practically amounted to the intended husband giving the dowry to his future wife.  The husband was also allowed to present his wife with a donation (morgengabe) on the morning after the wedding; the amount was limited by King Liutprand to not more than one fourth of all his goods.[312] Breaking an engagement after the solemn betrothal had been entered into was a serious business.  The Visigoths refused to allow one party to break an engagement without the consent of the other; and if a woman, being already engaged, went over to another man without her parent’s or fiance’s leave, both she and the man who took her were handed over as slaves to the original fiance.[313] The other barbarians were content to inflict a money fine for breach of promise.[314]

[Sidenote:  Power of the husband.]

The woman on marrying passed into the power of her husband “according to the Sacred Scriptures,” and the husband thereupon acquired the lordship of all her property.[315] The law still protected the wife in some ways.  The Visigoths gave the father the right of demanding and preserving for his daughter her dowry.[316] The Ripuarians ordained that whatever the husband had given his wife by written agreement must remain inviolate.[317] King Liutprand made the presence of two or three of the woman’s male relatives necessary at any sale involving her goods, to see to it that her consent to the sale had not been forced.[318]

[Sidenote:  Divorce.]

On the subject of divorce the regulations of the several peoples are various; but the commands of the New Testament are alike strongly felt in all; and we may expect to find divorce limited by severe restrictions.[319] The Burgundians allowed it only for adultery or grave crimes, such as violating tombs.  If a wife presumed to dismiss her husband for any other cause, she was put to death (necetur in luto); to a husband who sent his wife a divorce without these specific reasons existing the law was more indulgent, allowing him to preserve his life by paying to his injured wife twice the amount that he had originally given her parents for her, and twelve solidi in addition; and in case he attempted to prove her guilty of one of the charges mentioned above and she was adjudged innocent, he forfeited all his goods to her and was forced to leave his home.[320] The Visigoths were equally strict; the husband who dismissed his wife on insufficient legal grounds lost all power over her and must return all her goods; his own must be preserved for the children; if there were none, the wife acquired his property.  A woman who married a divorced man while his first wife was living, was condemned for adultery and accordingly handed over to the first wife to be disposed of as the latter wished; exile, stripes, and slavery were the lot of a man who took another wife while his first partner was still alive.[321] The Alemanni and the Bavarians, who were more remote from Italy and hence from the Church, were influenced more by their own customs and allowed a pecuniary recompense to take the place of the harsher enactments.[322]