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Justinian I · The Digest of Justinian §35.1.32.pr

Good-Faith Accounting Errors in Conditional Manumission

Passage 5363 of 9271 · Latin

Summary

Explains that when the rendering of accounts is a condition for manumission, a slave may still obtain freedom despite an underpayment, provided the error was made in good faith and without malice by both parties.

[IDEM libro nono quaestionum. ] §35.1.32.prQuamuis rationes reddere nihil aliud sit quam reliqua soluere, tamen si et statuliberi et heredis culpa, sine fraude tamen serui minus solutum sit et bona fide redditas esse rationes existimatum fuerit, liberum fore: et nisi ita obseruetur, neminem, qui sub condicione ita manumissus esset, umquam ad libertatem peruenturum, si per inprudentiam minus solutum esset.
[THE SAME, in the ninth book of his Questions.] Although to render accounts is nothing else than to pay the remaining balance, yet if, through the fault of both the conditionally free slave and the heir, but without fraud on the part of the slave, a less amount has been paid, and it has been deemed that the accounts were rendered in good faith, he will be free; and unless this is observed, no one who had been so manumitted under a condition would ever arrive at liberty, if through inadvertence a less amount had been paid.
haec ita accipienda ait, si quando is, qui rationes reddere iussus sit, per aliquem errorem sine dolo malo ita rationes ediderit, ut dominus quoque circa computationem erraret.
He says that this is to be so understood if at any time he who was ordered to render accounts has, through some mistake without malice, so produced the accounts that the master also erred regarding the calculation.

Notes

  1. 35.1.32.prliberum fore — liberum fore is a future infinitive synonymous with liberum futurum esse. The accusative subject eum (referring to the conditionally free slave) is omitted. This infinitive construction indicates that the entire sentence is in indirect speech (oratio obliqua), depending on a verb of saying (such as the subsequent ait).
  2. 35.1.32.prexistimatum fuerit — Subjunctive perfect passive (representing a future perfect in indirect speech). Its subject is the accusative and infinitive clause bona fide redditas esse rationes ("that the accounts were rendered in good faith").
  3. 35.1.32.pret statuliberi et heredis culpa — culpa is an ablative of cause or means. statuliberi and heredis are genitives depending on it, meaning "through the fault of both the conditionally free slave and the heir."

Cite this passage

Justinian I, The Digest of Justinian §35.1.32.pr. Humanitext Reader, https://reader.humanitext.ai/en/text/urn:cts:latinLit:phi2806.phi002.humanitext-lat1:35.1.32.pr

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