“No synagogue shall be constructed from now on”

In the early fifth century, anti-Jewish legislation and other pressures on Jews increased. Stories of attacks on Jewish synagogues—and other interreligious violence—proliferated in the suspect Lives of Christian saints, like Salsa, Marciana, Sergius, and especially Barsauma. In Alexandria, a Christian mob murdered the philosopher Hypatia. The city’s Nicene bishop, Cyril, expelled Jews after an alleged attack on Christians. A few inscriptions and a Jewish marriage contract from Antinoopolis may allude to these events. Theodosios’s wife, Eudokia, a convert to Nicene Christianity, seems to have been sympathetic to Jews. His sister, Pulcheria, may have orchestrated a law banning construction of new synagogues and helped demote the Jewish patriarch, Gamaliel VI. Accused of illicit synagogue construction, owning Christian slaves, and other crimes, his downfall may relate to events on Minorca only two years later. Not long after, Honorius expelled Jewish men from all branches of the state service. An ominous new law protected “innocent” Jews from arson and vandalism, but cautioned them against anti-Christian acts.