AMERICAN CHURCH

REVIEW.

VOL. XXXI.-MARCH AND APRIL, 1879.

THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON THE ROMAN LAW.*

PART SECOND-CHAPTER IX.

The Paternal Power.

New doctrines address themselves, more especially, to the young. Sons have their attention fixed on the future, and are carried forward; while their fathers, more pre-occupied with the present, are inclined to resistance.

Nascent Christianity aroused the spirit of the young, and cast dismay among the defenders of existing institutions. The missionaries of the Church were accused of being the missionaries of disorder, of counselling children to revolt against their parents' and preceptors, and of exciting them

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'See Hunter's Rom. L. p. 43. The Paternal Power was the prerogative of Roman citizens only, and could only be exercised by the head of a family over his legitimate children. D. 50, 16, Where, however, the demands of the State intervened the paternal despotism was excluded. A son could be elected magistrate, but could not marry without his father's consent, D. 1, For the peculiar relations of the Paternal Power to the family, see a former chapter.

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to shake off the yoke, of a worn out generation, frivolous and ignorant of true well-being.'

That tendency of opinions was the source of profound domestic agitations. Fathers who had patiently borne the disobedience of their children, disinherited them without mercy on the very day when a fortunate conversion rendered them humble and submissive. Mothers whose tender souls opened to the new doctrines, sought in vain to excuse those conversions, which they had, perhaps, encouraged; guilty themselves of Christianity, they were repudiated. It was not permitted, even to the slave, who would not incur the anger of his master, to be affiliated to the formidable faction of the Christians, although Christianity counselled him both fidelity and respect.*

The family, therefore, found itself divided into two camps; on the one side was the father entrenched in the old prejudices, and armed with the paternal power which protected them; and on the other, the wife, the children, and the slaves, opposing a firm resignation to that authority. Sometimes the father of the family yielded to

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1 See Origen against Celsus. lib. iii, § 55. "Quod illi delirent, mente capti sint, et nihil vere bonum vel sciant vel possint facere præoccupati nugis inanibus." Tertullian Apolog. § 3. Id. § 3. The family held together by the Patria Potestas, is the nidus from which the entire law of persons has germinated. Maine An. L p. 147. Gaius I. 55 and 125, Tomk. and Lemon's Ed. p. 61, 120 et seq. "The heir as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant though he be lord of all." Galatians iv. 1.

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The charges of the Pagans on the subject of those divisions are curious. Mark how Origen contra Celsus, lib. iii. 44, et seq.combats the invectives of Celsus. Pergit Celsus, et quæ de Jesu doctrina dicuntur a paucis e christianorum numero non prudentoribus, ut ipse putat, sed rudioribus, ait præcepta esse nostrorum hominum; nemo accedat eruditus, nemo sapiens, nemo prudens. Hoc pacto, inquit apparet quod solos fatuos ignavos, stolidos, mancipia, mulierculas, pueros, captent et pellicant. translate: "Celsus proceeds, and what is said concerning the Chris

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the force of example and numbers; he often resisted them, and fathers were seen standing alone for polytheism, in the midst of children and grandchildren chanting in their ears hymns of the Saviour.'

tian doctrine by a few of the not more learned of the Christians, as he thinks, but of the more uncultivated, he declares to be the precepts of our people. Let no one come to us who has been instructed, no one who is sagacious, no one who is prudent. By this means he says, it is evident that they captivate and deceive only the foolish, the timid, slaves, women and boys." Origen responds. "How much injustice there is in that charge! Who can fail to recognize the grandeur, and exalted character of the principles and precepts, as well as of the Jewish, as of the new religion; the profound sagacity of Moses, Solomon and the Prophets, the wisdom and eloquence of the Christian Apostles, of St. Paul among others, who, very far from interdicting that wisdom, placed it in the first rank of celestial gifts, only excluding that false wisdom, that which seeing only perishable things, studying only material phenomena cannot raise itself to the source of all wisdom, to God! Far from being injurious to Christianity true science is its most powerful auxiliary. Doubtless the Church addresses itself also to the ignorant and feeble but in order to render them better, for Jesus Christ came to call all men to follow him in the new way, the wise as well as the feeble in spirit, the great as well as the humble." Celsus continues his reproaches. Videre licet inquit, et in privatis edibus lanifices, sutores, fullones, illiteratissimum quemque et rusticissimum coram senioribus et prudentoribus patribus familias, nihil audere proloqui. Ubi vero seorsum nacti fuerint pueros eorum, et mulierculas imperitas, mira quædam disserere. Non esse audiendos parentes ac præceptores, sed sibi credendum quod illi delirent et mente capti sint, et nihil vere bonum vel sciant, vel possint facere, præoccupati nugis inananibus. soli rationem vivendi norint exactissime. Et pueros beato 'See the curious letter of St. Jerome to Læta, Christian daughter of the pagan pontiff Albinus, for whose conversion St. Jerome is hopeful through the influence of his Christian children and grandchildren. Ad Latam. Gibbon speaks of that letter.

Ipsi vero

Through these internal dissensions, and in the midst of the greatest paternal severities, we perceive how much of their ferocity ancient manners had lost. In the fine weather of the republic, it was not alone by disinherisons, that the paternal power sought to make itself respected; more than one Roman, jealous of that power, avenged the abandonment of the national religion, by the same sword which Brutus used to punish his sons who remained faithful to the tyrant. In its long war against the democracy, the patriciate had learned by experience the importance of again finding that terrible sword. Cassius was seen arraigning his sons before his domestic' tribunal and condemning them to death, because they had embraced the party of the Agrarian laws, and the Senator, Fulvius, inflicted the same penalty on a son, young, amiable, intelligent and cultivated, for taking sides with Catiline in behalf of the people.'

fore si se audient, atque adeo, propter eos totam familiam c. lv. We translate: "In private houses we behold workers in wool, fullers, and persons of the most unlearned and rustic character, afraid to utter a word in the presence of their elders, and more learned masters; but when they privately get control of the children and women as ignorant as themselves, they make the most wonderful statements to the effect that their parents and teachers ought not to be heeded, but that they should obey them; that the former are foolish and stupid, neither knowing how nor having the ability to do anything really good, being preoccupied with empty trifles; that they alone know how men ought to live, and that if children are obedient to them, they will be both happy themselves, and make their homes happy also." Quod si interim videant aliquem accedentem e preceptoribus, prudentioribus, aut ipsum patrem, tunc hos, si timidiores fuerint, perterriri; sin ferociores, auctores fieri pueris, ut habenas excutiant, ab murmurando quod in præsentia

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Adhibito propinquorum et amicorum consilio.—Valer. Max. lib. v, cviii, n. 2.—Gravina, with respect to the Twelve Tables. § 25. 2 Valer. Max. n. 5. Sallust. Catilin. 39.