4.1 Introduction

This paper will explore how a clearly hegemonic culture, that of the Middle Byzantine Empire, construed the legal status of its only officially sanctioned ethno-religious minority, the Jews. Among religious and ethnic minorities, Jews were unique in having an official, albeit restricted, legal status in Middle Byzantine law.

To the extent to which the relatively meager surviving sources allow such a generalisation, Jews were the only minority in the Middle Byzantine Empire who were allowed to live according to their own laws. Moreover, the separate legal status of Jews was unique. Other non-Romans ( barbaroi) living in the Byzantine Empire were expected to follow Roman law; ‘ethnic’ customs which contradicted Roman law were not legally valid. Those designated as ‘heretics’ or ‘pagans', on the other hand, had extremely restricted legal status or none at all. A case from the eleventh-century compilation of the jurist Eustathios Rhomaios, the so-called P eira, demonstrates this nicely. In it a high-ranking official of foreign origin makes a will using so-called ‘ethnic’ inheritance customs. In examining the will, Eustathios notes that even for high-ranking officials of foreign origin it is necessary to follow Roman law in inheritance practices. Even if foreigners are ignorant of Roman law, they have access to legal experts who can aid them, Eustathios concludes.

As with other facets of Byzantine society, at first glance the legal status of Jews remained practically unchanged from the time of Justinian's codification of Roman law. The B asilika a recapitulation of J ustinianic law completed in the eleventh century, transmitted sixth-century regulations with very few changes. Yet while the normative law codes tended to present a relatively unchanging façade of continuity, imperial legislation, namely that of Justinian I (r. 527-65) and Leo VI (r. 886-912), placed ever more restrictions on the legal rights of Jews living in the Byzantine Empire. These imperial novels took place against a backdrop of occasional attempts at forced conversion. Thus Byzantine law, as the direct heir of the Roman legal tradition, contained something of a dichotomy regarding the legal status of Jews: a pre-Justinianic body of imperial constitutions which granted them various legal rights and which gave them the most protected legal status of any ethnic-religious minority, as opposed to Justinianic and post-Justinianic constitutions and novels which, sometimes in direct conflict with older laws, imposed increased restrictions on their legal status.