Maxentius
c. 278 CE–c. 312 CE · Rome
Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius (born c. 283, probably in the East where his father Maximian was then serving; died 312) was the son of the emperor Maximian who seized power at Rome in 306 and ruled Italy and Africa, though the other tetrarchs never recognized him. In his territories he ended the Diocletianic persecution and extended toleration to Christians, and he intervened in a contested election for bishop of Rome, exiling Pope Eusebius and his rival to Sicily (the election fell in 309, the exile in 310). In 312 he was defeated by Constantine at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and drowned in the Tiber; Constantine's victory, which Christian tradition credits to a sign of the cross, was followed by the Edict of Milan (313) of Constantine and Licinius, which decriminalized Christianity.
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RomeרומאItaly
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About Rome
# Rome In the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, Rome lay within the Papal States, the territorial domain of the Catholic Church, though its temporal glory as an empire had long faded. The city sprawled across its famous hills along the Tiber River, a landscape of crumbling ancient monuments, medieval fortifications, and Romanesque churches that dominated the skyline. The Jewish community of Rome was among Europe's most ancient, tracing roots to the second century BCE, and it flourished in a precarious but resilient position under papal authority; while confined to restricted quarters and subject to discriminatory laws, Roman Jews maintained a sophisticated intellectual and commercial life, with Hebrew scholarship and biblical commentary flourishing despite—or perhaps because of—the community's isolation. The Jewish quarter itself, densely packed and vibrant, became a center of learning where skilled scribes copied manuscripts and rabbinical discussions drew on centuries of local tradition. What made Rome extraordinary for Torah study was not merely its learned scholars but the tangible presence of antiquity itself: the community lived amid the ruins of pagan temples and Roman law, giving their interpretations of Jewish law a unique resonance, as if they were rebuilding Jewish civilization in the very streets where Roman power had once reigned supreme.
Across the traditions, in Rome at the same time
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Maxentius’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Maxentius’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
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