]

+428. Mode of expressing _consensus_.+ If the consent of the parties is
regarded as essential, then the public proceedings must bring out an
expression of will. The ancient German usage was that the friends formed
a circle in which the persons to be married took their place, and the
woman's guardian, later her most distinguished friend, asked them (the
woman first) whether it was their will to become man and wife,--these
terms being defined in the mores. This was a convenient and rational
proceeding, of primitive simplicity and adaptation to the purpose. In
Scandinavia and Iceland the ancient laws contained exact prescriptions
as to the person who might officiate as the conductor of this ceremony.
Relatives of the bride, first on her father's side, then on her
mother's, were named in a series according to rank.[1350] Such a
prolocutor is taken for understood in the _Constitutio de Nuptiis_
(England).[1351] To him the man promises to take the woman to wife "by
the law of God and the customs of the world, and that he will keep her
as a man ought to keep his wife." Evidently these statements convey no
idea of wedlock unless the mores of the time and place are known. They
alone could show how a man "ought to keep his wife." The man also
promises to show due provision of means of support, and his friends
become his sureties. Through the Middle Ages great weight was given to
the provision for the woman throughout her life, especially in case of
widowhood. In fact, a "wife" differed from a mistress by virtue of this
provision for her life. In the _Constitutio de Nuptiis_ it is added,
"Let a priest be present at the nuptials, who is to unite them of right,
with the blessing of God, in full plenitude of felicity."

+429. Marriage at the church door.+ In a French ritual of 700 A.D. the
priest goes to the church door and asks the young pair (who appear to be
walking and wooing in the street) whether they want to be duly married.
The proceedings all concern the marriage gifts, after which there is a
benediction at the church door, and then the pair go into the church to
the mass. A hundred years later the priest asked for the _consensus_,
and statement of the gift from the groom to the bride, and for a gift
for the poor. Then the woman was given _by her father_ or friends.[1352]

+430. Marriage in Germany in the early Middle Ages.+ In the Frank,
Suabian, Westphalian, and Bavarian laws "the woman was entitled to her
dower when