Patricius of the Romans

PATRICIUS OF THE ROMANS. - This dignity appears in Rome in the 8th century and lasts there with various interruptions until the 12th century. It is no longer a question of the ancient Roman patriciate, but of a dignity that arose in the imperial period and was subsequently transformed.

In the Justinianic organization the patriciate constituted the highest grade of the court hierarchy, and such it continued to be at the Byzantine court until the 9th century, though it was combined with that of antypatos; in the 9th century the new dignity of the magistrates prevailed; in the 11th century the patriciate disappeared. The Byzantine emperors used to confer this dignity on foreign princes of their clientele.

After the Lombard conquest of Italy, the personages who came to govern the Byzantine domains with the office of exarch belonged as a rule to the rank of the patrician; thus it happened for the governors of Sicily and Africa. Often, for brevity, people spoke of "the patrician," meaning the exarch of Ravenna.

To the patriciate of the Byzantine type is linked the new patriciate that arose in the second half of the 8th century.

Around 740 the duke of Rome is a patrician: « Stephanus patricius et dux ». The Liber Pontificalis says that Pope Zachary, when in 743 he set out for the meeting with King Liutprand, left Rome « iamdieto Stephano patricio et duci ad gubernandum ». The phrase is of doubtful interpretation. Some believe that, given the Italian political crisis, the Emperor wished a personage equal in rank to the exarch to be in Rome; others believe that it was already a question of a personage of the Roman aristocracy designated by the local element, as an affirmation of autonomy. It should not be forgotten that in 739 Gregory III appealed for help against King Liutprand to Charles Martel, offering him a Roman dignity which the sources do not clarify. Stephen III, on his journey to France, after the agreements with Pepin at Ponthion on 28 July 754, crowned him king, conferring on him and on his sons the dignity of patricius Romanorum.

The juridical figure that Pepin thus came to assume is much debated. It is certain in any case that Pepin, king of the Franks and patricius Romanorum, does not perform the political and military functions either of the exarch or of the duke of Rome. From Pepin to Charlemagne, however, the Frankish kings assume with the patrician dignity the protection of the Roman Church and of the Papacy. The patrician is created - on whatever title - by the pope, but does not depend on him; Stephen II says "a Deo institutus". The patrician has rights of intervention, which resolve into duties of intervention: and this is not linked, as some believe, only to extraordinary circumstances. The authority of the pope, moreover, is not diminished by that of the patrician, but rather strengthened. Furthermore, the creation of the Franco-Roman patriciate allowed the Roman Church to escape, as regards papal election, imperial control: from the Frankish patrician onward, from Paul I in 757, it became customary only to give notification of the election that had taken place without waiting for confirmation and approval; indeed, if Paul I gave notification before the consecration, Leo III gave it only afterward, without raising objections on the part of Charlemagne.

The Franco-Roman patriciate also had relations with the population of Rome; the letter of the Senate and people of Rome to Pepin of 757 recalls the admonition that came from the king patrician to remain faithful to blessed Peter, to the Church and to Pope Paul I: assurance is given on the matter « quia ipse (the Pope) noster est pater et obtumus pastor »; they will therefore be faithful to him; but in various letters the Romans say they are « fideles » also to the patrician, and there is knowledge of oaths of fidelity sworn by various cities of the Patrimony to the patrician. And already from now perhaps "patriciate" was used as a geographical-political term, as equivalent to the Patrimony of St. Peter, as is found in the Regestum of Farfa (vol. V, p. 193, no. 1116): « infra regnum Longobardum sive infra patriciatus Romanorum ».

Substantially, however, the office of the patrician was to protect the Roman Church. Charlemagne, writing in 796 to the new pope Leo III, speaks of the pactum he had concluded with the predecessor Adrian and expresses the intention of coming with him to an inviolable « foedus fidei et charitatis ». However, it is not to be believed that in 796 a modification of the patrician authority took place; the content of Charlemagne's dignity is the same as Pepin's: « devotus sanctae Ecclesiae defensor humilisque adiutor ». The popes in their correspondence with Pepin and his sons regularly call them « rex et patricius ». Pepin does not appear to have used this title; Charles, on the other hand, gladly adorned himself with it in 774; his entry into Rome took place with the traditional ceremonial for the entries of the imperial exarch; in 799 the intervention in Rome in defense of Leo III is to be traced back to the patrician authority. In 781 Charles had brought with him to Rome his two sons Pepin and Louis, who were consecrated kings and patricians by Adrian I; indeed, documents are not lacking in which Pepin is called king of the Lombards and patrician of the Romans.

