Page 116 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

JEWISH COMMUNITY 103
execrations against the 'Nestorian' bishop Hiba should have exclaimed,
'No one wants the enemy of Christ! The foe of the Orthodox is wanted by
no one! No one wants a Jew as bishop! . . . No one wants the friend of the
Jews! No one wants the enemy of God!' And a century later the Mono-
physites denounced their persecutor, the Bishop of Amid, as 'murderer and
Jew'.1
At Edessa, it is true, some signs of friendliness between Jews and Chris-
tians are recorded by our chroniclers, but they are few. The Jews of Edessa,
we are told, took part in the general mourning at the death of Bishop Rabbula
in 435. We are told, too, that they shared the wonder of gullible Christians
at the egg that was laid in the town of Zeugma, bearing magical writings
which foretold the victory of Byzantium over the Persians in 503-4. But the
material and cultural decline of the Jews could not be halted. It was by order
of Emperor Theodosius II that Bishop Rabbula converted a synagogue at
Edessa into the church of St. Stephen. He received, his biographer informs
us, thousands of Jews into Christianity. In the general poverty of Byzantine
Mesopotamia the Jews suffered perhaps more than their Christian neigh-
bours ; during the famine of 499-500 at Edessa, Jewish women were per-
mitted to bake bread. The purchase of flour, however, was evidently beyond
the means of the Jews of Edessa, and the Jewish women were granted flour
from the public storehouse.
Physical violence against the Jews was never far away. John of Ephesus
described the unsavoury exploits of a certain recluse in a village near Amid
who took pleasure in tormenting the Jews by, in particular, burning their
synagogue, and John relates his story with pious praise for his hero. But this
was the work of an obscure fanatic. The Byzantine authorities in the province
of Osrhoene were usually fair in their treatment of the Jews. At Telia, about
100 kilometres from Edessa, the son of the bishop, Sophronius, brought a
Jew named Hesychius into the episcopal palace when his father was away in
about 448. He even ate with him the 'food of Jews', perhaps unleavened
bread, which was forbidden to Christians by the canons of the Church,2 and
let him sit with him at table at about 4 p.m. during the week of Pentecost
when Christians fasted. Then he introduced the Jew into church when a
service was in progress, but this was too much for the folk of Telia. They
drove the men out, and the dux gave them shelter in his praetorian. In the
same town in 502-3 the Jews were accused of conspiring to hand over the
city to the Persian army that was then besieging the walls, and an appalling
massacre ensued. Indeed, in the seventh century relations between the
Byzantine government and their Jewish subjects had so deteriorated that the

1 John of Ephesus in 'Chr, Zuqnin'. leavened bread of the Jews or 'take part in their
2 The Council of Laodicea declared, in profanity'.
Canon 38, that no one shall accept the un-

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