places presbyters were forbidden to take part in the festivities at second marriages. Leo the Wise, Emperor of the East, was allowed to marry thrice without remon strance, but when he married a fourth time he was suspended from communion. The early Emperors in their legislation discouraged second marriages; they legalized the condition (so often used in this enlight ened age, and so obnoxious to every sensi tive practitioner) that a widow's right to her husband's property should cease on her re marriage. The Leonine Constitutions at the end of the ninth century made a third mar riage punishable. Second marriages, by the Canon Law, are forbidden to be blessed by the Church and are a disqualification for or ders. Third and fourth marriages in the East are treated as manifest incontinence; and in the Greek church, even at the present day, a fourth marriage is forbidden. Now a word or two anent marriages in the early church. Christians were not allowed to unite themselves with infidels, or Jews, or heathen, or any of a different religion. Saint Paul so said. (I Cor. vi, 15: II Cor. vi, 14). Cyprian, Tertullian, Jerome, Augustine and a host of others of the Fathers agree thereto; and the councils of Laodicea, Car thage, Agde, Chalcedon, Arles and Eliberis passed canons to the same effect. Constantius made it a capital crime for a Jew to marry a Christian, but laid no penalty upon the Christian marrying the Jew. The edict of Valentinian and Theodosius (which now stands in the Justinian code) said if any Jew presumed to marry a Christian woman or a Christian took to wife a Jewess, the offence was punishable as adultery, that is, by death. The Church had to be notified of the in tention to marry, and persons nearly allied by consanguinity or affinity were forbidden by canon to unite. By the law of the Church and of the early Christian emperors,
the marriage of children under age, without the consent of their parents or guardians, was considered unlawful and the offspring illegitimate; in like manner slaves had to get the consent of their masters. Persons of high rank might not debase themselves by marrying slaves; the civil law required parties to be "pares gencre et morions," of equal rank and condition. Constant ine passed a law forbidding senators, governors of provin ces, or city magistrates to marry slaves, or freedwomen, or- actresses, or the daughters of actresses, or of innkeepers, under pain of infamy and outlawry, and of having their children illegitimate and incapable of inherit ing their father's property. Under another of Constantine's laws a poor slave who mar ried the common councilman of a city was condemned to the mines, and the indiscreet man was banished for life and had his goods confiscated. To prevent undue coercion, the judge of a province, during the period of ad ministration, could not betroth a woman of his province, nor could his son, grandson, kinsman, councilor, or domestic. Nor could a man marry his ward during her minority, nor could his son. Justinian forbade a man wedding his god-daughter; the council of Trullo went a step further and punished him if he married his god-daughter's mother; the Canon law pushed this further still. Some of the laws in the Justinian code allowed marriage after lawful divorce; but (according to Bingham) until the council of Trent the Church was divided on this subject; nor were the early Fathers of one mind as to whether an adulterer could marry a woman, after her husband's death, with whom he had committed adultery in the said hus band's lifetime. The council of Laodicea prohibited all marriages in Lent; that of Lerida {an. 524) added Advent to the for bidden season; while Henry II. made an or der {an. 1322) prohibiting weddings from
