434 THE FISH OF TOBIAS— DEMONIC POSSESSION 



But alas ! " this sad old romance, this unchivalrous story " 

 (to vary Lucille) must go to the wall. The jus, as thus con- 

 ceived and described, never in fact existed anywhere in civiUsed 

 Europe. The figment of its ruthless exercise as a legal right 

 by licentious lordlings owes its existence to a vivid imagination 

 uninfected by one germ of truth, as Lord Hailes, M. L, Veuillot, 

 and others clearly demonstrate. ^ 



It must come as a severe shock to preconceived ideas to run 

 up against the dull facts of history, and thence discover that 

 the jus primes noctis, so far from being the barbarous privilege 

 of deflowering an unwilling bride, was merely a right accorded 

 by the Church to the husband on the payment of a varying 

 fee to the bishops, etc., for the privilege of disregarding the 

 ecclesiastical ordinance, which required that his bride should 

 remain in a state of virginity for one, two, or three days ! ^ 



Continence for one night was first enjoined in the decree 

 passed by the Fourth Council of Carthage in 398 a.d.^ This, 

 extended to " two or three days," figured not only in the 

 Capitularies of Charlemagne, ^ but was received into the Canon 

 Law, and was twice repeated in the decretals of the Cathohc 

 Church. 5 



But what, it may be fairly asked, has the jus primce noctis 

 got to do with our Tobias and Sara ? The history of the con- 

 nection deserves tracing, not only to clear away its obscurity, 

 but also to show how a custom — important in result but based 

 simply on a variant version of Tobit — was by the Church early 

 adopted and widely inculcated. The days, during which the 



1 Annals of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1797), III. Appendix i, pp. 1-21 ; Lc Droit 

 iu Seigneur (Paris 1864), 191 &., 232-243, and 276 ff. As to the supposed 

 exception owing to the mythical law by that mythical king, Evenus or Eugenius, 

 by the provisions of which according to Boece (who in his History of Scotland, 

 published in 1527, seems to have been the first to resurrect or create the law, ' 

 and the monarch) landlords were permitted to " deflower the virgin brides 

 of their tenantry," see Cosmo Innes's Lectures on Legal Antiquities, 1872, 

 " in Scotland there is nothing to ground a suspicion of such a right," and 

 J. G. Frazer, op. cit., vol. I. pp. 485-493. 



* See the judgment delivered in 1409 in the case brought to the Bishop of 

 Amiens against the Mayor, etc., of Abbeville to establish his right to receive 

 such fees, which were " sometimes ten, sometimes twelve, sometimes twenty 

 I'arisian sous." 



' See Martine, de Antiq. Eccles. Ritibus, I. ix. 4. 



* J. P. Mignc, Patrologia Latina (Paris, 18O2), torn. I., p. 859, par. 463. 

 ' Lord Hailes, op. cit., iii. 15. 



