JERUSALEM in the FOURTH CENTURY Jerusalem Went Through

CHAPTER ONE JERUSALEM IN THE FOURTH CENTURY Jerusalem went through great transformations in the fourth century. From an insignificant provincial town it became a prominent Christian city with a correspondent architectural splendour – churches and monasteries. Its centrality as a Christian place, thanks to its biblical past and the presence of an increasing number of holy sites, brought Jerusalem to the center stage of the Christian world; it attracted many pilgrims as well as those who followed in their steps, and the city aired a cosmopolitan grandeur. The Jerusalem see – together with Rome, Antioch and Alexandria and, from 381 on, Constantinople – became the most eminent within Christendom and the Jerusalem bishop a person of authority at church councils. In the first centuries of our era, the religious character of Jerusalem changed several times. From being the foremost Jewish city, the center of the world to Judaism, it became after 135 a Hellenic city with pagan sanctuaries and cults such as could also be found in many other cities and towns in the Roman East. In the fourth century Jerusalem changed again, now from a pagan into a Christian city and gradually churches replaced pagan shrines. While we are rela- tively well-informed about Jerusalem in the Second Temple period, there is not much to go on, in terms of sources, about the period after 70 c.e. The years between the First Jewish Revolt (66–73) and the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–135) are poorly documented, and the same is true for post-Hadrianic Jerusalem or Aelia Capitolina as it was called after 135. Information only increases in the fourth century, but even about Jerusalem in this era of transformation our sources are anything but abundant. In the 130s, the emperor Hadrian refounded Jerusalem and named it Colonia Aelia Capitolina in honor of himself and Jupiter Capitolinus.1 The new Roman colony of Aelia Capitolina was built on the debris 1 Opinions differ as to whether the refoundation was a consequence of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, or whether Hadrian’s plan to refound Jerusalem as a Roman colony 2 chapter one of the Jewish Jerusalem, and was a predominantly pagan city.2 Jerusalem had now definitively lost the central sacred function in the world that it had as a Jewish city and would only regain as a Christian city in Late Antiquity. The Jews who had survived the Bar Kokhba Revolt were expelled – many probably went to Galilee – and were replaced by a gentile population, many of them veterans coming from Syria and other nearby regions.3 The presence of the Legio X Fretensis made Aelia very much a garrison town. Many of the veterans of the legion seem to have remained in Aelia after their dis- charge from army service.4 The name Jerusalem almost became extinct; Aelia became the common name for Jerusalem, a name that was still used in medieval Arabic sources as Iliya.5 The Roman ignorance of Jerusalem is illus- trated by the famous story of the interrogation by the Roman governor Firmilian of a group of Christian prisoners in 310 during the persecutions. When they were asked by the governor the name of their city one of them answered “Jerusalem,” meaning of course the heavenly Jerusalem. Firmilian, however, had never heard of this place and thought that the Christians had somewhere founded a city hos- tile to the Roman authorities.6 In spite of the presence of the tenth legion, Aelia Capitolina was a rather insignificant provincial town that did not differ in architectural appearance or religious and admin- istrative character from other towns and cities in the Roman Near caused the revolt, as Cassius Dio (69.12.1–2) reports. For a discussion of the causes of the revolt, see Smallwood, 1981, 428–38. For the foundation and town plan of Aelia see e.g. Lifshitz, 1977, 483–85; Smallwood, 1981, 459 ff.; Avigad, 1983, 205–207; Millar, 1990, 28–30; Tsafrir, 1999, 133–34; Stemberger, 2000, 51–55; Boatwright, 2000, 196–203. 2 Several cults are attested in Aelia: Tychè, Serapis, Jupiter, Dionysus, Dea Roma, the Dioscuri and Victory, and Mars; see Lifshitz, 1977, 486–87 and Belayche, 2001, 108–71. 3 Eus., HE 4.6.4; Cassius Dio 59.12; Chron. Pasch. 1, p. 474 (ed. Dindorff ). Jones, 1971, 277; Avi-Yonah, 1976, 15–16; Smallwood, 1981, 460; Belayche, 2001, 129–31. 4 Isaac, 1992, 323–25. Only sixteen inscriptions dating from the pre-Constantine period have been found in Aelia, but all of them are in Latin. This is an indica- tion, according to Isaac, that Aelia was a veteran colony, the citizens of which spoke Latin and rather identified themselves with Rome than with the Hellenized East. 5 Said ibn Batriq/Eutychius, Annales 168 (CSCO 471 [Scriptores Arabici 44], 58; 472, [Scriptores Arabici 45], 49). 6 Eus., Mart. Palest. 11.8 ff. (GCS, Eusebius Werke 2.2, 936 ff.). Hunt, 1982, 4–5; Wilken, 1992, 83..

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