Pacta Sunt Servanda

Few rules for the ordering of Society have such a deep moral and religious influence as the principle of the sanctity of contracts: Pacta sunt servanda . In ancient times, this principle was developed in the Bast by the Chaldeans, the Egyptians and the Chinese in a noteworthy way. According to the view of these peoples, the national gods of each party took part in the formation of the contract. The gods were, so to speak, the guarantors of the contract and they threatened to intervene against the party guilty of a breach of contract. So it came to be that the making of a contract was bound up in solemn religious formulas and that a cult of contracts actually developed.