Global InformationSicaricon information
| Part of a series on |
| Jews and Judaism |
|---|
|
|
Sicaricon (Hebrew: סיקריקון), lit. 'usurping occupant; possessor of confiscated property; the law concerning the purchase of confiscated property' (now obsolete), refers in Jewish law to a former act and counter-measure meant to deal effectively with religious persecution against Jews in which the Roman government had permitted its own citizens to seize the property of Jewish landowners who were either absent or killed in war, or taken captive,[1] or else where Roman citizens had received property (real estate) that had been confiscated by the state in the laws prescribed under ager publicus,[1][2] and to which the original Jewish owners of such property had not incurred any legal debt or fine, but had simply been the victims of war and the illegal, governmental expropriation of such lands from their rightful owners or heirs. The original Jewish law, made at some time after the First Jewish-Roman War with Vespasian and his son Titus,[3][4] saw additional amendments by later rabbinic courts, all of which were meant to safe-guard against depriving the original landowners and their heirs of any land that belonged to them, and to ensure their ability to redeem such property in the future.
- ^ a b The Mishnah (ed. Herbert Danby), Oxford University Press: Oxford 1977, s.v. Gittin 5:6, p. 313 (note 6)
- ^ Josephus alludes to this law in The Jewish War, VII.6.6 (VII, 216), where he says that "Caesar (Vespasian) gave order that all Judea should be exposed to sale." Although not conclusive, Emil Schürer thinks that this may have referred to the lease of confiscated Jewish property by non-Jewish tenants (farmers), with the money accruing unto the Roman treasury. See: Emil Schürer, Die Gemeindeverfassung der Juden in Rom in der Kaiserzeit (The Congregation of the Jews in Rome in the Imperial Age), Leipzig 1878, v. i p. 640. See also term, ager publicus, in Adolf Berger's Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law, vol. 43, part 2, Philadelphia 1980 ISBN 0-87169-435-2, p. 357. Berger, citing Charles Giraud (Recherches sur le droit de propriété chez les Romains, p. 163), writes that in such cases the lessee paid monies for the lease either in periods of five years (quinquennial leaseholds) or perpetually, i.e. , by emphyteutic lease or copyhold. From these lands the Roman treasury (fiscus) received an income of from one-tenth to one-fifth of the annual crops.
- ^ Such is the opinion of Talmudic exegete, Rashi (1040–1105), and Maimonides (1138–1205), as well as the historian, Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891), although Israeli historian and Israel Prize laureate, Shmuel Safrai (1919–2003), thought that the sicaricon laws were initiated only after the Second Jewish-Roman War with Hadrian (132-135 CE) (see: H. Graetz, Das Sikarikon-Gesetz [The Sikarikon Act], Breslau 1892).
- ^ Cf. Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 2, Keter Publishing House: Jerusalem 1971, p. 395 (s.v. Agriculture), where it writes: "Josephus relates that, after the destruction, Titus issued a decree expropriating Jewish landholdings which he ordered sold or leased out (Wars, 5:421). At first these lands were acquired mainly by Gentiles who leased the plots to the former Jewish owners, and these later tried to buy back their land. To assure the restoration of the lands to their former Jewish owners, the talmudic sages enacted ordinances forbidding competition and speculation in land (BB 9:4; TJ, Ket. 2:1, 26b; Git. 52a, et al.)."