Divorce
by Matthew Woods (9781459066311)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II Similar causes for the dissolution of the bond of matrimony are to be found in the laws of Honorius and Theodorus in the fifth century, and also in those of Theodosius and Valentinian near the sixth. All these legislators were orthodox, and Theodosius in particular was so much so, after the ancient manner, that his most enduring ambition was to extirpate by every means heresy, Judaism, and Paganism, and to convert the world to such Christianity as he only.knew, ? that is to say, such as was founded upon the example of the Holy Roman Empire rather than upon Christ. Yet, to show that he was not exclusively one-sided, it was this same Valentinian " who, on account of the scandalous abuse by ecclesiastics of influence over their penitents, excluded priests and monks from the rights of succession in property." This Christian emperor later gave marriage political significance by extending the grounds of its annulment so as to permit the wife " to divorce her husband for conspiracy against the government," and for attempting to make her a victim of manslaughter, a frequently mentioned perversion, for wife and husband murder was a common crime among the faithful even before the world was perverted by Martin Luther, John Cal- r vin, John Knox, Zola, Anatole France, or Bernard Shaw, or it was found necessary for the amusing Mr. Chesterton to assume the cap and bells as defender of the faith. Uxoricide in the old days was regarded, it would appear by its frequency, a commendably prompt way of getting rid of an uncongenial partner; it was at least expeditious, it did not take as long as the securing of a divorce, and besides it was cheaper. A woman also, according to Justinian's code, could divorce her husband " for urging her to a life of shame." This, too, wa...

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