Page:Henry Osborn Taylor, A Treatise on the Law of Private Corporations (5th ed, 1905).djvu/23

 CHAP. I.] CORPORATIONS IN THE ROMAN LAW. [§5. identity of the corporation were not affected by the change of even all its members. 1 § 4. There is no reason to believe that any special authoriza- tion from the state was necessary in the early time special au- in order to form a corporation. Under the Empire, * hori *y to however, a special permission from the state became poration o i i i 'i necessary necessary; 2 and, by the pagan emperors, it was only in lat- granted with great reluctance. 3 The requiring of a er times ' special permission, as well as the reluctance of the emperors to grant it, seems to have been due to the evils arising from un- authorized and seditious societies. § 5. The first corporations at Rome were formed for the regulation of trade and purposes of religion. 4 Under Varieties of the Republic municipal corporations come promi- Roman cor- nently into view, while the proportionate import- poia lons ' ance of religious corporations diminishes. The latter re- mained comparatively few in number until the conversion of the Empire to Christianity, to which event was due the aboli- tion of the general rule that a religious corporation could take propert}^ as heres, that is, through universal succession, only by virtue of a privilege specially conferred. 5 This rule had not great weight of authority; still Iher- iug, a distinguished jurist, says that the members were the true subjects of the corporate rights and liabilities according to the Roman law, and that the corporation itself was only the form which the mass of these rights and liabilities assumed to- wards outsiders. This form disap- peared when determining the legal relations of the members among themselves. Ihering, Gheist, etc., iii., Theil, pp. 219-220, 343-344. An- other writer thinks the Roman law did not regard the property of a cor- poration as belonging to a person, but to a universitas, i. e., to no one; as res nullius. 1 Brinz, Pandekten, 196. See Gai. i. 9, and Dig., i. 8, lex 1 pr. 1 " In decurionibus vel aliis univer- sitatibus nihil refert, utrum omnes idem maneant an pars meneat vel omnes immutati sint; sed si univer- sitas ad unum redit, magis admit- titur posse eum convenire, et con- veniri cum jus omnium in unum recciderit et stet nomen universita- tis." Dig., iii. 4, lex 7, § 2. 2 Dig., iii. 4, lex 1 pr. 8 See Pliny, Epist. b. 10, letters 42, 43. 4 Sav., System, ii. p. 246. 6 The principles of the (pagan) Ro- man law on this point are expressed by Ulpian, xxii. §6: "We cannot make gods our heirs, save those to whom a decree of the senate or a rescript of the emperor has granted this privilege." " Es war dem Chris- tenthum vorbehalten," says Savigny, " die Menschenliebe an sich zu einem wichtigen Gegenstand der Thatigkeit zu erhebeu, und in dauernden, unab-