If a desire for the public welfare has induced Us to substitute good laws for those which are worthless, it must also impel Us to enact such as may contribute to the happiness of Our subjects, instead of others that are bad and injurious, and especially where two of them are conflicting with reference to the same subject. Would it then be in accordance with reason that, when, from the generals and magistrates who are most eminent and best qualified, those who are the most competent and considered to be best adapted to govern Our subjects are selected; on the other hand, one should choose among the laws, whose authority is not temporary like that of the officials who administer them, not the best but the worst, and even those whose very existence was not known, should be accepted as rules of conduct? But for what purpose have these things been mentioned by Us? The Emperor Justinian, who adorned his reign as much by his piety as by his solicitude for the public welfare, while considering the dissolution of marriage, after having decided that if a wife, during the lifetime of her husband, should marry another man, her union with the latter will be regarded as void, and she shall be separated from him on the ground of having been guilty of perfidy; then decreed by a subsequent law that under such circumstances the first marriage did not bring about the annulment of the second. We, however, believing that it is more conducive to general prosperity to ratify his first provisions, since they have a tendency to strengthen the ties of marriage, do hereby direct that the former law shall be observed, and the latter repealed. Therefore, when it is ascertained that a woman, during the lifetime of her husband, has formed the intention of marrying another man, and has accomplished her infamous design, she shall be taken from him with whom her marriage must be dissolved, and rigidly condemned to the pecuniary penalties to which those who abandon their husbands in any other way are liable. For it is proper that she who formed one flesh with her husband, and instead of lavishing her affection upon him, not only showed that she was his enemy, but also insulted her Creator who joined her to him by uniting herself with another man, shall be compelled to renounce her second marriage, if she has violated her former vows; for what greater indication and evidence of hostility can she show to her husband than to desert him and bestow her affection upon another?