Disputation — Bontempi, Palladium Theologicum V · from Schola Thomistica
Disputation XI: On Testaments
TESTAMENTS were instituted chiefly, lest the goods of the deceased, uncertain, fixed to the dominion of no one, should provoke free men and kinsmen to lawsuits and Discord: Truly, the laws, providing for this inconvenience, incline to the other extreme, in such a way, appending so many conditions, circumstances, and causes to Testaments, that the lawsuits which were formerly threatened by reason of the lack of Testaments are now undertaken with a more difficult outcome, attacking their validity by reason of defects. Hence in disentangling these, laws busy themselves abundantly: here, however, I shall treat briefly of those things which rebound from Testaments into Consciences, remitting the rest to the Jurists. The name of Testament, moreover, is derived from testando (testifying), because by this instrument one soon to die testifies of his own will what he wishes to be done after his death with his goods.
De Testamentis.
PRAECIPUE instituta sunt Testamenta, ne bona defuncti incerta, nullius Dominio affixa, ad lites et Discordias liberos, et consanguineos provocarent: Verum Iura, huic incommodo providentia, in aliud extremum ita vergunt, tot Testamentis conditiones, circumstantias, et causas apponendo, ut quae prius ob Testamentorum carentiam intentarentur lites, nunc difficiliori exitu ob defectus, ipsorum validitatem labefactantes suscipiantur. Hinc in his extricandis leges profuse versantur: Hic autem ego, quae e Testamentis in Conscientias resiliant, breviter agam. Caetera ad Iuristas remittendo. Nomen vero Testamenti a testando derivatur, eo quod hoc instrumento mox moriturus de sua voluntate testetur, quid post obitum fieri velit de suis bonis.
Within this disputation
- Question I: What a testament is, and of how many kinds
- Question II: What solemnity is required for a testament, closed and open
- Question III: Who can and ought to make a testament, or be instituted heirs
- Question IV: Whether an heir instituted in a testament invalid at civil law through defect of solemnity can take the inheritance in the forum of conscience, despoiling the heir who succeeds on intestacy
- Question V: In what ways a testament is revocable
- Question VI: What obligation heirs instituted by testament undertake