[191] Or, properly speaking, to the husband’s father, if he was still alive (Rossbach, op. cit. p. 11).
[192] Leist, Alt-arische Juris Civile, i. 175. Maine, op. cit. p. 155.
[193] Rossbach, op. cit. pp. 36, 117.
[194] Valerius Maximus, ii. 1 (De matrimoniorum ritu), Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticæ, iv. 3. 1.
[195] Bryce, Studies in History and Jurisprudence, ii. 389.
[196] Rossbach, op. cit. pp. 30, 42. Maine, op. cit. p. 155 sq. Friedlaender, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms, i. 252 sqq.
This remarkable liberty granted to married women, however, was only a passing incident in the history of the family in Europe. From the very first Christianity tended to narrow it. Already the latest Roman law, so far as it is touched by the Constitutions of the Christian Emperors, bears some marks of a reaction against the liberal doctrines of the great Antonine jurisconsults, who assumed the equality of the sexes as a principle of their code of equity.[197] And this tendency was in a formidable degree supported by Teutonic custom and law. Among the Teutons a husband’s authority over his wife was the same as a father’s over his unmarried daughter.[198] This power, which under certain circumstances gave the husband a right to kill, sell, or repudiate his wife,[199] undoubtedly contained much more than the Church could approve of, and so far she has helped to ameliorate the condition of married women in Teutonic countries. But at the same time the Church is largely responsible for those heavy disabilities with regard to personal liberty, as well as with regard to property, from which they have suffered up to recent times. The systems, says Sir Henry Maine, “which are least indulgent to married women are invariably those which have followed the Canon Law exclusively, or those which, from the lateness of their contact with European civilisation, have never had their archaisms weeded out.”[200]
[197] Maine, op. cit. pp. 156, 154.
[198] Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, i. 75. Stemann, Den danske Retshistorie indtil Christian V.’s Lov, p. 323.
[199] Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 450 sq. Brunner, op. cit. i. 75. Schröder, Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, p. 303.