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Indissolubility 99
view he expresses definitely antedates the attitudes in Eliduc and
Ille et Galeron. It is not surprising that the author of a Latin text
(let alone the immensely learned Abelard) should be more in touch
with the long theoretical tradition that marriage was indissoluble
than vernacular romances.
The attitude of Abelard and H‹elo•§se to indissolubility may be
symptomatic of a gradual but general shift of attitudes towards
divorce in the twelfth century, preparing the way for the transformation
of law and consequently society e·ected by Innocent III,
to be discussed below. It is actually rather surprising how few marriages
are dissolved in vernacular romances: Marie de France and
Gautier d’Arras apart, instances of true divorce in the modern sense
are extremely dicult to find. Exceptions tend to prove the rule.
Thus in Chr‹etien de Troyes’s romance Clig›es the marriage of the
heroine to the emperor in Constantinople is never consummated,
a fact that she regards as crucial. Poems like Chr‹etien’s Erec and
Eneide or Yvain, or Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzifal, suggest
that the idea of durable married love had great appeal in literature
even if great men found it constricting in practice.
In the twelfth century the lay ‹elite show signs of accepting the
theory that the clergy were trying to turn into law, but maintained
traditional habits of serial polygamy by using a loophole in the
Church’s own rules. Paradoxically, this may have played a part in
the eventual triumph of indissolubility. It enabled the nobility to
get used to ecclesiastical domination of marriage without changing
the pattern of their legitimized sex lives too much. By the time
they were compelled to do so, they had been paying lip-service
to indissolubility and working within canon-law rules for so long
that they could not easily justify resistance after the convenient
loophole had been closed. There were few ideological obstacles to
be overcome in lay minds when a new wave of clerical intensity
washed over Western marriage. It drew much of its impetus from
the proto-university schools.
(c) The Age of Innocent III
Symbolism, the schools, and Innocent III
A wind of change was getting up among academics in the twelfth
century. Peter Lombard brought out clearly the connection between
marriage symbolism and indissolubility. He took up Augustine’s