Constantius, a weak emperor who relies on…

Constantius, a weak emperor who relies on his Church advisors, begins a series of anti-Jewish decrees protecting Jewish converts to Christianity, banning Jewish pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and forbidding “on pain of death” Christian intermarriage between Jewish men and Christian women and the circumcision of pagan or Christian slaves.

Constantius also does away with the right of Jews to possess slaves.

This prohibition to trade in and to keep slaves at a time when slave labor is common is not merely an attempt to arrest conversion to Judaism; it is also a blow at the economic life of the Jew, placing Jews at a disadvantage with Christian competitors with whom this economic privilege is assured.