IUS IN PENETRABILIS PONTIFICUM REPOSITUM

The text entitled Il testamento segreto romano e il Senatoconsulto Neroniano [“The SecretTestament in Rome and the Neronian Senatoconsultum”] is the result of a report I gave duringthe X Ionian-Polish Conference on the topic “Il segreto nei sistemi giuridici” [“The secret in legalsystems”], held in Warsaw at Uczelnia Lazarskego University on 31 May 2017. Those who studythe history of Roman law know that any examination of facts, situations and statements onthe subject of ‘secrecy’ is a preliminary reminder that this right was originally in penetralibuspontificum repositum. The verb penetrate and those penetralia behind which the oldest part of theRoman rituals and of which the penetralia pontificum play the role that we know is hidden, throughthe narration of Tito Livio, belong to the purest and most essential semantics of secrecy. In thememory of the late-republican culture the wisdom of the popes was linked above all to the custodyof the mos, of the religious and social customs of the ancestors. In the absence of writing, oralityplayed a constitutive role, in the sense that it gave rise to a juridical consequence, a juridicalconstraint. Words pronounced in a certain way and specific gestures, served to trigger contact withthe divine and with the ius. Hence the rigid control exercised consciously by the popes on the formof the words pronounced, on their sequence, on the rhythm of language. Only extremely skilledinterpreters such as lawyers-priests were able to elaborate and manipulate them. The monopolyof knowledge of the pontiffs started to be shaken by the written editorship of the law of the TwelveTables. But the much harsher blow was inflicted by the publication of the calendars and secretformulas of the Pontiffs by Gnaeus Flavius, a freed scribe of Appius Claudius the Blind (A. 304 BC.).A final step, this decisive time was taken by Tiberio Coruncanio, the first plebeian who came tothe office of maximum pontiff, who removed the original secrecy from the activity of the pontiffs.From that moment on, the popes’ responses had to be given in public and can no longer be secret.