“We have learned that the inhabitants of provinces, suffering from scarcity of food, sell and put in pledge their children. We command then that those found in this situation, without any personal resource, and being able only with great trouble to support their children, be succoured by our treasury before they fall under the blows of poverty; for it is repugnant to our morals that any one under our Empire should be pushed by hunger to commit a crime.”[381]
Ten years later, Constantine had to modify the laws in relation to children—so acute were the sufferings in the Empire—by permitting those who “took up” children to have the right of property in them.[382]
“Whoever,” said Constantine in his latest law, “has taken in a new-born boy or girl, exposed by the order and with the knowledge of its father or master, outside of the house of the one or the other, has the power to keep him as son or slave without fear that those who rejected him can reclaim him.”
The conditions of the times, as Dugour points out, are well shown by the frequency with which these conditions are referred to. Julius Firmicus, an astrologer of the fourth century, devotes a chapter of his work to revealing combinations of planets that will tell what will be the fate of the child that is exposed. Under certain signs the child will perish through lack of food; under others it will drown; under still another it will be eaten by dogs, and another combination indicated that it would find a saviour and a second father.
In 374, the Emperors Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian declared that the exposure of all infants was punishable, and ordered that parents see to it that their children were fed. The main question that seemed to agitate both the Empire of the East and the Empire of the West was that of the rights of the adoptive parent, as against those who owned the land where the child had been abandoned.
“Let men look to it that they nourish their children. If they expose them, they may be punished in conformity with the law. If other persons take the children up they cannot be reclaimed; as people cannot take again children they have wilfully permitted to perish.”
In 391, Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius permitted, by other law, the child sold by its father to become a free man after a short term of servitude, without reimbursing a master.[383]
In 409, Honorius and Theodosius issued an edict in favour of Romans sold to other Romans, limiting the period of slavery to five years. Nevertheless, in 412, Honorius and Theodosius confirmed the law of Constantine concerning the sale of infants purchased or taken up with the knowledge of the bishop of the diocese.
An edict of the emperors maintained the rights of the adoptive parents. The right of the latter to their property was also confirmed in cases where the parent or master willingly and knowingly had allowed the child to be exposed.
Another imperial edict ordered that no new-born could be taken from the place where it had been found without the presence of witnesses. A form was drawn up which was to be signed by the bishop.