THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 026
The Privy Council and the Old Roman Senate
2-14. The Privy Council and the Old Roman Senate
At the centre of the great many-storeyed edifice of the bureaucracy was the Consistorium or Most Honourable Privy Council . There was deep rooted in the Roman mind the idea that neither private citizen nor official should decide on important affairs without taking the advice of those best qualified to give it. This feeling gave rise to the great advising body for the magistrates, the Senate, to the jury who assisted in criminal affairs, to the bench of counsellors, drawn from his staff, who gave aid to the provincial governor, and also to the loosely constituted gathering of friends whose opinion the paterfamilias demanded. To every one of these groups the word consilium was applicable. It was natural that the early emperors should have their consilium, the constitution of which gradually became more and more formal and regular, Hadrian gave a more important place than heretofore to the jurisconsults among his advisers.
For a while a regular paid officer called consiliarius existed. In Diocletian's time the old name consilium was supplanted by consistorium. The old advisers of the magistrates sat on the bench with them and therefore sometimes bore the name adsessores. But it was impious to be seated in the presence of the new divinised rulers; and from the practice of standing (consutere) the Council derived its new name. From Constantine the Council received a more definite frame. As shewn above, certain officers became comites consistoriani. But these officers were not always the same after Constantine's reign, and additional persons were from time to time called in for particular business. The Praefectus Praetorio praesens or in comitatu would usually attend. The consistorium was both a Council of State for the discussion of knotty imperial questions, and also a High Court of Justice, though it is difficult to determine exactly what cases might be brought before it. Probably that depended on the emperor's will.
It is necessary that something should be said of the position which the two capitals, Rome and Constantinople, held in the new organisation, and of the traces which still hung about Italy of its older historical privileges. The old Roman Senate was allowed a nominal existence, with a changed constitution and powers which were rather municipal than imperial. Of the old offices whose holders once filled the Senate, the Consulship, Praetorship, and Quaestorship survived, while the Tribunate and the Aedileship died out. Two consulares ordinarii were named by the emperor, who would sometimes listen to recommendations from the senators. The years continued to be denoted by the consular names, and, to add dignity to the office, the emperor or members of the imperial family would sometimes hold it. The tenure of the office was brief, and the consules suffecti during the year were selected by the Senate, with the emperor's approval.
But to be consul suffectus was of little value, even from a personal point of view. A list of nominations for the Praetorship and Quaestorship was laid by the Praefectus urbi before the emperor for confirmation. Apart from these old offices, many of the new dignitates carried with them membership of the ordo senatorius. Ultimately all officials who were clarissimi, that is to say who possessed the lowest of the three noble titles, belonged to it. Thus it included not merely the highest functionaries, as the principal military officers, the civil governors, and the chiefs of bureaux, but many persons lower down in the hierarchy of office, for example all the comites.
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