Legate

LEGATE. - This is the title attributed, in various legal systems, to one who exercises the functions of a representative, with or without diplomatic character.

I. ROMAN PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT

Legati are those personages who, usually chosen from the senatorial rank and ten in number, accompanied and assisted the governor of the province, exercising a supervisory function over him and carrying out those duties (pre-eminently judicial and military) assigned to them by the governor himself.

In the last period of the Republic these legati, who until that time had not been invested with imperium, sometimes took on a different character: it suffices here to recall that the Lex Gabinia de bello piratico (67 B.C.) had authorized Pompey to appoint twenty-five legati with the power of a propraetor.

Under the principate, besides the meanings described thus far, legatus denotes the official, appointed by the emperor, who exercises the office of lieutenant of the princeps. The latter appoints the legati by virtue of his imperium proconsulare, in imitation of what the extraordinary republican magistrates had been empowered to do in certain cases.

Chosen from the senatorial order, the legati were placed in charge of the government of a province or of the command of troops (legati legionis). The first case occurred in the so-called imperial provinces (as opposed to the senatorial ones), which were entrusted to the emperor in such a way that the territory itself was considered his property and in which alone considerable military contingents were stationed. In these the governor assumed the title of legatus Augusti pro praetore. Although formally inferior in rank to the governors of the senatorial provinces (he was entitled, for example, to a smaller number of lictors), the legatus Augusti in fact exercised more important functions, especially in that he commanded the troops, employing the legati legionis for this purpose. The power of the legatus Augusti pro praetore derives directly from the Emperor: it begins and ends, respectively, with his arrival in the province and his departure from it. He is assisted by comites who aid him in the administration of justice and by procuratores Caesaris (v. PROCURATORE) for financial administration.

Rodolfo Danieli

II. LEGATE OF SYRIA AND JUDEA IN THE NEW TESTAMENT PERIOD

Augustus made Syria an imperial province. The procurator of Judea, who had no legion at his disposal, but only auxiliary troops, had to have recourse in the most difficult cases to the legate of Syria residing at Antioch. The legates of Syria were generally viri consulares, ex-consuls.

Here is the series of those known: 1) Varro, ca. 24 B.C.; 2) M. Vipsanius Agrippa, son-in-law of Augustus, from 23 to 13 B.C. governed with a special mission the whole of Asia as far as the Cimmerian Bosporus, whither he went from Judea accompanied by Herod (14 B.C.); he confirmed the privileges of the Jews (Flavius Josephus, Antiq. Iud., XVI, 2, 3-5 and 6, 45); 3) M. Titius, around 10 B.C.; 4) C. Sentius Saturninus, 8-6 B.C., already consul (19 B.C.), then proconsul of Africa (17-9 B.C.); he came to Syria with his 3 sons as comites; he was a friend of Herod; Tertullian (Adv. Marcion., IV, 19) attributes to him the census of Lk. 2:2; 5) P. Quintilius Varus, ca. 6-3 B.C.; he harshly repressed the disturbances after the death of Herod (Fl. Josephus, Antiq. Iud., XVII, 9, 3; 10, 1.9; 11, 1); he was legate of Germany in 6 A.D.; 6) P. Sulpicius Quirinius, probably (according to the conjecture of T. Mommsen adopted by many) from 3-2 B.C. and certainly from 6-7 to ca. 10 A.D.; 7) Gaius Caesar, son of Julia (daughter of Augustus) and of Agrippa, at the age of 18 was sent by Augustus to the East with ample powers: he was there from 1 B.C. to 4 A.D.; he had as rector M. Lollius and (from 3 A.D.) P. S. Quirinius; he died while returning to Rome on 20 February 4 A.D.; 8) L. Volusius Saturninus,

