Workshop - “Persecuting Jews to Save the Enslaved: A Constantinian Law and its Afterlife in Medieval Spain and Spanish Colonial America”

Noel Lenski (Dunham Professor of Classics & History; Chair of Classics, Yale University)
Ancient cave wall with a faded red menorah drawing and carved niches.
Jewish Catacombs of Venosa, Italy. Photo by Ruth Ellen Gruber.
Event Date & Time
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Event Location
Heller 1210

271 19th Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55455

To receive the pre-circulated paper, you must register using the above "Event Registration" button.

There is also the option to attend via Zoom. Password: ant1que.

 
About the Workshop:

In 329 CE, the Roman Emperor Constantine promulgated a law threatening death against any Jew caught holding enslaved persons who professed Christianity. This paper will examine the use of this law to persecute Jews from the fourth to the seventeenth centuries, with particular attention to Visigothic Spain in the seventh century, Alfonsine Castille in the thirteenth, and colonial Cartagena in the seventeenth.

About the Speaker:

Noel Lenski is the Dunham Professor of Classics and History at Yale University. He has published extensively on Roman history, ancient law, the history of slavery, and the history of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, including the edited volume, What is a Slave Society? The Practice of Slavery in Global Perspective (Cambridge 2018).

 

This event is sponsored by the Department of History and cosponsored by the Center for Premodern Studies, the First Millennium: Religion in Late Antiquity Workshop, the Department of Classical & Near Eastern Religions & Cultures, and the Center for Jewish Studies.

 

**Dr. Lenski will deliver the 2025 The Frederick and Catherine Lauritsen Lecture in Ancient History on 4/29 at 4:00 pm. See the CLA website for more details!
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