Imperium
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- This article is about the meaning of the Latin term Imperium as a concept of authority since ancient Rome; for artistic and other uses, see imperium (disambiguation)
Imperium can, in a broad sense, be translated as power. In Antiquity this concept could apply to people, and mean something like "power status" or "authority", or could be used with a geographical connotation and mean something like "territory". It is not to be mistaken with auctoritas ("authority").
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Roman antiquity
Imperium as a personal characteristic
In ancient Rome imperium could be used as a term indicating a characteristic of people, the measure of power they had. This qualification could be used in a rather loose context (for example poets used it, not necessarily writing about state officials), but in the Roman society it was also a more formal concept of legal authority. A man with imperium had in principle absolute authority to apply the law within the scope of his magistracy or promagistracy (see below), but could be vetoed or overruled by a magistrate or promagistrate having imperium maius= -maior (a higher degree of imperium) or, as most republican magistratures were multiple (not quite collegial: each could act on his own), by the equal power of his colleague, e.g. the other Consul. Some modern scholars (e.g. A.H.M. Jones) have defined it as "the power vested by the state in a person to do what they consider to be in the best interests of the state".
Imperium was indicated in two prominent ways. A "curule" magistrate or promagistrate carried an ivory baton surmounted by an eagle as his personal symbol of office (cf. field marshal's baton). Any such magistrate was also escorted by lictors bearing the fasces (traditional symbols of imperium and authority); when outside the pomerium, axes were added to the fasces to indicate an "imperial" magistrate's power to enact capital punishment outside of Rome (the axes were removed within the pomerium). The number of lictors in attendance upon a magistrate was an overt indication of the degree of imperium. When in the field, a curule magistrate possessing an imperium greater or equal to praetorian imperium wore a sash ritually knotted on the front of his cuirass. Further any man executing imperium within his sphere of influence was entitled to the curule chair.
- Dictator - originally 12 lictors, 24 lictors after the dictatorate of Lucius Cornelius Sulla
- Because the dictator could enact capital punishment within Rome as well as without, his lictors did not remove the axes from their fasces within the pomerium
- Consul - 12 lictors each
- Praetor - 6 lictors, 2 lictors within Rome
- Master of the Horse (magister equitum, te Dictator's deputy) - 6 lictors
- Curule Aedile (aedilis curulis) - 2 lictors
- Because a plebeian aedile (aedilis plebis) did not own imperium, he was not escorted by lictors
As can be seen, dictatorial imperium was superior to consular, consular to praetorian, and praetorian to aedilician; there is some historical dispute as to whether or not praetorian imperium was superior to "equine-magisterial" imperium. A promagistrate, or a man executing a curule office without actually holding that office, also owned imperium in the same degree as the actual incumbents (i.e., proconsular imperium being more or less equal to consular imperium, propraetorian imperium to praetorian) and was attended by an equal number of lictors.
Certain extraordinary commissions, such as Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus's famous command against Quintus Sertorius, were invested with imperium maius, meaning they outranked all other owners of imperium (in Pompey's case, even the consuls) within their sphere of command (his being "ultimate on the seas, and within 50 miles inland"). Imperium maius later became a hallmark of the Roman Emperor.
Another techical use of the term in Roman law was for the power to extend the law, beyond its mere interpretation, extending imperium from formal legislators (under the ever-republican constitution: popular assemblies, senate, magistrates, emperor and their delegates) to the jurisprudence of jurisconsults.
Territories
"Imperium Romanum" is probably the best known Latin expression where the word "imperium" is used in the meaning of a territory, the "Roman Empire", as that part of the world where Rome ruled.
Divine and earthly imperium
In monotheistic religions as Christianity (where the official language, latin, used terms as Imperium Dei/Domini) the Almighty God is held to have a superior imperium, as ultimate King of Kings, above all earthly powers. Whenever a society accepts this Divine will to be expressed on earth, as by a religious authority, that opens the way for a theocratic legitimation. If however a secular ruler controls the religious hierarchy, he can use it to legitimate his own authority.
Thus absolute, universal power was vested under early Islam in the original Caliphate (before it became the political toy of worldy powers 'behind the throne' and was even politically discarded by essentially secular princes), and later again claimed by Mahdis.
