This course covers more than one-and-one-half millennia following the emergence of the first congregation of believers at Jerusalem.
The task of the first unit is to introduce the Ancient Church in its cultural context. The second unit will summarize the Medieval Church and the third unit will delve into the period of reorganization and power-struggle in western Europe after about 1300 AD, typically labeled the period of the Renaissance and the Reformation.
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Christianity cannot be understood apart from the various cultures that have transported it through these centuries. All these cultures are understood as unique in their own right, but in the time frame viewed by this course they are also all components of what is called western civilization.
Many present day Christians remain ignorant of the historical manifestations of Christianity because our society is plagued by the disciples of presentism who advocate ignoring any part of the past that is not immediately relevant to a shallow but pragmatic understanding of the present. The kind of pragmatic understanding they value most enables or qualifies them to rake in the most wealth and enjoy the highest prestige. This ought not be the world-view of a committed Christian!
A Christian ought to sense the relevance of Christian history and be willing to commit some time to the examination of that heritage. Certainly, you will encounter parts of that heritage that will seem foreign and irrelevant to you because Baptists, as a group, together with other 20th century evangelical groups, are not known for having a firm grip on their own history let alone the history of other parts of the Christian movement. In the place of a "firm grip" one all too often gets dosed with the popular and many times fanciful myths about the Christian development in the past. These myths masquerade as history. In this class you will discover many things about the Christian movement that are not particularly glorious or praiseworthy, but perhaps you will also learn something of why the Christians of that day were unable, or deliberately choose otherwise, rather than to rise to the mark that we would set for them. Human frailties can sometimes make the success of Christianity appear all the more miraculous.
Some contemporary scholars have argued that concepts such as "western civilization" or "the history of Christianity" are themselves simply mental "constructs"--one as good as another and none of them worth a nickel. Cultural propaganda, these Post-modernists call it, just bigoted, dogmatic, totalitarian "hoopla" in literary form! To preserve the real truth as they see it all such constructs should be "deconstructed", emptied of value, and abandoned! Some individuals with radical social-engineering agendas that run counter the Christian heritage would like to cut present-day society off from its historical roots so they can more easily substitute an alien alternative, a new ideological foundation in place of our historical heritage. In that new society the frustrating limitations of the Judaeo-Christian heritage can easily be overruled. For example, you may think of Lenin's variety of scientific socialism better known as Communism. Communism is an example but it was not and is not the only movement guilty of this kind of manipulation in support of their agenda for social change.
If you would like to consider further the matter of Why Study the History of Christianity? you may take this link.
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But to get back to the issues at hand, let us take a few moments to analyze that brand of "western civilization" that prevailed in the first century AD. That first century AD segment was predominately influenced by the cultural contribution of the population who in that age spoke Greek and studied the Greek intellectual heritage. This population in the cities that sounds Greek and looks Greek and acts Greek but really isn't, is called Hellenistic, which means "Greek-like". It sounds Greek because the koiné ("common") Greek was the common language of the urban dwelling Hellenistic population.
Despite the broad ethnic diversity of the typical urban population in the first century AD, the upper class urbanites, including a large proportion of non-Greek peoples, blatantly imitated the norms established by earlier generations of Greek people. They followed or were heavily influenced by Greek customs not only in political institutions but also in artistic and architectural tastes, as well as the attitudes and activities of the everyday urban life-style of the rich and influential.
These Greek-speaking people were particularly visible in the urban populations scattered in eastern cities like Alexandria in Egypt, Jerusalem in Judea, Antioch in Syria as well as western cities like Massilia in south Gaul, Rome in Italy, Emporium in Spain, and several cities in Sicily. Certainly not to be overlooked were the great cities such as Corinth and Ephesus and numerous smaller cities in that part of the central Mediterranen region identified with the Aegean Sea. The degree of Hellenization present in the cities of the western Mediterranean was somewhat less than the degree present in the cities of the eastern Mediterranean region.
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The most ancient forefathers of classical Greek (Hellenic) civilization appeared on the islands and coasts of the Aegean Sea concentrated on either side of a line from Athens to Ephesus. These industrious farmers organized themselves politically into a number of local states most of which had developed a local urban settlement at the administrative center of the state by about 500 BC. By that time the Hellenic cultural footprint had expanded geographically in all directions swallowing pockets of non-Greeks that were surrounded and absorbed by its advancement. Virtually every available area suitable for settlement on an island or on the mainland bordering the Aegean Sea had been occupied. Today this Hellenic heartland is divided between the modern nations of Greece and Turkey.
