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- Title
КВЕСТОР - КВЕЗИТОР - КЈЕСТОР.
- Authors
ИЛИЋ, TAMAРА
- Abstract
The public office of quaestor is known to us from the history of ancient Rome. In a new guise, as quaestor sacri palatii (Quaestor of the Sacred Palace), it reemerged in the fourth century, during the reign of Constantine the Great, denoting the public official responsible for proclaiming and implementing the emperor's decisions. Over the following centuries, the quaestor's purview broadened, and he acquired administrative and judicial responsibilities (leges dictandae, preces). Of particular note is his judicial role, practiced from the time of Theodosios II and Valentinian III (CJ VII, 62, 32 = B. IX, 1, 122), in which the quaestor, based on his senior rank, together with the praetorian prefect, acted as a court of appeal that discussed appeals to the decisions of high-ranking dignitaries. But the office of quaestor evolved during the reign of Justinian I. Besides the previously second-degree powers, modified in some details, and the addition of second-degree appeals to the rulings of a doux, the quaestor (now renamed quaesitorος), based on the Novel 80 (539 AD) investigates, resolves and punishes a set of newly established cases in practice, with the most notable among them being matters concerning foreigners and forged documents. At the same time, the chancellery was created, so the rules about the quaestor's subordinates were changed. Based on those and other data, the role of the quaestor-quaesitoros in the sixth century was, on one hand, analogous with the previous tradition (participating in compiling codices, signing laws etc.), but it was also innovative, especially from 539 АD onward. The legal sources from the Middle Byzantine period, particularly the Ecloga, also bear evidence to the erstwhile understanding of the quaestor as a codex compiler and active participant in crime prevention. In this period, however, literary sources offer much more information, with quaestors appearing in them as political figures, emperor's allies and envoys. Ninth- and tenth-century legal compilations provide more data about the role of the quaestor in law. In them, the quaestor (now more frequently named as κοιαίστωρ) appears in the field of status, family, marriage and inheritance law. These claims also appear in sources of a different nature (the imperial novels of Leo VI the Wise and Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus), which clarifies the quaestor's role in practice. Elucidating the judicial system of this period is particularly important, primarily based on the compilation Ecloga Basilicorum, which offers more detailed information about the quaestor's court and powers. Combining these data with the evidence from the known lists of dignitaries and officials revealing which offices the quaestor's chancellery included [antigraphos, scribe, (e)sceptor, libellesios, protokankellarios and kankellarios]. After the tenth century, references to the quaestor grew increasingly frequent, testifying to his widespread role in various branches of the law. Data from the legal practice (Πεῖρα) confirm the already attested participation of quaestors in inheritance and family law. A few private-law documents also contain details about the process of archiving and copying wills, which were archived at the quaestor's chancellery in Constantinople. These data, as well as information from sigillographic and literary sources, allow us to infer that the quaestor's role in the tenth century, and especially in the eleventh and twelfth century, was still relevant and continued to exist in the public sphere, in which the quaestor acted as the emperor's spokesman and deputy and composer of imperial laws, and especially in private law branches, in which he is known to have dealt with various forms of inheritance through wills and investigating the veracity of documents. In that period, like before, the quaestors bore the highest dignities, and many of them are known to have also held other judicial functions. After the restoration of the Empire, the office of quaestor continued to exist, but its nature dramatically changed. From Pseudo-Kodinos' list, we learn that the function disappeared and the quaestor was now solely a dignitary. Other sources show that the title was still associated with the intellectual elite and rather prestigious.
- Publication
Zbornik Radova Vizantološkog Instituta, 2022, Issue 59, p89
- ISSN
0584-9888
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2298/ZRVI2259089I