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)
212 ANNE J. DUGGAN validity would have penalized large numbers, especially among the rural poor. For this reason, Alexander Ill’s responsum to a bishop of Beauvais in 1170/1, which allowed the parties to a secret or private marriage to have their marriages validated by the Church after the event, given that there were no impediments, was allowed to stand:” Si enim matrimonia ita occulte contrahuntur, quod exinde légitima probatio non appareat, ii, qui ea contrahunt, ab ecclesia non sunt aliquatenus compellendi. Verum si personae contrahentium hoc voluerint publicare, nisi rationabilis et légitima causa praepediat, ab ecclesia recipienda sunt et comprobanda, tanquam a principio in ecclesiae conspectu contracta. (For if marriages are contracted in secret so that there is no legal proof, those who contract them are not to be compelled by the Church in any way. But if the parties wish to publish the fact, they should, unless prevented by a reasonable and lawful cause, be received and confirmed by the Church as if they had from the beginning been contracted in the sight of the Church). So it was that in 1234. Alexander Ill’s responsum and Innocent Ill’s Lateran decree entered the Gregorian Decretals together as X 4.3.2 and 3. On the one hand, the compromise allowed regional bishops flexibility in applying the Lateran decree in their own regions; on the other, it supported the ancient principle that matrimony was a sacrament created by the mutual consent of the parties to live together in a Christian marriage for life. 99 X 4.3.2: Quod nobis, to the bishop of Beauvais: WH 819; JL 13774 (Tusculum, 18 Oct. 1170-19 Sept. 1171).
