The christianization of Europe came to mean that, in theory, and unlike with the Romans, there was supposed to be a single sexual standard, where adultery was a sin and against the teachings of the church, regardless of the sex of those involved. In practice, however, the church seemed to have accepted the traditional double standard which punished the adultery of the wife more harshly than that of the husband. Among Germanic tribes, each tribe had its own laws for adultery, and many of them allowed the husband to "take the law in his hands" and commit acts of violence against a wife caught committing adultery. In the Middle Ages, adultery in Vienna was punishable by death through impalement. Austria was one of the last Western countries to decriminalize adultery, in 1997.