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In the Roman Republic, the Pontifex Maximus was the head of the Roman religion. He was the most important of the Pontifices (plural of Pontifex), which were positions in the main sacred college ( Collegium Pontificum ), which was directed by the Pontifex Maximus. Other members of this priesthood included the Rex Sacrorum (king of the sacred rites), the Flaminii, and the Vestales. The number of Pontifices, elected by cooptatio, was originally six, but this number increased to fifteen in the 1st century BC. The Pontifices served for life. The office came into its own with the abolition of the monarchy, when the sacral powers previously vested in the king were transferred either to the Pontifex Maximus or to the Rex Sacrorum. Today it may still be said that the head of the Roman religion, now the Catholic Church at the Holy See, is the Pontifex Maximus, since that is one of the titles claimed by the Pope (see Primacy of the Roman Pontiff).The Pontifex was not simply a priest. He had both political and religious authority. It is not clear which of the two came first or had the most importance.
The Pontifices had many relevant and prestigious functions, such as keeping the official minutes of elected magistrates (see Fasti ), and the so-called "public diaries", the Annales maximi . They also collected information related to the Roman religious tradition into a sort of corpus which summarised dogma and other concepts, similar to later compilations of law in Jurisprudence.
Some authors believe that eventually Roman magistrates would have gained some of the Pontifices' political prerogatives and powers. Earlier Pontifices were elected only from the noble class, but in 300 BC the lex Ogulnia admitted people from plebs too to run for the charge, so that part of the prestige of the title was lost.
In 104 BCCenturies: 3rd century BC 2nd century BC 1st century BC Decades: 150s BC 140s BC 130s BC 120s BC 110s BC 100s BC 90s BC 80s BC 70s BC 60s BC 50s BC Years: 109 BC 108 BC 107 BC 106 BC 105 BC 104 BC 103 BC 102 BC 101 BC 100 BC 99 BC Events Aristobulus I suc the lex Domitia prescribed that the election would henceforward be voted by the comitia tributa; by the same law, only 17 of the 35 tribes of the town could vote. This law was abolished by SullaThis page is about the Roman dictator Sulla, for the Brythonic goddess sometimes called Sulla, see Sul. Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix ( Latin: L·CORNELIVS·L·F·P·N·SVLLA·FELIX) (ca. 138 BC 78 BC) was usually known simply as Sulla . His cognomen Felix — the and restored when Julius CaesarAlternative meanings: Julius Caesar (disambiguation). Gaius Julius Caesar ( Latin: C·IVLIVS·C·F·C·N·CAESAR) ( July 13, 100 BC March 15, 44 BC) was a Roman military and political leader whose conquest of Gallia Comata extended the Roman world all the way t was a Pontifex Maximus. A further modification prescribed then that the Emperor would have statutorily been the Pontifex Maximus and would have personally named the other Pontifices. With this attribution, the Emperor was given a religious dignity, completing the greatness of the throne. Most authors contend that the power of naming the Pontifices was not really used as an instrumentum regni, an enforcing power.
TertullianQuintus Septimius Florens Tertullian (b. 150- 160, d. 220- 240) is a highly ambivalent character in early Christianity. On one hand, he was the first great writer of Latin Christianity. He was born, lived, wrote, and died in Carthage, in what is today Tun first applied the term to Pope Callixtus I, although Pope Gregory I was the first to employ it in any formal sense. Pontifex was apparently a word in common currency in early ChristianityChristian cross and its many variations are widely recognized as an ancient Christian symbol. Christianity is an Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as described in the New Testament. Although Christians generally chara to denote a bishopA bishop is an ordained person who holds a specific position of authority in any of a number of Christian churches. Bishops in the New Testament The bishop's role is typically called the " episcopacy", because the word "bishop" is derived ultimately from. The office was relinquished by the Emperor Gratianus in 382, and was assumed by the Christian Bishops of Rome. It thus became one of the titles of the Popes of the Roman Catholic Church who hold it to this day. This is unusual in that most of the technical terms of Roman paganism were avoided in the vocabulary of Christian Latin in favour of neologisms or Greek words.
In Latin, Pontifex comes from pontem faciens, and means "bridge-maker". This was indeed an important position in Rome, where the major bridges were over the Tiber, the holy river (and a deity, at the same time); only prestigious authorities, with sacral function could be allowed to "disturb" it with mechanical additions. Other experts believe that the position, in its religious interpretation, would have provided men with a symbolic "bridge" to let them contact the gods; it has besides been noted that in ancient India similar concepts were in use in similar ages, here too ideally regarding rivers and bridges. The word has also been thought by some to be a corruption of a similar-sounding but etymologically unrelated Etruscan word for priest, but this theory is a minority opinion.
