Imperial constitutions

Constitution is a general term including all categories of imperial enactment. According to Gaius, an imperial constitution was “what the emperor ordains by decree, edict, or letter” (Gaius 1.5).

Emperors appropriated the right to issue edicts based on their personal imperium. Imperial edicts were unrelated and miscellaneous, and were addressed to the general public. They covered topics of private law, criminal law, administrative law, privileges, land law, and so on. They remained in force during the life of the emperor, and they continued tacitly in force unless the following emperor abolished them. The Constitutio Antoniniana (212 ce) of Caracalla, which granted Roman citizenship to all free individuals of the empire, and the Edict of Milan (313 ce) of Constantine and Licinius, granting toleration and freedom of worship for all religions, including Christianity, are probably the most famous imperial edicts (although it is still debated whether there was a formal Edict of Milan).

Imperial decrees were judicial decisions on civil and criminal matters pro­nounced after an oral proceeding before the emperor’s court. Pliny the Younger provided a good account of these imperial procedures (Epistulae 4.22; 6.22; 6.31). Although the emperor was advised by his council, he made the final decision. Paul, in his book three on imperial decrees (D. 29.2.97), explained that, in a case on inheritance, the emperor eventually decided to follow the opinion of Papinian instead of Paul’s view.

Sources of Roman law 57 considered precedents, and they achieved general validity. Callistratus (D. 4.2.13) provided a part of a decree of the emperor Marcus Aurelius imposing on creditors the obligation of claiming what they believed to be due to them through the intermediary of a judge. According to this decree, a creditor who forced the debtor to pay without a judicial hearing lost the claim.

Imperial letters (epistulae) included all imperial communications. They provided the emperor’s answers, by a separate letter, to questions, petitions, or requests for advice by officials, provincial governors, and provincial assem­blies. The correspondence between Emperor Trajan and Pliny the Younger (c. 112 ce) regarding the Christians during his governorship of Bithynia (modern Turkey) provides a good example of the value of an epistle. Rescripts could be considered a specific type of imperial letter.

Gaius did not include the mandata principum in the imperial constitutions, but the Justinian Code (C.J. 1.15) mentioned them. Mandates were general instructions or judicial and administrative rules issued by the emperor to provincial governors. When the content of a mandate affected the inhabitants of a province, the governor of the province would issue an edict to publicize the imperial instruction.

The Constitutio Antoniniana

One of the great landmarks of Roman history, the Constitutio Antoniniana, was an edict of Emperor Antoninus Caracalla of 212 ce that expanded Roman citizenship to all free men and women of the empire with the minor exclusion of some prisoners of war. A surviving papyrus from Egypt, at the University Library of Giessen, in Germany (P. Giessen 40 I), seems to preserve the original text of the constitution. Because it contains gaps, however, it provides only a general idea of the purpose of the constitution. The jurist Ulpian, master of requests under Caracalla, also left us details in his commentary on the edict: “Everyone in the Roman world has been made Roman citizens as a result of the constitution of the Emperor Antoninus” (Ulpian, D.

The ultimate reasons for and effects of the constitution are disputed. The Roman consul and historian Cassius Dio (78.9), also contemporary with and hostile to Caracalla, implied that the real purpose of the grant was the imperial desire to grow revenues by increasing the numbers of citizens liable for taxes (specifically inheritance taxes and taxes on manumissions of slaves). Religious reasons (e.g., to win new devotees to Roman gods) have also been alleged based on the papyrus. Saint Augustine (De civitate Dei 5.17) high­lighted the humanitarian character of the decree. What is indisputable is that the impact of the constitution in the long run was enormous: the constitution stimulated in both the eastern and the western parts of the empire a uniform legal system, forged a spirit of identification with the empire, and increased the consciousness of being a Roman.