Collaborative Hincmar Project blog

Letter on Stephen 9: final suggestions and comments

2010-09-03T23:28:00.000-07:00

[p 106] For also St Syricus took care to place something about the blessing of betrothed women in his decretals. About whom, the holy canons decree what is noted, and we thence have said some things, and we should now say other things more, if we had heard that a priestly blessing in the ecclesiastical way had been given to this wedding, about which we speak, But the priestly blessing did not have a place in that in which owed faith was absent, especially since scripture says: "In whatever home you should enter, first say: Peace on this house. And if they should be a son of peace in it, your peace will rest upon it, if not, your peace will return to you." [Luke 10: 5-6] And Peter said about the Lord from the faithful: "Faith purifying their hearts". [Acts 15: 9] And again it is written: "All their works in faith" and again: "For what is not from faith is sin". [Romans 14: 23] And where sin remains before suitable satisfaction blessing has no place. For prayer benefits nothing, as blessed Gregory says, where there is iniquitous action.

[p 106] After all these things, if Raymond should not want to receive his daughter, or she should decide to remain in her liberty, it is to be indicated to them that if she herself should commit whatever debauchery [stuprum], whatever should be wrongly done, will pertain to him or her, but not to Stephen.

[p 106] But you ought, holy bishops, to suggest, make known and order both Raymond, Stephen and their relatives and friends from divine mandate that they have peace among themselves, which the Lord orders, and without which they will not be able to see God, except for judgement. And the prince of the land with the primores ought to be busy to do this, lest for the sake of this case scandals and plots may happen in the church and kingdom. Those who should scorn to obey should be made, according to the gospel precept, like a heathen and publican, and according to the Apostle, let it be noted who does not obey the word, so that no one may be associated with him; and he who should not receive this doctrine of peace, let no one greet him, so that he may not communicate his sin and just as the canons decree neither let his offering be received in the shrine. And he who should not want to return to peace, let him remain excommunicated as long as he should despise returning to peace, and let him hasten to return as quickly as possible to charity, which covers a multitude of sins. And again it is written in the canons that from the council two or three judges should be chosen and sent to determine (?) all the things which ought to be examined and determined by clerical judgement, and that will be able to be determined more reasonably and conveniently elsewhere than in the same council. And whoever should be proved from contumacy not to want to obey the judges, when this should be proved by the bishop of the first see, let him send a letter, so that no one may communicate with him, until he should obey. About which matter the holy synod have taken care to choose you who are of the first sees of the Aquitaine kingdom for determining this case with your fellow bishops and the prince and primores of this land. Without this determination whoever should delay to obey you will not be able to avoid his peril and the invective of excommunication.

[p 107] I have taken care to collect these things from gospel truth and apostolic and canonical authority or doctrine and tradition of the Catholic fathers, just as the holy synod ordered, for the sake of the mediocrity of my little capacity. No one ought to be angry at me about this, just as I have heard, that certain ones are. Since I have not composed my words with my senses nor have I presumed to claim for myself what is not mine, nor have I taken care to write something that is not mine in this case by stating or demanding, prejudging the rational statement of no one, nor dishonouring authority or wanting to force necessity of obeying on any one. But I remind your very loved and revered fraternity, as blessed Leo writes to Rusticus Bishop of Narbonne: that, just as there are certain things which can be overthrown by no reason, thus there are many things it may be proper to be moderate about, either for the sake of the consideration of the age or for necessity of events, as long as that condition is always preserved, that in things which should either be obscure or doubtful, we should recognise that to be followed, which is found neither contrary to gospel precepts nor against the decrees of the saints.

Letter on Stephen 8: impotence and Stephen's penance

2010-09-03T14:16:00.000-07:00

[p 105] We have also reckoned a necessary addition, so that by the statements of the saints we may recognise that a marriage can be dissolved, in which lying together does not follow for certain reasons. And because of incontinence they are able to run together to other women. But subtle investigation and a reasonable discretion is first to be used in these things, whether there may be impossibility of intercourse in men, as if naturally - since also there are some eunuchs, as is written, who are born thus from the mother's womb - or whether this impediment happens to them by the operation of the devil, as is accustomed to happen. If this happens through sorceresses or female magicians, but never or nowhere unjustly, with God's judgment allowing and the devil working, those to whom those things happen are to be exhorted, that with contrite heart and humbled spirit they may make pure confession to God and the priest about all their sins and with profuse tears and more generous alms and prayers and fasts satisfy the Lord. By whose judgment for his merit, against their will, they should have merited to be deprived from that blessing, which the Lord gave the first parents before sin in paradise, and also did not want the human race deprived of in total even after sin. And through exorcisms and the other gifts of ecclesiastical medicine let the ministers of the Church attend to healing such, as much as the Lord should assent to, who healed Abimalech and his house by the prayers of Abraham. Who perhaps if they will not be able to be healed, will be able to be separated. But after, if they should seek another marriage, with those alive to whom they were joined, there will be unable to be reconciled to the first one, whom they left, even if the possibility of lying together should be returned to them. But just as we have said, and say again, an incestuous marriage ought not to remain, because of the incestuous crime, which cannot have a sacrament of Christ and the Church, but let us acknowledge that the crime ought to be healed by separation and penitence.

[p 105] Indeed we judge that Stephen's marriage, the case here, ought to be dissolved in all ways, lest he may be admitted as incestuous. And we hold that marriage, which has the natural mystery, cannot be dissolved by any other means whatever, except only in the case of fornication, as the authority of truth teaches. Since even if by common consent, the spouses should vow continence, the more resolutely, the more spiritually they will remain joined in the Lord. No simulation will be able to intervene in his eyes in this joining and indivisible separation, since he is discerned to be the scrutiniser of the heart and loins.

[p 105] Therefore let Stephen, for the fornication, about which he would have been able to do penitence by secret confession, had it not been that forced by necessity he published it, and since he has added the fault of simulation to the sacred mystery of marriage, although compelled by necessity, just like the one who did not fear to sow tares over the wheat, and since after such a marriage, before it should legally be dissolved, which seemed started as if legally, he is said to have used a concubine, destroying others by evil example, according to the form of the fault with moderation of piety, since he showed reverence to God, lest he should add incest to fornication, receive regular penitence from his own bishop according to his judgement, since the canons thus decree, and let him accomplish with the worthy fruits of penance. So that he who, by his neglect has presumed to scandalise the Church and many sons of the Church, may make satisfaction to the Church and its rectors and sons and after satisfaction, if he will not be able to be continent, according to the statement of Pope Leo the Great to Bishop Rusticus of Narbonne and according to the decree of the holy council of Toledo, let him seek marriage with a legitimate wife, lest again he may incur the crime of fornication. In which yet, speaking with the same very holy father, we do not constitute a rule, but estimate what may be more tolerable. For according to true judgement, nothing better befits him, who will have done penance, then chastity persevering in both body and mind. To whom lest we initiate the snare, we extend the hand of remedy, not the command of action.

Letter on Stephen 7: the status of the betrothed

2010-09-03T11:54:00.000-07:00

[p 102] These things blessed Augustine has discussed very sufficiently in the book about the good of marriage and about marriage and concupiscence and in other of his books. But also in the same place among other things he says: What therefore the apostles teach to the married, that is of marriage; namely that a husband renders the debt to the wife and the wife to the husband 'and procreate sons, and to be the mothers of families' [1 Timothy 5: 14]. But marriage does not force, but offers, what they concede venially, or what hinders praying. And just as good works do not benefit to eternal salvation without the sacrament of baptism, and it is not true baptism, since it is not one according to Scripture, that is unique in the unity of the Catholic faith, if it should not be celebrated catholically. Thus also a marriage cannot be a legitimate and true one in which it is shown there is not the nuptial mystery or in which marital coupling is not shown. Whence the Lord, who came not to dissolve the law, but to fulfil it, drew back by calling John, who was wanting to marry, from the marriage, as the histories relate, not after the celebrated marriage but from the marriage and before the joining of the flesh. It is not read about his future wife, namely John's, whether or not, if the Lord had not called him not only before the union of the flesh, but also before the practising very thoroughly (?) of the marriage, just like about the wife of the blessed Peter who persisted very continently, she remained in continence or according to the old law, so that the seed might be left in Israel, perhaps chose to wed another. It would not have remained in her free will, if after legal marriage they had been joined maritally, nor would it have been allowed to John, according to the example of the gospel, if he had taken a wife, betrothed, endowed and honoured with public marriage, also to leave her before the union of the flesh if he had not decided from consent to remain in continence, but to take another wife. For just so it would not be licit for Stephen to leave that one, whom he had betrothed, endowed and honoured with public marriage, although he had not had intercourse with her, and take another with penitence or without penitence, unless in sleeping with that one the incestuous evil had been able to intervene. But either from consent Stephen would have remained with her in continence, or, if he could not have kept himself continent, he would have remained with her joined maritally. But if without incest, they had been united with this due order they could not have been separated, except from mutual consent for the sake of continence or, separated because of fornication, they should either have remained unmarried or have been reconciled to each other. And if they should have been joined with incest, it ought to have been healed with their separation and the penance of adulterers according to canonical authority.

[p 103] And thus holy authority demonstrates these things to harmonize with themselves, saying about Mary and Joseph: 'Before they should come together' [Matthew 1: 18], that is before they should have celebrated with the solemn rite of marriage. For by the word of coming together it insinuates not the lying together, itself but the marriage, which is accustomed to precede the time of lying together, when the one who had first been betrothed, begins to be a wife. And a little after: 'He wanted to send her away secretly'. Joseph seeing his betrothed had conceived, whom he knew well have been touched by no man/husband, since he was just and wanted to do all things justly, took the best thing, so that neither this might benefit others, nor he himself might receive her as wife. But with a secretly proposed change of marriage, he allowed her to remain in the condition of betrothed, just as she was. But if he were to send her away secretly, nor accept her as wife and she were to bring forth while betrothed, without doubt there would be very few, who would affirm she was a virgin, and not rather a whore, and she would be stoned by the Jews as if an adulteress.

[p 103] Whence also the sacred canons in the chapter, in which they say about relatives who break the faith of the betrothal, discerning very prudently they took care to add: if yet, the betrothed man or woman should have been caught in a grave crime, the relatives were excused. Since the judgement that the relatives ought to have sustained as punishment of broken faith will pertain to those now who had merited it. And so that we might return to the order of the example above, therefore the counsel of Joseph was quickly changed to better counsel, so that, namely he himself for the preserving of Mary’s reputation received her as wife with celebration of marriage, but chaste, kept her chaste in perpetuity, just as follows: "But with him considering these things, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him saying: Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to receive Mary as your wife."

[p 103] About which form of marriage, Syricius wrote to Hymerius, bishop of Tarragona saying: You asked about the violation of marriage, if one may be able to take the betrothed girl of another in marriage. Let this not happen, we prohibit this in all ways, since that blessing, which a priest imposes on the girl about to be married before the faithful, is like some sacrilege, if she should be violated by any transgression. And in the Council of Ancyra: It pleases that betrothed girls, also after raptus by others, are to be plucked up and returned to those, to whom they had been betrothed before, even if force should have been inflicted on them by the raptors. Who, above the estimated order, not only made betrothed women, but indeed also as if made wives, are thus to be returned to their betrothed husbands, even violently corrupted, just as also disunited spouses, separated without the case of fornication, and without mutual consent are to be rejoined. But those separated in the case of fornication will either remain unmarried or from mutual consent be reconciled to one another. But about those marrying (?), but unmarried, that is about the celebration of marriage, in which by the earnest money of the betrothal, and the priestly blessing and the confirmation of the dowry, the mystery of both Christ and the church is directed to the perfection of completion, but it is not completed with the union of flesh, but, just as we said about Joseph, good counsel is changed by better counsel, so that it may remain in perpetual continence, there again it is written: "But Joseph rising from sleep did just as the Angel of the Lord had ordered him and he received his wife. And he did not know her." [Matthew 1: 24-25]. But he accepted into the name of spouse, for the sake of necessary causes, which then threatened, and he did not know her for the marital work, but both remained in continence.

[p 103] Which also Paul boldly demonstrated can happen in the first epistle to the Corinthians, and Augustine in the first book about marriage and concupiscence saying: To whom indeed it pleases from consent to remain permanently continent from the use of conjugal concupiscence, may it not happen that the conjugal bond between them is broken; nay rather, it will be firmer, by the fact that these pacts which they should have entered with themselves, which are to be preserved more dearly, and in more concord, are not by the voluntary binding together of bodies, but by the voluntary passions of minds. For nor was it falsely said by the Angel to Joseph: "Do not fear to take Mary as a wife", and the other things that further followed on in the same place.

[p 104] Taught about this matter by these testimonies of sacred authority, whoever should take wives betrothed, endowed and honoured with public marriage, free or made free for the sake of this, let them either remain in perpetual continence, or, unless this incestuous crime or something else whatever should prohibit, which does not receive the sacrament of Christ in or with itself, let them nuptially wed, if they will not be able to be continent from consent. And let them not be separated except in the case of fornication; in which separation let them either remain unmarried or if they cannot be continent, they will be reconciled to each other after penitence. But where, just as in Stephen's marriage, he may escape peril that should be avoided, with peril, let the lesser peril be chosen for avoiding the greater peril, just as St Gregory teaches in the book of Morals. But also the peril itself which is chosen, let it not be neglected, but let it be paid to be had (?) at all times before the clemency of Almighty God by the worthy fruits of penance, that is by pious works and profuse tears, so that peril may not remain eternally, but by saving remedy may be tempered, or inwardly avoided,

[p 104] But we have therefore reckoned to insert this necessary thing to these, since we have heard that certain ones, even those who used to call themselves teachers, apply with firm contention, as if from the words of blessed Ambrose and St Augustine, which they apply not very diligently, that a man not fornicating and separating from a fornicating woman can take another wife with her living and, she who in the case of fornication should have departed from a man cannot be reconciled; but, her who should have departed not in the case of fornication, but for whatever other reason ought either to be reconciled or ought to remain unmarried. Not heeding that thus the apostolic words were interpreted in a false sense, just as also those, against whom the blessed Augustine formerly had copied those books, and the African Synod, which we set beforehand, defined, when it also eviscerated the Caelestians and burned up the marrows themselves of the Pelagians. No wonder. For thus they have been infected with wicked dogma, just like all the modern Predestinarians, who labour to renew the heresy of the old Predestinarians, compiled as if from the words of St Augustine. Blessed Pope Celestine broke their heads and shook violently the top of the hair of those walking in their sins and ground them down in the letter of decretals to Venerius and the other Gallic bishops, and the same blessed Augustine in the book about corruption and grace and about the predestination of the saints and the good of perseverance. But also St Prosper from the delegation of the apostolic seat, absolving the objections of Gauls, Vincentians and Marseillians, in the books also about the calling of the nations, dissolved their arguments by Catholic sense and perfect and very clear reason and eloquent doctrine. But we would place here the words of the same authors, whence the inexperienced teachers capture such very absurd things, if we should not avoid putting together a difficulty for a solution.

Letter on Stephen 6: even more things on marriage

2010-09-03T11:50:00.000-07:00

[p 100] If these other things which we have placed in no way suffice the studious or curious, we attend to adding also yet other things. For the blessed Augustine says in the book about marriage and concupiscence: A man will leave behind father and mother and he will adhere to his wife and they will be two in one flesh: which is a great sacrament, the Apostle says in Christ and in the Church. What therefore is great in Christ and the Church, is very little in individual husbands and wives, but yet the inseparable sacrament of marriage. Therefore joined legally and maritally they cannot be separated except in the case of fornication and, separated in the case of fornication, they ought either to remain unmarried or be mutually reconciled, just as gospel and apostolic authority teaches and the African synod defined: It has pleased that according to the gospel and apostolic discipline neither the one sent away by a wife nor by a husband may be married to another, but let them remain thus or be reconciled to one another. Which if they should despise, let them be called back to penance. And since from that gospel and apostolic doctrine, wife from husband, or husband from wife, is not able, nor ought to separate, except in the case of fornication, blessed Augustine in the first book about adulterous marriages to Pollentius says: Who is it who may say, if a woman should separate from a man not fornicating, let her remain unmarried, when it is by no means allowed her to separate except from a fornicating man? And again: The Lord as teacher excepted only this case of fornication, when he spoke about sending a wife away, and he gave to understand such an image also to be preserved by a husband, since not only "the woman does not have power of her body, but the man", but similarly also "the man does not have power of his body but the woman". And therefore except from common consent they are not able to be separated even for the sake of continence, so much that, if a man converted should be tonsured against the will of the woman, or the woman converted should be veiled without the will of the man, the man is ordered to be restored to the woman or the woman to the man, by St Gregory in the letter to Secundinus, Bishop of Taormina, and in the letter to Hadrian, notarius of Panorni. But if from common consent they should promise to change themselves and whichever of them should retract themselves from thence, they are ordered to follow the conversion of their peer. But in the case of fornication, man or woman separating from each other because of the sacrament of marital union either will remain unmarried until one of them should die, or take care to be reconciled to each other. But reconciliation ought to happen after the penitence and priestly reconciliation of the one who has sinned, so that first he may be restored to the sacrament of the Church and afterwards to the nuptial mystery.

[p 101] And hence St Augustine in the second book about adulterous marriages: And thus a spouse is lawfully to be sent away, in the case of fornication, yet the chain of modesty remains, because of which the crime of adultery happens to him who should take the woman dismissed in the case of fornication. But just as with the criminal excommunicated for any crime, the sacrament of regeneration remains in himself, and he does not lack that sacrament, even if he will never be reconciled to God, thus if a wife is sent away because of fornication, with the chain of the conjugal tie remaining in her, nor will she lack that tie, even if she is never reconciled to her husband. But she will lack it if her husband should die; but therefore the excommunicated criminal will never lack the sacrament of regeneration, even if not reconciled, since God never dies. Thus it remains that if we want to be wise according to the Apostle, we should not say a man is to be reckoned an adulterer before death and therefore allow his wife to marry another. For though the death of adulterers may not be of the body, but, what is worse, of the soul, yet the Apostle did not speak about that death when he said: "If her husband should die, let her marry whom she wants" [1 Corinthians 7: 39], but only about that death which is taken from the body. And again in the same: For this band, since indeed it is not dissolved, even if a husband may be separated from a chaste wife through repudiation; much less is it dissolved, if, not separated, she should commit adultery. And it is not dissolved, except by the death of a spouse, not running into adultery, but exiting from the body. Therefore if a woman should withdraw from an adulterous man and does not want to be reconciled to him, let her remain unwed. And if a man should send away an adulterous woman and does not want to receive her either after penitence, let him keep continence, even if not willingly choosing a preferable good, certainly from necessity avoiding a ruinous evil. And the most eloquent doctor disputes hence more widely in the aforesaid book, just as he who should read intelligently will be unable not to know. Also in the first book about marriage and concupiscence he says that all evils of regenerated men are wholly cleaned and healed by the bath of regeneration and word of sanctification, not only the sins which then are all remitted in baptism, but also those which are incurred afterwards by human ignorance or infirmity. Not so that baptism, however often one sins may be repeated that often, but since it happens by that, which was given once, that not only the previous pardon, but also afterwards of whatever sin you may like may be obtained by the faithful. For what benefits either penitence before baptism unless baptism should follow, or after, unless it should proceed? And in the epistle to Boniface he writes: Not that something remains in baptism of all past sins, that may not be dismissed - if yet the baptism itself should not be had in vain outside, but either should be taken inside, or if now taken outside, should not remain outside with him - and whatever is committed by human infirmity of whatever fault, by those who live thus after the accepted baptism is dismissed because of this bath.

[p 101] Hence it is clearly demonstrated, that just as the once accepted sacrament of baptism, by which each faithful person is incorporated into the unity of the Catholic church in Christ, is afterwards lost by no intervening cause, so also the marital bond legally and nuptially celebrated, remains tied, indissolubly, although it may seem to be separated in the case of fornication or in whatever case. But having been separated in the case of fornication, if it should be reunited after penitence, it will not therefore yet be reiterated that it remains one. But if the spouses are not able to remain in penitential continence, which befits penitents more, by indulgence they are reckoned to be healed by medicinal reconciliation and mutual consent after ecclesiastical reconciliation. Just as baptism is not repeated as often as there is sin, but by the medicine of penitence, through clerical reconciliation, is not repeated, nor returned, but repaired by divine grace. But 'repaired' is said about something not lost in this way, just as also the mind and the body are read to be repaired by the receiving of Eucharist and the spirit to be renewed by suitable satisfaction of our mind. And just as it is by the employment of baptism that sins before baptism or after baptism, by human ignorance or infirmity, may be remitted by the worthy fruits of penance, so thus, lest crimes occur, the good of marriage is maintained, which was conceded by the Apostle according to indulgence. Those things, namely, which with desire impelling, are conceded only to the married, merely that they may lie naturally with the legally married. But we say naturally, since also Onan is read to have died, struck by the Lord, not lying with his wife naturally.

Letter on Stephen 5: dowries and hypothetical objections

2010-09-02T13:12:00.000-07:00

[p 98] And since Church rules offer also a statement of definition about these who infringe the faith of betrothal, it seems to us, not expressing according to authority but giving council, if perhaps thus it should seem to you, that since Stephen, if he had broken faith of the betrothal, according to civil law would be judged to pay much of the same betrothal gift, and the girl herself, after the betrothal gift, if they should have been joined carnally, would have to buy (?) the accepted dowry, which was from herself, so that not she, but Stephen, who committed the crime. ought not to have the same dowry, as it seems. So let her have in the place of much of the betrothal gift, the dowry given by Stephen to herself, and let her be restored to her father with the same dowry, and let her marry with counsel of parents who she wants, only in the Lord, and may there be peace between her relatives and Stephen.

[p 98] And lest someone craftily wanting to resist these things which we have proposed should say: If the dowry will remain and the betrothal gift and the celebrated marriage are not denied, in what way will it be able to happen that both Stephen does not remain husband and she wife? Or in what way would he be able to join with another woman and she with another man without adultery? Particularly since the same St Augustine in the aforesaid book about the good of marriage says: If there should take place an ordination of clergy in order to form a congregation of people, even if the congregation of people should not follow, yet there remains in those ordained the sacrament of ordination. And if for any fault anyone should be removed from his office, he will not be without the sacrament of the Lord once imposed, although remaining until judgement. Thus also in those remaining with betrothal, dowry and marriage the marital tie will remain and no one of them will be able to join themselves to another without adultery unless with the death of whichever one intervening. Let him hear, if anyone should dare to oppose this, that we have said about the girl having the dowry only for the sake of the pacification of her relatives and in the place of most of the broken betrothal gift of Stephen. If with the dowry paid, the relatives of the girl should prefer to demand most of the betrothal gift, they themselves should see to either grant or demand back, and by the civil laws thence it may suit their pacification. But we answer the one perhaps astutely questioning what pertains to us, that St Augustine posed this comparison about ordaining not about the imaginary union of a man and wife, but about incorporated union through sexual intercourse, just as he begins near to these preceding things: Therefore let these follow the Lamb, boys singing the new song, as it is written in the Apocalypse, "who have not defiled themselves with women" [Revelations 14: 4], for no other reason than that they have continued virgins. Nor let them on this account think themselves better than the first holy fathers, who used marriage, so to speak, after the fashion of marriage. Of course, the use of it is such that, if in it there has taken place through carnal intercourse that which exceeds necessity of begetting, although done venially, there is pollution. And after a little: Therefore the good of marriage throughout all peoples and all humans is for the sake of begetting, and in the faith of chastity. But it also pertains to the people of God, also in the sanctity of the sacrament, by reason of which it is sinful for one to marry another, so long as her husband lives, even if leaving by divorce, at any event, not for the sake of bearing children, although it may be the sole cause for which marriage happens, nor is the marriage bond loosed by any subsequent thing, except by the death of the spouse. And immediately he adds to the people about the ordination of the cleric, under which sense he says in the book about marriage and desires: Thus a certain marital matter also remains among those living, which neither separation or coupling with another could take away. But it remains for the harm of crime, not for the chain of bond; just like the soul of the apostate, which receding from the marriage of Christ with faith lost has also not lost a sacrament of faith, which it received from the bath of regeneration. For without doubt it would be returned to the returning, if leaving they had lost it. And in the preceding things of the same book he says about the sacrament of marriage: Therefore, a sacrament of marriage in our times is thus reduced to one man and one wife, so that the steward of the Church is not allowed to be ordained, unless he is the husband of one wife. Which they have understood more sharply, who reckoned neither he who as a catechumen or pagan should have another wife should be ordained. For it is a matter about sacrament, not about sin. For in baptism all sins are removed. But he who said: "If you take a wife you have not sinned", and "If a virgin should marry, she does not sin", and "Let her do what she wants, she does not sin if she should marry" [1 Corinthians 7: 28, 36], declared sufficiently that marriage is no sin. But because of the sanctity of the sacrament, just as a woman, even if she should have been violated as a catechumen, cannot be consecrated as a virgin in God after baptism, thus it did not seem absurd that he who had exceeded one wife, had not committed any sin, but had lost a certain sacred norm, not for the merit of good life but for the necessary seal of clerical ordination.

[p 99] And hence if anyone should be tempted to oppose what we said against what we said before, let him say, if Stephen should now be prevented by death, with her continuing as intact, just as she remains up to now, and she should not wish to marry, whether, since a violated catechumen could not be consecrated after baptism into a virgin of God, she will be able to be consecrated in holy virginity by the bishop, who ought not to consecrate someone, unless a virgin, into the profession of virginity or into the legitimate bond of marriage, just as neither should he become a bishop who has taken beyond one virgin wife. Also let him say, if after the death of Stephen, she, remaining virgin, should both not be able to be continent, and should choose to marry rather than be continent, whether she will be able to be joined to the brother of the same Stephen. When he is unable to contradict these things, let him either cease in his question or let our solution satisfy him. And let him recognise and know that consecration, if the girl should choose it, or marrying, if the girl should prefer, can happen within Stephen's lifetime, as reason and authority show. And let him know, just as we have taught by the tradition of the ancestors, that because of such betrothal, endowing and for the sake of such a marriage as that one was, is not a marriage, since in it sexual intercourse is missing and this sacrament of faith with the hope of offspring. Which sacrament just as it works very much in every saving action, then also in this matter, in which through the nuptial mystery man and wife are made one flesh, but also more actively in baptism, in which through the sacrament of faith, not only is the whole Church made the body of Christ, just as the Apostle says and his plenitude happens but individually, every individual fidelis of Christ is made an incorporated member of him. Whence the Holy Bede says in the homily on the gospel: For he who is baptised is seen to descend into the font, seen to be dipped in the water, seen to rise from the water; but only the piety of the faithful knows that a sinner descends into the font, but rises purified. It seems to the eye of the other foolish ones, that such came from the font as entered, and the whole thing that is done is a game. And in this betrothal, dowering, and in this marriage the whole thing was simulation, not truth. Therefore just as St Leo decides about those who have only received the form of baptism without the virtue of sanctification, that they may be confirmed by episcopal confirmation, thus this, which is the not the faith of marriage, but not the image of coupling, is dissolved by ecclesiastical sanction, and it may be healed in that one who needs clerical medicine.

Letter on Stephen 4: Stephen's marriage isn't a real marriage

2010-09-02T03:03:00.000-07:00

[p 95] Now let us apply these things, which the holy doctors say about marriage, to the marriage of Stephen, not having the love of offspring, but the necessity of avoiding exile or death; not having faith of preserving marital chastity, but the fear, not to be underrated, of incurring death-bringing incest; not having the sacrament of the incorporation of the unity of Christ and the Church, but drawing the veil over shamefulness, and the whole, that was done in this, was a figment of simulating, not the truth. Which marriage, although it was celebrated between free and equals by paternal judgement, with betrothal and dowering preceding, even if sexual intercourse should have followed it, could not possess the legitimate joining of marriage, nor could it be able to establish a valid marriage, nay rather, all things would be made void. Since the inflicted wounds, which those lying together would receive, would not be able to be healed by the medicine of penitence in them without separation, because of the incestuous crime, which cannot have the sacrament of Christ and the Church, just as the following sentences of the orthodox teachers and the Church will demonstrate. Therefore such a marriage is not mystical nor legal in the eyes of God. Since it was not legally led before God by Stephen and the girl, but rather led away, one body is made from these two through coition of carnal intercourse, not according to marital good, but incestuous evil. Because of the incest of Stephen they made one body, just as is written: "He who joins a prostitute is made one body" [1 Corinthians 6: 16]. And thus the girl, healthy from incest, joined through coition to Stephen would be made incestuous flesh and Stephen joined to that one, just as formerly a fornicator, thus also after the joining of this one, would be incestuous, which he had not yet been, since he had lain with a relative of hers, And therefore by saner counsel he both provided for the health of the girl, who was not yet weakened, preserving her intact, and also, lest he should offend more gravely, kept himself cautiously before God, according to the matter that he lain together (?). Since, just as the sacred canons say, such a marriage or rather adultery, could not be healed without separation if they were joined carnally. Where it is written in that matter: About incestuous marriages we preserve truly nothing of the pardon, unless they should heal with the separation of the adulterers. Indeed the incestuous are to be reckoned by no name of marriage, whom it is also dismal to designate. And St Gregory in the letter to Bishop Felix of Sicily, who had heard it perversely interpreted, that blessed Gregory had given to bishop Augustine of the English council according to indulgence about pagans in the fourth degree and the rest, lest they should refuse faith, and whatever he had suggested to the same venerable Pope, he wrote back to the same Felix saying: We judge that each individual from these, who faithfully taught and now planted with firm root, stand unshakeable, observes his relatives as far the seventh generation, and as far as they recognise relatives by affinity, they do not enter upon society of this kind of joining. Nor is it allowed or will be allowed to any advanced one of the Christians to lead her in marriage whom someone has as a wife from his own blood or has stained with any illicit pollution, since such coupling is incestuous and abominable to God and all the faithful; we read that formerly it was constituted by the fathers that the incestuous are to be reckoned by no name of marriage. Nor also do we leave this in this kind of anxiety, that all incestuous are to be separated from the threshold of holy Church, until through the satisfaction of prayers of the priest they may be reconciled to the same holy Catholic Church. And in the canonical edict offered before the body of St Peter: If anyone takes a wife from his own cognatio or whom a relative has, let him be anathema. And all replied three times: let him be anathema. And it is not to be doubted that the marriage of Stephen ought to have been subject to this anathema, if he had slept with that one, whose relative he admitted he had slept with. And again in the canons it is written: About those who defile themselves with the pollution of incest, it has pleased that as long as they should persist in the detestable and illicit companionship of the flesh itself, they should only be admitted to the mass of the catechumens in the Church; with whom also neither does it befit any Christian, as the Apostle orders, to consume food.

[p 96] And hence we would had been able to compile more things from the canons, if because the incest that Stephen avoided had happened, it would have been necessary to separate him and his wife because of this. But now, lest incest should be added to married simulation, since it behoves them to be separated before both divine and human eyes legally and rationally, who seem to have been joined illegally in divine justice, let us give such evidence of the holy fathers, which may be very clearly pertinent to the doing of the matter. St Ambrose in the epistle to the Corinthians says: For brother or sister is not subjected in this kind of servitude, that is, reverence of marriage ought not to be owed to him, who has horrified the author of marriage. For the marriage is not valid, which is without devotion of God. And St Jerome in the third book of commentary of the letter of Paul to the Ephesians: And so in the way the Church is subject to Christ, thus let a wife be subject to her husband. For married men and wife are bound together by the same order of pre-eminence and subjection which Christ and the Church have. But it is to be seen to, that the bond is holy also in man and woman, in the way in which there is holy union both in Christ and in the Church. But just as not every congregation of heretics can be said to be the Church of Christ, nor is Christ its head, thus not every marriage, in which one is not joined to one’s husband according to the precepts of Christ can be rightly called marriage, but rather adultery. About which the holy canons thus define: Clearly to whom an illicit union is forbidden, they will have liberty of entering a better marriage. And in the Synod of Lestinnes, at which under prince Carloman, Bishop George and John the sacellarius and St Boniface, by the precept of the apostolic Zacharius presided, it is read, that if a man should not be able to render the conjugal debt according to the apostle to a woman betrothed, dowered and led in public marriage, and this should be clear either through confession of both or whatever certain proof, that they may be separated, and the woman, if she should not be able to be continent, may legally marry another man. Since according to the definition of Pope St Leo and the tradition of the doctors demonstrated above, it is not to be doubted that that woman does not belong to marriage, in which the sacrament of Christ and the Church is not shown by sexual intercourse, that is there was the nuptial mystery.

[p 97] But how much more, in a case of this kind, it will be allowed legally to approach another tie, having separated the marriage, since not impotence of the flesh, but reverence of the mind, contradicted lying together. But in a marital union, in which with betrothing, dowering and sacrament of marriage, the mystery of Christ and the Church, namely the uniting of bodies was shown to have existed, a dissolving of the marriage will not be able to happen, except with death of the body intervening, just as gospel and apostolic authority testify, and the chorus of all the Catholic doctors. Also St Augustine says in the book about adulterous marriages: Since even if for intolerable and long-lasting infirmity a man should not be able to exercise coition or a woman sustain it, nor also for sterility or continence of religion or for any other reason whatever except fornication will a man and woman legally joined also by carnal intercourse be able to be separated. Wherefore the disciples hearing this law from God said: "If such is the case when a wife is had, it is not expedient to marry." [Matthew 19: 10] Yet the Lord did not change his statement for this. Whence also Leo wrote to Bishop Niceta of Aquileia and teaches thoroughly: if certain marriages should have been separated through warlike destruction and very grave incursions of hostility, so that with men abducted into captivity their women should remain destitute, who should reckon their own husbands either killed or should believe there will never be liberated from enemy domination, and should go over into the embrace of other marriages, forced by solitude, if husbands or captured women should return, the legitimate covenant of marriages should be renewed, since it is written: "The woman is joined to the man by God" and "What God has joined let not man separate." Nor yet as if anyone is to be judged as an invader, who assumed the person of their husband or wife, who was now not valued. But what necessity caused is to be judged blameless, and what faith demanded is to be restored. But he decreed that women or men captured by the delight of the later husbands or wives and not wanting to return to the first conjugal love are to be deprived of communion.

Letter on Stephen 3: patristic quotes on marriage

2010-09-02T02:01:00.000-07:00

[p 92] Both the old and new law teach how marriage ought to be entered, the Lord ordering through Moses, and the Gospel demonstrating: 'When Mary, the mother of Jesus was betrothed to Joseph, before they should come together' [Matthew 1: 18], that is before they came together in wedding celebration, just as the same shows in a celebrated wedding - which he deigned to sanctify with his presence and illuminate with a miracle accomplished just there. But also St Euaristus, fourth Bishop of the See of Rome after the blessed Peter wrote, and St Siriacus, and the blessed Leo and also all the other teachers show, all of which things we avoid placing here because of plurality and length. Yet we have reckoned to say the necessary thing, that legitimate marriages happen between the free-born and between equals, when a woman, asked from the relatives whom it concerns and legally betrothed, dowered and honoured with public marriage is joined in the bonds of marriage and from two one body and one flesh are made, just as is written: 'And there will be two in one flesh; and now not two but they are one flesh'; and 'What God has joined let man not separate' [Matthew 19: 5-6]. About which joining the great Pope Leo writes to Bishop Rusticius of Narbonne, saying: Not every woman joined to a man is the wife of the man, since nor is every son an heir of the father. But legitimate covenants of marriage are between free and between equals. And a little after: Whence since the association of marriage is thus constituted from the start, so that alongside the joining of the sexes it has in itself this sacrament of Christ and the Church, it is not to be doubted that that woman does not belong to marriage, in which it is shown there had not been the nuptial mystery. And we over against this can also show, that not every marriage makes a marital joining, which sexual intercourse does not follow, just as neither is every son of his an heir, whose heir he is known to be. Nor does marriage have the sacrament of Christ and the Church in itself, just as the blessed Augustine says, if they do not use each other maritally, that is if sexual intercourse does not follow close after. Nor will that woman be able to pertain to matrimony with whom it is shown there was no sexual intercourse, just as it is not to be doubted that that woman does not belong to marriage in whom it is shown there had not been the nuptial mystery. Which thus the aforesaid Leo shows to be, saying: Since the association of marriage is thus constituted from the start, so that alongside the joining of the sexes it has in itself this sacrament of Christ and the Church. And again the same: Therefore, he who should have given his daughter in marriage to a man having a concubine, it is thus not to be taken as if he had given her to a married man, unless perhaps that woman is seen made free and legitimately dowered and honoured with public marriage. By paternal authority the fault of joining is lacking to men if the women, who were had by the men, were not had in matrimony. By which sentence he clearly shows, that there is then true joining of legitimate marriage, when it happens between free and equals, and by paternal authority a free woman is joined to a man, legitimately dowered and honoured by a public marriage, with sexual intercourse. And then marriage has the sacrament of Christ and the Church in it and then that woman is known to belong to marriage, in whom both sexual intercourse and the nuptial mystery are known to have been.

