Imperial cult
The imperial cult (also ruler's cult ) was a cultic veneration of the emperors of the Roman Empire . Sacrifices were made to the dead or living rulers , and their image was sometimes worshiped, thereby making them not a god ( deus ), but a deified one ( divus ).
history
The Hellenistic ruler's cult
The Roman imperial cult is a special form of the ruler's cult that was widespread in antiquity and goes back indirectly to the Macedonian Alexander the Great , among others . According to authors like Arrian, he had already called for his own deification during his lifetime. After his death, it was widely believed that he was accepted into the community of gods because of his great deeds and help for the people, and from there he continued to help his worshipers.
After Alexander other kings of Hellenism received cultic honors. In today's research (see Chaniotis 2003), these are predominantly understood as a special form of euergetism : the initiative to establish a ruler cult, at least in the first decades, did not come from the respective king, but always from the relevant polis ; this could certainly expect something in return from the king - in accordance with the basic idea of the do ut des , which was also characteristic of the Greek religion. The dynasty cult of the Ptolemies formed a special form, which was based more strongly on Egyptian traditions and actively demanded cultic veneration of kings. The ruler's cult made it possible to bring the relationship between the kings and the Greek cities they controlled into an externally acceptable form; this was necessary because the Greeks actually rejected the monarchy on principle (see Tyrannis ). Cultic honors were apt to express the dependence of the Poleis and the hierarchical relationship with the kings without expressly recognizing the rule of the monarchs over the nominally democratically ruled city.
As a rule, those kings who had partaken of divine veneration during their lifetime were only deified after their death ( apotheosis ). The fact that Hellenistic kings themselves demanded to be venerated as theoi ('gods') during their lifetime was (apart from Alexander himself and the Egyptian rulers) a later development (see, for example, Antiochus I of Kommagene ). Incidentally, in late Hellenism, non-royal benefactors were also granted cultic veneration, which underlines the close connection between Greek rulers' cult and euergetism. Oriental influences, on the other hand, are discussed again and again, but can only be proven for the late Hellenism, not for the time when the practice, whose beginnings predate Alexander (see Lysander ).
Forerunner of the imperial cult in Rome
How strongly the imperial cult was influenced by the Hellenistic ruler's cult is controversial. In any case, the Romans came no later than 200 BC. In the course of their conquests in the course of their conquests, they came into contact with the Greek-Hellenistic ruler's cult, which the Roman religion had previously been unknown. Since the second century BC, the people in the conquered Greek territories showed both Roman provincial governors (first Titus Quinctius Flamininus ) and the Roman people and the Dea Roma for charitable acts .
A possible pre-form of the ruler's cult around 217 BC was included in the official Roman state religion . BC with the cult of the Genius Publicus or Genius Populi Romani , in which the " popular sovereignty " and the community of the Roman people were, as it were, deified. Whether this can be put in a direct row with the later imperial cult is controversial.
Gaius Iulius Caesar was particularly honored during his lifetime, as it was said that he was chosen by the gods and endowed with supernatural powers. However, he has not yet experienced any cultic veneration as a deified ruler. In 42 BC After his murder on March 15, 44 BC, he was raised to the rank of god under pressure from his adoptive son and entered the Roman community of gods as Divus Iulius , whereby the Romans always between a deus (a god) and a divus (a "deified").
The imperial cult in principle
Caesar's successor Augustus was 27 BC. First Roman emperor or princeps and remained so until his death a good 40 years later. As Caesar's adoptive son, he called himself divi filius , ie "son of the deified", during his lifetime . Immediately after his death, he too was raised among the gods. In the Greek East, which is familiar with the ruler's cult, he had already received appropriate honors during his lifetime.
Divine veneration of the living emperor by Roman citizens, on the other hand, contradicted the principle ideology , according to which the res publica supposedly still existed. In the West, especially in Italy, Augustus and his successor Tiberius therefore probably only permitted or caused their veneration to a limited extent during their lifetime; it was only later that the imperial cult established itself across the board. In the cult of the Genius Augusti , therefore, the charism of the emperors was worshiped to a certain extent . The ruler had also been the highest state priest ( pontifex maximus ) during Augustus' lifetime and was able to create new religious laws and finally interpret existing law.
If an emperor was deified after his death ( apotheosis or divinization) because of his (alleged) benefits for the people , the body of the emperor was cremated ( cremation ). (In fact, of course, it was not the Senate but the new ruler who decided what to do with the memory of his predecessor.) During this ceremony, an eagle , the symbolic animal of Jupiter , was released, which would bring the soul of the deceased into the realm of the gods should. The ascension of the soul had to be officially attested. The Senate then recognized the dead emperor's status as divus ; As I said, the actual decision lay with the successor of the deceased; Thus, in 138 , Antoninus Pius forced Hadrian, who was hated by the Senate, to be divinized . The deified one got his own temple and his own priesthood. After the death of unpopular emperors, the Senate could also decide on the Damnatio memoriae (curse of memory) if the new ruler so wished.
