Question Throughout the travels of the Apostle Paul the advantage of being a Roman citizen was apparent. How would he have been able to identify himself as a Roman citizen? Did this method change much during the Roman empire? My Bible study class is curious about this.
Thank you!
Kathi
Answer Hello,
St.Paul, born perhaps in 10 AD in Tarsus of Cilicia ( Asia Minor, today Turkey) and executed in Rome, under Nero, in about AD 67, was also known by his Jewish name of Saul.
His family in fact was Jewish and he likely inherited Roman citizenship from one of his ancestors who maybe was deported from the Palestine to Rome and became slave, but later was able to distinguish himself by any skill and was either freed by his master or bought his freedom and thus was given Roman citizenship.
So this remote ancestor of St. Paul, after obtaining this citizenship, seems to have returned to his native city Tarsus, though we don’t have enough information about St Paul's ancestors or parents.
In short, St Paul was privileged to have been born a Roman citizen at a time when it was not yet a universal right for people in the empire, since only after AD 212 all freemen in the Empire were granted citizenship by an imperial edict of Emperor Caracalla (the "Constitutio Antoniniana").
It was just this “ius civitatis”, i.e. the Roman citizenship, that allowed him to be beheaded by a sword instead of being crucified as was Simon Peter(see Acts 22:28). The Romans in fact considered death on a cross far too cruel for their own citizens.
As for how St.Paul was able to identify himself as a Roman citizen, note that first of all the Romans had good archives where there was the list of all the Roman citizens all over the empire.
In fact, every five years, each male Roman citizen had to register in Rome for the census (“Tabulae censoriae”, in Latin) and had to declare his family, wife, children, slaves and riches, for throughout the entire republican era registration was the only way that a Roman could ensure that his identity and status as a citizen were recognized.
Moreover each Roman citizen, and then St. Paul too, had a kind of certificate of citizenship, which in Latin was called “Diploma”.
This method changes only when the emperor Caracalla in 212 AD granted Roman citizenship to all living in the Roman empire, except to the slaves of course.