Early on in their development these agriculturally based Hellenic states had actively cultivated commercial interchange with the more advanced overseas cultures in the East such as those in Cilicia, Cyprus, Syria, and Egypt. Already in this period of greatest expansion beginning in the eighth century BC the Hellenic states began to scatter autonomous agricultural colonies outside the Hellenic heartland in places like southern Italy and Sicily, the coasts of Gaul and Spain, north central Africa, and various locations along all the coasts of the Black Sea. These colonial states almost never melted into the indigenous population, but tenaciously maintained their cultural identity, demonstrating its rich sophistication and influencing the advancement of the surrounding indigenous peoples.
Hellenic influence penetrated into the heart of the Balkans south of the Danube, an area consolidated and governed by the Macedonians in the fourth century BC. Macedonian king, Alexander the Great, led the Macedonian warriors and their Greek allies all the way to the Indus Valley conquering the sprawling Persian Empire. Alexander's successors continued to recruit their armies out of the Aegean region for over a century and settle dozens of colonies of army veterans in the areas being governed by the Macedonians. Moreover, where ever the Greeks or Macedonians planted themselves they attracted and impacted the surrounding indigenous peoples. Over a period of more than two centuries not a few of their indigenous neighbors showed their appreciation of Hellenic culture by adopting it for themselves.
Despite the persistant myth expressed on freshman-level history examinations, Alexander the Great was not a Roman general. The fourth century Macedonians did not conquer any territory west of Greece. Consequently, the Macedonians cannot be credited with the wide spread presence of Hellenistic peoples and practices in the west. To be sure in the East, the dominant Macedonian political and economic position was an additional encouragement to subject peoples to adopt the Hellenistic life. In the west, however, it was merely the persuasive argument of a wider, richer world accessible to the Hellenistic peoples.
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What surprises us is how small a proportion of these Greek-speaking people dispersed in the cities of the Mediterranean world in the first century AD were actually descendants of the original Greek-speaking peoples. To be sure there were some more or less "pure-blooded" Greeks to be found in most major cities from Babylon to Cadiz (Spain), but they were not the majority among the Greek-speaking people in most cities outside the Aegean heartland. Even the first century AD cities located in the ancient Hellenic area around all sides of the Aegean Sea, in southern Italy and Sicily, and in north central Africa contained a substantial immigrant population of a variety of non-Greek peoples displaying degrees of Hellenistic culture.
Koiné (common) Greek was the language of long-range commercial and financial activities carried out by the cosmopolitan, ethnically mixed but largely integrated, middle class population found in all the larger urban centers of the greater part of the Mediterranean world. The population utilizing the Koiné was the most mobile and ethnically diverse part of the total population around the Mediterranean in the first century AD. Speaking Greek at this time did not necessarily indicate that you were of Greek ancestry; rather it meant you were civilized, i.e., highly cultured. It was also the mark of intelligence and ambition. Indeed, if you were at all educated you learned to read the classical Greek, a more refined and purer language, less cluttered with particles, adverbs, and non-Greek vocabulary than the Koiné.
The lower class urban population in most cities, however, tended to reflect more the indigenous cultural influence of the city's geographic location. Lower class urban manpower implemented the vital interaction and communication between the city and the surrounding rural population on which the city depended for its food supply and other raw materials. Domestic crafts and trades also employed the prosperous lower classes. The culture of this bilingual group reflected a blending of the Greek-like culture of the upper classes and the traditional indigenous culture of the rural population surrounding the city. Hence the particular variety of local Hellenistic culture may differ in minor ways from other local varieties. For instance, at Antioch and other cities in Syria the Hellenistic society there has been described as Greco-Syrian, the Hellenistic achievement in Alexandria and other urban sites in Egypt has been labeled Greco-Coptic and that of the city of Rome and other cosmopolitan cities in central and northern Italy, Greco-Roman. By extension, the latter term has sometimes been applied to the Hellenistic civilization of the whole Roman Empire.
