Title XXXIII: On the Conversion of Infidels

Latin source headnote: No one can have as wife the woman whose husband he killed through the machination of the woman herself; it is otherwise if he acted without machination. And it is a beautiful and everyday case.

Celestine III.

A laudable—(And below:) But as for what you asked concerning Saracens who, while they were in captivity, killed the husbands of certain Christian women through the plots and machinations of those women—whether, because they were afterward converted through the women themselves to the Christian faith, they can by law take them as wives, or, if they have taken them, whether the marriage of the same persons holds—we are here content with the rule of the Council of Tribur, which asserts that, if the women maliciously machinated the death of their husbands, although by their zeal the Saracens approached the ecclesiastical faith, nevertheless they ought neither to adhere to them nor, if they have even adhered, are they to be tolerated. For a dispensation could not be admitted here without peril, since the church is unwilling to compensate such a loss by such a gain.

In addition to this, certain Saracens who are noted to have killed Christians in war, and Christians likewise Saracens, but afterward the Saracens, converted from the error of paganism to the catholic faith, joined to themselves in marriage the wives of those whom they killed in the contest of war; and Christians are known to have done the same with Saracen women converted to the faith. Nevertheless, those women, after they learned the truth concerning the death of their former husbands, insistently demand judicial separation. In these matters, therefore, we answer that, since such persons did not procure the destruction of the deceased husbands, marriage can lawfully be contracted between persons of this kind, and those joined in this manner, of whichever sex they may be, cannot seek judicial separation after the death of their spouses.

Indeed, the same law will apply in the following case that you took care to propose. When S., a Christian man, denied Christ because of hatred for his wife, joined a pagan woman to himself, and begot sons by her, the Christian woman, abandoned in reproach of Jesus Christ, flew to second nuptials with the assent of her archdeacon and received sons from them. For it does not appear to us that, if the first husband returns to ecclesiastical unity, she ought to withdraw from the second and be restored to the first, especially since she is seen to have departed from him by the judgment of the church, and, as Gregory bears witness, insult to the Creator dissolves the law of marriage with respect to the one who is abandoned from hatred of the Christian faith. Moreover, whether the woman can, against the will of the first husband who has returned to the faith, return to the monastic life; or whether he, having returned, can, after the death of the first wife, have as wife the woman whom he joined to himself by the pagan rite and who on account of him was converted to our faith with her children; and whether the children begotten before conversion are to be held legitimate by virtue of the nuptials that after conversion were celebrated by the ecclesiastical rite; and similarly whether the children of her who, with the license of her archdeacon, married a catholic man while her first husband was alive but had become an infidel, are to be held legitimate—the rule as well as the teaching of the Apostle, by which it is said, “If the unbeliever departs, let him depart; for a brother or sister is not subject to servitude of this kind,” and likewise that decree of the aforesaid Gregory, “It is not a sin if one dismissed on account of God has joined herself to another; for the unbeliever, in departing, sins both against God and against marriage,” and, moreover, the fact that our predecessor Alexander III of good memory spoke thus, “So great is the force of marriage that those who were begotten beforehand are held legitimate after marriage has been contracted,” do not permit us to doubt in matters of this kind that in these cases free access lies open to the one wishing to migrate to religion; that he who returns to the faith can lawfully join to himself the woman who was converted, after the first wife has died; and that the children also are to be deemed legitimate in each of the two aforesaid cases. Moreover, etc. [cf. c. 27, On Witnesses, II. 20.]

Latin source headnote: If one of two unbelieving spouses comes to the faith while the other remains in the error of unbelief, their common child is assigned to the convert.

Gregory IX, to the Bishop of Strasbourg.

We learned from your letters [that a question of this kind had been brought to your synod]: a certain man, brought from the error of Jewish blindness to Christ, the true light [and the way of truth], having left his wife in Judaism, insistently petitioned in court that their four-year-old son be assigned to him, to be brought to the catholic faith that he himself had received. To this she answered that, since the boy is still an infant, on account of which he needs maternal solace more than paternal, and is known to have been burdensome to her before birth, painful in birth, [and] laborious after birth, and since from this the lawful union of male and female is called marriage, as if “motherage,” rather than “fatherage,” the said boy ought more fittingly to remain with her [than to pass to the father newly brought to the Christian faith, or at least to follow neither before he reaches lawful age. Many other things having been alleged on each side, you, meanwhile retaining the aforesaid boy in your power, wished to consult us as to what you should do in this case.]

But since a son is constituted in the power of his father, whose family he follows, and not that of his mother; and at such an age one ought not remain with persons concerning whom there can be suspicion that they would plot against his salvation or life; and boys after their third year ought to be nourished and remain with a father who is not suspect; and the boy's mother, if it should happen that he remained with her, could [easily] lead him to the error of unbelief—we answer [your fraternity], especially in favor of the Christian faith, that the same boy is to be assigned to the father. [Given at Perugia, on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of June, in the second year. 1229.]