ARVAL BROTHERS. - A Roman religious sodality of a collegial type, composed of 12 members, headed by a magister; patrician in recruitment, with members appointed by co-optation down to the imperial era, from which point the emperors reserved the appointment for themselves (cooptatio ex litteris). It was dedicated to the cult of the goddess Dia, a special aspect of the Mother goddess or Ceres, and possessed a sanctuary at the fifth mile of the Via Campana (near present-day Magliana).

The great annual festival of the goddess lasted three days and fell at the end of May. It was directed at propitiating the gods, especially the Lares, the Semones, Mars and the goddess Dia, on behalf of agriculture. The liturgical activity of this sodality is fairly well known thanks to the Acts, or minutes, unfortunately fragmentary, of their meetings, inscribed on stones of which a large number survive; the most notable for their extent are those of the years 218 and 240.

The festivals at the end of May were proclaimed year by year and began in the house of the magister with libations, anointings and other propitiatory rites. On the second day, which was the most solemn, the Arval Brothers went to the sanctuary on the Via

Campana and there, after preliminary purificatory ceremonies: 1) they sacrificed a fat lamb to the goddess Dia; 2) they offered to the Mother of the Lares cakes of spelt, throwing them along the slope that led to the sanctuary; 3) they danced the tripudium in the temple, with closed doors, with their garments girded up and reading from special booklets, the celebrated carmen: Enos Lases invate. A banquet and running races in the nearby hippodrome followed. The third day was spent in the house of the magister with a banquet, the lighting of lamps and garlands of flowers.

The antiquity of this sodality is proved by the fact that Romulus himself was considered its founder; that the divinities worshipped were all indigenous; that the language of the carmen is archaic, as were the ceremonies of its recitation; that the tabu of iron was observed there, along with the persistence of the use of cakes of coarse dough, which recall those of the terremare; that archaic libations were made there both in their quality (cakes kneaded of flour, milk and liver) and in the manner of the offering. Its Acts are therefore first-rate documents for the study of the most ancient Roman liturgy. In the rite the Arval Brothers wore the praetexta and carried white infulae on their heads, on which rested a crown of ears of grain. Their college lasted until the last years of paganism.

Bibliography6 works

BIBL.: G. Marini, Gli atti e monumenti dei F. A., Rome 1792; G. Henzon, Acta fratrum Arvalium, Berlin 1874; N. Turchi, Il rituale degli A., in Saggi di storia delle religioni, Foligno 1924; G. Metzmacher, De sacris Fratrum Arvalium cum Ecclesiae Christianae ceremonii comparandi, in Jahrb. für Liturgiennis, 4 (1924), p. 1 ff.; M. Nacinovich, Carmen Arvale, 2 vols., Rome 1933-34; A. Ferrua, Antichità cristiane: i «F. A.» e i loro «Atti», in La Civiltà Cattolica, (1946, I), pp. 41-49, concerning the most recent discovery (1945) of fragments of the Acts, in the Vatican Grottoes.

Nicola Turchi

@incollection{ec2_arvali_fratelli, author = {Turchi, Nicola}, title = {Arvali, fratelli}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {II}, pages = {71--72}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/arvali-fratelli} }

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