Pontifex Maximus

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For alternate senses of this word, see pontifex (disambiguation).

In Ancient Rome, the Pontifex Maximus was the high priest of the collegium of the Pontifices, the most important position in Roman religion, open only to a patrician, until 254 BC, when a plebeian first occupied this post. A distinctly religious office under the early Roman Republic, it gradually became politicized until, beginning with Augustus, it was subsumed into the Imperial office.

Today, Pontifex Maximus is one of the titles of the Bishop of Rome as Roman Catholic Pope. As a papal title, the translation Supreme Pontiff is customary when writing in English, in which the Latin term Pontifex Maximus refers to the former pagan Roman post. But Latin is still the official Vatican language, and the Latin form Pontifex Maximus is still used in reference to the Pope when writing or speaking in that language.

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Etymology

The term pontifex literally means "bridge-builder" (pons + facere); Maximus literally means 'the greatest', i.e. the highest. This was perhaps originally meant in a literal sense: the position of bridge-builder was indeed an important one in Rome, where the major bridges were over the Tiber, the holy river (and a deity, at the same time); only prestigious authorities, with sacral functions, could be allowed to "disturb" it with mechanical additions. However, it was always understood in its symbolic sense as well: the pontifices were the ones who smoothened the bridge between gods and men (Van Haeperen). It has besides been noted that in ancient India similar concepts were in use in similar ages, here too ideally regarding rivers and bridges. The word has also been thought by some to be a corruption of a similar-sounding but etymologically unrelated Etruscan word for priest, but this theory is a minority opinion.

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Origins, duties, and development of the Pagan Pontifices

In the Roman Republic, the Pontifex Maximus was the highest office in the polytheistic Roman religion, which was very much a state cult. His was the most important of the Pontifices (plural of Pontifex), positions in the main sacred college (Collegium Pontificum), which he directed. Other members of this priesthood included the Rex Sacrorum (king of the sacred rites), the Flamines (each devoted to a major deity), the Vestales. During the early Republic, the Pontifex Maximus selected the members to hold these posts. However there were many other religious officials, including the Augures and Haruspices (two originally Etruscan types of reading of the will of the gods: from the flight and conduct of birds viz. the entrails of sacrificial animals), Fetiales and many other colleges and individual offices. The most recent general study of the pontifical college (Van Haeperen 2002), omits the earliest periods of Roman history, as too little is known. The major Roman source, Varro's book on the pontiffs, is lost: only a little of it survives in Aulus Gellius and Nonius Marcellus. More information is to be found in remarks by Cicero, Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Valerius Maximus, in Plutarch's vita of Numa Pompilius, Festus' summaries of Verrius Flaccus, and in later writers. Some of these sources present an extensive list of everyday actions that were taboo for the Pontifex Maximus; it seems difficult to reconcile these lists with evidence that many Pontifices Maximi were prominent members of society who lived normal, non-restricted lives.

The number of Pontifices, (s)elected by cooptatio (i.e the remaining members nominate their new colleague) for life, was originally six, but this number increased to fifteen in the 1st century BC. The office came into its own with the abolition of the monarchy, when most sacral powers previously vested in the King were transferred either to the Pontifex Maximus or to the Rex Sacrorum (not unlike the Athenian polis's basileus), though traditionally a (non-political) Dictator (the very highest, extraordinary, non-collegial magistracy in the Republic, closest thing to a king; compare interrex) was formally mandated by the Senate for one day (), to perform a specific rite. In post-Severan times, so few pagan senators were interested in becoming pontiffs, that the lack of candidates led to a change in the pattern of office holding.

The Pontifex was not simply a priest. He had both political and religious authority. It is not clear which of the two came first or had the most importance. In practice, particularly during the late Republic, the office of Pontifex Maximus was generally held by a member of a politically prominent family. Being Pontifex Maximus was not a full-time job and did not preclude the office-holder from holding a secular magistracy or serving in the military.

The Pontifices had many relevant and prestigious functions, such as keeping the official minutes of elected magistrates (see Fasti), and the so-called "public diaries", the Annales maximi. They also collected information related to the Roman religious tradition into a sort of corpus which summarised dogma and other concepts, similar to later compilations of law in Jurisprudence.

The Pontifices were in charge of the Roman calendar and determined when intercalary days needed to be added to sync the calendar to the seasons. Since the Pontifices were often politicians, and because a Roman magistrate's term of office corresponded with a calendar year, this power was prone to abuse: a Pontifex could lengthen a year in which he or one of his political allies was in office, or refuse to lengthen one in which his opponents were in power. Under his authority as Pontifex Maximus Julius Caesar introduced the calendar reform that created the Julian calendar, with a fault under a day per century, easily corrected by a modification of the rules for bisextile days (only added in a leap-year) to produce our present Gregorian calendar.

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Some authors believe that eventually Roman magistrates would have gained some of the Pontifices' political prerogatives and powers. Earlier Pontifices were elected only from the old nobility (patrician class), but in 300 BC the lex Ogulnia admitted people from plebs (plebeians) too to run for the charge, so that part of the prestige of the title was lost.

