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) 203

Cum societas nuptiarum ita a principio sit instituta, ut preter conmixtionem se- xuum non habeant in se nuptiae Christi et ecclesiae sacramentum, non dubium est, illám mulierem non pertinere ad matrimonium, in qua docetur non fuisse nuptiale misterium.

(Since the association of marriage was established from the beginning so that, apart from the union of the sexes, marriage should not contain within itself the sacrament of Christ and the Church, there is no doubt that that woman [the concubine], in whom it is shown that there was no nuptial mystery, does not belong to matrimony.)

In this way, an authentic tradition was confronted by two falsified texts attributed to the unimpeachable authority of St Augustine and St Leo I. Gratian then resolved the contradiction by arguing that marriage was initiated (initiatum) in espousal (sponsalitio) and perfected in physical union: coniugium desponsatio- ne initiatur, commixtione perficitur. Thus marriage was ratum, ratified and indissoluble, only after consummation.59

III. Towards a resolution

Simultaneously, from the beginning of the twelfth century one can trace the emergence in northern France of a contervailing theological tradition, which stripped away all the confusion in the legal sources and concentrated on the core of the Levitican exclusions for consanguinity and affinity and on the consent of the parties as the essential element in the formation of the sacrament. Writers like Ivo of Chartres and Anselm of Laon (fl 117)60 61 62 emphasized the authentic tradition traced above, from Augustine and Ambrose through to Leo I and Nicholas I, and Anselm of Laon distinguished between the pledge to make a contract (fides pactionis) and the pledge of consent itself (fides consensus).6'

The most important step, however, was taken by Hugh of St-Victor (t 1141) in the mid-1130s in Book ix of his De sacramentis 62 There, slightly modifying the definition in the Institutes, he defined marriage as The lawful consent of a man and a woman lawfully made to maintain an exclusive companionship for

59 Gratian, C.27 q.2 dictum ante c.35: Coniugium desponsatione initiatur, commixtione perficitur. (...) inter sponsum et sponsam coniugium est, sed initiatum; inter copulatos est coniugium ratum.

60 Fransen, G., La formation du lien matrimonial au moyen âge, in Revue de Droit Canonique 21 (1971) 106-126, at 111-117.

61 Fransen, G., La formation du lien matrimonial au moyen âge, 113, citing Ganshof, F. L., Note sur deux textes de droit canonique dans le "Liber Floridus ”, in Etudes d’histoire du droit canonique dédiés à Gabriel le Bras, i (Paris 1965), 105-115.

62 Van Den Eynde, D., Essai sur la succession et la date des écrits de Hugues de Saint-Victor (Spicilegium Pontifica Athenaei Antoniani 13), Rome 1960. 100-103.