vigiles
Relinquo quoque omnes consuetudines, videlicet villicationem, stabulationem, et ita liberum reddo eundem burgum, etc..... a molendino quoque, qui vocatur Mirabello, reddo Vigiles homines ibi manentes, usque ad eundem burgum, ex utraque parte aquæ, ad Monasterium vel burgum custodiendum, cum eisdem, quæ in eodem burgo morantur.Charta Henrici Regis Romanor. ann. 1107. apud Chapeavillum tom. 2. Hist. Leodiensis pag. 54 :
Item in domibus ad claustrales sedes pertinentibus, forensis potestas jus nullum spoliandi, aut ostium obserandi, vel Vigiles, vel ostiatim denarios exigendi habebit, etc.Tabularium S. Genovefæ Paris. ann. 1211 :
Custos vero turris et portarius, et asinarius, et Vigil, qui de nocte turrim vigilabat, etc.Charta Stephani Comitis Sacri-Cæsaris ann. 1178 :
Obolos, quos Vigiles capiebant.Vetus Charta in Additamentis ad Matth. Paris pag. 150 :
Quod Vigiliæ fiant per singulas villas, sicut fieri consueverunt, et per viros probos et validos.Vide Wactæ.
VI´GILES[EXERCITUSVol. 1. p. 795.]
(1) Sentinels who were on duty about a camp at night. (See castra.)
(2) A name given to the police of Rome. Of these there were seven cohortes or battalions with fourteen station-houses (excubitoria). They were under the command of a superintendent (praefectus vigilum), who was responsible for the order of the city, it being his duty to protect the citizens from all forms of lawlessness. He was also charged with the duty of preventing and extinguishing fires, so that the vigiles were really a police and fire department combined. Policemen were regularly detailed for duty at the theatres, public baths, and other places of public resort; and had very considerable powers, resembling those exercised by the police in the Continental cities. As firemen they were provided with axes, ropes, buckets, and also operated a kind of hand fire-engine (sipho, sipo), whence they received the popular nickname of siponarii. Each of the seven cohorts was commanded by a captain (tribunus), and the whole force numbered 7000 men. In 1868, an excubitorium belonging to the seventh cohort was excavated at Rome, and on its walls were found many interesting inscriptions, scratched by the policemen when off duty, and giving a curious picture of the life and thought of the ancient vigiles, being of every possible description—humorous, complaining, serious, and obscene. See the account of this discovery and of the Roman police in general in Lanciani, Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, ch. viii. (Boston, 1888).