Remarriage.
In accordance with the commands of Scripture neither the divorced man nor the divorced woman could marry again during the lifetime of the other party. To do so was to commit adultery, for which the usual penalties went into effect.
Property rights and powers.
A woman's property would consist of any or all of these:
I. Her share of the property of parents or brothers and sisters.
II. Her dowry and whatever nuptial donations (morgengabe) her husband had given her, and whatever she had earned together with her husband.
There could be no account of single women's property or disposal of what they earned, because in the half-civilised state of things which then obtained there was no such thing as women engaging in business; indeed, not even men of any pretension did so; war was their work. The unmarried woman was content to sit by the fire and spin under the guardianship and support of a male relative. Often she would enter a convent.
I shall first discuss the laws of inheritance as affecting women, in order to note what property she was allowed to acquire. In this connection it is well to bear in mind a difference between Roman and Germanic law. The former viewed an inheritance as consisting always of a totality of all goods, whether of money, land, movables, cattle, dress, or what not. But among the Germanic peoples land, money, ornaments, and the like were regarded as so many distinct articles of inheritance, to some of which women might have legal claims of succession, but not necessarily to all. This is most emphatically shown in the case of land. Of all the barbarian peoples, the Ripuarians alone allowed women the right to succeed to land.[[329]] Among other nations a daughter or sister or mother, whoever happened to be the nearest heir, would get the money, slaves, etc., but the nearest male kin would get the land.[[330]] Only if male kin were lacking to the fifth degree—an improbable contingency—did alodial inheritance "pass from the lance to the spindle."[[331]] In respect to all other things a daughter was co-heir with a son to the estate of a father or mother. According to the Salic and
Ripuarian law this would be one order of succession[[332]]:
| I. | Children of the deceased. |
| II. | These failing, surviving mother or father of deceased. |
| III. | These failing, brother or sister of deceased. |
| IV. | These failing, sister of mother of deceased. |
| V. | These failing, sister of father of deceased. |
| VI. | These failing, male relatives on father's side. |