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Legal effects of concubinage in reference to concubine's offspring in the light of imperial legislation of the period of dominate
Abstract
Wyd. 1
El Bajo Imperio Romano es uno de los períodos más apasionantes de la historia del mundo antiguo, pues en él terminaron de perfilarse muchas de las instituciones jurídicas y sociales todavía hoy vigentes; por ello, es importante su estudio y conocimiento como vía para poder comprender mejor algunos de los problemas que todavía se plantean en nuestras modernas sociedades. Junto a las fuentes jurídicas, en muchos casos fragmentarias y sospechosas de reelaboración posterior, puede ser muy útil recurrir a las fuentes literarias. Así, las Confesiones de Agustín de Hipona constituyen una valiosa fuente a la hora de conocer cómo fueron percibidas en la realidad cotidiana muchas de las cuestiones objeto de regulación y modificación legislativa a finales del siglo IV d.C.
On the 14 th of June 538, the Emperor Justinian issued a constitution known as Novel 74 in the Corpus Iuris Civilis. The aim of this constitution was to determine all the possibilities for the legitimation of 'natural' children. In Novel 74 Justinian determined what the conditions are that allow children to be called either natural or legitimate as well as who the children are who are neither legitimate nor natural. After that, he created three mechanisms to legitimate children: by their parents' marriage, by imperial decision on demand of the father, or on the children's demand based on their father's testament. But is this legislation as new as Justinian pretends it to be?
Late Roman legislation regarding the inheritance rights of nonmarital children is a tangled web of seemingly conflicting constitutions. Focusing on the period 371-428 AD, this Article argues that, when two particular Western laws from that era are considered alongside others issued at the same time, it is possible to discern some wider legislative trends that may help to contextualize the different attitudes shown toward nonmarital children. C.Th. 4.6.4 (371), a Western law beneficial to nonmarital children, can arguably be linked with another Western law issued shortly afterward granting a privilege to the daughters of actresses, another disfavored class in the late empire. On the other hand, the later Western constitution C.Th. 4.6.7 (426-27), the exact content of which is uncertain and disputed, appears to have been issued at a time when the Western consistory was especially concerned with promoting the interests of legitimate heirs. This lends support to the theory that the Western C.Th. 4.6.7 (and not a subsequent Eastern constitution hypothesized by Antti Arjava) was the law referred to in C.Th. 4.6.8 (428) as adopting a harsh position with regard to nonmarital children.
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