{"id":296275,"date":"2025-07-27T16:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T16:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/296275\/"},"modified":"2025-07-27T16:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T16:14:10","slug":"spanish-discovery-suggests-roman-era-church-may-have-been-a-synagogue-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/296275\/","title":{"rendered":"Spanish discovery suggests Roman era \u2018church\u2019 may have been a synagogue | Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seventeen centuries after they last burned, a handful of broken oil lamps could shed light on a small and long-vanished Jewish community that lived in southern Spain in the late Roman era as the old gods were being snuffed out by Christianity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Archaeologists excavating the Ibero-Roman town of C\u00e1stulo, whose ruins lie near the present-day Andaluc\u00edan town of Linares, have uncovered evidence of an apparent Jewish presence there in the late fourth or early fifth century AD.<\/p>\n

As well as three fragments of oil lamps decorated with menorahs and a roof tile bearing a five-branched menorah, they have also come across a piece of the lid of a cone-shaped jar bearing a Hebrew graffito. While experts are split over whether the engraving reads \u201clight of forgiveness\u201d or \u201cSong to David\u201d, its very existence points to a previously unknown Jewish population in the town, which eventually fell into decay and abandonment 1,000 years later.<\/p>\n

The jar lid bearing a Hebrew graffito points to a previously unknown Jewish population in C\u00e1stulo. Photograph: c\/o Bautista Cepri\u00e1n<\/p>\n

The discovery of the materials has led the team to consider whether the ruins of a nearby building, assumed to be an early Christian basilica dating from the fourth century AD, could perhaps have been a synagogue where C\u00e1stulo\u2019s Jewish community came to worship.<\/p>\n

When the site of the supposed church was first excavated between 1985 and 1991, archaeologists assumed it was a Christian edifice. \u201cDuring the 2012-2013 [dig], we found the roof tile with the five-armed [menorah],\u201d said Bautista Cepr\u00edan, one of the archaeologists working on the Andaluc\u00edan regional government\u2019s C\u00e1stulo Sefarad, Primera Luz project, which aims to uncover the town\u2019s Jewish history. \u201cUntil that moment, we didn\u2019t know that there could have been a very small Jewish community in C\u00e1stulo.\u201d<\/p>\n

A map showing the location of C\u00e1stulo<\/a><\/p>\n

In a recently published paper<\/a>, Cepri\u00e1n and his colleagues David Exp\u00f3sito Mangas and Jos\u00e9 Carlos Ortega D\u00edez consider the possibility that the \u201cchurch\u201d could in fact have been a synagogue.<\/p>\n

They argue that the lack of Christian materials in the site, combined with an absence of evidence of burials or religious relics \u2013 which would normally be expected in a Christian church of the era \u2013 could point to its use as a Jewish temple. A nearby baptistry, in contrast, has already yielded Christian finds and burials. Jewish religious law, however, forbids burials within 50 cubits (23m) of a residential area.<\/p>\n

A roof tile bears the five-branched menorah. Photograph: Usuario\/c\/o Bautista Cepri\u00e1n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we looked at the interior of the building a little more closely, there were some strange things for a church; there was something that could have been the hole for a big menorah,\u201d said Cepri\u00e1n. \u201cIt\u2019s also strange that this building doesn\u2019t have any tombs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The authors also point to the site\u2019s architectural features, such as its layout, which is reminiscent of some synagogues found in Palestine.<\/p>\n

\u201cSynagogues of that time could be more square in shape than Christian basilicas because in Jewish worship, there\u2019s usually a central bimah [raised platform], which people sit around,\u201d said Cepri\u00e1n. \u201cIn a church, the priest performs the rituals in the apse, which means things are more rectangular.\u201d<\/p>\n

An oil lamp fragment with menorah. Photograph: c\/o Bautista Cepri\u00e1n<\/p>\n

Then there is the location of the possible synagogue; it would have sat in an isolated part of town near a ruined Roman bathhouse that would have been feared and hated by the local bishops.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Roman baths were the last pagan place that remained in a city,\u201d said Cepri\u00e1n. \u201cIt was something diabolical and therefore something that had to be outside the Christian world. It seems to be the case that the baths in C\u00e1stulo had already been closed by the end of the fourth century, or the beginning of the fifth century.\u201d<\/p>\n

He argues that the synagogue\u2019s location, so close to a font of paganism, would have helped the local Christian hierarchy in its efforts to conflate Judaism<\/a> with unholy practices: \u201cThe Jews would have had few options and at that moment it\u2019s clear that it\u2019s the bishops who are fundamentally organising the town \u2013 and it would allow them to relate Jews with evil.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the researchers\u2019 theories were to be confirmed, the C\u00e1stulo synagogue would be among the very oldest Jewish temples on the Iberia peninsula. Spain\u2019s handful of surviving original synagogues are mainly medieval. The most recently discovered synagogue<\/a>, in the Andaluc\u00edan city of Utrera, dates from the 1300s.<\/p>\n

The problem for Cepri\u00e1n and his colleagues \u2013 as they acknowledge \u2013 is the lack of written historical corroboration. \u201cI\u2019m sure there will be criticism, which is totally legitimate \u2013 that\u2019s how science works and how it has to work,\u201d he said. \u201cBut of course we believe we\u2019ve provided data with enough seriousness to allow ourselves to posit it.\u201d<\/p>\n

A reconstruction using excavated fragments of the building in C\u00e1stulo. Photograph: Usuario\/c\/o Bautista Cepri\u00e1n<\/p>\n

Whether the building was a church or a synagogue, those digging up C\u00e1stulo have uncovered evidence of what would appear to be a small Jewish community living, if only for a while, in peaceful coexistence with their Christian neighbours. As the centuries wore on and the church propagated the otherness of Spain\u2019s Jewish inhabitants<\/a> in order to forge and galvanise a Christian identity, there were pogroms and, finally, the expulsion of the country\u2019s Jewish population in 1492.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shows us that there was a good coexistence between all the different social groups or faith groups that were there at that time,\u201d said Cepri\u00e1n. \u201cBut later, from the time when the Christian church begins to grow stronger in the Roman government, you start to get powerful groups opposed to those who are weaker in society. Oddly, that\u2019s something that\u2019s happening now, too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seventeen centuries after they last burned, a handful of broken oil lamps could shed light on a small…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-296275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114926089872382295","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}