Imperium Xl |VERIFIED|
Francisca Revelo
In ancient Rome, imperium was a form of authority held by a citizen to control a military or governmental entity. It is distinct from auctoritas and potestas, different and generally inferior types of power in the Roman Republic and Empire. One's imperium could be over a specific military unit, or it could be over a province or territory. Individuals given such power were referred to as curule magistrates or promagistrates. These included the curule aedile, the praetor, the consul, the magister equitum, and the dictator. In a general sense, imperium was the scope of someone's power, and could include anything, such as public office, commerce, political influence, or wealth.
Some modern scholars such as A. H. M. Jones have defined imperium as "the power vested by the state in a person to do what he considers to be in the best interests of the state".[citation needed]
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 (compare the field marshal's baton);[citation needed] any such magistrate was also escorted by lictors bearing the fasces (traditional symbols of imperium and authority), when outside the pomerium, axes being added to the fasces to indicate an imperial magistrate's power to inflict capital punishment outside Rome (the axes being 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 that of a praetor wore a sash ritually knotted on the front of his cuirass. Furthermore, any man executing imperium within his sphere of influence was entitled to the curule chair.
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 possessed 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 Pompey's famous command against the pirates, were invested with imperium maius, meaning they outranked all other holders of imperium of the same type or rank (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 technical 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.
While the Byzantine Eastern Roman 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 in the person of the Pope and the secular imperium of the Holy Roman Emperor, beginning with Charlemagne, whose title was claimed to have "restored" the office of Western Roman Emperor among the new kingdoms of Western Europe. Both would refer to the heritage of Roman law by their titular link with the very city of Rome: the Pope, Bishop of Rome, versus the Holy Roman Emperor (even though his seat of power was north of the Alps).
The Donatio Constantini, by which the Papacy had allegedly 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 it, 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 12th century quoted it as authoritative.
In one bitter episode, Pope Gregory IX, who had several times mediated between the Lombards and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, reasserted his right to arbitrate between the contending parties. In the numerous manifestos of the Pope and the Emperor the antagonism between Church and State became more evident: the Pope claimed for himself the imperium animarum ("command of the souls", i.e. voicing God's will to the faithful) and the principatus rerum et corporum in universo mundo ("primacy 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 to be the capital of the world and Frederick was to become the real emperor of the Romans, so he energetically protested against the authority of the Pope. The emperor's successes, especially his victory over the Lombards at the battle of Cortenuova (1237), only aggravated tensions 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, et cetera).
In some monotheistic religions such as Christianity (the Catholic Church where the official language, Latin, used terms as Imperium Dei/Domini) the Divine 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, this can lead to theocratic legitimation. However, the Catholic Church and most other Christian groups acknowledge the authority of secular governments. If, however, a secular ruler controls the religious hierarchy, he can use it to legitimize his own authority.
The chief minister of Henry VIII, the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, suggested removal of the Roman Catholic papacy's imperium in imperio (Latin for 'state within a state') by requesting that Parliament pass the Act in Restraint of Appeals (1533) specifying that England was an empire and that The Crown was imperial, and a year later the Act of Supremacy proclaiming the Imperial Crown Protector and Supreme Head of the Church of England.[citation needed]
After a long history of ruthless expansion, the birth of Princess Issa inspired her father, later to be known as the slain king, to change his ways, and thereby, the ways of the Imperium. One of the imperium soldiers, Balisarius, quickly gained power in the meantime, and when the king christened an Imperium ship in the name of peace, Balisarius used the opportunity to have the royal family assassinated, naming himself regent of the realm and taking command. Balisarius' rule was as violent as his predessesors'.
Et in Asia et in Europa situm (exempli gratia Graecia, Albania, Bulgaria, Serbia, et Hungariae magna pars ad id pertinebant), imperium per totam suam historiam necessitudines et cum Orienti et cum Occidenti habebat. A saeculo decimo sexto imperium Ottomanicum etiam principatus Moldaviae, Valachiae et Transilvaniam Tartariamque Minorem in sua potestate habebat, quamquam hae civitates de iure liberae manebant.
Saeculo vicensimo ineunte imperium primo bello mundano a copiis foederatis, quibuscum et Arabi pugnabant, victum erat. Bello composito gubernatio collapsa est et victores terras imperii inter se dividerunt. Multae partes imperii secederunt; una ex quibus erat pars media imperii Ottomanici nomine res publica Turciae. Familia sultanorum e finibus Anatoliae exterminata est, imperioque maximo potentissimoque terminato, Kemal Ataturk hodiernam civitatem condidit.
Prorogation becomes common and regular during the Punic Wars. The First Punic War, taking place primarily in Sicily, demanded the use of prorogation to cover the lag time between elections in Rome and commanders arriving in Sicily, as well as to allow single commanders to conduct more complex campaigns. By the Second Punic War, which takes place in Italy, Sicily, Gaul, Spain, North Africa and Illyria (much of that simultaneously) it was also necessary to prorogue commanders in order to simply get enough field commanders with imperium for all of the armies Rome was deploying. Indeed, in the crazy days of the Second Punic War, at points the Senate prorogued men who had never held office before, privati cum imperio (private citizens with imperium), though this is discontinued and replaced by a system whereby prorogued commanders will have first held the relevant office at some point.
Senatorial decisions on prorogations were submitted to the people for ratification until around 190 BC. Drogula, in Commanders and Command p 255, indicates that this was likely because it became a boring staffing issue rather than a decision related to war and peace. The original grant of imperium was previously ratified by the comitia curiata which is a vestigial assembly.
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