The imperial coronation of 800 caused the title of patrician to disappear from the Carolingian protocol. It is not, however, forgotten: the action of the Carolingian emperors in Rome is perhaps to be traced back to the patrician authority rather than to the imperial one. Some mention is not lacking: Amalarius, bishop of Trier, in 811 writes to Charlemagne calling him emperor, king and patrician of the Romans; in 872 Adrian II writes to Charles the Bald, wishing to have him as duke, king, patrician and emperor; John VIII, writing to Boso in 879, calls him « iustus patricius ».

The dignity of patrician of the Romans reappears in the 10th century with Alberic II of the house of Theophylact. To be sure, he used the title of « princeps Romanorum », but various sources call him patrician of the Romans; the coins on which he would assume the title of « patricius » are not certain. Marozia too is sometimes called « patricia ». It cannot be excluded that Alberic II called himself patrician: in this case the dignity would have assumed a value quite different from the Carolingian patriciate; it would have been something opposed to the Papacy. Various German sources affirm that Otto I was created in Rome not only emperor but also patrician: « patricius atque imperator apostolica benedictione creatus ». Otto III too would have been crowned in 996 emperor and patrician. However, of this resurrection of the patriciate as an imperial dignity there is no absolute certainty for the Ottonian period. Instead, perhaps in connection with the Alberician one, in 975 the patriciate reappears as a high urban magistracy in the family of the Crescenzi. In 975 there is « Benedictus patricius », cousin of Crescenzi; in 985 one finds patrician John, son of Crescenzi I, until about 995; then John II, son of Crescenzi, between 1006 and 1011. The Crescenzian patriciate has given rise to much discussion; Gregorovius considered it an anti-papal manifestation; Bossi traces it back to imperial dependence, whether Ottonian or Byzantine; Borino affirms with good reasons its character as a papal magistracy: « patricius Domini Apostolici », though with a reservation for John II. Between the two Johns of Crescenzi there is inserted a patriciate normally of imperial derivation with a « Ziarius patricius », faithful minister of Otto III, who would thus have had the city patriciate under his dependence.

The house of Theophylact returned to power in Rome after 1012, but it does not appear to have exploited the dignity of the patriciate; it is true, however, that according to Bonizo, Benedict IX would have given the patriciate to his brother Gregory of Tusculum. In this period the memory of it is not lost: the Graphia aurea urbis Romae, gathering elements of various origins, preserves a juridical and moral physiognomy of the "patricius Romanorum" in which the Byzantine and the Carolingian patriciates are fused. This explains how in 1046 Henry III, having come to Rome for the imperial coronation, arranged that the Roman nobles of the imperial party should confer upon him the honor of the patriciate: he wore the traditional green mantle and placed on his head the customary aureum circulum. Thus in 1061 the Roman nobles again sent to the young Henry IV the patrician aureum circulum together with the ring, the mitre and the chlamys, the insignia of the dignity. Bonizo explains the matter by saying that Henry III believed "per patriciatus ordinem se Romanum posse ordinare pontificem." Whether the patriciate carried the right to direct or control the election of the popes is a question that during the Investiture Controversy was vigorously debated between the imperialists and the curialists. In 1076 Henry IV, in order to command Gregory VII to abandon the papacy he had usurped, referred openly to the right that the patriciate of the City gave him, to which he had been raised by the will of God and by the consent of the Romans.

The patriciate reappears in Rome in the 12th century: according to William of Malmesbury, when Henry V was in Rome in 1111 the Roman nobles hastened to crown him with the golden patrician circlet; thus, according to Peter the Deacon, it happened for Lothair III in 1133. It does not appear that other emperors subsequently assumed the Roman patriciate. Instead, in 1144 the anti-papal Roman renewal revived the patriciate as an urban magistracy of the Crescenzi type, but with an anti-papal character: Jordan of Pierleone was created patrician by the people (or by the nobles?). However, already in 1145 the agreement of the Senate with Eugene III led to the suppression of the patriciate, while the prefecture was re-established as a papal magistracy.

Francesco Cognasso