quote the words of Sir Henry Maine, "the situation of the Roman female, whether married or unmarried, became one of great personal and proprietary independence." He continues:
"But Christianity tended somewhat from the very first to narrow this remarkable liberty. Led at first by justifiable disrelish for the loose practices of the decaying heathen world, but afterwards hurried on by a passion of asceticism, the professors of the new faith looked with disfavour on a marital tie which was in fact the laxest the Western world has seen. The latest Roman law, so far as it is touched by the Constitutions of the Christian emperors, bears some marks of a reaction against the liberal doctrines of the great Antonine jurisconsults."[1]
Justinian, acting under the influence of the Church, so far abandoned the old contractual notion of marriage, which prevailed in the Roman law, as to prohibit divorce by mutual consent, but his legislation in this particular was beyond the endurance of his subjects. His successor, Justin, repealed his prohibitions in deference to the popular wishes. With the downfall of the Empire in the West, and the
- ↑ See "Ancient Law," p. 156, Tenth Edition.
