Chapter XX: Comparison of the Process of Change at Rome and in the Modern World

The Romans began with a doctrine of marriage which had four salient characteristics[229]:

A formal legal act almost invariably accompanying marriage.
A religious element in the oldest form of this act.
A subjection of the wife to the husband’s power.
A complete absorption of the wife’s property rights into the legal
personality of the husband.

-----

Footnote 229:

See above, p. 388 sqq. Although no formal legal act and no religious
rites were absolutely required for marriage at the time when we first
discover the Roman Law as a working system, the practice of using
either such an act or such rites was all but universal.

-----

These characteristics all vanished; and under the newer law and custom of the city, and ultimately of the Empire—

The act of marriage required no formalities, and was entirely a
private affair.
It was also a purely civil, not a religious, affair.
The wife became absolutely independent of her husband, remaining
(unless she had been emancipated) in the legal family of her
father.
The wife’s property remained her own, though it was usual for the
consorts to have some joint property.

Concurrently with and following on these changes there had come about in Rome a general decline of faith in the old deities, a faith partially, but not beneficially, replaced by Oriental superstitions. There had also come habits of luxury, a thirst for material enjoyment, a passion for amusements, a general relaxation of the moral restraints which public opinion had formerly imposed. Marriage had begun to be regarded mainly from the point of view of pecuniary interest or social advancement. There was comparatively little sentiment attaching to it, and not much sense of duty. Men grew less and less willing to marry; women as well as men less and less faithful. Fewer children were born. As neither religious nor moral associations sanctified the relation, and as it could be terminated at pleasure, it was lightly entered on, and this very heedlessness, making it frequently a failure, caused it to be no less lightly dissolved. Thus social habits and a standard of opinion were formed, against which the reforming efforts of Augustus and his successors could do little, and which resisted even the far more powerful efforts of Christianity, until Roman society itself went to pieces in the West, and passed into new forms in the East.

This decadence of the matrimonial relation was doubtless facilitated by three peculiarities of the law, viz. the absence of all prescribed forms for marriage and divorce, which set caprice free from legal restraints or delays, the extinction of any necessary connexion as regards property between the two spouses[230], and the fact that the legal family did not coincide with the natural family, for legally the wife remained in her father’s family and did not enter her husband’s. Nevertheless the underlying causes of that decadence were social and moral rather than legal causes.

-----

Footnote 230:

The _Dos_ supplied a connexion, but the wife’s right to claim it at
the end of the marriage was not greatly affected by her conduct (see
pp. 397 and 406 _supra_).

-----

In the modern world the change from the old state of things to the new has been slower and less complete. Still it offers a kind of parallel to the phenomena we have been considering.

Before the Reformation what were the features of the marriage relation in Europe?

It had a strongly religious character. Its formation was blessed by the Church. It was deemed a Sacrament. It was treated, for doctrinal reasons, as indissoluble. There were, to be sure, plenty of marriages essentially unhallowed, plenty of marriages contracted for the most sordid reasons, plenty of marriages with little affection; and there were also marriages tainted by sin. The standard of conjugal fidelity was in the fifteenth century a low one. Nevertheless the tie was deemed to be one which religion sanctified, and religious sentiment must have had a restraining effect upon tender consciences, and particularly upon the wife, women being usually more susceptible to religious emotion than men are.

It gave the husband, in most countries, and notably in England, an almost complete control over the property rights of the two spouses, and in this way held them together.

It gave the husband, and notably in England, almost complete control over the person and conduct of the wife, impressing upon her mind her dependence on him, and her duty to obey him. No doubt where the wife’s intellect or will was the stronger of the two her intellect guided or her will prevailed. Nevertheless her normal attitude was that of a submissive identification of her wishes and interests with his.

Whether these things made for affection, and for happiness, the outcome of affection, is another question. What we have to remark is that at any rate they drew the bond very tight, and formed a solid basis for family life. Bride and bridegroom took one another for richer for poorer, for better for worse, in sickness and in health, till death should them part.

What has been the course of things since the Reformation?

In Protestant countries the religious character of marriage has been sensibly weakened. Although the ceremony, in most of such countries, and notably in England, still usually receives ecclesiastical benediction, the tie is not to men’s or even to women’s minds primarily a religious tie. To most Protestants, the wedding service in church, or before a minister of religion, is rather an ornamental ceremony than essentially a sacred vow. The duties of the spouses are conceived of by them in a more or less worthy way, according to their respective religious and moral standards, but not generally, or at least seldom vividly, as a part of their duties towards God.

This is perhaps part of that general decline in the intensity of the feeling of sin which marks the Protestantism of our own time as compared with that of earlier centuries. I do not mean that people are any more sinful than they were—probably they are not. They were sinful enough in the seventeenth century. But wrong-doing presents itself more frequently to all but the most pious minds rather as something unworthy, something below their standard of honour, something disapproved by public opinion, than as something which deserves the wrath of God, and affects their true relation to Him as their Father. Thus the element of sin in any breach, be it slight or be it grave, of conjugal duty, would seem to be less present to the conscience of the average husband or wife now than it was formerly, at least if we are to take the literature (including the theological literature) of former times, when set beside that of our own, to be any guide.

The inquiry how far any similar change has passed upon sentiment in Roman Catholic peoples would lead us far, nor am I competent to pursue it. The conception of sin itself is not quite the same thing to pious Catholics as it is, or was, to pious Protestants. But, broadly speaking, marriage doubtless retains to Roman Catholics, and to the Orthodox church of the East, more of a sacred character than it does to Protestants, and the change in this respect from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century is doubtless greater among Protestants.