Chapter V — Whence chiefly it comes about that very many marriages abound with inconveniences and hardships. Admonitions to confessors and parish priests

I. The chief cause is that very many, God not being consulted, undertake so great a business at the suggestion of avarice alone, or of luxury, or of ambition. These causes Hugh of St. Victor sets forth in his epistle to his companion, saying: “Wives are taken today, not for the cause of avoiding fornication, but for the cause of luxury; not for the cause of offspring, but for the cause of money. Riches are wont to be chosen in wives rather than chastity. Many take wives not with their eyes but with their fingers — that is, they take wives not on account of the virtues which they see in them, but on account of the moneys which they can count out. The best thing is that which avarice does not conciliate, and which luxury does not couple.”

II. Those who for the cause of saturating venery celebrate the great sacrament of matrimony cast themselves into the most grave hardships. No less unhappy are the marriages which are contracted from a cupidity of moneys. Two young men strove to take a philosopher's daughter as betrothed, of whom one was poor but prudent and well-mannered; the other rich but frivolous and imprudent. The philosopher, the rich youth being rejected, espoused his daughter to the poor young man. To friends reproaching him with the deed he replied: I had rather give my daughter to a man in need of money than to money in need of a man. A sentence worthy of a wise philosopher.

III. The other chief cause of quarrels, brawls, and aversions which are wont to accompany matrimony is the outrages, basenesses, and obscenities with which the betrothed, being contaminated, approach this sacrament. Whence it arises that neither do wives wish to be subject to their husbands, nor are husbands wont to love their wives as befits. Wives are bound to obey their husbands, says St. Paul, Ephesians 5: Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord: because the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church. He is the saviour of his body. Therefore as the church is subject to Christ, so also let the wives be to their husbands in all things. But why women often transgress this precept, for the most part husbands are the cause, who neglect to go before women with the example of virtues, who neglect with Christian prudence to bear the defects of the weaker sex, who neglect to follow their wives with a divine love, against the mandate of the same Apostle: for Paul forthwith subjoins in the same place: Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it. … So also ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, as also Christ doth the church: because we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be two in one flesh. This is a great sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular love his wife as himself: and let the wife fear her husband.

IV. The other and most grave cause why so many families wither and are extinguished, why so many dissensions and aversions burn, is that pestiferous corruption hitherto unknown to all nations, even to the very heathen and Turks — namely of promiscuous conversations between men and women. The matrimony being entered upon, the husband espouses his own mistress, the wife her own lover. Both, if not in words, at least in deed consent that each may have his own little lover and her own little paramour. The Platonic community of husbands and of wives, if not full, at least half-full, has been brought in. Even if a community of bed did not happen — which is not most difficult — is it not a great crime that a wife should be the mistress either of another husband or of a most shameless youth; that she should be in servitude to these for solace, sport, and diversion, so that from them she may receive again and again the tributes of servitude, little gifts, and services? Those wives who, their own husbands being neglected, converse, play, dance, and caper with other men and husbands, are not the wives whom Paul describes, but imitate the vilest harlots and little strumpets of the crossroads; who defame Christ, who defame the Church, who dishonour their husbands, who break off the succession of families, who disturb society, and who bring in a gross and asinine ignorance into almost all assemblies of men. Men, their own offices being neglected, sow the time with their little mistresses. Of all evils of this kind the husbands are the cause. They are unwilling to coerce their own concupiscence. They are not content with the drink of their own fount, but seek out others' muddy cisterns; and therefore they cannot contain their wives in order. But these wives, made bolder by the depraved examples of their husbands, and with the reins shaken out, become unbridled, and lead their life with their own lovers. Hence the form of times, of hours, and of the best government is disturbed, and all things are confounded. All these things are known to the blear-eyed and to the barbers. What remedy is there? For the wrath of God is kindled, and the fury of divine vengeance strikes with the scourge of a most mournful blindness those who most boldly contend to maintain against holy Scripture, the Fathers, the theologians, the preachers, and experience itself that a most pernicious corruption is honourable.

V. The first ADMONITION which I exhibit to parish priests and confessors is that they altogether deny the sacraments to husbands and wives who are followers of the Platonic and half-full community, until they come to their senses. Otherwise with those not coming to their senses they will descend into hell. If any remedy is left to be applied to so dire a plague, it is in the hand of confessors. Let them suspend absolution to these men, until these marital commerces be broken off. Unless this be done, the die is cast, and no hope of salvation remains.

VI. The second ADMONITION is that parish priests and confessors learn from the Apostle St. Paul the reason and form of the discourse with which they ought to address them. Let them expound in a grave oration the sublimity, excellence, and pre-eminence of evangelical matrimony. Let them interpret the divine documents of the same Apostle. Let them declare the chastity, honesty, and holiness of the conjugal office. Let them often intone the saying of St. Paul: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour, not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles that know not God. Let them represent in congruous words the perpetuity of reciprocal love, and the indissolubility of the mutual bond even unto death. Let them set forth the opposition of the disciples, who, when they had heard the burdens of matrimony, cried out: If the case of a man with his wife be so, it is not expedient to marry; who said to them: All men take not this word. Matthew 19. Not to be long: if parish priests shall have kindled the fire of charity in married persons, if they shall have excited in them the spirit of Christianity, if they shall have formed true Christians, superfluous are, and can be handed over to the fire, all those questions and opinions concerning wifely matters which not a few have stirred up, whereby they bring scandal even to the heretics themselves. Since indeed married persons, when they shall have been joined to Jesus Christ by the bond of charity, will be united between themselves; and the interior virtue itself, probity, and sanctity will eloquently teach the honesty, purity, and chastity which spouses ought to acknowledge, without there being need that they be instructed by others. Opinions most filthy, wherever they are read in the books of certain men, offend readers and dishonour Christian spouses. And let these things concerning the great sacrament of matrimony suffice to have been said.