From the Epistle of the Same, to Felix of Messina (Epistles, Book XIV, Epistle 17), A.D. 604

"What I wrote to Augustine, bishop of the English race, to your alumnus, namely, as you remember, concerning the union of consanguinity, you should know that I wrote to him specially, and not generally to others, for the race of the Angles itself, which had recently come to the faith, lest from fear of things more austere it withdraw from the good which it had begun. Whence also every Roman city stood forth as witness for me (perhaps a synod, in which this concession was made by decree, is indicated); nor were these things commanded by me to them in that intention that, after they have been strengthened in faith by a firm root, if they have been found within their own consanguinity, they should not be separated, or that within the line of affinity (consanguinity), that is, down to the seventh generation, they should be joined. But while those neophytes are still existent, it is necessary very often first to teach them to avoid unlawful things and to instruct them by words and examples; and the things which afterward they may have done concerning such matters must reasonably and faithfully be excluded."

The line of consanguinity is said to extend down to the seventh generation; moreover the Angles are to be joined beyond it, since the privilege has first been revoked.

It will be useful to linger here a little, that, if it is right, we may interpret rightly the opinions of Gregory the Great (and cf. what was said in Theology XXIX, n. XIV, concerning these epistles). As regards the epistle to Augustine, Gregory makes mention of a certain earthly law, which is the law in the Code of Justinian, L. V, Tit. IV, l. 19, which either before or after Theodosius the Younger removed the law of Theodosius the Elder forbidding nuptials between cousins. Indeed, Theodosius the Great was the first of the Roman Emperors to forbid nuptials between paternal cousins and first cousins. This law indeed is not extant; nevertheless Ambrose mentions it in the epistle to Paternus, Augustine in The City of God XV.16, Aurelius Victor in the epitome of the History toward the end, and Arcadius and Honorius, sons of the same Theodosius, in the law Manente, Cod. Theod. L. III, Tit. 12, l. 3, by which law they tempered the law of their father as to the penalties. The question is whether afterward the same sons abolished the same law of their father by the law Celebrandis, by which these nuptials are permitted, which law is extant in the Code of Justinian, Book V, Title 4, and is ascribed to the same men, although it is lacking in the Theodosian code. Jacobus Sirmondus, in the diatribe On the Law Celebrandis (Works, Tom. IV), judges it more probable that this law, such as it now stands in the Code of Justinian, did not proceed from Arcadius and Honorius, both for other causes and especially because it is absent from the Theodosian code, and was unknown to Augustine, who, in the cited place, acknowledges the law of Theodosius the Elder alone as in force in his own age; and finally because, on the contrary, Honorius and Arcadius brought a law (Cod. Theod. L. III, Tit. 10, sole law, If nuptials are sought by rescript) by which, while the prohibition of nuptials between cousins remained, they nevertheless granted that the same nuptials could be sought by rescript of the Prince.

But Jacobus Gothofredus, on Cod. Theod. L. III, Tit. 12, l. 3, judges that there is nothing for which that law Celebrandis should be denied to be theirs, to whom it is ascribed in the Code of Justinian. For he observes first generally that, when there were two or more Emperors, even if some law was founded by one alone, it was nevertheless accustomed to be inscribed and promulgated in the name and authority of all. Therefore he says: 1. the law Si nuptiae, published shortly thereafter, is from Honorius alone in the West. 2. Arcadius, however, first tempered the rigor of the paternal law by the law Manente; then, a few years later, by the law Celebrandis permitted what the Father had forbidden. Why therefore does this law Celebrandis not appear in the Theodosian code? He himself responds by asking: why does the law of Theodosius the Elder not appear there? If these things are received (for cf. Gothofredus himself in the cited place), we understand without great difficulty why Augustine in the West acknowledges the law of Theodosius the Elder as still in force; for Honorius had not abrogated it, but rather had confirmed it, permitting only that such nuptials be sought by rescript of the Prince. Cassiodorus also seems to have acknowledged this law of Honorius alone, who in Book VII of the Variarum, formula 46, asserts that the favor of joining by nuptial copulation with cousins was reserved by the prince to prudent men.

But it is certain that before Gregory the Great, Justinian made that law Celebrandis his own, inserting it into his Code, L. V, Tit. IV, l. 19: The license of celebrating marriages among cousins has been granted by the healthfulness of this law; so that, the authority of the old law being revoked and the incentives of calumnies extinguished, marriage among cousins is held legitimate, whether they were born from two brothers, or from two sisters, or from a brother and sister; and those brought forth from that marriage are to be held legitimate and successors to their parents.

And so it is evident that Gregory the Pontiff has no regard to this secular law for Christians, but rather disapproves it.

