Distinction V

GRATIAN. Part I. These things that have been written concerning privileges and the other matters placed below agree with both secular and ecclesiastical laws. Let us now return to the difference between natural law and the others. §1. Natural law holds primacy among all laws both in time and in dignity. For it began from the origin of the rational creature, and it does not vary with time, but remains immutable. §2. But since natural law is said above to be comprehended in the Law and the Gospel, while certain things contrary to those established in the Law are now found to be permitted, natural law does not appear to remain immutable. For in the Law it was commanded “that if a woman bore a male, she should abstain from entering the temple for forty days, but if a female, for eighty days”; now, however, she is not prohibited from entering a church immediately after childbirth. Likewise, a woman who was undergoing menstruation was accounted unclean under the Law; now, however, she is not prohibited either from entering a church or from receiving the mysteries of holy communion, just as neither the woman who gives birth nor that which is born is prohibited from being baptized immediately after childbirth. Hence Gregory [I] writes to the same Augustine, saying:

You have learned from the precept of the Old Testament after how many days a woman who has given birth ought to enter a church: because she ought to abstain for thirty-three days for a male, but for sixty-six days for a female. It must nevertheless be known that this is understood mystically.]

[Gregory, continuing in the same place.] If a woman enters a church to give thanks in the same hour in which she has given birth, she is burdened by no weight of sin; for the pleasure of the flesh, not its pain, is at fault. There is pleasure in the commingling of flesh, but groaning in the birth of offspring. Hence it is said to the first woman herself: “In pains you shall give birth.” Therefore, if we prohibit a woman who has given birth from entering a church, we turn her very punishment into a fault.

Likewise. [The same to the same.] A woman who has given birth, or that which she has borne, is in no way prohibited from being baptized if danger of death presses, either in the very hour in which she gives birth or in that in which what is born is brought forth, lest, while time is still being sought to furnish the mystery of redemption, through the intervention of a slight delay there can no longer be found one who may be redeemed.

Likewise. [Gregory, continuing in the same place.] Her husband ought not to approach intercourse with her until the child who is born is weaned. [PALEA. A depraved custom has arisen in the conduct of married persons, however, whereby women disdain to nurse the children whom they bear and hand them over to other women to be nursed. This plainly appears to have been devised from the sole cause of incontinence, because while they are unwilling to contain themselves, they disdain to suckle those whom they bear.] But if, from depraved custom, they hand their children over to others to be nursed, they ought not to be joined to their husbands unless the period of purification has passed; indeed, even apart from the cause of childbirth, when they are detained in their customary menstruation they are prohibited from joining themselves to their husbands, so that the sacred Law strikes with death if any man approaches a menstruating woman. §1. Yet a woman cannot be prohibited from entering a church while she undergoes her customary menstruation, because an excess of nature ought not to be reckoned to her as a fault, and it is unjust that she be deprived of entry into a church on account of that which she suffers unwillingly. For we know that the woman who suffered a flow of blood, humbly coming behind the Lord, touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her infirmity departed from her. Therefore, if she who was placed in a flow of blood could laudably touch the Lord’s garment, why should it not be lawful for a woman who suffers the menstruation of blood to enter a church? For if she did well to presume to touch the Lord’s garment while placed in infirmity, why should what is granted to one infirm person not be granted to all women who are afflicted by the defect of their nature? §2. Nor ought she to be prohibited from receiving the mystery of holy communion on those days. If, however, from great reverence she does not presume to receive it, she is to be praised; but if she receives it, she is not to be judged. For it belongs to good minds to acknowledge their faults even where there is no fault, because often that which proceeds from fault is done without fault. Hence, even when we hunger, we eat without fault, though it came about from the fault of the first man that we hunger.