Note 134 — Chapter XI · HISTORY OF SEPARATION AND DIVORCE UNDER ENGLISH AND ECCLESIASTICAL LAW

"Wenn trotzdem die Zeit der Karolinger als diejenige Epoche zu bezeichnen ist, in welcher die Kirche den ihren endgültigen Sieg im Kampfe um das Ehescheidungsrecht besiegelnden Fortschritt machte, so wird dieser Fortschritt weniger auf dem Gebiete des materiellen Rechtes als auf demjenigen des Ehescheidungsverfahrens gesucht werden müssen."—Geffcken, op. cit., 68.

Geffcken criticises Sdralek, Hincmars Gutachten über die Ehescheidung des Königs Lothar II., 108 ff., who holds that the Frankish civil court has full authority to decree divorces. According to Sohm, "Die geistliche Gerichtbarkeit im fränk. Reich," ZKR., IX, 218, 242 ff., the Frankish matrimonial law is "temporal law, and receives its development through temporal custom and legislation." The canons are statutes for the spiritual and not for the temporal law; and only through the public lawgiver do they have any effect upon the legal principles governing marriage. "By virtue of public law marriage is subordinate to the state and not to the church." The spiritual law is no law for the temporal court; and in matrimonial causes the spiritual court is no court according to public law. There exists, in fact, in the Frankish empire no spiritual jurisdiction in the sense of public law. With this view Geffcken, op. cit., 68 n. 3, agrees; while rejecting as inconsistent therewith Sohm's later statement in ZKR., XVII, 179, that the judgment of the temporal as well as that of the spiritual court was necessary for a divorce. Compare Boehmer, Ehegesetze im Zeitalter Karls des Grossen, 108-16, who explains the contradictory enactments of the period as the result of the two systems of jurisprudence—the temporal and the spiritual.