tian emperors on second marriages
reflects the various feelings of the Church Fathers on the subject.
Under the old law, people could marry as often as they wished without
any penalties.[258] But we have seen that among some of the Churchmen
second marriages were held in peculiar abhorrence, and third nuptials
were regarded as a hideous sin; while the orthodox clergy, like St.
Augustine and St. Jerome, permitted second and third marriages, but
damned them with faint praise and urged Christians to be content with
one venture. Public opinion, custom, and the influence of the old Roman
law were too powerful to allow Christian monarchs to become fanatical on
the subject[259]; but certain stricter regulations were introduced by
the pious Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius, in the years 380, 381,
and 382.[260] As under the old laws any widow who married again before
the legal time of mourning--a year--had expired, became infamous and
lost both cast and all claims to the goods of her deceased husband. She
was furthermore not permitted to give a second husband more than one
third of her property nor leave him more than one third by will; and she
could receive no intestate succession beyond the third degree. A woman
who proceeded to a second marriage after the legal period of mourning,
must make over at once to the children of the first marriage all the
property which her former husband had given or left to her. As to her
own personal property, she was allowed to possess it and enjoy the
income while she lived, but not to alienate it or leave it by will to
any one except the children of the first marriage. As I have before
remarked, Roman law constantly had the interest of the children at
heart.[261] If there was no issue of the first marriage, then the woman
had free control. A mother acquired full right--as the old Senatus
consultum Tertullianum had decreed--to the property of a son or daughter
who died childless[262]; but if she married a second time, and her son
or daughter died without leaving children or grandchildren, she was
expelled from all succession and distant relatives acquired the
property.[263]

[Sidenote: Justinian moderates these laws to a great degree.]

Justinian changed these enactments to a pronounced degree. "We are not
making laws that are too bitter against women who marry a second time,"
he remarks,[264] "and we do not want to lead them, in consequence of
such action, to the harsh necessity, unworthy