Question V

GRATIAN. PART I. That a husband cannot vow continence without his wife’s consent is proved by many authorities. For Augustine says on Psalm 146:

If a husband says, “I now wish to be continent; I no longer wish to have a wife,” he cannot do so. For what you wish, she does not wish. Ought she to be made a fornicator through your continence? If she marries another while you live, she will be an adulteress. God does not wish such a loss to be compensated by such a gain. Render the debt; and if you do not exact it, render it. God will account it to you as perfect sanctification if you do not exact what is owed to you but render what is owed to your wife.

Likewise Alexander II to Landulf in Corsica. You notified us that, gravely ill almost unto death and greatly terrified by the recollection and terror of your sins, you anxiously sought to become a monk; that by threats and terrors of killing your wife you extorted from her permission for this; that in this way you took monastic clothing without an abbot and sought a monastery; but afterward, when you had become healthy, overcome as a penitent by your wife’s protests, wailings, and lamentations and by the dispersal of your household, you returned home; and that after many days, by the counsel of certain wise persons, you returned to the bed of the aforesaid woman. But now you seek our counsel whether it is permitted to use your wife.

If, then, it is as your messenger relates, it does not seem to us to have been done reasonably or justly. For although everything is to be carried out lawfully, holily, and justly by every person tending toward monastic life, you, contrary to the laws, threateningly and violently, being unnerved partly by fear of death and partly by the pains of your illness, followed a devious course and, having received no permission from your wife, as is said, withdrew and sought the monastery. For this ought to be done not by violence but by equal will and consent, as the holy Fathers say; nor ought a husband to choose a monastery or, after professing continence, hastily change his habit.

Likewise from the Council at Compiègne. If a woman has placed a veil upon her head without her husband’s permission, let him, if it pleases him, receive her again into marriage.

Likewise Augustine to Ecdicia, [letter CXCIX]. What you had vowed to God by equal consent, you ought to have rendered perseveringly to the end. If he has fallen away from that purpose, you at least should persevere most insistently. I would not exhort you to this unless he himself had consented to it for you. For if you had never possessed his assent, no number of years would have defended you. And a little later:

§ 1. Your husband had not ceased to be your husband because you were equally abstaining from carnal union. Indeed, you remained spouses between yourselves all the more holily insofar as you concordantly observed holier resolutions. Therefore, you ought to have done nothing concerning your clothing, nothing concerning gold or silver or any money or any earthly possessions of yours, without his decision. And below:

§ 2. There is a certain matronly clothing, proportioned to the person and distinct from a widow’s clothing, which can fittingly belong to married members of the faithful while preserving the cause or observance of religion. If your husband was unwilling for you to lay this aside, lest you boast yourself a widow while he was living, consider that he was not to be led in this matter as far as the scandal of dissension, with the evil of disobedience being greater than the good of any abstinence. For what is more absurd than for a woman to become proud over humble clothing, when it would profit you more to obey in radiant conduct than to resist in dark garments? For although a nun’s garment delighted you, even this could have been assumed more pleasingly after your husband had been respected and entreated than presumed upon without consulting him and while despising him. But if he did not permit it at all, what would perish from your purpose? Far be it that you should thereby displease God because, while your spouse had not yet died, you did not dress like Anna but like Susanna.

The same. According to the apostolic words, even if the husband had wished to be continent and you had been unwilling, he would be compelled to render the debt to you, and God would impute continence to him if he yielded not to his own weakness but to yours, lest you fall into adultery.

§ 1. Therefore, whoever, having compassion upon a wife’s weakness, renders but does not exact the debt; or if, because of one’s own weakness, one takes a wife, lamenting rather that one could not exist without a wife than rejoicing that one took her; whoever sells what one knows would not make one blessed even if it remained; whoever buys what one knows will pass away, does not presume concerning these things, and from it has performed mercy with those who do not have—such a person securely awaits the last day.

The same to Armentarius and Paulina, [letter XLV]. There can be one cause alone on account of which we would not only not exhort you to fulfill what you vowed, but would even prohibit you from fulfilling it: if perhaps your spouse, because of weakness of mind or flesh, refused to undertake this with you. For such things are not to be vowed by married persons except by consent and common will; and if it has been done too hastily, the rashness should be corrected rather than the promise fulfilled. For God does not exact it if someone vows something from another’s property, but instead forbids the usurpation of another’s property.

Likewise Jerome, [book I Against Jovinian]. PART II. A woman will then be saved if she bears those children who will remain virgins; if she obtains in her children what she herself lost and compensates for the loss and decay of the root by flower and fruits.

I now say only this: just as virginity alone does not save without the other works, so all works are imperfect without virginity, purity, continence, and chastity.

“Let one who thirsts come and drink; let one who can receive it receive it.” He does not say, “Whether you will or not, you must drink and run”; rather, the one who wills, the one who is able to run and drink, that one conquers, that one will be satisfied. And for this reason Christ loves virgins more: because they voluntarily give what had not been commanded of them, and it belongs to greater grace to offer what you do not owe than to render what is exacted from you.

The Apostles, having contemplated the burden of a wife, say, “If such is a man’s situation with a wife, it is not expedient to marry.” Approving their opinion, the Lord rightly says: You perceive rightly that it is not expedient for a person tending toward the kingdom of heaven to take a wife; but it is a difficult matter, and not everyone receives this word, but those to whom it is given. Nature makes some human beings eunuchs; the force of human beings makes others. Those eunuchs please me whom not necessity but will has castrated. I willingly receive into my bosom those who have castrated themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven and, on account of my worship, were unwilling to be what they were born.

