De matrimoniis incestus.
Concerning incestuous marriages.
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We do not consider the laws previously enacted by emperors on incestuous marriages to be complete, since they left the parties who contracted such marriages unpunished, but deprived the children, though innocent, of their father’s property; as though the guilty should be free and the innocent suffer punishment as sinners.
1) We, therefore, ordain that if anyone hereafter enters into an unlawful and unnatural marriage, which the law calls incestuous, sinful and punishable, and has no children of a former, legal and unblameable marriage, all of his property, including what has been given him as a dowry, shall be immediately confiscated to the Treasury, and an amount at the discretion of the Consuls retained as a fine. For why should a man who may enter into a lawful marriage, contract one that is unlawful, spoil the blood of the offspring, insult his family, violate the laws of God and man and wish for something from which even brute animals refrain? Such man shall be punished not only by confiscation of his property, but he shall also be deprived of the girdle of his office and sent into exile, so that he may learn to live chastely and according to nature, and refrain from living licentiously, from seeking forbidden bounds and from violating laws dictated by nature. A woman, too, who knowingly fails to live up to the law and enters into an incestuous marriage, shall suffer the same penalty.
2) If there are children, grandchildren or other descendants from a prior, unblameable marriage, they shall have the father’s property and be released from the father’s control by reason of the penalty inflicted on him; but they shall support the father and furnish him with all necessary things, for though he violates the law of God and man, he is nevertheless their father.
3) This then shall be in force in the future and will give no one, who lives chastely, any trouble. Innocent parties will not suffer through this law. Parties that have been guilty in the past shall go neither wholly free nor be dealt with too severely. Incestuous marriages heretofore contracted, but already in any manner dissolved, shall remain unpunished. But if a man lives with a woman under any such marriage at the time of the enactment of this law, he may within two years after its publication divorce his wife; and if he does so in a manner that she will not return to him, and the separation is not merely in appearance, and he does not in fact further associate with her—for he might, perchance, keep the former marriage in force in this manner—a smaller fine shall be paid into the Treasury. And the children whom we pardon as persons who are innocent will be permitted to inherit from their father, provided that they are the only children and the father has none from another, lawful marriage and provided that the latter does not exclude them from the inheritance upon some lawful ground. But if there was another marriage not repugnant to law, from which the children were born, inheritance may belong to these children not involved in any crime or fault, unless they are guilty of conduct which, according to law makes them unworthy of their father’s succession; and a smaller portion thereof may be left to the children, who, while themselves innocent, are involved in guilt, provided that their conduct toward their father is without fault, and excepting in either case the fine of the paternal property which the Consuls order to be turned over to the Treasury. And we permit such children to inherit from their progenitor both pursuant to a testament and on intestacy, according to the measure previously stated. And all this shall apply also if, after the man has divorced his wife allied to him by an incestuous marriage, he marries another woman, and children are born to him of the first and subsequent, lawful marriage. And we temper the time that is past with clemency and the woman shall receive her dowry back. But if the man does not divorce his wife (to whom he is unlawfully joined) within two years after publication of this law, he shall be fined the full amount, and the woman of her dowry, and the penalty aforesaid shall apply. The children of such marriage shall then have none of the paternal property nor anything out of the mother’s dowry. If there are children, however, of a prior, lawful marriage, they shall have the father’s property except the amount that goes to the Treasury, and they shall become their own masters (sui juris), but shall nourish their father and extend the help to him previously mentioned. The dowry of the incestuous marriage shall go to the Treasury. If the man has no children of such prior, lawful marriage, all of his property shall go to the Treasury. These provisions also apply to a man who contracts an incestuous marriage hereafter, for he is on the same footing as the man who does not divorce his wife, to whom he is joined in such marriage, within the time specified by us.
Given 16 May 535.