AGE. - I. CANON LAW. - In general it is a natural condition, which has an influence both on legal capacity and on the capacity to act (v. CAPACITY): whereas the first, the fitness to be a subject of rights, is acquired by every human being at birth and can be explicitly limited by law for individual acts, the second, the fitness to perform juridical acts and to exercise one's own rights, as a rule is acquired by the subject upon reaching the age of majority, with the exception of those rights for the exercise of which the law fixes a different age.
The CIC establishes the attainment of the age of majority at the twenty-first year, and the presumption that the use of reason is acquired upon the completion of the seventh year, and that a male is pubertal at fourteen years and a female at twelve. One who has not yet completed seven years of age is called an infant or child or little one (can. 88).
During minority the subject is, as a rule, incapable of the personal exercise of rights, but certain powers and obligations already exist before the completion of the age of majority.
An infant is not bound to the observance of merely ecclesiastical laws (that is, those which are not of divine right: can. 12). Normally neither the sacrament of Confirmation nor the Eucharist may be administered to him (cans. 788 and 854); with the acquisition of the use of reason, which can occur even before the seventh year, there begins the obligation of confessing (if conscious of mortal sin) and of communicating at least once a year, and the capacity to receive Extreme Unction (can. 940 § 1) and to pronounce vows (can. 1307 § 2). However, Confirmation may be administered to infants in case of danger of death, or if another grave cause exists (can. 788); and the Eucharist may, indeed must, be administered to them in case of danger of death, if they are able to discern the Body of Christ from ordinary food and to adore it reverently (can. 854 § 2). With the completion of the seventh year there begins the obligation of observing ecclesiastical laws in general and of abstinence in particular (can. 1254 § 1). With puberty one acquires the capacity to take part in elections (can. 167 § 1 n. 2), to choose the church for one's funeral and the cemetery for burial (can. 1224 n. 1), and with the completion of the fourteenth year the capacity to stand personally in judgment in spiritual causes or in causes connected with spiritual matters (can. 1648 § 3).
The CIC further requires the completion of the fourteenth year of age for admission to the novitiate, of the sixteenth for temporary religious profession, and of the twenty-first for the subdiaconate and for perpetual profession, whether solemn or simple.
The attainment of a maximum age does not entail the loss of rights, but only exemption from certain obligations; with the beginning of the sixtieth year, for example, the obligation of observing fasting ceases (cans. 1254 § 2).
In penal law, age is a circumstance that is taken into account in applying the penalty to the guilty party; the impuberal are not subject to latae sententiae penalties, and normally not even to censures or to the graver vindictive penalties ferendae sententiae, and in place of such penalties educational punishments are applied to them (can. 2218 § 1 and 2230).
The capacity to act is acquired with the age of majority; a minor in the exercise of his rights is subject to the power of his parents and of his guardian, with the exception of those rights for which the law explicitly exempts him from paternal power (can. 89).
II. MATRIMONIAL IMPEDIMENT
Age is of particular importance for marriage.
Among the Hebrews it was customary that boys could not contract the bond before completing their thirteenth year, and girls their twelfth, provided both were capable of procreating. In Athens the age of eighteen years was required for boys and fifteen for girls. The Romans held that natural puberty developed together with mental maturity, and therefore admitted the celebration of marriage upon reaching puberty. There was disagreement between the two schools of jurists, the Proculeians and the Sabinians, over the proof of the existence of puberty in men, since the latter held corporal inspection to be necessary, while the Proculeians maintained that juridical or legal puberty was reached upon completing the fourteenth year for a man and the twelfth for a woman; a thesis that was subsequently accepted by Justinian.
It was the custom of the Germanic peoples to contract marriage at a mature age, but from the ancient laws it cannot be inferred whether there was a determined age. In the Visigothic laws the prohibition was laid down against contracting marriage if the man were younger than the woman. King Liutprand forbade marriage to the impuberes of either sex. Among the Anglo-Saxons the same norms prevailed in this matter as regulated the age for embracing the religious state.
The Church, in the first centuries, adhered to the traditional norms, establishing the capacity to contract marriage upon reaching puberty. But grave difficulties arose with the spread of the practice of promising children in tender age by sponsalia both de futuro and de praesenti: restraints were placed upon this license by Alexander III, distinguishing the legitimate age for sponsalia and that for marriage, adopting for the latter the Roman limit of reaching puberty and for sponsalia the completion of the seventh year, and establishing the principle that the sponsalia de praesenti of impuberes should be considered, by presumption of law, sponsalia de futuro. With the spread of religion in the East, the Church, faced with the different customs of those peoples, applied its law with prudence, without issuing new norms.
This impediment is of ecclesiastical law: it is, in fact, independent of the reaching of puberty. Independently of the capacity to give consent, in natural law there exists no determined age for contracting marriage, also because the actual capacity to procreate is not required for the validity of the bond. Thus, if the marriage celebrated before the aetas canonica is invalid, even though the capacity to procreate is already present, after the completion of that age the marriage contracted by one who at the time of celebration was not yet capable of procreating owing to a delay in normal development, not owing to an anomaly of the physique, is valid (v. IMPOTENZA).
