7 - After Marriage
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
Summary
Divorce
Saint Augustine viewed Christian marriage as a lifelong commitment. In his formulation of the three goods of marriage as fides, proles, et sacramentum, the sacramentality of marital union referred to the indissolubility of the marital bond. Augustine's model of the indissoluble marriage was influential throughout the Middle Ages, and, in the later Middle Ages, the marriage vow taken in England contains within it an expression of the lifelong nature of the commitment being made. Partners took one another as spouses ‘tyll dethe vs departe.’ Christian disapproval of divorce was an innovation: divorce was legal in ancient Jewish law, as it was in ancient Rome and in early medieval Germanic law. Consequently it took the medieval Church a long time to succeed in promoting its idea that marriage was an indissoluble union. In early medieval England, we can see Christian moralists permitting divorce on a number of grounds. The Penitential of Theodore permits remarriage in a number of circumstances. A man may remarry if his spouse commits fornication (but a woman may not). A woman may remarry if her husband becomes a slave through theft, or fornication, or some other offence, but only if it is her first marriage. A deserted husband may remarry after five years with the bishop's consent if he and his wife have not been reconciled. Men and women whose spouses have been taken into captivity or abducted by enemies may remarry: the regulations vary on the length of time they must wait before remarriage, and on the question of which partner should be recognized if the original spouse returns after remarriage has taken place.
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- Marriage in Medieval EnglandLaw, Literature and Practice, pp. 139 - 158Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004