Tell me, did that stand in the
way of your marriage with a Goth?'
She cast down her eyes and was silent.
'Was your marriage,' Basil went on, 'blessed by a Catholic or by an
Arian presbyter?'
'By neither,' replied Aurelia gently.
'Then why may it not be so with me and Veranilda? And so it shall
be, lady cousin,' he added cheerily. 'Our good Decius will be gone;
we await the sailing of the ship; but you and Marcian, and perhaps
Venantius, will be our witnesses.'
For the validity of Christian wedlock no religious rite was
necessary: the sufficient, the one indispensable, condition was
mutual consent. The Church favoured a union which had been
sanctified by the oblation and the blessing, but no ecclesiastical
law imposed this ceremony. As in the days of the old religion, a man
wedded his bride by putting the ring upon her finger and delivering
her dowry in a written document, before chosen witnesses. Aurelia
knew that even as this marriage had satisfied her, so would it
suffice to Veranilda, whom a rapturous love made careless of
doctrinal differences: She perceived, moreover, that Basil was in no
mood for religious discussion; there was little hope that he would
consent to postpone his marriage on such an account; yet to convert
Basil to 'heresy' was a fine revenge she would not willingly forego,
her own bias to Arianism being stronger than ever since the wrong
she believed herself to have suffered at the hands of the deacon,
and the insult cast at her by her long-hated aunt.
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