From the Second Council of Chalon, A.D. 813

Canon XXVIII. Certain men asked us about the affinity of relationships and in which degrees marriages are to be joined. We command them to run to the canons, and that what is contained in them ought to be observed by them in this business, as in the rest.

Appeal is made to the canons, not to the civil laws. In a certain capitulum of Book I of the collection of Benedict the Levite, n. 310: Incestuous nuptials are forbidden, that is, up to the line of affinity, or as long as they could inherit between themselves. Affinity, namely, extends only as far as the capacity of going to an inheritance ab intestato. Cf. what we shall bring forward from Peter Damian under the Roman Council of Alexander II.

Canon XXIX. Certainly, the rule which is to be observed in the proper husband, the same, namely, must be observed in the kinship of the wife from the law of nuptials. Therefore, because it is established that those two are in one flesh, a common kinship on both sides must be believed to belong to them.

Namely, the blood-relatives of one spouse are affines of the other.

Canon XXX. It has been told to us that certain persons, by a certain authoritative presumption, break up legitimate marriages of slaves, not attending to that evangelical saying: What God has joined, let man not separate. Whence it seemed good to us that the marriages of slaves are not to be broken up, even if they have different lords, but that, remaining in one marriage, they should serve their lords. And this is to be observed in those cases where there was a lawful conjunction and by the will of the lords.

If the consent of the lords is lacking, these Fathers seem not to judge the marriage of slaves legitimate. So indeed in the capitular of Aito, chapter XXI, which follows here. But in other respects the Fathers wish marriages among slaves to be legitimate and indissoluble.

Canon XXXI. It was also told to us that certain women, some carelessly, some also fraudulently, in order to be separated from their husbands, held their own sons before bishops for confirmation. Whence we judged it fitting that if any woman has held her own son before a bishop for confirmation, through carelessness or through some fraud, on account of her fallacy or on account of the fraud, as long as she lives let her do penance, yet let her not be separated from her husband.

Cf. also the response of John VIII to Anselm the Bishop, A.D. 879, below. Namely, she loses the right of asking, which does not befit a penitent, but not the debt of rendering. Alexander III decreed a little otherwise, chapter Si vir, De Cognatione Spirituali.