was that matrimony represents the union of Christ with the Church; that is indissoluble, and therefore its image must be indissoluble (Esmein, op. cit., vol. i, p. 64).  In part, also, one may well believe, the idea of the indissolubility of marriage suggested itself to the ecclesiastical mind by a natural association of ideas:  the vow of virginity in monasticism was indissoluble; ought not the vow of sexual relationship in matrimony to be similarly indissoluble?  It appears that it was not until 1164, in Peter Lombard’s Sentences, that clear and formal recognition is found of matrimony as one of the seven sacraments (Howard, op. cit., vol. i, p. 333).

The Church, however, had not only made marriage a religious act; it had also made it a public act.  The officiating priest, who had now become the arbiter of marriage, was bound by all the injunctions and prohibitions of the Church, and he could not allow himself to bend to the inclinations and interests of individual couples or their guardians.  It was inevitable that in this matter, as in other similar matters, a code of ecclesiastical regulations should be gradually developed for his guidance.  This need of the Church, due to its growing control of the world’s affairs, was the origin of Canon law.  With the development of Canon law the whole field of the regulation of the sexual relationships, and the control of its aberrations, became an exclusively ecclesiastical matter.  The secular law could take no more direct cognizance of adultery than of fornication or masturbation; bigamy, incest, and sodomy were not temporal crimes; the Church was supreme in the whole sphere of sex.

It was during the twelfth century that Canon law developed, and Gratian was the master mind who first moulded it.  He belonged to the Bolognese school of jurisprudence which had inherited the sane traditions of Roman law.  The Canons which Gratian compiled were, however, no more the mere result of legal traditions than they were the outcome of cloistered theological speculation.  They were the result of a response to the practical needs of the day before those needs had had time to form a foundation for fine-spun subtleties.  At a somewhat later period, before the close of the century, the Italian jurists were vanquished by the Gallic theologians of Paris as represented by Peter Lombard.  The result was the introduction of mischievous complexities which went far to rob Canon law alike of its certainty and its adaptation to human necessities.

Notwithstanding, however, all the parasitic accretions which swiftly began to form around the Canon law and to entangle its practical activity, that legislation embodied—­predominantly at the outset and more obscurely throughout its whole period of vital activity—­a sound core of real value.  The Canon law recognized at the outset that the essential fact of marriage is the actual sexual union, accomplished with the intention of inaugurating a permanent relationship.