L'età del fidanzamento secondo Modestino

In the famous passage of D. 23. 1. 14, taken from Modestino’s Differentiae, he initially affirmed that a marital engagement could have been contracted since the birth of the couple. But he soon appears to contradict himself by claiming that it was necessary for the engaged couple to be able to understand the act which they were about to perform by requesting for this purpose that the children be at least seven years old. Generally, interpreters have found the course of the passage at the very least, tortuous, and, apart from a few different voices, they have suggested that the current wording does not correspond to Modestino’s original interpretation; and that instead, it is the result of one or more alterations, which occurred during the post-classical age and/or age of Justinian. The ‘readings’ of the passage have been numerous and often divergent. This seems to justify a review, which, based on abundant and perspicuous readings that interpreters of the text have provided, intended to further deepen the fragment D. 23 .1 .14, both in its content (initial and successive, until Justinian) as the inside thoughts and work of Modestino. The review seems to make it plausible that the wording of D. 23.1.14 has been the result of the synthesis of successive disciplines from the Republican period until the time of Modestino. Most likely, the jurist carefully exposed those rules (probably drawing them from different sources dating from jurists who preceded him), trying to reach harmonization through a text that was projected on a discipline defined during the Severan period, fused with earlier rules on the age of engagement because he felt the need to keep track of those decisions made during the course of the Roman experience until his time. This way of proceeding appeared appropriate to the aims and techniques of the Severan jurists, who felt bound to give sure answers to the various people of the empire, taking into account the different affirmations of sources of case law, when they found themselves in difficulty and not knowing which rules to apply. The well merged synthesis of Modestino precisely intended to make the last discipline look like nothing more than the explanation and consequence of what could have been found in works of the previous age