opinion of Papinian and the ancient jurists, to savage customs, which make the wife the slave, and not the companion, of her husband.
Among the Germans and the Scandinavians, the man alone had the right of repudiation according to the almost universal usage of barbarous peoples; however, divorce by mutual consent was tolerated.[1] The Salic law also permitted divorce, and we find in Marculphus the form of an act of divorce by mutual consent. "The husband and wife, such and such a one, seeing that discord troubles their marriage and that love does not rule in it, have agreed to separate, and leave each other mutually free, without opposition from either party, under pain of a fine of one pound."
The pagan Irish had rendered divorce useless by instituting marriages of one year, at the end of which the wife could be repudiated by the temporary husband and even ceded to another for a fresh year. These experimental marriages were made or unmade, sometimes on the first of May, and sometimes on the first of November of each year.[2]
Repudiations at the will of the husband are still in use among the Teherkesses of the Caucasus, whose customs have more than one feature in common with those of our ancestors of barbarous Europe. With them the husband can repudiate in two manners: either by sending away his wife in the presence of witnesses, and leaving the dowry to the parents, which implies the liberty to marry again for the repudiated wife; or by simply driving the wife away, and then he can recall her again during one year.[3]
In France, under the two first races, the man could put away the woman; he could even, which is more rare and original, repudiate his family, and leave it, after a declaration before the judge, and this destroyed all rights of inheritance on both sides. Later, under the influence of the Catholic clergy, who by reason, no doubt, of their want of practical experience in the "things of the flesh," claimed energetically the right of regulating all conjugal questions, a distinction
