Latin
Lines 1.554-1.562
Roman Law and Society, The Institutes of Justinian 1.554-562
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4. To all these formalities we have enacted by our constitutio, as an additional security for the genuineness of testaments, and to prevent fraud, that the name of the heir shall be written in the handwriting either of the testator or of the witnesses; and that everything shall be done according to the tenor of that constitutio.
5. All the witnesses may seal the testament with the same seal; for, as Pomponius says, what if the engraving on all seven seals were the same? And a witness may use a seal belonging to another person.
6. Those persons can be witnesses with whom there is testamenti factio. But women, persons under the age of puberty, slaves, madmen, dumb persons, deaf persons, prodigals restrained from having their property in their power, and persons declared by law to be worthless and incompetent to witness, cannot be witnesses.
7. A witness, who was thought to be free at the time of making the testament, was afterwards discovered to be a slave, and the Emperor Hadrian, in his rescript to Catonius Verus, and afterwards the Emperors Severus and Antoninus by rescript, declared, that they would aid such a defect in a testament, so that it should be considered as valid as if made quite regularly; since, at the time when the testament was sealed, this witness was commonly considered a free man, and there was no one to contest his status.
8. A father, a son under his power, or two brothers under the power of the same father, may be witnesses to the same testament; for nothing prevents several persons of the same family being witnesses in a matter which only concerns a stranger.