From its origin Christianity combatted the morals called pagan, which name even was a reproach. Abandoning the modest reality, it lost anchor from the first, and was drowned in a sea of dreams. Marriage, instead of being simply the union of a man and a woman in order to produce children, became mystic; it was the symbol of the union of Christ with his church; it was tolerated only, and the church especially condemned divorce. Nevertheless, custom and good sense held out a long time against ecclesiastical unreason, and it was very slowly, in the twelfth century only, that the civil law prohibited divorce.[805] St. Jerome had allowed, as did afterwards the Christians of the East, that adultery broke the bond of marriage as well for the woman as the man, which is simply just; but this sentiment was condemned and anathematised by the Council of Trent,[806] which thus returned, contrary to the opinion of Papinian and the ancient jurists, to savage customs, which make the wife the slave, and not the companion, of her husband. Among the Germans and the Scandinavians, the man alone had the right of repudiation according to the almost universal usage of barbarous peoples; however, divorce by mutual consent was tolerated.[807] The Salic law also permitted divorce, and we find in Marculphus the form of an act of divorce by mutual consent. “The husband and wife, such and such a one, seeing that discord troubles their marriage and that love does not rule in it, have agreed to separate, and leave each other mutually free, without opposition from either party, under pain of a fine of one pound.” The pagan Irish had rendered divorce useless by instituting marriages of one year, at the end of which the wife could be repudiated by the temporary husband and even ceded to another for a fresh year. These experimental marriages were made or unmade, sometimes on the first of May, and sometimes on the first of November of each year.[808] Repudiations at the will of the husband are still in use among the Tcherkesses of the Caucasus, whose customs have more than one feature in common with those of our ancestors of barbarous Europe. With them the husband can repudiate in two manners: either by sending away his wife in the presence of witnesses, and leaving the dowry to the parents, which implies the liberty to marry again for the repudiated wife; or by simply driving the wife away, and then he can recall her again during one year.[809]