According to the authorities of the first century AD the largest city in their day was Alexandria in Egypt. Founded late in the fourth century BC by Alexander the Great, its ethnic composition reflected the diversity of the whole Mediterranean region. The apparent small proportion of Egyptians in the population of Alexandria on one hand and the rather large proportion of Jews on the other surprises modern students. As the capital of the Egyptian based Ptolemaic Kingdom until it was conquered by Rome in 30 BC, Alexandria functioned for most of its short history as the intellectual hub of Hellenistic Civilization, the most advanced and sophisticated civilization yet known to mankind.
Like other cities in that day the population of the city of Rome in the first century AD was cosmopolitan with virtually every ethnic group in the Empire and several from beyond the frontiers represented. Above the cacophonous buss of dozens of native tongues the Koiné Greek more often than the Latin served as the mediating vehicle of communication. Among the masses in Rome Latin was simply the language of the privileged ruling class best avoided unless you are dealing with city officials or native Italians.
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Indigenous cultures around the Mediterranean were not altogether extinguished by the Hellenistic transformation of the cities. Indeed, the Hellenic influence and its Hellenistic result were the least visible in the more isolated and backward rural communities where, comparatively speaking, the indigenous cultures surely displayed a pristine purity.
Of course, most of the rural indigenous population outside the Aegean heartland did not speak Greek. They spoke an astounding variety of native tongues reflecting as many different indigenous cultural traditions. Thriving indigenous cultures had for centuries supported their own relatively small, local urban centers economically and socially. It was in such local urban centers that the population engaged in commercial, social and political communication with other urban centers. It was this population engaged in all kinds of dealings with the distant, non-local world that had been impacted by Hellenistic influences over the course of the last three to five centuries of the Pre-Christian Era.
So all these diverse rural cultural traditions co-existed with the widely scattered Hellenistic culture found in their own local urban centers. There is a sense in which the koiné-speaking population is spread like a network across the whole Mediterranean world containing and molding all the diversity of the rural peoples into something of a coherent, interdependent whole.
In the central Mediterranean region peasants spoke indigenous Greek dialects in the lands around the Aegean Sea (Greece, Macedonia, the islands and western Turkey), and also in central north Africa region of Cyrenaica (modern Libya). Some Celtic and Iranian dialects were spoken in the Balkans (the lower Danube River valley, southern Rumania and Bulgaria).
In the eastern Mediterranean region Iranian and Celtic dialects were spoken in central and northeastern Turkey (Galatia, Pontus, Cappadocia, Armenia). Greek dialects were very strong on the Island of Cyprus and along the south coastal region of Turkey. In the Taurus Mountains of southeastern Turkey the Iranian dialects survived even later. Aramaic (i.e., Syriac) dialects were spoken by the great majority of the lower class rural peoples of the lands between the Mediterranean coast and the Arabian Desert. Native Egyptian farm laborers spoke native Coptic dialects.
The illiterate rural population of the Empire formed a highly variegated mosaic of ethnic and linguistic differences. In the western half of the Mediterranean area at the beginning of the Christian Era possibly as much as one fourth of the rural population spoke Latin or related Indo-European dialects. Western Central Italy just south of Rome was the cultural hearth of earliest Latin usage. Latin probably remained in use there among the lowest class of illiterate rural dwellers in the first century AD. Latin was the literary language employed in the upper class's inscriptions throughout rural Italy as well as parts of North Africa, Spain and southern France. The lower class country people, however, leave us little direct evidence. We may speculate that remnants of several Italian dialects such as Etruscan and Oscan may have survived among the Italian rural illiterate. A wide variety of Celtic dialects surely could be heard in the European areas of France and Spain. There were probably a few tiny pockets of Teutonic speech in extreme northern Italy and eastern France. Berber dialects were prevalent along the desert fringe of northwest Africa. Greek dialects were spoken by the majority of the rural illiterate population of southern Italy's coastal plain and throughout Sicily.
During the last four centuries BC the rural cultural tradition native to central Italy had expanded under the leadership of one of its major political centers in its military domination over geographic regions and populations both inside and outside of Italy. Indeed the little state of Rome leading the Latin-speaking cultural tradition had ultimately succeeded in taking military and political control over all the peoples and cultures of the Mediterranean world. Although Rome had the military and political control, they were not able to challenge the superiority of the Hellenistic civilization. Indeed there were many ways in which Hellenistic civilization dominated Rome. Hence, the world of the first century AD was politically and militarily dominated by Rome but intellectually and artistically dominated by the Hellenistic elements in Mediterranean society.
