But child-marriages were the real curse of medieval home-life in high society. The immaturity of the parents could not fail to tell often upon the children; and when Berthold of Regensburg pointed out how brief was the average of life among the 13th-century nobility, and ascribed this to God's vengeance for their heartlessness towards the poor, he might more truly have traced the cause much further back. "In days of old," wrote a _trouvère_ of the 12th century, "nobles married at a mature age; faith and loyalty then reigned everywhere. But nowadays avarice and luxury are rampant, and two infants of twelve years old are wedded together: take heed lest they breed children!"[198] The Church did, indeed, refuse to recognize the bond of marriage if contracted before both parties had turned seven; and she further forbade the making of such contracts until the age of twelve for the girl and fifteen for the boy, though without daring, in this case, to impugn the validity of the marriage once contracted. That the weaker should be allowed to marry three years earlier than the stronger sex is justified by at least one great canon lawyer on the principle that "ill weeds grow apace"; a decision on which one would gladly have heard the comments of the Wife of Bath.[199] But "people let the Church protest, and married at any age they pleased"; for it was seldom indeed that the ecclesiastical prohibition was enforced against influence or wealth, and the Church herself, theory apart, was directly responsible for many of the worst abuses in this matter. Her determination to keep the whole marriage-law in her own hands, combined with her readiness to sell dispensations from her own regulations, resulted in a state of things almost incredible. On the one hand, a marriage was nullified by cousinship to the fourth degree, and even by the fact of the contracting parties having ever stood as sponsors to the same child, unless a papal dispensation had been bought; and this absurd severity not only nullified in theory half the peasants' marriages (since nearly everybody is more or less related in a small village), but gave rise to all sorts of tricks for obtaining fraudulent divorces. To quote again from Gautier, who tries all through to put the best possible face on the matter: "After a few years of marriage, a husband who had wearied of his wife could suddenly discover that they were related ... and here was a revival, under canonical and pious forms, of the ancient practice of divorce." It is the greatest mistake to suppose that divorce was a difficult matter in the Middle Ages; it was simply a question of money, as honest men frequently complained. The Church courts were ready to "make and unmake matrimony for money"; and "for a mantle of miniver" a man might get rid of his lawful wife.[200] An actual instance is worth many generalities. In the first quarter of the 14th century a Pope allowed the King and Queen of France to separate because they had _once_ been godparents to the same child; and at the same time sold a dispensation to a rich citizen who had _twice_ contracted the same relationship to the lady whom he now wished to marry. The collocation, in this case, was piquant enough to beget a clever pasquinade, which was chalked up at street corners in Paris. John XXII. probably laughed with the rest, and went on as before.