Barletta, in his sermons, frequently follows the example of his brother friar, the English Dominican preacher, Robert Holkot († 1349), whose works were much in request at the close of the Middle Ages.[433] Holkot had such respect for Christian matrimony, that he applies to it the words of the Bible: “O how beautiful is the chaste generation with glory; for the memory thereof is immortal.” Since the “_actus matrimonialis_” was willed by God, it must be assumed, he says, that it can be accomplished virtuously and with merit.[434] If the intention of the married couple is the begetting of children for the glory of God, they perform an act of the virtue of religion; they also exercise the virtue of justice if they have the intention of mutually fulfilling the conjugal duties to which they have pledged themselves. According to him, mutual love is the principal duty of the married couple.[435] Franz Falk has dwelt in detail on the testimony borne by the Late Middle Ages to the dignity of marriage.[436] Commencing with the prayers of the marriage-service and the blessing of the ring, the prayers for those with child and in child-bed, and for the churching of women, he goes on to deal with the civil rights pertaining to the married state and with the Church’s opinion as witnessed to in the matrimonial handbooks and books of instruction and edification. With the respect for the Sacrament and the dignity of the married woman there found expressed, Falk compares the sentiments likewise found in the prose “novels” and so-called “Volksbücher,” and, still more practically expressed, in the numerous endowments and donations for the provision of bridal outfits. “It is quite incomprehensible,” such is the author’s conclusion, “how non-Catholic writers even to the present time can have ventured to reproach the Church with want of regard for the married state.”[437] Of the information concerning bridal outfits, he says, for instance: “The above collection of facts, a real ‘_nubes testium_,’ will sufficiently demonstrate what a task the Church of the Middle Ages here fulfilled towards her servants and children.... Many other such foundations may, moreover, have escaped our notice owing to absence of the deeds which have either not been printed or have perished. From the 16th century onwards records of such foundations become scarce.”[438]