On the subject of divorce the regulations of the several peoples are various; but the commands of the New Testament are alike strongly felt in all; and we may expect to find divorce limited by severe restrictions.[319] The Burgundians allowed it only for adultery or grave crimes, such as violating tombs. If a wife presumed to dismiss her husband for any other cause, she was put to death (_necetur in luto_); to a husband who sent his wife a divorce without these specific reasons existing the law was more indulgent, allowing him to preserve his life by paying to his injured wife twice the amount that he had originally given her parents for her, and twelve _solidi_ in addition; and in case he attempted to prove her guilty of one of the charges mentioned above and she was adjudged innocent, he forfeited all his goods to her and was forced to leave his home.[320] The Visigoths were equally strict; the husband who dismissed his wife on insufficient legal grounds lost all power over her and must return all her goods; his own must be preserved for the children; if there were none, the wife acquired his property. A woman who married a divorced man while his first wife was living, was condemned for adultery and accordingly handed over to the first wife to be disposed of as the latter wished; exile, stripes, and slavery were the lot of a man who took another wife while his first partner was still alive.[321] The Alemanni and the Bavarians, who were more remote from Italy and hence from the Church, were influenced more by their own customs and allowed a pecuniary recompense to take the place of the harsher enactments.[322] [Sidenote: Adultery.] Adultery was not only a legal cause for divorce, but also a grave crime. All the barbarian peoples are agreed in so regarding it, but their penalties vary according as they were more or less affected by proximity to Italy, where the power of the Church was naturally strongest. The Ripuarians, the Bavarians, and the Alemanni preferred a money fine ranging from fifty to two hundred _solidi_.[323] Among the Visigoths the guilty party was usually bound over in servitude to the injured person to be disposed of as the latter wished.[324] Sometimes the law was harsher to women than to men; thus, according to a decree of Liutprand,[325] a husband who told his wife to commit adultery or who did so himself paid a mulct of fifty _solidi_ to the wife's male relatives; but if the wife consented to or hid the deed, she was put to death. The laws all agree that the killing of adulterers taken in the act could not be regarded as murder. [Sidenote: The Church indulgent toward kings.]