All this resulted in hopeless confusion and uncertainty, and it was early found necessary to modify it. Thus Pope Gregory I. limited the impediment to the 7th degree of relationship inclusive (civil computation) which was afterwards made the law of the empire by Charlemagne. Later still Innocent III., by a decree (4th Lateran Council), permitted marriages between a husband and the relations of his wife, and vice versa, beyond the 4th degree inclusive. (Canonical computation.) This .remains the canonical rule of the Roman Catholic Church. Impediments due to spiritual affinity were limited by the Council of Trent to the relation of the baptizer and baptized; the baptizer and the parents of the baptized ; the baptizer and the godfather and godmother; the godparents and the baptized and its parents: i.e., a godfather may not marry the mother of the child he has held at the font, nor the godmother the father of such child.
In the fully developed canon law impediments to marriage are of two kinds, public and private; near relationship, for instance, is a public impediment, impotence and force are private impediments. Impediments are further divided into separating or merely suspensive; to the first class belongs, e.g., a previous marriage not dissolved by death, which involves the nullification of the marriage even where through ignorance the crime of bigamy is not involved ; to the second belongs the case of one or both of the contracting parties being under the age of puberty. Impediments, moreover, are absolute or relative; near relation ship, for instance, is an absolute impediment, difference of religion between the parties a relative impediment. In addition to con sanguinity and affinity, impuberty and existing marriage, the canon law lays down as public and absolute impediments to marriage the taking of holy orders and the vows of chastity made on entering any of the religious orders approved by the Holy See. In these impediments the canon law further distinguishes between those which are based on the law of nature (jus naturae) and those which are based on the law of the Church (jus ecclesiae). From impediments based on the law of nature, or of God, there is no power even in the pope to dispense; e.g., marriage of father and daughter, brother and sister, or remarriage of husband or wife during the lifetime of the wife or husband of another marriage, which is held to be a violation of the very nature of marriage as an indissoluble union. From impediments arising out of the law of the Church dispensations are granted, more or less readily, either by the pope or by the bishop of the diocese in virtue of powers delegated by the pope. (See DISPENSATION.) Thus dis
pensations may be granted for marriage between persons related by consanguinity in any beyond the 2nd degree and not in the direct line of ascent or descent; e.g., between uncle and niece (confined by the Council of Trent to the case of royal marriages for reasons of State) and between cousins-german, or in the case of marriage with a heretic. In this latter case a dispensation is now (i.e., since the papal decrees ne temere of Aug. 2, 1907, which came into force at Easter 1908) only granted on condition that the parties are married by a Catholic bishop, or a priest accredited by him, that no religious ceremony shall take place except in a Catholic church, and that all the children shall be brought up in the Roman Catholic faith.
In the absence of any impediment a marriage is according to the canon law completed between baptized persons by the facts of consent and consummation ; the principle is still maintained that the parties to the marriage, not the priest, are the "ministers of the sacrament." From the first, however, the Church, while recognizing the validity of private contracts, enjoined the addition of a public religious ceremony. (I Tim. iv. 5.) Tertullian (de pudicitia, cap. iv.) says that clandestine marriages, not professed in the Church, were reckoned among Christians as all but fornica tion, and he speaks of the custom of seeking permission to marry from the bishop, priests and deacons. (De monogamic, cap. xi.) This latter precaution became increasingly necessary as impedi ments were multiplied, and Charlemagne, in a capitulary of 802, forbade the celebration of a marriage until "the bishops, priests and elders of the people" had made diligent inquiry into the question of the consanguinity of the parties. This was the origin of the publication of banns which, long customary in France, was made obligatory on the whole Church by Pope Innocent III. In the Eastern Church the primitive practice survives in the cere monial blessing by the priest of the betrothal, as distinguished from the marriage ceremony. The ecclesiastical recognition of clandestine marriages, however, survived until the crying evil was remedied by a decree of the Council of Trent (Sess. xiv. del matrim.), which laid it down that for a valid marriage it was at least necessary that consent should be declared before a priest and in the presence of three witnesses.