ADULTERINE, in the civil law, is particularly applied to a child issued from an adulterous amour or commerce. Adulterine children are more odious than the illegitimate offspring of single persons.—The Roman law even refuses them the title of natural children; as if nature disowned them.—Adulterine children are not easily dispensed with for admission to orders. Those are not deemed adulterine, who are begotten of a woman openly married, through ignorance of a former wife being alive.—By a decree of the parliament of Paris, adulterine children are declared not legitimated by the subsequent marriage of the parties, even though a papal dispensation be had for such marriage, wherein is a clause of legitimation.
Adulterine Marriages, in St. Augustine's sense, denote second marriages, contracted after a divorce.