Re: There is foremost an economic motive

This is matter of great religious dogma. I only meant to convey the common belief of the masses in these ideas. Which, to my understanding, is that most people consider angles unable to sin, with rare exceptions, if they believe in those.

I was just setting the record straight. My point is that the belief in angels unable to sin is also absurd (Lucifer and his armies).

The problem with this is, that the Church had a different age for marriage, regardless of the age for reason.

Well, of course they did! This is not a problem. The age of reason refers to a basic set of cognitive abilities collectively called "reason:" the ability to tell fact from fantasy and "right" from "wrong" and to recognize what you like to do well enough to choose a line of work. This is quite a different matter from entering into a marriage. As for age of consent for sex, this is yet another matter. As far as I know, under Roman law, there was no such thing. The closest that I am aware of, is Caligula's senate enacting a minimum age of seven for prostitution. When did the age-of-consent for sex laws even start to appear? I would assume during the Victorian era?

Student