THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 019
The Magister Officiorum and the Imperial Secret Service
2-7. The Magister Officiorum and the Imperial Secret Service
The department known as ab epistulia was early divided into two sections distinguished as ab epistulis Latins and ab epistulis Graecis. It was originally the great Secretariat of the Empire. Here were managed all communications touching foreign affairs, and the general correspondence of the government, excepting in so far as it related to the legal and other multifarious petitions addressed to the emperor, appealing for his interference or his favour. These would come not only from officials, but also from private persons, and all fell within the functions of the office a libellis. This bureau absorbed into itself another which had been specially devoted to legal inquiries, and was called a cognitionibus. Hence the magister libellorum is described in the Digest by the fuller title magister scrinii hbellorum et sacrarum cognitionum. The department had famous lawyers, like Papinian and Ulpian, connected with it, and it must often have sought the aid of specialists in other matters belonging to the public service, as revenue and finance: for many of the petitions addressed to the ruler sought relief from taxation.
The name of the department a memoria implies that its head was the keeper of the "emperor's memory." It was therefore a Record Office, but it was much more. It assisted other offices in putting documents into their final shape, and not only recorded the documents but issued them. The accounts we have of the office make it clear that it took to itself much important business which originally was transacted by other departments. Thus the Notitia describes the magister memoriae as dictating and issuing adnotationes, that is to say brief pronouncements running in the emperor's name ; also as giving answers to supplications (preces). Further he gave to the emperor's letters, speeches, and general announcements their final form, and sent them forth. The magister libellorum and the magister epistularum must have become in fact, though not in form, his inferiors. From his office emanated diplomas of appointments, the permission to use the imperial post, and countless other official permits. The scrinium dispositionum kept in order all the emperor's engagements, and made the innumerable arrangements necessary for his journeys, and took count of many matters with which he was in touch, being of such a nature as not to come definitely within the purview of other bureaux.
All these scrinia were under the control of one of the greatest functionaries of the Empire, the magister officiorum. His importance grew over a long space of time from small beginnings. His functions encroached greatly on those of the Praefecti Praetorio, and their development is a measure of the jealousy entertained by the emperors for these great officers. The word officium indicates a group of public servants placed at the disposal of a state functionary. The magister officiorum is the general master of all such groups. Naturally he is vir illustris. He selected from the scrinia, in accordance with elaborate rules of service, the clerks who were required to carry out many sorts of business in the capital and in the provinces. His duties were of many different kinds, through which no connected thread of principle ran; they evidently reached their full compass by an agglomeration which followed lines of convenience merely.
One of the most prominent occupations of the magister lay in his direction of what may be called the Secret Service of the Empire. He had under him the very important schola agentum in rebus, which was organised by Constantine or possibly by Diocletian, and replaced a body of men called frumentarii, drawn originally from the corps which had in charge the provisioning of the army. These had acted as secret agents of the government. They were the men by whose means Hadrian, as his biographer says, "wormed out all hidden things." The vast extension of the Secret Service in the age of Constantine and later was a consequence of the huge increase in the number of officials, and of the suspicion which an autocratic ruler naturally entertains towards his subordinates: in part also of a genuine but ineffectual desire to check misgovernment.
The term schola is closely connected with the army, and implies a service which is regarded as military in trend, like that of the other scholae palatinae. The duties assigned to this schola opened of course wide doors through which corruption entered, and it became one of the greatest scourges from which the subjects of the Empire suffered. All attempts to keep it in order failed. The number of the officers attached to it was generally enormous. Julian practically disbanded it, retaining only a few of its members; but it soon grew again to its former proportions. The officers belonging to the schola were arranged in five classes, with more or less mechanical promotion, such as generally prevailed through the imperial service. The members themselves seem to have had some voice in the selection of men for the highest and most responsible duties. The standing of the schola became continually more honourable; and members of it rose to provincial governorships and even to still higher positions. The agens in rebus was ubiquitous, but only some of the more momentous forms of his activity can be mentioned here.
To obtain a deluxe leatherbound edition of THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE, subscribe to Castalia History.
