Synagogue of Daphne

RESUMEN

La historia de Synagogue of Daphne

Daphne was the famous garden suburb of Antioch on the Orontes, a plateau of springs, villas and sanctuaries about eight kilometres south of the city; Antioch itself was sometimes called "Antioch near Daphne". The suburb lies at present-day Harbiye in the Defne district of Hatay. Jews were among the founders of Antioch, and by the late fourth century they had at least one synagogue in the city and one in Daphne. John Chrysostom, preaching at Antioch in 386, warned Christians away from "the synagogue here in town" and "the one in Daphne", where, he said, there was "a more wicked place of perdition which they call Matrona's" and where many of the faithful went to sleep. Glanville Downey took the Daphne synagogue to be the one where Christians practised incubation.

No remains of the building have been found and its plan, date of construction and appearance are unknown. Its end is recorded by the sixth-century Antiochene chronicler John Malalas. In 507, in the reign of Anastasius, the Green circus faction, led by the Constantinopolitan charioteer Calliopas, went up to Daphne with the crowds for the Olympic games, attacked the synagogue, plundered and burned it and killed many people. They planted a cross on the site and made it a martyrion of St Leontius. An earlier lead dated the burning to 489 under Zeno; that date belongs to attacks on synagogues in Antioch city itself.

UBICACIÓN

Where it stood

Historic: the suburb of Daphne, about 8 km south of Antioch on the Orontes; exact site unknown. Today: Harbiye, Defne, Hatay, Türkiye (approximate; pin at the centre of Harbiye).

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La comunidad judía

Downey describes the Jewish community of Antioch under Theodosius I as flourishing, with two synagogues, one at Antioch and one at Daphne, and perhaps others; Chrysostom elsewhere speaks of "synagogues in the city, synagogues in the suburb", and it is not clear whether his plural is literal. The community was led by an archisynagogos; one of them, Ilasios, was rich enough to make large gifts to the new synagogue at Apamea in 391. Daphne also had older Jewish associations: Jewish texts identify the biblical Riblah with Daphne, and the high priest Onias was murdered there on the orders of Menelaus. A tradition in Malalas that Vespasian or Titus built the theatre of Daphne on the site of a synagogue was doubted by Kraeling and is unrelated to the building burned in 507. Nothing is known of the members, officers or size of the Daphne congregation itself. Its users presumably included Jews living in the suburb and Antiochene Jews who came up to Daphne for festivals, but no source states this.

Arquitectura y diseño

Nothing is known of the building's architecture. No ancient author describes it, no plan or drawing survives, and the excavations at Daphne, which uncovered the theatre of the suburb, did not identify it. Its size, materials, decoration and orientation are unknown, as are the architect and the date of construction. Chrysostom's words suggest that the Jewish holy place at Daphne attracted visitors who slept beside it in hope of cures or visions; the Oxford Cult of Saints database describes Matrona as a Jewish shrine of a cave in Daphne, which, if correct, would point to a site linked to a natural cave or spring rather than to a free-standing hall, but this cannot be confirmed. Malalas states only that there was a synagogue of the Jews in Daphne, that it contained goods worth plundering, and that it could be burned, which implies a roofed building with timber and contents. Its later reuse as a martyrion of St Leontius may mean that some of the structure was kept, but no source says whether the shrine reused the walls or was a new building on the site.

La vida dentro de la sinagoga

Almost nothing is recorded about worship in the Daphne synagogue. Chrysostom's first sermon Against the Jews, preached at Antioch in 386, is the only description of activity there, and it is hostile. He says that at Daphne there was a place the Jews called Matrona's, which he equated with the temple of Apollo as equally profane, and that he had heard that many Christians went up there and slept beside the place. Downey reads this as Christian incubation at the Daphne synagogue: people spent the night at the holy site hoping for healing or a dream. Chrysostom's broader complaints, that Christians of Antioch attended synagogues on Sabbaths and festivals, took oaths there and brought disputes to Jewish judges, show that the synagogues of Antioch and Daphne were respected well beyond the Jewish community, which is why he preached against them. No inscription, liturgical object, name of a rabbi, elder or donor, or account of a service at the Daphne synagogue is known. How long the congregation used the building between Chrysostom's time and 507 is unknown.

Destrucción

According to John Malalas, writing in Antioch in the sixth century, the destruction happened in 507, in the third consulship of the emperor Anastasius. Calliopas, a charioteer from one of the circus factions of Constantinople, had come to Antioch and been given to the Green faction there, while Basilius of Edessa was comes Orientis. When the people of Antioch went up to Daphne for the customary Olympic festival, the Greens rose with Calliopas, "attacking the synagogue of the Jews which was in the same Daphne, burned it, plundering everything that was in the synagogue; and they killed many people, on the 9th of July in the fifteenth indiction". Then, "planting the holy cross there they caused it to become a martyrion of St. Leontius." Anastasius removed Basilius and sent Procopius of Antioch as comes Orientis with a new chief of police, Menas; further Green rioting followed, Menas was killed and parts of central Antioch burned. The perpetrators were therefore the Green circus faction under Calliopas. Malalas also records earlier Green attacks on Jews under Zeno, in the 480s, but those were on the synagogue of Asabinus and a synagogue in the southern quarter of Antioch city, not Daphne.

El destino de la comunidad

Malalas says that many people were killed in the attack of 9 July 507, but he does not say how many, or whether they were Jews, worshippers in the synagogue or people caught up in the riot. The synagogue was not given back: it became a Christian martyrion of St Leontius. What happened to the Jews of Daphne afterwards is unknown. The Jewish community of Antioch as a whole continued to suffer in the factional violence of the period; the Jewish Encyclopedia summarises that in brawls between the Blues and the Greens many Jews were murdered by the Greens. No source consulted in this run records a later synagogue at Daphne or follows the fate of the families who had worshipped there. The synagogues of Antioch city, among them the one known as the Matrona, are treated in a separate entry.

El lugar hoy

The site of the synagogue is unknown and nothing of it is visible. Daphne is today Harbiye, a town in the Defne district of Hatay province, about seven to eight kilometres south of Antakya, where the ancient springs of the suburb are still in use. Excavations at Daphne found the ancient theatre but no synagogue, and the later martyrion of St Leontius has not been located either. A building labelled with the name of Leontius in the border of the Yakto mosaic is probably a private house and not this shrine, according to Downey. The map pin marks the centre of modern Harbiye and stands only for the suburb as a whole.

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