'II. Affixing Titles to Property. [When land had from any cause become public property, the Emperor's officers used to affix tituli, to denote the fact and to warn off all other claimants. Powerful men who had dispossessed weaker claimants used to imitate this practice, and are here forbidden to do so.]
'This offence shall subject the perpetrator to the same penalties as pervasio. It is really a kind of sacrilege to try to add the majesty of the royal name to the weight of his own oppression. Costs are to be borne by the defeated claimant.
'III. Suppression of Words in a Decree. Anyone obtaining a decree against an adversary is to be careful to suppress nothing in the copy which he serves upon him. If he does so, he shall lose all the benefits that he obtained. We wish to help honest men, not rogues.
'IV. Seduction of a Married Woman. He who tries to interfere with the married rights of another, shall be punished by inability to contract a valid marriage himself. [This punishment of compulsory celibacy is, according to Dahn, derived neither from Roman nor German law, but is possibly due to Church influence.] The offender who has no hope of present or future matrimony[610] shall be punished by confiscation of half his property; or, if a poor man, by banishment.
'V. Adultery. All the statutes of the late King (divalis commonitio) in this matter are to be strictly observed. [Edict. Theodorici, § 38, inflicted the penalty of death on both offenders and on the abettors of the crime.]
'VI. Bigamy is to be punished with loss of all the offender's property.
'VII. Concubinage. If a married man forms a connection of this kind with a free woman, she and all her children shall become the slaves of the injured wife. If with a woman who is a slave already, she shall be subjected to any revenge that the lawful wife likes to inflict upon her, short of blood-shedding[611].
'VIII. Donations are not to be extorted by terror, nor acquired by fraud, or as the price of immorality. Where a gift is bonâ fide, the document conveying it is to be drawn up with the strictness prescribed by Antiquity, in order to remove occasions of fraud.
'IX. Magicians and other persons practising nefarious arts are to be punished by the severity of the laws. What madness to leave the Giver of life and seek to the Author of death! Let the Judges be especially careful to avoid the contagion of these foul practices.