Peculiarities of the Legal Awareness in the Ancient Rome’s Republican Period as a Factor of the Religious Tolerance

Abstract

The article deals with the peculiarities of the forming of a tolerant attitude towards other religions in the collective consciousness of the titular majority of the population of the Ancient Rome. The article supports a view that religious tolerance was inherent in the general views and the culture of the Roman political community, which was reflected in its legal system and had a positive effect on expanding the state's borders, establishing the relations with the population of the annexed territories by guaranteeing their freedom of religion, and reducing the social strains. The development of the Roman state and its domination over the conquered or annexed territories formed the concepts of the idealization and supremacy of the Roman statehood, legal system, culture and traditions, their superiority over all similar phenomena of the other peoples, the emergence of what is now classified as “imperial mentality”. But the unique feature of this phenomenon in Rome was that, unlike many other imperial state formations, the Romans did not seek to convert other peoples to their standards, but tended to differentiate and recognize their subjects’ identity. Till the IV century the Romans used the religious freedom of the federates to help in setting the religion as one of the identification marks. The peculiarities of the formation of the Roman legal awareness regarding the regulation of the religious relations were realized in the legal institute of religious tolerance, which in the future, through the reception of the Roman law and culture, was incorporated into the foundations of the Western tradition of law, and in the modern period was included in the complex of the inalienable human rights.