Thus it appears that during the two centuries between Constantine and Justinian the legislation of the state relative to the vital question of divorce is practically untouched by the influence of Christianity. Informal divorce _bona gratia_[77] and divorce by mutual consent, both contrary to Christian teaching, are freely allowed. The principle of further marriage after separation is fully maintained for the innocent party, and usually under restrictions for the guilty person as well. The causes of legal divorce are, indeed, limited and the penalties for unjust repudiation made more severe; but the strict principle of indissolubility of the marriage bond, as already conceived by Augustine and his contemporaries, is completely ignored.[78] [Footnote 77: On divorce _bona gratia_ see WÄCHTER, _op. cit._, 224 ff.] [Footnote 78: _Cf._ the conclusions of GEFFCKEN, _op. cit._, 28, 29; WOOLSEY, _op. cit._, 101.] _d_) _The compromise with German custom._--Far more important in its results is the contact of the Christian doctrine with Germanic customs and ideas. To the newly converted nations of Teutonic stock came the western empire as a proper heritage. It would be their task to make the history of the future; to construct a new civilization by blending the best elements of their own culture with the maturer results of Roman experience. But this could be accomplished only through ages of struggle and compromise; through a slow and painful process of amalgamation in religion, language, and jurisprudence. For the Germans were relatively young in social progress. In law and institutions at the time of conversion they stood about where the Romans were when Roman legendary history begins. With respect to the customs of marriage and divorce they stood even lower; for the earliest collections of folk-laws, some of which were made after the acceptance of Christianity, disclose marriage as a real contract of sale through which the wife in theory, and no doubt often in practice, becomes the husband's chattel. With regard to the primitive law of divorce there is scarcely any direct information. But it seems probable that originally the right of repudiation was the sole privilege of the man, though in practice the arbitrary use of his power must have been restrained by dread of the blood-feud and the fear of pecuniary sacrifice.[79] In the historical period, however, and long after the conversion divorce by mutual agreement seems to have prevailed very widely among the Germanic peoples; but with the exception of the _Lex romana Burgundionum_, it does not appear to be sanctioned in the folk-laws until the seventh[80] century, which fact has led to the conjecture that this form of separation, "originally alien to the German legal consciousness," was gradually adopted under Roman influence.[81] The folk-laws show that, side by side with divorce by free consent of the parties, the husband still possessed the right