From the Letter of Leo, to Nicetas, Bishop of Aquileia, A.D. 458

Decree I. Since through the calamity of war ... men were carried off into captivity, and their women ... who thought their own husbands either killed or believed they would never be freed from domination, and, solitude compelling them, passed over to marriage with others, and since now ... some of those who were thought to have perished have returned, your charity deservedly seems to be uncertain what ought to be ordained by us concerning the women who have been joined to other men. But because we know it written that "a woman is joined to a man by God" (Prov. XIX, 14), and again we have recognized the precept, that "what God has joined, let not man separate," it is necessary that we believe the covenants of legitimate nuptials are to be restored, and, the evils which hostility brought in being removed, that to each one that which he legitimately had be reformed; and it must be procured with every zeal that each one receive what is his own.