https://doi.org/10.31648/cetl.2541
The text entitled Il testamento segreto romano e il Senatoconsulto Neroniano [“The Secret
Testament in Rome and the Neronian Senatoconsultum”] is the result of a report I gave during
the X Ionian-Polish Conference on the topic “Il segreto nei sistemi giuridici” [“The secret in legal
systems”], held in Warsaw at Uczelnia Lazarskego University on 31 May 2017. Those who study
the history of Roman law know that any examination of facts, situations and statements on
the subject of ‘secrecy’ is a preliminary reminder that this right was originally in penetralibus
pontificum repositum. The verb penetrate and those penetralia behind which the oldest part of the
Roman rituals and of which the penetralia pontificum play the role that we know is hidden, through
the narration of Tito Livio, belong to the purest and most essential semantics of secrecy. In the
memory of the late-republican culture the wisdom of the popes was linked above all to the custody
of the mos, of the religious and social customs of the ancestors. In the absence of writing, orality
played a constitutive role, in the sense that it gave rise to a juridical consequence, a juridical
constraint. Words pronounced in a certain way and specific gestures, served to trigger contact with
the divine and with the ius. Hence the rigid control exercised consciously by the popes on the form
of the words pronounced, on their sequence, on the rhythm of language. Only extremely skilled
interpreters such as lawyers-priests were able to elaborate and manipulate them. The monopoly
of knowledge of the pontiffs started to be shaken by the written editorship of the law of the Twelve
Tables. But the much harsher blow was inflicted by the publication of the calendars and secret
formulas 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 to
the 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.
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