Thesis III

A pact added to the matrimonial contract for preserving perpetual continence does not conflict with the essence of that contract; and it can be that in this way the most blessed Mother of God and St. Joseph entered marriage.

I. In chapter Si Conditiones, On Conditions Added, it is said: "If conditions are inserted against the substance of marriage, for example, if one says to the other, I contract with you if you avoid the generation of offspring, or until I find another richer in honor or possessions, or if for gain you hand yourself over to be adulterated, the matrimonial contract, however favorable it may be, lacks effect; although other conditions added in marriage, if they are base or impossible, ought, because of its favor, to be held as not added." As regards the last part of this chapter, cf. Sanchez, book V, disp. 3; for it does not pertain to our question. What is established in the first part seems to oppose those things which we taught in the preceding thesis and here again defend more fully. For those who would enter a matrimonial contract with an express pact of preserving virginity, or of abstaining from carnal mingling, would finally add this condition to the contract: I contract with you if you avoid the generation of offspring, which effects no contract. And indeed, since offspring is the end of marriage, so that marriage is to be contracted for its sake alone, if we believe Augustine (cf. preceding Thesis, n. II), and yet that offspring is obtained by means of copulation, does not the condition of abstaining from copulation oppose the end of the contract? But is not an expressed will of not attaining the end, by this very fact, also the will of not employing the means which has been instituted for that end alone? Indeed, the matrimonial contract and the pact of preserving virginity appear mutually contradictory and therefore to destroy each other. For by the former there is made a mutual obligation and power toward carnal copulation; by the latter there is made an obligation of abstaining from it and a lack of power for it, moral indeed, just as the power in marriage also is moral. For this reason this contract seems ridiculous: I give you power for this, provided that you obligate yourself not to use it, that is, provided that you do not obtain this power. Therefore, although the pact of preserving virginity concerns a holy thing, indeed a holier thing, nevertheless, because it cannot be composed with matrimonial consent, it must be said that marriage is made void by that pact. Thus indeed not a few say. Benedict XIV, On the Diocesan Synod, XIII, 22 (cf. also On the Feasts of the Blessed Mary, on the Espousals), doubtful, as is his custom, hesitates because of the opposed opinions of Doctors; but in order to defend a true marriage, such as he judges really to have existed between the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph, he enters upon that path which excludes an express pact of preserving virginity added to the contract itself. Although this way of explaining that marriage is not disapproved by us, nevertheless we judge that that marriage could have been true even if a pact of preserving virginity had preceded it, that is, generally that this pact mutually undertaken does not vitiate the matrimonial contract.

II. That there was true marriage, not mere betrothal, between the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph, Suarez, in III, q. XXIX, a. 2, section 1, holds as so certain that he asserts it to be a truth of faith, which Sanchez, book II, disp. XXVIII, does not approve. If by a truth of faith you understand one which not only has been revealed by God but also has been defined by the Church, Sanchez rightly disapproves the opinion of Suarez; but if you call a truth of faith one which has been revealed and can be defined by the Church, we judge that Suarez spoke truly, because of the theological arguments which persuade us of this. On this matter one should read the learned Dissertation of the distinguished Father Patrizi, On the First Embassy of the Angel to St. Joseph, published separately. We shall complete the matter briefly in this way.