[p 93] About which mystery, the apostle Paul says to the Ephesians: "He who loves his wife, loves himself. For no one ever has his own flesh in hatred, but nourishes it and cherishes it, just as Christ does the Church, since we are members of his body, from his flesh and bones. Because of this a man will leave his father and her mother and will adhere to his wife; and they will be two in one flesh. This is a great sacrament: but I say in Christ and in church." [Ephesians 5: 25] Hence St Ambrose signifies that the sacrament of the mystery is greatly in the unity of man and woman. Nor does only this appear, but it also demands another case, which is not in discord from the remembered mystery, which he knows to pertain to the human kind, that is of the church and Saviour, so that just as with parents left behind the man adheres to his wife, so also with all error left behind, the Church may adhere and be lain under its head, which is Christ. Since there is one nature in man and wife, therefore the man is reminded thus to love the woman as if himself. For by natural reason, the woman is a part of the body of the man, and through this the man loves himself in the woman; in which way, if he should fornicate, he sins in himself, since the two are in one flesh. The persons do not therefore divide the substance, so that through persons the number of nature may happen (?), but the natures are in unity. And St Augustine in the first book of marriage and concupiscence says: Clearly it is not only fecundity, whose fruit is in offspring, nor is it only modesty, whose chain is faith, but also a certain sacrament of marriage is commended to the faithful married, whence the apostle says: "Men, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the Church." The matter of this sacrament is without doubt that male and female, joined by marriage, as long as they should live, should persevere joined inseparably, nor is it allowed to separate man from wife except in the case of fornication. For this is kept in Christ and the Church, that the living with the living in eternity may be separated by no divorce in the City of God on his holy mountain, that is in the Catholic Church. And St Gregory in the letter to Patriarch Teoctista says: For the Truth says through himself: 'What God has joined, let not man separate.' Who also said: 'It is not allowed to send away a wife except in the case of fornication.' [Matthew 5: 32] For we know that it is written: 'They will be two in one flesh.' If therefore man and wife are one flesh and for the sake of religion a man sends away the wife or the wife the husband, remaining in this world or perhaps moving to illicit things, what is this conversion, in which one and the same flesh both partly moves to continence and partly remains in pollution? But if it should befit both to lead a continent life, let who may dare accuse this, when it is certain that omnipotent God who concedes lesser things, has not prohibited greater things? And somewhat after: But if the wife does not follow continence, which the man seeks, or what the wife seeks, the husband rejects, the marriage is not allowed to be separated. Since it is written: 'The woman does not have power over her body, but the man; similarly the man does not have power over his body, but the woman.' [1 Corinthians 7: 4] And in the letter to Adrian, notary of Panormi: For, except in the case of fornication, divine law concedes to the man to leave his wife for no reason, since after joining of marriage, one body is made of the man and a woman, it cannot be converted partly and partly remain in the world.

[p 94] And St Augustine in the book about the good of marriage: For this reason there is marriage, so that concupiscence itself reduced to a legal chain should not flow deformed and dissolute, having from itself uncheckable infirmity of the flesh, but from marriage the indissoluble society of faith, from itself immoderately increase of uniting, from marriage the means of chastely procreating. Therefore married persons owe one another not only the faith of their sexual intercourse itself, for the begetting of children, which is the first fellowship of the human kind in this mortal state; but also, in a way, a mutual service of sustaining one another's weakness, in order to shun unlawful intercourse: so that, although perpetual continence be pleasing to one of them, he may not, save with consent of the other. For thus far also, the wife hath not power of her own body, but the man: in like manner also the man hath not power of his own body, but the woman. So that also they deny not the one or the other that which either he seeks of marriage, or she of her husband, not for the begetting of children, but for weakness and incontinence. Lest by this they fall into damnable seductions, through temptation of Satan, by reason of incontinence either of both, or of whichever of them. Again in the same book: Therefore that marriage takes place for the sake of begetting children, as the Apostle is a witness: "I will," says he, "that the younger women be married." And, as though it were said to him, For what purpose? straightway he added, "to have children, to be mothers of families." [1 Timothy 5: 14] But unto the faith of chastity pertains that saying, "The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife." But unto the sanctity of the Sacrament that saying, "The wife not to depart from her husband, but, in case she shall have departed, to remain unmarried, or to be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife." All these are goods, on account of which marriage is a good; offspring, faith, sacrament. And in the book about marriage and concupiscence: Yet in marriage let the marriage goods be loved: offspring, faith, sacrament. But offspring not only so that they may be born, but also so that they may be reborn. For they are born to punishment, unless they should be reborn to life. But faith, not such as the infidels have between themselves jealous of loving ardently the flesh. For what man however impious wants an adulterous wife? Or what woman however impious wants an adulterous husband? For this in marriage is indeed an natural good, yet carnal, but a member of a Christian spouse ought to fear to be joined to an adulterer, not for himself/herself, and to hope for whatever prize of faith from Christ of the marriage. But let married people keep harmonious and chastely the sacrament, which neither the separated nor adulterated lose. For that is the only thing which also a sterile marriage holds by the law of piety, with hope of fecundity now lost, because of which they had been joined. Let him praise these nuptial goods in marriage who wants to praise marriage. And in the literal Genesis: The good which marriage has and which are the marital goods can never be a sin. But this is threefold: faith, offspring, sacrament. It is attended to in faith lest besides the marital bond one sleeps with another male or female; in offspring so they may be received lovingly, nourished benignly, educated religiously; in sacrament, so that the marriage may not be separated and nor is the one sent away (male or female) joined to another for the sake of offspring. For this is as if the rule of marriage, by which either the fecundity of nature is adorned, or the wickedness of incontinence is ruled.

Letter on Stephen 2: next procedural steps

2010-09-01T23:49:00.000-07:00

[p 90] But with him heard, the synod ordered him to withdraw. And once individuals had spoken according to how it seemed to them, it was decreed that you co-provincial archbishops with your fellow bishops in that kingdom should undertake a synod at a convenient time and place, and let there be a placitum where the prince with the primores of the land may be present, lest - may it not happen - those illustrious men from either side may come together with the help of relatives and friends, and by the devil's working, a seditious tumult may be able to arise. And let the King attend to pacifying this case between noble men with noble men, but you, by episcopal authority and canonical definition, take it apart and take care to lead it to the due and healthy finish. Stephen having been called, this proposition was put to him and very gratefully received by him. But since the very littleness of my little intelligence, by the order of the synod, took care to suggest what it thought accordingly about the method of this case and the order of definition (?), it pleased the common consent of holy unanimity, that I transmitted and commended these things in letters also to your wisdom, just as they were then accepted in council. And therefore, not as if to those not knowing these things which follow, which are necessary to you, nor as claiming special authority of knowledge for myself, or boasting audacity of definition, but as a servant of the Church and your servant, namely of all the servants of God and servant to the Lord's people, I have taken care to collect anything, not as I ought, but as I could, from obedience of devotion and collected to transmit to you. In which things I have taken care to place nothing from civil law, which bishops ought not to recognise, but to note down briefly, as much as occurred to the memory, those things which are known to agree with ecclesiastical definition.

[p 90] St Gregory demonstrates in a letter of instructions to John the defensor, the order of judgement about things not yet spontaneously confessed or convicted openly, since otherwise no one, as Pope Leo discerned, can be judged regularly. St Gregory says: First so that judgement may be made in an orderly way, to what extent some are accusers and others witnesses. Then so that the quality of the cases, if it should be worthy of exile or condemnation, may be explored, with that one being present, who is accused, let testimony be offered against him under oath, and implanted with writing of the acts and let the accused be allowed to reply and defend himself. But it is to be enquired subtly about the persons of the accusers and witnesses, of what condition or what repute they are, lest they are needy, or lest perhaps they may have some enmities against the accused, and whether they have said testimony from hearing or really testify they specially know themselves, and so that the sentence judged from the writings may be recited with the parties present (?), and thus all things may solemnly be confirmed.

[p 91] But about a clear case and one known to very many, or which he thus confesses, just like that one (if yet also the girl [Raymond's daughter] should say, just what Stephen says, since often we hear among the masculine and women, that what one says the other one very often denies) witnesses are not to be sought, as St Ambrose says in a letter to the Corinthians, explaining the statements of the Apostle about the fornicator: Judges should not condemn without an accuser since also the Lord, although Judas was a thief, since he was not accused by no means cast him off, although with that work known, he should have been banished from the meeting of the brotherhood. For all used to know his crime and did not accuse. For publicly he had his stepmother in the place of a wife. In which matter there is neither work for witnesses nor could the crime be covered by any subterfuge. And a little later: With the face being absent but the spirit being present by authority, who is absent nowhere, I have now judged him as present who admitted this.

[p 91] Therefore it is necessary that Stephen brings the girl to the synod and the father of the girl herself should come, and the girl should be questioned if it is true what Stephen says, that he has preserved her intact until now. And since we have heard about another woman, since she wanted to be freed from a husband, she was prevailed upon and then said other things about herself which were not true, as is reported, let due liberty be given to her and the peril indicated, lest, prevailed upon, she might confess a lie for the truth. And if she should say thus just as Stephen and then, if it should be necessary, belief befitting reason and authority should be received thence by oath, or satisfaction through suitable person, if necessity demands, should be demanded by judgement. Since not for the sake of fraud or any other cause whatever should Stephen remove himself from carnal bond of this girl, except for this reason, which he himself indicated to the synod, namely that he had had lain carnally with a blood-relative of the girl betrothed to him, a relative by connection of the flesh.

[p 91] For this Pope St Leo and blessed Gregory judge to happen in a doubtful matter, openly through an oath from a priest or from whatever man or woman, noble or ignoble, just as he who should want to read will be able to find. Among other things that blessed junior Gregory says in a letter to Boniface Bishop of Mainz directed via the priest Denwald: In the case in which they should not be sure witnesses, who may confirm the truth of the crime produced, it should be sworn on oath in the midst and let the accused offer back testimony about the purity of his innocence, to whom all things are naked and open, and let him have as a witness of his conscience, he whom he will also have as his judge. Which purging of the sacrament is very usual both in churches and in external laws and is also established to have arisen from the truth of faith from the earliest times. But judgement is not accustomed to happen except for the sake of concord, peace and charity among equals; but it is done by subjects for the satisfaction of greater. Which in this case, cannot be required by authority unless it should happen from the placitum.

[p 92] Since it has been said to us to be required from Stephen that he designate by name the woman he has slept with, and demonstrates the certain affinity of relationship, for the sake of which he is not able to unite himself in carnal bond with this girl, we have reckoned to place this worthy thing here which the Apostolic authority discerns from this and the Catholic Church holds, with the truth on this account being known, that it is against reason and ecclesiastical authority and habit of Christian devotion to seek that from him, if perhaps it is sought from another. Leo, greetings to the universal Church in Campania, Samnium and Picenium and all provinces. I am moved with great indignation and saddened with much sadness that certain of you are learned to be forgetful of Apostolic tradition and entangled in zeal of their errors. And after a while: Namely about penance which is offered by the faithful: lest a written declaration should be publicised in the form of a booklet about individual sins, it suffices individual priests to have secret confessions of consciences indicated. For although a plenitude of faith should seem laudable, which because of fear of God does not fear to blush before men, yet since not all sins are of this kind, that those who desire penitence do not fear to publicise them, let the objectionable custom be removed, lest many are bent from the remedies of penitence, since either they blush or fear their deeds to be revealed to their enemies, by which they could be struck down by the law constitutionally. For that confession suffices which is offered first to God, then also to the priest, who he may approach as an intercessor for the sins of the penitent. For there are many who will be able to be provoked to penance, if their conscience is not publicised to the revealing ears of the people.

Letter on Stephen 1: outline of the case

2010-09-01T13:53:00.000-07:00

[p 88] Hincmar, bishop by name, not merit of Rheims and slave to the people of God, to the reverent Archbishop of Bourges and very dear brother Rodulf and to the amiable brother and honourable Archbishop of Bordeaux Frothar with all the venerable bishops of your provinces, wishes for very many greetings in the Saviour

[p 88] Recently letters were delivered to the synod of bishops of fourteen provinces, namely Lyons, Rouen, Tours, Sens, Vienne, Arles, Besancon, Mainz, Cologne, Trier, Rheims, Bourges, Bordeaux, Narbonne, at the villa of Tusey in the parish of Tulle, in 860, indiction eight, month of November, laying down the quarrel of Count Raymond against Stephen. That namely the said Raymond gave his daughter legally to the aforesaid Stephen for the joining of marriage, but he [Stephen] did not use her legally as a wife, because, as he acknowledges, he had formerly mixed himself in carnal commerce with another relative of the same girl, but he did not want to reveal with whom or how closely joined by affinity. This meaning of these letters, if I repeat rightly something whose words I do not hold, were recited and set in the synod. Such an accusation did not merit to obtain a synodal response, since no one absent can regularly accuse anyone by letter and, if he has given his daughter legally to another in marriage, he has set her free from his power, because of which, on account of this business, which perhaps thus had been able to be hidden or interpreted otherwise than it might have been said (?), he [Raymond] cannot canonically accuse him to whom he gave her; about which thing the wife ought to join the accusation or suit against her husband, if necessity demands, but the father ought to seek for her thence either correction of her husband by persuasion or suggestion, by which means he himself would also have been able to satisfy. However, since this case has been ventilated by very many and both noble and illustrious men and powerful according to the dignity of the world for about three years, if among themselves they disagree hence for a very long time, very great scandal will be able to happen in the church and detriment in the kingdom because of this, and since the same Stephen was in service in the royal household in the same place, it seemed to the synod that it should summon him and take care to find from him what he should say about these things. But called so that this might be related, after certain things he asked contradictions (?) of his response, so that would it be allowed to him to speak with the bishops alone. And the others retreating, he intimated to the bishops the things which seemed to him. To whom among other things the bishops said, they could neither give him secret council or pronounce private judgement about the things which the letters of Raymond had spoken and which are ventilated throughout the mouths of almost everyone in many kingdoms. Therefore also he himself, said he wanted what was here before him to come to the notice of all and obtain necessary council and have judgement savingly discerned for him: yet he would like first that the synod might publicly hear his statement and only then give council to him and promulgate judgement.

[p 89] And let us exhibit his person speaking: "As is the custom," Stephen said, "in the fragile nature of my youth it happened to me youthfully with a certain woman. But also when time came to me, that I might seek legitimate marriage in the manner of my ancestors, united with the consent of my relatives and friends I asked seeking as a legal wife the daughter of Raymond, as a noble man, hoping to be legally betrothed. But returned to myself and knowing what had I done, I proceeded to my confessor and sought his counsel: that since the young woman, with whom I had been mixed in carnal commerce, was the relative of this girl, and that I had heard that those pertaining to one another from the fourth degree and in the rest were able to connect themselves, whether with this girl remaining betrothed to me, I could have joined her to me in marriage, while remaining under a secret penitence, without my and her eternal damnation, He showed me a book which, as I believe, is called canons and read before me, that as long as the nearness of affinity can be counted, it is allowed neither to me or to any Christian man to be joined with his female relative or she whom a relative has or with two relatives savingly, and as long as we might remain in such incest, neither I nor her would be able to do fruitful penitence, nor would such incest be able to be cured unless by our separation from each other. Meanwhile disagreement occurred between my superior, the lord king and my youthfulness, so much that I could not remained surely in that kingdom. Therefore, bound from either side, I could neither break my betrothal, nor dare to take my betrothed in marriage, lest the disagreement of Raymond and his noble relatives might also add to the disagreement of my lord, and thus I either might be banished totally from the kingdom, or if I were wanting to remain in the kingdom, would die. And therefore I evaded through two placita leading my betrothed in marriage. But at length, forced by necessity, since I was being threatened about my life, I endowed her and accepted her, honoured by public marriage. But lest I might lose her with me who had been healthy up till then, and I might more cumulatively acquire perdition for myself, I decided to keep her intact thus far. And since therefore the truth of reason keeps itself through all things, and I did this not from fraud or hate or despite of someone or love of another woman, but just as I told you now, God being my witness, in whatever way it now pleases you, I demonstrate through myself and my relatives and friends or faithful men this to be true to you by sacrament, or by what every other convenient way you may like. And if you want and seek it, I send as many of my slaves as you decide thence into judgement and I am ready in all things in which I should be able, to obey what council thence you should give to me according to God for my salvation and according to the world for agreeing with honour and for pacifying Raymond and for the salvation and honour of the girl herself."

Responsio 12f: if Theutberga is guilty of incest

2008-03-10T15:18:00.000-07:00

[p 193] We say these things so that the princes and kings and rulers of the holy church may do all things according to reason and the order of law, but also so that the above-mentioned case may be decided with judgement of equity. But the same blessed Gregory described, in the letter of instruction to John the defensor who was going into Spain, the method of constituting the judgement if Hubert should come for this reason to hear an ecclesiastical judgement, not having been judged by a civil one. Gregory says: ‘First so that this may happen in an orderly way, when there are some accusers and other witnesses, let the quality of the case be explored there, whether it is worthy of exile or condemnation, so that with him present under oath, testimony may be offered against him or introduced by a written statement of acts, and so that he himself has license to reply and defend himself. But it also to be enquired subtly about the persons of the accusers and witnesses, their condition and their opinion, lest they may be destitute or perhaps may have some hostility against him and whether they give testimony from hearing or have testified that they really specially know, and let the judgement be in writing and thus let the sentence be recited and thus all these things may be solemnly confirmed.’

For the rest, if the woman is found guilty of crime with her brother before the start of the marriage, we have produced this to be considered, corresponding to the letter of the same Gregory to John, bishop of Palermo about a certain woman, who some man left before he became a deacon, and a certain man handed her over to a husband after the change of clothes. For he said: ‘Since there are faults in which it is a fault to relax the punishment, the truth should always be sought, so that it ought to be inquired whether a crime condemns the accused or whether detected innocence removes him from punishment. Therefore it came to us that Fantinus the defensor wished to exercise vengeance on Peter, the bearer of this letter, because, as it said, at the time he was a tenant he handed over the widow of a certain deacon to a husband. But Peter asserts she was not the wife of the deacon, nor did she come to him as a virgin, in short, so she might not presume to change her religious clothing after he was promoted into holy orders. He added that before she came to the deacon and afterwards she had lived with a bad reputation. Therefore we exhort your fraternity in these words to enquire into this case, with the fear of God, as is suitable, and subtle investigation in all ways. And if the woman concerned was married to the deacon then let the above-mentioned letter bearer be handed to the defensor and ruler of the patrimony mentioned for vengeance and let those who have been joined badly be separated with suitable emendation.’ We extract this from the words of St Gregory.

And just as we placed above from the words of St Augustine, that in the church excommunication and separation from the church does what killing used to do in the old law or also what it now by laws does in the state [res publica], so, just as is set before, if whatever woman, who is caught by the public laws in crimes of this kind, evading the forum’s judgement, should come to episcopal judgement, as it seems to us, according to the holy council of Ancyra, about ‘those who fornicate irrationally with men or beasts and about those women who fornicate and kill their offspring or who do things with themselves so that they expel foetuses from their womb, she should be ordered to pray among those who are very weakened [?] by an unclean spirit.’ Then, chastised by a strict ten-year penance, she will be judged to devote herself to the fruits of worthy penance until the end of her life, with the option reserved, by ecclesiastical piety to give the viaticum to her, if fear of death should attack, separated not only from the marriage bed, but from all marital consort, according to the decree of the blessed Pope Gregory to Felix, Bishop of Sicily. He said: ‘We decree about those who are faithfully taught and now stand undestroyed, planted with firm roots, that every individual should observe his descent as far as the seventh generation and as far as he knows relatives by marriage, he should not approach association of this kind of coupling. Nor indeed is any Christian allowed or will be allowed to take in marriage her whom someone from his own blood has in marriage or has stained with any illicit pollution, since such coupling is incestuous and abominable to God and all humans. But we read that formerly it was constituted by the holy fathers that the incestuous were not to be reckoned by the name of marriage. Nor also do we omit this, in this part of care, that all the incestuous are to be separated from the thresholds of holy church until they may be reconciled through satisfaction by the prayers of priests to the same holy catholic church.’ And in the canonical edict offered before St Peter: ‘If anyone should take a wife from his own relatives or she whom a relative had, let him be anathema.’ And St Ambrose on the first letter to the Corinthians says: ‘For a brother or sister is not subject to service in this way, the reverence of marriage is not due to him, who appalled the author of marriage. For that marriage is not established which is without God’s devotion.’

And St Jerome in the third book of the commentary on the letter of Paul to the Ephesians: ‘In the same way as the Church is subjected to Christ, so is the wife subjected to the husband. Husband and wife are bound by the same order as the pre-eminence and subjection that Christ and the Church have. But is it to be seen that in the way in which there is a holy joining of Christ and the Church, thus also let there be a holy bond in man and woman. But just as not every congregation of heretics can be said to be the Church of Christ, nor is Christ their head, thus not every marrying, which is not joined according to the precepts of Christ in his man (?), can rightly be called marriage, but rather adultery.’

Hence it is to be noticed intelligently, that what the doctor himself said in a letter to the priest Amandus, that ‘as long as the man lives, although he may be an adulterer, although a sodomite, although overwhelmed by all sins and deserted by his wife because of these sins, he is reckoned her husband, she is not allowed to take another man’, he says about him who sins in the marriage himself, after a legitimate marriage is started. In this law man and woman are held by equal sentence. But in this place it is a matter of her of him who, having committed incest before a legitimate marriage is started, takes away from himself/herself the legitimate marriage which he/she had been able to have.

And in the council of Agde: ‘We keep nothing at all of mercy about incestuous marriages, unless they should be cleansed by the separation of the adulterers. But the incestuous are not to be reckoned by the name of marriage, which it is deadly for them to be designated as (?).’ And St Augustine in the book about the good of marriage: ‘It is one thing not to sleep together except only for the wish to beget children, which is no sin: it is another thing indeed to seek the desire of the flesh by sleeping together, but with the spouse only, which is a venial sin. For even if they do not sleep together for the sake of propagating offspring, the propagation of offspring is not resisted for the sake of this lust, either by evil will or evil act. For those do this, who although they are called spouses, are not. Not do they retain any truth of marriage, but spread the honest name to veil infamy. Having also proceeded so far, they are betrayed into exposing their sons, who are born against their will. For they hate to nourish or have those whom they feared to beget. Thus as they rage against those they begot unwillingly, the shadowy iniquity is disclosed in the light as clear iniquity and the hidden shameful deed proved by open cruelty. Sometimes, this lustful cruelty or lust for cruelty goes so far as to procure poisons for sterility, or, if that should not be effective, to destroy and eject the conceived foetus in some way from the womb, preferring its offspring to die rather than live, or if it lived in the womb, to kill it before it was born. Well, if both parties are like this, they are not spouses, and if they were such from the beginning, they have not come together by marriage but rather by debauchery. But if the two are not alike in such sin, I dare to say that either she is in some way the whore of her husband or he is an adulterer to his wife.’

Responsio 12e: Stand by your hand

2008-02-24T12:30:00.000-08:00

[p 187] But this kingdom was united from the hands of many in the hand of the fathers of our kings by the grace of God. And the one kingdom is one church, which ought never to be divided, just like one man and one rector in one rule, in the divisions of those kings. Nor should it be said that among our princes someone may flee from one people or one kingdom to another people or kingdom, but rather they remain in one kingdom, just as befits Christians and in the unity of mother church. St Gregory writes to John, Bishop of Cagliari about what patronage those fleeing to the church ought to have, saying: ‘If some people about whom there is an investigation should perhaps take refuge in the church, the case ought to be disposed so that neither do they suffer violence, nor do those who says they are oppressed sustain losses. Therefore let it be your care that those it concerns promise by oath to them to preserve law and justice, and let them be warned in all ways to come out and to render account for their acts.’

Following this example, our catholic princes ought to be careful that they obey divine mandates as sons of the catholic church and what they confirmed with their own hands and God as a witness, namely that they ought not only not to protect men of this kind and defend them against law and reason, but also not receive them, unless for this reason, that they come to render right account. But certain of the same kings who affirmed this so far still by the grace of God live in this body and one has gone to the Lord. But sons are born for the father, by whom, according to the Roman law which their predecessor emperors and kings built and preserved and through which they ruled their peoples and corrected them happily, ‘an action begun by a progenitor should be completed by the heirs’and thus each of the statutes of their predecessors should be kept well in all ways, just as they desire that the things they constitute to be preserved by their successors. And it does not seem trivial for kings or whoever else to infringe the things they take care to confirm with their own hands [p 188], since from divine doctrine and apostolic tradition, the confirmation of such a very great matter was always by the hand of the first in the world themselves, so that the vicars of the apostles themselves from themselves [?] decreed over celestial authority, that ‘he who should go against his subscription in anything, he himself should deprive himself of the honour’. And let the kings not say: this is constituted about bishops and not kings, but consider if they desire to be sublime and honoured in the rule of the people, under Christ the one king and priest, from the derivation of whose name they are called lords of Christ, from whose honour and love and fear they are called lords and kings by participation in his great name, although they are men just like the rest, and if they want to have a part with these in the kingdom of the heavens, with those who are anointed with holy chrism. Chrism receives its name from the name of Christ who thence anointed priests, prophets, kings and martyrs, he also anointed with the oil of delight before his brothers made whoever of them in baptism kings and priests for our God and a royal people and a royal priesthood according to the apostles John and Peter. Let them know and understand themselves to be deprived of the name of kings and the dignity of office in the eyes of God, (although they may usurp that name before the eyes of men and by unstable and earthly power) when they act against the hand of their subscription, if what they confirmed with their hand pleased God. Since, just as just and good kings live in their good and just laws, when the guilty are repressed and punished by them and innocent are lifted up and freed, so apostolic men live within rules promulgated and confirmed by their hands, by which who act against those rules, from that day on which they are constituted.

And just as the Apostles says about her who living is dead, thus also such a transgressor, (although those who now, in the places of the apostles retain him, do not judge him, either since they do not know or they conceal what has been done) if he should not correct himself before the last day will merely be judged as placed among those to be condemned in judgement for greater transgressions. For the law is not placed for the just, just as the Apostle says, but for transgressors and the wicked, homicides and parricides and fornicators and the remaining sinners. For, written not without cause, it is read, that the words of the decalogue are written by the finger of God. Indeed he decreed that law would be valid forever which he wrote with his finger, that is his spirit. And the Lord says about the elect in the gospel: Rejoice, since your names are written in heaven. But the prophet Jeremiah said about the reprobate: Withdrawing from you, O Lord, they are written in earth. But this is not to be understood childishly, as if God wrote the good in the heavens, the bad in the earth for the remedy of forgetfulness, but to be understood beneficially, [p 189] that he who should do either heavenly or earthly works, through these, as if by letters, commented on, he may be eternally impressed in the memory of God. In this law is demonstrated, that what anyone should confirm by his hand justly and rationally he should preserve inviolably and with persistent justice.

Not in vain does he who comes for baptism, if he is of age or the godfather for the boy, but also the one publicly doing penance coming to reconciliation, by church tradition, give his own name written, which is placed upon the holy altar among the celebration of the celestial mysteries and commended to the Lord by the priest reciting it at the place. But none the less in the holy diptychs the names of the faithful both living and dead are not frivolously written and those of the unfaithful are erased from the same diptychs after death by holy judgement if they should have been written down. But perhaps the princes say, as if supported by imperial license: What great evil do I do against God or who will judge me thence if I either infringe or do not notice a precept or edict confirmed by my hand? First, indeed, let them notice that if they are over others, God is over them. And if they should act wickedly and not correct themselves they will be judged the more gravely, the more they are loftily preferred on the royal throne. For kings and priests correct the wicked acts of their subjects, but they ought not to forget that their evils will be judged by the same Lord, not ought they to hear with deaf ear what is written: The powerful will suffer torments powerfully, but mercy is conceded to the small. Therefore let them read the history of holy Abraham who received a charter of confirmation from the seller of his wife’s tomb before his sons and the people of the land as so great, that he worshipped on the land, the people of the land, that is the sons of Eth (?), since he obtained that by their heard concession, and they [the princes] will be able to find how the great (?) ought to consider this. But also they will find sufficiently in the Law about this confirmation, which flourished only before the coming of Christ, so that Pilate instructed by ancient custom said to the Jews demanding that what he had written in the inscription over Christ might be gainsaid: ‘What I have written, I have written’, not wanting what he had done to be unfinished or unchanged. Which also long before was confirmed by the Lord stipulations, just as is written above the inscription of the title to the psalm: Do not corrupt. And in the book of Tobit is read how a chirograph (that is written by hand) ought to be believed to be of very certain stability and firmness and is it demonstrated in the gospel about written bonds. [p 190] But certain princes (may God make this far from our Christian princes) perhaps do not see that their confirmation remains after they are infirm, and withdraw themselves and just as St Augustine says the acts passes and the guilt remains. They give what was theirs to holy places by confirmation and usurp it for themselves by occupation, which, so that the poorer of the world may not obtain them by interceding payment (?), rather they also take them away for themselves and do not give them to the holy places and they perpetrate sacrilege when they ought to have provided a remedy for themselves. Therefore St Gregory in the letter to the subdeacon Sabinus writes: ‘It is sacrilege and against the laws if someone tempts from effort of bad will to retain what is relinquished to holy places from his savings (?). Let clerics or seculars who should presume to retain either offerings of relatives or donations or things left by will or should think to take away that which they themselves donated to churches of monasteries, be excluded from church, just as the holy synod states, just like killers of the poor, until they return those things.’

Therefore let them know that along with their own sins, they will also be punished for the sake of all the sins of those who gave the same things for the redemption of their soul. And let those who perhaps confirm ill-advisedly not disregard what they give to their friends and faithful men, and take that away without judgement, when the things they have given return to the memory in doing penance, not noticing that they go from the world when the soul leaves the body, but the land remains for ever and is held free from the possessor by charter of royal confirmation of those things. And while the hearts breathe, perhaps the lips are provoked to ill-saying, not without the weight of sin, since both have been provided, that is lest a certain king should give ill-advisedly or without judgement of equity take something away or after judgement an unbroken charter might remain about the things taken away. For it is written: The memory of the just with praises, but the name of the impious will decay. Thus it is better and more rational that through reason a broken charter may decay and praise of their equity may remain than a charter of confirmation may remain and the name of praise decay.

But perhaps the princes reading or hearing these things may say: The bishops have chastised us well, we will give nothing by precept, lest we are reproved again. On the contrary, let them here what the prophet complains of, saying with the voice of those chastising: ‘We have cured Babylon and she is not healed. [p 191] Indeed Babylon is cured, yet not returned to health when the mind confused in wicked action hears the words of correction, receives the whips of correction and yet refuses to go back to the right way of salvation.’ And through Wisdom: ‘Just as vinegar in natron, thus it is for him who sings songs with a very bad heart. When vinegar is placed in natron, it bublles constantly and boils up’. Thus for the most part, also the hearts of the powerful, who swell from power and do not humble themselves from their humanity (as Abraham said to the Lord, humbling himself from the exultation of his conversation: ‘I will speak to my God although I am dust and ashes’), when they hear correction of the chastising missus of the Lord, they erupt into a word of contradiction from the excitement of their heart. Bishops have not forbidden giving to holy places or faithful men, making known to all: Consecrate and render to your God and Do all things with counsel ands you will not repent afterwards and Do not do what is iniquitous, not judge unjustly and justly judge your neighbour. Just as a prince does not want what God concedes to him to be taken from him by someone stronger, so also let he himself not take away without judgment of equity from anyone either what he gave or what he did not give, since it is written: What you do not want to happen to you, do not do to another. But rather the bishops again and again preached: Make for yourself friends form the mammon of unrighteousness, so that when you die, they receive you in the eternal tabernacle, and Whatever your hand can do immediately, since their is neither place nor reason among those below, to which you hasten.

And just as the bishops preached those things which are useful and honest, thus no less let them preach so that the king may hasten to conceal a shameful mark from himself on the royal name, and as much as he can, wash away through undivided days and acts, remembering the statement of Deuteronomy which says: ‘You will have a place outside the camp to which you should go for the requisites of nature, bearing a peg in your belt, and when you sit down, you shall dig a hole and you shall put soil on your excrement, of which you are relieved. For the Lord your God walks in the middle of the camps, so that he may rescue you and deliver your enemies to you, so that your camps should be holy and no foulness appear in them, lest he should leave you. Indeed encumbered by the weight of corruptible nature, certain overflows of our thoughts burst out from the womb of our mind and from our actions by the unworthy work of rule (?) as if the burdens of the belly. And we ought to carry a peg under our belt, who are the rectores of the people, that is so that we always girdled for restraining ourselves may have the goad of compunction around us, which incessantly digs the earth of our mind with the sorrow of penance, and conceals what foulness burst outs from us. Indeed the excrement of the belly is covered in the ditch by earth through the peg, when the overflowing of our mind or the reprehensible foulness of our work, discussed with subtle refutation and corrected by honest work, is concealed before the eyes of God through the goad of its compunction and the good of correction. But is it to be considered that the kings and emperors of old stated in their laws that a confirmation was determined to be confirmed by five or seven or ten witnesses, as Ambrose writes. [p 192] But also in the signing of charters a conditional regulation is placed by civil law, about the expense by which he who should be tempted to break a charter should be punished by the fisc. And the accuser signing a written accusation may not change himself from that condition.

But they wrote about their confirmation, since the hand of the prince, just as we read is said in the Book of Kings about David is reckoned for 10,000. And a king, constituted by God either by grace or because of the sins of the people, will be crowned by the king of kings himself about his just acts or judged by judgement of equity will be punished for unjust judgement and wicked actions. They also inserted in the same laws in the Lex Cornelia on wills, about those who should knowingly write suppress, move, devise or destroy a will or other false instrument by fraud: the honestiores are to be deported to an island, the humiliores wither condemned to the minds or raised on the cross, but the slave to have capital punishment. And as St Augustine reminds in the commentary on the gospel of John: It is the law of the forum that the rescript that someone obtains who lies to the prince in entreaties, should not benefit him, rather he should lack the benefit of the writing himself, by which he guided the rescript. But they said nothing about confirming their rescripts, since they held it sinful to infringe what they confirmed, just as is read in the Book of Esther, as much as a signing had the condition of a king’s ring, the absence of that ring had that much caution, how much more the subscription of the royal hand. And the royal dignity ought not to take as perfunctory what is written in its precepts: And so that the precept may obtain fuller strength in the name of God and I give happily in that or that year in the name of God, lest what is happily confirmed in the name of God is unhappily weakened without the judgement of God, that is without the judgement of truth, since it is written: You shall not pollute the name of your God and You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

Let them also read Paul and the explainers of the Apostle himself, how significant it was said that the same Apostle wrote in his letters [p 193]: See how I have written this with my own hand. And again: My salutations by the hand of Paul. Therefore kings who may confirm with subscription of their hand things given by them or privileges of the saints with anathema strengthened by hands, and should afterwards count it little to preserve these, as if bound, they are not held by the chain of anathema, let them hear the statement of the blessed Gregory to the patrician Theoctista: ‘They themselves are witnesses that they are not Christians who trying to loosen themselves reckon the bindings of the whole church as vain (?) and through this nor do they consider the absolution of the holy church, which if offers to the faithful, to be true, if they do not reckon its binding as valid, and since they believe the truth to deceive, they are therefore tightly bound in their sins. But if therefore there are those who under the Christian name either dare to reach this or silently to hold it among themselves, both I and all the catholic bishops and the universal church anathematise them.’

Responsio 5. On the difficulty of divorce, loving one's wife, the importance of judgment, the case of Northildis, and unpleasant Frankish men.

2008-01-06T13:15:00.000-08:00

[135] In the first place, that it should by love of eternal salvation be according to the Gospel admonition, as Saint Augustine says in his book On the good of marriage, where marriage is observed to be better as it is more spiritually maintained, and not broken. And St Augustine says in his fifth book against Julian, “Luke the evangelist said about the Lord that he was thought to be the son of Joseph, and this was thought so that he might be believed to have been born from Joseph’s sexual relations. He removed this false opinion of the people, not denying that Mary was the wife of this man against angelic witness, although you yourself admit that she took the name of wife from the pledge of betrothal.[?]. And this pledge remained perfectly inviolate. Nor indeed, when he had seen the holy virgin bestowed with divine fertility, did he seek another wife, for nor indeed would he have sought this one, had a wife not been necessary. But he did not judge that the bond of faithful union should be dissolved because the hope of sharing the flesh was taken away.”