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The ruling class of the Roman State by the middle of the first century AD was already an amalgam of ethnic and cultural diversity in itself. Every Roman aristocrat was appropriately proud of his pedigree whether it be Greek, Samnite, Etruscan, Sabine, Hernician, African, Hispanic, Gaullic, or Latin--to name a representative few of the once powerful and independent peoples of Italy and the western Mediterranean identified with Rome by the first century AD. As an ongoing process the Roman governmental enterprise had acted as the magnet binding the elite descendants, the so-called aristocracy, of every diverse Italian nation and western Mediterranean region into a coherent and self-conscious body which we recognize as the Roman ruling class. Constant attrition due to the natural hazards of leadership had necessitated systematic and ongoing recruitment of new families to maintain adequate leadership manpower. For example, by 20 AD there were only a very few, if any, families of this class whose ancestry had been politically prominent in earlier centuries at Rome. The newer families rose to the occasion by adopting and defending the common culture of the class regardless of their own roots.
The culture of the Roman ruling class in the first century was a direct continuation of the ruling class culture of earlier periods at Rome. It was a culture incorporating at its core the predominant values, attitudes and characteristics of central Italy with added nuances drawn from the whole field of Italian nations. Hence, the Latin language was the very heart of the core of this elite ruling class culture. Since the perks of the class membership included ultimately all the leadership positions in society whether judicial, administrative, or military, Latin remained the language utilized in all these realms of government life throughout the Empire.
The young men of this ruling class regularly studied Latin classics to polish their Latin-speaking ability, but more and more since the second century BC they also studied the Greek resources which were so much richer and more elaborate than the Latin. In that sense the Roman ruling class was part of the Hellenistic world.
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Rome was originally a tiny obscure city-state in Italy with a rather remarkable but not exceptional history of her own. It began in the eighth century BC as an elective tribal chiefdom located on a strategic hilltop overlooking the only safe low-water crossing on central Italy's largest river, the Tiber. According to tradition Rome's inhabitants terminated the monarchy and established themselves as a Republic with annually elected officials about the beginning of the fifth century BC. At that time it was comparable in size and power to many of its immediate neighbors. By the middle of the fourth century BC Rome enjoyed a rising leadership role among the several states of central Italy based on interstate treaties. The so-called Roman Confederation of the middle of the third century BC was structured on the basis of individual treaties between Rome and every other community, people, tribe or city located anywhere in peninsular Italy.
By the beginning of the third century BC peoples outside Italy began to recognize Roman leadership. As Rome's influence extended beyond the Italian shores, however, treaties proved to be less satisfactory as a means of establishing control over politically underdeveloped regions. In the backward regions Rome usually utilized the statecraft developed by those who had previously controlled the territory. The frontier of Rome's intimidating and overwhelming outreach was still expanding during the first century AD.
Throughout Roman history the ever-present challenge of defending the Roman frontier was one important basis for Rome's self-definition. She saw herself as the bulwark defending civilization against the non-civilized world beyond the limits of her control. To be sure, some of the inhabitants of the distant reaches of her empire were not that much more civilized than their cousins beyond the boundary. Consequently, the Romans also defined themselves as defenders of peace and tranquility within her dominion. The pax Romana, Roman peace, was sometimes heavy handed and brutal, but it was a more tranquil and enduring peace than most of the conquered regions had experienced before.
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Taken as a whole, the multicultural civilization of the Roman Empire in the first century AD has been labeled either as Greco-Roman, or Hellenistic as a matter of convenience. This should not, however, be misunderstood. Throughout the long duration of Roman domination over the Mediterranean world the general policy followed by Rome was to leave undisturbed any cultural practice that was not clearly opposed to Rome and her ultimate authority. Neither would Rome tolerate any action aggressively disruptive of the peace and welfare of society in general. On occasion the government took steps to guarantee the rights of conquered minority peoples to exercise their native customs as long as the above considerations were not infringed. These facts complicate the study of the Roman Empire in relation to a number of cultural issues. While over the centuries most cultural conflicts eventually worked themselves out harmoniously, as a long term policy Rome did not aggressively impose a cultural straightjacket on her Empire. Take for example the chaotic divergence among the various calendars being employed by the Romans and their subjects during the first century AD.
