Howard, op. cit., vol. i, p. 259; Smith and Cheetham, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, art. Arrhæ. It would appear, however, that the "bride-sale," of which Tacitus speaks, was not strictly the sale of a chattel nor of a slave-girl, but the sale of the mund or protectorship over the girl. It is true the distinction may not always have been clear to those who took part in the transaction. Similarly the Anglo-Saxon betrothal was not so much a payment of the bride's price to her kinsmen, although as a matter of fact, they might make a profit out of the transaction, as a covenant stipulating for the bride's honorable treatment as wife and widow. Reminiscences of this, remark Pollock and Maitland (op. cit., vol. ii, p. 364), may be found in "that curious cabinet of antiquities, the marriage ritual of the English Church."
Howard, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 278-281, 386. The Arrha crept into Roman and Byzantine law during the sixth century.
J. Wickham Legg, Ecclesiological Essays, p. 189. It may be added that the idea of the subordination of the wife to the husband appeared in the Christian Church at a somewhat early period, and no doubt independently of Germanic influences; St. Augustine said (Sermo XXXVII, cap. vi) that a good materfamilias must not be ashamed to call herself her husband's servant (ancilla).