Folia Theologica et Canonica 3. 25/17 (2014)

IUS CANONICUM - Anne J. Duggan, The paradox of marriage law: from St Paul to Lateran IV (1215)

THE PARADOX OF MARRIAGE LAW: FROM ST PAUL TO LATERAN IV (1215) 201

II. Consent vs consummation

A second problem was confusion about which action established a valid and indissoluble marriage. Like the question of incest, this confusion can be traced to a combination of misinterpretation and faulty transmission of the key authority. Leo I, it will be remembered, had distinguished between concubinage and matrimony,48 but when Archbishop Hincmar of Reims applied that definition to a difficult marriage case referred to him four hundred years later by prelates after the Council of Tusey-sur-Meuse in 860, his gloss signihcantly changed its meaning:49

quia secundum diffìnitionem sancii Leonis papae et traditionem doctorum superius demonstratum50 dubium non est earn mulierem non pertinere ad matrimonium, in qua coniunctione sexuum non docetur Christi et ecclesiae sacramentum, hoc est nuptiale mysterium.

(for according to the definition of Pope St Leo and the tradition of the teachers cited above, there is no doubt that that woman does not belong to matrimony, in whom the sacrament of Christ and the Church, that is the nuptial mystery, is not shown by sexual union.)

Where Leo had discounted sexual union -preter sexuum conjunctionem- Hincmar had made it the core of the sacrament. Moreover, in an anticipation of the later treatment in Gratian,51 he supported his interpretation with an equally false attribution to St Augustine:52

48 Above, at n. 11.

49 MGH Epist. VIII/1. 87-107, no. 136, at 97, lines 11-12. For the letter in Migne, seePLCXXVI.

132- 153, no. 22.

50 MGH Epist. VIII/1. 93, and n. 1.

51 C.27 q.2 C.16, but Hincmar was not the source. See below, n. 58.

52 MGH Epist. VIII/1. 93, lines 6-7. On this letter see Gaudemet, J., Recherche sur les origines historiques de la faculté de rompre le mariage non consommé, in Kuttner, S. - Pennington, K. (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Salamanca, 21-25 September 1976 (Monumenta Iuris Canonici C/6), Città del Vaticano 1980. 309-33 and G. Fransen’s attemptto defend Hincmar from the suspicion of falsification (which I do not find persuasive): La letter de Hincmar de Reims au sujet du marriage d'Etienne. Une relecture, in Lievens, R. - van Mingroot, E. - Verbeke, V. (ed.), Pascua Mediaevalia, Leuven, 1983.

133- 46. Cf. Gaudemet, J., Sur trois “Dicta Gratiani", below, n. 58. Reynolds, P. L., Marriage in the Western Church: the Christianization of Marriage during the patristic and early medieval periods, Leiden-New York 1994. 354-361, raises no question about Hincmar’s treatment of Leo and Augustine, although he allows that the letter is ‘tortuous, rambling, and sometimes obscure’ (355).