4-5; 9) Q. Caecilius Metellus Creticus Silanus, 12-17; 10) Cn. Calpurnius Piso, 17-19, was in revolt against Germanicus sent by Tiberius in 17 to the East with ample powers; 11) Cn. Sentius Saturninus, 19-21 and after, son of 4), with whom he had already been in Syria; 12) L. Aelius Lamia, appointed in 21 and died in 33: he never reached Syria; 13) L. Pomponius Flaccus, 32-35; 14) L. Vitellius, 35-39 (Tacitus, Ann., VI, 38), had ample powers; he intervened in Judea, sent Pontius Pilate (v.) back to Rome, came to Jerusalem at Passover 36 (Fl. Josephus, Antiq. Ind., XV, 11, 4; XVIII, 4, 1-3) and generously received the requests of the people; he deposed the high priest Joseph called Caiaphas and replaced him with Ionathan, son of the high priest Ananos (Hanan); he clashed with the tetrarch Herod Antipas (v.); when the latter was defeated by Aretas IV, king of the Nabateans, Vitellius on the order of Tiberius marched with two legions; he went to Jerusalem at Passover 37 and remained there three days; he deposed Ionathan and gave the high priesthood to his brother Theophilus; on the fourth day he learned of the death of Tiberius and returned to Antioch; 15) P. Petronius, 39-44, knew how to dissuade Caligula from erecting his statue in the temple of Jerusalem; 16) C. Vibius Marsus, 42-44; 17) C. Cassius Longinus, 45-50; 18) C. Ummidius Quadratus, 50-60; 19) Cn. Domitius Corbulo, 60-63; 20) C. Cestius Gallus, 63-66; 21) C. Licinius Mucianus, 67-69.

While Judea until 70 was under procurators of equestrian rank, after the victory of Titus it had governors of senatorial status, entirely independent of the legate of Syria, who — it seems — were praetorii until Hadrian, and consulares from Hadrian onward.

Here is the series of the known legates of Judea up to Hadrian: 1) Sex. Vettulensis Cerialis, who commanded the Legio V at the siege of Jerusalem; 2) Lucilius Bassus, conqueror of the fortresses Herodeion and Machaerus; 3) L. Flavius Silva, conqueror of Masada; 4) M. Salvidenus, ca. 80; 5) Cn. Pompeius Longinus, 86; 6) Atticus, ca. 107; 7) Q. Pompeius Falco, ca. 107 ff.; 8) Tiberianus, ca. 114; 9) Lusius Quietus, ca. 117; 10) Tineius Rufus, 132; 11) Iulius Severus, 135, who repressed the Jewish revolt of Bar Kokhba.

Antonino Romeo

III. IN PONTIFICAL DIPLOMACY

Those ecclesiastics sent by the Roman pontiff to represent him are generally called legates (that is, envoys, messengers). The stable and permanent pontifical representatives to the governments or ecclesiastical hierarchies of the various countries are designated by a particular name: nuncios (v.) or apostolic delegates (v.). The others are divided into three kinds: nati, missi, a latere.

1. — The legati nati represent a development of the ancient apostolic vicars. These in fact were also called legates (cf. c. 1, D. 94 and c. 4, X, I, 30; K. Ruess, Die rechtliche Stellung der päpstlichen Legaten bis Bonifaz VIII., Paderborn 1912, p. 104). Their powers were not granted to the see, but to the person, so that every new holder of the see needed a new grant or a confirmation of the powers inherent in the vicariate. In various cases, however, metropolitans who had been personally invested by the Roman pontiffs with the powers proper to vicars or legates, claimed that attribute and those faculties as granted to the see, and not to the person, so that the holders of that see had for that very reason to recognize themselves also as apostolic vicars or legates for that determined region or province (cf. c. 9, X, I, 30; c. 1, I, 15, in VI). In this way, with the explicit or implicit recognition of the supreme pontiffs, the legationes natae arose, which, accordingly, do not differ from the ancient apostolic vicariates except that, being inherent in the see, they do not need a renewal or confirmation of powers for the new holder. Legati nati are consequently those who do not need a particular grant in order to obtain and exercise the powers proper to the legation, because their very dignity or see has united the title and the prerogatives of apostolic legate.

The oldest expression of the Roman Curia for designating these legates is, however, legatus perpetuus; the term legatus natus appears only in the canonical doctrine of the 13th century, and officially in the privilegium of Boniface IX for Gran (Strigonia) in 1394.

The extent of the rights of the legati nati remains in many respects imprecise. C. 1, X, I, 30, reporting a Decretal of Alexander III to the suffragans of Canterbury (the archbishop of this see came to be considered the type of the legati nati), recognizes that this metropolitan could judge the causes submitted to him by the dioceses of his suffragans, not only by way of appeal as other metropolitans, but, by his very quality as legate, also by simple recourse. According to c. 9, X, I, 30 the legati nati could not absolve one excommunicated for striking a cleric, nor, according to c. 1, I, 15 in VI, confer benefices by virtue of the legation alone (cf. also cc. 4 and 5, I, 15, in VI). It should nevertheless be admitted that the attempt to define precisely, through the canonical sources, the attributions of the legatus natus does not allow one to reach sure results. If, on the other hand, the stable legations are a derivation of the ancient apostolic vicariates, it seems that one must consequently recognize in them — albeit with the attenuations imposed by the passage of time, by the resistance of the suffragans and by the different extent that the jurisdiction of those same vicariates assumed in different places — powers similar to those that were proper to these.