1. In describing the genealogy of Christ, this is Matthew's purpose (1:1 ff.), namely to show that Christ draws his origin from Abraham and David. But since Christ, by the testimony of Matthew himself (ibid. 18 ff.), arose from the Virgin alone without the help of a man, it was necessary that Christ draw origin from David through the Blessed Virgin herself; and therefore it was necessary that the Blessed Virgin herself be from David, and the Evangelist had to demonstrate this if he wished to show Christ's origin from David. Now Matthew deduces the series of generations from David down to Joseph, and then adds that he is the man of Mary, from whom Jesus was born. But this way of describing the genealogy would conclude nothing unless Matthew supposed that this was known to those to whom he was writing, namely that Mary was an agnate of Joseph, that is, from the same family. This, I say, Matthew supposes as known; for this is in reality the minor premise of his reasoning, which nevertheless he left unspoken. Namely he argues thus, nor can his conclusion have force otherwise: those whom I have enumerated are the progenitors of Joseph; but Mary is an agnate of Joseph; therefore the same men, either all or almost all, perhaps with the last excepted, are also the progenitors of Mary, and therefore of Christ. Why, then, did Matthew leave unspoken this premise necessary for his conclusion? There was no other reason except that he supposed it to be known to those to whom he was writing. Moreover, this shows that it was also known to the same persons that Mary was the true wife of Joseph. For how could it be generally established that Mary was an agnate of Joseph? Some public fact was required. Such a fact could be no other than this: that Mary, a daughter lacking brothers, had been compelled to marry by force of the law concerning heiress daughters (Num. XXXVI, 1 ff.), which law indeed ordered heiress daughters to marry an agnate. Cf. Patrizi, On the Gospels, dissertation VI and dissertation IX, chapter 2, part 1. Therefore this was commonly established: that Mary had satisfied this law. But the law ordered the heiress daughter to enter, not some mere betrothal, but true marriage with an agnate. Therefore, finally, Matthew himself, calling Joseph the man of Mary, takes "man" strictly, namely as one who was joined by the bond of true marriage to Mary his wife, who by force of that law had married him.

2. Mary is said to be betrothed to Joseph (Matt. 1:18; Luke 1:27). Now either the betrothal of the Virgin of which the Evangelists speak is taken so that the nuptials had been completed, or so that the celebration of the nuptials still remained (cf. the Parergon at the end of this chapter). If the first is said, you have a perfect marriage. If the second is said: first, either betrothal alone effected true marriage among the Hebrews; but the taking or leading of the bride into the house of the man, that is, the celebration of nuptials, provided this, at least in the later age, that the spouses might lawfully and honorably use the power already handed over and accepted (cf. the cited Dissertation of Patrizi). Therefore, if marriage consists in the handing over of power, the Blessed Virgin was already the true wife of Joseph. But second, it cannot be doubted that if something still remained to be done, that is, the celebration of the nuptials, it was done in its own time. For otherwise Joseph would have had to dismiss the bride according to Mosaic law by giving a bill of repudiation, which Joseph certainly did not do. Therefore.

3. Besides, how could it have happened that Jesus was commonly believed to be the son of Joseph the carpenter (Luke III, 23; John VI, 42, compared with Mark VI, 3), unless it had been established for all that there was true marriage between him and the Mother of the Lord? Therefore whatever was required for entering true marriage had been performed by both, and indeed publicly; and therefore true marriage was contracted.

4. But what of the Fathers? The Fathers generally investigate and give reasons why the Blessed Virgin was joined to a man: namely that she might have support and consolation, that she might not be reckoned an adulteress, and that her birth-giving might be concealed from the devil (cf. Jerome on Matthew, chapter 1). Now these reasons, especially the two latter, require such a union of the Blessed Virgin with St. Joseph to be conceived that by force of that union Joseph should be judged to have had a right over the Blessed Virgin to conjugal acts; but this is the bond proper to marriage. But when they deny that Joseph was or is to be called the husband of the Virgin (cf. Jerome, ibid., chapter II), they understand by husband one who is not only a man, but who further uses conjugal copulation. This is a way of thinking frequent in Jerome, who therefore opposes husbands, as also wives, to virgins in this manner: that he numbers among virgins also those who, joined by the bond of marriage, abstain from intercourse (cf. what he disputes against Helvidius, and what we shall bring from him in Chapter II, Thesis VII). And rightly indeed; for it is not the conjugal bond, but the use of copulation, that is opposed to virginity and most perfect chastity. Therefore it must be held that the Blessed Virgin was joined to St. Joseph by the bond of true marriage.

