Non in veneratione, sed in veritate

Abstract

D. 48.4.7.3 of Modestinus opens with the following proposition ‘Hoc tamen crimen iudicibus non in occasione ob principalis maiestatis venerationem habendum est, sed in veritate’; it seems to constitute a regula whereby the judgment on wrongdoing should look to the truth, a concept that in the following lines is functional to the application of the criteria of guilt. This regula contrasts maiestas and veritas in a vision that seems modern at all, whose value emerges all when compared with the propaganda ideology of the emperors.
In this regard, he underwent a P.Bingen 3 examination in which the neopitagoric
Diotogene fully expresses the maiestatic sense of the power of Augustus. The same dialectic, which invests the criteria of judgment that follow legal parameters not oriented to mere adulation, is present in the well-known P.Ryland 457, papyrus that bears the narrative of the Trial of Jesus, ascribed to the evangelist John. The reading of these sources and others makes it possible to draw up a composite picture in which legal practitioners often perceive the difficulty of reconciling scientia iuris, namely veritas and maiestas. The modernity of Modestinus’s precept, whereby the crime of laesa maiestas
applied according to criteria of guilt and imputability, would be such that it is rediscovered only in the Enlightenment era, becoming a foundation of criteria of
subjective responsibility in the criminal field.

Keywords : maiestas, veritas, guilty, papyri