Living emperors could not formally achieve apotheosis, but they could surround themselves with an aura of divine power through a court ceremony . In many places in the Greek East the principle of the Hellenistic ruler's cult continued almost seamlessly. In the Latin West the situation was more complicated, especially in Rome and Italy: The rulers Caligula (37–41), Nero (54–68), Domitian (81–96) and Commodus (180–192) practiced a particularly absolutist form of government and were worshiped in the style of Hellenistic god-kings during their lifetime . However, their plans largely failed politically and received no further veneration after their death.
Decius (Emperor from 249-251) tried after severe economic crises and incursions, especially the Franks , Alemanni and Goths , to renew the unity of the empire with a return to the ancient Roman state religion. To this end, he expanded the imperial cult: God's essence should appear in his person or at least for his protection ( epiphany ). Aurelian (270–275) increased this with an oriental court ceremony : he made the Sol invictus (undefeated sun god) an imperial god, but this only succeeded for a short time. Diocletian (284–305) indirectly linked the idea of the gods as guarantors of the state order: He wanted to see the tetrarchy of emperors as an earthly manifestation of the divine world regiment (by Jupiter etc.).
In the provinces , the imperial cult was seen as an expression of loyalty to Rome. Those who refused to do so excluded themselves from society and were easily regarded as "haters of the human race" ( odium generis ). In the Roman Empire, Jews and Christians who were not allowed to worship people as gods because of the First Commandment ( monotheism ) had problems with practicing the imperial cult . However, the Romans recognized the Jewish religion as religio licita and allowed Jews to participate in the imperial cult. Christians have not been granted this privilege since Trajan (98–117), after Christianity emerged as a separate religion. As a result of the spread of Christianity, the imperial cult soon became a means of demanding loyalty to the state: Where Christians refused to make an imperial sacrifice, there were at times severe persecution of Christians , especially under Decius (249 to 251) and Diocletian .
The end of the imperial cult
After the death of Diocletian, Constantine initiated a major religious political turn (the so-called Constantinian turn ) and from 312 put Christianity on an equal footing with other religions. He saw in him a new basis for the religious unification of the empire and for the legitimation of sole rule, so that he now granted the church extensive privileges over other cults, including the previous state gods, and actively promoted its internal unity. However, on the other hand, Constantine expressly permitted the imperial cult without bloody sacrifices. Although he was baptized shortly before his death, he was officially elevated to divus afterwards . His sons, who had already been raised in Christianity, had their father's apotheosis celebrated on specially minted coins.
Since the complete Christianization of the empire under Theodosius (379–395), the imperial cult disappeared externally, most recently in North Africa, where it lasted well into the 5th century. The images of the emperors continued to be wreathed and venerated, but this was now a purely political expression of loyalty. Traditionally, deceased emperors were still referred to as divus to make it clear that their successors recognized them as legitimate rulers; this is still attested for Anastasius (491-518).
The emperor's claim to power over religion persisted well into the Middle Ages and modern times. The divus became the emperor " by the grace of God ": the court ceremonies remained largely the same down to the details and were also copied by the papacy at the same time .
literature
- Hubert Cancik (Ed.): The practice of worshiping rulers in Rome and its provinces. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, ISBN 3-16-147895-9 .
- Angelos Chaniotis : The Divinity of Hellenistic Rulers. In: Andrew Erskine (Ed.): A companion to the Hellenistic world. Blackwell, Oxford 2003, p. 431 ff. (Good, concise overview of the Hellenistic ruler cult).
- Manfred Clauss : Emperor and God. Cult of rulers in the Roman Empire. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-77444-3 (very controversial study which, in contrast to most researchers, assumes that the imperial cult was actually based on religious motives).
- Wilhelm Drexler : imperial cult . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.1, Leipzig 1894, Col. 901-919 ( digitized version ).
- Duncan Fishwick: The imperial cult in the Latin west. Studies in the ruler cult of the western provinces of the Roman Empire. Three volumes (in seven sub-volumes). Brill, Leiden 1987-2004, ISBN 90-04-07179-2 .
- Ittai Gradel: Emperor worship and Roman religion. Clarendon Press, Oxford 2002, ISBN 0-19-815275-2 .
- Panagiotis Iossif, Andrzej Chankowski, Catharine Lorber (eds.): More than Men, less than Gods. Studies on Royal Cult and Imperial Worship. Peeters, Leuven 2011, ISBN 978-9-0429247-0-3 .
- Anne Kolb , Marco Vitale (ed.): Imperial cult in the provinces of the Roman Empire. De Gruyter, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-041671-8 .
- Simon RF Price : Rituals and power. The Roman imperial cult in Asia Minor. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984 (and reprints), ISBN 0-521-31268-X .
- Frank W. Walbank : Kings as gods. Reflections on the ruler cult from Alexander to Augustus . In: Chiron 17 (1987), p. 365 ff.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Chr. Mileta: The open arms of the province. Reflections on the function and development of the pre-Roman cult festivals in the province of Asia (first century BC). In: Festival rituals in the Roman Empire. Tübingen 2008, pp. 89–114. Ders .: The pre-Roman cults of the province of Asia in the tension between religion and politics. In: The Religion of the Imperium Romanum. Koine and confrontation. Tübingen 2009, pp. 139-160.
- ↑ Older bibliography on Augustus cult and religion at the time of Augustus here: Religionsgeschichtliches Handbuch (by Karl Prumm SJ)
- ^ Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL), XI, 5265.