8. [Footnote 551] But although the solemnising of marriages is prohibited in these intervals, yet a contract of marriage holds good at whatever time it may have been duly made. But in that it is ordered by the canons that weddings should not be celebrated in the three weeks before the Festival of S. John Baptist, the rule was made that men might be more at leisure for prayer. For the Church had formerly appointed two periods of forty days, besides the great one of Lent:--the one preceding the nativity, usually called S. Martin's, and lasting from his day to the nativity; [Footnote 552] the other, forty days before the Feast of S. John Baptist:--in which men should give especial heed unto prayers, alms, and fastings. But in regard of the frailty of man, these two seasons have been reduced to one, and that one again divided into the three weeks of advent, and three before the nativity of S. John: at which times men ought to fast and abstain from marriage. [Footnote 551: A few passages have been omitted in the course of this chapter.] [Footnote 552: Martinmas is the 11th November. The forty days are not exactly made out between this and the Nativity. ] {156} 9. According to S. Isidore (of Seville), women wear veils, when they are married, so that they may know that they must always be subject to their husbands: and because Rebecca, when she saw Isaac, veiled herself. The same saith also that married persons after the benediction are coupled by a fillet, to show that they must not break the tie, that is the fidelity, of conjugal unity. And the same fillet is both white and purple mixed; because the white signifieth purity of life, and purple their lawful raising of offspring: so that by this symbol, their continuance and mutual 'defrauding one another for a time is signified, as well as their coming together again' [Footnote 553] and return afterwards to conjugal duties. [Footnote 553: See S. Paul I Corinthians vii, 5. The whole of this passage is quoted from S. Isidore, who is, however, more circumstantial than Durandus, and much more elegant and intelligible in his language. The extreme corruption of the printed copies of our author may be exemplified by referring the reader to the original in S. Isidore.--_De Off. Eccles._ ii, 19. See also Hugo de S. Victore, _Exercit. Theol. Summ. Sent._, Tract vii.]