Volume 2

History of European morals from Augustus to Charlemagne / William Edward Hartpole Lecky.

  • Lecky, William Edward Hartpole, 1838-1903.
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: History of European morals from Augustus to Charlemagne / William Edward Hartpole Lecky. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    neetions, and made it a main object to authorise, dignify, and regulate them. The unlimited licence of divorce practically included them under the name of marriage, while that name sheltered them from stigma, and prevented many of the gra vest evils of unauthorised unions. The word concubine also, which in the Republic had the same signification as among ourselves, represented in the Empire a strictly legal union—an innovation which was chiefly due to Augustus, and was doubtless intended as part of the legislation against celibacy, and also, it may be, as a corrective of the licentious habits that were general. This union was in essentials merely a form of marriage, for he who, having a concubine, took to himself either a wife or another concubine, wag legally guilty of adultery. Like the commonest form of marriage, it was consummated without any ceremony, and was dissoluble at will. Its peculiarities were that it was contracted between men of patrician rank and freedwomen, who were forbidden by law to intermarry; that the concubine, though her position was perfectly recognised and honourable, did not share the rank of her partner, that she brought no dowry, and that her children followed her rank, and were excluded from the rank and the inheritance of their father.1 Against these notions Christianity declared a direct and implacable warfare, which was imperfectly reflected in the civil legislation, but appeared unequivocally in the writings of the Fathers, and in most of the decrees of the Councils.2 1 See Troplong, Influence du Christianwne sur le Droit, pp. 239- 251. 2 We find, however, traces of a toleration of the Roman type of con¬ cubine in Christianity for some time. Thus, a Council of Toledo decreod : ‘ Si quis habens uxorem delis concubinam habeat non com- municet. Caeterum is qui non habet uxorem et pro uxore concubinam habet a communione non repellatur, tantum ut unius mulieris, aut uxoris aut concubinae ut ei placuerit, sit conjunctione contentus.’— 1 Can. 17* St. Isidore said: ‘ Christiano non dicam plurimas sed nec duas simul habere licitum est, nisi unam