=Marriage.= In the early Christian church marriage was made to mean a great deal. Surrounded as the Christians were by the moral rottenness of the decaying Roman state, it became necessary for the sustenance of their religion that the marriage vow should be a sacred obligation. To this end marriage became a religious ceremony. A Christian could not marry a pagan, as this vow could only be properly taken between parties of the same religious belief and could thus receive the benediction of the bishop. This idea of marriage made chastity the all-important thing in woman and thus created the home and gave to children a pure parenthood and made childhood mean more to children than the world had given before. Among the Germans, and likewise other northern nations of earlier Europe, monogamy was prevalent and almost the universal practice. There was a kind of purchase of the wife, as the man in the presence of her parents offered a dowry to the bride, which if accepted sealed the match. The parties to the contract both had to be mature people, the bridegroom having to be old enough to be invested with arms and to become a member of the state. Before the woman could marry she had to have the consent of her father or nearest relative, and if a widow, having been purchased, she had to have the approval of the relatives of her deceased husband. "Marriage ceremonies (among Anglo-Saxons) consisted in the assemblage of friends, the consuming of the great loaf (made by the bride as an introduction into house-keeping, and the ancestor of our wedding-cake); some special barrels of beer were brewed--the 'bride ale,' hence our modern 'bridal.' This beer was drunk to her health and to that of the bridegroom (originally _brydgumma_, bridesman). The Anglo-Saxons paid a regular sum, agreed upon beforehand, to the father before the wedding; the consent of the lady being obtained, the bridegroom then gave his promise and his 'wed.' 'Nor,' adds Sharon Turner, 'was this promise trusted to his honor merely, or to his own interest. The female sex was so much under the protection of the law that the bridegroom was compelled to produce friends who became security for his due observance of the covenant.' In this we have the origin of 'groomsman,' or 'best man,' of our time. The parties being betrothed, the next step to take was to settle by whom the _fosten-léan_, or money requisite for the care of the children, was to be supplied. The bridegroom pledged himself to do this; his friends became security for him. These preliminaries being arranged, he had to signify what he meant to give her for choosing to be his wife, and what he should give her in case she survived him. This was the _morgen gifu_, being given by the Anglo-Saxon husbands to their wives on the morning after the wedding.[206] The old law says that it is right that she should halve the property, or the whole of it should become hers if she had children, unless she married again. The friends