Constantine and the Jews

Constantine has often been blamed for mistreatment of Jews in the Roman empire, but that blame has been misplaced.  He did little to change the legal status of Jews or tighten restrictions on them.

Guy Stroumsa, however, has suggested that Constantine had a more subtle role in a “radicalization” of polemics against Jews and in the increasing legal restrictions on them: “To use Weberian parlance, one can speak here of Politisierung .  Weber referred to Entpolitisierung as  the process through which intellectuals in different societies of the ancient world, when ejected from the corridors of power, developed new religious conceptions usually having salvation at their center.  If the earliest strata of Christianity can legitimately be described as stemming from such entpolitisiert milieus, fourth-century Christian writers reflect the inverse trend: they learned to express anew ideas originally developed without any direct contact with political reality or power.”

Theodoret, for instance, records the conversion of Armenians, Georgians, Abyssianians, even Indians; in the fact of Christian success, the Jews were seen as uniquely stubborn and intransigent. How could the Jews fail to see that Christians were the true Jews?   Anti-Jewish polemics sharpened accordingly.