III. But this also must be held: that the Blessed Virgin, before she was addressed by the Angel, had obligated herself to God by a vow of virginity. For her words to the Angel compel us to believe this: "How shall this be, since I know not man?" For this present, "I know not," in this place signifies not some transitory act, but the will or power of the act, as the present form of a verb frequently does; otherwise the response would be foolish and ridiculous. Therefore the sense is: since I do not wish, or I cannot, know a man, that is, be mingled with him. Shall we think, with the Protestant interpreter Wilhelm Meyer in this place, that Mary from error so understood the preceding words of the Angel that she thought that she immediately then had to mingle, not with her own man, who perhaps was absent, but with another, and therefore signified her will of preserving conjugal chastity? This interpretation, full of irreverence, besides the fact that it is unknown to the Fathers and abhorrent from them, is excluded by the words of the Virgin Mary themselves; for she did not answer that she did not know another man, but simply that she did not know man. If these words are considered in themselves, their sense can only be one of these two: either that she knows no man, or that she does not know her own man. But because it is absurd to suppose that the Blessed Virgin suspected the Angel of proposing to her an illicit mingling forbidden by natural law, those words in this place can give only the other sense; and therefore they come back to this: since I do not know my man. Besides, what was there in the words of the Angel, who used only future forms, "you shall conceive," "you shall bear," from which Mary could suspect that he was speaking of a conception to be had immediately? But what that learned doctor says, that our interpretation is excluded by the very condition of Mary, since she was joined in marriage to Joseph, is altogether inept; as though it were not lawful for spouses, at least after nuptials had been entered, to vow virginity by consent. We do not divine that this happened; we are taught it from the words of Mary. Cf. Petavius, On the Incarnation, book XIV, chapter 4.

IV. But the question can be raised whether the Blessed Mary made the vow of virginity only after the nuptials had been entered, or before them; and if this latter, whether absolutely or only conditionally, namely unless God should perhaps signify to her that something else was pleasing to him.

For resolving the former question, certain testimonies of Scripture do not suffice. Nevertheless the sense of the Church, concordant among ancient and recent writers, shows itself clearly enough in favor of the sentence affirming that the vow, or purpose, of virginity was elicited before the nuptials. This is attested by the most ancient author of the apocryphal book The Gospel of the Nativity. Epiphanius seems to have judged the same in heresy LVIII, n. 7, saying that "the Blessed Mary was indeed handed over to Joseph," whom he nevertheless thinks to have been old, "but by no means was she granted to him for copulation." Thus Augustine judged, who in the book On Virginity, chapter 4, says: "She was betrothed to a just man, not one who would violently take away, but rather one who would guard against the violent, what she had already vowed." Thus Sophronius of Jerusalem, in his Oration on the Annunciation of the Mother of God (Ballerini, Sylloge, part 2, p. 95), after he had commended, insofar as it could be done, the purity and virginity of the Blessed Mary offered in the temple and thereafter, introduces the Angel speaking thus to the Blessed Virgin: "I know that Joseph has obtained the mere name of spouse without the thing; for he was not joined to you as the begetter of offspring, but as the faithful and God-beloved minister of your Son." John Geometra, not later than the middle of the eleventh century (Sylloge of Ballerini; cf. his preface, part 2), said in an Oration on the Annunciation of the Mother of God (ibid., p. 106): "the tradition derived from the Fathers to us: that the Virgin knew not only no use of nuptials, but not even a desire of them. I know no desire of a man, she says, no will of the flesh is mine. This indeed was singular to her, even from the whole female sex, since before all others and from a deliberate purpose of the will there was in her a chastity inaccessible to these defilements." Hence in the twelfth century Hugh of St. Victor wondered that anyone had existed who dared to call into doubt the vow of virginity made by the Blessed Virgin before the nuptials, moved by this reason, that it cannot be composed with the consent necessary for marriage. This indeed he excellently and subtly refutes in the little work On the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mary. Finally after him Thomas taught, in IV, dist. XXX, that the vow of virginity preceded the nuptials, and generally the Scholastics with him.

