From the Epistle of Nicholas I, to Ado, Archbishop of Vienne, A.D. 862

Response I. You ask whether, after a wife has been dismissed whom someone had led after legitimate betrothal, because afterward he imposed an evil name on her, it is lawful for him, without a decree of a general synod, either to accept another against the evangelical authority, or, while she survives, to have a concubine in place of a wife. To these things, supported by apostolic authority, we resist altogether according to the evangelical sanction, and we neither concede the coupling of another wife to those who do such things while the one dismissed survives, nor do we grant license of having a concubine.

Those words, "against the evangelical authority," inserted in the question, are not those of the ones who were asking, but of Nicholas himself, considering the matter in itself.

Response II. Concerning this: if a betrothed woman, with the betrothed man not knowing, is corrupted, and afterward, a dowry having been made, that same betrothed man has lain with the same woman in marital fashion: whether, after no time has been intercepted (other reading: interposed), it is lawful for him to dismiss her as corrupted by another and thus lead another, as if that woman had not been a wife, or to hold a concubine in place of her. We do not consent to this either, that those who are joined by the legitimate covenant of nuptials and are made one body through some space of time should make a divorce. But what before, at the beginning of the conjunction, they voluntarily kept silent by receiving the corrupted woman, afterward, with time intercepted, by enduring it, even if not voluntarily, let them unwillingly preserve; also let them in every way abstain from concubines.

The other part of the response ("but what before they kept silent") is a little obscure. Nicholas seems to suppose that the betrothed man from the beginning, before the marital union had been performed with marital affection (through which espousals then passed into marriage), knew the corruption of the betrothed woman and voluntarily kept silent; yet this seems to be alien to the species of the case. But in reality it is not alien; for nothing contrary to this hypothesis occurs in the statement of the case. Nor ought it to be a wonder that the betrothed man at first, because of affection toward the betrothed woman, considered that defect of small account; but afterward, with affection cooling, objected to the crime of the betrothed woman, and wished from it to seize a cause of dissolving the marriage. Therefore Nicholas wishes to say that it was indeed lawful for the betrothed man before marital congress to dismiss the betrothed woman and refuse her nuptials because of that crime or defect, but once the marriage had been completed, this was no longer lawful.