Special Political Discourses on Domestic Society and the Rights of Citizens

chapter 15; and see the same author in Hebrew Questions, book 2, chapter 63, and on the passage in Leviticus, chapter 64. "He who does not nourish his parents is base," original Latin: "Ignobilis est qui Parentes non nutrit" according to Diogenes Laertius's life of Solon, folio 37. See also Enenckel, On the Privileges of Parents, book 7, chapter 6. Indeed, children could also once be sold by their parents: see Dominik Arumaeus, Exercise 2, Thesis 2, and Pierre Cavallo, volume 3, question 780. From these points it is also proved: that a statutory inheritance Legitima a portion of an estate that the law requires to be left to specific heirs, regardless of the will's contents is owed to parents (just as to children) even by Natural Law. See the Sext, chapter "If a father," under the title "On Testaments"; Bernhard Graeve, book 2, conclusion 119, consideration 1, at the end.

CHAPTER IV.

Concerning

Paternal Authority.

The obedience owed to parents is asserted and kept intact by a certain command and power. Therefore, the legal interpreters—following Bartolus—have wrongly claimed that this paternal authority Patria potestas The Roman legal concept of a father's nearly absolute power over his household belongs solely to Civil Law Jus Civile the specific laws of the Roman state, as opposed to the universal Law of Nature. For indeed, a son is said to be in the power of his father by nature, according to the Digest 195, section "familia," under the title "On the Significance of Words"; Aristotle’s Ethics, book 8, chapter 2; Vacunius à Vacuna, Declarations 8; Bodin’s On the Republic, book 1, chapter 4, and Method of History, chapter 6; and Alberico Gentili, On Marriage, book 4, parts 1 and 2. While this right is indeed specific to Roman citizens—as noted in the Institutes, title "On Paternal Power," section 2, because those who are deported those stripped of citizenship and exiled do not enjoy it—it is not therefore unknown to other nations or to Nature itself. Wesenbeck relates the same regarding Adoption in his Commentary on the Pandects, title "On Adoptions," number 2; see however Andreas Gerhard, Disputations on the Institutes 2, thesis 1; Timon Faber, Disputations on the Institutes 5, thesis 2; and my own Commentary on the Pandects, title 5 and 6, question 13, and Disputations on the Pandects 1, thesis 3.

II. Our own doctors—specifically Dr. Bidembach, On Matrimonial Causes 1, question 1; Cothman, volume 1, counsel 1; Dr. Harprecht, in the preface to the Institutes on marriage, number 23; and Graeve, book 2, conclusion 95, consideration 1; and Besold, On Family Pacts, folio 138—all say that a marriage contracted while parents are protesting and unwilling is against rational Natural Law, and also against Civil Law. However, others dissent with plausible reasons, such as Antonio Contius, Successive Readings 4; Guibert Costanus, book 1, question chapter 12; and Bellarmine, Controversies, volume 1, "On Marriage," chapter 27. It is unjust that a person should be born as an heir to an unwilling father. original Latin: "Iniquum est, ut Patri invito, suus hæres agnascatur." This reasoning holds true today even for emancipated children emancipatis those legally freed from paternal power, because even a grandfather is bound to honor an emancipated grandson with a statutory inheritance share. Experience teaches that marriages not entered into according to the parents' wish are almost always unlucky. See Richter, Economic Axioms 59. The Canonists experts in Catholic Church law seem to wander too far into trifles when they say that such a marriage cannot be prohibited by any statute; as if without...