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an institution which is so closely connected with religion. 

 We might fancy that it would have been the first 

 business of the Christian bishops to urge on the civil 

 government the necessity of submitting matrimony to the 

 regulations of the church. But though several of the 

 first Christian emperors issued unimportant changes in 

 the laws about the relationship of the married parties, 

 none thought of introducing a fixed form for the mar- 

 riage. Justinian, though he pronounced matrimony to 

 be a mere civil contract, was the first who attempted to 

 connect it legally with the church. 



In a novel of the year 538 he ordei*ed that all persons 

 belonging to the rank of a senator, or who could claim 

 the title " ilhistres" and upwards, should make written 

 pacta dotalia when concluding a marriage ; persons of less 

 rank, though not belonging to the lowest classes, should 

 go into an oratory and declare there, before the " defensor 

 ecclesice,'^ a kind of chiirchwarden, in presence of three or 

 four ecclesiastics, their intention to marry. But so strong 

 was in the Eoman empire the idea that the wedding was 

 a mere private affair, with which public powers should 

 not meddle, that already, four years afterwards, Justinian 

 abolished again this order, as far as it concerns the 

 church, and only preserved the necessity of the written 

 pacta dotalia for the highest classes. This apparently 

 strange phenomenon is easily explained by the internal 

 condition of the Christian church itself. The Church of 

 Christ was still satisfied Avith the internal api:)robation 

 and the faith of man, and had not grown into a church 

 which appeared in the same time as a worldly institution, 

 adorned with worldly power and worldly glory. The 

 church of these ages had her dominion rather in the volun- 

 tary and hearty submission of man, than in the splendour 

 of her ceremonies and the terrestial power of her bishops. 

 It had always been the custom, in the first Christian 