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Even though Rome did not impose the Roman calendar on the general population of the Empire, Roman citizens and governmental agencies throughout the Empire nevertheless, generally always followed it. Subject peoples, however, retained their own customary calendars. For example, the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt had employed the Macedonian calendar for governmental purposes, counting the years in the Ptolemaic Era beginning with year 305 BC when the kingdom was established by Ptolemy I. However, the native Egyptians had maintained their traditional calendar for religious and cultural purposes. Likewise, the Jews brought the calendar of Iraq out of the exile with them and established it at Jerusalem for religious and political purposes. During the centuries previous to the Roman conquest the more prevalent calendar in the broad context of Palestine was that of the Seleucid Era another version of the Macedonian calendar which also numbered its years beginning with the year we label 305 BC. Some of these regional calendars continued to be utilized for local records in some cases well into the Middle Ages.
For everyday purposes Rome had never numbered their years; rather, they labeled each year with the names of the first two annually elected political leaders (the Consuls). Even after the Emperors took over the control of the state they continued the annual election of two Consuls in order to give the year its names. Somewhat as an afterthought some scholars did attempted to determine the "Roman Era" counting years from the Founding of the City (Ab Urbi Condita). Among the several divergent results, we are most familiar with the Roman Era proposed by Livy according to which the year 754 AUC = 1 AD.
Since different authors frequently utilized different calendars--sometimes several calendars--and not always with equal precision, historical dating in the first century AD is fraught with problems. Calendars in the various cultural regions observed the beginning of their years at different times resulting in variable, and to a degree unpredictable, overlaps between the various calendars. To cite a single example, the official Julian Calendar considered January 1 to be the beginning of the New Year, but the civil calendar followed by the Jews observed the beginning of the year with the New Moon observed at Jerusalem in late September or early October. Their religious calendar, however, began with the New Moon in late March or early April. Hence any Roman year overlapped two Jewish civil years and two Jewish religious years. This situation can confuse the original authors not to mention the scholars who try to make chronological sense of them.
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While all twelve native Egyptian months were thirty days each (five extra days always separated the end of one year and the beginning of the next), the months recognized by the Jews were sometimes twenty-nine, sometimes thirty days. The actual beginning of each Jewish month theoretically depended upon an official sighting of the New Moon at Jerusalem. Twelve typical lunar months technically constitute only 354 days, making it necessary to insert an additional month from time to time in order to keep the calendar roughly correlated with the seasons. In the Seleucid and Ptolemaic calendars twenty-nine-day months routinely alternated with thirty-day months, and additional months were inserted in a regular pattern of years.
The official calendar of Rome was the responsibility of the pontifex maximus, the Great Pontiff or high priest of the Roman state. Traditionally, their year had consisted of twelve months, seven of which were twenty-nine days each, four of which were thirty-one days, and one of which was twenty-eight. There was evidently no uniform tradition for keeping this calendar correlated to the seasons.
The official Roman State calendar was revised substantially by Julius Caesar who was at the time pontifex maximus. During his recent military campaigns in Egypt he had learned from the scientists and priests of Alexandria how to develop a solar calendar. To adjust the traditional series of months to the actual seasons he delayed the start of the new year, beginning January 1, 45 BC in our calendar, by a total of 90 days. In order to conform the traditional months to the solar timetable, he lengthened January, August and December two days each while adding one day each to April, June, September, and November. He also provided that an additional day be added to February once in each four years. Thus he created the most nearly accurate functioning solar calendar in ancient times. While the Roman calendar was at least theoretically a solar calendar based on a hard and fast numerical sequence, the practice did not always reflect the theory.
This arrangement of months eventually prevailed across the Roman Empire by the third century AD even though the traditional regional names were often substituted for the official Roman ones. It was used in Western Europe until Pope Gregory XIII revised the leap year arrangement in AD 1582. While the Gregorian Calendar prevailed in western Europe, the Julian Calendar continued to be used in Russia and some other eastern European areas until the early 20th century.
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The Roman custom of interpreting the day as beginning at midnight and lasting till the next did not immediately prevail across the Empire. Two rather interesting alternatives long prevailed beyond the first century AD. Egyptian scholars at Alexandria insisted that each day begins at sunrise. The cultures in southwestern Asian including the Jews preferred understanding that each day begins at sunset. This latter view is clearly that of the writers of both the Old and the New Testament. Some interpreters have based their arguments on the notion that all three of these schemes were being employed by the various Gospel writers. This allows them use whichever scheme supports their hermenutic agenda.
