9. Rabbis in Southern Italian Jewish Inscriptions from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages

Giancarlo Lacerenza, in ‘Rabbis in Southern Italian Jewish Inscriptions from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages’, examines the evolution of the title rabbi based on the epigraphic evidence. Even though rabbinic literature mentions the presence of rabbis in Rome, the word rabbi rarely appears in the early inscriptions. Lacerenza studies three Greek and Latin funerary inscriptions from the fourth to sixth centuries that mention some variation of the title. The scarcity of evidence for this period contrasts with the situation after the ninth century, where rabbinic allusions abound in predominantly Hebrew inscriptions. Lacerenza postulates that a progressive rabbinization of southern Italy occurred during the two centuries where the evidence is silent.