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100 Chapter 2
ideas and rechargedthem with influence. After the Lombard’s place
in the tradition had become secure, and then for more than a century,
every serious theologian would be steered towards reflection
on the subject. Their conclusions have been closely analysed in a
neglected book by Tomas Rinc‹on.
The most important thing about Rinc‹on’s findings for our purposes
is that they provide the background which makes sense of
some epoch-making decisions by Pope Innocent III, who made
this symbolic reasoning about marriage his own. Against the background
of twelfth-century thought reconstructed by Rinc‹on, this
was explicable, almost predictable. Thus Peter of Poitiers uses language
which we shall meet again in Innocent’s decretal Debitum
(X. 1. 21. 5). Peter says that ‘The sacrament is here the consent
of minds and carnal joining, and there are not two sacraments, but
one sacrament: of the union of Christ to the Church which comes
about through charity, and of the bodily union which comes about
through conformity of nature—of which the sign is carnal joining,
just as consent of minds is the sign of spiritual union.’ Peter was a
prominent Paris theologian in the late twelfth century. He would
have been teaching when the young Lothario Segni, the future Innocent
III, was a student there. However, the whole tradition of
thought about marriage symbolism in twelfth-century Paris is a
relevant context to Innocent’s decisions.
T. Rinc‹on, El matrimonio, misterio y signo: siglos IX–XIII (Pamplona, 1971).
Rinc‹on deals with canonists as well as theologians.
Peter of Poitiers, Sententiarum libri quinque, 5. 14 (Migne, PL 211. 1257),
cited by Rinc‹on, El matrimonio, 208 and n. 308. Note that the Migne edition has
‘consensus animorum’ then ‘consensus animarum’; Rinc‹on silently emends.
On Peter of Poitiers, and for further references, see F. Robb, ‘Intellectual Traditon
and Misunderstanding: The Development of Academic Theology on the Trinity
in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University
College London, 1993), 108–9. The work from which this is taken was influential:
see ibid. 108.
On the future Innocent III’s time as a student in Paris see W. Imkamp, Das
Kirchenbild Innocenz’ III. (1198–1216) (P•apste und Papsttum, 22; Stuttgart, 1983),
24: ‘d•urfte sein Pariser Studienaufenthalt in die ersten beiden Drittel der 80er Jahre
des 12. Jahrhunderts fallen’; and Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants, i. 44:
‘Peter of Poitiers . . . acceded to the theological chair left vacant by Peter Comestor
in 1169, was made chancellor of Notre-Dame in 1193’.
On this see Rinc‹on, El matrimonio, pt. 2, ch. 2, and the conclusions on p. 212,
which are worth quoting since the book is hard to obtain: ‘1.A El matrimonio es
un v‹§nculo indisoluble por ser sacramento de la uni‹on indisoluble de Cristo con la
Iglesia. 2.A El divorcio es pecado porque rompe esta significaci‹on. 3.A La uni‹on de
Cristo con la Iglesia se realiz‹odedobleforma:porelamoryporlacarne.Loprimero
se significa por el consentimiento, lo segundo por la c‹opula. El matrimonio-signo,