In the old law, up to the CIC, the reaching of legal puberty was required, fixed at different ages for the man and for the woman because of the different onset of the potentia generandi in the one and the other: in the woman it is, in fact, more precocious, but it also disappears earlier than in the man, who, later in its beginning, preserves it until a more advanced age. The onset and the persistence of this capacity do not, however, depend on age alone, but also on other factors, among which climate, temperature and the activity of individual persons are paramount.
Before the CIC in the Latin Church, and before the motu proprio Crebrae allatae of 22 Feb. 1949 in the Eastern Church, the impediment (diriment, except in the law of the Maronites) subsisted until the completion of 14 or 12 years respectively for the man and the woman: it was, however, conditioned upon the actual lack either of discretion or of generative capacity (nisi multitia suppletet aetatem), so that there was no impediment if the subject, though not having yet reached the established age, nevertheless had sufficient discretion of judgment and capacity to procreate.
In the law currently in force, for the validity of marriage the age of 16 years completed is required for the man and of 14 for the woman (can. 1067 § 1 of the CIC and can. 57 § 1 of the aforementioned motu proprio, in AAS, 41 [1949], p. 101).
This is so not only to ensure a greater psychic maturity and physiological puberty, but for many other reasons of a moral, social and hygienic order: indeed, the oscillation between the thirteenth and eighteenth year for the man and between the twelfth and fifteenth for the woman in reaching the potentia generandi, the consolidation of the physique for a healthy reproduction, the mental maturity for a full understanding of the obligations deriving from marriage, the working capacity for an honest support of the family have convinced the legislator not only to fix the legal term at a more advanced age than that at which puberty is legally presumed to be reached, but to add a grave admonition: namely, pastors of souls must seek to dissuade from marriage the young who have not yet reached the age at which, according to the customs of the place, marriage is customarily contracted (can. 1067 § 2 of the CIC and can. 57 § 2 of the cited motu proprio).
For the marriages of unbelievers the principle holds that the marriage contracted by two unbelieving impuberes is valid, provided they are endowed with maturity of reason and provided there exist no impediments of natural or divine law (Resp. S. C. S. Ufficio 5 Aug. 1839) or of civil law (which binds unbelievers).
If one of the two contracting parties is baptized and the other is not, the impediment subsists only in the case that the baptized party has not reached the age established by the Church, or that the unbaptized party lacks the discretion of judgment necessary for marriage.
The impediment ceases upon reaching the age required by law. A marriage contracted before that age is null, and the nullity is not healed by reaching the required age.
The impediment can also be dispensed, provided there subsists in the contracting parties sufficient reason to permit them to understand that marriage is a permanent society between man and woman for procreating children (can. 1082 § 1). Without this maturity of reason the impediment is no longer of ecclesiastical law, but of natural law and, as such, cannot be dispensed.
But, even if there is such psychic development, the Church does not wish to grant the dispensation unless the party is at least puber. Once the dispensation is granted, the spouses are forbidden cohabitation until they are capable of coitus, because of the danger of incontinence consequent upon cohabitation. The Holy Office has held that, in mission territory, in the case of married children still impuberes and converted with their family to Christianity, if the marriage is valid, the missionaries must work to persuade them to separate not only from bed but also from dwelling until the reaching of puberty (Resp. 2 May 1866).
The dispensation is rarely granted: a public cause is required, such as the concord of a kingdom, of a city, or of two families divided by deep hatred. In danger of death it can be granted even for a private cause.
III. ITALIAN LAW
The Italian Civil Code sets the attainment of the greater age [of majority] at the completion of the twenty-first year, and with this the capacity to perform all acts for which a different age is not established (art. 2). For example, it is upon completion of the eighteenth year that a minor "may provide his own labor, stipulate the relevant contracts and exercise the rights and actions that depend on them, save for special laws that establish a lower age" (art. 3).
For marriage, the Code of 1865 set the completion of the eighteenth year for the man and the fifteenth for the woman; the code currently in force, preceded in this by art. 1 of the law of 27 May 1929 no. 847, has conformed to canon law, establishing the completion of the sixteenth year for the man and the fourteenth for the woman, and allowing dispensation for grave reasons and the contracting of marriage after the completion of the fourteenth year of age for the man and the twelfth for the woman (art. 84).
Rem.: T. Sanchez, De matrimonio, Venice 1614, l. I, d. 16, and l. VII; A. Reiffenstuel, Int. canonicum, minorum, Macerata 1746, l. II, p. 46; F. X. Wernz, Int. decretalium, IV, Prato 1912, p. 105; R. De Ruggiero, Istituzioni di diritto civile, Naples 1912, p. 210; G. Cheboli, Int. matrimonii iuxta C. J. C., Trento 1921, p. 84; Wernz-Vidal, V (1925), p. 274; I. Delmaillo, Agr. III DDC, I, coll. 215-28, and bibliography cited there; A. Vernecchi, Creusen, Epitome iuris canonici, Rome 1927; P. Gupero, De matrimonio, Vatican City 1932, p. 385; F. M. Cippello, De matrimonio, Rome 1936, pp. 35 and 428; H. De Messaucher, Trostante de actibus humanis, 3rd ed., Malines 1939, pp. 50-51; F. Marsi, Delle persone fisiche, in Commentario del 1er libro del Codice civile, edited by M. D'Amelio, Florence 1940, pp. 91 and 279.
Giulio Pacelli