Augustine) has declared that polygamy is not a crime where...

Augustine) has declared that polygamy is not a crime where it is a legal institution of a country, and the German reformers, even as late as the sixteenth century, allowed and declared valid the taking of a second or even a third wife, contemporaneously with the first, in default of issue, or any other cause.' (Ameer Ali, Life and Teachings of Mohammad, p.220; and Mohamedan Law, vol.1I, p.23) 'When Christianity made its appearance in Rome, history shows that polygamy was recognised and the early Christian Emperors seem to have admitted its validity.' Says Ameer Ali: - 'The Emperor Valentiniah II, by an Edict, allowed all the subjects of the Empire, if they pleased, to marry several wives; nor does it appear from the ecclesiastical history of those times that the Bishops and the heads of the Christian churches made any objection to this law.

Far from it, all the succeeding Emperors practised polygamy, and the people generally were not remiss in following their example. Even the clergy often had wives. This state of the laws continued until the time of Justinian, who ... resulted in their embodiment in the celebrated laws of Justinian. `But these laws owed little to Christianity, at least directly.' The greatest adviser of Justinian was an atheist and a pagan.

Even prohibition of polygamy by Justinian failed to check the tendency of the age.' " (Ameer Ali,Life and Teachings of Mohammad, pp.222-223) * It should be mentioned here that Justinian was in the thirteenth century of Christian era, it means that up to thirteenth century there was no prohibition of polygamy in Christianity, at all. The following paragraphs from An Apology for Mohammed and…