[136] Second, equally according to the Gospel truth, about the cause of fornication. This medicine is applied in the canons of the Council of Ancyra: “If anyone’s wife is an adulteress or if he has committed adultery, it is fitting for him to bring it to completion with a penance of seven years.” And about their separation in the Council of Africa, chapter 69, it is written: “It pleased us, that according to the Gospel and Apostolic discipline, neither a husband left by his wife nor a wife by her husband may be joined to another, but let them remain thus or be reconciled. And if they ignore this, let them be brought to repentance.” The authority then continues, that in whatever way marriages legitimately entered into should be separated, they should not be separated without sacerdotal awareness and without legal judgment. And again in the Council of Elvira: “A believing woman who leaves her believing adulterous husband and marries another: that she should not marry him. If she does marry him, she will not accept communion, unless the man she left departs this world, or the necessity of illness compels it to be given.” And a similar judgement is to be held regarding the husband, for, as Innocent wrote to Exsuperius bishop of Toulouse, and Augustine wrote in his book On the ten strings, and Jerome in his letter to Oceanus about the death of Fabiola, they are held under the same law of divine judgment.

If they are broken apart for whatever cause: Innocent wrote about this to Exsuperius bishop of Toulouse, chapter 7. “Your Goodwill also asked about those, who join themselves to another in marriage after a repudiation, who on both sides are clearly adulterers. For whoever rushes to another union while his wife is alive, although the marriage may be seen to be broken, cannot be seen not to be adulterers. And even those persons who are joined to them are also seen to have committed adultery, according to what we read in the Gospel: Whoever leaves his wife and marries another, commits adultery: and similarly whoever marries the woman who was left also commits adultery. And therefore all must abstain from the communion of the faithful. But nothing of the sort can be decreed for their relatives or friends, unless they are revealed to have arranged the illicit union.”

[137] And St Ambrose writes in his book on Abraham: “I advise you men, especially those who are reaching for the grace of the Lord, not to become mingled with an adulterous body: for who joins himself to a prostitute is made one body – nor to give this opportunity to divorce for women. Let no one delude himself with the laws of men. All sex outside marriage [stuprum] is adultery, and what is not allowed for a woman is not allowed for a man. The same chastity is required from a man as from a woman. Whatever is done with a woman who is not the legitimate wife is condemned as the crime of adultery. Therefore watch out what for you must beware, so that no one offer himself to the sacraments unworthily.”

Chapter 4. In the council of Agatha, it is written about those who leave their wives without reason as follows: “About those laymen who send away or who have sent away their conjugal partner for no serious fault, and without offering plausible reasons for the break up, therefore set aside their marriage, so that they dare what is not theirs or is not permitted. If they do this before they have explained the cause of the break up to the provincial bishop, and if they cast off their wives before they are condemned by judgment, they are to be excluded from the communion of the church and from the gathering of the holy people, because they stain the faith of marriage.” And again in the Council of Elvira, “Woman, who leave their husbands without any preceding reason and join themselves to others, may not accept communion even in the end.” And there are other incestuous unions and separations and judgments about them, which we pass over from discussing here, hastening to other matters.

Let all those who are reading this recognise that the holy and apostolic men, the successors that is of the Apostles, did not establish laws from their traditions – which we have included here, so that none of the faithful should dissolve a marriage established by divine authority without his bishop’s knowledge – so that we should despise and wish to trample upon the Christian laws of the world. For the Church is often accustomed to demand that these should be promulgated even for matters of the Church by emperors and kings, and episcopal authority frequently uses and accepts their decisions in their judgments, together with the sentences of the canons. So much so that Damasus and Leo and Saint Gregory made these sentences of law canonical, as we find in their letters, and Saint Gregory drew up advice for John the defensor going to Spain from sacred orders wholly instituted from the laws.

[138] And amongst other kings and emperors throughout the various courses of time who decreed legal rights is the Emperor of our own time, Louis of pious memory. In a synod and general meeting at Worms, in the presence of the legate of the Apostolic See and Pope Gregory and many others, he commanded about those things which bishops had recently found in synods held at four places of his empire to be necessary and useful concerning the matter of all, bishops as well as faithful laymen, with everyone’s agreement decreeing thus: “Whoever”, he said, “marries another wife, having left his own wife or having killed her though innocent, let him put down his weapons and perform public penance. And if he should be contumacious, let him be seized by the count and bound in chains, and held in custody, until the issue is brought to our attention”.

Christ, the virtus of God and the wisdom of God, says of himself: “I wisdom, dwell in counsel, and am present in learned thoughts. By me kings reign, and lawgivers decree just things”.

And therefore both the deputies of Christ and the successors of the Apostles established these laws, and we howsoever presiding over the church of God in their place, insert them here, so that the blessing which the Lord first gave to Adam and his wife in paradise, saying “Increase and multiply”, which given once is to this day and to the end not denied not only to the faithful but also to the unfaithful, may be given by the mouths of the priests to the faithful and the devout individually, as a holy mystery– which Christ brought through his presence to the wedding when he made water into wine. And so, those who are joined through God, that is through their ministry, by the laws of the world, which are sanctified by the justice of God though which anyone is made just, may not be separated without their knowledge. And if for the sake of God they are separated spiritually from commingling of the flesh, that cleaving to the Lord they made be made one spirit, as Paul says about many who are in the church, including publicans and prostitutes, murderers and adulterers, “For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ”, they may be joined to the Lord with the full blessing of sacerdotal awareness. If however the spouses are separated by a just civil law, and in concordance with the holy precept of the Lord because of the sin of fornication, which is accustomed to snatch away through human fragility, let them seek the medicinal advice of episcopal attention. So that the bishop might know how, with respect to the quality and degree of the form of injury and to their virtue, he must apply the medicine of healing. Thus the Lord the day before he would suffer for the reparation and salvation of all who perished in Adam, blessed at dinner with his own hands a Eucharist composed of bread made of flour and water, and a cup of the holy altar mixed with water, and commended it to the mouth, which everyday in the whole catholic Church spread far and wide across the world he consecrates though the hands and mouths of priests with those unfailing words of his, for the redemption, the reparation and the salvation of believers. Priests with a medicinal blade cut off from that life-giving communion those who publicly sin in serious crimes which the laws publicly condemn. And after a satisfaction which seems appropriate, they attend to their reintegration into the wholesome refreshment, since the spiritual doctors of the church, that is the priests of the Lord, are able to give medicinal and healing counsel for the infirmities of sinners secretly confessed to them. And they are not able to separate anyone by an ecclesiastical judgment, that is the separation from the communion of the church, or from a rank, or from a conjugal union, unless he has publicly and freely confessed to crimes, or has openly been convicted of them. And confession or conviction in ecclesiastical positions has a form and an order, which do not need to be included here. And public confession or the conviction of secular men has its form and order, in which they ought publicly to be judged. Not that serious crimes cannot be dissolved also by secret confession and penance, but lest the weak in the church should be caused to stumble seeing punishments whose causes they know nothing about; and what is agreed by the attention of many to have been perpetrated, shall be healed by the knowledge of many.

[140] And who in the church sins [against one person??], let him apply himself to showing the satisfaction owed to him. And who destroyed many, as much as himself, by his own examples, let him cure many with the antidote of his humiliation. As Paul says about himself, “I before was a blasphemer and a persecutor and contumelious”, and “They saw how he who first fought against this faith now preaches it, and they glorified God in me”. It is the case that whoever offends God in many things will attain a cure more quickly with many people praying for him to the Lord, as St Gregory wrote to Felix, the bishop of Sicily. “The wicked should be segregated from the good, the evil from the just, so that in their shame they may recognize their consciences, and be converted from their wicked deeds. And if they should be incorrigible, let them be segregated from the faithful until satisfaction, following the sentence of the Lord saviour, who amongst other things said to a brother sinning against him, ‘But if thy brother shall offend against thee” and what follows, up to where it is said “let him be to thee as the heathen and publican.’ The bad should be segregated from the good by these and many other authorities of the holy fathers, lest the just perish for the unjust, as is written ‘the just man perishes for the impious’. There must always be a discretion between the good and the bad, as there is between sheep and goats. Open sins should not be pegged with hidden correction, but rather what is openly harmful should be openly complained of. So that while they are healed by open chiding, those who offend by imitating them are corrected. For while one is rebuked, many are emended. And it is better that one man should be condemned for the salvation of many, that that through the license of one person, many should perish. It is no wonder if this notion is observed amongst men, since we have often known this to happen amongst cattle. Those which are seen to have scabies or some skin disease are separated from the healthy, lest all should be damned or perish from their disease. It is indeed preferable that the wicked should be openly corrected than that the good should perish for them.”

These things needed to be said, to explain why we set down the laws that spouses should be separated, whether from the love of God or the admission of sin, with sacerdotal awareness, whence they took the blessing of entering into marriage. But since we are currently concerned with the separation of a man and wife, which took place not because of love for perpetual continence, nor, as is said, for an open crime, but on account of a certain suspicion, it is necessary that this dispute be aired through men of this order, that is married men, and that it be judged according the Christian laws set down by God with a most fair investigation, and settled. And whenever sacerdotal piety or the medicinal severity of church authority finds its place in this business, let it not only offer itself to the sons of the church and the judges of justice, but let it truly force itself upon them.

[141] And since it is written, “Pass not beyond the ancient bounds which thy fathers have set”, whose examples which should be imitated are for us true doctrine, we thought it necessary to recall to the memory that some of us were present in the palace of Attigny in the time of the Lord Louis, the pious emperor of holy memory, when there was a universal synod of the whole empire, including even legates of the Roman see. In the general placitum, a woman of not ignoble ancestry called Northildis publicly complained to the emperor about certain shameful matters between her and her husband named Agambert. The emperor sent her to the synod, so that episcopal authority should decide what should be done. But the entirety of the bishops sent her back to the judgment of the laymen and of the married, so that they might judge between her and her husband who knew about these matters and were sufficiently gifted in the laws of the world, so that this woman should subject herself to their legal judgments, and should hold without appeal to what they decided about the matter. If there were some crime, for which after their judgment she would demand a form of penance from episcopal authority, they would not refuse to impose it upon her according to what the holy canons constituted. This sacerdotal discretion pleased the lay nobles, because judgment about their wives was not taken away from them, nor was any prejudice inflicted upon civil laws by the sacerdotal order. And they gave the law to the woman’s complaint, and conveyed a settlement in judgment to the legal question.

[142] In the same way let them call this matter, whose discussion concerns most important people, to the middle of judgment, and let them judge very carefully following what they see to be appropriate to a judgment of equity; recognising that a marriage legally entered into is able to be dissolved for no reason, except, as we have said above, a joined spiritual separation, or a manifest confession or an open conviction of physical fornication. For as Saint Augustine says in this book On the good of marriage, it is not licit for a man to leave her husband or a husband her wife even because of her sterility, “nor is it allowed to join oneself to others for the sake of children, for whom the wife was married. And if they were to do this, they and those to whom they joined themselves would commit adultery. The bond of marriage remains, even if because of manifest sterility children, for whom it was entered into, do not follow.” And again in the same book, “Just as it is preferable to die of hunger than it is to eat sacrifices made to idols, so it is better to die without children than to seek offspring [stirps] from an illicit sexual union.”

And in his books to Pollentius about adulterous marriages, the reader will find it is stressed over and over again that a husband cannot be separated from a wife, nor a wife from a husband, except only for the cause of fornication. By that they are able to be separated, on condition however that they remain unmarried or are reconciled to each other.

And St Jerome says in his commentary on Matthew: “The disciples said to the Lord, ‘If the case of a man with his wife be so, it is not expedient to marry’. The burden of wives is a heavy one, if it is not permitted to leave them except for the reason of fornication. How will she be coped with if she is drunken, if she is angry, if she has wicked habits, if she is wanton, greedy, roving, abusive and slanderous? Like it or not, she will be coped with. For when we were free, we voluntarily subjected ourselves to this servitude."

And again in the letter to Amand the priest: “The Apostle cut through all the debates, and very clearly defined that woman to be an adulteress, who marries another while her husband is alive. Please do not object to me about the abductor’s violence, the mother’s persuasion, the father’s authority, the swarms of relatives, the traps of slaves and relatives, the damage to the family property: as long as her husband is alive, even if he is an adulterer, even if he is a sodomite, even if he is buried deep in all wickednesses and the wife leaves him because of this, he is still considered her husband, and she is not allowed to take another. And the Apostle did not decide this on his own authority, but Christ spoke through him, who said in the Gospel, “whosoever shall put away his wife, excepting the cause of fornication, maketh her to commit adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery”.

[143] And the apostolic Innocent, Leo, and Gregory, and the African Council, Ambrose, John of Constantinople, Origen in his books amended by Saint Jerome, the venerable priest Bede and all other catholic doctors: they all agree with this evangelical truth and apostolic doctrine. And if there were not such a clear precept of the Lord, so that even Paul when asked about virgins and giving counsel did not dare to change anything at all of it, saying “Concerning the wife: it is not I but the Lord who commands the wife not to leave her husband, and that if she leaves, she must remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband”, and there were such a place in scripture that authors would understand it differently, though not contrary to faith, then we would follow the decision of the most and of greatest authority which we have in the canons. But as it stands we are not able to nor should we think or understand differently, except according to what we read in the divinely inspired writings. Saint Paul associated fornicators and adulterers with worshippers of idols, saying that they will not possess the kingdom of God, and ordered that bread not be broken with them. And again he wrote, that God will judge fornicators and adulterers. And these men, who as we have shown are held by the same judgment before God as are women, if they have committed adultery, will be punished with a greater punishment to the degree that they are the heads and governors of women, the more fragile sex and weaker vessels. And they must not presume an illicit licence, so that they condemn their adulterous wives without judgment. For the Lord in law about the slave, who is the property of his master: “Who strikes his slave or slave girl with a stick, so they die at his hands, will be guilty of a crime.’ And the holy canons, ‘if anyone kills his own slave without the awareness of a judge’, command them to expiate the spilling of blood with an excommunication for two years. And, ‘if a mistress beat her slave girl with blows, whence she dies, and if this happens on purpose, let her be admitted to communion after seven years or if there was an excuse after five, saving the authority of the gift of viaticum, which is to be denied to none in their last breath."

[144] If therefore such equity and goodwill should be preserved even towards the servile condition in the house of every Christian, how much more and more generously and fully should it be kept between a husband and wife, a man and his spouse, the head and the body? For, as the Apostle taught, the man is the head of the woman as Christ is the head of the Church, the saviour of the body, and men must love their wives as they love their own bodies. Whoever loves his life, loves himself. For no one ever held his own flesh in hatred, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church.

And let the Christian man pay attention, that if the foot or hand or genitals or whatever other limb begins to rot away or to be eaten up by cancer, with how much diligence, and medical inspection and judgment does he either bear it, so that it might heal, or cut it from himself, if it is unable to heal. And so let him do with his limb, that is his body, that is his wife. And again the Apostle says, ‘Men, love your wives as Christ loved his Church and gave himself for her, so that he might sanctify her, cleansing her in a bath by his word. For indeed so much, and so great and excellent a love is commended by apostolic men between a husband and a wife, saving however the superiority in that marriage of the husband and the subjection of the wife, so that none is able nor should be greater in that union, instituted once by God and legitimately brought together. For what should be more venerable than the conjugal mystery of Christ and the church? What should be more holy, that that men should love their wives as Christ loved the church, giving himself for it, so that he might sanctify and cleanse it? What should be dearer and more reciprocal than that a man should be head of a woman as Christ is the head of the church, the saviour of the body? He even testifies in the gospel about the unity of this marriage saying, and now they are not two, but one flesh. They will be, he said, two in one flesh. And the Apostle adds to this, saying ‘Men love your wives and do not be bitter to them'. If therefore men must not be bitter to their wives, how much less should they be savage, cruel, bloodthirsty, keeping no law for them, no reason, no judgment, which in the Christian religion is even to be kept for slaves? But as soon as they want, provoked with indignation and an impious fury, they order them to be lead as if to the butchery to be torn to pieces , and they order them to be slaughtered by the knives of their cooks like sheep or pigs; or they themselves butcher them with their own hand and their own blade, not remotely giving themselves to them in imitation of the Lord Jesus Christ that they might sanctify and cleanse them, but rather destroying them for ever through the zeal of their lust, they impiously pollute themselves with their blood: when in such a case, the more easily murder can be committed by a husband’s zeal, the more justly should be awaited legitimate judgment.

[145]. Some of these are so unmerciful, and are found to be not of human affection but of bestial cruelty, that they kill their first wives from suspicion of adultery, without any law, without reason, by no judgment, but simply from hatred and cruelty or lust towards another wife or concubine. And drenched in recent blood, not only are they pricked by no repentance, nor making satisfaction to God in humility, but exulting in their pride, they arrive at Christ’s altar without delay, and, not bothered, dare to touch the sacred mysteries. Christ always says about such people taking his mysteries what he said about Judas: Behold, the hand of my betrayer is with me on the table. When they are able to be released from their sinning wives without any mortal peril by a judgment, they do not wait for it, but forestalling the judgment of divine law, they incur the judgment of damnation. Let them defend themselves as much as they like, those of this sort, through the earthly laws if there are such or through human custom. But if they are Christian, let them know that on the day of Judgment, they will be judged not by Roman or Salian or Burgundian law, but by divine and apostolic law, although in the kingdom of Christ even those public laws should be Christian, fitting with and consonant to Christianity. The law of the Almighty God divides all things into three kinds, which men are seen to have subject to them in earthly matters or to possess, since in the Ten Commandments He defines it and says, “Neither shalt thou desire his wife, nor his servant, nor his handmaid, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is his”. In these words the dignity of the wife should be considered in one way, the condition of slaves and slavegirls in another, and in another the vileness of brute animals or unfeeling things. And so all these are to be dealt with according to their own merits, and distinguished and judged in their own degrees.

We say this so that the sort of people who in a disordered order preserve amongst themselves a meaner condition for their wives than for their slaves, should think about it. And if a master is guilty of murder for a slave killed without the awareness of a judge, and is not able to expiate the shedding of blood except through penance: what should be understood for the case of a wife? We do not say this to trample upon or prohibit proper judgments, but rather we exhort that these should be sought and followed. For let us know the law of God, that every Christian will be judged on the day of judgment, so that he will receive according to his works. So except through legitimate judges and witnesses let no guilty person be allowed to be punished, nor adulterers or adulteresses, those whom He commanded to be stoned in a public judgment by the people. And we read that Susanna, when she was falsely accused of the crime of adultery, was both condemned in public judgment and was absolved in public. And the woman truly caught in adultery was first led according to the law to the Pharisees, who exercised the power of judgment over the people, and then for the sake of tempting him to the judgment of the Lord. And he did not deny the judgment but ordered it to be carried out justly and by the just. Therefore, if any woman caught in adultery according to the law of Moses, which the Lord promulgated in the old Testament, or to the public laws of Christians, which the church embraces, should come to episcopal judgment, there is a very obvious and very sufficient medicine prepared by the wholesome tradition of the Apostles, by which without any error of ambiguity she will be able to be cured, through divine grace and ecclesiastical piety.

Interrogatio 5

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[135]. [And tell us] how or for what causes marriages can be separated once they have been entered into, and without which causes they must not be separated. And after a separation, whether the man or woman, whichever one is still alive, can hope for another union; and whether, sinning within marriage, they should each be judged by the same judgement.

Interrogatio 9/Responsio 9. About trickery and deceit in oaths and ordeals.

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[164] But let us concede that there was deceit in this ordeal by the working of the devil, who although he lost the glory of angelic spirit, did not lost its subtlety of nature. He is permitted - the Lord allowing it either because of the unfaithfulness of those who do not rightly believe or for the purgation of the faithful, as when the devil on Christ’s behest suffocated Judas communicans, full of wickedness [??], and buffeted Paul when he was taken up to the third heaven – to do many things, by divine judgement which is hidden but never unjust, just as many things were performed through the magicians of the Pharaoh, which Moses the prophet of the Lord had done. And the airs were disturbed to test Job, and fire from the airy heavens burned up his sheep and his children. And the Antichrist will do many things himself and through his ministers, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect. And through a phitonissa a vision of Samuel was shown. And in the book of Dialogues which St Gregory wrote we read that “an idol was found”, “which being for a little while by chance cast into the kitchen, fire suddenly to come from it, which to the sight of all the monks seemed to set the whole kitchen on fire. For the quenching of it, the monks by casting on of water made such a noise, that the man of God Benedict, hearing it, came to see what the matter was. He himself beheld that the fire was in the sight of his brothers, but not his own. He bowed down his head forthwith in prayer, and then he recalled those brothers , whom he perceived that they were deluded with a fantastical fire, to their sight, that they might behold the kitchen standing safe and sound, and not those fantastical flames, which the devil had falsely devised”.

[165] And it is read in the Itinerary of Peter about the father of Clement, that he was smeared with an ointment by Simon Magus whom he had forsaken, so that he might be killed by the faithful, and he appeared to everyone’s sight in the form of Simon. Only Peter saw who he really was, and brought the disciples back to their sight through prayer, and returned his proper shape to the sight of those looking on, making sport of the phantom. And in the life of the former monk John, parents by devilish working saw their daughter to be equal [??]. And the Gospel we also read about the two disciples walking with Christ and doubting in him, for their eyes were held back, that they might not recognise him. We assume not unsuitably that the hindrance on their eyes was sent by Satan, so that Jesus might not be recognised, but that it was done with Christ’s permission until the sacrament of bread, so that it should be understood that the hindrance of the enemy is removed by sharing in the unity of his body, so that Christ is able to be recognised. So it is no wonder if the Lord, who appeared externally to the sight of those doubting the same way he was considered by them within, permits these things to happen in judgement, for the sake of the incredulity of those hesitating and doubting in faith. This was done in their sight, not through the deception of truth, but because they were not capable of seeing the truth and thought the matter other than it was: as St Gregory says about Mary: “she was looking for the Lord, whom she did not at all believe had been resurrected, but because she loved and doubted, she saw and did not recognise, for love showed him to her, and doubt hid him. And the Lord appeared to those disciples walking along the road who did not believe, but he did not show them a form which they would recognise. The Lord showed externally in the sight of their eyes, what was happening within them in the sight of their heart. The simple truth did nothing through duplicity, but showed himself to them in body as he was to them in mind."

[166] And Saint Augustine says in his book on Christian Doctrine “Whatever men have arranged for [demonic] consultations is superstitious, and so are the treaties of signification negotiated and entered into with devils, which are employed in the magical arts, and so are the books of the haruspices and augurs. In this class we must place also all amulets and cures which the medical art condemns, whether these consist in prayers, or in marks which they call characters, or in things for hanging or tying on. (…) And all these omens are of force just so far as has been arranged with the devils by that previous understanding in the mind which is, as it were, the common language, but they are all full of hurtful curiosity, torturing anxiety, and deadly slavery. For it was not because they had meaning that they were attended to, but it was by attending to and marking them that they came to have meaning. And so they are made different for different people, according to their several notions and prejudices. For those spirits which are bent upon deceiving, take care to provide for each person the same sort of omens as they see his own conjectures and preconceptions have already entangled him in.” And the venerable priest Bede says in his commentary on the book of Daniel, “If anyone wonders, how a woman is able to disturb and awaken a prophet after death by demonical art, let him know for certain that either the devil showed a false shadow to those asking questions, or if it was really Samuel, so much was permitted to the devil in doing these things as the Lord allowed. Nor is it surprising that these things were allowed for some hidden causes to the wicked spirit, who set up the saviour on the pinnacle of the temple, and who sought and took Job for testing. And if as we believe it was rather a phantom of the unclean spirit which appeared, how much true and prophetic things he was able to narrate should disturb anyone. For we know that the devil is able to know in advance or predict many things of the future which he learned form the heavenly angels. But those things which he says should not be listened to, for all things which he says or does to men, he does with the intention of luring them."

So that the devilish traps might not come to fruition, we should resist the devil, as the Apostle says, strong in the faith which conquers the world, and through which the saints conquered the kingdoms. And about those who firmly believe in it, it is said ‘Let it be to you, according to your faith’, and the Apostle says ‘let him demand in faith, without any hesitation’. And if something should happen to test our faith – for it is useful to test even the saints with the flames of temptation, so that the tempted who had been strong should be revealed, or so that once their weakness had been recognised through temptation, they might learn to be stronger, and so, when they have been tested, they might accept the crown of life – then we should not mull over the divine judgements, which are sometimes hidden but never unjust. Nor must it seem strange if some trickery by the devil’s cunning interferes in this type of judgement, with God’s permission. For the water of baptism, in itself faithful, as Ambrose says, is to some a water of lies: the baptism of the wicked does not heal, it does not clean, it pollutes. And according to the decrees of the canons, of St Innocent and of other Roman popes, those baptised by heretics in the name of the holy Trinity take the grace of the holy spirit through the laying on of hands, but those baptised in the name of the holy trinity are not commanded to be baptised again. But is it possible, although trickery is found in the baptism of heretics, that the baptism of catholics will not be proven? And if some trickery is found in the ordeal because of the faith of the incredulous, is the law of purgation to be abandoned from the custom of those who believe? For just as private or public trickery is always to be punished, so, as we read is written, the custom which does not impede the public good is to be considered as law. Therefore, if any fraudulence is found in this ordeal, through whatever trick, let the matter be brought back into question, as reason suggests, with a doubled vengeance of judgement, whether for the admission of sin or for the faithless deceit.

[167] But about the purgation of the sacrament, we read in the letter of Saint Gregory to Secundinus the bishop of Taormina, that the wife of Leo the cartularius had left him for the crime of fornication and had put on nun’s clothing. But given an oath by him that since their marriage had begun he had not fallen into the sin of adultery, she returned to her husband without consulting the bishop, and so she was excommunicated with her household. And the holy pope decreed that her household should quickly be absolved. And if it were clear, that the woman had found nothing to say against her husband, and that her suspicion had been cut off through that oath, and that after this she had returned to him of her own free will, then the censure upon her was to be moderated, and she was not to be deprived of communion for long. And he wrote again to Candidus the abbot, “Finally we dispose, so that it will be to the full satisfaction of everyone, that as well as his physical oath, he should confirm that he practised no trickery, or hid anything, but revealed the whole truth. And if anyone, which we do not believe will happen, should try in some way to apply a contrary will about this matter, let him know that he is guilty before God who tries to rescind what has been settled usefully. For let him recognise that it is not his business to detract from this decision and this affair.” And to Praeiecta, “It is very convenient to the moderation of the church, that what has been arranged or decided should not be disturbed afterwards by any opposition.” We have often heard concerning this purgation of the sacrament, that many are accustomed to do some trickery in it by swearing with a trick. But they are not so much swearing as perjuring, for as we read, that oath will be judged by God as it was received by Him who was accustomed to be satisfied through it, in faith [?]. But we are not able to deny that deceit or rather perjury committed in the purgation of the sacrament is revealed, as can happen in the ordeal through devilish cunning and by divine permission. And we find in the book of kings and Macabees about the treacherous oath, and in the Prophet about the unfaithful oath made to the king, that they did not give them out unpunished. And we think that what we have said above suffices.

Responsio 7. On procedure.

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In the same way, so we read, some attempted with a false piety to defend St Peter, that he had said he did not know that man because he recognised that he was God, when the truth says ‘you will deny me’. So these, greater in iniquity because with impious falsehood they misrepresent a feigned truth which they proclaim as pious, say that He wished to free this woman, so that He might deceive those believing in her ordeal, though it is said “For the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee from the deceitful’. And St Peter said to Simon Magus, who thought that he was able to buy the grace of the Holy Spirit through whom miracles and signs were worked and which flees the deceitful: “Thou hast no part nor lot in this matter (…)For I see thou art in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity.” And, as St Gregory says, ‘The simple truth does nothing through duplicity, peering into hearts and proving the reins, and reaching unto the division of the soul and the body, of the joints also and the marrow and the innards of the heart. And is truth is near to those that call upon it Him in truth, so he orders judgment to be made in truth.” For who calls upon the Lord and is deceived? Faithfully invoked in a just judgement, He is not able to deceive anyone, for the Lord is just in all his ways, and holy in all his works. And the Catholic teachers say about the purgation of the sacrament, that as indeed it was taken by him cui perinde fuit [?], so it is judged by the Lord. And Paul says “For, with the heart, we believe unto justice: but, with the lips, confession is made unto salvation”. And there is no confession without confession in the heart and by the lips, so that our mind is in concord with our voice. And in baptism, it is not the putting away of the filth of the flesh which cleanses, but the questioning and confession of a good conscience in God. For Paul, who had confessed this Christ to be the son of the living God, knew him to be the Lord and believed him to be God, denied that he was the disciple of him who said “Who confesses in me before me, I will confess him before my Father’ and ‘Who denies me, I will deny him.’ And as we read, to deny that he was his disciple, as Peter said ‘I am not’ to someone who claimed that he was one of that man’s disciples, is nothing other than to deny that he is a Christian. And so the Councils decreed those who believed in Christ in their hearts and denied him with their lips, conquered by torture, to be amongst the fallen. And again it is written, “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?” How, I say, did this woman call upon the Lord as her helper and liberator in this ordeal, in Whom she did not believe? And if she faithfully believed in the Lord whom she called upon, she believed him to be true and not false, and loving the just and justice, and whom she knew not to be able to deceive or be deceived. Those who say to the contrary, what other do they say than affirm that the truth can deceive and be deceived? They are more obstinate than the demons, who, as the Gospel says, left those possessed confessing him, because they knew him to be the Christ.

[162] And what also is said, that even he who took the confession of this woman was a witness of this, we wonder if it is in any way able to be true. And we would not believe this, if we did not dare not to believe those men who told us this. For he would have known that what he reads in the book of Leviticus must not be understood perversely: “’If any one hear the voice of one swearing, and is a witness either because he himself hath seen, or is privy to it: if he do not utter it, it is on his soul.’” For as Origen says, “From this, without doubt the soul takes the sin of him who does or swears something unjust. This too edifies us according to history, lest we should ever pollute our consciences with the sins of someone else, or lend consent to those who do bad things. By consent I mean not just doing the same, but being keeping silent about things done openly and illicitly.” And if he knew and kept silent because of the secret confession, why – and as is said may it not be – did he stay silent or agreed that there should be an ordeal, not respecting the sentence of the law and the Gospel, “Do not tempt the Lord your God’. For if it is a diminution of honour to act against canonical authority, which proceeds from the fountain of the law, the prophets and the gospel, promulgated by the Holy Spirit by whom these things were spoken, he who tries to oppose the truth of the Gospel in such important matters will not be able to escape danger. And again it is written, “thou shalt perform thy oaths to the Lord”. If he promised fidelity to his lord, who did he dare to consent to this trickery against him? And if caught between two dangers, he chose the lesser, to neglect the oath, so that he might avoid the greater, lest he become a betrayer of confession, why does he now reveal this confession? For it is written: “He that walketh deceitfully, revealeth secrets: but he that is faithful, concealeth the thing committed to his soul” as if it should openly say, he that does not conceal the thing committed to his soul is not faithful. And Paul says about those who are not faithful, “What part hath the faithful with the unbeliever?”

Many things could be said here, but that is not convenient for us. For everyone will bear his own burden. We have said this briefly, not because we wish to believe in or be believed about any derogation of whichever priest [?]: but so that to the extent we might respond, we might in the name of the Lord point out to those witnesses this impious act of betrayal and duplicity, which we should very much avoid, and which is certainly detestable in all men.

Interrogatio 7

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[161] And they say that it was on account of a secret confession made by this woman that her champion escaped unburned from the ordeal .

Appendix: Responsio 7b. Conclusion, and Pseudo-Cyprian.

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[258] Finally: we have said, concerning those matters which we remember came to us in that letter, as much as we in our mediocrity understand, by the inspiration of the Lord, and the doctrine of the holy scriptures and catholic Fathers, obliged by truth and the ministry imposed on us, neither prejudging any healthy decision, nor dishonouring authority. As Saint Cyprian once said, "Nor let anyone of us set himself up as bishop of bishops, or by tyricannical terror round up his colleagues for the necessity of obedience, for every bishop has” – reserving in all things the privilege of the holy and Apostolic See of Rome, first amongst the whole circle of the world, and of its pontiff the Lord Pope Nicholas, and the decrees of the holy canons established by the Holy Spirit – “his own will to the extent of his liberty and power, so that who cannot be judged by one man cannot himself on his own judged another. But, as the Apostle says, every man abounding in his own sense, let us await the judgement of all things, of our Lord Jesus Christ, who one and alone has the power of promoting us in the governance of his church, and of judging our action.” This alone we warn all the lords and our co-priests, and us too with them, that according to the precept of the great Pope Leo to Rusticus bishop of Narbonne, In matters, he said, which were doubtful or obscure, we thought it best to pursue whatever was neither contrary to the Gospel precepts nor to the decrees of the Holy Fathers. Indeed our Redeemer, who deigned to become both king to us and priest - priest indeed, so that he might cleanse us from our sins by the sacrifice of his passion, and king so that he might continually grant to us a kingdom, and make us a kingdom and priests to God – and the only one able to be essentially both in dignity and name, that is king and priest, by his providence constituted two [persons], as St Gelasius wrote to Anastasius the emperor, by which this world is imperially ruled, that is holy pontifical authority and royal power, and the weight of the pontiffs is the greater because they will give account to the Lord for these kings. About these two persons most excellent in dignity, we thought it suitable to attach the comments of Saint Cyprian the Pope and martyr, so that attending to the form of his name, as much as human fragility allows, they might be derailed in no way from the rule given to them by that priest of priests and king of kings.

For he says in his book about the twelve abuses of the world, first about the king and then about the bishops, that as much as the rank is loftier, so the fall is harder, and as much as the dignity is more spiritual, so the climb is higher.
For the ninth grade of abuse is the unjust king. For a king out not to be unjust, but the corrector of the just, so he should preserve the dignity of his name in himself, For the name of king retains this meaning, that he will perform the office of a rector to all those subject to him. But how will he be able to correct others, who does not correct his own behaviour, if it is unjust, since the throne of the king is exalted by justice, and the helms of the people are fortified by truth? The justice of the king is to oppress no one unjustly through power, to judge without acceptance of persons between a man and his neighbour, to be the defensor of strangers, orphans and widows, to hamper theft, punish adultery, not to exalt the wicked, not to nuture the shameless and actors, to drive the impious from this world, not to let parricides and perjurers to live, to defend churches, to nourish the poor with alms, not to pay attention to the superstitions of sorcerers, arioli and phitonissa, to postpone anger, to defend the homeland strongly and justly against enemies, to live in God in all things, not to lift the spirit in prosperity, to bear all things patiently, to have catholic faith in God, not to let his sons to act impiously, to stop at certain times for prayer, and not to dine before a suitable time. Woe to the land, whose king is a boy and whose princes feast in the morning. These things make prosperity in this kingdom, and led the king to the better heavenly kingdoms. Who does not arrange things according to this law will tolerate many adversities for his rule. Therefore often the peace of the peoples is broken, and obstacles are raised up even from the kingdom, the fruit of the earth is diminished and the service of the people is shackled, many griefs assault the prosperity of the kingdom, deaths of those dear to him and of free people bring grief, enemy attacks devastate the provinces, and tear flocks of cattle and sheep to pieces, storms of spring and winter inhibit the fertility of the land and the ministeries of the sea, and sometimes bolts of lightning burn up crops and fruit trees and vine-shoots. Above all these things, the injustice of the king does not only darken the face of the present rule, but also obscures his sons and grandchildren that they will not the inheritance of the kingdom after him. Because of the sin of Solon, the Lord took the kingdom of the house of Israel form the hands of his sons; and because of the justice of king David, he left the oil lamp of his seed forever in Jerusalem. Behold, how much the justice of the king is worth is clear to those who look: he is the peace of the people, the protection of the homeland, the immunity of the people, the fortification of the people, the cure of the sick, the inheritance of the children, and the hope for himself of future blessedness. But let him know, that as he is placed first on his throne amongst men, so if he does not do justice, he will have the first place in punishments. For he will have in that future as a punishment all those sinners above him in this matter who in the present he now has below him.

