Sixth Century
- 519
- Ravenna, Italy. After the local synagogues were burned down by the local mob, the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great orders the town to rebuild them at its own expense.
- 529–559
- Byzantine Emperor Justinian the Great publishes Corpus Juris Civilis. New laws restrict citizenship to Christians. These regulations determined the status of Jews throughout the Empire for hundreds of years: Jewish civil rights restricted: "they shall enjoy no honors". The principle of Servitus Judaeorum (Servitude of the Jews) is established: the Jews cannot testify against Christians. The emperor becomes an arbiter in internal Jewish matters. The use of the Hebrew language in worship is forbidden. Shema Yisrael ("Hear, O Israel, the Lord is one"), sometimes considered the most important prayer in Judaism, is banned as a denial of the Trinity. Some Jewish communities are converted by force, their synagogues turned into churches.
- 535
- The First Council of Clermont (of Gaul) prohibits Jews from holding public office.
- 538
- The Third Council of Orléans (of Gaul) forbids Jews to employ Christian servants or possess Christian slaves. Jews are prohibited from appearing in the streets during Easter: "their appearance is an insult to Christianity". A Merovingian king Childebert approves the measure.
- 576
- Clermont, Gaul. Bishop Avitus offers Jews a choice: accept Christianity or leave Clermont. Most emigrate to Marseilles.
- 589
- The Council of Narbonne, Septimania, forbids Jews from chanting psalms while burying their dead. Anyone violating this law is fined 6 ounces of gold. The third Council of Toledo, held under Visigothic King Reccared, bans Jews from slave ownership and holding positions of authority, and reiterates the mutual ban on intermarriage. Reccared also rules children out of such marriages to be raised as Christians.
- 590
- Pope Gregory I defends the Jews against forced conversion.
Read more about this topic: Timeline Of Antisemitism
Famous quotes containing the words sixth and/or century:
“The sixth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Six geese a-laying,”
—Unknown. The Twelve Days of Christmas (l. 26–28)
“The nineteenth century planted the words which the twentieth ripened into the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler. There is hardly an atrocity committed in the twentieth century that was not foreshadowed or even advocated by some noble man of words in the nineteenth.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)