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Indissolubility 109
we solemnly entreat them not to neglect in the future, but to hold before
their minds. (Document 2. 1. 4)
The tone is reminiscent of protests against the ease of annulments
in the United States in the late twentieth century—and indeed,
we shall have to consider the possibility that the experience which
sparked o· Hostiensis’s protest was localized, since the situation he
describes does not fit very easily with what we know from church
court records, where we have them. He was a man experienced in the
world’s a·airs, but there is no tolerant cynicism here: his warning
about the danger to the souls of the judges and many others seems
to come from the heart.
Hostiensis uses the word actenus (so far), as if he expected the
situation to change, and perhaps it did. He was himself an enormously
influential man and probably did not underestimate the
e·ect of his vehement protest on readers and pupils—for in the
nature of the case it is likely that he expressed himself with still
greater freedom, which is saying a lot, in his academic teaching.
Discussions during academic teaching may lie behind the objections
Hostiensis raises. An imaginary interlocutor challenges him
by saying that the law normally tries to make as much proof as
possible available: so why not in annulment cases? Hostiensis has
two answers. The first is much the same as the point made earlier,
namely that proof had become much easier since the number of
forbidden degrees had been reduced to four, so that strict standards
should now be expected. His second argument is an allusion
to the ‘examples’ of how hearsay evidence could be abused. The
decretal which gave rise to the whole discussion had referred to the
many examples that showed the danger of hearsay evidence and
the consequent need for rigour. An earlier passage in Hostiensis’s
commentary takes this remark as a cue for the remarkable
story of Raymund Barellus, of the diocese of Nice (printed below
as Document 2. 1. 1).
Barellus worked the following scam to get marriages dissolved.
He was old, and claimed to be able to reconstruct practically any
Cf. R. H. Vasoli, What God Has Joined Together: The Annulment Crisis in
American Catholicism (New York and Oxford, 1998).
‘quia tamen pluribus exemplis et certis experimentis didicimus, ex hoc multa
pericula contra legitima provenisse coniugia, statuimus, ne super hoc recipiantur
de cetero testes de auditu, quum iam quartum gradum prohibitio non excedat, nisi
forte [then the list of rigorous conditions begins]’ (X. 2. 20. 47).