[260] The tenth grade of abuse is the negligent bishop, who seeks the honour of his rank amongst men, but does not keep the dignity of his honour before God, for whom he acts as ambassador. First is to be asked about the bishops what the dignity of his name reveals, for bishop, which is a Greek word, means one who watches. Why a watcher was appointed and what is required from a watcher, the Lord himself lays bare, when through the person of the Prophet Ezekiel he explains the reason of the post of bishop, saying “Son of man, I have made thee a watchman to the house of Israel”. You will announce to them the speech which you hear from my mouth, and if you see the sword coming and do not proclaim it so that the impious may return to his path, that impious man will die in his impiety, but I will demand his blood from you hand. If you announced it and he did not return, he still died in his iniquity, but you have liberated your soul. It is fitting for the bishop – who is appointed as a watchman for all – to look out for sin, listening and afterwards let him correct in word and deed if he can, and if he cannot, to deflect the workings of the wicked according to the rule of the Gospel. If, it says in the Gospel, thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou shalt gain thy brother. And if he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more: that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand. And if he will not hear them: tell the church. And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican. In this way should be expelled whoever who disdains to attach himself to a doctor or a bishop. And who is expelled in this way must bet be accepted by any other doctor or bishop. Whoever communicates with someone outside communion, non permittente bachina ira, withdraws [in communion] from that holy catholic priest by whom the first man had been ejected from the community of Christians. A bishop ought in this way to be bishop for those for whom he is appointed as a watchman. But how indeed he ought to be in himself, it is written in the law about the priest, Let him not take a widow or a repudiated woman to wife. And the Apostle Paul explains that someone coming t o the grade of bishop should be sober, prudent, chaste, wise, modest and hospitable, having obedient sons in every chastity, a good reputation amongst those outside, bearing a speech of faithful doctrine, before episcopacy not having had more than one wife, not a murderer, not duplicitous, not a drunkard, not newly converted, so that in this way he will show first in deed what he teaches others in sermons of doctrine. Let negligent bishops beware, what the Lord complained through the prophet in the time of punishment: Many shepherds have laid waste my people, and the shepherds do not graze my flock, but they graze themselves, but let they whom the Lord appointed over his family attend in their time to giving them as food a measure of wheat, that is pure and proven doctrine, so that when the Lord comes they might deserve to hear, Well done, good and faithful servant: because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

Finally, these other two abuses follow on, which are not able to be hidden and separated from the negligence and danger of the previous two. The people without discipline, which pertains to the guilt of the negligent bishop and the people without law, which pertains to the wickedness of the unjust king. And the eight which precede these two, that is the wise man and preacher without works, the old man without religion, the young man without obedience, the rich man without alms, the woman without shame, the lord without virtue, the argumentative Christian, the proud pauper, are known look to these two chapters, by whom this world is imperially ruled, wither with praise and glory, or with censure and judgement. For episcopal authority by preaching through life and speech, and the royal dignity through ruling and correcting must be in charge and benefit all those who want to follow and observe discipline, what is ordered correction and the keeping of the rule of the elders who came before us. Those who despise the divine word and the known laws, the bishop with his medicinal blade should cut off like a rotten limb from the healthy, and the king with his judicial sword must drive the impious from this world. So that they may deserve to hear at the coming terrible judgement, from the great pastor and the king of kings with the sheep and subjects entrusted to them, Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, and which God promised to those who love him, who does not lie, and who lives and reigns before all and through all and in all, world without end, Amen.

Appendix. Responsio 7 A. That Lothar must be corrected.

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[250] It is written, “who causeth a sinner to be converted from the error of his way shall save his soul from death and shall cover a multitude of his sins.” So by contrast, however many are destroyed by someone’s wicked example, he will be condemned for so many, unless he repents worthily. Therefore he does a public penance, repenting in public: not because the Lord does not give indulgence to him worthily repentant through secret confession and private penitence for his sinful crimes, for even David rebuking himself in the presence of one person repented by the authority of the Lord and confessed and deserved the indulgence of his sin, whose punishment he later sustained in public: but the person who destroyes many by his wicked example, should build up many to salvation by the repentance of his humiliation. For as it is said of Paul: They saw him persecuting the church and later building it up, and they glorified the Lord for this. And the person who sins publicly and is unwilling to return to penance is cast out from the society of the church by public excommunication by the bishops, not so that now excommunicated he will not be in the presence of Him who promulgated the church laws speaking through His spirit: but let the priests, the successors of the apostles and of apostolic men, carry out their office, lest they be thought by those subject to them to neglect their ministry, and the blame of the sinner is known, so let the refutation of the corrector be known to all. And who does not wish to understand his sin differently, let him either be rejected by all and accepted by none, for often good things are offered to the unwilling, or let him be forced to return to penitence, let necessity return to devotion [?], and let who sinned through pride deserve to be reincorporated through a sacerdotal reconciliation, once he has been corrected through humility.

[251] All kings and princes of the world should take note, that the wicked prince and king will be in the damnation of flames to be punished to the degree in which he was outstanding in worldly governance. So it is necessary that he incessantly consider his actions, and when he destroys others by his example, let him fear, for he will not die alone who kills many by the example of his own wickedness, for whom without doubt he will give account to the Lord. And he sins many fold not just through himself but also through those who imitated him or who sinned by his example or authority, especially when he sinning as though licitly was to others the kindling of sin. And so speaking of another matter the Apostle said, “But take heed lest perhaps this your liberty become a stumbling block to the weak” And again, “And through thy knowledge the weak brother shall perish, for whom Christ hath died. Now when you sin thus against the brethren and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.” And the Lord said, “But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea”. For it would be much better for one of these that he should remain in private life, than placed in princedom make himself imitable in fault for others. and he will pay the penalty for as many as those for whom he was a leader into error by his example of sinning as if licitly, and the author of their error. His crime is more serious, his torture will be harsher, the greater was his ability to excel. For no one sins more against the people than those who usurp the order of governance, acting perversely. For no one dares to rebuke this sinner, and in his example the blame is very greatly extended, when from princely reverence the sinner is honoured. And as he gives honours and benefices to his flatterers, the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul, and he is blessed who does wicked things, and the dead man is buried by the dead in a very bad death. For it is written, “If thou didst see a thief thou didst run with him, and with adulterers thou hast been a partaker”. He runs with a thief and is a partake with him, when anyone joins himself in praises of an adulterer or in his pleasing delights, and places the share which he ought to have had with God and the angels in hell with him, whose mouth abounds in malice and whose tongue concocts treachery; when he praises him acting wickedly and treacherously or gives agreement to his wicked actions. Since not only those who do, but also those to consent to those doing are worthy of death. And so St Ambrose: “Since he who does these things sees himself to be honoured by those who are not like him, he grows in evil and boasts that he is such. Therefore it is right that they should be punished with the same penalty. And he who judges in this way, as this Paul says, and does these things, will not escape the judgement of God. For he will be judged by Him, around whom flattery and the acceptance of persons ceases.”

[252] Saint Augustine gave us advice on avoiding this sort of danger, saying: “In two ways the bad will not defile you; if you consent not to him, and if you reprove him; this is, not to communicate with him, not to consent to him. For there is a communication, when an agreement either of the will or of the approbation is joined to his deed. This the Apostle teaches us, when he says, "Have no communication with the unfruitful works of darkness." And because it was a small matter not to consent, if negligence in correction accompanied it, he says, "But rather reprove them." See how he comprehended both at once, "Have no communication, but rather reprove them." What is, "Have no communication"? Do not consent to them, do not praise them, do not approve them. What is, "But rather reprove them"? Find fault with, rebuke, repress them (….) But then in the correction and repressing of other men's sins, one must take heed, that in rebuking another he do not lift up himself; Wherefore let him that thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall. Let the voice of chiding sound outwardly in tones of terror, let the spirit of love and gentleness be maintained within (…) So then be neither consenting to evil, so as to approve of it; nor negligent so as not to reprove it; nor proud so as to reprove it in a tone of insult.” And St Gregory says in his letter to Felix, bishop of Sicily gives advice to all bishops, saying “The wicked should be segregated from the good, the evil from the just, so that in their shame they may recognise their consciences, and be converted from their wicked deeds. And if they should be incorrigible, let them be segregated from the faithful until satisfaction, following the sentence of the Lord saviour, who amongst other things said to a brother sinning against him, ‘But if thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou shalt gain thy brother. And if he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more: that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand. And if he will not hear them: tell the church. And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican.’ The bad should be segregated from the good by these and many other authorities of the holy fathers, lest the just perish for the unjust, as is written ‘the just man perishes for the impious’. There must always be a discretion between the good and the bad, as there is between sheep and goats. Open sins should not be pegged with hidden correction, but rather what is openly harmful should be openly complained of. So that while they are healed by open chiding, those who offend by imitating them are corrected. For while one is rebuked, many are emended. And it is better that one man should be condemned for the salvation of many, that that through the license of one person, many should perish. It is no wonder if this notion is observed amongst men, since we have often known this to happen amongst cattle. Those which are seen to have scabies or some skin disease are separated from the healthy, lest all should be damned or perish from their disease. It is indeed preferable that the wicked should be openly corrected than that the good should perish for them. So we wish all you bishops to convene together, so that there can be a discussion of matters arising and a wholesome collation of ecclesiastical observance. So that while through these and the preceding, they may be corrected and in future take up a rule, and the almighty Lord may be praised by the agreement of the brethren. Know that if you observe this, His presence will be there, since it is written “For where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them”. If he deigns to be there were there are two or three, how much more will be not be absent when many priests convene? And since a council was instituted by the rules of the fathers to be held twice in the year, let it not lie hidden, but lest there by any excuse, we command a meeting once, so that nothing wicked or illicit will be dared, in the expectation of a council. For very many abstain from that which is known to all to be displeasing to the judgement, through fear of examination, if not from love of justice."

And St Ambrose says in his letter to Theodosius the emperor:
“I am continually harassed by almost incessant cares, most blessed Emperor, but I have never been in such anxiety as at present, since I see that I must take heed that there be nothing which may be ascribed to me savouring even of sacrilege. And so I entreat you to listen with patience to what I say. For, if I am unworthy to be heard by you, I am unworthy to offer for you, who have been entrusted by you with your vows and prayers. Will you not yourself hear him whom you wish to be heard for you? Will you not hear him pleading his own cause whom you have heard for others? And do you not fear for your own decision, lest by thinking him unworthy to be heard by you, you make him unworthy to be heard for you? But it is neither the part of an emperor to refuse liberty of speech, nor of a priest not to say what he thinks. For there is nothing in you emperors so popular and so estimable as to appreciate freedom in those even who are in subjection to you by military obedience. For this is the difference between good and bad princes, that the good love liberty, the bad slavery. And there is nothing in a priest so full of peril as regards God, or so base in the opinion of men, as not freely to declare what he thinks. For it is written: "I spoke of Your testimonies before kings, and was not ashamed;" and in another place: "Son of man, I have set You a watchman unto the house of Israel, in order," it is said, "that if the righteous does turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, because you have not given him warning," that is, hast not told him what to guard against, "the memory of his righteousness shall not be retained, and I will require his blood at your hand. But if you warn the righteous that he sin not, and he does not sin, the righteous shall surely live because you have warned him, and you shall deliver your soul." I had rather then, O Emperor, have fellowship with you in good than in evil, and therefore the silence of the priest ought to displease your Clemency, and his freedom to please you. For you are involved in the risk of my silence, but are aided by the benefit of my freedom. I am not, then, officiously intruding in things where I ought not, nor interfering in the affairs of others. I am obeying the commands of God. And I do this first of all out of love for you, good-will toward you, and desire of preserving your well-doing. If I am not believed in this, or am forbidden to act on this feeling, I speak in very truth for fear of offending God. For if my peril would set you free, I would patiently offer myself for you, though not willingly, for I had rather that without my peril you might be acceptable to God and glorious. But if the guilt of silence and dissimulation on my part would both weigh me down and not set you free, I had rather that you should think me too importunate, than useless and base. Since it is written, as the holy Apostle Paul says, whose teaching you cannot controvert: "Be instant, in season, out of season, reprove, entreat, rebuke with all patience and doctrine.” We, then, also have One Whom it is even more perilous to displease, especially since even emperors are not displeased when every one discharges his own office, and you patiently listen to every one making suggestions in his own sphere, nay, you rebuke him if he act not according to the order of his service. Can this, then, seem to you offensive in priests, which you willingly accept from those who serve you; since we speak not what we wish, but what we are bidden? For you know the passage: "When you shall stand before kings and rulers, take no thought what you shall speak, for it shall be given you in that hour what you shall speak; for it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father Who speaks in you." And if I were speaking in state causes, although justice must be observed even in them, I should not feel such dread if I were not listened to, but in the cause of God whom will you listen to, if not to the priest, at whose greater peril sin is committed? Who will dare to tell you the truth if the priest dare not? I know that you are Godfearing, merciful, gentle, and calm, having the faith and fear of God at heart, but often some things escape our notice. "Some have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge." And I think that we ought to take care lest this also come upon faithful souls. I know your piety towards God, your lenity towards men, I myself am bound by the benefits of your favour. And therefore I fear the more, I am the more anxious; lest even you condemn me hereafter by your own judgment, because through my want of openness or my flattery you should not have avoided some fault. If I saw that you sinned against me, I ought not to keep silence, for it is written: "If your brother sin against you, rebuke him at first, then chide him sharply before two or three witnesses. If he will not hear you, tell the Church." Shall I, then, keep silence in the cause of God? And in the same letter, “I, indeed, have done what could be done consistently with honour to you, that you might rather listen to me in the palace, lest, if it were necessary, you should listen to me in the Church”.

[254] And again in another letter to him, Ambrose says “Should I keep silence? But then my conscience would be bound, my utterance taken away, which would be the most wretched condition of all. And where would be that text? If the priest speak not to him that errs, he who errs shall die in his sin, and the priest shall be liable to the penalty because he warned not the erring.” And again, “There was that done in the city of the Thessalonians of which no similar record exists, which I was not able to prevent happening; which, indeed, I had before said would be most atrocious when I so often petitioned against it, and that which you yourself show by revoking it too late you consider to be grave, this I could not extenuate when done. When it was first heard of, a synod had met because of the arrival of the Gallican Bishops. There was not one who did not lament it, not one who thought lightly of it; your being in fellowship with Ambrose was no excuse for your deed. Blame for what had been done would have been heaped more and more on me, had no one said that your reconciliation to our God was necessary. Are you ashamed, O Emperor, to do that which the royal prophet David, the forefather of Christ, according to the flesh, did? To him it was told how the rich man who had many flocks seized and killed the poor man's one lamb, because of the arrival of his guest, and recognizing that he himself was being condemned in the tale, for that he himself had done it, he said: "I have sinned against the Lord." Bear it, then, without impatience, O Emperor, if it be said to you: "You have done that which was spoken of to King David by the prophet." For if you listen obediently to this, and say: "I have sinned against the Lord," if you repeat those words of the royal prophet: "O come let us worship and fall down before Him, and mourn before the Lord our God, Who made us," it shall be said to you also: "Since you repent, the Lord puts away your sin, and you shall not die.” And again, “And so it repented the Lord, and He commanded the angel to spare the people, and David to offer a sacrifice, for sacrifices were then offered for sins; sacrifices are now those of penitence. And so by that humbling of himself the king became more acceptable to God, for it is no matter of wonder that a man should sin, but this is reprehensible, if he does not recognize that he has erred, and humble himself before God”. And again, “I have written this, not in order to confound you, but that the examples of these kings may stir you up to put away this sin from your kingdom, for you will do it away by humbling your soul before God. You are a man, and it has come upon you, conquer it. Sin is not done away but by tears and penitence. Neither angel can do it, nor archangel. The Lord Himself, Who alone can say, "I am with you, who destroyes your iniquities" if we have sinned, does not forgive any but those who repent”. And again, “Conquer him while you still possess that wherewith you may conquer. Do not add another sin to your sin by a course of action which has injured many”. And a little later, “I, I say, have no cause for a charge of contumacy against you, but have cause for fear; I dare not offer the sacrifice if you intend to be present. (…)Lastly, I am writing with my own hand that which you alone may read. As I hope that the Lord will deliver me from all troubles, I have been warned, not by man, nor through man, but plainly by Himself that this is forbidden me. For when I was anxious, in the very night in which I was preparing to set out as you had asked, you appeared to me in a dream to have come into the Church, and I was not permitted to offer the sacrifice. I pass over other things, which I could have avoided, but I bore them for love of you, as I believe. May the Lord cause all things to pass peaceably. Our God gives warnings in many ways, by heavenly signs, by the precepts of the prophets; by the visions even of sinners He wills that we should understand, that we should entreat Him to take away all disturbances, to preserve peace for you emperors, that the faith and peace of the Church, whose advantage it is that emperors should be Christians and devout, may continue. You certainly desire to be approved by God. "To everything there is a time," as it is written: "It is time for You, Lord, to work." "It is an acceptable time, O Lord." You shall then make your offering when you have received permission to sacrifice, when your offering shall be acceptable to God. Would it not delight me to enjoy the favour of the Emperor, to act according to your wish, if the case allowed it? And prayer by itself is a sacrifice, it obtains pardon, when the oblation would bring offence, for the one is a sign of humility, the other of contempt. For the Word of God Himself tells us that He prefers the performance of His commandments to the offering of sacrifice. God proclaims this, Moses declares it to the people, the apostle Paul preaches it to the Gentiles. Do that which you understand is most profitable for the time. "I prefer mercy," it is said, "rather than sacrifice." Are they not, then, rather Christians in truth who condemn their own sin, than they who think to defend it? "The just is an accuser of himself in the beginning of his words." He who accuses himself when he has sinned is just, not he who praises himself.(…). You have been anticipated, and I have not shunned that which I needed not to fear. But thanks be to the Lord, Who wills to chastise His servants, that He may not lose them. This I have in common with the prophets, and you shall have it in common with the saints”.

[256] How this most blessed emperor obeyed these warning repenting in public, this St Ambrose demonstrated in amongst others his sermon on the fortieth day after his death, in the presence of the Emperor Honorius his son. How other Christians and the faithful of God are able to avoid danger in communication of this sort, the Lord in the Gospel shows about him who rebuked for a sin was unwilling to amend, and Paul says in the letter to Corinthians, “Do not err: Neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers, nor the effeminate nor liers with men nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor railers nor extortioners shall possess the kingdom of God.” And again, “But now I have written to you, not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother be a fornicator or covetous or a server of idols or a railer or a drunkard or an extortioner: with such a one, not so much as to break bread. (…).Put away the evil one from among yourselves!”

And so that no one may say, ‘He is the king: how will I be able to remove myself from his communion?’, let him know that Saint John the Baptist was crowned with martyrdom because he said to Herod, ‘It is not permitted for you to have her’, that is an adulterous woman. And Paul, as we said, forbade to break bread with these sort of people, and he says elsewhere, “Do you seek a proof of Christ that speaketh in me?” And the Lord in the Gospel exclaimed, “He that is of God heareth the words of God. Therefore you hear them not, because you are not of God”. And again, “If you love me, keep my commandments”, “He that loveth me not keepeth not my words”. And the Apostle John said “If any man say, I love God, and does not keep his commandments, he is a liar”. And the Psalmist says of the Lord, “May you destroy all who speak lies”. And again the Apostle John in the Apocalypse, “There shall not enter into it”, that is the heavenly Jerusalem, “any thing defiled or that worketh abomination or maketh a lie” and again, “But the fearful and unbelieving and the abominable and murderers and whoremongers and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, they shall have their portion in the pool burning with fire and brimstone, which is the second death”. And the terrible reproof of the Gospel weighs against them, they who loved the glory of men more than God, and who rebuke those and pursue them who want to remove themselves from every brother walking out of order. About these persecutors, it is said in Apocalypse, “But I have against thee a few things: because thou sufferest the woman Jezabel, who calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants, to commit fornication and to eat of things sacrificed to idols. And I gave her a time that she might do penance: and she will not repent of her fornication. Behold, I will cast her into a bed: and they that commit adultery with her shall be in very great tribulation, except they do penance from their deeds, And I will kill her children with death: and all the churches shall know that I am he that searcheth the reins and hearts. And I will give to every one of you according to your works.” He sweetly consoles those who rebuke iniquity, since they do not consent to it, “I know thy tribulation and thy poverty: but thou art rich. And thou art blasphemed by them that say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer. Behold, the devil will cast some of you into prison, that you may be tried: and you shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death: and I will give thee the crown of life. (…) He that shall overcome shall not be hurt by the second death.”

[257] To those who are not able to resist such a thing with the authority of order or the dignity of power, or by the fortitude of virtue, divine clemency advises them saying in the Apocalypse, “And to the rest who are at Thyatira: Whosoever have not this doctrine and who have not known the depths of Satan, as they say: I will not put upon you any other burthen. Yet that which you have, hold fast till I come. And he that shall overcome and keep my words unto the end, I will give him power over the nations. And he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and as the vessel of a potter they shall be broken. As I also have received of my Father. And I will give him the morning star”. And St Ambrose says in his letter to the Corinthians, “If anyone does not have the power to cast him or to test him whom he knows is guilty, he is immune. And it is not for the judge to condemned without an accuser, for the Lord did not cast off Judas, although he was a thief, because he had not been accused. But this excuse priests and princes and the first of the world are not to have before God. And this St Ambrose says in that letter, “you are puffed up and have not rather mourned: that he might be taken away from among you that hath done this thing”. He humiliates their pride so that he makes them not complainants but supplicants – for they were participants, while they allowed someone guilty of such a great crime to remain in their midst uncorrected – so that all with one agreement will cast him out if he refuses to amend himself. For the Apostle says that once his work was recognised, he was to be thrown out of the gathering of the brotherhood. One man had a stepmother in place of a wife, and all knew his crime and they did not accuse him. In this matter, there was no need for witnesses, nor could the crime be hidden by turning one’s back. I am absent in body, but present in spirit, that is the gaze is absent, but the spirit of authority is present, which is never absent: and I have now judged him who allows this, as if I were present.”

And this is to be noted, that whoever admit criminal sins – whence now judgments are determined by those mouthpieces of Christ, who reign with him in heaven and gleam with earthly miracles, and amongst the ashes of whom, dead in nature but alive to God, it is demonstrated by the miracles of their merits that they still live in words and proclamations, - they are judged now and unless they suffer penance, they are predamned, although we neglect to follow by our inertia those things for which we are ordained and constituted at our peril, and the peril of those committed to us. And the great Pope Leo speaking about the holy Nicene council, which the catholic faith holds for understanding other things, writes “These holy and venerable fathers who in the city of Nicæa, after condemning the blasphemous Arius with his impiety, laid down a code of canons for the Church to last till the end of the world, survive not only with us but with the whole of mankind in their constitutions; and, if anywhere men venture upon what is contrary to their decrees, it is at once null and void; so that what is universally laid down for our perpetual advantage can never be modified by any change, nor can the things which were destined for the common good be perverted to private interests”. Weighing up all these things and other authorities of the holy scriptures and church rules, which we omit to insert here because it would be very long, and considering also his own danger, let anyone, and also the person who is in question, return to himself, and show that his action is clearly concordant with reason and authority, lest himself sinning when God is seriously offended, as scripture says about Jeroba, he also makes other to sin; or let him submit himself to wholesome counsel and divine authority, for otherwise he is not able to be saved. And let him consider, since youth and pleasure are vain things, for a brief and miserable enjoyment, for the price of a whore is scarcely that of a single loaf, that he shall not give his honour to others and his years to a cruel one, nor let him give his flesh so that he should make his soul sin, nor let him yield his members as instruments of iniquity unto sin. And he will groan in the last days, when he consumes his flesh and his body, when he is not able to amend, when he is compelled to return those things which he did with his body, with his soul. Thinking in this lay, let him turn his path and his feet in the testimony of the Lord , and let him do satisfaction through worthy fruits of penance to the Lord and the church. And for the rest, let him direct his steps according to the eloquence of the Lord through his grace, so that he will not be dominated by every injustice, and imitating the conversion of Paul, who said of him self, and they glorify God through me, as the Lord commanded, “So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven”.

Appendix. Interrogatio 7

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[250] And since some wise men say these things, as we said, do bishops and other Christians have any danger who take communion with this adulterer, and if there is a danger, how will they be freed before the Lord from the danger of communion?

Appendix: Responsio 6. Discoursing on kingship, including succession.

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[247] This is not the voice of a catholic Christian, but of a blasphemer, filled with the devil’s spirit. The king and prophet David when he sinned was corrected by his lesser, Nathan, and heard that man was of death, and was saved through a very strong penance. Saul learned from Samuel, that he would be cast down from the kingdom. Roboam also learned from the prophet, that by his hand the kingdom which he father had held well, would be divided. Whenever the kings and sons of Israel sinned, and were given over to the hands of the gentiles, like Manasses and Sedechias, or they fled from the Lord’s gaze like Ezechias, they took on through prophets the anger of the Lord, or they deserved His mercy. And in Deuteronomy it is written, “If thou perceive that there be among you a hard and doubtful matter in judgment between blood and blood, cause and cause, leprosy and leprosy: and thou see that the words of the judges within thy gates do vary: arise, and go up to the place, which the Lord thy God shall choose. And thou shalt come to the priests of the Levitical race, and to the judge, that shall be at that time: and thou shalt ask of them, and they shall show thee the truth of the judgment. And thou shalt do whatsoever they shall say, that preside in the place, which the Lord shall choose, and what they shall teach thee, According to his law; and thou shalt follow their sentence: neither shalt thou decline to the right hand nor to the left hand. But he that will be proud, and refuse to obey the commandment of the priest, who ministereth at that time to the Lord thy God, and the decree of the judge, that man shall die, and thou shalt take away the evil from Israel: And all the people hearing it shall fear, that no one afterwards swell with pride”. And the Lord says through priests “And now, O ye kings, understand: receive instruction, you that judge the earth. Serve ye the Lord with fear: and rejoice unto him with trembling. Embrace discipline, lest at any time the Lord be angry, and you perish from the just way.” And apostolic authority advises that kings too should obey their prelates in the Lord, who watch for their souls, so that they may not do this with grief. And the Pope Saint Gelasius wrote to Anastasius the Emperor, that there are two persons, by which this world is imperially ruled, that is pontifical authority and royal dignity, and the weight of the pontiffs is the greater because they will give account to the Lord for these kings. And Ambrose separated for the sake of his sins the emperor Theodosius from the church, and recalled him through penance. And in our time, episcopal unanimity restored by wiser counsel the pious Emperor Louis, who was thrown down from his kingdom, to both kingdom and church after satisfaction, with the consent of the people.

What is said, that the king is subject to the laws and judgments of none except God alone, is true if the king is named in this way, for ‘king’ comes from the word for ‘ruling’. And if he rules himself according to the will of God and guides the good in the right path, but corrects the wicked from the crooked path to the right one, then he is a king and is subject to the laws and judgments of none except God alone. For they can be called opinions, and they are not laws unless they are of God, through whom kings rule and the establishers of the law see what is right. And whichever king is truly a king, he is not subjected to the law, since “the law is not made for the just man but for the unjust and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the wicked and defiled, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for them who defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and whatever other thing is contrary to sound doctrine”, and for those who serve the works of the flesh. The Apostle says about these, “Now the works of the flesh are manifest: which are fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, luxury, idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths, quarrels, dissensions, sects, envies, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like. Of the which I foretell you, as I have foretold to you, that they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God.” But he rules himself and others according to the fruit of the Spirit, that is charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity, he is not subject to the law, since the law is not against this sort, but is subject to the judgment alone of Christ, by whom he will be rewarded, and he is Christ’s who crucifies their flesh, with the vices and concupiscences. But in a different way, the adulterer, the murderer, the unjust, the raptor and he guilty of other vices, will be judged secretly or publicly by priests, who are the thrones of God, in which God sits and through which he makes His judgements. The Lord said to these, and to his apostles whose place priests hold in the church, “But if thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between thee and him alone. And if he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more: And if he will not hear you in this way: tell the church. And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican”. And lest anyone should slight the priest in this, the Lord adds “Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven”. And again he said, “He that heareth you heareth me: and he that despiseth you despiseth me”.

[248] About what is said, that he was able to be constituted in the kingdom which his father left to him, by God alone, let those who say this known that some are constituted by God in supremacy, like Moses, Samuel and Josias., about whom it is written even before he was born, “Behold a child shall be born to the house of David, Josias by name” and the rest which follows there. Some are constituted by God through men, like Joshua and David. But some are constituted by men, not without divine permission – for as Augustine says, nothing happens except what He himself does or what He permits to happen, and whatever is done, is done by the ministry of angels and men – like Solomon, by the order of his father David and through Zadoc the priest and Nathan the prophet. And many kings supported by the help of citizens or soldiers are constituted or are cast down from their supremacy, and even saints like Samuel. Some indeed rule by paternal succession, as is found for all those in the histories and chronicles and even for those who are included in the Vita Caesarum. Some indeed obtain their supremacy by tyrannical usurpation for the fulfilment of their sins, or for punishing the people, about whom it is written “They have reigned, but not by me”, and again, “Who maketh a man that is a hypocrite to reign for the sins of the people?” It is necessary that things are this way, so that scandals may come, but ‘woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh’. Woe to him, that makes himself by his vice what he must be, so that what pertains to woe may come to pass through him.

[249] Concerning what is said about the kingdom, that his father left it to him. Rather than boasting in his obtaining of the kingdom, this king ought to dread divine and to respect human judgments which derive from it, if he would not imitate the good habits and holy life and fair and just governance of his father, or if – and may it be thus – he should chose to follow his wicked habits or unjust life (which we do not say that this man had), or an unworthy governance. For what necessity of kin helped the sons of Samuel, who had no heirs in virtue? And what paternal care of justice helped the children of Moses, who did not imitate him? And so the power of their father was not carried to them as if from succession, who were designated as kin by that word alone, and it passed to him who was his sons in virtue not in ancestry: which this king too ought to fear. What harm is it believed to have done to Timothy from the provinces, that his father was a gentile? And so holy Abraham had an impious father but was not made the heir of his impiety. And Ezechias was the son of the most profane Acab, but deserved to be the friend of God. Which of his father’s varied virtues did Noah’s son gain, who was made a slave from free status? And Joseph for a while was a slave in the middle of Egypt, but wove for himself the glorious crown of chastity,. And three boys and Daniel in Babylon were loftier than princes. Certainly then we see that paternal nobility does not suffice to vote for children. For vices conquer the privileges of nature, and drive the sinner not just from the nobility of the father, but even from liberty itself. Was Esau not the son of Isaac, secured by the great favour of his father? And Isaac tried and wanted to give him a blessing, since he carried out all his father’s wishes, but since he was morally wicked, nothing from any of this was of any use to him: but although by the order of nature foremost and secure in his father’s will, yet because he was not pleasing to God, he lost everything which he seemed to have. Every king, including this one, should think on this, and let him not freely do all things which are pleasing to him, since not all things which are lawful are expedient, and according to the scriptures, “Let him bow his head to great men” in honour of the king of kings, whose is the kingdom and through whom kings reign, who says I will honour those who honour me, and those who despise me will be ignoble. And to his priests he says, “Who receives you, receives me, and who hears you, hears me, ad who despises you, despises me”.

And finally the example of scripture, “The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord: whithersoever he will, he shall turn it” must be confirmed, for what he does and how he is in the governance of the people might at the command of God be evil, as the devil mocked the Saviour: the disciple of his expounded [??] “For he hath given his angels charge over thee”. But the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord, for as we have shown above, he is truly a king who rules himself and his thoughts, his words and his deeds under divine command. And his heart is in the hand of the king, so that rising from this valley of tears and disposing in his heart, he walks from virtue to virtue, until the God of gods shall be seen in Sion, that is in the contemplation of eternal felicity and of holy vision. By contrast, the heart of him who is ruled wickedly by the encamped devil is in his power to the extant that if he hears anything of God’s commands, the devil comes and takes the words away from his heart, lest believing or persevering in acting on what he believes, he might be able to be saved. And so given up to a reprobate understanding, he does those things which are not appropriate, since when he recognises God, he does not honour him as God with worthy obedience. Concerning that which is written, that if the king does not wish to come to a synod, even if compelled he can leave off coming, the sacred scripture and the holy canons show that there should not be an acceptance of persons in judgement, but the quality of the matter should be perceived. And Hubert, after he was accused of having perpetrated a certain crime against his own sister, was summoned to the synod with synodal letters: summoned to three synods through letters and legates, he came in person to give account to only one, when he was able to come with the assurance that justice would be maintained for him and a lawspeaker [causedicus] and an accuser of the crime was conspicuously absent or denied that he had the freedom to give account [?]. And the Pope Boniface wrote to the Gallican bishops, “Those things which were said against someone are proven to be true if he does not want to be present to confound them. And let no one doubt, that the guilty man flees the judgment while the innocent seeks it so that he might be absolved. So we command that a synod be gathered, where he will be present if he wishes to be there and he may respond to the accusations, if he has trust. If he neglects to be there, he will not gain a delay in sentencing from his absence. It does not matter whether all those things which are said are proven in an examination of him while present, since the absence may also wholly stand for a confession.[?].”

Appendix: interrogatio 6. On the supremacy of Lothar in his kingdom.

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[246] Some wise men say that this prince is the king, and is subjected to the laws and judgements of none except God alone, who constituted him as king in the kingdom which his father left to him. And that if he should wish, he will go to a placitum or a synod for this or that matter, and that if he should not wish, he will freely and legitimately leave off doing so. And just as he must not be excommunicated by his own bishops, so he is not able to be judged by other bishops, since he is subjected to the supremacy of God alone, from whom alone he was able to be constituted in supremacy. And what he does and how he is in governance is at the command of God, as it is written, “The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord: whithersoever he will, he shall turn it”.

Appendix: Responsio 5. Boso's wife must be sent back.

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There are legal capitularies of the emperors and of the kings his predecessors which say what someone should receive who takes in a thief after they have been outlawed. And in the texts [chirograph] of our kings it is expressly decreed whose ministry it is to ensure that they are maintained, as Saint Ambrose wrote to Valentinian, “Let the emperor make laws which he will be the first to keep”. And if he breaks them, it should be feared that he will hear from the Apostle, “thou, that preachest that men should not steal, stealest; that abhorrest idols, committest sacrilege”. Therefore let him hear suitably and wholesomely from the Lord, “Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man worthy of death, thy life shall be for his life, and thy people for his people”, and again “Thou helpest the ungodly, and thou art joined in friendship with them that hate the Lord, and therefore thou didst deserve indeed the wrath of the Lord”, and again “The curse is in the midst of thee: thou canst not stand before thy enemies”, and “He that toucheth pitch, shall be defiled with it”. For no one can “hide fire in his bosom, and his garments not burn”.

[245] And if this is about mercy, let him read and see, how Saul caused offence with impious mercy to an impious man because he spared Agag but did not free him, and he lost his kingdom. And St Celestine says, There is a piety from which is born impiety.” And if it is about kinship, let him read what is written “Who hath said to their father, and mother: I do not know you, and did not recognise their brothers for the sake of God: these have kept your testament, o Lord.” And the Lord said, “He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me;” and the rest which follows there. And if it is about freedom, she is known by the judgement of divine and worldly law to be his who now seeks her, and against whom she cannot complain of fornication, herself, as it is said, a fornicator. If he keeps her back for the freeing of her life, we showed above what firmness ecclesiastical authority demands from him in the maintenance of justice. If, as is said, he keeps her back so that she might not perish among the Vikings, let the Apostle respond “If the unbeliever departs, let him depart” And “Put away the evil one from among yourselves”, lest “one sick sheep should contaminate the whole flock.” And this king is not more just than the Lord, who forbade Judas from going to the Jews or as Peter said, to his own place, nor did He forbid Herod to kill the children through power, nor did He leave off from taking Peter from the prison from where he was to be led, lest the soldiers should be killed for him. And the Lord, who taught to love one’s neighbour as oneself, asked no one to sin that another should be freed from sin, and he Who laid down his soul, that is the life of his body, for his enemies and preached that it should be laid down for friends, did not teach that anyone should have be perish in eternity so that another would not perish in eternity.

Anyone who mixes himself in these matters and makes these arguments must take care that he not be thought to be making excuses for sin, for not only those who do, but also though who consent to those who do them [?] are worthy of death. He will not be free from this agreement who did not avert evil when he was able to, or who send off wicked people into their liberty, when he was able to suppress them. For the judge, who as it is written does not carry a sword without reason, is constituted for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of the good. To whom in the book of Deuteronomy the lord gives the rule of judgement and punishment, saying “A man or woman that do evil in the sight of the Lord thy God, and transgress his covenant, So as to go and serve strange gods, and adore them, the sun and the moon, and all the host of heaven, which I have not commanded: And this is told thee, and hearing it thou hast inquired diligently, and found it to be true, and that the abomination is committed in Israel: Thou shalt bring forth the man or the woman, who have committed that most wicked thing, to the gates of thy city, and they shall be stoned. By the mouth of two or three witnesses shall he die that is to be slain. Let no man be put to death, when only one beareth witness against him. The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to kill him, and afterwards the hands of the rest of the people: that thou mayst take away the evil out of the midst of thee”.

[246] And so that no one will say ‘This decision does not apply to the wife of Boso, since it is written about idolators’, let him read the scripture which says “whose God is their belly: and whose glory is in their shame: who mind earthly things”. And this decision also applies to that wicked business which it is said is suspected of Hubert and the king’s wife, since in the book of Leviticus, various abominations listed one by one are punished with death. And the adulteress is ordered to be buried under stones, saving the right of the laws, which is carried by those laws [?] which they established who thanks to God established the laws, seeing what was right. And St Augustine in his second book on adulterine marriage, about the preachings by which he commands that husbands to be persuaded that they should abstain from the blood of adulterous wives, he says “Finally I am asked by you, whether it is licit for a Christian husband, whether according to the old law of God or by Roman law, to will an adulteress. It is best that he should restrain themselves from both, that is the permitted punishment for she who has sinned, and from an illicit marriage while she is alive. But if he insists on choosing one, it is better for him to do what is allowed, that the adulteress may be punished, than to do that which is not allowed, that while she is alive he commits adultery. But if as is truly said, it is not allowed for a Christian man to kill his adulteress wife, but only to send her away, it is on this condition, that he may either life in continence or be reconciled to her, since if while she is alive he marries another, he too will without doubt be guilty of adultery.

