CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE AND MORALITY 43 



As the result of these doctrines innumerable im- 

 pediments were thrown in the way of marriage. 

 The forbidden degrees of consanguinity and affinity 

 were extended to a ridiculous length. Widows who 

 had promised to live a single life were excommuni- 

 cated if they married again. Any married woman 

 who wished to be a nun was allowed to leave her 

 husband and retire into a convent, and he was for- 

 bidden to take another wife. All married persons 

 were asked to abstain from cohabitation three days 

 before the Communion and forty days after Easter ; 

 next it was held to be as great a sin for a man to 

 cohabit with his wife in Lent as to eat flesh ; then 

 marriage was forbidden during Lent and at sundry 

 other specified seasons, until, as an old writer quietly 

 remarks, " there were but few weeks or days in the 

 year in which people could get married at all." As 

 inducements to chastity, stories were circulated as 

 to men who had won a crown of glory through re- 

 sisting the blandishments of courtesans and other 

 vicious women, and as to virgins who had been 

 miraculously cured of diseases through refusing to 

 uncover to doctors. No ordinance, in short, was too 

 monstrous, no tale too extravagant, to serve the pur- 

 pose of checking the legitimate intercourse of the sexes. 



