In all such cases it seems to us sufficiently wrong for the lord to prejudge the absence of his coloni, who, born in the country and afterwards absent, till their land through their friends, fathers, brothers, or relations…. For when a part of the body, in a way, remains on the farm by relationship it does not appear either to wander away or to stay free. And so a constant law remains for the lord and while the parents or children or relations of the colonus remain on the estate, he himself would appear to have resided there.
Codex Justinianus:
Children of Mixed Marriages, c. 530
The ruling of Justinian to the effect that children follow the condition of the mother was also applied to marriages between freewomen and unfree men and to those between unfree women and freemen.
Xl.48.xxiv. If those, who are accounted adscripticii by whatever judgment or whatever artifice or with their lords’ consent or in their lords’ ignorance, take to themselves freewomen as wives, we decree that both those, as well as their offspring, which is known to have been born to them, shall remain in liberty; but without doubt this must be observed, that if from a free husband and a wife of adscripticius status a child is born, he shall follow not the free condition of his father but incur the infamy of his mother’s condition.
But lest adscripticii should think such effort would go unpunished, which is a thing well to be believed of them, and lest the condition of a freewoman should be depressed by marriages planned by men of this kind, we decree, if any such thing should be perpetrated by an adscripticius, that his lord shall have full power, either of himself or through the president of the province, to correct such man with a moderate punishment and to separate him from the woman. And let him know that if he fail to do this, the negligence of such a man will redound to his own disadvantage.
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