Appendix: Interrogatio 5. Concerning the wife of Boso.

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[244] And concerning the wife of Boso, about whom Boso himself complained at Koblenz, and who afterwards came to this king and stayed under his power. Some people say that he did wrong since he did not return her to her husband when he could have done. And others say that it was not appropriate that he should hand over to death his relative who came to his faith, nor was it fitting that he should oppress a Frankish woman and compel her like a slave girl, and return her to someone if she did not want it. And others say that if he would wish to return her, she will go to the Vikings, and it is better that he allows her to live among Christians, and amongst them to free her life which the other man wants to take from her.

Appendix: Responsio 4. That the king cannot do simply what he wills in this.

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xWe have not learned about a judgment of this sort from the truth of the Gospels, or apostolic authority, or the promulgation of the sacred canons. But as the African synod decided, “It pleased us that according to the Gospel and apostolic discipline, no one dismissed by his wife or dismissed by her husband shall be joined to another, but let them remain separated or be reconciled to each other.” ‘Reconciled’ it said, not ‘forced’, and he who is wise will understand how a reconciliation can take place. And again Paul remembering Him through whom we are reconciled to God and take the ministry of reconciliation, “We beseech you for Christ, be reconciled to God”. This reconciliation happens by the grace of God calling, not compelling, and freely, not obliged by human will. And it is written of the just man, “in the time of wrath he was made a reconciliation”, that is so that crimes should be not suspected. Whoever knows the similarity between 'council' and 'reconciliation' knows also the form and order of reconciliation. A diversity of types of illness requires a diversity of experiments from doctors.

And we read in the holy authority that some were driven and forced to repentance, some were excommunicated until they returned to peace, and some left freely of their own will [??], as we showed above from the letter of Saint Gregory about the wife of Leo the cartularius, who had left him for a while for the crime of fornication, putting on the religious habit, but after an oath had been given, and she recognised the innocence of her husband, she returned to him of her own will: and Gregory wrote what should be observed towards her to Secundinus the bishop of Taormina. In these things, the will in full liberty is to be waited on, as in this case, since it is conceded that a man and woman can be separated for the issue of fornication, and once separated can be reconciled. But it is not conceded but compelled, without any trace of free will, that a man and woman cannot be separated for a reason other than fornication, and should in no way be joined to others as though separated. Here Saint Augustine says in his second book about adulterous marriage, “We exhort those who fear to be reconciled to their spouses cured of adultery by penance, to nothing except keeping continent, since the woman is fettered. Whether the husband lives as an adulterer or chastely, she commits adultery if she marries another. And the man is fettered, so that whether is wife lives as an adulterer or chastely, he commits adultery if he marries another. This fettering cannot be dissolved even if through repudiation a husband is separated from a chaste spouse, and so can still less be dissolved if she commits adultery whilst not being separated. And in this way nothing dissolves it, except the death of the husband, not falling in adultery, but leaving the body. Therefore, if a woman leaves an adulterous man and does not wish to be reconcilsed to him, let her remain unmarried. And if a husband sends away an adulterous woman and does not want to take her back even after penance, let him keep continence, for the necessity of avoiding a pernicious evil, even if not for the sake of choosing a greater good. And in this way it is this I encourage, even if the wife is in a long and maddened sickness, even if she is sometimes separated from the body so that the husband cannot approach. And afterwards I exhort to this, even if the woman wants to live in continence, for as long as she in shame sends away her shamed husband, which is against discipline because not from consent [?]. I think no Christian would deny that he is an adulterer who, while his wife is ill for a long time or long absent wants to live chastely, joins himself to another woman. Thus indeed, if an adulteress wife is sent away, he is an adulterer with an adulteress, for not this man or that but rather everyone commits adultery, who sends away his wife and marries someone else.” And again in this book, “We will deny the grace of baptism and the medicine of penance to those men was long as they live with adulteresses, if they have repudiated their previous wives for the sake of fornication and married others. Someone might say that no one can make his wife commit adultery if she is modest But the Lord says, “But I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, excepting the cause of fornication, maketh her to commit adultery”, and so as modest as she was with her husband, once sent away she is obliged through to join herself from her former husband to another husband, and that is to commit adultery. And if she does not do this, still he compels her to do it as far as he can, and God will count this as a sin for him, even if she remains chaste”. And again, “Bear in mind that I say this about both sexes”. And again, “Then there will be those who while their earlier spouses are still alive are joined to adulteresses, nor their own spouses. And if they will not be in the kingdom of heaven, then where will they be, except where they are not saved?”

[243] So it is clear, that as we have showed above by the authority of the scriptures and the doctrine of teachers, a man and wife cannot be separated except either for continence within marriage, which is better, since they persevere as spiritually joined, or because of fornications, since one of them has divided one body and one flesh. They are able to be separated because of this cause if they want, and if they are unwilling to remain together in worthy penitence or to be reconciled. They should not at all be forced either to remain together or to be reconciled. They should be persuaded if possible, since reconciliation requires a will, it needs love, as a faithful and pure confession can be encouraged but cannot be extorted, and can be forced only to be pretended. Those who are separated because of fornication must certainly be prohibited from marrying others. And if they disdain this, they must be brought back to repentence. And since we have touched on pretence: if -and may it not happen - there is pretence in any man (who because of manifest fornication is able to be rejected by his wife so that he cannot marry someone else) so that he will receive her back through persuasion not force, and because while she is alive he will not be able to take anyone else; and in the absence of a reason which is not contrary to sacred authority, he plots to ‘lose’ her in some way: such (moral) strength should be sought from him, as Gregory ordered should be demanded from certain people in the maintenance of justice for those who flee to the sacred places fearing violent injustice. And if anyone is proven to have defiled this strength, then he wil have to submit to public and church laws. And if he acts in secret, so that he cannot legally be convicted, then warned through the priestly persuasion he will have on his conscience a witness who will also be a Judge. For perfect episcopal foresight will say to him in judgement, what Elias sought to show to Eliseus, “for that which was my part, I have done to thee”, and to the Lord, “I have not hid thy justice within my heart: I have declared thy truth and thy salvation.” And in this and all other things, sacerdotal authority ought in its doctrine to observe that apostolic form wherein it is said; “Reprove, entreat, rebuke”. That is to say, he ought, as occasions require, to temper fair speeches with threats: let him show the severity of a master and the loving affection of a father: those who are undisciplined and restless he must reprove sternly, but with such as are obedient, mild and patient, he should deal by entreaty, exhorting them to go forward in virtue. But the stubborn and negligent he must severely reprove and chastise, nor should he shut his eyes to the sins of offenders, but, as soon as they show themselves, use all possible endeavours utterly to root them out.

Appendix: interrogatio 4. Some sinister insinuations.

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[242] They say moreover that if it were not permitted to this king to take another wife, or the concubine he now has, and that his wife were to be judged to return to him whether he will it or no, then he would come up with such a plan so that he would be freed of her and would not have to come back to judgement about it again.

Appendix: responsio 3. More on the mutability of decisions.

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[239] To the contrary, St Celestine wrote to Nestorius: “We want even priests to be corrected, regarding what is against heaven’s command.” Let those who say this read the Acts of the Apostles, and let them see, that some people who came down from Jerusalem to Antioch raised up strife against Paul and Barnabas concerning the question of circumcision and the observation of the law, so much so that Paul and Barnabas decided to go up to Jerusalem with others who had been sent to the apostles and priests for this question; and that this question was raised by some of the Pharisees of Jerusalem after their arrival. And let them take note that it was settled by Peter and judged by James differently from how these had judged and settled it, but no one from them was condemned. Let them also see in the letter of Paul to the Galatians, that Peter was criticised, rebuked, and corrected by Paul for pretence, but was not condemned, and that this rebuke was accepted by the first amongst the apostles, to the extent that he honoured those letters of Paul in which he read that he was criticised, with great praise.

And in case anyone should say that as according to scripture the lesser is blessed by the greater, so the greater will not be judged by the lesser, let them read the letters of Paul to the Corinthians, and they will found this archbishop and outstanding doctor to have refuted and corrected the disobedient, but not to have condemned the bishops who allowed a fornicator to pass time in their midst without suitable criticism. And that he chided bishops for an excess of this sort, he make clear himself, saying “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered together and my spirit”, and in the second letter “Wherefore, I beseech you that you would confirm your charity towards him. For to this end also did I write this to you, that I may know the experiment of you, whether you be obedient in all things. And to whom you have given any thing, I also. For, what I have given, if I have given any thing, for your sakes have I done it in the person of Christ”. ‘Given’ here means ‘forgiven’, which for the publicly discarded public crime pertains to no one but bishops, as they know who know the church canons. And so it is written in the Council of Carthage, “This also pleased us, that when an appeal goes from some church judges to other church judges of greater authority, it shall not tell against the former if their sentence is dissolved, if they are not proven to have judged with hostile intention, or while corrupted by greed or favour.”

[240] Concerning the idea that since ‘there are no archbishops of greater authority than those’, so that this matter should again come before them for judgement, we have shown above that what the singular cannot manage, a plurality can achieve, which the authority of scripture demonstrates saying “if two of you shall consent upon earth, concerning anything whatsoever they shall ask, it shall be done to them’ and ‘For where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them’. And when the apostles with the rest of the faithful and Mary the mother of Jesus prayed gathered together, the earth moved, and the holy spirit appeared in tongues of fire above one hundred and twenty people gathered on the day of Pentecost. And Paul, as we have said, showed this saying “you being gathered together and my spirit”. And the prince of the Apostles, who was filled with such gifts of grace, and supported by such power of miracles, when because by the admonition of the Spirit he had gone in to Cornelius the Gentile, a question was raised against him by the believers as to why he had gone in among Gentiles and eaten with them, and why he had received them in baptism: yet he replied to the complaint of the believers, not by power but by reason, and explained the case to them in order; and he pacified them by giving a reason humbly, and even produced witnesses to defend him from blame, saying, Moreover these six brethren accompanied me. If, then, the pastor of the Church, the Prince of the Apostles, who singularly did signs and miracles, disdained not, in defending himself from blame, humbly to give a reason, how much more ought we sinners, when we are blamed for anything, to pacify those who blame us by giving a reason humbly, even if we are judged in something of greater authority[?]?

And we say this not to blame our brothers and co-priests who judge in something according the canon law, but so we might more clearly show what we should do, so that we who are said to be something should not deceive ourselves, for we are nothing, as the Apostle said. And if in the matter from which this debate arose there is something worthy of emendation, let it be changed for the better (without harming charity): as Paul realised about concerning not circumcising gentiles and not burdening them with the yoke of the law, and as Peter agreed, and as James helped judge. And the holy council of Nicaea decreed, “that when all the bishops of the province are assembled together, such questions may by them be thoroughly examined”, and once this discussion has taken place, then either what was done shall remain, or the decision shall be changed for the better, and if however, “two or three bishops, from natural love of contradiction, and not because of the truth of faith or the sincerity of authority, shall oppose the common suffrage of the rest, it being reasonable and in accordance with the ecclesiastical law, then let the choice of the majority prevail. If the fraternal decision is seen by some to be in need of retraction because of an excess, as often happens, as with the acceptance of the gentiles discussed above, and account is given with full faith and authority, let the decision of the acts of the apostles be brought out, in which it is said by Peter about the gentiles, “If then God gave them the same grace as to us also who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ: who was I, that could withstand God? Having heard these things, they held their peace and glorified God, saying: God then hath also to the Gentiles given repentance, unto life”. If a less important question should arise, let the turbulence of the brotherly spirit be calmed to keep peace and charity, as evangelical authority demonstrated, when a question arose amongst the disciples, about whom of them was the greater. And if anyone has acted violently and negligently against those subjected to him, or other than he should have done in this sacral ministry, let he be rebuked and amended according the toe rules promulgated by the holy spirit, but those who are present. As the Nicene Council did about the excommunicated, and the Sardican Council about the bishop who was angry, which he ought not to be, and who tried to destroy his priest or deacon, and as the Chalcedonian council did about the neglected ordination of bishops, and as other councils, and letters of Leo and Gregory clearly show.

[241]. If some people - and may it not happen - should in rash daring attempt to speak against or trample down faith, or church doctrine, or the statutes of holy authority, and they are warned according to the lord’s precept; and if – and may the Lord spare us from this – they continue to be rebels, and obstinate contemptors, let the examples and statutes of the elders be brought out, and they will be suppressed, as St Leo says in his letter to all the provinces: “We command that all things which have been promulgated by ecclesiastical orders and the disciple of the canons should be guarded by your Goodwill , so that if anyone acts against them, he will know that henceforth pardon will be denied him. And who attempts to move against what has been decided, and dares to accept what has been prohibited, he should know that he will be removed from his office, and will not be a companion in our communion, who did not want to be a companion in discipline.” And St Gelasius, wrote, “Nor let them doubt who dare to do this, and also those who noticed it but kept silent, that they will undergo the loss of their own honour, if they not hurry as fast as they can to be cured from their lethal wounds by a suitable medication.” And St Celestine wrote to Nestorius, “About these we advise, with the foregoing agreement, that if they abuse our health-giving admonition, it is necessary that we confirm the sentence of damnation against them.” And to Cyril of Alexandria, “We say this lest we should be seen perhaps to desert those wishing to make correction. For if he turns his thorns to us offering a grape, let it be implemented, let the earlier decisions stand through the fruit of his judgment: let him harvest what he sowed with devilish plough, ready to perish by his own will, not by our advice".

Appendix: Interrogatio 3.

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[239] And some say that there are no archbishops, except the pope, of greater authority than those who settled this matter, and if it were brought back to judgment, and it were found that the matter should not stand as it is, then the bishops who judged it would not be able to remain in the episcopacy any longer.

Appendix: Responsio 2. Decisions can be changed.

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[237] This is the voice of the inexperienced and of those who do not know the canons. Read in the council of Sardica, what Pope Zosimus sent through Bishop Faustinus to the synod of Carthage from the text of the council of Nicaea, and you will adequately find there that people who say those things are wrong. And the Roman Pope Leo, and the synod held at Rome said to the emperor Theodosius about retracting the synod of Epheina, which he seemed dangerously to favour: “In my sincere desire, which is shared by the bishops that are with me, that you, most Christian and revered prince, should before all things please God, to whom the prayers of the whole Church are poured with one accord for your empire, I give you counsel, for fear lest, if we keep silence on so great a matter, we incur punishment before the tribunal of Christ. I entreat you therefore before the undivided Trinity of the one Godhead, which is injured by these evil doings, and which is the guardian of your kingdom, and before Christ’s holy angels that all things remain intact as they were before the judgment, and that they await the weightier decision of the Synod at which the whole number of the bishops in the whole world is gathered together: and do not allow yourselves to bear the weight of others’ misdoing. We are constrained to say this because we dread that His wrath will be provoked Whose religion is being dissipated.” And this is also to be dreaded not a little by all priests, kings and princes, and by all the faithful in general in this matter, which is not a small part in faith and religion. And it is clear from the sacred canons that the care of the whole province is in the charge of the archbishop and primate, who should know of the judgements of his co -bishops, from which a complaint might be necessary, and in those which a matter demands it, he should appoint chosen judges. By all this it is shown that a synod should test or correct the judgement of the provincial bishops, but that a general synod should test or correct the judgments or dissensions of the provinces, as is shown in the African Council, which stated that nothing was to be altered in the Council of Hippo. Let the Apostolic See retract, re-ignite or confirm the judgements of provincial and general synods, as the letters of Leo and Gelasius and the other Roman pontiffs, and the synod of Sardica clearly show, so that the authority be confirmed of the bishops who judge rightly, be corrected of those who judge otherwise, and that authority may not meanwhile wholly perish away.

Appendix: Interrogatio 2.

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[237] Some also say that there is neither authority nor reason why this matter which was settled by the judgement of bishops should be called back to judgement, because if this happened, the bishops who decided it will be as of no authority for other matters, and whatever they decide in the future will not be able to be so firm so that it cannot be retracted.

Appendix: Responsio 1. The matter pertains to all.

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[236] To these it should be replied: “You are in error, knowing neither the scriptures nor the power of God”. When some of the sons of Israel built a hillock of testimony, the other part aroused by divine zeal rushed to arms, so that the people of the Lord should not be divided, as they were later divided in the cows made in idolatrous crime for Jereboa. And now these lords want to cut in two the kingdom and the catholic church, which is one dove and one loving affection, as if they do not persuade but rather force to say, what some people said formerly, “you have no share in David, nor an inheritance in the son of Esau, return to your tents, Israel”, trying to bring back to our time that most pestilential time, when there was neither a king nor a duke over the people, but every man did what seemed right to him. And would now that everyone would knowingly and prudently do what seemed right, and not what was voluptuously pleasing, twisted and wrong. Is there not, as these build up their maliciousness, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father almighty, who is above all and through all, and in all of us, and one kingdom, one dove of Christ, that is holy church, by the law of one Christianity, of one kingdom and one church, although the helms are guided through many princes of kingdoms and bishops of churches?

And the matter in question is such that is it known to pertain to all those marked by the name of Christian. The reckoning is brought into the open about a king and a queen, a Christian man and a Christian woman, about the law of marriage given by God to our first kin in paradise, and strengthened in the church, confirmed by divine and human laws through God, and established with a blessing through the sacerdotal ministry, and celebrated in the fashion of no matter who of the faithful. And such a devilish invention stains this most excellent gift, that his operation cannot be doubted, whom the scripture predicts will appear, that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself as if he were God’ and ‘For the mystery of iniquity already worketh; since licit things are illicitly vomited up, and illicit things are seized upon as if they were allowed. Not only those bishops, in whose parishes or diocesan responsibilities, or those of the faithful, before whose eyes these things are dared, are agitated as though these things pertained to them: truly the universal order, and men of every order are troubled by portentous novelty of this sort. And the pope St Celestine, as we mentioned above, said to Venerius and the other Gallican bishops, “The whole church shakes with any novelty’ and to Nestorius the bishop of Constantinople, What is happening should be known by all, when the business of all is being dealt with”. This business is like a mirror for everyone. Therefore it is necessary for it to be settled, and settled to be known by all, since it should be observed by all, as the Lord says “What I say to you, I say to everyone: keep watch”. And in the African council it is defined that matters which are not communal should be decided in their provinces. But when a common matter demands it, let a general synod be gathered, so that the general matter should be settled in it, for as pope Innocent wrote to Victorius bishop of Rouen, the judgment is complete which is confirmed by the decisions of many.

[237] Therefore it is necessary that this general matter pertaining generally to all should come to the attention of all, and be settled by a general decision, lest by those who know it less well it be said “For every one that doth evil hateth the light and cometh not to the light, that his works may not be reproved. But he that doth good things cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest: because they are done in God”. And those things which concern the generality and which are said in the shadows should be said in the light, and those things which are whispered into ears in small chambers, let them be shouted from the rooftops: so that they might be rebuked by no one, who, so that they might shine in word and deed to all and be seen by all, will be gazed upon by all placed like a candle on a candlestick, and a city on a mountain.

Appendix: interrogatio 1. Is this just Lotharingia's business?

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Some say that since King Lothar has bishops and noble and faithful laymen in his kingdom, by whose advice and counsel he settled the matter between himself and his wife, that to retract anything from this does not pertain to the bishops of another kingdom, or to anyone else.

Appendix: introduction

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[235] Finally, what follows are seven questions which we were given to resolve around six months after the ones discussed above, sent from the same people. Just as in the preceding ones, we insert the questions before the answers one at a time, responding as briefly as we can; and explaining as if compressed into a box, so that the careful man can understand so that he can embellish on them more fully; and so that we might not shut out the innards of charity from the petitions of the brethren, and offer to the wise man according the scripture the chance to be made wiser, when investigating more fully these things he seeks to understand them. And in the few little hours which we have extorted more than loaned from our multiple and very various occupations, for we do not have thoughts of leisure [?], we have done what might suffice and will not enrage the reader, since the size of the responses to these questions would wholly exceed the width of a volume. The beginning of thse questions is as follows:
“We beg of your Goodwill, that you will not find it tedious if we importunately persist in asking about things necessary for us to know. For after we recently sent questions to you for resolution, we found out about many things, concerning which we earnest ask for your responses, one at a time and individually, from the authority of scripture and canon law, and from the doctrine of the doctors of the church.”

Responsio 23: limits on what bishops can do

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Let whoever says this know that in a certain way this was the fourth chapter of the error of those [?] who dared to disparage and contradict the holy Synod of Chalcedon, and who were condemned as being in error by the Apostolic See and the unanimity of the bishops of the whole world, as Saint Leo says many times and blessed Gregory too in his letter to Theoctista the patrician, writing amongst other things: “For the Truth in person says, What God hath joined together let not man put asunder. He says also, It is not lawful for a man to put away his wife saving for the cause of fornication. Who then may contradict this heavenly legislator? We know how it is written, Two shall be one flesh. If, then, a man and wife are one flesh, and a man puts away his wife for the sake of religion, or a woman her husband while he remains in this world, even though perchance he turns aside to unlawful deeds, what is this conversion., in which one and the same flesh on the one part passes to continence and on the other part remains in pollution? If, however, it should suit both to lead a continent life, who may dare to accuse them, since it is certain that Almighty God, who has granted what is less, has not forbidden what is greater? And indeed we know of many holy persons who have both previously led continent lives with their consorts, and have afterwards passed over to the rules of holy Church. For in two ways holy men are accustomed to abstain even from lawful things. Sometimes that they may increase their merits before Almighty God; but sometimes that they may wipe away the sins of their former life.(…)Accordingly, when good husbands and wives desire either to increase merit or to do away with the faults of previous life, it is lawful for them to bind themselves to continence and to aspire to a better life. But, if the wife does not follow after the continence which the husband aspires to, or the husband refuses that which the wife aspires to, it is not lawful for wedlock to be cut asunder, seeing that it is written, The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife”.

[233] And in the letter to Adrian the notary of Panormia, he blames the abbot Urbicus, since he had received the husband of Agathosa against her wishes in his monastery for [monastic] conversion, and he ordered her husband to be returned to her, even if he had already been tonsured, saying “unless (…) you find that the aforesaid woman has committed any crime of fornication on account of which it is lawful for a man to leave his wife, then, lest his conversion should possibly be an occasion of perdition to the wife left behind in the world, we desire thee, without any excuse allowed, to restore her husband to her, even though he should be already tonsured (…) for seeing that after the husband and wife have been made one body by the copulation of marriage, it cannot be in part converted, and in part remain in the world”.

And if someone grows angry with us, that we have suggested that ecclesiastical judgments should be heard also by laymen, let him read the resolution of the Fathers for this question, why the Lord, who forbade holy things to be given to dogs, or pearls to the irreverent, when asked about the resurrection of the dead with a shameful tale of the woman of seven husbands, opened the secrets of the law to hostile infidels and tempters. Their resolution is that he did not open the secrets of the law to them who were not able to understand, but to those who could and who were also present, whom it was not fitting to neglect because of the uncleanliness of others. And when the tempters questioned him and he responded to them, they did not have anything with which they could respond, although they were wasting away from their own poison more than being filled up with his bread; others however, who were able to understand, heard many useful things from that event of theirs.’ And let him accept a sufficient explanation from us small little half-people. And let him also receive St Augustine, speaking kindly for us in his book on the good of perseverance, for he said “But the reason of keeping back the truth is one, the necessity of speaking the truth is another. It would be a tedious business to inquire into or to put down all the reasons for keeping back the truth; of which, nevertheless, there is this one,—lest we should make those who do not understand worse, while wishing to make those who do understand more learned; although these latter do not become more learned when we say [!] such things on the one hand, but also do not become worse. When, however, a truth is of such a nature that he who cannot receive it is made worse by our speaking it, and he who can receive it is made worse by our silence concerning it, what do we think is to be done? Must we not speak the truth, that he who can receive it may receive it, rather than keep silence, so that not only neither may receive it, but that even he who is more intelligent should himself be made worse? For if he should hear and receive it, by his means also many might learn. For in proportion as he is more capable of learning, he is the more fitted for teaching others."

Interrogatio 23

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Concerning that written to be said by some people, that if a man and woman wish to separate from each other not from consent regarding continence, but because of discord, or their fragility, that if separated they are not able to contain themselves or are unwilling to be reconciled, that bishops are able to advise from their own authority.

Responsio 22: About church asylum

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[227] Anyone who is intelligent, even if he does not know the laws of the church, will recognise how absurd this is. For, as saint Gregory wrote to Leontius the exconsul, your Glory must remember that it has never received my letters for the commendation of anyone, unless so that you should confer your protection if justice favours it. For it is shameful to defend what has not first been proven to be just. Indeed I love men because of justice, but I do not put justice second for the sake of men. So indeed, as we wrote above that Saint Ambrose showed, a pact of marriage cannot be confirmed before fewer than ten witnesses, and the latin word for marriage nuptiae, which does not have a singular, shows that that the attention of many must be sought. And what is joined in public is not able to be separated in a corner. And a marriage joined by Christian and public laws cannot be dissolved from that yoke of marriage by a secret confession, which it is not legal to make public, nor should such a game be said to be a flight to ecclesiastical piety.

And if anyone wants to know, what ecclesiastical authority moderately decrees about those fleeing to it as if to the mother’s lap, we suggest that whoever is curious or studious should consider amongst other things the letters of saint Gregory, in which several times, indeed as often as the opportunity presented itself, he inserted in letters petitioning emperors and various others for all those fleeing to him, ‘without prejudice to justice”, or “without prejudice to reason”, or “justice standing firm”, or “the matter settled at a judicial meeting, without priestly jealousy,” and that it is necessary to undergo the judgement of the chosen [judges] with the other side, so that the truth can be recognised and what the order of justice recommends is able to be established.” and so that “without further delay whosoever is to be obliged to go to the judgement of the chosen judges, and once the truth has been recognised, whatever is decreed by the sacrosanct gospels is to be put into execution. And “whatever seems advised by justice, let it be determined in writing”; and “that no one should in any way suffer by being burdened contrary to the law or reason, but justice should be respected towards him, as befits Christianity, in all things, and so to him who flees to ecclesiastical piety should [receive] what is promised to him by that piety, and should not be burdened against the order of justice. And again, “Wheresoever it is necessary for him to flee, reason running alongside will be safeguarded”. And again, ‘May he obtain from your Comfort whatever custom demands, with justice accompanying”. And again to Faintus the defensor, “Give this aforementioned woman protection, without prejudice to justice, and do not allow her to be burdened in any way against the order of reason”, and again to Anatholius the deacon of Constantinople, “However we wish your Love to carefully look out for this, that it should not allow itself to be mixed up in any matter where there is a burden for the poor, lest perchance you should under pressure from some people’s power be obliged to act, to a degree, in a way which cannot help your soul. Deal with everything with the fear of God, and assess carefully in particular the eternal reward.” And to Sabinus the subdeacon, “let it be your mission that no one should undergo any expense against reason. And if by chance some tries to defend it with some excuse, let the matter to carefully inspected amongst the sacrosanct Gospels, and let it be fitting to settle it as justice and the order of law recommend, and let the settlement be brought to effect”. And to Romanus the defensor, “that with regard to ecclesiastical patronage of people (whether you should have received letters from me, or none should have been addressed to you), you should bestow it with such moderation that, if any have been implicated in public theft, they may not appear to be unjustly defended by us, lest we should in any way transfer to ourselves, by venturing on indiscreet defence, the ill repute of evil doers: but so far as becomes the Church, by admonishing and applying the word of intercession, succour whom you can; so that you may both give them aid, and not stain the repute of holy Church.” And he wrote about those who flee to the enclosures of churches and even the sanctuaries of saints, to John the bishop of the city of Cagliari, “If anyone – and the matter is about such as these - should flee into a church, the matter should be arranged so that neither do they suffer violence nor do those who say they are oppressed sustain damage. Let it be your care, that it shall be promised by an oath from the one side to the other in question, that law and justice will be maintained, and let them be strongly counselled to leave the church, and give reason for their actions.

[229] And in the first book of the capitularies of the Emperors Lord Charles and Louis “if anyone makes a flight to a church, let him have peace in the enclosure of that church, nor should it be necessary to enter the church, and no one will dare to drag him from there by force. But it is permitted for him to confess what he did, and from there he will be taken by the hands of good men to a discussion in public.”

And in the Council of Orleans, c.1: it is written concerning murderers, adulterers and thieves if they flee to churches, that as is decreed in the church canons and in the decrees of the roman law, it is not allowed to drag them from the enclosures of the church or from the house of the bishop, but let oaths be given to them about death, mutilation and all sorts of punishment, lest they suffer violence before legal satisfaction, and let them come out, so that to him who is guilty , there will be a fitting satisfaction [??]. And in the third chapter, ‘if anyone’s slave flees to a church for whatsoever crime, let him receive an oath that he will not be punished and then be obliged to return to the service of his lord. If after an oath has been given he is unwilling to return, it is allowed for the lord to seize him thus unwilling to leave. Those who do not keep what they promise are ordered to be cut off from the communion of the church. And in the second chapter of this council it is written, “if any raptor flees with the abducted woman to a church, and it is clear that this woman was carried off by violence, she should at once be freed from the power of the raptor, and the raptor, with an impunity conceded to him regarding death or [physical] punishment, will be subjected to the condition of a slave or will have the free opportunity to buy himself off. If she who was carried off has a father, and the girl consented to the raptor, let her be excused and returned to the power of her father.” And in the Council of Africa, it is written “That if a cleric of whichever status is condemned by the judging of bishops of whatever crime, it is not allowed for him to be defended from the condemnation while the penalty of money or honour is delayed, whether by the churches of which he was in charge, or by any man [?], in which the promulgators of the law command that neither age nor sex can be an excuse.” How much less should bishops, the preachers of righteousness, unjustly defend anyone under the guise of piety, especially when they re-read what is written, “If you have offered rightly, but you have not divided up rightly, you have sinned” and “follow justly what is just”.

And if the Council of Orleans seems to anyone to sound a little contrary to the decrees of the Apostolic see, since the one demands oaths of impunity, the other of keeping justice, it should be known that Saint Gregory speaks of these people who trust that they can justify themselves in court, but fear violence before the judgement; whereas the Synod of Orleans speaks of those who do not hide their injustice, and greatly fear moreover the violence of the equity of judgement. But it does not talk about the law of marriage, which as we have said the Lord gave in paradise to the first kin and did not change in the Gospel – and even the apostles complained that if this was the law of man and wife, then it would not be expedient to marry. Nor did Paul, taken up to the third heaven and to paradise, dare to write anything new, or attempt to say anything in defence of this sort of thing.

[230] And it is clear to the readers, that whenever a council is read to have decreed something for a particular time or danger which diverges a little from the advice of the apostolic see or the old canons, but is not against faith or religion, then according to what is read in the Nicene Council, c.5 about that, that “If, however, two or three bishops shall from natural love of contradiction, oppose the common suffrage of the rest (…) then let the choice of the majority prevail.” so that as Gelasius wrote, ‘those ancient rulings should be maintained from reverence which when there is no limit of time or place, it is fitting to keep canonically’. That is, that those things should be kept which the Apostolic See decreed should be held unbreakably, or which many councils or those of greater authority, decided.

And Saint Gregory wrote encouraging Venantius, bishop of Luna who was unwilling to do justice, saying “Since the censure of equity warns that, without prejudice to reason, episcopal comfort should especially be therefore for the converted, therefore we encourage your Fraternity with these letters, that you should have the already mentioned mother of Deodata summoned to you, and advise her with calm encouragement, that she should not desist from doing of her free will what he can be compelled to do by legal reason, so that she should not be afflicted, and nor should he sustain an unfairness. And if, which we do not believe, she wishes to pass over your advice, give protection to the above mentioned nun Adeodata against her, and with your comfort vehemently help her with the judge or in whichever other way she wants. And devote yourself to this cause so that she might be obliged unwillingly to do by legal reason what she put off doing willingly. Let your Fraternity, without prejudice to justice, keep the bearer of this letter commended in all things, that giving her the protection so that she can, God helping, remain in the habit which she took up, without any other disturbance.” And to Januarius the bishop of Sabina, “We sent Redemptus our defensor and the bearer of this letter there, so that he might oblige the parties to observe the judgement, and bring whatever was judged by his own effort into effect.” And there is much of this sort which can be found, and which would take a long time for us to go through.

It is not recognised to pertain to the right of any church or church man to strive against this, lest perhaps inappropriate piety be judged as impiety, as Saint Celestine wrote to Nestorius, “There is frequently such a piety from which impiety is born”. And St Augustine says in his fourth book against Julian, “Perhaps you are going to say that mercy is a good will. And rightly this would be said, if mercy were always good just as the faith of Christ, that is faith which works through love, is always good. But if bad mercy can be found, in which there was an acceptance of the person of the poor man in the judgement, because of which King Saul deserved finally to be condemned by the Lord for mercy, since against His precept he had spared the captive king through human affection, think more carefully, less perhaps this mercy should not be good unless it be of good faith: indeed tell me that you should see this at once, whether you esteem an unfaithful mercy to be good. For if it is a vice to pity the wicked, it is far from any doubt that it is a vice to pity unfaithfully. No one can be found as merciful, as would be more merciful than God, Whose mercy the psalmist wanted to talk about, saying my God my mercy, who was unwilling to take away a just judgement from the just judges concerning the woman caught in adultery and handed over to him. And St Jerome explains the verse of the Psalm, saying “Because of truth and meekness and justice. Christ is the truth, whereby he said to the Jews about that woman, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her “. Meekness, when he said ‘Neither will I condemn thee”. And justice when he said, Go, woman, and now sin no more”.

[231] Now, what we read in the above mentioned volume about this woman of Boso is written as follows: “We called her husband with an agreement of safety while he came and stayed with or left us, so that we might examine his wife in his presence. We avoided handing over someone to death who was not examined and who had fled to us, as unjust and cruel, because when no particular accuser came forth, she was admonished and questioned and confessed to nothing else except that she had fled fearing to die from the persecution of Hubert alone”. The readers must prudently notice, whether this is able to suit authority or reason. Authority indeed demands, for the conservation of equity and justice firmness for those fleeing to the church: and it does not take wholly away the legitimate power of a husband over his wife, who was legally betrothed, legally dowered and honoured with a public marriage. What is written in Heptaticon about jealousy, that a husband stirred up by the spirit of jealousy should take his wife to the priests for examination, commands that the office of the priest is to write, for the ministry imposed on him, the exorcisms which will be washed with the water which the woman has to drink. And the sacred canons decreed that secular men should neither condemn nor cast off their spouses, because they have told the provincial bishop of the cause for the discord. But divine authority does not remove husbands from their wives by a legal judgment [?], as we showed above from the truth of the Gospels.

[232] But let us pay attention more closely to what is contained in this volume: We avoided handing over someone to death who was not examined and who had fled to us, as unjust and cruel , and we should not hand over to death the examined either, unless while alive they are as dead to God through sin. Let us concede however, that the bishops should hasten to examine that woman who is said to have fled to them, keeping her in their power away from her husband, to see if she is suspected of anything untoward. And what will have to be done, if in this episcopal examination she is found to be guilty? If the bishops want to remove her from a legal judgement over her once she has been found to be guilty by their authority, they will be seen to act against Him whose action and speech is known to be perfect authority, as is written, ‘all things which Jesus began to do and teach’, since he did not remove judgement form the woman taken in adultery, whom he ordered to be stoned through Moses, but he ordered the legal judgement to take place through just judges, saying “Let him cast the first stone”. If indeed the bishops hand her over to be punished, once they have examined her and found her guilty, they will be proven to act against ecclesiastical piety and the head of the church, the fount of piety, who said “Neither will I condemn thee. Go, and now sin no more”. Let us bishops, once we have clearly recognised these things and thought about them extremely carefully, follow the authority of the elders about those fleeing to the piety of the church, and we will not be caught needing to be rebuked.

And what is finally written there, that when no particular accuser came forth, she was admonished and questioned and confessed to nothing else except that she had fled fearing to die from the persecution of Hubert alone. Then what remains to be done, since she was accused by no one, and if the bishops did not find otherwise according to the canons – if there were canon laws there, which we have not read to have been the case – and the Christian and noble laity did not find otherwise according to the laws – which we have not learned was the case – than to return her to her husband, and if perhaps necessity and reason demands it for some crime charged to her, with a promise to maintain justice. In order that she might be protected by the defence of her husband as is just, so that she should not be killed by Hubert. And finally the husband, according to Christian and ecclesiastical law, might exercise the legitimate and legal power over her, as a man must do concerning his wife.