While the Byzantine Emperors retained full Roman imperium and made the episcopate subservient, in the feudal West a long rivalry would oppose the claims to supremacy within post-Roman Christianity between sacerdotium (the 'priesthood', i.e. the clergy ministrating the word and will of God) in the person of the Pope and the secular imperium of the revived western Emperor since Charlemagne. Both would refer to the heritage of Roman law by their titular link with the very city Rome: the Pope, Bishop of Rome, versus the Holy Roman Emperor (even though his seat of power was north of the Alps). Ironically, the Donatio Constantini (whether partially or wholly forged doesn't alter its effect) by which the Papacy had been granted the territorial Patrimonium Petri in Central Italy, became a weapon against the Emperor. The first pope who used it in an official act and relied upon, Leo IX, cites the "Donatio" in a letter of 1054 to Michael Cærularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, to show that the Holy See possessed both an earthly and a heavenly imperium, the royal priesthood. Thenceforth the "Donatio" acquires more importance and is more frequently used as evidence in the ecclesiastical and political conflicts between the papacy and the secular power: Anselm of Lucca and Cardinal Deusdedit inserted it in their collections of canons; Gratian excluded it from his 'Decretum, but it was soon added to it as Palea; the ecclesiastical writers in defence of the papacy during the conflicts of the early part of the twelfth century quoted it as authoritative.
In one bitter episode, pope Gregory IX who had several times mediated between the Lombards and the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II reasserted his right to arbitrate between the contending parties. In the numerous manifestos of the pope and the emperor the antagonism of Church and State becomes daily more evident: the pope claimed for himself the imperium animarum 'command of the souls' (i.e. voicing Gods will to the faithfull) and the principatus rerum et corporum in universo mundo 'princedom over all things and bodies in the whole world', while the emperor wished to restore the imperium mundi 'imperium (as under Roman Law) over the (now Christian) world- Rome was again the be the capital of the world and Frederick was to become the real emperor of the Romans, so he energetically protested against the world-empire of the pope. The emperor's successes, especially his victory over the Lombards at the battle of Cortenuova (1237), only embittered the opposition between Church and State. The pope again excommunicated the "self-confessed heretic", the "blasphemous beast of the Apocalypse" (20 March, 1239) who now attempted to conquer the rest of Italy, i.e. the papal states, etcetera.
Thomas Cromwell, the first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, was the one who suggested to Henry VIII, the Tudor King of England, to undo the Roman Catholic papacy's imperium in imperio (Latin equivalent of state in the state) by proclaiming the crown Protector and Supreme Head of the Church of England.
In Orthodox Russia too, when Peter I the Great has assumed the Byzantine imperial titles Imperator and Autokrator, instead of the 'merely' royal Tsar, the idea in founding the Russian Holy Synod was to put an end to the old Imperium in imperio of the free Church, by substituting the synod for the all to independent Patriarch of Moskow, who had become almost a rival of the Tsars - Peter meant to unite all authority in himself, over Church as well as State: through his Oberprocuror and synod, the Emperor rules his Church as absolutely as his army and navy through their respective ministries; he appoints its members (mostly bishops) just as his generals; and the Russian Governments continued his policy since.
Even in 19th century North America, when by the decree of the President of the United States, Brigham Young, the Mormon hierarch and head of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, was appointed first Governor of the Territory of Utah on 28 September, 1851, this was called (politically, not in law) establishing a theocratic form of government there (until it became a regular state) as an imperium in imperio, within the limits of the republic.
Other use
In theology, imperium has been used to describe the human free will's 'command' over the lower (i.e. biological) faculties.
Sources and references
(incomplete)
- This article incorporates text from the public domain Catholic Encyclopedia. (several pages)
See also
- Auctoritas
- Cursus honorum
- Curule dignity
- Imperator, a Latin title derived from the same verb imperare "to command".
- translatio imperiide:Imperium
eo:Imperiumo fr:Imperium he:אימפריום it:Imperium nl:Imperium (Rome) pl:Imperium pt:Imperium zh:統治權 es:Imperium