Christo auspice: Impetrato consensu amplissimi ordinis facultatis Iuridicae, in inclyta Academia Basiliensi, pro solenni gradu in utroque Iure consequendo, has propositas assertiones de Testibus defendet Caspar Niess Tremonianus

monetary lawsuits, but also in criminal cases, if the situation demands it. However, they are more easily compelled in civil cases, in which it is shameful to conceal the truth, than in criminal cases, in which category to conceal the disgrace of another is not entirely to be blamed.

8. Some are prohibited by law itself, for example, the underage. One who has reached puberty, however, is not prohibited, except in a criminal case, in which one does not testify before the twentieth year. But I know it has been asked here by the doctors whether one who has reached puberty can provide testimony about what he saw in his childhood. We think this is more likely to be the case.

9. Likewise, a woman is prohibited from being a witness in feudal cases, as well as in wills. That this has been done in codicils and donations in contemplation of death original: "donatione causa mortis" is accepted by the common calculation of the doctors, just as it is in the remaining civil and criminal cases by civil law. For by pontifical law, in criminal cases this is not without dispute. And although the common opinion of the canonists is that a woman is barred from bearing testimony in criminal cases, we shall nevertheless maintain that the contrary opinion is truer, even according to pontifical law.

10. Parents and children also are not admitted against each other even if they are willing, and all those to whom command can be given by reason of paternal or dominical power. Some are also excluded by reason of the highest reverence, such as that which exists between a freedman and a patron, husband and wife, father-in-law and son-in-law. Some also by reason of baseness and crime, such as an excommunicated person, a perjurer, a usurer, or one who openly practices or has practiced for gain, one convicted of adultery, or a defamatory poem; an accomplice in a crime does not provide faith either for his associate or against him; and generally, all who are infamous cannot speak testimony.

11. Hence, an elegant question has arisen: can an infamous person repel an infamous witness produced against him by the exception of infamy? And although an infamous person cannot object to the infamy or baseness of another, because he condemns in another what he has approved in himself, and thus seems to have nothing to object to the infamous person, according to that saying, "Nothing for Catiline, nothing for Cethegus," note: A classical reference suggesting that a person cannot condemn in others what they practice themselves yet we have asserted against some who feel the contrary that it is more equitable that this infamous person should not be repelled from his exception by replication. Many other things must also be explored in the person of the witnesses: namely, whether he is wealthy or needy, or whether he is an enemy to him against whom he bears testimony, or a friend to him for whom he gives testimony, and whether he bears testimony simply, that is, with an unchanging face. For often the pallor of the face,