“We deny to the Jews and to the pagani, the right to practice legal advocacy and to serve in the state service.”

Competition between the empresses intensified. Eudokia’s uncle Asklepiodotos implemented a law protecting Jewish synagogues. Simeon the Stylite allegedly objected, Theodosios relented, and Jews protested, replaying Ambrose’s contestation with Theodosios I over the Callinicum synagogue. Theodosios II expropriated funds collected after the cessation of the patriarchate. Theodosios’s later laws dismissed Jews (and Samaritans) from most public offices and stripped them of prestigious ranks, perhaps related to a conflict between Eudokia and Barsauma. After the empress permitted Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, Barsauma may have orchestrated their massacre. Jewish efforts at redress ultimately failed. Western laws from Galla Placidia, mother of another child emperor, Valentinian III, prohibited Jews from state service and from serving as legal advocates. Jews and Samaritans could not disinherit family who converted. Jews on Crete are said to have been misled by a messianic pretender around the same time. A rare inscription from Grado, Italy, memorializes a sole fifth-century Jewish convert to Christianity.