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Chapter 1 Dominium and Object Extinction When the issue is to know to whom a written or painted object belongs when the owner of the support and the owner of the inscriptions or motives are not the same person, things, at the outset, always come down to a determination of the dominium. However, under Roman law, the dominium is invested in the thing; it has the same destiny. If the thing disappears, if it becomes extinct under the law, so does the dominium. Such is the case for a metallic part, such as the handle of a vessel or an arm affixed to a statue, when the object as well as the part and the soldering metal were of the same nature—the mode of attachment the law called ferruminatio. If, on the contrary , the extinction is not definitive and there still exists a way of returning to the original object—for example by adding a stone to a ring, a plank to a boat, or an arm to a statue, albeit by using a metal different from the joint parts—a process known as adplumbatio—then, under certain conditions, the dominium does not perish because the object has retained its individual quality and has the potential to recover its autonomy sooner or later. [Cassius] dicit enim, si statuae suae ferruminatione iunctum bracchium sit, unitate maioris partis consumi: et quod semel alienum factum sit, etiamsi inde abruptum sit, redire ad priorem dominum non posse. Non idem in eo, quod applumbatum sit: quia ferruminatio per eandem materiam facit confusionem, plumbatura non idem efficit. [(Cassius) says in effect that if an arm was attached to its statue by ferruminatio, because of unity, it is absorbed into the greater part, and, once part of another’s property , even if it (the arm) were later torn off, it would not return to the prior owner. Not so with what was applumbatum, because ferruminatio with the same substance causes fusion, whereas this does not happen with plumbatura.] (D.6.1.23.5) Therefore the question asked was double. One had to decide, on the one hand, whether or not there was extinction of the object when the colors or the ink were applied to a support; and, on the other hand, which of the two, the support or the addition, became extinct. The thing could be regarded as having lost its individuality, its existence under the law, in two situations, 16 Chapter 1 which Roman law had not systematized, but which medieval law acknowledges as specific and classified forms of dominium acquisition: accessio and specificatio. They do not imply the systematic disappearance of the thing, but in many cases, they lead to it. In order to understand the body of references that define the space of this reflection, I propose a description based upon two successive organizations of the sources. First, one must describe the framework of the tabula picta in Roman texts, strictly limiting the analysis to the passages that discuss it. At a second stage, one will have to consider the body constituted by the fragments in which writing and painting are discussed and to take into account the ordinary glosses of Accursio, who taught in Bologna between 1200 and 1263 and was a disciple of Azo’s (ca. 1190–1220), the greatest master of his time. His large gloss, or ordinary gloss, which contains close to ninety-seven thousand fragments from various authors including himself, will become essential and will bring the era of the glosses to an end because of its authority, the genre being subsequently continued by additiones to his monumental compilation.1 Proceeding thus will allow us to establish a list of the themes that jurists mobilized in their attempt to circumscribe an evasive object; for if the fate of a rooted tree, of construction timber added to the house of another, of the progeny of animals, of mixed grains, or of metal masses seem to be governed by stable criteria, it is not the same for painting and writing. In Book 6 of the Digest, Title 1, which discusses Rei vindicatio, contains a text by Paul, a jurist from the Severan period: Sed et id, quod in charta mea scribitur, aut in tabula pingitur, statim meum fit: licet de pictura quidam contra senserint. propter pretium2 picturae: sed necesse est ei rei cedi id, quod sine illa esse non potest. [But what is written on my papyrus or painted on my board becomes mine immediately ; perhaps some may be...

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