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The traditional Roman practice before the Julian calendar reform divided each month into three eight-day "weeks" each one ending on a market day. The first market day occurring always on the fifth or seventh day of the month depending on the size (29 or 31 days) of the previous month. After the Julian reform the week ending on the first market day of the month varied in length from six to eight days instead of ten. The traditional Greek/Macedonian (Seleucid Era/ Ptolmaic Era) market days were separated by ten-day weeks. As you know, the seven-day week was traditional among the Jews, but it was also customary among most of the peoples of southwest Asia.
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In Iraq and western Iran the practice of naming the seven days after the sun, moon, and the five planets originated probably in the fourth century BC. Although this astral week was known in Rome by the first century BC it had almost no immediate effect on practices elsewhere in the Empire. Spain and the countries in the eastern Mediterranean never did adopt the practice; they still number the weekdays. The practice came to us because it was evidently by the early third century AD adopted by many cities in Italy, Gaul, the Balkans and Britain from whence it later spread to the peoples of central Europe.
The construction of the astral week depends on the old Babylonian assumption that each of the seven days, representing the seven known celestial bodies, should be divided into 24 divisions or "hours". The names of the astral bodies used here reflect the Roman names, some of which have been preserved in present day astronomy. They began by assigning Saturn, the most distant and fear-inspiring planet in their view, to the first hour of the first day of the week. The second hour was assigned to the planet they ranked second, Jupiter. The third hour belonged to Mars, the fourth to Sol (= the Sun), the fifth to Venus, the sixth to Mercury, the seventh to Luna (= the Moon), and the eighth hour again to Saturn. Continuing to assign hours in that order, Saturn came up again on the fifteenth and the twenty-second hour of the first day. The first, eighth, fifteenth and twenty-second hours of the second day of the week were all claimed by Sol, the Sun. Thus, continuing, the third day was dedicated to the Luna, the Moon, the fourth day to Mars, the fifth day to Mercury, the sixth day to Jupiter and the seventh to Venus.
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At the beginning of the first century AD the southern frontier was the desert lands of tropical Africa and Arabia, natural deterrents but not an impenetrable barriers. One of the more dangerous sections of the eastern frontier was in Syria along the Euphrates River that separated the Roman domain from that of the Parthian kingdom, which encompassed much of what today is Iraq and Iran. An equally difficult segment was the Armenian frontier from the upper Euphrates River northward to the southern coast of the Black Sea. To the northeast the Black Sea served to mark the Empire's northern extent in the east while the central European frontier followed the course of the Danube River from its mouth on the Black Sea to its headwaters in Switzerland. The Western European frontier likewise more or less followed the course of the Rhine River from its headwaters in the Alps northward to empty into the North Sea. As of AD 20 England was not yet in Roman hands for Julius Caesar's attempts had failed.
Rome's defense of the frontiers was not intended to prevent commerce and other communication with those peoples beyond the boundary. Rather it was designed to prevent the immigration and settlement of any organized groups either inside Roman territory or too close to the outside of the frontier. Rag-tag groups of peoples from central Europe attempted such movements on a recurring basis along the Rhine and Danube frontiers. The peoples claimed a variety of cultural identities, but modern scholarship lumps these Europeans together and calls them "barbarians". For curious reasons such culturally backward groups threatening other parts of the frontier in Asia Minor, Arabia and Africa are seldom considered barbarians. The usual Roman response in any case was to attack the threatening group, capture and sell them as slaves, or drive them back away from the frontier, always with considerable bloodshed. Indeed, by the first century BC the frontiers were supplying a substantial proportion of the available slaves in markets all across the Empire. Many slaves, regardless of their origin were freed at the death of their master or might be allowed to redeem themselves. Many of these freedmen remained inside the Empire as loyal subjects.
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Even though Rome belatedly adjusted her Republican governmental machinery as the size and administrative demands of the Empire grew, it soon became customary for the Roman Senate to handle all the routine affairs of the allies and provinces. Members in this ancient body served for life. The membership comprised the majority of the Roman aristocracy. The Senators collectively monopolized not only the elective offices at Rome and the provincial governorships across the Empire, but also the special army commands. They also dominated Rome's Italian allies. The Roman aristocracy gradually became complacent and corrupt while Rome's lower class citizen population grew increasingly dissatisfied.
