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Justinian I · The Digest of Justinian §34.5.11.pr

Validity of Bequest of Ownership to the Last Survivor

Passage 5275 of 9271 · Latin

Summary

Julianus' opinion that whenever usufruct is bequeathed to freedmen and ownership to the last survivor, the legacy is valid, because the ownership is deemed to be given to all freedmen under the condition of being the last survivor.

[IULIANUS libro trigesimo sexto digestorum. ] §34.5.11.prQuotiens libertis usus fructus legatur et ei, qui nouissimus superuixerit, proprietas, utile est legatum: existimo enim omnibus libertis proprietatem sub hac condicione 'si nouissimus superuixerit' dari.
[IULIANUS, in the thirty-sixth book of the Digests.] Whenever a usufruct is bequeathed to freedmen, and the ownership to the one who survives last, the legacy is valid; for I think that the ownership is given to all the freedmen under this condition: 'if he survives last'.

Notes

  1. §34.5.11.prnouissimus — The adjective nouissimus (last, latest) is in the nominative singular, functioning predicatively (adverbially) with the relative pronoun qui, meaning "last" or "as the last one".
  2. §34.5.11.promnibus libertis proprietatem... dari — An accusative with infinitive (A.C.I.) construction governed by existimo. Julianus saves the validity (utile) of the legacy by reconstructing that the ownership was not given directly to the specific one who survived last, but to "all the freedmen" under the suspensive condition of being the last survivor.

Cite this passage

Justinian I, The Digest of Justinian §34.5.11.pr. Humanitext Reader, https://reader.humanitext.ai/en/text/urn:cts:latinLit:phi2806.phi002.humanitext-lat1:34.5.11.pr

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