Latin
Lines 1.524-1.532
Roman Law and Society, The Institutes of Justinian 1.524-532
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5. So if the usufructuary of a female slave sells or gives away her child, believing it to be his property, he does not commit theft; for there is no theft without the intention to commit theft.
6. It may also happen in various other ways, that a man may transfer a thing belonging to another without committing a theft, so that the possessor acquires the property in it by use.
7. As to movables, it may more easily happen that a person may, without violence, take possession of a place vacant by the absence or negligence of the owner, or his having died without a successor; and although his possession is mala fide, since he knows that he has seized on land not belonging to him, yet if he transfers it to a person who receives it bona fide, this person will acquire the property in it by long possession, as the thing he receives has neither been stolen nor seized by violence. The opinion of the ancients, who thought that there could be a theft of a piece of land or a place, is now abandoned, and there are imperial constitutiones which provide that no possessor of an immoveable shall be deprived of the benefit of a long and undoubted possession.
8. Sometimes even a thing stolen or seized by violence may be acquired by use; for instance, if it has come back into the power of its owner, for then, the vice being purged, the acquisition by use may take place.
9. Things belonging to our fiscus cannot be acquired by use. But Papinian has given his opinion that if, before bona vacantia have been reported to the fiscus, a bona fide purchaser receives any of them, he can acquire the property by use. And the Emperor Antoninus Pius, and the Emperors Severus and Antoninus, have issued rescripts in accordance with this opinion.