The gears of political revolution at Rome began to grind in the early second century BC. As a fever that wracks every joint and muscle in the whole body with pain there was scarcely a part of Rome's vast empire that escaped the bloody ravages of 150 years of intermittent civil warfare. Out of this maelstrom of chaos arose a series of political promise-makers whose brief and turbulent careers punctuated the history of this revolution. Eventually a bold young man best known by his later name and title, Octavian Caesar Augustus, managed to live long enough to terminate the incessant hostilities. Born Gaius Octavius he was the grand nephew and adopted son of perhaps the most enigmatic but also the most widely remembered of Rome's would-be saviors, Julius Caesar, whose brilliant career had been terminated by assassination in 44 BC.
From 27 BC when Octavian Caesar set aside his revolutionary role and began his legitimate rule of Rome and her Empire, this vast sovereign state was under the control of one man, the princeps (principle, first, Prince). At that time the title,
princeps, was not yet associated with any official government office, but Octavian Caesar's success in this new role gave it official status. During most of his 41 years as princeps Octavian Caesar was, by Roman definition, a private citizen whose personal authority exceeded that of any elected or appointed officers of the state--judicial,
military, or administrative. Today we customarily refer to the ruler of Rome in New Testament times as the "Emperor" although that was not the first century practice.
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We would be wrong in assuming that the constitution and administration of the Roman state under Octavian or at any time during the first century AD was as centrally organized and streamlined as it would become in the second century AD. The old Republican offices and institutions at Rome together with the variety of old constitutional institutions in the provinces only gradually dropped by the wayside and were replaced by an emerging "imperial" bureaucracy.
The Roman World in AD 20 included a collection of 28 provinces of various sizes and political structures. Appointed governors ruled over the provinces. The number of provinces could vary from year to year as Rome frequently reorganized unstable regions. Some regions had been subject to the domination of Rome nearly 300 years, while other regions, like Judea, had been within the Roman embrace for only 82 years. Each province was to a surprising degree unique; for Rome had selectively disrupted or replaced only those local institutions and aspects of culture that jeopardized a peaceful and stable relationship with Rome. Rome had not yet mandated uniformity for the grass roots political and administrative organization for the peoples subject to her ultimate jurisdiction. Rome's imperial policies were a mixture of general guidelines and on-the-spot administrative discretion. What Rome did not mandate, did nevertheless gradually come about especially as older provinces competed with one another in trying to please the Fathers in Rome by emulating Roman institutions and practices.
Provinces, as such, ruled over only a portion of Rome's imperial subjects. In addition there were client kingdoms and chartered self-governing city-states. As with the provinces there was little uniformity beyond their subject status in the Roman World. In 20 AD there were around 15 client kingdoms--states ruled by native kings who had personal contracts (treaties) with the Roman government. Indeed, Judea under Herod had been a client kingdom. Similar but slightly different arrangements existed between the Roman government and the older well established city-states. While these client city-states were usually subject to the oversight of some designated Roman official and might be restricted in commerce or in their dealing with non-Roman subjects, they remained basically self-governing in their customary fashion. Although they were permitted to tax themselves for the benefit of Rome they were often exempt from the tax burdens imposed on the provincial territories around them. As occasions during this first century period presented themselves the emperors granted charters transforming a number of provincial cities into client city-states of various grades in many parts of the Roman world.
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Given the nature of surviving records, authorities feebly venture their best-controlled guesses that Roman citizens numbered about 6,000,000 by the middle of the first century AD. This was still a very nominal minority compared to the 50,000,000 inhabitants, more or less, of the total Empire. Granting citizenship to individuals and groups was an ongoing routine activity in the early Empire. Once any individual became a citizen all his children and descendants were henceforth citizens.
By 20 AD all peoples native to the south and central Italian regions were citizens, but elsewhere the incidence of citizenship was very spotty and uneven. Citizens were concentrated largely in the Roman armies and the cities unevenly scattered across the Empire. Only a little over half the Roman troops were citizens at any given time; the remainder would become citizens upon their discharge after 25 years service. Very few of the inhabitants of client kingdoms were citizens. Exercising my own guesswork I see the demographic center of Roman citizenry at this time located somewhere in the northern part of the Italian peninsula.
