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Wellsprings

Romeרומא

Italy

Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.

18 teachers · 4 works · 12 most-discussed ideas

Rome through the eras

Zugot — The Pairs

In the 1st century BCE and 1st century CE Rome was the power that ruled Judea. Its Jewish community grew after Pompey took Jerusalem in 63 BCE and brought captives to the city; Herod's sons were educated there, Philo led an embassy of Alexandrian Jews to the emperor Gaius in 39-40 CE, and Josephus wrote his histories in Rome after 70 CE.

Tannaitic Era

After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, commemorated on the Arch of Titus, Rome was the imperial capital that ruled Judea. Rabbinic sources tell of a delegation of sages, among them Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah and Rabbi Akiva, who travelled to Rome; the city's large Jewish community is also known from its catacomb inscriptions.

Rishonim

In the Middle Ages Rome was governed by the popes as capital of the Papal States. Its Jewish community, continuous since antiquity, produced scholars such as Nathan ben Jehiel, whose Talmudic dictionary the Arukh was completed in 1101, and the poet Immanuel of Rome (13th-14th century); Benjamin of Tudela, visiting about 1165, counted about 200 Jews (probably heads of household).

Acharonim

In the 16th century Rome received Jewish refugees from Spain and elsewhere and briefly hosted the messianic figures David Reuveni (1524) and Shlomo Molcho. In 1555 Pope Paul IV confined the city's Jews to a walled ghetto beside the Tiber, which lasted until 1870.

Modern Era

Since the 19th century Rome has been both the seat of the papacy and a national capital. Italian troops took the city in 1870, it became the capital of Italy in 1871, and the Lateran Treaty of 1929 created the independent Vatican City. The city's Jews, released from the ghetto in 1870, suffered deportation under the German occupation in October 1943; the Second Vatican Council met here in 1962-65.

Late Antiquity

Rome passed from weakened Western emperors into Ostrogothic hands under Theodoric (493) and then was bitterly contested during the Byzantine reconquest (535–554), yet its bishop — Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) — steered the church, organized missions, and preserved classical learning through the turmoil.

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Ideas shaped here

Concepts most frequently discussed in the works composed at Rome. Click any to trace the idea across time and place.

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