In 104 BC the lex Domitia prescribed that the election would henceforward be voted by the comitia tributa; by the same law, only 17 of the 35 tribes of the city could vote. This law was abolished by Sulla and restored when Julius Caesar was Pontifex Maximus.

After Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, his ally Marcus Aemilius Lepidus was selected as Pontifex Maximus. Though Lepidus eventually fell out of political favor and was sent into exile as Augustus Caesar consolidated power, he retained the priestly office until his death in 13 BC, at which point Augustus was selected to succeed him and given the right to appoint other pontifices. With this attribution, the new office of Emperor was given a religious dignity. Most authors contend that the power of naming the Pontifices was not really used as an instrumentum regni, an enforcing power.

From this point on, Pontifex Maximus was one of the many titles of the Emperor, slowly losing its specific and historical powers and becoming simply a referent for the sacral aspect of imperial duties and powers. In periods of joint rule, two pontifices maximi could serve together, as Pupienus and Balbinus did in 238 -- a situation unthinkable in Republican times. In the crisis of the Third Century, usurpers did not hesitate to claim for themselves the role not only of Emperor but of Pontifex Maximus as well. Even the early Christian Emperors continued to use it; it was only relinquished by Gratian in 376, at the time of his visit to Rome (Van Haeperen).

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Legacy

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Christian usage

In Christian circles, when Tertullian furiously applied the term to Pope Callixtus I, with whom he was at odds, ca 220, over Callistus' relaxation of the Church's penitential discipline, allowing repentant adulterers and fornicators back into the Church, under his Petrine authority to "bind and loosen," it was in bitter irony:

"In opposition to this [modesty], could I not have acted the dissembler? I hear that there has even been an edict sent forth, and a peremptory one too. The 'Pontifex Maximus,' that is the 'bishop of bishops,' issues an edict: 'I remit, to such as have discharged [the requirements of] repentance, the sins both of adultery and of fornication.' O edict, on which cannot be inscribed, 'Good deed!' ...Far, far from Christ's betrothed be such a proclamation!" (Tertullian, On Modesty ch. 1)

Was Pontifex a word in common currency by early 3rd-century Christianity to denote a bishop? Tertullian's usage is unusual in that most of the technical terms of Roman paganism were avoided in the vocabulary of Christian Latin in favour of neologisms or Greek words. After Gratian put aside the pagan honour, it remained in desuetude. Pontifex summus was an expression used to distinguish Hilary of Arles (died 449) as the bishop of the notable see of Gallia Narbonensis, in relation to those of less importance, by Eucherius of Lyons (Catholic Encyclopedia, quoting Pat. Lat., L, 773), but other such early instances are difficult to find, and it may be significant that Pontifex summus was substituted for the pagan formula Pontifex maximus by Bishop Eucherius.

At the end of the 6th century Gregory I was the first Pope to employ "Pontifex maximus" in a formal sense, in a broader program of asserting Roman primacy. It has remained one of the titles of the popes to this day.

  • The title Pontifex Maximus was briefly usurped,1902–1906, by the head of the Filipino sect Aglipayanism.
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The tradition of sovereign as High Priest

Main article: Caesaropapism.

The practice of religious and secular duality united in the sovereign has a long history, having passed from the Roman to the Byzantine emperors, where it perhaps reached its zenith in the West. The Romanov dynasty of Russia, the Third Rome, claiming direct descent from the Roman emperors, also claimed supreme authority over the Russian Orthodox Church. The first of the Holy Roman Emperors, Charlemagne (c. A.D. 742 or 747 - 814) is said to have regretted that he allowed himself to be crowned by the Pope rather than crowning himself; since his authority was supposed to come directly from God, he was in no need of a "bridge builder".

Though the sovereign of England is Supreme Governor of the Church of England since the English Reformation there is effective separation of church and state.

Eastern traditions, from the ancient Egyptian to the Japanese, have carried the concept even further, by according their sovereigns demigod status. The secular equivalent of the emperor as Pontifex Maximus is the philosopher-king of the Greek sages, with whom the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius is said to have identified, as a stoic, and to which the Prussian king Frederick the Great and the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte aspired, both as philosophes.

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Popular culture

In the Christian fiction series Left Behind, Cardinal Peter Mathews is named Pontifex Maximus of Enigma Babylon One World Faith established by antagonist Nicolae Carpathia.

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Incomplete list of Pontifices maximi

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Furthermore

  • Two English words pontificate—spelled identically but pronounced differently—correspond to two related Latin words : the noun form pontificatus indicates the (term of) office of a Pontiff, the verb to pontificate means to speak or act with the solemnity of a pontiff, often used in a derogatory sense for pompous arrogance.
  • Pontifex is also an inter-house cross-country race at Charterhouse, Godalming; the official distances per year group vary from 4.5 miles to 1.75 miles, the course includes flat and steep terrain.
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External links

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Further reading

Roman religion series
Offices
Augur | Flamen | Haruspex | Pontifex Maximus | Rex Nemorensis | Sacred king | Vestal Virgin
Beliefs and practices
Apotheosis | Festivals | Funerals | Imperial cult | Mythology | Persecution | Sibylline Books | Temple
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