Rome stripped the last patriarch of the house of Hillel, let no son succeed him, and took the patriarch's tax for the imperial treasury

For centuries the office of nasi, or patriarch, passed within the family of Hillel. Rome recognised the patriarch as political head of the Jews. He presided over the court, fixed the calendar, ordained scholars and sent apostles to the communities of the diaspora, who collected an annual tax for him. Gamaliel VI took office around 400. In October 415 an edict of Honorius and Theodosius II took away his rank of honorary prefect and his higher honours. It cited his building of new synagogues and his judging of disputes between Jews and Christians. Gamaliel died around 425. The emperor allowed no successor. An imperial decree diverted the patriarch's tax to the treasury "after the death of the patriarchs." On 30 May 429 a further law ordered the Jewish leaders in Palestine to pay over everything they had collected since the patriarchs ended. From then on every synagogue paid an annual sum to the imperial treasury, as it had once paid the patriarch. Money sent from the western provinces went to the emperor too. Gamaliel VI was the last Hillelite nasi. A medical writer of the 5th century, Marcellus, records a remedy for the spleen tested by "the patriarch Gamaliel."