[Footnote 93: C. 6 of the laws of the Longobard Grimoald appended to the _Edictus Rothari_ in 668, after acceptance of orthodox Catholicism, permits the wife not guilty of a _culpa legitima_ to leave the husband who keeps permanently in the house a concubine whom he prefers to the wife. It may be noted that occasional fornication is not mentioned; and that c. 8 of the law assumes as a rule that there will be a reconciliation: GEFFCKEN, _op. cit._, 41, 42. _Cf._ FREISEN, _op. cit._, 780, who holds that, according to c. 8 of the _Lex Grimoald._, bigamy does not allow the wife a divorce.] Such are the salient features of secular legislation on German territory following the migration and settlement of the new nations. Let us now look at the question from the opposite point of view--that of the decrees and practice of the church itself. For more than three hundred years after the strict theory of Augustine had been proclaimed by the Council of Carthage and by Innocent I. in the beginning of the fifth century, there is more or less wavering on the part of ecclesiastical authorities. In general, it may be said there is a tendency to uphold the rigid doctrine of indissolubility; but the evidences of compromise with popular sentiment are by no means wanting. Almost always in the papal letters divorce with remarriage is absolutely forbidden.[94] Yet in 726 Gregory II., in a letter addressed to St. Boniface, permits a man to contract a new marriage because his wife by reason of infirmity is unable to perform her conjugal duty; and this opinion has proved a sore puzzle to canonists and theologians, for it is utterly inconsistent with an earlier decision of the same pontiff.[95] A similar inconsistency exists in the conciliar decrees. The doctrine of indissolubility is rigidly enforced by the Council of Angers in 453; the two Councils of Orleans in 533; the Council of Nantes in 658; that of Friuli in 796; and generally by those of the ninth century.[96] On the other hand, several decrees are much more tolerant. In 465 the Council of Vannes "expressly exempts from anathema those men who marry again after putting away their wives for adultery proved;"[97] and, still more liberal, the Council of Agde, 505, while expressly allowing more than one cause of separation _a vinculo_, threatens with excommunication only those who repudiate their wives for the sake of remarriage without "establishing in advance before the bishops of the province the causes of their divorce."[98] [Footnote 94: ESMEIN, _Le mariage en droit canonique_, II, 59; FREISEN, _op. cit._, 782; LUCKOCK, _Hist. of Marriage_, 154-72.]