From the Epistle of the Same Nicholas, to Harduic, Archbishop of Besancon, A.D. 865

Response I. Those women who have married two brothers, or those who have accepted two sisters as wives, the Council of Neocaesarea commands to be cast away until death and, at their end, to obtain the remedy of penance, only after the bonds of this conjunction have been dissolved. But these men or these women who after penance have sought new marriages and forbidden concubitus, blessed Pope Siricius separates from the banquet of the Lord's table, and willed that such persons be assisted by the grace of communion with the viaticum alone when they begin to set out to the Lord. In what manner, therefore, can they make use of any marriage, to whom it is lawful neither to repeat forbidden concubitus anew nor again to contract new marriages, since, even when the bonds of a conjunction of this sort have been dissolved, such persons can obtain the remedy of penance only at the end?

The Pontiff adheres to the common law and does not permit in the archiepiscopate of Besancon what he had permitted in the regions of Germany in the epistle to the Bishops of Germany: namely, that penance would not be perpetual, and that, once it was completed, legitimate nuptials could be contracted. Dispensation from the law is, namely, a free act which prudence rules, so that, according to diverse conditions, it grants to one what it denies to another.

Response II. But those who accept wives from their own consanguinity and from their own cognation, or marry, who would not reprehend or accuse them? Since even our holy predecessors, prelates of the Apostolic See, namely Gregory and Zacharias, strike these persons with the sword of anathema and willed that a coupling of this sort, contracted as by the custom of beasts, be entirely dissolved. But now, after the coupling has been dissolved, those separated from each other, if they can, as you ask, pass to a better marriage: no reason is open (to those about to obtain it). Since these persons must be subjected to penance, they ought neither to seek these concubitus forbidden to them nor other new marriages.

He presses the law prohibiting marriage to penitents; nevertheless he adds:

"If anyone from this ill-omened mingling has died after dissolution of the coupling, and the other, who has survived and is still detained in the years of adolescence, if, some danger perhaps pressing, he has done penance and complains that he cannot contain himself, he can be helped by the remedy of marriage. We will that the form of this indulgence be observed also concerning women. In this, however, we do not constitute a rule, but with that eminent column of the Church, blessed Pope Leo, we judge what is more tolerable."

Cf. the preceding response, whose rigor proceeds from this: that that sin was to be expiated by sinners with penance up to death, prescribed by the ancient canon, whose force the Pontiff did not wish to relax; but penitents were not permitted to contract nuptials.