From the Council of Vermerie, celebrated at the Palace of Vermerie, in the Presence of King Pepin, A.D. 753

Canon I. Those joined in the third degree are to be separated, and after penance has been performed, if they so wish, they have license to join themselves to others. But in the fourth conjunction, if they have been found, we do not separate them, but we impose penance on them. Yet if it has not been done, we grant no faculty of joining in the fourth generation.

Cf. what was said at the epistles of St. Gregory the Great.

Canon II. If anyone remains with his stepdaughter (privigna), he can have neither her mother nor her daughter; neither he nor she will be able to join themselves to others at any time. Yet to his wife, if she so wishes, if she cannot contain herself, if after she knew that her husband was in adultery with her daughter, she has not had carnal commerce with him, unless she abstains by her own will, she can marry another.

When it is said that such a man, being an adulterer, cannot have the mother of his stepdaughter, of whose mother he himself is the husband, that word have is to be understood of conjugal copula, or even of cohabitation, which is forbidden on account of the supervening affinity.

In the former part of the canon a penalty is established for him who commits adultery with his stepdaughter: namely, that for the whole time of his life he abstain from marriage, so that for this reason, even after his own wife has died, he cannot lead another. From this penalty indeed the wife is immune; and consequently she is said to be able to marry another, provided, however, that she has not had commerce with her husband after she knew of his adultery. The opposition between that which is denied to the man and that which is conceded to the innocent wife remains intact, if the permission made to the wife is understood of second nuptials after the death of the husband. Cf. canon IX.

You see besides that the crime of incest impedes marriage, which indeed occurs several times in the following canons; but cf. the responses of Nicholas I to the bishops of Germany, A.D. 863.

Canon III. If any presbyter has had his niece as wife, let him dismiss her and lose his grade. If another has accepted her and rejects her from himself, if he cannot contain himself, let him accept another: because it is reprehensible that another man should have the woman left by a priest.

Namely, what had already been established (cf. Canon I of the Roman Council under Gregory II, above), that a legitimate wife left by a deceased presbyter could not be accepted by another, these Fathers wish to have force even in her who had been illegitimately joined to a presbyter; and because of this illegitimate conjunction, namely with a niece (which I think the Fathers suppose took place before ordination), the presbyter is punished with deprivation of his grade.

Canon V. If any woman has plotted the death of her husband with other men, and that husband himself, by defending himself, has killed that man, and can prove this, that man can dismiss that wife, and, if he wishes, let him accept another. But that plotter, subjected to penance, shall remain without hope of marriage.

This power, made to the man while it is denied to the woman, of accepting another, may be interpreted of entering marriage after the other's death, as in Canon II. Cf. Canon IX.

Canon VI. If any freeborn man has accepted a female slave as wife, in place of a freeborn woman, if that woman afterward has been reduced to servitude (recalled into servitude), if he can redeem her from servitude, let him do so; if she cannot be redeemed, if he shall so wish, let it be lawful for him to accept another. Similarly also a freeborn woman, if she accepts a slave as a freeborn man, and afterward for whatever cause he has been reduced to servitude, unless through want, with hunger compelling, he sold himself and she consented and was freed from hunger by the price of her husband, if she wishes, she can dismiss him and, if she cannot contain herself, lead another.

The impediment is that of servile condition. But these Fathers seem to pass beyond the limits. For when a female slave, known as such, is accepted as wife, the marriage is valid and cannot be dissolved. But of this sort seems to be this female slave accepted in place of a freeborn woman, whom the husband ought to redeem when she returns from servitude, if he can. Yet perhaps here it is supposed that the man did not know that the wife accepted was a female slave, so that this canon coheres with XIII following.

Canon VII. If a slave has had his own female slave as concubine, if it so pleases, he can, after dismissing her, accept his peer, a female slave of his lord; but it is better to keep his own female slave.

The discourse is about a slave who has female slaves (concerning slaves among the Germans or Franks, cf. Du Cange, Lexicon, at the word servus): if he has his own female slave, not as wife but as concubine, he can indeed cast her away; but the Fathers advise that he keep her, of course as wife. If we take concubine as distinguished from wife, all things stand correctly. Cf. Response IV of Leo to Rusticus, above.

Canon VIII. If any slave, after liberty has been received from his lord, has afterward perpetrated adultery with his female slave, if his lord wills, whether he wills or does not will, he shall have her as wife. But if he dismisses her and leads another, let him be compelled entirely to dismiss the later one, and to receive her with whom he previously committed adultery, or, while she is living, to have no other.

Here adultery is taken for fornication, and the congress is presumed to have been marital.

Canon IX. If anyone, under the compulsion of unavoidable necessity, has fled into another duchy or province, or has followed his senior (suo signore), to whom he cannot falsify his faith, and his wife, when she is able and can, from love of her parents or of her own affairs, has been unwilling to follow him, she shall remain unmarried at all times, as long as her husband, whom she did not follow, lives. For that man her husband, who under the compulsion of necessity fled into another place, if he does not hope ever to return to his own fatherland, if he cannot abstain, can accept another wife with penance.

