The opinion of the ancients, who thought that there could be a theft of a piece of land or a place, is now abandoned, and there are imperial constitutiones which provide that no possessor of an immoveable shall be deprived of the benefit of a long and undoubted possession.
8. Sometimes even a thing stolen or seized by violence may be acquired by use; for instance, if it has come back into the power of its owner, for then, the vice being purged, the acquisition by use may take place.
9. Things belonging to our fiscus cannot be acquired by use. But Papinian has given his opinion that if, before bona vacantia have been reported to the fiscus, a bona fide purchaser receives any of them, he can acquire the property by use. And the Emperor Antoninus Pius, and the Emperors Severus and Antoninus, have issued rescripts in accordance with this opinion.
10. Lastly, it is to be observed that a thing must be tainted with no vice, that the bona fide purchaser or person who possesses it from any other just cause may acquire it by use.
11. But if a mistake is made as to the cause of possession, and it is wrongly supposed to be just, there is no usucapion. As, for instance, if any one possesses in the belief that he has bought, when he has not bought, or that he has received a gift, when no gift has really been made to him.
In favor of the heir or bonorum possessor
12. Long possession, which has begun to reckon in favor of the deceased, is continued in favor of the heir or bonorum possessor, although he may know that the immoveable belongs to another person; but if the deceased commenced his possession mala fide, the possession does not profit the heir or bonorum possessor, although ignorant of this. And our constitutio has enacted the same with respect to usucapions, in which the benefit of possession is to be in like manner continued.
13. Between the buyer and the seller, too, the Emperors Severus and Antoninus have decided by rescript that their several times of possession shall be reckoned together.
14. It is provided by an edict of the Emperor Marcus, that a person who has purchased from the fiscus a thing belonging to another person, may repel the owner of the thing by an exception, if five years have elapsed since the sale. But a constitutio of Zeno of sacred memory has completely protected those who receive anything from the fiscus by sale, gift, or any other title, by providing that they themselves are to be at once secure, and made certain of success, whether they sue or are themselves sued in an actio, while they who think that they have a good ground of action as owners or mortgagees of the things alienated may bring an actio against the sacred treasury within four years.
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