The end of the Patriarchate: an office descending from Hillel is cut off
After the death of Rabban Gamliel VI the empire allowed no successor, and turned the tax the community paid its head into imperial revenue.
The Nasi—the Patriarch—was head of the Jews of the Land of Israel and was recognised by Rome as an authority: he appointed judges, fixed the calendar, and collected a tax from communities throughout the diaspora. The house traced itself to Hillel and through him, by tradition, to David; the office held without a break for some four centuries.
In 415 the emperor Theodosius II stripped Rabban Gamliel VI of his honorary rank of prefect for building synagogues and judging cases between Christians. About 425 the Nasi died leaving no son, and none was chosen. A law of 30 May 429 speaks plainly of "the cessation of the patriarchs" and directs that the tax "formerly sent to the patriarchs" shall henceforth go to the imperial treasury.
The consequence went deeper than money. With the Patriarch the Land of Israel lost the right to fix the calendar by the testimony of witnesses to the new moon—and the move to a calculated calendar, ascribed to Hillel II, became irreversible. At the same time the one centre whose authority both Babylonia and Rome acknowledged disappeared. Primacy passed to the Babylonian academies, and for the next six hundred years the chief address of Jewish law was Baghdad, not Tiberias.
Sources
Documents of the period
- Codex Theodosianus XVI.8.22 (415) — Rabban Gamliel VI stripped of his prefect's rank
- Codex Theodosianus XVI.8.29, 30 May 429 — «after the cessation of the patriarchs» the tax goes to the treasury
Basis: documents and evidence.
People and places
Tiberias · Jerusalem · Babylon · Rabban Gamaliel III, son of Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi · Rabbi Judah II—Judah Nesiah · Rabban Gamaliel IV · Rabbi Judah III · Hillel II—Hillel ha-Nasi · Rabban Gamaliel V · Rabbi Judah IV · Rabban Gamaliel VI—the last patriarch