Here the very opposition between that which is forbidden to the wife as a penalty and that which is permitted to the man seems to demand that the permission made to the man is that of leading another even while his wife is still living; for the wife is forbidden only to accept another man while the former lives, so that when he is dead she is not forbidden to accept another. But if as much had been permitted to the man, no difference would appear between the woman acting unjustly and the innocent man, which difference it is sufficiently manifest that the Fathers wished to establish. Namely, these Fathers erred; and a little afterward Pope Stephen corrected their error (cf. his Response V, cited below), and before him Zacharias had already rejected it in the responses given to Pepin and to all the bishops of the Franks (cf. Response XII, above). Namely, these Fathers obeyed in part the custom which the nation of the Franks, although it had received the Christian rites, had not yet fully put off. Indeed, among the civil formulas edited near the end of the preceding century by the monk Marculf, there exists, Book II, chapter 30, a formula of a charter or little document of repudiation, which was carried out before the count, conceived in this manner: Since between that man and his wife that woman there reigns not charity according to God but discord, and on this account they can by no means live together, it pleased the will of each that they ought to separate themselves from consortship, which also they did. For this reason they decreed that these letters, written between themselves in one tenor, should be made and confirmed, so that each one of them, whether he or she should wish to associate himself or herself to the service of God in a monastery or to a matrimonial bond, should have license and ought to have no claim from this on the part of his or her neighbor, etc. That repudiation employed by the Franks was milder than that which the imperial laws of the Greeks permitted; for the formula of Marculf signifies that the consent of each was required. But the Fathers of Vermerie, as a penalty of the wife refusing the duty owed to her husband in that age in which vassals were so bound to their lords and the occasion of running here and there was too frequent, conceded to husbands deserted by their wives that, after repudiating these, they might lead others. This faculty made to men in this hypothesis by the Fathers of Vermerie could perhaps be a reason why someone might suspect that an equal faculty was made in Canons II and V. Yet if the words are accurately weighed, a manifest difference appears: for here only, and not in those canons, the discourse is about a marriage which is entered while the other spouse is living, and which is forbidden to one, but permitted to the other.

Canon X. If a son has slept with his stepmother, the wife of his father, neither she nor he can arrive at marriage. But that man, if he wishes, can have another wife; but it is better to abstain.

Canon XI. If anyone has slept with his stepdaughter, he can stand by a similar sentence; and with the sister of his wife he can stand in a similar way.

Namely, let the sentence of the preceding canon have force also here, so that the stepfather and stepdaughter, the woman and her sister's husband (that is, the husband of her sister), if they have polluted themselves by incestuous copula, always remain without marriage. But the man concerning whom there is discourse in the preceding canon is the husband of the stepmother, to whom perhaps the Fathers thought favor should be shown, but undeservedly, as in Canon IX.

Canon XII. He who has slept with two sisters, and one of them was previously his wife, shall have neither of them; nor shall that adulterous sister, nor that man who committed adultery with her, ever accept others.

Namely, he who has slept with the sister of his wife shall no longer have relations with his wife, or shall be separated from her (cf. Canon II), nor can he accept that sister after the death of the wife; which indeed, even if that disgrace had not intervened, would have been forbidden. Consequently, as a penalty of the sin, nuptials are altogether forbidden to the adulterers even after the wife's death. Namely, incest is an impediment impeding or prohibiting any nuptials.

Canon XIII. He who knows that his wife is a female slave and accepted her voluntarily shall afterward remain with her always.

Namely, disparity of condition does not invalidate the contract, if it is entered freely with knowledge of that condition.

Canon XVII. If any woman has made complaint that her husband has never remained with her, let them go thence to the cross; and if it shall be true, let them be separated, and let her do what she wishes.

The discourse seems to be about a man who had never been with his wife and would not wish to be in the future. Would we have here the dissolution of a ratified marriage, whose faculty the Fathers of Vermerie claimed for themselves? The same was afterward decreed in A.D. 799 in the Synod of Salzburg, Canon 15.

Canon XVIII. He who remains with the female cousin of his wife shall lack his own wife and have no other. That woman whom he had may do what she wishes. The Church does not receive this.

The last words, "The Church does not receive this," were certainly added by some copyist of the canons; and they could have been added also in Canon IX. Insofar as the incestuous man is not permitted to have any other, that returns which we warned in the last place under Canon XII, and which appears in several other canons of this age.

You discern in these canons, on one side, too much indulgence (Canon IX), and, on the other side, that severity which the Church did not judge should be approved, when for certain disgraces nuptials are altogether forbidden for the whole time of life. The Fathers, namely, were dealing with men still rough.

The same severity, establishing such a penalty, appears in other canons of the same Council cited by Regino, Abbot of Prum, in Book II, On Ecclesiastical Discipline.

Other canons are attributed to the Council at Vermerie by Gratian, C. XXXV, q. 2 and 3; these pertain rather to the Council of Compiegne to be cited below.