At the same time, the sentence must be considered: “Who,” he says, “have castrated themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” If the castrated have the kingdom of heaven as their reward, then those who have not castrated themselves cannot receive the place of the castrated.

GRATIAN. The end of this authority and the two preceding authorities are understood of the disposition toward virginity, which exists not in will alone but also in necessity. But the beginning is understood of its effect, which before a vow exists not in necessity but in the will, and is not exacted unless it is promised.

Likewise from the Council of Reims. PART III. One who has permitted his wife to take the veil shall not take another, but shall likewise be converted.

Likewise Augustine in Questions on Numbers, [question LIX]. PART IV. It is manifest that the law wished a woman to be under her husband in such a way that none of her vows which she vowed for the sake of abstinence are fulfilled by her unless her husband was their author by giving permission. For although the law wished it to pertain to the same husband’s sin if he first permitted and afterward prohibited, nevertheless it did not say even this: that the woman should do what she had vowed because she had already previously been permitted by her husband. It said that it was the husband’s sin because he rejected what he had previously conceded; nevertheless, it did not thereby give the woman a command that, if her husband, after previously conceding it to her, afterward prohibited it, he should be contemned.

GRATIAN. From the foregoing it appears that neither can a woman render vows of continence to God without her husband’s consent, nor a husband without his wife’s consent. But if a vow has been promised by one with the consent of the other, even if the one who gave permission afterward wishes to render it void, that person nevertheless cannot, because in the debt of marriage the woman equally has power over the husband, just as the husband over the woman. And therefore, if either of them has released the other from one’s right, one will not be able to recall the other to the former servitude.

But because in other things the husband is the head of the woman and the woman the body of the husband, a woman can promise vows of abstinence with her husband’s permission in such a way that, if he afterward prohibits it, she cannot fulfill what was promised. This, as we have said, is because of the condition of servitude by which she ought to be subject to her husband in all things. Hence Augustine says in the Book of Questions on Genesis, [question CLIII]:

There is a natural order among human beings that women serve men and children serve parents, because among them this is justice: that the lesser serve the greater.

The same in Questions of the Old and New Testaments, [mixed from both, c. 106]. This is the image of God in the human being: that one was made from whom the others might arise, possessing God’s dominion as though his vicar, because he possesses the image of the one God. Therefore, the woman was not made in God’s image. For thus it says: “And God made the human being; in God’s image he made him.” Hence the Apostle also says, “A man indeed ought not to veil his head, because he is the image and glory of God; a woman veils for this reason, because she is not the glory or image of God.”

It is sufficiently apparent from this how the law wished women to be subject to men and wives to be almost servants. For it established that a husband should give testimony against his wife, by which she would be stoned if it were demonstrated to be true; but he in turn is not stoned if it is established to be false. Rather, he is merely chastised and fined and is commanded to adhere perpetually to her whom he had wished to lack. But in other cases, the law commands that one who has harmed anyone by false testimony be punished by that same penalty by which, if the testimony had been proved true, the accused person would have been punished.

Likewise Jerome on the Letter to Titus, [at c. 2]. Since the husband is the head of the woman, but Christ the head of the husband, every wife who is not subject to her husband—that is, to her head—is guilty of the same crime as a husband who is not subject to his head. The word of the Lord is blasphemed either when God’s first sentence is contemned and accounted as nothing, or when Christ’s Gospel is brought into disrepute because a Christian woman, who is subject under God’s law, desires, against the law and faith of nature, to command her husband, although even Gentile women serve their husbands by the common law of nature.

Likewise Augustine in Questions on Numbers, [question LIX]. Accordingly, the law did not wish a woman to vow anything to God against her own soul, so that in those same vows authority to abstain from certain lawful and conceded things should belong not to the woman but to the man. Thus, if her father had permitted her while still unmarried to fulfill vows, but she married before fulfilling them and this, when known to her husband, did not please him, she is not to fulfill them. And this is altogether without sin, because God cleansed her, as it says—that is, judged her clean. Nor must this be considered to be done against the Lord, since God himself commanded and willed it.

Likewise Ambrose in the Book of Questions of the Old Testament, [question XLV]. It is established that a woman is subject to her husband’s dominion and possesses no authority: she can neither teach, nor be a witness, nor give a pledge, nor judge.

Adam was deceived through Eve, not Eve through Adam. It is just that the man whom the woman called to fault should take her under his governance, lest the woman again fall through facility.

A woman ought to veil her head because she is not the image of God. But so that she may be shown to be subject, and because transgression was begun through her, she ought to have this sign: in the church, out of episcopal reverence, let her not have her head uncovered but covered with a veil; let her not have the power of speaking, because the bishop bears the person of Christ. Therefore, let her be before the bishop as though before Christ the judge, because he is the Lord’s vicar. On account of original sin she ought to appear subject.

PART V. Nor is it without significance that the woman was made not from the same earth from which Adam was fashioned, but from Adam’s own rib, so that we might know that there is one nature of the body in man and woman and one source of the human race. Therefore, man and woman were not made as two from the beginning, nor were two men or two women made; rather, first the man, and then the woman from him. For God, wishing to establish one nature of human beings and beginning this from one principle of creation, removed the possibility of many and disparate natures.

GRATIAN. Accordingly, it appears most evidently that the husband is the head of the woman in such a way that she is permitted to offer God no vows of abstinence or religious conversion without his permission. Even if they were promised with the husband’s permission, she is not permitted to fulfill the vow in deed when the husband wishes to revoke what was permitted. But vows of continence can be offered by one with the other’s permission in such a way that after permission they cannot be rendered void.