The exercise of power by the legati nati, as moreover by the primates, clashed constantly with the opposition of the bishops concerned, until the Council of Trent (sess. XXIV, De Ref., can. 20) prescribed that ecclesiastical causes should be treated in first instance before the individual Ordinaries, with exclusion of the prerogative until then recognized to the legates. Subsequent changes in ecclesiastical life and organization gradually reduced the office of legatus natus, as also that of primate, to a purely honorary qualification, devoid of jurisdiction. Can. 270 indeed establishes: « Episcopis qui, ratione sedis, titulo legati apostolici decorantur, nullum exinde competit speciale ius ». The archbishops of Salzburg, Cologne, Prague, Gnesen and Posen, and Gran (Strigonia) have the predicate of legatus natus.

2. — Legati missi are more properly all the envoys of the Roman pontiff for a special and temporary mission. To the Merovingian kings, and even more frequently to the Lombard and Frankish kings, the popes sent these representatives of theirs. Various legations were sent in the 9th century to the Carolingians, both because of the political disorder in which Italy found itself and because of the attribution of the imperial crown. In the 10th century and the first half of the 11th century the traces of these representations are rarer, both because of the rarity and confusion of the sources and because precisely in this period the legati nati were at their height.

The legati missi were in use especially after the middle of the 11th century, when, to stem the evils that afflicted the Church, namely simony and the incontinence of the clergy, the legati nati had become insufficient, and the pontiffs Leo IX, Alexander II and Gregory VII found themselves in the necessity of sending ecclesiastics in whom they trusted, with the task of presiding over councils or even of deposing bishops. The employment of these legations continued very frequently under the pontificate of Innocent III and throughout the 13th century. Meanwhile from the legati missi the figure of the legati a latere had arisen. After the institution of stable nunciatures, the use of the legati missi, although rarer, has not disappeared, and probably will never disappear entirely, since circumstances can always arise that, by their nature or their solemnity, require the sending of representatives other than nuncios and apostolic delegates.

The right of the Roman pontiff to send representatives, even temporary ones, furnished with jurisdiction, was denied in recent times by the Gallicans, the regalists and the liberals (v. NUNZIO APOSTOLICO). But already Gregory VII had had to resist the claims of those who wanted legates to be Romans only and not ultramontanes, and to reprove bishops who prevented the legates from carrying out their mission. Paschal II, writing in 1115 to Henry II, king of England, vindicated the right, which the Normans practically limited or contested in England and in Sicily, to send representatives on the part of the Apostolic See, and John XXII (c. 1, I, 1, in Extrav. comm.), condemned the practice of not admitting legates of the Holy See who had not been requested and without the beneplacitum of the princes.

The powers of the legati missi are circumscribed by their mandate; they can imply jurisdiction, or even be devoid of it (can. 265); but even when they are furnished with jurisdiction, this is not ordinary, but delegated (can. 197); even if they are not invested with episcopal dignity they precede all the Ordinaries, except the cardinals, and if they are bishops, they can, without the license of the Ordinaries, bless the people even in the churches of these, except the cathedral, and celebrate the divine offices there, even pontifical ones, with throne and canopy (can. 269).

3. - Legati a latere, according to the Latin expression, are the envoys of the household or the retinue or the court of the sender. In the documents of pontifical diplomacy, a legatus a latere is a cardinal, sent by the Roman pontiff to the supreme head of a State for a temporary mission, generally of extraordinary gravity. The last of them was Card. G. B. Caprara, sent to Napoleon I for the execution of the Concordat. Can. 266 CIC, while presupposing the possibility of such extraordinary representations, defines the legatus a latere as an alter ego of the Roman pontiff. Today the legati a latere are charged with representing the supreme pontiff and with presiding in his voice over particularly solemn ceremonies. The powers that belong to them are established at the moment of the appointment. They also enjoy the privileges that belong to the legati missi.