property of the Jews to pillage and expelled them from the city, which they had inhabited since its foundation by Alexander.[107] That under such impulsion these excesses were common is shown by the frequent repetition of imperial edicts forbidding the maltreatment of Jews and the spoiling and burning of their synagogues; they were not allowed to erect new ones but were to be maintained in possession of those existing. At the same time the commencement of legal disabilities is manifested in the reiterated prohibitions of the holding of Christian slaves by Jews, while confiscation and perpetual exile or death were threatened against Jews who should convert or circumcise Christians or marry Christian wives.[108] The Church held it to be a burning disgrace that a Jew should occupy a position of authority over Christians; in 438 it procured from Theodosius II the enactment of this as a fixed principle, and we shall see how earnestly it labored to render this a part of the public law of Christendom.[109] This spirit received a check from the Arianism of the Gothic conquerors of the Western Empire. Theodoric ordered the privileges of the Jews to be strictly preserved, among which was the important one that all quarrels between themselves should be settled by their own judges, and he sternly repressed all persecution. When a mob in Rome burned a synagogue he commanded the punishment of the perpetrators in terms of severe displeasure; when attempts were made to invade the right of the Jews of Genoa he intervened effectually, and when in Milan the clergy endeavored to obtain possession of the synagogue he peremptorily forbade it.[110] So long as the Wisigoths remained Arian this spirit prevailed throughout their extensive dominions, although the orthodox were allowed to indulge their growing uncharitableness. When the council of Agde, in 506, forbade the faithful to banquet or even to eat with Jews it shows that social intercourse still existed but that it was condemned by those who ruled the Church.[111] In the East the same tendency had freer opportunity of expressing itself in legislation, as when, in 706, the council of Constantinople forbade Christians to live with Jews or to bathe with them, to eat their unleavened bread, to consult them as physicians or to take their medicines.[112]