I Appeal unto Cæsar

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 3, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 26.

"I Appeal unto Cæsar."

TO EXPLAIN the full effect of this proceeding we must observe that in the provinces of Rome the supreme criminal jurisdiction (both under the republic and the empire) was exercised by the governors, whether they were proconsuls, propretors, or (as in the case of Judæa) procurators. To this jurisdiction the provincials were subject without appeal, and it is needless to say that it was often exercised in the most arbitrary manner. But the Roman citizens in the provinces, though also liable to be brought before the judgment-seat of the Governor, were protected from the abuse of his authority, for they had the right of stopping his proceedings against them by appealing to the tribunes, whose intervention at once transferred the cognizance of the cause to the ordinary tribunals at Rome. This power was only one branch of that prerogative of intercession (as it was called) by which the tribunes could stop the execution of the sentences of all other magistrates. Under the imperial regime the emperor stood in the place of the tribunes, Augustus and his successors being invested with the tribunitian power, as the most important of the many republican offices were concentrated in their persons. Hence the emperors constitutionally exercised the right of intercession, by which they might stop the proceedings of inferior authorities. But they extended this prerogative much beyond the limits which had confined it during the republican epoch. They not only arrested the execution of the sentences of other magistrates, but claimed and exercised the right of reversing or altering them, and of re-hearing the causes themselves. In short, the imperial tribunal was erected into a supreme court of appeal from all inferior courts either in Rome or in the provinces.

Such was the state of things when Paul appealed from Festus to Cæsar. If the appeal was admissible, it at once suspended all further proceedings on the part of Festus. There were, however, a few cases in which the right of appeal was disallowed; a bandit or a pirate, for example, taken in the fact, might be condemned and executed by the proconsul, notwithstanding his appeal to the emperor. Accordingly, we read that Festus took counsel with his assessors concerning the admissibility of Paul's appeal. But no doubt could be entertained on this head, and he immediately pronounced the decision of the court: "Thou hast appealed unto Cæsar; to Cæsar thou shalt be sent."

—Conybeare and Howson's Life of Paul.