Status Under Roman Law
During the late 1st century, Rome considered Judaism a legitimate religion, with protections and exemptions under Roman law that had been negotiated over two centuries (see also Anti-Judaism in the pre-Christian Roman Empire). Observant Jews had special rights, including the privilege of abstaining from the civic rites of ancient Roman religion. Failure to support public religion could otherwise be viewed as treasonous, since the Romans regarded their traditional religion as necessary for preserving the stability and prosperity of the state (see Religio and the state).
Christianity at first had been regarded by the Romans as a sect of Judaism, but eventually as a distinct religion requiring separate legal provisions. The distinction between Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism was recognized by the emperor Nerva around the year 98 in a decree granting Christians an exemption from paying the Fiscus Iudaicus, the annual tax upon the Jews. From that time, Roman literary sources begin to distinguish between Christians and Jews. In his letters to Trajan, Pliny assumes that Christians are not Jews because they do not pay the tax. Since paying taxes had been one of the ways that Jews demonstrated their goodwill and loyalty toward the Empire, Christians were left to negotiate their own alternatives to participating in Imperial cult; their inability or refusal to do so resulted at times in martyrdom and persecution. The Church Father Tertullian, for instance, had attempted to argue that Christianity was not inherently treasonous, and that Christians could offer their own form of prayer for the wellbeing of the emperor. Christianity was formally recognized as a legitimate religion by the Edict of Milan in 313.
Read more about this topic: Split Of Early Christianity And Judaism
Famous quotes containing the words status, roman and/or law:
“Knowing how beleaguered working mothers truly are—knowing because I am one of them—I am still amazed at how one need only say “I work” to be forgiven all expectation, to be assigned almost a handicapped status that no decent human being would burden further with demands. “I work” has become the universally accepted excuse, invoked as an all-purpose explanation for bowing out, not participating, letting others down, or otherwise behaving inexcusably.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No law can possibly meet the convenience of every one: we must be satisfied if it be beneficial on the whole and to the majority.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)