Yet the question is more entangled: how far, among Christians in the age of Gregory, did the prohibited degrees of kinship extend? For Gregory, in the epistle to Felix, teaches that marriage is lawful only after the seventh generation. On the other hand, at the same age, Isidore, Etymologies, L. IX, c. 6, n. 29, affirms that "consanguinity has been constituted down to the sixth degree of kind" (which nevertheless, according to the interpretation of Peter Damian, does not conflict with the former; cf. below at the year 1065), "so that, just as the generation and estate of man is finished in the six ages of the world, so the propinquity of kind would be terminated by as many degrees." But the Fathers of Agde and Toledo, above, forbid marriages so long as kinship is known; but as to degrees expressly indicated, it does not appear that any degree beyond the third is expressly prohibited. Cf. Canon LXI of the Council of Agde and XXX of Epaon, the canons of the Synod of Auxerre, A.D. 590, and Canon XIV following of the Council of Paris. Theodore of Canterbury, who flourished after the middle of the following century, increases the difficulty. For among the capitula ascribed to him (cf. Spicilegium Dacherianum, Tom. IX), these are found: Chapter XIII: "In the third propinquity of the flesh, according to the Greeks it is lawful to marry, as it is written in the law (the law of Justinian permitted it also in the second degree, according to the ecclesiastical computation indeed; therefore Theodore does not appeal to this law), in the fifth according to the Romans. Nevertheless in the fourth they do not dissolve the marriage after it has been made" (the same thing was established in the middle of the eighth century by the Fathers of Vermerie and others, whom see below). "In the third propinquity it is not lawful to have the wife of another after his death." Chapter LXXXIV: "In the fifth generation they shall be joined; in the fourth, if they have been found joined, they are not to be separated; in the third, they are to be separated." Moreover Rabanus Maurus in the ninth century, in an epistle to Humbert, mention having been made of the opinion of Isidore and Gregory, prefers to both and says that there is to be followed the doctrine of Theodore, who, "walking midway between Isidore and Gregory, defined that after the fifth generation marriage already becomes lawful." But from the capitula of Theodore which are now circulated, it is rather evident that he himself thought marriage lawful after the fourth generation.

Rabanus therefore in the ninth century knew no ecclesiastical law which forbade marriages after at least the fifth generation; indeed, not even after the fourth. For in another little work, On the Nuptials of Blood-Relatives, after the cited canons of Gregory II (which see below), he says that these are to be followed, admonishing only "that if anyone has willed to contain himself as far as the fifth or sixth or even seventh generation, he is not to be prohibited, but rather exhorted." Cf. also Decree XXX of the Council of Mainz held by the same Rabanus, A.D. 847, below. Yet in the eighth century Gregory III already, in an epistle to Boniface (which it is wonderful was hidden from Rabanus), testifies that he has decreed that each one observe his own progeny down to the seventh generation; see below. Moreover Zacharias, in the epistle to Theodore of Pavia (see below), making mention of the epistle of Gregory the Great to the Angles, admonishes that that pious Father granted it that he might impose certain light things, not graver ones, upon the rude and those newly coming to Christ. By these words Zacharias openly alludes to the epistle of the same Gregory to Felix, so that there is no reason why, any longer with Peter Coustant (in the Epistles of the Roman Pontiffs, col. 416-17), who did not see the entire epistle of Zacharias to Theodore, we should doubt the authenticity of this epistle of Gregory to Felix. Zacharias moreover adds there that he wishes the people committed to the care of Theodore to observe not what was granted to the recently converted, but what those keep who from their cradles have been nourished in the Catholic Church: namely, that when they have known themselves to be of their own kinship, by all means they abstain. But since he does not declare the degrees more distinctly, Zacharias seems to understand those whom Gregory the Great, to whom Theodore of Pavia had appealed, indicated, namely down to the seventh degree.

What therefore is to be judged? I think that in the Church this was always guarded: that, so long as certain persons had known themselves to be of their own kinship, they should abstain from marriage (which indeterminate manner of speaking Nicholas I also preferred to retain when he wrote to the Bishops of Germany, see below, as if the degrees of kinship were known from elsewhere); yet there was not among all the same way of applying this law. And at Rome indeed and in the nearest churches, in the age of Gregory the Great, and before him and afterward, the law was in force that, since after the seventh generation kinship was judged to cease, marriages were lawful only after the seventh generation. Certainly Modestinus (in Dig. L. 38, Tit. 10, l. 4) had already said: "not easily, so far as our law is concerned, when inquiry is made concerning natural kinship, does anyone exceed the seventh degree, since beyond that degree the nature of things scarcely permits the life of kinsmen to exist." Nevertheless, I judge that a universal law concerning this matter in the Church, forbidding all these marriages, whether introduced from the prescription of the Roman See or from custom imitating the Roman manner, prevailed only rather late, after the middle of the ninth century. For, as we shall see, several provincial councils of the immediately following centuries are ignorant of this law. But in the ninth century, especially as it declined toward its end, that law appears commonly received.

Unless perhaps you wish to say with some that the difference which shows itself among so many canons is only verbal: namely, that some used the ecclesiastical computation in enumerating the degrees, others the Roman. But we cannot receive this. For 1. if it were so, those who used the Roman computation would have placed the eighth for the fourth ecclesiastical degree; but mention of this degree never occurs. 2. The difference is not only between two limits, inasmuch as some fix the limit, for example, in the fourth degree, others in the seventh, but between several limits; for you will also find those who stop at the third degree. 3. When certain persons in the Church of Naples judged that the computation of degrees should be applied according to the Roman manner, Alexander II (see below in its place) did not respond that up to that time both ways had been used and amounted to the same thing, provided that in the Roman computation the number be doubled; but he utterly rejected that method of computing. 4. When Innocent III in an ecumenical Council (see below) contracted the prohibited degrees to the fourth, because in the more distant degrees the prohibition previously in force could not be generally observed without grave loss, he manifestly signified that the prohibition extending down to the seventh degree differed not only in words but in reality from the prohibition down to the fourth. Otherwise he would have established nothing new, and would have left untouched the same grave loss to which the faithful were liable. Cf. what we shall say at the canon of the Roman Council under Alexander II.