ADULTERY

(Lat. adulterium, a word of very uncertain derivation.) The sin of incontinence committed by a married person: adultery between two married persons is termed double by some jurists. By the law of Moses, adultery was punished by death. Lev. xx. 10., Deut. xxii. 22.; and pa ages in Proverbs (c. vi.) and Ezekiel (xvi. 38, 40.) prove that the law was observed in this respect down to the overthrow of the Jewish monarchy, as we know it to have been in the time of our Saviour. The mode of punishment was by stoning; but it is observable that this mode is not ordained in Deuteronomy, as it is for various other offences. The test or ordeal of adultery is detailed in Numbers v. 11— 3L Under the Grecian and Roman republics adultery was variously treated; but the celebrated Lex Julia de Adulterio, under August us, punished it with banishment (deportatio vel relegatio). Tacit, lib. ii. Annal. It was not until the reign of Constant i no, when some tincture of Judaism had been introduced into the state along with the establishment of Christianity, that the punishment of death was formally enacted for it. This penalty was again mitigated under Leo and Mareian; and by the laws of Just in i an the adulterer was punishable with death, the adultre with flagellation, imprisonment, . But about the same period, the gradual increase of episcopal authority in civil cases seems to have drawn crimes of incontinence almost wholly within the cognizance of the ecclesiastical courts; and the canons contain a variety of directions on the subject of adultery. On the other hand, the jurisprudence of the Northern nations, which visited this as well as other crimes of freemen with very little severity, as mere offences against individuals, reduced the penalty in most of the Western kingdoms to a mere pecuniary one, sometimes attended with public disgrace or corporal punishment. The customs of the several French provinces contain a great variety of penalties and fines; at Castelnaudari, in the fourteenth century, the fine for adultery was fixed at "five sous only J " Such penalties, of course, fell rapidly into disuse; and in the sixteenth century we find it observed by a French civilian (quoted by Thuanus), that " it was never heard that any body had been punished for adultery in France." This observation is quoted by the historian when relating an event which created great sensation at the time, namely, the capital pimishment at Orleans of two offenders by St. Cyr, the governor, a rigid Calvin ist. The protestants of that sect, in France as well as in Scotland and England, made it their endeavour to introduce primitive severity of manners by severity of punishment. De Thou, the father, appears also to have made some efforts toward putting in force the laws against adultery: but from the time of the religious wars, penal cognizance of adultery may be said to have nearly ceased in France, although, by various arrets (1637, 1701, .), besides the civil consequences of an action of adultery by husband against wife, the latter might be condemned to seclusion in a house of correction for two years, or more. In Geneva, Str as bourg, and other places where the reformed religion prevailed, a temporary strictne of law was introduced about the same period, but with little permanent effect. In England, by the old common law, mutilation was the punishment of this as well as other offences; but under the Plant a genets it became matter of ecclesiastical cognizance (except so far as civil consequences were concerned), and visited [s. 28]