Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

Concubinatus

[Latin "concubinage"] Roman law. A permanent, monogamous union of a man and a woman who are not legally married. 0 Concubinatus was not prohibited by law, but carried fewer benefits than a legal marriage. Cf. JUSTAE NUPTIAE."[Cloncubinage (concubinatus) ... was something to which we have no precise analogue in modern law, for, so far from being prohibited by the law, it was regulated thereby, being treated as a lawful connexion. It is almost a sort of unequal marriage (and is practically so described by some of the jurists) existing between persons of different station - the man of superior rank, the woman of a rank so much inferior that it is not to be presumed that his union with her was intended to be a marriage." James Bryce, "Marriage and Divorce under Roman and English Law," in 3 Select Essays in AngloAmerican Legal History 806-07 (1909).