From the Council of Arles, A.D. 443 or 452

Canon II. Someone constituted in the bond of marriage cannot be taken up to the priesthood unless conversion has first been sent before (that is, of the wife, who has professed monastic life, or at least chastity. Cf. the Council of Agde, Canon XVI, cited below).

Canon XXI. Any penitent woman who, after her husband has died, has presumed to marry another, or has lived with a stranger in suspected or forbidden familiarity, let her be kept back with him from the thresholds of the Church. It also pleased the council that this be observed concerning a man placed in penance.

Cf. the things to be said at response XIII of Leo to Rusticus. Yet note that both spouses indeed are punished together, but they are not ordered to be separated. That is, marriage was prohibited to penitents, but it was not invalidated.

Canon XXII. Penance is not to be given to married persons except with the consent of the other.

The reason of this canon must be sought from the preceding one, as Sirmond notes.

Canon XXV. Those who, after the holy profession of religion, apostatize and return to the world and afterwards do not seek the remedies of penance, are not at all to receive communion without penance; we also order that they not be admitted to the office of clericate. And whoever he may be, after penance let him not presume to put on secular habit; but if he shall have presumed, let him be held alien from the Church.

We have recited this canon because it seems sufficiently to disclose the opinion concerning the force of religious profession impeding nuptials. Surely those on whom penance is imposed because of return to the world, and to whom after penance secular habit, and therefore also secular conversation, is interdicted, must be held to have always been prohibited also from the use of conjugal life. Yet nothing is said concerning the invalidation of the act, just as neither in the following Canon LII.

Canon XLVI. Professed widows, if they have furnished connivance, are to be condemned with the abductors.

Cf. the preceding note.

Canon LII. Concerning girls who have vowed themselves to God and have flourished with the splendid beauty of the name, if after twenty-five years of age they have passed over to earthly nuptials, we have decreed that this is to be observed: that they be deprived of communion with those with whom they have bound themselves, so that penance not be denied to them when they request it, but the communion of that penance be deferred for a long time.