religious institutions of the Jewish people. In 553 he interdicted the use of the Talmud (which had then not long been completed), and the Byzantine emperors of the 8th and 9th centuries passed even more intolerant regulations. As regards civil law, Jews were at first allowed to settle disputes between Jew and Jew before their own courts, but Justinian denied to them and to heretics the right to appear as witnesses in the public courts against orthodox Christians. To Constantine V. (911-959) goes back the Jewish form of oath which in its later development required the Jew to gird himself with thorns; stand in water; and, holding the scroll of the Torah in his hand, invoke upon his person the leprosy of Naaman, the curse of Eli and the fate of Korah's sons should he perjure himself. This was the original of all the medieval forms of oath _more judaico_, which still prevailed in many European lands till the 19th century, and are even now maintained by some of the Rumanian courts. Jews were by the law of Honorius excluded from the army, from public offices and dignities (418), from acting as advocates (425); only the curial offices were open to them. Justinian gave the finishing touch by proclaiming in 537 the Jews absolutely ineligible for any honour whatsoever ("honore fruantur nullo"). 43. _Judaism in Babylonia._--The Jews themselves were during this period engaged in building up a system of isolation on their own side, but they treated Roman law with greater hospitality than it meted out to them. The Talmud shows the influence of that law in many points, and may justly be compared to it as a monument of codification based on great principles. The Palestinian Talmud was completed in the 4th century, but the better known and more influential version was compiled in Babylonia about 500. The land which, a millennium before, had been a prison for the Jewish exiles was now their asylum of refuge. For a long time it formed their second fatherland. Here, far more than on Palestinian soil, was built the enduring edifice of rabbinism. The population of the southern part of Mesopotamia--the strip of land enclosed between the Tigris and the Euphrates--was, according to Graetz, mainly Jewish; while the district extending for about 70 m. on the east of the Euphrates, from Nehardea in the north to Sura in the south, became a new Palestine with Nehardea for its Jerusalem. The Babylonian Jews were practically independent, and the exilarch (_resh-galutha_) or prince of the captivity was an official who ruled the community as a vassal of the Persian throne. The exilarch claimed, like the Palestinian patriarch, descent from the royal house of David, and exercised most of the functions of government. Babylonia had risen into supreme importance for Jewish life at about the time when the Mishnah was completed. The great rabbinic academies at Sura and Nehardea, the former of which