Rome, Sezione I II (unofficially known as N otai Ebrel)-the fondo from which all archival references (unless otherwise specified) are drawn throughout this volume-Fasc. 2, lib. 1, fo/. 58r (Henceforth, with no archival reference and within square brackets when incorporated into the body of the
2018
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the status of the Jewish communities in Roman Italy in Late Antiquity.1 During this period, as was the case earlier on, the legal status of the Jewish community mirrored an external framework—that is, if during the early Imperial period that model was the collegium, in Late Antiquity the Jewish community mirrored the Christian ecclesiastic organization. Thus this essay will deal with the legal framework of the Jewish communities of Roman Italy in Late Antiquity, mainly from the second half of the fourth century until the middle of the fifth century, with the comparative reference ultimately comprised by the organizational framework of the Catholic Church. Indeed, if Constantine first allowed and then adopted Christianity, financing its clergy and its building projects, by the end of the fourth century, Theodosius I made Nicene Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, consequently de-legitimizing both the non-Nicene Creed (such as the Arian Creed) and paganism as public religions. The paper will be divided into four parts. The first part will discuss the figure of the Patriarch and his power, since according to Roman law he was the recognized head of Judaism in the Roman Empire. The next section will deal with the function and power of the representative officials of the Jewish communities of Roman Italy, who, at least in theory, were dependent upon the Patriarch. In this case, most of the data at our disposal comes from epigraphic sources from the catacombs of Rome and of Venosa. Next will be an analysis of the privileges which characterized the Jewish communities in Late Antique Italy and how they can be regarded 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. 614 424. It was part of the ERC Judaism and Rome, and has been realized within the framework of the CNRS and Aix-Marseille University, UMR 7297 TDMAM (Aix-en-Provence). as an indication of a certain degree of recognized autonomy. Finally, the paper will discuss the emergence of two new trends that characterized the end of Late Antiquity and in fact broke the delicate relationship between the Jewish communities and the external framework that it had mirrored until that point in time—namely the presence of Rabbis from the Land of Israel coming to the Jewish communities of Roman Italy and the growing infringement upon Jewish autonomy by the Roman state, of which Justinian's Novella 146 is a good example.
Ancient Cities 3, Greece and Rome, Social Life, Politics and Culture, 2024
This paper focuses on one of the most important facets of the urban identity of the Jews living in Imperial Rome, namely their social spectrum and occupational framework. An indepth analysis of the literary sources and epigraphic data permits a synchronic study of the topic. During the Early Empire, the vast majority of the Jews coming to or living in Roman Italy were either slaves or immigrants. Literary sources attest to the presence of artisans such as tanners. Few became Roman citizens, including of course the liberti, who, in most cases, provided communitarian leadership. Powerful figures such as the Publii Lucilii Gamalae, who reached the peak of the municipal hierarchy in Ostia, and Tiberius Julius Alexander, the praefectus of the praetorium, were quite rare. During Late Antiquity, the majority of Jews, foreigners and citizens alike, were part of the plebs humilis, the poorest segment of the urban population. A wide group could be numbered among the members of the plebeian elite, and made up the ruling class of the Jewish communities. Inside this group, it is possible to differentiate between Greek-speaking immigrants from the East and Latin-speaking "locals." Yet, local as well as immigrant Jews were chosen or co-opted as communitarian officials. Not much is known about the professions of the Jews living in late antique Rome; thus, a butcher, a trader, a painter, and a doctor are known from epitaphs, while the Synagogue of the Calcaresians may indicate that the members of the community were lime-burners. A few members of this communitarian elite, as is made clear by the Collatio Mosaica and the Letter of Annas to Seneca, were well integrated into the cultural milieu of the imperial capital. Last but not least, the existence of an upper stratum in the communitarian elite, characterized by its wealth, can be inferred from its members' burials, such as the hypogea from the Vigna Randanini Catacombs and the cubiculum and arcosolia in the Catacombs of Villa Torlonia. Thus, the social spectrum and occupational framework of the Jews living in Rome and Ostia clearly demonstrate that Jews shared these two important characteristics with the general urban population of Imperial Rome.
The Cinquecento was marked by the emergence of expanded and more formalized structures of self-government in Italy's Jewish communities. It is from this century that we begin to have written capitoli (constitutional agreements) and pinkasim (record books).2 By the middle of the century, as Robert Bonfil has demonstrated, the office of community-appointed rabbi had been created and regularized.3 Intense internecine struggles broke out for control over the new institutions, and contemporary rabbinic responsa attest to the slow and sometimes tortuous manner in which early modem Jews felt their way toward new working arrangements, procedures, and understandings.4