[Footnote 133: GEFFCKEN, _op. cit._, 52. _Cf._ on this decree and its use by the canonists ESMEIN, _op. cit._, II, 89, notes.] Even during the Carolingian era theoretically the state still maintained the old position. The judgment in a penal action neither nullified nor enforced self-divorce. In reality, however, the power of the church in this field was vastly increased at the expense of the state.[134] For the state then undertook as never before to enforce the discipline through which hitherto the church had striven in vain to realize her doctrine.[135] Backed by the state, the church thereafter had the power to compel a restitution of conjugal life when a divorce was attempted against her will--a power which the secular judge had never possessed. Accordingly, "the temporal divorce jurisdiction of the Frankish empire, so far indeed as one is justified in speaking of such a jurisdiction, was not abolished by a legislative act; but it gradually perished through the contradiction to its own laws in which the state of the Carolings involved itself when it made the unqualified support of the disciplinary jurisdiction of the church one of its cardinal principles of government."[136] Already by the beginning of the tenth century this process was practically complete.[137] In German lands the diocesan court of the bishop had become the ordinary tribunal for divorce causes; and for annulment of the uncanonical separation an exact formula, the oath of reconciliation, had been devised.[138] [Footnote 134: "Wenn trotzdem die Zeit der Karolinger als diejenige Epoche zu bezeichnen ist, in welcher die Kirche den ihren endgültigen Sieg im Kampfe um das Ehescheidungsrecht besiegelnden Fortschritt machte, so wird dieser Fortschritt weniger auf dem Gebiete des materiellen Rechtes als auf demjenigen des Ehescheidungsverfahrens gesucht werden müssen."--GEFFCKEN, _op. cit._, 68.