1. Law will be honorable, just, possible, according to nature, according to the custom of the country, adapted to the place and time, necessary, useful, clear also, lest it contain anything in its obscurity that tends to fraud, drawn up for no one’s private advantage, but for the common good of all citizens.
Chapter 24. On legal instruments.
1. Voluntas (will) is the general name for all legal instruments, and it has received this name because it issues from free will, not from compulsion.
2. Testamentum (will) is so named because, unless the testator dies, what is written in it cannot be established or known, since it is closed and sealed; and it is called testamentum because it is not in effect until the burial of the testator (testatoris monumentum); whence the Apostle says: Testamentum in mortuis confirmatur.
3. Testamentum has not only this meaning in the Holy Scriptures, that it is in effect only when the testators are dead, but they also called every agreement (pactum et placitum) testamentum; for Laban and Jacob made a testamentum which was certainly to be in effect while they were living. And in the Psalms is read: Adversum te testamentum disposuerunt; and many others of the sort.
4. The tabulae of a will are so called because not only wills but letters were written on hewn tabulae (boards) before paper and parchment were used. Whence letter-carriers are called tabularii.
5. The testament of the civil law is made valid by the signature of five witnesses.
6. The testament of the praetorian law is sealed with the seals of seven witnesses; the former testament is made in the presence of citizens, and from that is called civile; the latter in the presence of the praetors, and thence is of the praetorian law.
7. A testamentum holographum is one wholly written and signed in the hand-writing of the maker. From this it got its name. For the Greeks use the word ὅλον for whole, and γραφή for writing.
8. A testament has no legal force if its maker has forfeited his civil rights, or if it has not been made in due form.