Civic Religion in the East Roman State

The government of the Romans was involved in religious ritual on behalf of the Roman polity since Romulus took auspices, offered sacrifices, and expiated his followers’ guilt on the day he founded the city (D.H. Ant. Rom.1.87). Both the ancient Romans and those they conquered attributed their success to the Romans’ particular skill at maintaining the good-will of the gods. Scholars of ancient Rome have long taken ‘civic religion’—worship and piety undertaken by magistrates for the benefit of the entire community—as a key aspect of political and religious history. The theological switch from polytheism to Christianity did not lessen the emperors’ responsibility for maintaining divine support for the state. In the 9th and 10th centuries, aspects of fiscal administration and law can best be explained as extensions of the civic religion espoused by the emperors. Taking a ‘Lived Religion’ approach to the evidence, we can see that what has too often been dismissed as ‘imperial ideology’ was apparently a vibrant strand of Orthodox piety focused on bringing divine blessings to the Romans and making the Roman government a sacred project. Late 11th- and 12th-century changes in fiscal policy then had implications for civic religion as well as the organization of revenue. Including civic religion as a category of analysis can help us better understand changes in both government and piety in the ninth through twelfth centuries.