42 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



marriages were denounced as especially abominable. 

 The mystic union of Christ and the Church — which 

 probably would never have been insisted upon but 

 for the fact that the Latin word for church was 

 feminine — was held to be symbolical of marriage, and 

 second marriages were therefore regarded as a sort of 

 infidelity to Heaven. St. Jerome in the fourth cen- 

 tury, while treating simple marriage as evil and 

 vicious in itself, reserved the worst vials of his wrath 

 for what was called digamy.^ This pious father con- 

 sidered that the " clean " animals in Noah's ark were 

 those that had had no intercourse with their kind, 

 the " unclean " being the remainder. Decrees were 

 made forbidding married women to approach the 

 altar or to touch the Eucharist, and it was even de- 

 clared to be doubtful whether married persons co- 

 habiting with each other could be saved. St. Chry- 

 sostom, in the fifth century, boldly averred that if 

 mau had not sinned the world would have been 

 peopled by other means. All married persons were 

 exhorted to pray for grace to keep themselves unde- 

 filed, and wives were commended for declining the 

 embraces of their husbands. 



^ In pagan Rome, and among the Germans also, second marriages 

 were discountenanced, but on the higher ground of the devotion due 

 by a widow to her husband's memory. 