Interrogatio 22: questions about episcopal authority

2008-01-03T12:11:00.000-08:00

In the eighth chapter, write back to us, whether it should be followed as some say that some bishops teach, that they [bishops] should offer the protection of defence to men or women who have confessed to them, lest anyone dare to bring these person to the judgment of the state for the crimes about which they had confessed to them, even if they are well known crimes. And if these wish to separate not from consent over continence, but because of discord, or because of their fragility, and if separated they are unable to contain themselves or are unwilling to be reconciled, these bishops say that by their authority they can give advice. And since they fled through a secret confession to ecclesiastical piety, like Boso’s wife, about whom we were informed with some interruption in the synod held at Toul, they should not therefore be judged except by the bishops to whom these people confessed.

Responsio 21: not so fast...

2008-01-03T11:50:00.000-08:00

[220] Since there is one law for men and for women, as we have shown above from the decisions of the scriptures and the catholic fathers, if he is released from the law of marriage, then as St Paul says about a wife, let her marry whom she will; only in the Lord. That is, as Ambrose, says, let her marry without the suspicion of any indecency and to a man of her religion: that is to marry in the Lord. This dissolution and licit union can be understand and can be done in two ways. That is in those who either never initiated a legal marriage or who are released from the law of marriage by the intervention of death, as St Paul says, “But I say to the unmarried and to the widows: It is good for them if they so continue, even as I. But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry.” And again, “Art thou loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife. But if thou take a wife, thou hast not sinned. And if a virgin marry, s/he hath not sinned”. This is to be understood for both the male and the female: ‘virgin’ is a common noun, either a man or a woman. And the Apostle shows this afterwards, saying, “These sort shall have tribulation of the flesh.” Ambrose expounds on this sentence for both man and woman, “What is allowed can be made illicit for those who could have come to marriage without and has proposed to himself the attainment of a greater good and have made unlawful the less good which before was lawful. For it is written, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. He therefore who has been intent on a more resolute purpose is convicted of looking back, if, leaving the larger good, he reverts to the least.”

And what is allowed can be made illicit by the intervention of a matter which should not be despised, when a marriage which was legally entered into is allowed to be dissolved for the sake of infidelity. Whence Paul says “If any brother hath a wife that believeth not/is unfaithful and she consent to dwell with him: let him not put her away. And if any woman hath a husband that believeth not/is unfaithful and he consent to dwell with her: let her not put away her husband”. And a little later, “if the unbeliever depart, let him depart”, or if the wife is left for the sake of fornication, about which again Paul says, But to them that are married, not I, but the Lord, commandeth that the wife depart not from her husband. And if she depart, that she remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife”. This should be weighed with equal measure, that is she is sent away, he should remain in celibacy. And a disjunction between the faithful after a marriage has been entered into cannot happen, except for the sake of fornication and the love of continence.

[221] And what was not allowed can be made permitted through indulgence, as again the Paul says once again showing important things through small, saying “I speak this by indulgence, not by commandment”, that when a man and woman are separated because of fornication, if they are not able to contain themselves, they might be reconciled to each other. It was illicit that fornicators should return to the union of the flesh which they had joined, because they ought to remain in continence, especially since the scripture says, “He that keepeth an adulteress, is foolish and wicked.” But as Saint Augustine says in his book on the good of marriage, often a lesser evil is tolerated instead of a greater ill. For the Lord says that if a man and woman are separated from each other because of fornication, they committed adultery if they join themselves to others, and if they marry others, they are adulterous. Augustine says this here and in his book on the Sermon of the Lord on the mount, and very clearly in his Books of Retractions, and Innocent shows the same in his letter to Exsuperius bishop of Toledo as we inserted above. It is clear, as again Augustine said, that adultery is worse than fornication. This does not mean that fornication is good because adultery is worse, since it is worse to violate another’s marriage than to cleave to a prostitute, and nor is adultery good because incest is worse. For it is worse to lie with a mother than with the wife of another: until we arrive at those things, which, as the Apostle says, "it is a shame even to speak of’. And St Gregory says, But since, when the sickness of two vices attacks a man, one presses upon him more lightly, and the other perchance more heavily, it is undoubtedly right to haste to the succour of that through which there is the more rapid tendency to death.” And between two dangers, let the lesser be carefully sought.

And what is not allowed can be made permitted through mercy, when, as Leo demonstrated, "a youth performing a public penance fearing to fall into youthful incontinence has chosen to marry a wife lest he should be guilty of fornication, he seems to have committed a pardonable act, so long as he has known no woman whatever save his wife. Yet herein we lay down no rule, but express an opinion as to what is less objectionable.”

And what is illicit can, almost illicitly, pass into being allowed, as with the wickedly incestuous, whom the Council of Agatha talks of , when with the indulgence of penance they are permitted to pass over to the embraces of a wife.

[222]And now we should talk about forms of concubinage, how there is a transition not from the good to the good and honest, nor from the good to the good if not exactly honest, but from the bad to the good in parts, but not honest. For it is good and honest before marriage to seek nuptial conjunction if they are unable to remain in virginity, as we showed above from the apostolic tradition of St Evarist. And it is good and honest for the celibate, if they are not able to contain themselves, to enter into legal marriage, as Saint Leo showed above. But it is not a transition from the good to the good and honest to pass from being a concubine to a wife, as St Leo demonstrates to Rusticus bishop of Narbonne, saying, “Not every woman that is joined to a man is his wife, even as every son is not his father’s heir. But the marriage bond is legitimate between the freeborn and between equals: this was laid down by the Lord long before the Roman law had its beginning. And so a wife is different from a concubine, even as a bondwoman from a freewoman. For which reason also the Apostle in order to show the difference of these persons quotes from Genesis, where it is said to Abraham, “Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with my son Isaac. And hence, since the marriage tie was from the beginning so constituted as apart from the joining of the sexes to symbolize also the mystic union of Christ and His Church, it is undoubted that that woman has no part in matrimony, in whose case it is shown that the mystery of marriage has not taken place”. And again, “to turn a bondwoman from one’s couch and take a wife whose free birth is assured, is not bigamy but an honourable proceeding”, since “Those who are joined to husbands by their fathers’ will are free from blame, if the women whom their husbands had were not in wedlock”, for “the wife is one thing, the concubine another”.

There is a passing from the not good to the good though not altogether honest, as this Leo showed above, when a concubine is made a free woman if she was previously a slave girl, and legitimately dowered, and is made honest by a public marriage, as every wife to be legally married ought after betrothal to be legally dowered and made honest with public ceremonies. And to hurry from the wicked to the good in parts but not honest, is tolerable, as Augustine says in his first book on marriages and concupiscence, “It is certainly not fecundity only, the fruit of which consists of offspring, nor chastity only, whose bond is fidelity, but also a certain sacramental bond in marriage which is recommended to believers in wedlock. Accordingly it is enjoined by the apostle: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church." Of this bond the substance undoubtedly is this, that the man and the woman who are joined together in matrimony should remain inseparable as long as they live; and that it should be unlawful for one consort to be parted from the other, except for the cause of fornication. For this is preserved in the case of Christ and the Church; so that, as a living one with a living one, there is no divorce, no separation for ever. And so complete is the observance of this bond in the city of our God, in His holy mountain —that is to say, in the Church of Christ—by all married believers, who are undoubtedly members of Christ, that, although women marry, and men take wives, for the purpose of procreating children, it is never permitted one to put away even an unfruitful wife for the sake of having another to bear children. And whosoever does this is held to be guilty of adultery by the law of the gospel; though not by this world's rule, which allows a divorce between the parties, without even the allegation of guilt, and the contraction of other nuptial engagements,—a concession which, the Lord tells us, even the holy Moses extended to the people of Israel, because of the hardness of their hearts. So enduring, indeed, are the rights of marriage between those who have contracted them, as long as they both live, that even they are looked on as man and wife still, who have separated from one another, rather than they between whom a new connection has been formed. For by this new connection they would not be guilty of adultery, if the previous matrimonial relation did not still continue. If the husband or wife die, with whom a true marriage was made, a true marriage is now possible by a connection with a man or woman which would before have been adultery, that is if kinship, or religious dress, or the impurity of a dreadful crime or something else of this sort did not stand in the way." And again Augustine, “Thus between the conjugal pair, as long as they live, the nuptial bond has a permanent obligation, and can be cancelled neither by separation nor by union with another. But this permanence avails, in such cases, only for injury from the sin, not for a bond of the covenant. In like manner the soul of an apostate, which renounces as it were its marriage union with Christ, does not, even though it has cast its faith away, lose the sacrament of its faith, which it received in the laver of regeneration. It would undoubtedly be given back to him if he were to return, although he lost it on his departure from Christ. He retains, however, the sacrament after his apostasy, to the aggravation of his punishment, not for meriting the reward.”

[223] And in the book On the good in marriage, “Therefore the good of marriage throughout all nations and all men stands in the occasion of begetting, and faith of chastity: but, so far as pertains unto the People of God, also in the sanctity of the sacrament, by reason of which it is unlawful for one who leaves her husband, even when she has been put away, to be married to another, so long as her husband lives, no not even for the sake of bearing children: and, whereas this is the alone cause, wherefore marriage takes place, not even where that very thing, wherefore it takes place, follows not, is the marriage bond loosed, save by the death of the husband or wife. In like manner as if there take place an ordination of clergy in order to form a congregation of people, although the congregation of people follow not, yet there remains in the ordained persons the sacrament of ordination; and if, for any fault, any be removed from his office, he will not be without the sacrament of the Lord once for all set upon him, albeit continuing unto condemnation”. And again in the aforementioned book on marriage and concupiscence, “But may it not happen that the nuptial bond should be regarded as broken between those who have by mutual consent agreed to observe a perpetual abstinence from the use of carnal concupiscence. Nay, it will be only a firmer one, whereby they have exchanged pledges together, which will have to be kept by a special endearment and concord,—not by the voluptuous links of bodies, but by the voluntary affections of souls”.

It is made clear by these testimonies from the scriptures and the sayings of holy men, how he might be able to join the concubine with whom he is said to have committed adultery to himself in marriage should he wish, that is if either the wife who was legally taken and found innocent towards him should die in the flesh, or if she should be found so dead in spirit that sexual relations with her would be legally shown to be incest and not to be considered by the name of marriage. However, if he were to take the concubine in marriage in this fashion, then the union would be seen not to be without blame or the stain of offence, as St Augustine says in his book on the good of marriage, “What, therefore, the Apostles command the married, this is proper to marriage, but what they allow by way of pardon, or what hinders prayers, this marriage compels not, but bears with. Therefore if haply, (which whether it can take place, I know not; and rather think it cannot take place; but yet, if haply), having taken unto himself a concubine for a time, a man shall have sought sons only from this same intercourse; neither thus is that union to be preferred to the marriage even of those women, who do this, that is matter of pardon. For we must consider what belongs to marriage, not what belongs to such women as marry and use marriage with less moderation than they ought. For neither if each one so use lands entered upon unjustly and wrongly, as out of their fruits to give large alms, does he therefore justify rapine: nor if another brood over, through avarice, an estate to which he has succeeded, or which he has justly gained, are we on this account to blame the rule of civil law, whereby he is made a lawful owner. Nor will the wrongfulness of a tyrannical rebellion deserve praise, if the tyrant treat his subjects with royal clemency: nor will the order of royal power deserve blame, if a king rage with tyrannical cruelty. For it is one thing to wish to use well unjust power, and it is another thing to use unjustly just power. Thus neither do concubines taken for a time, if they be such in order to sons, make their concubinage lawful; nor do married women, if they live wantonly with their husbands, attach any charge to the order of marriage. That marriage can take place of persons first ill joined, an honest decree following after, is manifest. But a marriage once for all entered upon in the City of our God, where, even from the first union of the two, the man and the woman, marriage bears a certain sacramental character, can no way be dissolved but by the death of one of them. For the bond of marriage remains, although a family, for the sake of which it was entered upon, do not follow through manifest barrenness; so that, when now married persons know that they shall not have children, yet it is not lawful for them to separate even for the very sake of children, and to join themselves unto others. And if they shall so do, they commit adultery with those unto whom they join themselves. For as the holy fathers agreed about the good of marriage, marriage has what is good, and what is good is not a sin; and through this, whoever acts against a good marriage, commits a sin, when he commits adultery. They also decided that marriage is good and constituted by God and blessed , and which He consecrated by his presence, in which there is faith, children and sacrament. Faith is required, lest in spite of the bond of marriage the spouse sleeps with an adulteress or with another man. Children, so that they might be lovingly brought up, kindly nourished, and religiously taught, and the parents who bear children should rejoice only so much as these are reborn in Christ. And the sacrament, so that the marriage shall not be separated, and one or other sent off, nor for the sake of children joined to someone else. This is the rule of marriage, by which the fertility of nature is decorated, and the depravity of incontinence is ruled’ as St Augustine shows elegantly and at length in this book on the good in marriage, and his book on marriage and concupiscence.

[224] So it should in every way be observed, that the king, about whom the questioners wanted to be advised, should not expect a marital union with a concubine or with anyone else’s woman, until by the legal judgement of outstanding men and by priestly decree, the spouse whom he legally accepted should be judged unworthy of the name spouse, or should depart from the body by divine judgment, as is read very clear in the book of Ester, when Queen Vashti [wife] of the very powerful king Assuer, when she had offended his spirits with contempt and contumacy was not deposed from imperial honour only by his anger and rage, although he was very fearsome, but by public judgement, and the sentence of the princes and nudges of the Medes and the Persians. And after the deposition of this queen through a public judgment had taken place, girls were sought who were pleasing to the eye of the king, amongst whom Ester shone out in beauty and good looks as suited a royal spouse.

[225] Even the ancient Romans by a legal judgment decreed and observed in their laws that this should be the case, not only now they are made Christian, but also when there were still pagan, as the law of Anthony the pagan emperor shows very clearly, which Saint Augustine in his book on adulterous marriage commemorates in this way and commends, saying “Those who are displeased that there should be an equal form of modesty between husband and wife, and who chose rather especially in this matter to the subject to the laws of the world than of Christ, since the secular laws do not seem to them to obstruct men in ties of modesty as they do to women: they should read what the emperor Anthony, although not at all a Christian, decided about this mater, when a husband is not permitted to accuse his wife of the crime of adultery, whose own morals did not offer an example of chastity, so that both would be condemned, if he convicted both to be equally immodest. For these are the words of this emperor, which can be read in the Gregorianum: “Indeed, my laws will prejudice the case of neither party. Nor indeed, if there is fault amongst you, so that your marriage is dissolved and your wife Eupasia should marry according to the law of Julia, will she be condemned for adultery because of this my rescript, unless it is clear that there was adultery. They will have this before their eyes to enquire into, whether, when you were living modestly, you were also the promoter of cultivating good habits for her. It would seem to be extremely unfair that the man should demand a modesty from the wife which he himself did not display. And this matter is able to condemn the husband, not through the compensation of mutual crime to settle the matter between both, or to remove the matter in question. If these things should be observed fro the glory of the earthly city, do the heavenly fatherland and the society of angels not seek even more chaste people? This is what Saint Augustine commemorates about the laws of the pagan emperor Anthony. So the kings of the Medes and the Persians, and of the Romans, and the judges of the world, when they were still pagans and idol worshippers, naturally taught what the laws were, causing to be observed, settled and held in marital disputes, not cruelty and savagery, but equality and justice.

Therefore kings, bishops and judges of this world should fear what is said in the Gospel about the Ninevites and the queen of the east, that they shall rise in judgment with this wicked generation, and shall condemn it. They will condemn it not by the power of judgement, but by the comparison of what was done better. So those kings and idolatrous judges maintained the order of judgement, and so should we under Christ the judge of the living and the dead deviate from the order of judgment through less consideration than is needed? In the book of Numbers it is ordered, that if any woman is guilty of adultery is attacked with a false suspicion, and the spirit of jealousy stir up the husband against her, he shall bring her to the priests and offer her to divine judgment, for condemnation or for liberation. And Susanna, when she was wrongly accused of the crime of adultery, is read to have been condemned in a public judgment and to have been public absolved. And that woman in the Gospel, who was truly caught in adultery, was first led to judgement to the Pharisees, who exercised the power of judging over the people, then for the sake of temptation to the Lord, when through her admirable piety, she deserved to be freed from the torture of stoning, and from the guilt of her crime. These are the Christian laws, inspired by the Lord Creator, by which a marriage should be legally entered into. And the sanctity is the sacerdotal authority, by which the Lord wished his blessing to be given to each in turn in the paradise to the first kin, a blessing given by himself to these legally joined to each other in marriage, in his stead, through those who are called his mouth, - as the prophet said, the mouth of the Lord has spoken, and ‘if you separate the precious from the vile, you will be as my mouth – and to cure the infirm with the medicine of penitence. And what the Book of Ecclesiasticus says about a slave, so how much less of a wife ‘do any grievous thing without judgment’.

And there is another thing this king should bear in mind, lest he bind himself to a wife, let alone to this concubine about whom we are concerned, before he has taken a legal penance according the law of the church, and carried it out, and has been reconciled. For did king David did not have Bathsheba with whom he had committed adultery in marriage without this purging penitence, that his son who was born from that adultery, though David had petitioned for him with much fasting and weeping, was at once struck by divine judgment and died. And he afterwards, with very serious tribulations and the loss of his kingdom through his son Absalom was afflicted and vexed and was as placed in a furnace of fire, burned through and purged, so that he is seen to have escaped by divine clemency. And the merciful Lord took away his sin from him, bitterly contrite and repentent in heart and confessing, but since He is just and loves justice, he rightly and very justly avenged what the king, appointed by him to avenge wickedness, had himself done wickedly.

Interrogatio 21: a killer question

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[220] Concerning that which was added at the end of these questions: And tell us whether, if this woman has been legally rejected, the king is able, after penance and if he so wishes, to take the concubine, whom he kept and with whom he is said to have committed adultery after the marriage was initiated, in marriage.

Responsio 20: marriage after penance?

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Saint Leo the Pope responded to Rusticus bishop of Narbonne, saying “If a young man under fear of death or the dangers of captivity has done penance, and afterwards fearing to fall into youthful incontinence has chosen to marry a wife lest he should be guilty of fornication, he seems to have committed a pardonable act, so long as he has known no woman whatever save his wife. Yet herein we lay down no rule, but express an opinion as to what is less objectionable. For according to a true view of the matter nothing better suits him who has done penance than continued chastity both of mind and body.” And in the Council of Toledo, chapter 8, “It is the decision of the old and most holy father Pope Leo, that if a young man under fear of death has done penance, for being incontinent within marriage, he should return to his previous marriage so that he may not afterwards incur the fault of adultery, until he is able when he is more mature to attain the state of continence. What we decree for men, we decree also for women in the same way, not indeed a general and legitimate precept, but as an indulgence from us for human frailty. And on this condition, that if the person who is not given over to the laws of penance departs this life before he takes up continence with the agreement of those to whom he returned [??], then it is not permitted to the survivor to pass over to wifely embraces. If the survivor in this life is the person who did not take the blessing of penance, then let this person marry, if he is not able to contain himself, and enjoy the union of another wife. It is clear that we have decreed the same in equal fashion for both sexes, so that in all this things the ordinatio of the priest can be expected to distribute the law of absolution or penance according to whether he considers their age suitable for continence.”

Interrogatio 20

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[219] Concerning that which is asked, And if such matters are considered whence the king must do public penance, after she has been found to be criminous, tell us also whether that king is able to take a legitimate wife after public penance.

Responsio 19: if the marriage was not legal

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That is, if according to Christian laws, secular [forenses] and ecclesiastical, it is found that this union was not a legal one, then let Saint Gregory’s decision to Felix bishop of Sicily be held, “We have read that it was formerly constituted by the holy Fathers that incest-committers should in no way be considered married.” And Saint Ambrose in his first letter to the Corinthians says, “For a brother or sister is not under servitude in such cases. That is, the reverence of marriage is not owed when it would appal the Author of marriage. A marriage is not ratified which is without devotion for God, and so there is no sin to him who is sent away for God if he joins himself to someone else. The insult to God dissolves the law of marriage around him who he remains, so that if joined to another he should not be accused. But the unfaithful man who leaves is understood to sin against God and against marriage, since he was unwilling to have a marriage under devotion to God. Therefore there is no need to keep the pledge of marriage to him who left so that he would not hear about the Governor of Christians, the God of his spouse. For if Hesdra ordered unfaithful wives or husbands to be sent away, so that God might be propitiated and not angered if they took others from their stock – for it was not ordered to those, that once these had been sent back they might not marry others – so how much more, if the unfaithful husband leaves, will she have free will, if she wishes to marry a man of her law? It should not be imputed to matrimony that it was made outside the decree of God; but after he recognises and regrets that he has sinned, let him amend himself so that he may deserve mercy. If however both believe, the marriage is confirmed through the recognition of God. For God calls us in peace. Truly it is not fitting to take legal action against him who leaves, since he leaves with the hatred of God, and through this is not worthy to be had.” And here Saint Augustine in his book to Pollentius, ‘Rightly the lord ordered that the wives the sons of Israel had married should be sent away, for everything which is not done from faith is a sin.” And the reader will be able to find more things in these books.

[219] And in the Council of Agatha it is written, “We reserve absolutely no mercy for those joined together incestuously, unless they heal their adultery with a separation. Those who commit incest are not to be considered by the term of marriage, which it is wrong even to designate in this way” And a little later, “Indeed, those to whom an illicit union is forbidden have the freedom of entering into a better marriage.”

Interrogatio 19

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[218] Concerning that which was asked ‘And if she is found guilty of those crimes of which she is accused, tell us whether the king is able to marry another woman’: we have already responded to this in part above, but it is worth repeating now.

Responsio 18: if she is innocent.

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About that which is asked, If this woman again comes to the ordeal, and is found innocent, does her husband have to return to her, or can he unite with someone else? It is superfluous to repeat what we have showed above: that if she was innocent before the marriage was legally initiated, and she should be found to have kept faith with her husband once legally married, then according the Gospel, the Apostolic truth, the laws of the church and catholic doctrine it is not possible to separate a legitimate marriage. And if they are separated, they should remain unmarried or else be reconciled with each other. But lest we should leave this repeated question empty: the Lord said through Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy about that of which she is accused, if she should be found innocent, “If a man find a damsel that is a virgin” and what follows up to “he may not put her away all the days of his life”. And Saint Augustine says, expounding on this sentence, “It is rightly questioned whether there should be this punishment, that he may not put aside for all time her whom he wrongly and illicitly violated. For if we should wish to understand from that that she cannot, that is should not, be put aside for all time, because she has been made his wife, one may have recourse to the fact that Moses permitted the giving of a booklet of repudiation, and to send away. But for those who vitiate illicitly, he was unwilling to allow this, lest it should be seen to make a mockery, and more to have pretended that he married her, than really and truly to have married her. And this was commanded for her, whom a husband accused of not being a virgin, about which it was written, as we have said above, “and he shall have her to wife, and may not put her away all the days of his life”. And Saint Augustine also said about this sentence, “It is sufficiently clear here, how far the law wants women to be subjected to men, and wives to be amongst their maids: that when the husband gives testimony against his wife, she should be stoned if this is truly demonstrated, but that he in turn is not stoned, if this is shown to be false, but only castigated and condemned and commanded forever to adhere to her, whom he wanted to be without. But in other matters, he who harms with false witness someone who were it proven would be ordered to be killed, he is to be ordered to undergo the same punishment, as the other one would have, had it been true.”

Interrogatio 18: Lothar's options

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[217] In the seventh chapter, we ask to be informed as follows. If this woman again comes to the ordeal, and is found innocent, does her husband have to return to her, or can he unite with someone else? And if she is found guilty of those crimes of which she is accused, tell us whether the king is able to marry another woman. And if such matters are considered whence the king must do public penance, after she has been found to be criminous, tell us also whether that king is able to take a legitimate wife after public penance. And tell us whether, if she has been legally rejected, the king is able, after penance and if he so wishes, to take the concubine, whom he kept and with whom he is said to have committed adultery after the marriage was initiated, in marriage.

Responsio 17: bad news for sorcerers et al.

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Saint Leo wrote to the bishops throughout the provinces: “A good many sorcerers [!], however, who had so deeply involved themselves that no remedy could assist them, have been subjected to the laws in accordance with the constitutions of our Christian princes, and lest they should pollute the holy flock by their contagion, have been banished into perpetual exile by public judges”. And a little later, "For we cannot otherwise rule those entrusted to us unless we pursue with the zeal of faith in the Lord those who are destroyers and destroyed: and with what severity we can bring to bear, cut them off from intercourse with sound minds, lest this pestilence spread much wider. Wherefore I exhort you, beloved, I beseech and warn you to use such watchful diligence as you ought and can employ in tracking them out, lest they find opportunity of concealment anywhere. For as he will have a due recompense of reward from God, who carries out what conduces to the health of the people committed to him; so before the Lord’s judgment-seat no one will be able to excuse himself from a charge of carelessness who has not been willing to guard his people against the propagators of an impious misbelief.”

[215] And St Gregory wrote to Cyprian the deacon, “The most holy man Maximian our co-bishop desired to purge the church of God from wicked men, and was praiseworthily concerned about the lifestyle of clerics, as you know. While he was vigilantly watching over their actions with pastoral care, he learned that some had been infected by witchcraft, popularly called canterma, and these he gave to be kept in custody, as he informed your Affection by letter. However, because for the sake of our sins he was prevented by death from being able to avenge this crime, it is necessary that your Affection hurry to track this down with every subtlety, and to avenge in them according to the enormity of the crime, as the above mentioned bishops in the zeal for correction and justice would have done in this vengeance, if he were alive. Let your Affection with every strength and every haste take care to show almighty God its zeal in this matter, and to display to his enemies a fitting adversity for the retribution inflicted. So that what is written may be fulfilled: Have I not hated them, O Lord, that hated thee: and pined away because of thy enemies. If your Affection is set alight with his zeal, let a punishment be given to them who left God and acted against Him with sorcery. But if it is not able to follow this through rightly, then people like this should be sent to us, si this can be proved, and then they will without difficulty be convicted.” And to Januarius the bishop of Sardinia, “We exhort your Fraternity to keep watch in pastoral care more vigilantly against worshippers of idols and of auspicers and soothsayers, and publicly to speak to the people against meo f this sort, and to call them back by persuasive exhortation from such a disastrous sacrilege, the judgement of divine concentration, and from the danger of this present life. If however you find that they are unwilling to amend and reprove themselves in this way, then we want you to take on a more fervent zeal. And if they are slaves, castigate them with blows and tortures so that they can come to emendation; and if they are free, let them be led to penance by a suitable imprisonment and punishment. So that who disdain to listen to healthy words calling them back from peril of death, torture of their body will be able to lead them to the desired health of mind.”

And it is written in the canonical edict, “If anyone pays attention to arioli, aruspicii or incantatorii, or makes use of their amulets, let him be anathema. And everyone responded “Let him be anathema.” And in the Council of Anchyra, chapter 23, “Those who seek divinations and follow them in the fashion of the gentiles, or who bring these sort of men into their houses for finding something by a wicked art or for expiating something, let them lie under the rule for 15 years, according to the established grades of penance.” And from the Council of Braga, c.70, “If anyone following the customs of the pagans introduces magicians or soothsayers into his home, as if putting an evil outside or finding evil doers, or performing pagan processions, let them do penance for five years.” And in c.71. “It is not allowed for Christians to observe the traditions of the gentiles, or to worship the elements, or the path of the moon or the stars, or the deception of signs, for the building of a house or for the planting of crops or harvests or the union of marriages. For it is written, All things which you do in word or in deed, do them in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, thanking God.” And in chapter 72, “It is not allowed to pay attention in the collecting of medicinal herbs to observations or incantations, except those of the holy creed and the Lord’s prayer, so that only God and the Lord may be honoured.” And in chapter 73, “It is not allowed for Christian women to respect any vanity in their weaving, but let them invoke God as their helper, who gave to them the wisdom of weaving” And in the Council of Carthage, c. 88, “Anyone serving augurers or enchantresses must be separated from the society of the church, like those adhering to Jewish superstitions and celebrations.” And in the first book of the imperial capitularies, “That coclearii, sorcerers and enchantresses shall not be permitted to exist, who it is clear are terribly damned, as with Simon Magus.” And in the Council of Elvira, c.6, “If anyone kills someone else by witchcraft, which he could not do without idolatry, he will not receive communion even on his deathbed.”

[216] And it should be known that this severity of punishment in the Council of Elvira towards those who do not come to their senses will have to be observed: but according to the decrees of the blessed Celestine, “Final penance should not be denied to anyone repenting, and as the great Pope Leo decreed, neither should satisfaction be forbidden, nor reconciliation and the grace of communion denied, to those who in a time of necessary and in the pressure of great danger beg for the protection of penance and then reconciliation: even if they have lost their voice, if they can be shown to ask for it through indications of their remaining senses. And if they are so burdened by some illness so that what they had earlier demanded, they are at that moment no longer able to signify, then testimony should be taken from those standing around them, and the kindness of penance and reconciliation will follow on – saving however the rules of the canons concerning those persons who sin in their learning of the Lord’s faith. In general, the giving of grace to all those who are on the threshold of death and ask for communion, as the Nicene synod defined, whose conversion is to be gauged more in their mind than in time, since for God, true repentence suffers no delay in mercy, is not to be denied. The prophet said this too, ‘If you are converted and groan out, then you will be saved.” And in the Nicene Council: “And in all things it is fitting to explore the intention and appearance of the penitents, however many genuinely show their conversion in thought and with tears, patience and good works” And a little later, “Bishops investigating the fashion of their conversion have the power either to act more humanly towards them, or to add more time.” And the reader will find sufficient material in the fifth chapter of this council and in other councils. And Pope Innocent wrote to Decentius bishop of Gubbio, “About penitents, whether they are bearing penance for serious or for slight offences. If no sickness intervenes, the custom of the Roman church says that they should be remitted the fifth week before Easter. It is for the priest to estimate the weight of the crimes. He should listen carefully to the confession of the penitent, and his tears and crying as he is set right, and should order him to be released when he has observed a fitting satisfaction. If anyone is struck by illness and comes to despair of life, relaxation can be given to him before the Easter season, so that he will not depart this world without communion.”

Interrogatio 17

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[214] About that question which was posed: if by chance these male sorcerers or female enchanters should be found, what should be done about it?

Reponsio 16: blame the devil

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It should be known that since good marriage is instituted by God, and every sin exists not by its own natures – for evil has no substance, but rather when it can it coalesces in good nature – and for the sake of our sins, wickedness happens in good marriage by the working of the devil. Just as good land belongs to the Lord, since it is created by a good God and our iniquities are our own, and often we look upon our iniquities and see rot setting into the land of the Lord, who in anger promised for us that iron land would come, and a bronze heaven, and when mollified he promised that he would give us warm rain and a fruitful earth, and that the heaven will given rain and the earth will bring forth its fruits: not so that the nature of creatures will be changed, but because according to the measure of the meritorious, when God is angry or pleased, so we feel his vengeance or his grace upon us. And St Gregory said in his second book on morals, “By a hidden judgement, permission is given to wicked spirits that whom they strangle willingly in a noose of sin, they might drag them even unwillingly to the punishment of sin”. And Augustine wrote in his first book on marriage and concupiscence: “Whoever wonders that a creature of God is subjected to the devil, should not wonder. For one creature of God is in subjection to another creature of God, the less to the greater, a human being to an angelic one; and, not owing to nature, but to a corruption of nature, the unclean to the unclean […].For the devil is himself an unclean spirit: good, indeed, so far as he is a spirit, but evil as being unclean; for by nature he is a spirit, by the corruption thereof an unclean one. Of these two, the one is of God, the other of himself. His hold over men, therefore, whether of an advanced age or in infancy, is not because they are human, but because they are polluted.” And in his book On grace and freewill, he says “This ought to be the fixed and immoveable conviction of your heart, that there is no unrighteousness with God. Therefore, whenever you read in the Scriptures of Truth, that men are led aside, or that their hearts are blunted and hardened by God, never doubt that some ill deserts of their own have first occurred, so that they justly suffer these things. Thus you will not run counter to that proverb of Solomon: "The foolishness of a man perverts his ways, yet he blames God in his heart.”

Interrogatio 16: why do such things happen?

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[213] About that question which was posed: what might be the reason that God, as is said, often allows these things to happen in legitimate marriage?

Responsio 15: comments on the devil's work from Hincmar's experience and other sources

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[205] Let them reread the history of the Book of Kings, how after David’s sin with Bathsheba, the wife of Uria, the son of David, Amnon by the devil’s prompting, fell passionately in love with his sister Thamar, and how on the advice of Jonadbh, and symbolising Adam who fell by sinning on the advice of the tempting devil through Eve [?], he slept with her. And how before that sleeping together he loved her so much that he was wholly lost in her, and pined for her love. But after their sleeping together, he regarded her with tremendous hatred, so that the hatred with which he now hated her was greater than the love by which he had loved her. And this devilish work led, through fratricide, to other evils, which readers will find there.
And St Ambrose explains the verse of Psalm 118, ‘Unless thy law had been my meditation, I had then perhaps perished in my abjection’ and speaking about Joseph who carried messages sent through wicked angels, says “It is said that the devil said to a certain prophet (many say it was Isaiah held in prison) when a mass of imminent ruin was looming “Say that you did not speak from the Lord when you said those things, and I will change the minds and opinions of all towards you”.

And in a certain diocese of ours what we will explain took place. A certain young man of noble birth fell passionately in love with a woman of not ignoble ancestry. And seeking her legally from her parents, he won assent from her father, but the girl’s mother totally refused his request. But, what rarely happens, the father prevailed in agreeing to the young man’s demands. After betrothal, the giving of a dowry and a marriage celebration, the young man led her to a secret room, but he was in no way able to sleep with her as is normal. After they had led a life made tedious by irremediable hatred for two years, the young man went to the bishop, forced by necessity for he could not get advice anywhere else, with words of persuasion, requests and threats: that unless he allowed the marriage to be dissolved, he would take out his sword, through which murder would occur if the marriage could not be dissolved in any other way. But this bishop, sifting through many other such things often done by the devil, brought back to mind what the Lord said through the Prophet: “Son of man, dig in the wall, and see the wicked abominations which they commit here. And when I had digged in the wall, there appeared a door” and the rest which is read there. And he went from meeting to meeting, and through many treatises took the matter from the dispute to settlement, until the works of the devil were dissolved by the grace of God, and sexual relations, which had been possible with enjoyment with a concubine before, but impossible with his legally acquired woman, were made possible for the young man with his wife, after penance and church medicine. And the devilish hatred was driven off, and conjugal love was restored amongst the spouses up to now with the passion owed, and the married couple rejoice in numerous children.

[206]. It is shameful to repeat the stories known to us and it would take a long time to calculate the sacrilege, which we learn takes place in this sort of matter, with the bones of the dead, and ashes and burned coal, and with hairs from the head and from men and women’s genitals together with threads of various colours, and with various herbs and clocleoli, and parts of snakes, all put together while songs are chanted, from which men are freed and, cured by the blessing of the church, enjoy conjugal grace and what is naturally owed. Some are dressed up or clothed in red cloaks, some are driven mad by sorcerers through drink, some by food, some are mesmerised by chanting witches, and are found to be made almost lifeless. Some are debilitated by witches or women’s weaving, some woman are even found to have slept with dusii in the shape of the men for whom they were burning in love. Men and women alike, divine power restores to health, and devilish fantasies are suppressed and cast off by exorcisms and Catholic remedies. There are other things which necessary compels us to investigate and to judge, which we do not want to talk about because of the nefarious turpitude. And there are other things of this sort which are still worse, which we will not write here so that they cannot come to the attention of wicked people who perhaps might not know them. And moreover we hear about so many portents of devilish working wrought by magical art that they exceed what can be believed.

But it is not remarkable if in these last times there come such prefigurings of the coming of the Antichrist, which the Lord and his apostles had described would come St Paul says about these: “For the mystery of iniquity already worketh according to the working of Satan, in all power and signs and lying word” and again “Now the Spirit manifestly saith that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error and doctrines of devils.” This vanity of the magic arts deriving from wicked angels, was spread by Zoroaster the king of the Bactrians, whom Ninus the king of the Assyrians killed in battle and who lived for many centuries thanks to Democritus. And it was practised amongst the Assyrians by many devilish men, of whom some were so proficient in the arts of sorcery that as we said, they even resisted Moses with similar signs, turning sticks into dragons and water into blood.’ And all these evil-doers have one impiety [although] they have a diversity of arts and a diversity of names, as the learned pagans and even Christians observed.