V. But the remaining question is whether this vow before the nuptials was absolute or only conditioned. A conditioned vow is understood in this way: that the Blessed Virgin firmly proposed and promised to God her perpetual virginity, with the will of preserving it insofar as it was situated in her own choice, but with some condition nevertheless added to this promise; not only this implicit condition, "if it please God," which accompanies all vows, says St. Bonaventure (in IV, dist. XXVIII, a. 1, q. 6), but an explicit and more determinate condition, arising from a doubt by which the Virgin could still be troubled: namely, unless from some debt of keeping the divine law by which I am bound, I should understand that there is another will of God. For one must think that the Blessed Virgin, who was an heiress daughter, knew the Mosaic law which ordered daughters of this kind to marry agnates, so that goods might remain in the family; and therefore that one of her agnates had a right to take her as wife. Moreover, unless the man consents to continence, it is the obligation of the wife to render the debt. Could the Virgin, placed in these circumstances, make an absolute vow of virginity? A twofold hypothesis must be distinguished.

If we suppose that the Blessed Virgin had already long before been made certain by divine revelation that, whatever would happen, although she would have to marry, nevertheless her virginity would be subject to no danger, she could before marriage promise virginity to God absolutely. But if we do not suppose this knowledge of the Virgin from divine revelation, she could conceive only a conditioned vow; otherwise she would have shown herself less conformable to the law, which certainly had to be avoided all the more. Therefore, if no revelation preceded, it must be said either that marriage was entered by the Blessed Virgin with that vow only conditioned, "if Joseph should consent"; but, with the consent of Joseph acceding after the matrimonial contract, the vow became absolute before she was saluted by the Angel; or that before the matrimonial contract itself, there intervened a mutual pact with Joseph of preserving virginity in marriage, and that, with the future husband's consent, the Virgin then already vowed absolutely, if indeed this pact does not obstruct matrimonial consent. But if that revelation which we have mentioned preceded, the Blessed Virgin, even before she thought of marriage, before the consent of a future husband was received, could absolutely vow virginity to God, since she knew with certainty that it would not be violated against her will by any external cause. But what is more probable to have happened? If you weigh the sense of the Church expressed by the testimonies cited, you will hardly persuade yourself that there is speech only of a conditioned vow before the nuptials. For they speak either simply of a vow, or even of an absolute vow. This is what Hugh of St. Victor defends, what Thomas affirms, who therefore, to explain it, posits a revelation previously made to the Virgin, by which she was made certain that her virginity would never come into danger. This sentence, that an absolute vow of virginity preceded marriage, coheres more with the eminent concept of the most pure Virgin. Thus the question remains whether it was lawful for each to add to matrimonial consent a pact concerning preserving virginity, and whether it is lawful for us to conceive the nuptials entered by the Blessed Virgin with St. Joseph in this way. This certainly is easier to think to have been done if no revelation preceded for the Virgin; but even on this hypothesis it could also happen, unless the essence of the matrimonial contract rejects a pact of this kind. It is clear that the general question can be proposed, namely whether a pact of this kind renders the matrimonial contract null.

VI. Although not a few Doctors, whom Benedict XIV seems rather to approve in On the Feast of the Espousals of Blessed Mary, judge this to be so and seem to rely on the authority of St. Thomas, nevertheless the denying sentence is certain to us, and Hugh of St. Victor in the cited little work, and others whom Ballerini follows (Theological-Moral Work, vol. V, On Marriage, n. 419 ff.), defend it. For, first, the arguments brought forward for the opposite sentence do not settle the matter.

Indeed, a) appeal is badly made to the canon of the Decretals (n. I). For that condition which is said to be against the substance of marriage, "If you avoid the generation of offspring," is without any reason confused with this one: "If you are willing to preserve continence," although from this there follows a lack of offspring. For the condition which is against the substance of marriage is that which is opposed, not only negatively but positively, to some good of marriage; certainly of this kind are the two following conditions enumerated by the Pontiff. But the condition of avoiding offspring, which positively opposes marriage, is the will of impeding the generation of offspring in the use of marriage. The sense of the condition, namely, is this: I contract with you if, in carnal mingling, you are willing to impede offspring from existing. Indeed, the examples of this condition brought by the canonists look to this, namely either by suffocating the offspring or by drinking a potion of sterility, as is taught in chapter Aliquando, 32, q. 5, says Gonzalez on the Decretals, book IV, here, which examples suppose carnal copulation and indicate the will of impeding offspring from arising from marital copulation. This certainly is directly against the end of the same. Now this is altogether different from establishing abstinence from copulation; therefore that decretal is not rightly invoked in this question. Indeed, the condition added of impeding offspring is against the substance of marriage, because that very impediment of offspring in carnal mingling is against the end of conjugal copulation; but who would say that mere abstinence from copulation is against the end of marriage? Therefore these two things are wrongly confused.

