To attempt to fit the pieces of any sort of litigation into a coherent picture must be a difficult task. Litigation is diverse and confused, as the aims and motives of the parties to it are diverse and confused. But any searcher in the records of the Church courts cannot avoid an attempt to connect his findings with two problems. One is the relation of canonical theory to actual practice. In particular, this raises the question of the relevance of the writing of the canonists. The other is a substantive evaluation of the Church's jurisdiction over marriage and divorce. Both of these have, in a sense, lain behind much of what has already been said. But they are worth considering directly.

Certainly the broad picture is one of fidelity between the commentaries of the canonists and what went on in the courts. Most of what the canonists wrote was useful and most of their conclusions were observed in practice. The ingenious, and apparently artificial, distinctions they drew between the effects of different words used to contract marriage were actually relevant to real problems. And so far as we can tell, the distinctions were applied by the courts. The difference between a marriage contracted under the words ‘I will have’ and one contracted under the words ‘I will take’ seems, at first blush, a matter of purely academic speculation. But the records show that it was in fact an important difference in litigation.