[207] And omitting most, let us remind ourselves of some things: There are magi, who are popularly called malefici because of the magnitude of their crimes. These stir up the elements, they disturb the minds of men and without any drinking of poison, they kill by their violence of song alone. There are necromancers, by whose chants the dead are brought back to life to make divination, and who respond to questions. There are water-magicians, who call up the shades of demons by peering into water, and see images or mocked-up versions of them, and claim to be able to hear things from them. There are chanters, who perform their art with words. There are Arioli, who utter wicked prayers by the altars of idols, and offer dreadful sacrifices, and from these rituals receive the replies of demons. There are auspicers, who guard the times of doing business and working, who gaze upon the bowels, entrails and shoulderblades of sheep amongst other things, and from these predict the future. And there are augurers, who wait upon the flights and songs of birds, or which one sort concentrates on vision, that is the flight of birds, the other on hearing, that is birdsong. And there are phitonissae, otherwise known as ventriloquists. And there are astrologers, so called because they augur from the stars. And there are some who work on dates of birth, and who track the movement of the stars for those being born, who are popularly called mathematicians. And there are horoscopers, who speculate from the time of birth with various and different opinions. And there are sortilogi, who profess a knowledge of heavenly matters through things which they call the lots of the saints, under the cover of a made-up religion, or who guarantee a future by looking at various writings. And there are some who predict something fortunate or sad from the movement of limbs, that is the twitching of an eye or a part of some limb. And there are praestigatores, called by another name obstrigilii, who hamper or restrict the sight of human eyes, like those are said to play around with pennies, which is wholly devilish. And so we read that the devil first betrayed this through Mercury, which is why the inventor of it is called Mercury: and no Christian can allow this devilish work to take place in front of him, or, if he has any power over him who does these things, let him go unpunished, without sin. To these also belong the bonds of execrable healings, which the art of the doctors condemns, whether through chanting, or scrawling, or in hanging things or binding them, or by measuring certain measures, and what women call in the textile and weaving work superventas. In all these things, there is demonic art, made through the pestilential association of men and bad angels. And all these things should be avoided by every Christian, and totally repudiated and condemned with every execration.

[208] And there are those who say when they go hunting that they should not meet a cleric coming towards them. And there are those who make their dogs bark at a tree-trunk as if it were a beast. And there are those who count the days in the passing of a journey or in the beginning of a house-building. The Apostle Paul considered this such a great sin that he said “You observe days and months and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest perhaps I have laboured in vain among you”. And the Lord said in the Gospel: “As it came to pass in the days of Lot. They did eat and drink, they bought and sold, they planted and built.” And apart only from the terrible and unspeakable crime of the Sodomites, he mentioned only those things which they could have thought small or of no significance: so that you might understand what punishments illicit things receive, if licit things and those without which this life could not be led when done immoderately are punished by fire and sulphur. Rightly therefore Augustine, disturbed with a just grief when he saw the alluring habits of crime, exclaimed ‘Woe to the sins of men! We recoil only from the unaccustomed, but we are forced to tolerate by avoiding, and sometimes by tolerating even ourselves to perform the more customary things, which the blood of God’s son was shed to wash away, and although they can be so great that they make the gates of the kingdom to heaven to be shut against them. O Lord, may we not do all those things which we are not able to prohibit.’

And it should be known too, as we read in the words of the doctors, that there are demons, who as if specialising in looking out for particular sins though they enjoy all of them, provoke men as if particularly to those in which they specialise. Therefore the evangelist Mark commemorates that the Lord cast out seven demons from Mary, who was a sinner in the city, so that, where there was an abundance of sin, a superabundance of grace should be shown. For the number seven is often placed to stand for everything: so it should be understood that she was cured from seven demons, that is freed from all the sins. And we read, amongst the leaders of these demons of vice, that the Lord said of Mammon, “You are not able to serve both God and Mammon, for, who serves Mammon, that is riches, serves him who is placed above these earthly things by the merit of his perversity, and is said to be a leader of this world by The Lord. And we read about these types of demons, which is released through enticements in the heat of wrath or the voluptuousness of the flesh, or in the fire of adultery, by which hearts are set alight; and they place the person they have invaded in waters which extinguish charity: that he is not able to be ejected except by prayer and fasting. And the ancient enemy tempted the first of our kin, as is known, by greed, vainglory and avarice, and by tempting overcame him, so that he willingly submitted to him. And he lures the next man who is tempted by the same means through which he laid low the first.

[209] And in the Psalm, we sing about ‘the arrow that flieth in the day”, that is about the sermon of heretics and philosophers, who are mouthpieces of the devil and are not able to deceive unless they promise the light. And this sort of demon easily corrupts those, who neglecting their own concerns, and giving heed to the actions of others, wanders forth out of its own proper condition and order, and involve themselves too much in external matters. And it leads on the deceived mind of these through vain hopes, so that it might hesitate from the intention of penance, showing to it many things spread our far and wide, so that it may receive no good hereafter, being saddened by no evil now and that it may then be more fully overwhelmed with punishment, in that now it even rejoices in its transgressions. But about ‘the business that walketh about in the dark’, that is the overseer of denial and lies, about ‘the attack’ that is of headlong haste and fear, and of the ‘noon-day devil’, that is sloth which makes the fervour of devotion grow cold, and the heretics grow warm with love of pretended right intention and ambition for the works of light, about which demon is written “He sleepeth under the shadow, in the covert of the reed, and in moist places.”, under the shadow, that is in dark consciences, in the covert of the reeds, which is shining on the outside, but empty within, and works in lascivious imitations and softened senses into the damp places. And this sort of demon leaves the man at the time of baptism, or after the fruits of penance and the grace of reconciliation, goes and finds seven other spirits worse than he. He comes to the house of the man he left, and finding it empty, cleaned with brushes and decorated – cleaned that is from the initial sins through baptism or penance, empty of good actions through negligence, and decorated with pretended virtues through hypocrisy, and he and the spirits worse than he whom he brought along enter in and live there. Through the seven spirits are signified all vices. Whomsoever wicked heresy or worldly cupidity seize after baptism, soon he falls into the depths of all vices. And rightly worse spirits are said to enter him, since he will not only have those seven vices which are the opposites to the seven spiritual virtues, but he will also through hypocrisy pretend to have those virtues. And as it is narrated in Isaiah that the seven spirits of virtue descended upon the stock of the root of Jesse and the flower which grew from that root, so in the opposite way the number of vices in the devil is consecrated.”

And there are other types of demons, which we read are constituted by their prince for particular vices, which we will not mention here. We will take care to mention only those demons who are in charge of fornication, to show how there are even types of demons who delight in fornication so much that they even seek to sleep with humans. We would be able to talk about some things of this sort which happened in our time, except that for the sake of brevity we will pass over them. And whoever doubts about these things, let them read so that what we can say can be better believed what Saint Ampihlocius, bishop of Ichonienis, whom Saint Jerome recorded in his book On illustrious men with appropriate veneration, described amongst the wonderful virtues of Basil bishop of Caeserea, saying

[210] “Elladius, who saw him of most holy memory, who was made by him a minister of perfect miracles, and who was the successor after the death of this apostolic Basil to his see, a miraculous man and decorated with every virtue, told me what follows. A certain faithful senator called Proterius went to the holy and venerable places, wishing to consecrate his daughter there, and to place her in one of the monasteries of good repute [?], thereby offering a sacrifice to God. But the devil, jealous of the divine will from the first murder, moved one of the senator’s servants and ignited him with love for the girl. This man, since he was unsuitable for this sort of endeavour and did not dare to approach the task, spoke to one of the abominable enchanters, and promised to pay a great quantity of gold to him if he could overcome this girl. The sorcerer said to him, ‘O man, I cannot prevail in this matter, but if you want, I will send you to the devil who procures for me, and he will carry out your will’. He said to him, ‘Whatever you say to me, I will do.’ And the sorcerer said to him, Will you renounce Christ in writing? And he replied, Yes. And the worker of iniquity said to him, if you are ready and prepared, I will be your helper. And the minister of wickedness wrote a letter to the devil and sent it, whose gist went like this: Since it behoves me, o lord and procurer, to take people away from the religion of the Christians and to lead them to your will so that your part may be multiplied, I have sent this man, who carried these my letters. He burns with desire for a girl, and I request that this deed may be followed through, so that I may glory in it, and with great alacrity I may gather together those pleasing to you.’ And he gave him the letter and said, “Go at such a time of night, stand upon the monument of the gentiles, and raise this charter in the air, and there will stand around you those who can take you to the devil. He did this at once, and threw the wretched charter into the air, calling on the devil’s assistance. And at once, there were princes of the shadowy power there around him, evil spirits, and taking this erring man with great joy they led him to where the devil was, and they showed to him the devil, sitting on a high sit, and around him were standing wicked spirits. And the devil took the letters from the sorcerer, and said to the wretch ‘Do you believe in me?’ and he said, “I believe’. And do you deny your Christ? And he replied, I deny him. And the devil said to him ‘You Christians are treacherous. When you have something for me to do, you come to me, but when your desire has been achieved, you deny me and you go to your Christ, who is kind and merciful and who accepts you. But make for me a signed attestation of a willing renunciation of your Christ and baptism, and of a willing profession of my things in the world. Then you will be with me in the day of judgment, enjoying with me the eternal torments laid on: and I will at once fulfil your desire.’ And he drew up with his own hand the attestation as he had been asked.

At once the corrupter of souls, the contorted dragon, sent demons who are in charge of fornication, and they inflamed the girl with love for the young man. She threw herself to the ground, and began to cry out ‘Pity me, pity me Father, for I am horribly tortured on account of that boy of ours! Pity my innards, show to me, your only daughter, your paternal love, and join me to the boy whom I love! If you do not want to do this, you will see me soon dying a bitter death, and you will account for me on God’s judgement day. The father said with tears, “O alas for me, a sinner, how should I pity my daughter? Who has stolen my treasure? Who has spoiled my daughter? Who has put out the sweet light of my eyes? I wanted to marry you to the celestial bridegroom, Christ, to set you as a flatmate/cohabitant of angels. And I hurried to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God and I hoped to be saved through you. Have you gone mad in a lascivious love? Unless I marry you to God, will you not lead my in my old age with tribulation to hell, and cover over the nobility of our kin with confusion?’ But the girl thought nothing of this, and kept on crying out ‘O father, do what I want or soon you will see me dying. The father brought to great weakness, and taken up with an immeasurable sadness, believed the advice of his friends who suggested that he should defer to her will, and believing her [?], the father ordered the desire of the girl to be fulfilled, so that she should not give herself over to death. And he brought together his own daughter and the boy she sought, and giving them all his wealth, he said to his daughter ‘Farewell, wretched daughter. Very soon you will wail in repentance, when you have nothing to show’.

[211] Once the marriage was carried out and completed, by the devil’s wicked work, and a little time had passed, it was noticed by some that the boy did not go to church, and did not approach the immortal and life-giving mysteries. And they said to his wretched spouse, ‘Do you know that the husband you chose is not a Christian, but is a wanderer in faith and a foreigner? She was filled with dark and miserable thoughts, and threw herself to the ground, and began to scratch herself with her nails, and to beat her chest and cry out ‘no one was ever saved who did not obey his parents. Who will announce my confession to my father? Oh wretched me, that I have fallen to such a depth of perdition? Why was I born, why once born was I not carried off?’ Her wholly lost husband heard that she was lamenting these things, and ran to her, telling her that this was not the truth of things. She was consoled by his persuasive speech, and said to him If you wish to do right to me, and to pity my soul, then tomorrow you and I will go together to church, and you will participate in the uncontaminated mysteries: then I will be satisfied. Then under compulsion, he told her the sentence of his decree. At once she laid aside her womanly infirmity, and gave him good advice, and she ran to Basil the shepherd and disciple of Christ, enemy of impiety, and cried out “Have pity on wretched me! pity me, disciple of the Lord, for I have dealt with demons, pity me who did not obey my own father And she told him the story of what had happened. The holy man of God called the boy and asked him, if things were in this way. He said tearfully to the saint, “Yes, holy man of God: even if I were silent, my deeds would cry out.’ And he told to him the wicked work of the devil from the beginning through the final end. Then the saint said to him, Do you wish to return to the Lord our god. TO this the boy said Certainly I wish it, but I am not able to. And Basil said Why is that? The boy replied, I denied Christ in writing, and professed in the devil. Basil said Do not worry about that. Our God is kind, and he will accept your repentance. He has compassion for our wickedness. And the girl threw herself to the feet of the holy evangelist, and begged him, o disciple of Christ our God, help us as much as you can! And the holy man said to the boy, do you believe in salvation? The boy said, I believe, lord, and help my incredulity. And at once he took his hand, and making the sign of Christ on him and praying, he shut him away in an inner place of the holy enclosure. And giving him a rule, he worked with him for three days. After this he came to him, and asked ‘How are things, my son? And he replied ‘I am in great despondency, saint of God: I cannot bear their shouting, their threats and their throwing of stones. They hold my attestation and object, telling me You came to us, not we to you. And the holy man said to him: do not fear, my son, only trust. And he gave him a little food, and again made the sign of Christ over him, and praying, he shut him up again. And after a few days, he visited him and said ‘How are things, my son?’ And he replied, Holy father, I hear their shouts and threats from a distance, but I cannot see them. And again he gave him food, and praying, shut the door and went way. And on the fortieth day he returned and said to him, ‘How are things, brother?’ And he replied: I am well, saint of God. I saw you fighting for me today in a vision, conquering the devil.’

[212] Soon after, the saint uttered a prayer according to custom, and led him out, and brought him to his dormitory. The next day, he called his holy clergy and the monasteries and the whole people pleasing to Christ, and said to them, O dearest children mine, give all thanks to God! Behold, the good shepherd must carry the lost sheep on his shoulders and bring him to church. Therefore we must keep watch at night, and beg his Kindness, that the corruptor of souls will not win in this matter. And at once the people, brought together, prayed to God the whole night, shouting for him with tears ‘Kyrie eleison, Lord have mercy’. And soon the holy man, with the whole multitude of the people, took the by the right hand, and led him to the holy church of God with psalms and hymns. And behold! The devil who bewitches the unsaddened life with every pernicious strength, came and invisibly held the boy, and tried to take him from the saint’s hand. And the boy began to shout ,’saint of God, help me! And the cursed devil attacked with such force, that he dragged the memorable man as well as the boy. And the saint turned and said to the devil, “Wicked corrupt of souls, father of shadows and perdition, if your own perdition not enough to you, which you have brought upon yourself and those who are under you, that you should also tempt the creatures of my God? The devil said to him, you are being unfair to me, Basil, and [?] many of us heard the voices of demons saying this while the people shouted ‘Kyrie eleison’. The saint of God said to him, May the Lord reprove you, devil. And he replied saying, Basil, you are being unfair to me. I did not go to him, abut he came to me, and he denied Christ and professed in me. And see, I have his attestation, and on the day of Judgement I will lead him to the general Judge. And the saint of God said, Blessed Lord my God, may the people not waver their hands from the heights of heaven until you return that attestation. And he turned and said to the people, Raise your hands to heaven, and shout with tears, ‘Christ have mercy’. And the people stood for a long time, with their hands stretched out to heaven: behold ,the attribution of the boy fell through the air, and was seen by all, and fell to the hands of our memorable father and shepherd. He took it, and thanking God he was made most joyful, and in the presence of the whole people, he said to the boy, Do you recognise these letters, brother? And he said to him Yes, saint of God, that is my attestation. And saint Basil ripped it up, and led him into church, and made him worthy for the holy ministry and communion of the mysteries and gifts of Christ. And making a great undertaking, he calmed the people, and he led out the boy; and instructing him and giving him a fitting rule, he return him to his wife, glorifying and praising God with a mouth that could not be silenced.

[213] And the venerable priest Bede said in his third commentary on the Gospel of Luke, And Jesus asked him, saying: What is thy name? But he said: Legion. Because many devils were entered into him. He did not ask him his name because he did not know, but so that the virtue of the healer would shine out more gracefully, when the raging pest he was tolerating was confessed in his presence [?]. And priests in our times, who know how to cast out demons by the grace of exorcism, often say that patients cannot be cured, unless they openly confess everything they know about the wicked spirits, from sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, or whatever other bodily or spiritual senses they have learned awake or sleeping. And especially in cases when incorporeal spirits which the Gauls call dusii seek with a unspeakable miracle to sleep with humans and claim to have done so, appearing to men in female shape, and to women in male dress, the priests demand that the name of the demon, by which he named himself, and the form of the oaths they swore to each other in a pact of love, should be revealed. There was a matter very similar to this, and true and well known by the attestation of many: a certain priest, a neighbour of mine, told that he had tried to cure a nun from a demon, but as long as the details were hidden, he was not able to get anywhere. But when she confessed the phantom which was bothering her, he soon drove off the spirit with prayers and other types of purification, as was fitting. And he healed the woman’s body from the ulcers which she had contracted from the devil’s touch with medicinal care, by applying salt which had been blessed. But one of these ulcers, which was high up on her side he was not able to close off, but it kept on opening up. And he asked her whom he wanted to cure for advice on how she might be cured. She said ‘If you sprinkle me with oil consecrated for the sick and anoint me in this fashion, I will be at once restored to health. For I once say, through the spirit, in a certain city far away which I have never seen with earthly eyes, a certain girl labouring under a similar affliction, who was cured in this way by a priest.’ And he did as she suggested, and at once the ulcer took the remedy which it had previously refused to two. I took care to mention this briefly against demonic tricks, so that you will understand that the Lord did not ask the spirit he was about to eject for its name in vain.”

Interrogatio 15: questions of magical practice

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[205] About that which was asked, whether it is able to be true as many men say, that there are women who by their evil-doing are able to place an irreconcilable hatred between husband and wife, and are able to sow a love beyond words between a man and a woman, and all the rest which the questioners wanted to bring to this question.

Interrogatio 14/Responsio 14: about the oath

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[203] Let the words of St Gregory in his book on the morals, c.33, be read for the question raised about the oath. For he says: “Imagine someone who seeks friendships of this world, and who binds himself by an oath to someone leading a life similar to his, that he will cover over his secrets in total silence; and that he to whom this was sworn is known to be committing adultery, and even tries to kill the husband of the adulteress. The man who swore the oath comes back to his senses and is buffeted about by various thoughts: he fears to keep silence about it, lest by keeping silent about the adultery he becomes a participant in the murder; but he fears also to betray, lest he render himself guilty of perjury. He is tied by the entwined nerves of his testicles. Fearing to come down on either side, lest he not be free of the sickness of transgression.” And a little later, “There is however a principle which is useful for eliminating these trickeries, which is that when the mind is compelled between lesser and greater sins, then if there is really no path of escape open without sin, the lesser sins should always be chosen. For he who is enclosed by a circuit of walls so that he might not escape jumps off in flight there where the walls are lowest.”

And the venerable priest Bede says in his homily on the Gospel according to Matthew, in which Herod’s foolish oath is described, “How greatly we should avoid the rashness of taking an oath, the Lord in the Gospel and James in his letter teach, saying “Before all things, my brothers, do not swear by the heavens nor by the earth, nor by any other oath.” Let your speech be ‘yes’ and ‘no’, so that you will not fall at the judgment. That judgement at which Herod falls, so that fearing perjuring or perjury, it was necessary for him to commit a sin. But if it happens perhaps that we should swear unwisely, which oath if kept would lead to worse consequences, then by wise counsel we know that the oath can be changed, and by force of necessity, we will have to perjure, rather than avoiding perjury only to fall into a more serious crime. For David swore by the Lord to kill Nabal, a foolish and impious man, and to destroy all that belonged to him. But at the intercession of his prudent wife Abigail, he revoked his threats, he sheathed his sword, and grieved that he had committed a sin with such perjury. And Herod swore to give to the dancer whatever she demanded of him, and, lest he be called a perjurer by the revellers, he polluted the revels with blood, making the death of the prophet into a dancer’s reward. A careful moderation is to be observed not just in swearing, but in all things. so if by the traps of the wily enemy we make such a slip from which we cannot escape without some stain of sin, let us escape it by seeking the outcome in which we foresee that we will commit the lesser sin. And so, for those shut in by enemy walls on all sides, and who trying to escape see all exits blocked off, it is necessary that they chose some place from which to jump, where from the lowest wall they run the least danger of falling.” And the Council of Lerida, “whoever obliges himself by an oath that he will in no way make peace with someone who he is suing, he will be separated from the communion of the body and blood of the Lord for one year for his perjury, and he will absolve his guilty with alms, tears and as far as he can, fasting, and hurry to return quickly to charity, which deals with a multitude of sins.”

[204] And since the questioners wished to ask about an oath of this sort, we thought it not irrelevant to write about such things which are accustomed to happen to human fragility. We will not attack anyone in particular with what we write, but rather in case there is such a person, whom this advice would be able to help, mindful of the scripture saying “whatsoever thou shalt spend over and above, I, at my return, will repay thee”. And so although we were not asked about it, we thought we should include [advice] for someone who must chose between two things and hesitates. For no one will easily find, indeed no one is able to find someone who is holier than David, wiser than Solomon, and stronger than Samson. And these, captured by love of a woman which tames iron wills by lust, and neither shrinks back from the rags of the poor nor fears the royal purple, did things which were not befitting. And women often come to us complaining that young men made them a pledge and then scorned them and left. And it has meanwhile been found by us that men leave their legitimate wives and adhere to adulteresses that they should keep the pledge they promised, and they struggle with great effort to be separated from these wives. About this business, St Augustine says in his book On the good of marriage “There is this further, that in that very debt which married persons pay one to another, even if they demand it with somewhat too great intemperance and incontinence, yet they owe faith alike one to another. Unto which faith the Apostle allows so great right, as to call it "power," saying, "The woman has not power of her own body, but the man; again in like manner also the man has not power of his own body, but the woman." But the violation of this faith is called adultery, when either by instigation of one's own lust, or by consent of lust of another, there is sexual intercourse on either side with another against the marriage compact: and thus faith is broken, which, even in things that are of the body, and mean, is a great good of the soul: and therefore it is certain that it ought to be preferred even to the health of the body, wherein even this life of ours is contained. For, although a little chaff in comparison of much gold is almost nothing; yet faith, when it is kept pure in a matter of chaff, as in gold, is not therefore less because it is kept in a lesser matter. But when faith is employed to commit sin, it were strange that we should have to call it faith; however of what kind soever it be, if also the deed be done against it, it is the worse done; save when it is on this account abandoned, that there may be a return unto true and lawful faith, that is, that sin may be amended, by correction of perverseness of the will. As if any, being unable alone to rob a man, should find a partner in his iniquity, and make an agreement with him to do it together, and to divide the spoil; and, after the crime has been committed, should take off the whole to himself alone. That other grieves and complains that faith has not been kept with him, but in his very complaint he ought to consider, that he himself rather ought to have kept faith with human society in a good life, and not to make unjust spoil of a man, if he feels with how great injustice it has failed to be kept with himself in a fellowship of sin. Forsooth the former, being faithless in both instances, must assuredly be judged the more wicked. But, if he had been displeased at what they had done ill, and had been on this account unwilling to divide the spoil with his partner in crime, in order that it might be restored to the man, from whom it had been taken, not even a faithless man would call him faithless. Thus a woman, if, having broken her marriage faith, she keep faith with her adulterer, is certainly evil: but, if not even with her adulterer, worse. Further, if she repent her of her sin, and returning to marriage chastity, renounce all adulterous compacts and resolutions, I count it strange if even the adulterer himself will think her one who breaks faith.” And this is equally to be understood about adultery, that someone breaches an agreement made with an adulteress, that adulteress cannot rightly say that he is a violator of a pledge.

Responsio 13b: on communion and bishops' responsibilities (again).

2008-01-03T09:58:00.000-08:00

[200] And whoever guilty of sin dares to eat the Lord’s supper while remaining in sin or before correction and satisfaction, dares to eat it for his own condemnation as we said above and as the Apostle attests, saying “Whoever eats this bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.” And Saint Ambrose says about this, “What is it to be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, except to be punished for the death of the Lord? For he was killed on account of those who thought his kindness useless.” And Paul says again “Let man test himself and then eat of that bread and drink of that cup.” Man should test himself, that is correct himself of that sin, and reprimand that sin, and after a worthy satisfaction, come to the holy communion, so that the soul should know it owes reverence to Him whose body it comes to take. For this too it should consider, that it is the Lord whose body and blood it takes. And what follows: “Therefore there are many weak and incapable amongst you, and many are sleeping”, to which he comments that “let him show the image of judgement on those who carelessly taken the body of the Lord.” For as these are infirm and are dying in body, so whoever remains in sin or has the mood of sinning, and takes the body and blood of the Lord brings death upon himself, by unworthily taking that from which he could take life, if he took the sacraments following a suitable satisfaction after a worthy penance.

And if anyone asks, why those who take it unworthily even now are not weakened or dying, as they were then weakened and dying, let him accept that the Apostle did not say that all were weakened or died, but “many were made weak and many died.” And in the early church physical signs were necessary, but now a true faith should suffice. It is different, because as is written, at the end of the world the sun will be like a sackcloth of hair, that is the church in the bitterness of grief without the gleaming of miracles, as is clearly proven [?]. And while some are corrected who take communion in honesty, although like Peter they sin later, some taking communion wickedly are tolerated like Judas, who was his own murderer, and who showed by a miserable end what the soul now suffers without a body and what it will suffer forever with the body, since it ate and drank the divine mysteries as a judgment upon itself. And what he adds: “If we judge ourselves, we will not be judged: he means if we ourselves correct our errors, we will not be judged by the Lord, that is condemned.”

[201] And therefore the holy canons sanctified that sinners should be removed from or reunited to the holy altar by the judgment of the priest, as the Lord said to the lepers, who prefigured the leprosy of sinners now dispersed throughout the church: “Go, show yourselves to the priests”, so that they might consider the worthy satisfaction for them according to the magnitude or multitude of sins they saw; and so that without an acceptance of persons, they should set a length of time for penitence and for their reconciliation. So that they should not take in judgment and condemnation what the Lord gave to believers for their redemption and their salvation. But if there is a sinner who is slow to comprehend and neglects to repent, confess and do satisfaction for the sins he committed, episcopal care should not advise him to dissemble, mind of the sentence said to it “’if thou be surety for thy friend, thou hast engaged fast thy hand to a stranger’, that is if you take the soul of a brother in danger into your way of life, you have bound your mind to sollicitudinous care which was not there when you took up pastoral office. ‘Thou art ensnared with the words of thy mouth, and caught with thy own words’, for although you compel those committed to you to good things by preaching, it is first necessary that you yourself obey what you say. ‘Do, therefore, my son, what I say, and deliver thyself: because thou art fallen into the hand of thy neighbour. Run about, make haste, stir up thy friend’:Do not just remember to keep guard by living well, but dislodge him who you are in charge of from the sloth of sin by preaching. ‘Give not sleep to thy eyes, neither let thy eyelids slumber’. He gives sleep to his eyes who neglects the care of those subjected to him; he sleeps who recognised indeed their reprehensible deeds, but does not correct them because of a weariness of mind. ‘Deliver thyself as a doe from the hand, and as a bird from the hand of the fowler.’ As much as a bird tries to escape from the net, or the doe from the hand of the captor, so should you struggle that you will render yourself free as your Listener instituted from the wager of life, lest you be marked out as a hired hand, not a shepherd.” If you see anyone being dragged to luxury, or fired up for avarice, or raised up in pride, or divided in anger, and you - either making an acceptance of persons, fearing the wealthy lest his hand should angrily take away from you what it enticingly paid out, or through respect of familiarity or whatever earthly reward you remain silent, – you kill those souls sinking with earthly advantages, and in the divine view you will be counted not as a shepherd but as a hired help. Instead, preach and beseech, pressing every opportunity. If he will not hear you warning him according to the Gospel, go to the royal power so that he might be compelled. And if you can still not lead the matter to fulfilment, then announce your warning to the church, according to the divine precept. And if he does not hear the church, let him be to you as a foreigner and a tax collector, lest by dissembling or neglecting to argue (like the sons of the priest Heli, who sinned against God so that they would not be bitter to men) you perish with him.

And since there should no sparing of any person against God, it is clear that we might safely spare him and ourselves, to whom we are carefully unsparing according to our moderation, as much as the Lord gave St Ambrose who by not sparing Theodosius gave him merit in heaven in God’s presence, and an eternal memory on earth amongst men, so that it should be understood that it was written of him he acquired ‘the memory of the just man with praise”. Nor should Gregory’s sentence of Queen Brunhild be heard perfunctorily by bishops and kings and all those endowed with human power, in which he says “These things we say should not be dissembled away, for whoever is able to eradicate sin and neglects to do so, without doubt makes himself a participant in the crime. Look to your soul, look to your grandchildren, whom you want to govern happily, look to your provinces, and think very seriously about correcting wicked deeds before the creator raises His hand to strike, so that he might not strike all the harder, the longer he has been waiting.” And if perhaps whatever person does not obey the divine speech, let him be expelled from the church by the abovementioned procedure, so that this expulsion, God willing, will be able to help him to salvation, as St Augustine says in his book on rebuke and grace: “Therefore, let brethren who are subject be rebuked by those who are set over them, with rebukes that spring from love, varied according to the diversity of faults, whether smaller or greater. Because that very penalty that is called condemnation, which episcopal judgment inflicts, than which there is no greater punishment in the Church, may, if God will, result and be of advantage for most wholesome correction. For we know not what may happen on the coming day; nor must any one be despaired of before the end of this life; nor can God be contradicted, that He may not receive and give repentance, and receive the sacrifice of a troubled spirit and a contrite heart, and absolve from the guilt of condemnation, however just, and so Himself not condemn the condemned person. Yet the necessity of the pastoral office requires, in order that the terrible contagion may not creep through the many, that the diseased sheep should be separated from the sound ones; perchance, by that very separation, to be healed by Him to whom nothing is impossible.”

And if perhaps – and may it not happen – someone should rise up who is puffed up with earthly power and disdains to obey, and snapping the reins of Christ, rushes to the damnation of hell, the bishop like the Prophet Ezechiel will have an iron pan, that is glowing with the zeal of charity, to free him. And he should remember the sentence of Saint Ambrose, who said in this letter to the Corinthians: “St Paul humiliated their pride in this things, saying, “you are puffed up and have not rather mourned: that he might be taken away from among you that hath done this thing” not so that he might make them complain, but to make them instead honest - for they were themselves participants, while they allowed someone to remain amongst them uncriticised for such a great crime – so that all by one accord should throw him out, if he refused to amend himself. If however he who knows that the person is guilty does not have the power to cast him out or cannot prove it, he will be immune. And the judge should not condemn without an accuser, as the Lord did not at all cast out Judas although he was a thief, because he was not accused. And the Holy Spirit said through a worthy and pleasing mouthpiece, that is the blessed St Benedict, “and again the free governor will be such, that if he have bestowed all diligence on his unquiet and disobedient flock, and employed the utmost care to cure their corrupt manners, he shall then be acquitted in the judgment of the Lord, and may say with the Prophet: “I have not hidden thy justice in my heart, I have told thy truth and thy salvation,. but they contemned and despised me.” And then finally, death shall be inflicted as a just punishment upon the disobedient sheep.

[end of responsio 13]

Responsio 12d: time to examine Hucbert

2008-01-03T08:13:00.000-08:00

p[p 183] But we remind that the royal road in exercising justice should be maintained without any respect of whatever person, just as the magnificent doctor Gregory writes to the metropolitan Domitian: ‘We advise your fraternity, that he also take care to search for the truth with all subtlety and thus quickly impose an end to the contentions of the parties according to justice, lest each part may complain bitterly that they suffer prejudice in judgement. For just as we do not want anybody to be condemned without judgement, thus for no excuse do we suffer the things that have been decided to be delayed.’ And he writes to Constantius the bishop of Milan, from which in that case everyone knowing and intending rightly will be able to take a similarity and a not unsuitable example. [p 184]. For he says: ‘If there was as much care in the examination, as there had been (?) subtlety in discussion, nothing from that which is said about our brother would have been uncertain, but it would have been evident, whether it was true or made up (?), since as we knew, such a question as is now raised again him was raised against him a little while ago in Sicily before our brother of reverent memory, bishop Maximianus. But since his case was enquired into with subtle investigation, he was found innocent, who had been accused of a crime. Now, therefore, since his those things which were said against him were not investigated with the strictness befitting, and the acts completed thence before your fraternity, proved adequate neither for condemnation or absolution, it is not a light matter, which ought to be decided either incautiously or cursorily. For the matter is grave enough and ugly, that a definite sentence is said in a dubious matter. And indeed these acts could have been suitable for deciding, if confession of the accused were to follow, if yet subtlety of examination were to bring out (?) the same confession from secret things, and not pain extracting violently. That frequently causes this, that also the innocent are known to confess themselves as guilty. For after the aforesaid brother, as it said, claimed he was tortured in custody and burned with hunger, you ought to know if it is thus, whether he harms (?). For if a confession should have been extorted thus, when such cases receive a sentence, and he is called to the Holy See, the person who is judged is not present (?), and the truth is searched for very strictly and from every side, so that then it is decided if a sentence ought to remain or not? And therefore, since both the person is absent and the acts, which you submitted to us, do not seem to us to satisfy suitably, just as we said above, we neither ought nor are able to decide anything rashly about the person of the brother, lest, may it not happen, we might be found reprehensible to our men (?), to whom by the law of others he is able to retract sentences (?).’ And he says to Bishop Virgil of Arles: ‘Let emendation and punishment strike the culpable and let false rumour not afflict the innocent.’ And he writes to Bishop Columbus: ‘Since it is proved to be sufficiently perverse and against ecclesiastical criticism that someone is deprived in error for the sake of the wishes of certain ones, whom his own fault or action does not evict from the office which he performs.’

Hence therefore let the judges consider, that if it is reputed about the woman’s dishonour, the same man who offered force to her or enticed her to evil should be summoned and the case should be investigated rather via him and he himself should be brought in and examined according to the law and either freed or punished by legal judgement. This is especially the case, since, as we hear, he himself handed her over legally to her husband, in the place of a parent, whom it behoves, according to the precept of the Lord through Moses, if she was not found a virgin in the first lying together, either to show the indications of definite virginity or to consign to reproaches of dishonour. Otherwise, whatever suspicion might perhaps gnaw at those who desire to judge justly, and those who are rather eager and able to detract from others, rather than establish their own things (?) may find a place for detraction, saying: A woman in custody, thoroughly terrified by afflictions and threats, will dare and be able to say nothing other than what is ordered her. Let him come, who is in his liberty and legally either be freed, defending, or conceding about the things that he was reputed to have done (?), that he is not only a participant, but also author and executor of the crime, let him be legally punished. And either in that man’s freedom, let her who is in custody and lied about herself because of fear, [p 185] be legally freed, or let her be legally punished in his punishment. The just judges can read this, just as ordered in the first book of Roman law chapter six about debauchers and in chapter seven about incestuous and shameful marriages, and in the other things which Christian laws produce. For it is unjust for the oppressed to be oppressed again and the oppressor to glorify about liberty of sin, as the very holy Gregory very frightfully invokes (?), saying to Guduin, dux of Naples ‘We marvelled enough that very strict punishment has not so far been made in that militia who be diabolical instigation ruined the handmaiden of God. For it was very suitable to your morals and goodness that the revenges should arrive at us before the iniquity of the perpetrated fault. We order that without any excuse or limit (?), as much as your fervour may be towards the guard of charity, you may hasten to emend such a great crime, thus demonstrating by strict example to others (?), so that you may make God favourable to you, in the injury of whom the man perpetrated this deed, who by his neglect despised God’s fear (?). For in no way do we suffer such a great iniquity to remain unrevenged.’ And princes of the earth ought not to hear with deaf ear what is said: ‘Anathema in your midst, you will not be able to stand before your enemies.’ And again St Gregory to Bishop Syagrius: ‘since it is noxious and pernicious, that people may be destroyed by wicked imitation of one acting, who should have been built well by the punishment of that one. In which matter not only is that one culpable, but also the person who is found not to resist; for he seems to consent to the one erring, who does not rush in to correct, so that they should be stopped.

And let no-one say: Such a perverse man should not be called to judgement, but be condemned, as if now judged. Let him hear what it is written in the gospel of John that Nicodemus said to the princes of the Jews about Jesus, who they had called to arrest before judgement; for it is written: ‘Yet Nicodemus, one of the Pharisees, who had come to the Lord at night, replied to the Jews: For does our law judge a man, unless it should hear from him first and should know what he does?’ And the Lord: ‘Do not judge according to the face, but judge with just judgement. And St Gregory to Sabinus the subdeacon, about a priest who was stigmatised by the heinous crime of idolatry and sodomy: ‘News has been brought by the report of certain people, that Sisinnius, the priest of the city of Regitana (?) is a venerator and worshippers of idols, which is excessively intolerable to hear itself (?), indeed that he presumed to place some idol in his home, but also, which is a not dissimilar sin, that he is stained with the crime of sodomy. And therefore, since the iniquity of such a great crime should be investigated with strict and subtle investigation and punished, we order you by this authority, that you enquire with vigilant zeal and wholly diligent care, [p 186] and if you should be able to take hold of this matter by that evidence, bring him in strict custody, until you report back to us, so that we may be able to deliberate how such a hue crime ought to be punished and dispelled.’

