Note 21 — Chapter I · Marriage Laws and Customs.
Reading edition
III. Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, 805.
Before the end of the Republic, the confarreatio had practically become obsolete and was regarded as an old world curiosity, although formerly obtaining generally, in all patrician families. (III. Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, p. 789.) The religious ceremony, used at the marriage confarreatio, is described in Wood’s “Wedding Day in All Ages and Countries,” where it is shown that the custom of the “bride-cake” is directly traceable to the cake of wheat or barley, used at this old religious ceremony. (“Wedding Day in All Ages and Countries,” vol. 1, pp. 51, 52, 60, 61, vol. II., p. 224.)