relief representations of late
Roman marriages on which Juno appears as _pronuba_, a figure of her
standing behind the spouses as protectress or patroness. Rossbach[1342]
thus interprets such a relief: "The bethrothed, with the assistance of
Juno, goddess of marriage, solemnly make the covenant of their love, to
which Venus and the Graces are favorable, by prayer and sacrifices
before the gods. By the aid of Juno love becomes a legitimate marriage."
Rossbach mentions exactly similar reliefs in which Christ is the
_pronuba_, and the transition to Christianity is distinctly presented.
In a similar manner ideas and customs about marriage were brought under
Christian symbol or ceremony, and handed down to us as "Christian
marriage." The origin of them is in the mores of the classes who
accepted Christianity, which were subjected to a grand syncretism in the
first centuries of Christianity.

+425. Ancient German marriage.+ No documents were necessary until the
time of Justinian (550 A.D.), an oral agreement being sufficient, if
probable. There were essential parts of the Roman wedding usages which
were independent of paganism and which were necessarily performed at
home. In the Eastern empire concubinage was abolished at the end of the
ninth century. The heathen Germans had two kinds of marriage, one with,
the other without, jural consequences. Both were marriage. The
difference was that one consisted in betrothal, endowment, and a solemn
wedding ceremony; the other lacked these details. Here, again, it is
worth while to notice that property and rank would very largely control
the question which of these two forms was more suitable. Consequences as
to property followed from the former form which were wanting in the
latter. If the pair had no property, the latter form was sufficient. In
mediaeval Christian Germany the canon law obliterated the distinction,
but then morganatic marriage was devised, by which a man of higher rank
could marry a woman of lower rank without creating rights of property or
rank in her or her children. In such a form of marriage the Roman law
saw lack of _affectus maritalis_ and of _deligere honore pleno_; hence
the union was concubinage, not marriage. The German law held that the
intention to marry made marriage, and that property rights were another
matter.[1343] The ancient mores lasted on and kept control of marriage,
and the church, in its efforts to establish its own theories of
marriage, proper