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)

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ANNE J. DUGGAN

ter in a responsum in 120992 and again as the conclusion of Canon 52 of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which forbade the use of flimsy hearsay evidence in consanguinity cases

.93 More importantly, the application of this principle, that God’s laws are immutable but human laws, including ecclesiastical precepts which do not depend directly on them, can be changed when necessary,94 underpinned Canon 50. After declaring the mutability of statuta Humana, by which Innocent III meant the tangled web of rules and customs relating to consanguinity and affinity:95

Non debet represensibile iudicari, si secundum varietatem temporum statuta quan- doque varientur humana, presertim quum urgens nécessitas vei evidens utilitas id exposed, quoniam ipse Deus ex his quae in veterì testamento statuerat, nonulla mutuavit in novo.

(It should not be considered reprehensible if human statutes are changed according to changing times, especially when urgent need or evident utility requires it, since in the New Testament God himself changed some things which he had decreed in the Old).

The canon declared, simply:

Prohibitio quoque copulae coniugalis quartum consanguinitatis et affinitatis gra- dum de caetero non excedat, quoniam in ulterioribus gradibus iam non potest absque gravi dispendio huiusmodi prohibitio generaliter observari.

(The prohibition of conjugal union also shall not for the future exceed the fourth grade of consanguinity and affinity, since it is not possible for a prohibition of this kind to be generally observed in the further grades without grave inconvenience).

Miscellanea Rolando Bándinéin, Papa Alessandro III (Accademia Senesi degli Intronati), Siena 1986. 85-151, at 105-06; repr. with the same pagination in Duggan, C., Decretals and the Creation of New Law in the Twelfth Century. Judges, Judgements, Equity and Law, Aldershot 1998. No. III. Innocent III used the same statement, almost verbatim, forty or so years later in a rescriptum to the prior of St Honoratus of Arles (1209), Ex tenore tuarum litterarum: PL CCXVI. 66-68, no. 61, at 68: cum tolerabilius sit aliquos contra statuta hominum copulatos di- mittere quam conjunctos legitime contra statuta Domini separare.

92 Ex tenore tuarum litterarum: PL CCXVI. 66-68, no. 61 (to the prior of St-Honoratus in Arles), at 68.

» X 2.20.47.

94 For a brief summary of literature on the ‘flexibility and mutability of laws’, see Dondorp, H., Review of Papal Rescripts in the Canonists' Teaching, in ZRG Kan. Abt. 107 (1990) 172-253, at 172-177.

95 Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, Bologna 1973.3 257-258; cf. X 4.14.8: Esmein, A., Le mariage en droit canonique, I-II. Paris 1929.21. 371-393. Helmholz, R. H., Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (Cambridge Studies in: English Legal History), London-New York 1974; cf. idem, in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, III. 539-540.