Callinicum Synagogue

PRZEGLĄD

Historia Callinicum Synagogue

Callinicum, Greek Kallinikos, stood on the Euphrates, at the point where the Syriaca.org gazetteer says the Daisan river enters it, on the site of today's Raqqa in northern Syria. It began as the Hellenistic city of Nikephorion, which Seleucus II enlarged and renamed Kallinikos; in Roman times it lay in the province of Osrhoene. A Jewish congregation there owned a synagogue in the late fourth century, but nothing about the building or its people is recorded except its end.

In 388 CE the military Count of the East reported to Theodosius I that the synagogue had been burnt at the instigation of the town's bishop, and that monks had also burned a meeting house of the Valentinians, a Gnostic sect. Theodosius ordered the culprits punished and the bishop to rebuild the synagogue. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, objected in a long letter and then in a sermon preached before the emperor in Milan, and Theodosius promised to amend the edict and stop the whole investigation. The affair is told in Ambrose's own letters, numbered 40 and 41 in the older collection, which are the only near-contemporary evidence. Whether the Jews of Callinicum ever rebuilt their synagogue is unknown. Louis Ginzberg called the outcome a victory for the Church and wrote that it encouraged the destruction of synagogues elsewhere in the empire; in 393 Theodosius ordered that attacks on synagogues be punished.

LOKALIZACJA

Where it stood

Historic: Callinicum (Kallinikos), province of Osrhoene, on the Euphrates; street and plot unknown. Today: Raqqa, Raqqa Governorate, Syria; pin at the gazetteer location of ancient Kallinikos (approximate).

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Społeczność żydowska

Almost nothing is known about the Jews of Callinicum apart from the fact that they had a synagogue in 388 CE. The town lay in Roman Mesopotamia on the Euphrates, in the province of Osrhoene, and according to the summary in the English Wikipedia it had declined by the fourth century; it was rebuilt by Emperor Leo I in 466 and again by Justinian after the Persian king Khusrau I destroyed it in 542. Ambrose, writing from Italy, called it 'a far distant town' and suggested that a synagogue there could not have owned much. His letter mentions a demand that 'the money chests which had been taken away' be returned, which implies that the synagogue held communal funds that were carried off when it was attacked. No names of members, officials or rabbis survive, and the size of the congregation is unknown. Harry Freedman notes that no record survives of how the Jews of the town responded to the attack.

Architektura i projekt

No description of the building survives and no remains have been found, so its date, plan, size, materials and decoration are all unknown. The only physical details come from Ambrose's letter of 388 CE. The building was burnt, and the community kept money chests in it that were taken away during the attack. Ambrose's sister letter calls it simply a synagogue of the Jews, without a word on its form. Ambrose's insulting phrases for it, 'a home of unbelief, a house of impiety, a receptacle of folly', are polemic and say nothing about its appearance. No reconstruction is attempted here, because better-known ancient synagogues elsewhere cannot show what this one looked like. The location of the synagogue inside the town is also unknown; the Roman and early Byzantine town of Kallinikos lay east of the later Abbasid city of al-Rafiqa, but its full extent is not established.

Życie w synagodze

No source describes worship, study or communal life in the Callinicum synagogue. What the texts do show is that the building held the congregation's money: Ambrose refers to a demand that the money chests taken from it be given back, and he dismisses the Jews' complaints as 'artifices of the Jews who wish to calumniate us'. The synagogue therefore served, as synagogues of the period commonly did, as the place where communal funds were kept as well as a house of prayer, but this is the only concrete detail recorded. The names of its leaders, the language of its services and the date when the congregation was founded are unknown. The building is remembered today almost entirely because of the controversy over its destruction, not for what took place inside it, and the people tied to it in the sources, the local bishop, Ambrose and Theodosius, were all outsiders to the congregation.

Zniszczenie

In 388 CE Christians of Callinicum burned the synagogue. According to the report of the military Count of the East, quoted by Ambrose in his letter to Theodosius, this was done at the instigation of the local bishop, whose name is not recorded. In the same disturbance monks burned a hurriedly built meeting house of the Valentinians in a village nearby, after the Valentinians had blocked a road along which Christians were singing psalms. Louis Ginzberg describes the attackers as a mob led by the bishop and many monks. Theodosius ordered that the culprits be punished and that the bishop rebuild the synagogue at his own cost. Ambrose, who was at Aquileia when the order was issued, wrote to the emperor that a bishop could not in conscience build a synagogue, rhetorically declaring that he himself would take the blame. When Theodosius came to church in Milan, Ambrose preached against the order in his presence and refused to go on with the Eucharist until the emperor promised to amend the edict and end the inquiry. The bishop was not made to rebuild.

Los społeczności

What became of the Jews of Callinicum after 388 CE is unknown. No source records a rebuilt synagogue, punishment of the attackers, or compensation for the community; the investigation was dropped at Ambrose's demand and the money chests apparently were never recovered. According to the editorial note accompanying Jacob R. Marcus's translation, Theodosius in 393 ordered the Count of the East to punish Christians who attacked synagogues, a law that shows such attacks continued in the region. The town itself was refounded by Leo I in 466, destroyed by the Persian king Khusrau I in 542, rebuilt by Justinian and taken by the Arab commander Iyad ibn Ghanm in 639-640, after which it became al-Raqqa. No later reference to a Jewish community in Callinicum was found in the sources read for this entry, and none of them traces the congregation of 388 beyond the affair.

Miejsce dzisiaj

Nothing of the synagogue has been found, and its position within the ancient town is unknown. Kallinikos lay at present-day Raqqa in northern Syria; the older city stood east of the Abbasid walled city of al-Rafiqa, in an area now covered by modern Raqqa, and its almost rectangular walls are known only in part. The map pin marks the general location of ancient Kallinikos as given by the Syriaca.org gazetteer, not the synagogue itself, and should be read as approximate. No marker or memorial to the synagogue is known.

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