Page:Fourie v Minister of Home Affairs (SCA).djvu/57

Rh propagated during the sixteenth century by virtue of the favour shown them by the Renaissance and the Reformation; they were presented before the Council of Trent by more than twenty prelates and theologians, and, a more serious thing, the jurists took possession of them in order to make of them a weapon against the Church. From this they came to the conclusion that marriage ought to be subjected to the Church in so far as it was a sacrament, to the State in so far as it was a civil contract.’

This development culminated, as far as France was concerned, in the adoption in the constitution of 1791 of the principle that ‘the law only considered marriage as a civil contract; the Church was free to set up the sacrament in establishing the forms and conditions which might please it, the faithful were at liberty to respect its doctrines, but the State had no power to bind itself to impose them upon all citizens without affecting their liberty of conscience. The decree of September 20, 1792, organized the certificates of civil status and marriage; the latter must thenceforth be executed before a municipal official in order to be recognized by the State.’

The principle that marriages had to be solemnised by a civil official was adopted in some of the provinces of the Northern Netherlands after 1795 and became the legal position in the whole