Vincoli parentali e divieti matrimoniali - Università di Palermo

ALESSANDRO CUSMÀ PICCIONE
Vincoli parentali e divieti matrimoniali:
le innovazioni della legislazione del IV sec. d.C.
alla luce del pensiero cristiano
ABSTRACT
Although in the last few decades the tendency to reform the conception, for which the
great part of the normative innovations recorded in the postclassic legislation (in species
in matrimonial or familiar matter) has to ascribe to the action of the Church on the
Empire, has assumed more and more consistency, it is still possible to discover some
fields in which the infuence of the Christian religion on the choices of normative policy is
considered almost expectable. In this view, the present work aims at investigating the laws
that in the IV cent. a.C. innovated the picture of the matrimonial prohibitions deriving
from relationship or affinity, in relation just to three cases: wedding between adfines, with
the neptis ex fratris and inter consobrinos. After the inheritance of the classic experience,
with regard to nuptiae nefariae et incestae, was evaluated, the position assumed by the
Church was investigated, as can be derived from the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures,
the works of the Church Fathers and the ecclesiastical legislation; the correspondent legal
regulation introduced in IV cent. a.C. (C.Th. 3.12.1, 3.12.2, C.I. 5.5.5 and C.Th.
3.12.3) is then annotated. By mutual comparison it emerges that, in subiecta materia, the
conditions which the doctrine has characterized to presume the derivation of the imperial
laws from the Christian religion – such as the correspondence of the contents, the
anteriority of the Christian discipline regarding that legislative one, the exclusion of other
motives and the identification of the effective channel of relation – don’t exist completely
or exist only partially, with the consequence that the examined imperial provisions can be
considered as “Christian measures” not as directly influenced by the Church, but rather
by virtue of the fact that they are not contrary, lato sensu, to the spirit of the nova religio.
PAROLE CHIAVE
Divieti matrimoniali; parentela; affinità; costituzioni imperiali; Padri della Chiesa; concili.