Justasas

Justasas (also Justus , Justa or Ustas ; † 484 ?) Was a leader of Samaritan rebels against the Eastern Roman emperor Zenon , probably in the year 484.

With the rebellion, the Samaritans defended themselves against the strictly Christian-Orthodox religious policy of the central government in Constantinople . Justasas, who is described in some late antique sources as the leader of a band of robbers, was supposedly - like Julian ben Sabar later - made king by the rebels. His troops are said to have conquered Neapolis and Caesarea Maritima and murdered the Christians there and mutilated their bishop Terebinthus on the hands. The uprising was put down by the dux Palaestinae Asklepiades, Justasas captured and executed as a usurper. His head, adorned with a diadem, is said to have been sent to Emperor Zenon. He had an octagonal Chapel of Mary built on the Garizim , the holy mountain of the Samaritans .

In the years 529 and 556 there were renewed uprisings of the Samaritans.

swell

• Chronicon Paschal 1.603
• John Malalas 15.8

literature

• Alexander Demandt : The late antiquity. Roman history from Diocletian to Justinian. 284 - 565 AD (= Handbook of Classical Studies . Section 3: Ancient Orient, Greek History, Roman History. Part 6). 2nd completely revised and expanded edition. Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-55993-8 , p. 519.
• John Robert Martindale: Iustasas. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1980, ISBN 0-521-20159-4 , p. 644.
• Mischa Meier : The other age of Justinian. Experience of contingency and coping with contingency in the 6th century AD (= Hypomnemata . Vol. 147). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-525-25246-3 , p. 212 f.
• Reinhard Pummer: Early Christian Authors on Samaritans and Samaritanism (= texts and studies on ancient Judaism . Vol. 92, ISSN  0721-8753 ). Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3-16-147831-2 , p. 257.
• Avner Raban, Kenneth G. Holum: Caesarea Maritima. A Retrospective After Two Millennia (= Documenta et monumenta orientis antiqui . Vol. 21, ISSN  0169-7943 ), EJ Brill, Leiden 1996, ISBN 90-04-10378-3 , p. 586 f.

Remarks

1. ↑ Raban / Holum consider the Justasas episode largely to be a historiographical “duplicate” of the much better documented Julian's rebellion.