From Adoptio to Profiliatio: Institute of Adoption in Spain from the 4th to the 10th Centuries

The article is devoted to the study of the main directions of the evolution Roman adoption (adoptio) in Spain in the 4th — 10th centuries. In the Spanish provinces of the Empire in the 4th — 5th centuries, the norms of Roman law (Theodosian Code) were in force, corresponding to the ideas about adoption that had developed in Roman jurisprudence (“Institutiones” written by Gaius etc.). The Roman legal concept of adoption was preserved during the era of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toulouse (5th — early 6th centuries), and in many respects during the period of the Kingdom of Toledo (mid-6th — early 8th centuries). Nevertheless, in the decrees of the VI Council of Toledo (638), a break with Roman norms is outlined: at this time, the institution of adoption began to be used to carry out legal actions that had no relation to the nature of Roman adoptio. There is no reason to claim that these changes occurred under the influence of the norms of barbarian law: the data from Spanish sources of the 7th — 10th centuries have nothing in common with the concept of adoption presented in the Leges barbarorum. Thus, we are not talking about barbarization, but about vulgarization, simplification of both the institution of adoptio itself and the conceptual system associated with it.