But, they say, b) in reality it is opposed to the end of marriage, whose end is offspring. Therefore we respond according to those things which we taught from Augustine in the preceding thesis: offspring is the primary end of matrimonial copulation, although not the only end - conceded; it is the end of the matrimonial bond itself - distinguish: immediate, denied; mediate, distinguish further: it is the only end, or an end essential to the essence of marriage, denied; it is some end, indeed even primary, conceded. Now, to enter some contract with a pact not indeed of acting against some one of its ends, but only of not doing that from which some one of its ends, even the primary end, follows, while other ends and goods remain, is certainly lawful. For provided that this end is not positively excluded, an action intending a good from a good end is honorable (cf. the moral theologians); but the end is not positively excluded when only the use of the thing is omitted. Indeed I ask: is there a true matrimonial contract when it is made between those for whom copulation is possible, but offspring is not possible? Who sane has ever denied this? In those contracting, can there be a serious intention of offspring? I do not think so. Therefore the matrimonial contract is valid even without any positive intention of any good or end of the same, without, I say, any intention of offspring.

Therefore, from the fact that, because of the pact of continence added to the contract, the intention of offspring is lacking, that pact cannot be condemned on account of the lack of intention of this end.

But they press more sharply, c). With that pact added, not only is the intention of the end lacking, but also the intention of copulation; indeed there is introduced an obligation of abstaining from it. But this is repugnant to matrimonial consent itself, by which power is conferred for copulation; for a moral power toward copulation and a moral obligation of abstaining from it are contraries which cannot exist together. This is the principal argument of the adversaries (Sanchez, book V, disp. 10). Nevertheless we have something to reply; namely, we affirm three things. First, an intention of not using copulation, hidden in the soul, does not harm the value of the contract; once that contract has followed, if the other asks, it will be necessary to render the debt and to bid farewell to that intention. Second, this intention when manifested, since, if it is seriously made, it signifies the will of obligating the other to continence, vitiates the contract if the other does not consent to the same thing. Third, the mutual obligation of continence undertaken in the contract itself is opposed not to the matrimonial contract itself, but to a certain free use of the same, and therefore does not make the contract void.

The first is clear, because in itself the will of not using some thing does not exclude the will of having it. Indeed, if someone received the order of priesthood without the intention of ever exercising its acts, would this will exclude the intention of receiving the order? By no means; but he would truly be a priest, who nevertheless could be obligated by the Bishop to acts of the order, notwithstanding that intention. So in marriage. For, with St. Thomas (in IV, dist. XXX, q. 2, a. 2, ql. 3), as Sanchez observes (book II, disp. XXVIII, n. 4), a twofold account of implicit consent must be distinguished. One is implicit consent on the part of the object or contract; in this way it is true that in consent into marriage there is contained implicit consent into copulation, to which marriage is intrinsically ordered. The other is implicit consent on the part of the subject or the one contracting; in this way implicit consent into copulation is not necessary, and indeed, although the one contracting has the intention of not consenting into copulation, there is true marriage. This, says Sanchez, St. Thomas seems clearly to signify in the cited place by these words: "The Virgin implicitly consented into copulation... copulation was never in the proposal; for she had been certified by God that the act ought never to follow." Behold how, on the part of the contract, he posits implicit consent into copulation, but not on the part of the one contracting; rather, he posits the opposite disposition. Thus Sanchez.

The second is also clear: for if the other does not consent to the continence which the one wills, since he wills marriage on account of its intrinsic goods, which he is not going to obtain with this person, neither is he judged to will to contract with this person.