And if someone should say: The same perverse man does not dare to come to account, let him hear the council of St Gregory about the Photinian (?) heretics, who were not able to be lead to account otherwise, what he writes to Bishop Maximinius of Salona: About the Photinians (?), may you fraternity be altogether solicitous, so that just as it begins (?) he may take care about how they may be called back to the bosom of mother church. But if some people should want to come to me and receive reason (?), first let them present and promise an oath, that once reason has been received they would not persist in their error. If they should recognise the truth let them receive it, if they should not recognise it, I send them away unhurt. But if someone from them should want to come against us without an oath, let your fratenity keep him very little, since either coming he will receive reason, or I will know that they will not see that earth further (?)’ And it is written in the Council of Carthage: ‘It pleased that the accused or the accuser who is in the same place where the one is who is accused, if he fears some force from the rash multitude, let him choose for himself a very near place, which it may not be difficult to lead witnesses to, where the case may be finished.’

Perhaps someone might say: He cannot be brought to judgement, since supported by the patronage of other kings, he maintains rebellion against the king, who for this crime and also for others would want to send him into judgement if he could; he leads that woman whom he has to judgement. Let our lord kings have before their eyes the truthful statement of the king of kings, who is Truth and the judge of the living and the dead, in which he says about (?) aid of the present king against justice: ‘You offer help to the impious and you join in friendship with those who hate me. Therefore you will merit the wrath indeed of the Lord, but good works are found in you.’ Therefore let the kings fear, who offer patronage to such men unjustly, by whose defence they may offend God and the churches and poor of Christ and the humbler men may be oppressed and devastated, and just judgements cannot be exercised. Lest perhaps, if they should not have such great and good deeds of their own, which they could oppose to such great evil, they may perish without any hindrance, or the good deeds which they have may be made lost before the eyes of God, for the sake of another’s evil in which they were made participants, although they may be thought safe in body by human judgement. But also so they may not incur the statement of scripture: ‘the just perish for the unjust’and lest anyone should interpret perversely to them the statement of Deuteronomy: ‘Do not hand over the slave who should flee to you to his lord; he will live with you in the place which should please him and he will rest in one of your cities, nor will you sadden him’, [p 187] let them hear in what way St Augustine explains that. Augustine says: ‘The Septuagint says you should not hand over the boy to his lord, who is placed with you by his lord, not because his lord should place him, that is commend him, for rather it would say ‘entrust’(depositum), but it says ‘place’ (appositum) by his lord, that is attached, when he has departed. It does not therefore prohibit fugitives being received, but rather returned. Indeed this could be thought unjust, unless we should understand this is said about that gens and people, not about one man. But it thus prohibits returning the refugee from another gens to that gens, where it says than man from his lord, that is his king. For also king Geth preserved the foreigners when David fled to him from the face of his lord, that is King Saul. But it very clearly explains this when it says about the same refuge: He will live among you in every place where it should please him.’

Responsio 13a: on adultery and fornication

2007-12-29T09:19:00.000-08:00

[196] We respond; If as is rumoured, the king in question indeed carried out the business of sleeping with someone else in carnal union after the marriage was legally initiated, then he cannot deny that he committed adultery; even if the woman he took to wife should be found guilty of those things as is alleged. For he presumed to do illicit things after a marriage was legally entered into, and before a legal settlement.

[197] For the Apostle says that a wife is bound to the law of her husband for as long as the husband lives, but when he is dead, she is released from his law. And there is no one who can doubt that she who is legally betrothed, endowed and honoured with a public wedding according to sacred authority, is a wife. And holy authority testifies that there is one rule in the law for both husband and wife. And therefore before one is released from the other by leaving the heavy yoke laid on the sons of Adam from their mother’s womb till they enter the womb of the mother of all; or until it is proven by that law by Him who perceives the just amongst the founders of law, that what was entered into was not a legitimate marriage: until either of these, whichever one of these two divides one flesh into two by adultery cannot claim not to have committed adultery.

The great pope Leo, writing to Niceta the bishop of Aquileia, compared the form of secular to ecclesiastical laws, that “as [status] is maintained for slaves, fields, even houses and possessions which are taken across the border into captivity and are then returned; so too spouses should be rejoined together even if they have been joined to others.” And we must contribute something from the laws for an example: that if anyone for himself claims against what is right what could by right pertain to him [?], he is obliged by the law to make legal compensation to the person he despoiled. Therefore if anyone who is legally married should dare anything against the laws of marriage, publicly or secretly, before a judgement has been made about the accusations, it will be necessary for him to submit to the laws set out for transgressions, secretly or publicly. It is decreed for these in the African Council that bishops should discern at will the lengths of penance for penitents, according to the difference in their sins. And in the Council of Carthage, that the priest enjoin the laws of penance upon him begging for it, without any acceptance of persons. And according to the Council of Elvira, if any of the faithful who has a wife commits adultery not once but often, an end will be put to it on his death[??]. And if he promises to stop, communion should be given to him. If he, thus brought back to life, commits adultery again, he should be cut off more firmly, so that he may no longer mock the communion of peace. And according to the Council of Anchyra, an adulterous wife or a husband who commits adultery will receive complete reconciliation and communion after a penance of seven years. And again according to the Council of Elvira, if anyone who has a wife slips once, he is to be reconciled after five years of penance, though communion should be given to him beforehand if ill-health makes it necessary. Likewise the Council of Toledo decreed “Whoever has both a wife and a concubine is to be separated from the communion of the church.”

[198] In such a separation, or in - after a suitable satisfaction - a reconciliation, the pastors of the church, successors or deputies of the apostles, who as Gregory said take on the authority of binding and loosing when they take on the status of their order, must beware loosing and binding those subject to them according to their whims, rather then according to the merits of the case: thereby damning those who do not deserve it, or loosing others while they are bound. And so they deprive themselves of this power of loosing and binding, if they exercise it according to their own wishes, and not for the morals of those subject to them. Nor should they be affected by hatred or gratitude towards someone, for they will not be able to judge those subjected to them worthily if they decide to follow hatred or gratitude in the matters of their subjects. And rightly it is said through the prophet, they were killing souls which did not die, and they revived souls which were not living. Whoever damns the just puts to death someone who is not dying, and whoever tries to absolve the guilty from punishment attempts to bring to life someone not alive. So the matters should be considered, then the power of binding and loosing should be exercised. It should be seen what the guilt is, and what penance should follow after the guilt, so that those upon whom the almighty God visits his grace through compassion, the sentence of the pastor should absolve. Then there is a true absolution of the guardian, when [His] inward will is followed by the judges. And we should absolve those through pastoral authority whom we recognise our Author has brought alive through a rousing grace. This bringing back to life is indeed recognised before the act of righteousness in the confession of sin” which is accustomed to happen not just verbally and with barely the lips, but which comes from the deepest emotion of the heart, as Daniel said: Lord, I have sinned. And he deserved to hear ‘The Lord has taken away your sins, you will not die.” And he again said “I sighed while my heart groaned”, and “I will announce my iniquity”, and I will think over my sin; just as he said in tribulation, which he suffered for the sins he admitted, fleeing from the sight of his son, thinking ‘May the Lord look upon my affliction and return good to me for that curse’. Through all this it is clear that to those who confess in that way, satisfaction should not be forbidden, nor communion denied.

Some dare to take the sacraments of the holy body and precious blood of our Redeemer as a judgement for themselves, carelessly neither purified nor absolved: they are rather seduced by the priests of whom the Prophet says “Woe to them that sew cushions under every elbow: and make pillows for the heads of persons of every age to catch souls”, that is “they warm with alluring flattery the souls falling from their righteousness and lying amongst the delights of this world, that they may lie sweetly in error, and not be struck by the harshness of criticism.” Rectors show that they love themselves to those whom they fear could harm them in their zeal for temporal glory. It is written about these: “O my people, they that call thee blessed, the same deceive thee, and destroy the way of thy steps.” And again, "Thy prophets have seen false and foolish things for thee: and they have not laid open thy iniquity, to excite thee to penance: but they have seen for thee false revelations and banishments.” And so, remaining in the state of mind of sin, or before a fitting satisfaction, they made God’s good gift into their judgement. This is how the holy authors expound the word of the Lord, as shown by the venerable priest Bede in his commentary on the Gospel of Luke, saying “Behold indeed, the hand of my betrayer is with me on the table. Woe indeed to that man through whom he is betrayed. They say today also and forever, ‘woe to that man who wickedly came to the Lord’s table, who prepared traps in his head and …who did not fear to participate in the mysteries of Christ. And he, like the example of Judah, gave the son of man not indeed to Jewish sinners, but to sinners, that is his limbs, by which he dared to violate the inestimable and inviolable body of the Lord. He sold the Lord, who neglecting love and fear of Him, was persuaded more to love and care for earthly and passing things, indeed criminal things. Woe, I say, unto that man, whom Jesus, ready to consecrate the sacred altars as though as though placed amongst the offerings, doubted not was there when, who was obliged to sigh to the heavenly ministers standing around him, ‘Behold, the hand of my betrayer is with me on the table”.

[199] And Paul said, “if any man is named a brother, and is a fornicator or covetous or a server of idols or a railer or a drunkard or an extortioner, do not break bread with his sort”, and “the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: Neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers, nor the effeminate nor liers with mankind nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor railers nor extortioners shall possess the kingdom of God.” And again, “For fornicators and adulterers God will judge” and “Every sin that a man doth is without the body: but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.” And Ambrose said, “It characterises the most serious sin, since from this the whole body is destroyed, while in other sins a part perishes, but not all. The whole body is the man and wife, since the woman is a part of the man. Whoever commits another sin, sins outside himself, but the fornicator sins within his own flesh.”

Although all sins crowd upon man in the flesh, this is a particular desire of the flesh, that he should give his soul stained with sins to hell together with his body, for the soul when conquered by the libido of the flesh is made into flesh, just like the well governed body is considered as spiritual. It is the soul which either is conquered by allurements makes the whole man into flesh, or remaining in the vigour of its nature bestows upon the flesh that it can be called spiritual. Therefore the founders of the canons, with the Holy Spirit speaking through them, sanctified that these men should be separated from communion until satisfaction, because those who are separated from the kingdom of God should be separated in every way from the church, which is also called the kingdom of God, until correction and satisfaction. It does not suit the disciples of Christ to break bread with these people, and the priests of the Lord should not given them holy communion, as He prohibits in the Gospel, “Give not that which is holy to dogs”, which Paul explains saying “as the sow that was washed to is returned her wallowing in the mire, and the dog to his vomit”, so as Solomon says, the stupid man is returned once again to his stupidity.

Interrogatio 11/Responsio 11: on public confession and penance

2007-12-29T08:15:00.000-08:00

[174] We tried to show above by ecclesiastical authority that a husband cannot separate himself from his wife, or wife from her husband, by means of a written secret confession: just as a bishop cannot remove himself from the church entrusted to him or from his rank, nor can anyone in church orders remove himself from his rank. And nor should anyone have to undergo public penance on account of a booklet of secret confession passed around, and nor can someone be condemned on account of a guided text, or one submitted by somebody else. Rather, what should be judged publicly should be confessed or proven publicly, and in their presence. The great pope Leo wrote to Nicetas Bishop of Aquileia, saying “A sentence can justly be imposed on someone who, present and standing there, has been proven guilty or has confessed fully”, because it is against reason for them to discern the punishments of those whose motives they are not able to know.

Divine scripture also demonstrates the procedure for judging, accusers saying about an accused woman in a prepared judgment ‘“Send for Susanna the daughter of Elchias and wife of Joachim”. And they sent for her and she came with her kin and her children.’ And after testimony was given, the judges condemned her to death. But she was freed, freed by truth, and the false witnesses were punished since they had done harm to their neighbour.

But the woman caught in the act of adultery, and physically present, was not accused through someone else’s testimony or written deposition, which church and Roman laws forbid. Her confession is implied, when it was said to her by the Lord “‘Has no one condemned you?’ and she said ‘No one, Lord’. And Pilate too said about the Lord – though he was seized like a thief and tied up by a band of men, the legitimate procedure of power was maintained, as Augustine said – who was handed over to his prefectural responsibility by the ministers of the Jews, by Anna Caiphas and by Caiphas, “You have handed this man over to me”. Hearing that he was in the power of Herod, he sent him back to Herod. This teaches us to expect Christian and fair judgments from secular men of the world [?], and then to have to apply ecclesiastical healing ointment, ie judges’ medicine, to the infirm. The Apostle demonstrated the same thing, when the faithful were still mixing with the unfaithful, “Already indeed there is plainly a fault among you, that you are judged by outsiders, and not by the brethren. If therefore you have judgments of things pertaining to this world” amongst you, “set them to judge who are the most contemptible in the church.” And Gregory says in the Pastoral Rule “those unadorned with spiritual gifts should at least serve for earthly matters.” And Augustine in his Enchiridon shows that [?] such necessary judgments should not be prohibited, but should be judged amongst the faithful. And St Ambrose: “Since there are wise brothers, let some of these whose judgment the world will respect be chosen to judge. It is very shameful if amongst those who are said to know God none can be found who is able to conduct a judgment.”

[175] For how can a repentant murderer receive the peace of the church before he is pacified with the litigants? How is discord able to win forgiveness before it is united by the glue of charity? How can the rapacious man, who has exhausted himself in rapine, perform acts worthy of penance, before he has made a peace offering by making amends or satisfaction, according to the judgment of David and the example of Zacherias? Or how can a marriage be dissolved unless according to the Christian laws, by which it had been joined under the Lord? And if it was not initiated but rather usurped, how else should this be proven? So St Gelasius wrote to the Emperor Anastasius, “If bishops of religion obey your law in as much as it pertains to the order of public discipline [?], recognising your imperial power bestowed upon you by supernal disposition; so it is fitting and appropriate for you to obey them, who are endowed with elevating and venerable mysteries. As is written elsewhere, read it again “Return to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” To Caesar then pennies, tribute and livestock, the honour owed so long he faithfully honours the Lord [!], the taxes; to God tithes, first-fruits, oblations and offerings, and continual service. Just as He returned tribute for himself and for Peter, and returned to God what was God’s, doing his Father’s will. And St Augustine says in his sixth sermon on the Gospel of John, “Don’t say ‘What’s the king to me?’ What are your possessions to you? For possessions are possessed by kings’ law.” So questions of secular business are to be sorted out through legal trials – just and Christian ones.

[176] And about the booklet or secret confession, Leo observed “to all the bishops in Campania, Samnium and Picenum. I am moved by great indignation and grieved by much pain, when I learn that any of you have been forgetful of apostolic tradition, and ruined in the zeal of your error.” And a bit later, “About penance indeed, which is demanded by the faithful: rather than making public a profession of every particular sin in a written booklet [?], let it suffice for the conscience to indicate [them] to the priests alone, in secret confession. Although the plenitude of faith which on account of the fear of God has no qualms about blushing before men is praiseworthy; yet not all sins are of the sort that those requesting penance would not fear to make them known. So let this uncommendable customs be removed, lest many should be kept away from the remedies of penance, because they are embarrassed or because they fear to reveal their deeds to their enemies, by whom they could be struck with legal action. Let that confession suffice which is offered first to God, then to the priest, who goes as an intermediary for the sins of the penitents. For they will then be able to push many to penance, if the conscience of the confessing person is not made public to the ears of the people.” Let them also consider (since the sacred canons order the excommunication of a bishop [?] for as long as he does not communicate with someone who he says confessed secretly to him) whether anyone ought or would dare to submit someone to the laws of public penance, on the grounds of a secret confession, whether a booklet or hearsay. And how much less should a legally initiated marriage be dissolved without certain and obvious reason, which Leo intoned terribly to all the bishops appointed throughout all the provinces, saying “Our warning denounces this too: that if any of the brethren tries to act against the constitutions and dares to ascribe to prohibited things [?], he should know that he will be removed from his office, and he who does not wish to be a companion in discipline will no longer be a participant in communion.”
[end of responsio 11]

Responsio 10b: on procedure and on temptation, and examples from Gregory

2007-12-28T08:23:00.000-08:00

[170] Although this is neither the time nor the place to demonstrate in which ways and to what extent it is possible and necessary to judge people in their absence according to ecclesiastical laws, we will bring to attention what is relevant to the matter now. The Synod of Valence showed, following the Roman church, that if anyone pronounces himself to be guilty through a truthful confession or a lying falsehood [he cannot be absolved], and nor can someone be absolved who incriminated himself in a crime punishable by death, because an incrimination like this referring to another person would be punished, for everything which is a cause of death is an act of murder. What is is not able to take place in the church through either a secret confession or through someone else, can still less take place through priests to whom it is not permitted to make public the sins confessed to them: unless he who committed the crime himself spreads the story of what he wrongly did.

So far as he can, the bishop, to whom this duty is known to belong, ought to make sure that no one, seduced by error or coerced by fear falsely incriminates himself whereby he harms both himself and the church. For it is decreed that a written admission which is extorted or coerced has no force at all, as the glorious martyr saint Alexander, the fourth pope after Peter, judged: “If documents have been extorted by fear, fraud or force from a person of this sort”, an enemy to every Christian in name [?], “or documents have been written or validated by them through whatever ingenuity so that they can clear themselves, we adjudge these to bear no prejudice or harm against them, nor any infamy or insult, and nor do we allow them to undergo the confiscation of their property, by the authority of the Lord, the holy apostles and their successors. The confession of these people must be not forced but spontaneous, as he attests who says “Murder, adultery, fornication, blasphemy (and the rest) come from the heart.” And again, “God pays more attention to your thoughts and your spontaneous will than to deeds performed through necessity or through simple-mindedness.”A confession must not be extorted from these people, but should rather be freely uttered. It is dreadful to judge anyone from suspicion or an extorted confession, for the Lord is an inspector of hearts more than of deeds, and requires thoughts to be pure and wishes good, not lips to be lying.”

This is the confession which is owed by him who sinned, as it is written “First confess your sins so that you may justify yourself.” ‘First’, indeed, so that you may pre-empt in confession the voice of the accusing devil and the gaze of the Lord, so you you may justify yourself, and not be condemned. For even this ecclesiastical excommunication is not an eternal punishment, but a temporal medicine, so that the sinner may be converted to Him and live, choosing life, not a sinner’s death. And again it is written “You will justify yourself by your words, and from your words you will be condemned.” And so Jerome says, “There is no doubt about wicked words that the man who utters them is condemned by God. But he cannot be justified by good words unless he speaks them with righteous intention, from the bottom of his heart. Words uttered without rightful intent may be good but they cannot justify the speaker. For after interpretation Caiphas is not found to be righteous, who said “It is fitting that one man should die for his people, and the whole nation should not perish.” Words justify the speaker if the good things he utters from his mouth he also keeps deep in his heart, and says them with holy intention. The working of human life consists in the weight of words, for as Solomon says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue”.

[171] And in the capitularies of the emperors it can be found that “whoever says outside a court and compelled by fear that he is a slave incurs no prejudice to his liberty, until he is presented to a judgment. So he may either obtain his liberty, if he can prove it in the presence of the judges, or if proven a slave, at once be returned to his master.”

Bishops especially, the judges of souls, must take great care and also warn laymen, that a devilish idea, pretending to be under the pretext of a later confession and penance, should not secretly take hold of them as they go about the business of accusing, witnessing or judging, speaking not in words but [?] encouraging everyone to follow the desires of his own heart. ‘Make sure’, says the devil, ‘that you carry out what your want to, and that your are not defeated by what you have begun. It is better for you to do penance afterwards, than to be shamed in defeat.’ To witnesses, he says ‘You are able to think up a way by which it will appear that what you say is true’. And to judges the devil often advises that they should say ‘How can I judge differently? As I hear, so I judge!’. Let them hear, let them listen to what is written: “Woe to you, who justify yourselves to men. For the Lord knows your heart.” And “If your eye”, that is your intention, “is unjaundiced, your whole body will shine”. And “You will be judged according to your judgements”, and “the false witness will not be unpunished.” And let them read what St Jerome says in his commentary on Matthew. “The false witness”, he says, “is he who does not understand words the way they are spoken”. How much worse is he who says things which were never spoken? And let them set what Jerome says in this book against the thought which the devil proffers to ill-wishers, witnesses or judges, about getting penance. Jerome says about Judas, “The Judas who had betrayed Him saw that he was damned. Led by repentence, he returned the thirty silver coins to the princes of the priests and the elders, saying ‘I have sinned in betraying innocent blood’. The weight of impiety shuts off the vastness of avarice [??]. Seeing the Lord judged, Judas returned the price of his death to the priests, as if it was in his power to change the sentence of the persecutors. And so although he could change his will, yet the consequence of his former will did not change. So if he who handed over the blood of the righteous sinned, how much more do they sin who bought righteous blood and provoked a disciple to betrayal by offering a price? They said to him “What’s it to us? Watch!”. And Judas threw his coins into the temple and withdrew, and leaving, he hanged himself in a noose. It was of no benefit to have done penance which could not correct the crime. Whenever a brother sins against a brother, and he is able to amend his sin, it can be forgiven him. But if the deeds remain, penance is undertaken with but vain speech. This is what is said in the Psalms about this most wretched Judas. ‘And his prayer was made into a sin, so that he was not only unable to amend the wickedness of his betrayal, but also added the crime of his own murder to his earlier wrongdoing.’”

[172] We should all fear this truthful sentence, we should all beware this most pernicious cunning of devilish wickedness aiming at our deception. In this fashion the devil deludes us even by hope of repentence, and by counsel ties us up in fault, so that “when they fall by sin from the state of righteousness, for the most part they fall also into the snare of desperation”, and be ripped out from the root of hope. “Hence it is that the Lord through the Prophet reproves not so much the wrong doings of precipitance as the zeal for sin, saying, Lest perchance my indignation come out as fire, and be inflamed, and there be none to quench it because of the wickedness of your purpose. Hence, again, in wrath He says, I will visit upon you according to the fruit of your purposes.Since, then, as Gregory says, sins perpetrated after forethought differ from other sins, the Lord censures the zeal for wickedness rather than wicked deeds. For in deeds the sin is often of infirmity or of negligence, but in purposes it is always of malicious intent. He sits, as it were, in the chair of perverse counsel who is lifted up with so great elation of iniquity as to endeavour even by counsel to accomplish evil. Let those, then, who actually bind themselves by counsel in guilt are to be admonished realise what vengeance they must at some time be smitten with, being now made not the companions but the princes of evil-doers.”

Also to be guarded against is the cunning of the crafty foe, who when he sees that the soul which he trips up by sin is afflicted for its fall, seduces it by the blandishments of baneful security. And he recalls before its eyes empty hopes and grounds of security so that he may withdraw from it the benefit of sorrow. For he tells now of the heavier offences of others, now he puts to it the shame [of breaking] the promise whose accomplishment had wickedly been sworn, now of what has been perpetrated being nothing, now he speaks of God’s mercy, now he reminds the corrupted mind of practicalities or whatever reward of grace or honour, or again he promises time hereafter for repentance; so that the soul, seduced by these deceptions may not turn back from what it has wickedly begun, and may hesitate on the intention of repentence to the end that it may receive no good hereafter, being saddened by no evil now, and that it may then be more fully overwhelmed with punishment, in that now it even rejoices in its transgressions. Often indeed in a special evil he perverts the hearts of the duplicitous through an artful old ingenuity, so that, while they deceive others by their crooked and double conduct, they glory as though they were surpassingly prudent beyond others. And, since they consider not the strictness of retribution, they exult, miserable men that they are, in their own losses. The Prophet says about these “Behold the day of the Lord comes, great and horrible, the day of wrath, that day; a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of cloud and whirlwind, a day of trumpet and clangour, upon all walled cities, and upon all lofty corners. For in a judgement of great wrath he will destroy in judgment hearts hards blocked off with defences against the truth, dissolving their knotty duplicities.”

[173] Let accusers of the innocent, treacherous witnesses and judges hear what is said to them: “Woe to them who set down unfair laws, writing down injustice”, and the violent suffering which is said to have been inflicted upon Anna by injustice. For it has a voice, just like mercy, about which it is written “Hide away alms in the heart of the poor, and it will pray for you.” For the violent suffering imposed as we said by injustice says “O eternal God, who knowest hidden things, who knowest all things before they come to pass, Thou knowest that they have borne false witness against me: and behold I must die, whereas I have done none of these things, which these men have maliciously forged against me. And the Lord heard her voice.” And he gave back to the priests, who were the appointed judges of the people in that year and who had borne false witness, what they deserved for having done evil to their neighbour, and they were killed. And let them hear that many die even in the present flesh, like Annaeas and Saphira who while taking communion did not perceive the body of the Lord, as Paul said. Many are alive in the flesh, but for their wicked deeds are dead in spirit, like her of whom it is written “Living, she was dead”. The soul which sins always dies, and sinners who persevere with a duplicitous confession are crushed to pieces, when they are made into an oven of fire, and covered with their confusion as with a double cloak, when they are destroyed, body and soul, in hell. We say this not to take away judgments, but fearing lest we be judged to know injustice: not prohibiting bearing witness to truth, but fleeing from lies.

But since we adequately showed above from the decrees of Saint Gregory and from the decrees of other learned men the procedure for settling the matter in question, it will not be tedious to show how we should conduct the investigation and the settling of this sort of question. If the question is about an issue [arising] after a marriage has been begun, he said to Adrian “Agathosa, the bearer of these presents, complains that her husband has, against her will, been converted in the monastery of the abbot Urbicus. And, since this undoubtedly touches the credit and reputation of the said abbot, we enjoin your Experience to investigate the matter by diligent enquiry, so as to see whether it may not be the case that the man's conversion was with her consent, or that she herself had promised to change her state. And should it be found to be so, see to his remaining in the monastery, and compel her to change her state, as she had promised. If however neither of these things is the case, and you do not find that the aforesaid woman has committed any crime of fornication on account of which it is lawful for a man to leave his wife, then, lest his conversion should possibly be an occasion of perdition to the wife left behind in the world, we desire you, without any excuse allowed, to restore her husband to her, even though he should be already tonsured. […1] For, save for the cause of fornication, a man is on no account allowed to put away his wife, seeing that after the husband and wife have been made one body by the copulation of wedlock, it cannot be in part converted, and in part remain in the world.”

[Notes: The following is omitted from Gregory’s letter to Adrian: “For, although mundane law declares that marriage may be dissolved for the sake of conversion against the will of either party, yet divine law does not permit this to be done”].
And that one law is known to stand for husband and wife, he shows in the letter which we inserted above, to Secundinus the bishop of Tauromenium: “Leo the freedman, bearer of this letter, came to us and spoke about his wife. She had left him for his crime of fornication, which he said greatly enraged her, and had put on religious clothing. But he had not been at all blameworthy, nor had he fallen into the fault of fornication after the marriage had begun, and he added that - as he had sworn to his wife by the most strict oaths - he was innocent of the matter about which suspicion bothered his wife. Therefore by her own will she had returned to him. But he said that she and her household had been deprived of communion by you because she had returned secretly to him, without consulting you. We wish that the household of this woman should receive sacred communion, and that penance will not long hold them for the fault of their lady in this affliction. About the woman, that is the wife of this letter’s bearer, it is necessary for you to observe that, if it is wholly clear that she was unable to say anything against her husband, and moreover that an end was put to her suspicion by an oath, as we have heard and that afterwards she returned to him by her own will: then the censure of judgment upon her should be tempered, so that she should not be deprived of communion for long.”

[End of Responsio 10]

Responsio 12c: sodomy and gynaecological implausibilities

2007-12-26T12:44:00.000-08:00

[p 181] Therefore, let no-one say he has not perpetrated the sodomitical sin, who has worked shamefulness against nature in male or in woman and deliberately and eagerly is made unclean by rubbing or touching or shameful motion. Such a one, as the Apostle teaches, is excluded from the kingdom of heaven, since also other sins against the laws of nature, usurping the reputation of Sodom, are called sodomitical, as the Lord said to the city full of sin via the prophet: ‘ This was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: leisure, fullness of bread and abundance.’ And the Jews sinning before the Lord are called by Isaiah ‘princes of Sodom and people of Gomorrah’, who among other crimes of their iniquity, placed a boy in a brothel and the price of Greek youths in pouches (?). Those dominated by this (?) are effeminate, who are made eunuchs as if for the custody of married women in the place of Greek youths, adopted by impudence and uncleanliness and subjugated by lust, which is also accustomed, as they say, to conquer iron minds, and preserve and rule those were found wilful by diabolical invention (?). And sins of this kind are not only sacrilege, but also idolatory, whose rewards are repaid as the Apostle shows, just as is it written about the greedy: ‘whose God is their belly’, and about the luxurious; ‘And glory in their confusion, who know earthly things’. Certainly the scripture calls God glory, which says: ‘They changed their glory into the image of an ox eating grass’; and scripture testifies about avarice, that it is the service of idols. The studious reader will find this and also about things and from other scriptures.

About abortion, indeed, it is said in Exodus: ‘If two men should dispute and one should hit a woman bearing in her woman and her unformed infant should die, he will suffer punishment, as much as a man should of a woman, and he will give with claim (?). But if it should be formed, he will give life for life.’ And it is written in the gospel about conception: ‘For what is born in her’, which as Gregory explains without doubt means ‘is conceived’. For Joseph then first began to hesitate, since he saw the swelling womb of his betrothed. Hence let us think over from the law in what way conception may happen according to nature. ‘A woman’, it says, ‘who with semen received should give birth to a male or female’ and it is written about the bearing forth, whether formed, or, as said above, unformed, whether of male or female sex: ‘everything which throws open the womb’.

[p182] It is to be noted that scripture asserts a woman to receive semen, that is by male coitus emitted through the genital vein into the secret place of the womb, the carrying womb, just as we also learn by physical reading, and not to attract or receive emission elsewhere or another way, as this invention says. And in emission, what has conceived from the emitted semen is testified by the same scripture to throw open the womb, namely for the first birth; which also could not naturally preserve the integrity of the enclosure in the first birth. Let us believe therefore, what we read, and what we do not read, let us believe a crime to build on.

For from the beginning it has never been heard, neither has it been read in scripture of truth under this sky that a female woman may receive semen without intercourse and conceive with both closed uterus and unopen womb or with intact flesh may give birth to either a live or aborted birth, except only singularly the holy and blessed virgin Mary, whose conception was not of nature but grace, as the archangel said to her: ‘Hail, full of grace’. The Holy Spirit came over her, who conferred on her fecundity of offspring from virgin semen and virgin blood without will of the flesh and without will of man and did not take away her virginity. Mary, just as she conceived with flesh intact and womb not open, that is with closed uterus, thus gave birth not with open womb, but closed uterus, and at the same time was both mother and remained perpetual and eternal virgin. Indeed as we read ‘virginal’, from which virgins are called, who are intact of flesh, that is skin, which is corrupted in them in the first lying together, which nature does not suffer to remain whole in emitting whatever birth; and after that virginity (?) is corrupted, a woman is not had as a virgin.

But also about what was in (?) that diabolical invention which is referred to about that woman and her brother, in the scripture of truth we read Onan seeking to fulfil lust with his wife and having slept together, not wanting sons to be born, for which thing he died, struck by the Lord. Whence we do not believe that this woman had been able to conceive from such lying together.

Therefore we say these things to the bishop: that we would not wish to reveal to those knowing or suggest to those not knowing the virginal secrets of girls or women, which we do not know by experiment, except since it is written: ‘The case which I did not know, I used to investigate very diligently.’ Therefore we re-read the things written by the teachers of the church, we call them back before our eyes. So that if one caught in this way should come to us seeking penance about the judgement of just judges, we should be able to judge her without error. Therefore we also add that if our lord king found the aforesaid woman a virgin, why does he consent to her being called as if corrupted? But if he did not find her a virgin, why did he keep her so long, or why did he receive judgement of examination about her? But those very noble lay married men and very equitable judges, who ought to judge about this, will be more able than us and more quickly to know through themselves and to learn from their wives by marital liberty, whether any woman whatever might be able to conceive in such a way as we heard about that woman.

[p 183] And it is necessary that they investigate this solicitously and carefully, lest perhaps they could undertake this judgement of justice and equity with whatever error, so that (?) it will be able to come to the attention of so many about such persons, and very many will take care to accept the example from that judgement. But we – as experienced in this business – say the things we read and we do not seek thence either to know further or want to investigate further. But let the judges of the law see if what is said about the woman should be found true, namely that before betrothal, while she was in her own power or that of the one mentioned [Hukbert], she indecently committed such a thing (?), and after she was joined to her husband, preserved herself for him alone -, whether they decree her to be condemned to death, whether by Roman law or by their laws or by those to which that woman is subject or through those they should want to judge her by. For there are thus diverse peoples and their laws which, the holy church discerning does not reject, if they are Christian in their orders, which are just. But we, just like the notice of Bala (?) do not recognise the punishment of the crime, we take refuge from the council of the Lord given after the edict, so that we decree no-one dies, but we want all to be saved, since we desire no-one to perish, nor do we undertake to inflict any violence on the holy and just laws which until now the holy church and episcopal religion at one time accepted, at another time sustained.

Responsio 10a

2007-12-25T14:04:00.000-08:00

How an ordeal should be arranged, which as we have said above was demonstrated by clear indications even in the ordeal we are discussing, St Fabian, Pope and Martyr, decreed, “That it is necessary for four persons always to be present in every judgment, that is chosen judges, accusers, defenders and witnesses”. For as Leo wrote to all the bishops appointed through Caesarea and Mauritania, we are not able to judge anyone, unless standing in our presence and proven guilty or confessed, he is able justly to be submitted to the sentence.

And Saint Augustine says in his Book on Penance, “But very many decent Christians bear the sins of others in silence although they know of them, because often proofs are lacking, and they are not able to prove what they know to the church judges. Although some [suspicions] are truthful, the judge should not readily believe them unless demonstrated with certain indication. We are not able to ban just anyone from communion – although such a ban would be medicinal, not mortal – unless the person has freely confessed, or has been named and convicted in some judgement, whether secular or ecclesiastical. For who would dare take both roles, that he should be both someone’s accuser and his judge? Paul is understood to have alluded to a rule of this sort when he gave a church court procedure in part similar to this for some such crimes. He said ‘I told you in a letter not to mix with fornicators’, and the rest. And again, ‘If any brother is named as a fornicator, or an idol-worshipper, or as greedy, cursed, drunken or rapacious, do not break bread with him.’ And it should be realised that by ‘naming’ the Apostle wanted to be understood that which happens when a sentence has been carried out in full and judicial order. For if naming alone were enough, many innocent people would be damned, for many are often named falsely of a crime. Paul did not wish a man to be judged by a sense of suspicion, or even an irregular, extra-ordinary judgment, but to have confessed or been accused and convicted by the law of God according to church procedure.” And in the Council of Toledo, ‘It is suitable that the life of the innocent should not be stained by the perniciousness of those who accuse. Therefore if anyone is accused of something, let both accuser and accused be presented and let the sentences of the laws and the canons be consulted, so that if the accuser is found to be unsuitable to make an accusation, no one will be judged or condemned on his word.’ And in the Council of Chalcedon, ‘It is to be investigated in the judgment what sort of person it is who is accusing, and who is accused.’ And again in the same council, ‘Those witnesses should not be admitted to give testimony who are not allowed to be accusers, or those whom the accuser brings from his own household.

[169] And St Cornelius Pope and martyr, and Felix Romanus the pope, and all the other Popes of that See, decreed that ‘Judges of the church should be careful not to pass judgment in the absence of him whose case is being discussed. For [the decision] will be invalid, and they will have to account for their action to their colleagues’. Except for certain cases,which the laws of the church specify, and as the public laws set out to a certain degree. In these cases, people may be judged in their absence: if the crime is extremely well known, and those involved are extremely well known too, so that neither are witnesses necessary for establishing proof, nor shall presence felt to be lacking. For this is what St Ambrose says in his letter to the Corinthians. “The judge should not condemn without an accuser, for the Lord did not cast off Judas, although he was a thief, because he had not been accused. And anyone who does this sort of thing should be taken away from your midst: once the deed has been recognised, he should be driven out from the band of brotherhood. One man had a stepmother in place of a wife, and all knew his crime and they did not accuse him. In this matter, there was no need for witnesses, nor could the crime be hidden by any funny business. I am absent in body, but present in spirit, that is the face is absent, but the spirit of authority is present, which is never absent: and I have now judged him who allows this, as if I were present.”

Interrogatio 10

2007-12-24T02:19:00.000-08:00

In the fourth chapter we ask you to inform us as follows. If this issue, for which we heard (and some of us witnessed) the ordeal was performed, is called back to judgement, how should the judgment be canonically arranged? And should the woman be judged by the secret confession which, it is said, she committed to the bishops, or by the booklet proffered forth in the judgment? And, if it happened that she proffered the booklet under coercion or signed it unwillingly, can she legally be removed from the marital bed in this fashion?