Title XVI: On Marriage Contracted against an Interdict of the Church

Latin source headnote: A marriage made or contracted against an interdict of the Church or a judge is not dissolved for this reason alone; nevertheless, penance is imposed upon those contracting thus, and they are separated until the cause of the interdict is heard. This in effect is what this entire title says.

Alexander III, to the Bishop of Padua.

The letters which your fraternity sent to us expressly declare that, when a certain parishioner of yours, in the presence and with the consent of his sister, who was already marriageable, had affirmed by a furnished oath that he would give her to a certain man as wife, and she, not many days later, voluntarily receiving the gifts and presents of the man according to the custom of the land, had often embraced him as her own husband, at last, after her brother died, she permitted herself to be betrothed by her husband’s own brother, and falsely avers that she had been known by him. And when you publicly prohibited her from joining herself to either of them or to anyone else, she, having spurned your admonitions, did not fear to marry another. Finally, when you had summoned both before you and had commanded the woman to return to her mother’s house, she appealed to our hearing. But because it lies upon our solicitude to correct the transgressions and enormities of others and to recall them to the measure and form of rectitude, through apostolic writings we order your fraternity that, if it is so, as was narrated above, lest your mandate appear to be contemptible, you compel the aforesaid woman to return to her mother’s house with every appeal and excuse ceasing; and, after worthy penance for so great a transgression has been imposed upon her, when she has remained in her mother’s house for a month, permit her to return to the third man and to be lawfully joined to him.

Latin source headnote: Betrothals of the future, even when contracted with one woman against an interdict of the Church, do not have the power to dissolve a marriage afterward contracted with another.

The same, to the Bishops of Worcester and Baronia.

From the letters of our venerable brother the Archbishop of Canterbury, legate of the Apostolic See, it came to us that, when G. of Saint-Léger had betrothed his absent daughter M. to a certain young man named R., afterward, at the procuring of certain blood relatives of the woman herself, the aforementioned R. contracted marriage with her while she was present through words of the present tense, as is said; faith being corporally furnished on each side that henceforth the man would conduct himself toward the woman as toward a lawful wife, and she would reverently obey him without contradiction as her lawful husband; and nothing was lacking except the solemnity to be celebrated in the face of the Church, which on account of the season of Lent could not then be carried into effect. Afterward, when a suspicion arose that the aforesaid R. desired to pass to other vows, the case was brought to the examination of the aforementioned archbishop, who under threat of anathema prohibited him, as we received from his letters, from passing to second vows before the aforesaid matter was fully established. But he, having contemned the aforesaid prohibition, solemnly joined to himself in the face of the Church the daughter of V., named Matilda, as wife. But afterward, when the two women and the man had been constituted before the archbishop, the aforesaid R. publicly confessed that he had contracted marriage with Maria, as was said above, and afterward, seduced by the depraved suggestion of certain persons, had taken the other, namely Matilda. But Maria steadfastly asserted that her father had not moved the complaint from her will, adding that between her and the aforesaid R. no obligation had intervened except faith alone concerning contracting marriage; because he had not observed it, she was by no means bound to observe it, and therefore, because he was leaving her whom he had taken second. But when she petitioned that the aforesaid R. be restored to her as her own husband, and the archbishop wished to hear the first marriage, especially because the women were said to touch one another by consanguinity, and through this the vice of both adultery and incest was feared, the said M. emitted the voice of appeal to the Apostolic See and fixed the feast of the Circumcision just passed as the term for the appeal. Deferring to her appeal, the archbishop more strictly interdicted the same Maria, under peril of her soul and threat of excommunication, from marrying anyone until the case itself received its due end before us or before judges delegated by the Apostolic See. Nevertheless, trusting in the remedy of appeal, she married a certain other man named V. nevertheless. And, cited concerning this before the archbishop, she was unwilling to appear on account of the appeal which she had objected. Therefore, since it did not appear to us that the matter was to be concluded while the parties were absent, committing it to your experience, in which we fully confide, by authority of the present letters We order that, after the parties have been summoned before your presence, you investigate the truth more diligently and, if nothing is established which impedes except the consent of the future which is asserted to have preceded between the aforesaid R. and M., with the obstacle of appeal removed you adjudge that the second marriages are to be inviolably observed. For although they ought not to have passed to second vows against the interdict of the Church, nevertheless it is not fitting that on account of this alone the sacrament of marriage be dissolved. Nevertheless, other penance will have to be imposed upon them because they did this against the prohibition of the Church. [Given on the Nones of February.]

Latin source headnote: If those who were said to be blood relatives contracted against the command of a judge, they ought to be separated until the case is heard.

The same, to the Bishop of Padua.

Concerning the woman—(And below: [Compare chapter 6, On Betrothals, IV. 1.]) But those who are prohibited from being joined on account of consanguinity and afterward receive one another contrary to the interdict of the Church you ought to subject to excommunication until they are separated for so long as it takes to be lawfully ascertained whether their marriage can and ought by law to stand.