The Romans sometimes awarded citizenship to individuals for types of non-military service such as election to a high political office in a local city government. Still another way of granting citizenship which would become even more popular in the 40's of the first century AD was granting colonial status to selected existing urban settlements. There was usually a nucleus of newcomers such as discharged veterans who became resident there, but often most of the upper class natives of the place automatically received citizenship en masse. An early example is Colonia Julia Augusta
Philippensis, i.e., Philippi, in the province of Macedonia. This city first received its charter as a colony from Mark Anthony in 41 BC, and then in 31 BC his rival and successor Octavian Caesar confirmed its status as a Roman colony.
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The Roman criminal law--ordo iudiciorum publicorum--applied to Roman citizens only. Subject peoples (non-citizens) in the provinces and client kingdoms continued to live under native traditional laws so far as those laws were consistent with the principles of Roman law or as specifically defined in a treaty or a governor's edict.
The Roman provincial governor had the power to alter native laws or supplement them by general edict. Moreover, the governor's imperium (authority) was discretionary and virtually absolute. In individual cases brought before him the governor might either disregard or uphold the native law as he judged best. Only his own moral character and good judgment guided him when it came to handing out punishment. For the non-citizen there was no appeal from a provincial governor's judgment. In contrast, however, Roman law strictly limited the governor's powers over Roman citizens. Roman Law even stipulated the punishments. And citizens could, of course, appeal from the Law to the judgment of the princeps. While the tendency over time was to enforce ever-greater judicial and administrative uniformity in the provinces, that tendency does not bear much fruit in the period before 70 AD.
Client kings of whatever race normally received citizenship and became subject personally to Roman law as supervised and interpreted by the Emperor. Any and all other Roman citizens in the kingdom were both subject to and protected by Roman Law. The client kings frequently sent Roman citizens guilty of crimes to Rome or to a nearby provincial governor for trial. Inhabitants who were not Roman citizens were subject, without appeal, to the traditional law of the kingdom and to the edicts of the king and the Emperor. Of all the types of Roman dominion, the client kingdoms were the least stable. Nevertheless, they were the most practical initial approach for recently acquired territories with deeply rooted traditions of self-government. The future of a client kingdom depended precariously on two issues; namely, the personal relations between the king and the Roman supervising personnel (i.e. the Senators), and the king's performance relative to the demands of his treaty with Rome. If the Emperor disliked or distrusted the client king or if the kingdom seemed to be a source of trouble in the area, the client king might be replaced with another individual or the state be transformed into a province with an appointed governor. The status of some regions, like Judea, flip-flopped from client kingdom to province and back more than once.
The client city-state population enjoyed much the same continuity and local control as the client kingdoms. However, the number of Roman citizens in a client city-state was frequently much greater, and these citizens were often influential in the local government of the city-state. Many of these city-states were ripe to become Roman colonies.
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Roman tax collection in the conquered regions had evolved through the earlier centuries, as the imperial territory grew larger. The tax collection process had usually combined the activities of specific government officials and private tax collecting corporations. These publicani corporations were made up of high-ranking Roman citizens who pooled their wealth to purchase the tax collection rights over a particular region at an auction. This auction was handled by the magistrate known as the censor, Censor. This purchase price was paid in installments with a substantial portion of it paid to the imperial government up front, followed by annual installments collected from the population of a region in various ways for a specified period of years, typically five to eight. Because these tax collection contracts were typically auctioned off to the highest bidder, enormous inequities in actual tax rates typically existed sometimes even within the same province.
Octavian Caesar established a degree of uniformity and equality across the vast empire by inaugurating a policy of periodic imperial censuses. The process is documented in only a few instances and from scattered parts of the Empire, but scholars have been able to reconstruct the basic practices. Octavian's first imperial registration decree was issued in 27 BC and the second in 12 BC and the third in AD 6. On each occasion there was a registration (apographé) of all real and personal property. Each individual together with his dependents had to appear personally and make his declaration, sign it, and take an oath of loyalty to the Emperor. It appears that each provincial government was responsible to carry out the registration within its province. In some provinces this registration process required more than a year. Subsequent to the registration each individual's tax liability (Greek: kenson; Latin: censum) was annually determined by the provincial assessment (apotimesis). There is insufficient evidence at this point to resolve the scholarly debate whether the semi-autonomous states with client status such as Herod's Judea were subject to these decrees or not.
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Most recently edited 2 December 2003