[103] Ibid., 1009, 8.
[104] The ecclesiastical laws of Howell the Good of Wales (928) show more clearly, perhaps, than is done anywhere else the way in which the church was often constrained to put up with barbarian custom. One-sided divorce with remarriage is allowed each party, under penalty for repudiation without legal cause. If the husband desert the wife within seven years, he must pay her the dower (agweddi), the maiden-fee (cowyll), and the maiden-dues (gobyr) for the lord. "If after seven years, he leave her; let all be shared between them, unless privilege should give precedence to the husband: two parts of the children go to the husband, and the third to the mother. The eldest and the youngest go to the father." "A man is free to forsake his wife, if she notoriously attach herself to another man; and she is to obtain nothing of her right excepting the three things [cowyll, argyvren (paraphernalia), wyneb-werth (fine for husband's fornication)] which are not to be taken from a woman, and the seducer is to pay to the lawful husband his saraad," or injury fine. "If a man deserts his wife unlawfully and takes another; the rejected wife is to remain in her house until the end of the ninth day; and then, if she be suffered to depart entirely from her husband, everything belonging to her is to go in the first place out of the house; and then she is to go last out of the house, after all her property; after that, on bringing the other into the house, he is to give dilysdawd (assurance) to the first wife; because no man, by law, is to have two wives." "Whoever shall leave his wife, and shall repent leaving her, she having been given to another husband; if the first husband overtake her with one foot in the bed and the other out; the first husband by law is to have her." "For three causes, if a woman desert her husband, she is not to lose her dower: for leprosy; want of connection; and bad breath."—Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, I, 246-51.
[105] Geffcken, op. cit., 45, who gives, 44-46, 52-55, an interesting discussion of the reasons for the absence of divorce regulations during the Merovingian era.
[106] Esmein, op. cit., II, 58, 64; Geffcken, op. cit., 55.
[107] The dates are uncertain. In general, on these synods see Freisen, op. cit., 782-84; Geffcken, op. cit., 55-57; and especially Esmein, op. cit., II, 64-69; who gives a clear summary of their decrees. Cf. Perrone, De mat. christ., III, 332, 338 ff.
[108] Esmein, op. cit., II, 69.
[109] C. ix of the decree runs: "Si quis necessitate inevitabili cogente in alium ducatum seu provinciam fugerit, aut seniorem suum, cui fidem mentiri non poterit, secutus fuerit, et uxor ejus, cum valet et potest, amore parentum aut rebus suis, eum sequi noluerit, ipsa omni tempore, quamdiu vir ejus, quem secuta non fuerit, vivet, semper innupta permaneat. Nam ille vir ejus ... si se abstinere non potest, aliam uxorem cum poenitentia potest accipere." Cf. Esmein, op. cit., II, 66, note. In contrast with this decision, the Synod of Compiègne forbids both parties to remarry when the husband abandons his wife in order to escape private vengeance: ibid., 66.
[110] Esmein, op. cit., II, 68; I, 325: ap. c. vi, decree of Verberie. Cf. also Freisen, op. cit., 788; and Cigoi, Unauflös. der ch. Ehe., 74, who regards this synod more as an imperial diet than an ecclesiastical assembly, and so excuses its action. Cf. Hefele, Konzilien-Geschichte, III, 537.
[111] Esmein, op. cit., II, 65.
[112] These decrees are for the most part included in the collection of Gratian; "mais il se fera tout un travail pour les mettre d'accord avec la règle triomphante de l'indissolubilité; elles contribueront néanmoins à introduire, dissimulées sous la forme de nullités, de véritables exceptions à cette règle."—Esmein, op. cit., II, 69.