As regards the third, observe with the distinguished Ballerini (loc. cit.) that those who put this pact before the matrimonial contract must be said, rather than to yield a right, to promise a yielding of a right; for the yielding of a right supposes an acquired power, which is acquired by the matrimonial contract itself. But if this pact is conceived together with the contract itself as a mode of it, the persons contracting must be said to hand over power to each other mutually in such a way that at the same time they mutually renounce the right to copulation which arises from that power. It is as if someone buying a house should, in the very act of contracting, yield the use of that same house to the seller.

Therefore we prove this third head thus. A distinction must be made both between transitory and permanent power, and between power to an act which can produce nothing except this very act and no other effect, and power to some act indeed, but which, since it is permanent, is also able to effect or procure another good consequent upon this very power. Now we concede that, if the discussion is about a transitory power and one from which only that one act is naturally able to proceed, the acquisition of the power and the obligation of not using it cannot be composed together. But if the discussion is about another, permanent power, which besides the act to which it is ordered, and because of this very ordination, can produce some other good, we deny that these two cannot be composed together. You have an example first in the power of priestly order. This indeed in itself is ordered to sacred acts, and certainly is nothing but the power of sacrificing, administering the sacraments, and performing other hierarchical acts. But since it is a permanent power, who does not see that, besides all these acts, it procures for a man a certain perfection and dignity through itself, so that it is good and desirable to have it even without any act? Therefore it is not intrinsically repugnant that this same power be conferred with the obligation of not using it. You have a certain example of this in titular Bishops in the regions of infidels, who nevertheless are prohibited from exercising any act of their power in their titular sees, and could be prohibited from exercising those acts in any place. Say the same of Marriage: the power is mutual over the body of the other in order to copulation, but from this very permanent power there arises a special union and friendship; there arises a right to the help and consolation of the other and to a stable communication of goods. These are the goods which this power produces, even when copulation is set aside.

For this reason the power itself is in itself desirable even when copulation is set aside; nor is it given and obtained in vain when the use of copulation is denied. Now if this is so, it becomes evident that that pact of continence added to the contract is opposed not to the power, but only to a certain act of it; because the power is given and accepted through the contract, and that obligation does not destroy it; for with that obligation this power can still produce good effects and in itself is still some desirable good. Read Hugh of St. Victor, loc. cit. Therefore, since, when there is a permanent power to some act whose positing is not necessary, the power itself and a certain proximate right of using it, which can be lost while the power remains, are distinguished - and so it is in Marriage - and besides this, the power, even when this right is freely renounced, still does something; hence it follows that these two can be composed together: namely, the acquisition of power over the body of the other and the corresponding obligation, and the free abdication of the right of using that power as regards this, namely, as regards copulation.

For this reason, by matrimonial consent affected by this pact, that very thing is handed over and accepted which remains in spouses who after the contract obligate themselves by mutual consent to continence. Therefore what Sanchez says (loc. cit.) is not true: that this mutual pact is repugnant to the intrinsic and necessary elements of marriage. For it is not repugnant to the necessary elements, because neither offspring nor copulation is necessary; but the power over the body of the other, which is necessary to marriage, remains. It is not repugnant to the intrinsic elements, because that which is intrinsic to marriage, that is, that without which its essence cannot exist, is mutual power, not the proximate right of using, which the contracting parties renounce. Therefore if afterward they were to violate this pact, they would not be fornicators, but guilty of a violated promise or vow, if they had sanctioned this pact by a vow. If you hold these things, you have not only the solution of the difficulties, but the demonstration of the Thesis. For the rest, Sanchez does not hand down the opposite sentence as certain, but only as more probable.

Moreover, famous in ecclesiastical history is the marriage of St. Pulcheria the Virgin with Marcian (cf. Acta Sanctorum, September 10, on St. Pulcheria, §11), celebrated after this promise had first been sought by her from Marcian and furnished by him, of preserving her virginity in marriage. Therefore we judge that in the same way the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph could have entered marriage.