Religious crimes in the Acts of the collegium of the fratres arvales

Abstract

Religious crimes in the acts of the collegium of the fra­tres Arvales. Our work consists of the study of two fundamental paths that go hand in hand and are present, even, in other priesthoods and rituals. In the first place, we will study how the sacrifice was and the faults committed in it and se­condly, about the Arvales college. The Roman sacrifice had a series of specific operating rules. If these immolations had any anomaly, their interruption would be immediate so that they could be restarted. This return was atoned for with a new sacrifice, generally of a sow, cow or calf that was prepared for that purpose. The existence of numerous priestly collegia was evident in Rome thanks to epigraphic or literary sources. We will discuss in this space the immolative changes, their rea­sons and what elements could cause the sacrifices in general, and particularly those made by the fratres Arvales, to be interrupted. We want to investigate the different religious crimes that could have occurred in a sacrifice led by the fratres Arvales and their legal consequences around the protagonists who committed it. We begin this study from two complementary paths. On the one hand, we will capture what are the different religious crimes linked to the sacrifice and, on the other, the knowledge of the immolations by the fratres Arvales and what events forced them to perform a series of expiatory rituals.