Conjuga sobrinarum diu ignorata, tempore addito
percrebuisse. Tacitus The Annals xii. 6, and Lipsius ad loc.
The
repeal of the ancient law, and the practice of five hundred
years, were insufficient to eradicate the prejudices of the
Romans, who still considered the marriages of cousins-german
as a species of imperfect incest (Augustine, The City of
God, XV.16); and Julian, whose mind was biased by
superstition and resentment, stigmatises these unnatural
alliances between his own cousins with the opprobrious
epithet of 
(Orat. vii. p. 228). The jurisprudence of
the canons has since revived and enforced this prohibition,
without being able to introduce it either into the civil or
the common law of Europe. See on the subiect of these
marriages, Taylor's Civil Law, p. 331; Brouer, de Jure
Connub.1. ii. c. 12; Hericourt, des Loix Ecclesiastiques,
part iii. c. 5; Fleury, Institutions du Droit Canonique,
tom. i. p. 331, Paris, 1767; and Fra Paolo, Istoria del
Concilio Trident. l. viii.
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