INTRODUCTION
The Antonine Constitution is a paradoxical event for historians. On the one hand, it seems to be one of the major dates of imperial Roman history, just like the foundation of the Principate by Octavian/Augustus in 27 CE, or Constantine’s conversion to Christianity becoming official in 312 CE.
On the other hand, unlike the two other events cited here, we have only scant information about it. We can explain this silence on the part of the sources in two ways. The elites may not have wanted to draw attention to a benefaction that would reduce their social prestige by generalizing a dignity that they already possessed, and that had been granted by an emperor who was denigrated after his death. As for the beneficiaries, after a period of gratitude towards “Antoninus the Great” attested in the papyri,[252] the general population did not speak about it anymore, either because it had become routine, or because it did not profoundly change their daily life. Indeed, we know that the political benefits of Roman citizenship only truly concerned the elites, that local civic rights continued until the end of the third century, and that the distinction between honestiores and humiliores within the group of Roman citizens had already, by means of a juridical distinction, recreated or re-introduced an important structure of social differentiation within the population of citizens, to the detriment of the masses. Yet it is principally the latter who received the civitas Romana, Roman citizenship, in 212.Christianity was born in the Roman world, and Christians have thought a great deal about the various relationships between the Biblical and ecclesiastical history of salvation and that of Rome. This reflection has developed in three directions. The first was the relationship between the divine economy of salvation and imperial Roman power. The latter can appear demoniacal in the Apocalypse of John, or as desired by Providence in Origen and Eusebius of Caesarea. The second was meditation on Christian citizenship, principally in Paul and Augustine, with an essential semantic slippage between the kingdom of God and the city of God.[253] The last major theme in Christian reflection on the relationship between Biblical and Roman history is the one at issue here, namely, Christian reflection on Roman citizenship. Christian texts from the third to the fifth centuries do not mention the Edict of Caracalla, except in an indirect manner, but contain numerous remarks on the civitas Romana, in exegetical, ideological, or legal contexts. This essay will those texts that reflect upon the meaning of the census in Bethlehem and on Paul’s Roman citizenship, as well as the attitude of Augustine, who was both an ideologue, the author of The City of God, and also a bishop responsible for faithful, who were also Roman citizens.
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