Woman physiologically considered as to mind, morals, marriage, matrimonial slavery, infidelity and divorce / By Alexander Walker.

  • Walker, Alexander, 1779-1852.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Woman physiologically considered as to mind, morals, marriage, matrimonial slavery, infidelity and divorce / By Alexander Walker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    years, and in that space not heard of, though gone to war in the service of the empire,’ she might divorce, and marry another by the edict of Constantine to Dal- matius.”’ [Bucer, adds ‘‘ The wife’s desertion of her hus- band the christian emperors plainly decreed to be a just cause of divorce, when as they granted him the right thereof, if she had but lain out one night against his will without probable cause.’’] <‘ And this was an age of the church, both ancient and cried up still for the most flourishing in knowledge and pious government since the apostles.—But to return to this law of Theo- dosius, with this observation by the way, that still .as the church corrupted, as the clergy grew more ignorant, and yet more usurping on the magistrates, who also now declined, so still divorce grew more restrained.” ‘“This law therefore of Theodosius—reduced the causes of divorce to a certain number, which by the judicial law of God, and all recorded humanity, were left before to the breast of each husband, provided that the dismiss was not without reasonable conditions to the wife. But this was a restraint not yet come to extremes. For besides adultery, and that not only actual, but suspected by signs there set down, any fault equally punishable with adultery, or equally infamous, might be the cause of a divorce. Which informs us how the wisest of those ages understood that place in the gospel, whereby not the pilfermg of a benevolence was considered as the main and only breach of wedlock, as is now thought, but the breach of love and peace, a more holy union than that of the flesh; and the dignity of an honest person regarded, not to be held in bondage with one whose ignominy was infectious. “ Justinian added three causes more. In the 117 Novell, most of the same causes are allowed, but the hberty of divorcing by consent is repealed: but by