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Bigamy
(a) Bigamy and Becoming a Priest
The meaning of ‘bigamy’
Bigamy in this context does not mean having two wives at the same
time. It refers to a man’s marriage to a widow or his remarriage
after his wife’s death. For the laity it was legitimate in the Middle
Ages. It was not banned by the Church, and in fact was extremely
common, as any social and political historian knows. On the other
hand there were rules about bigamy that may at first seem strange.
They have not been much studied though a few good publications
lay a solid foundation. The key rules for our purposes are: (a) a
man who has been made a widower twice or whose deceased wife
was a widow is banned from the priesthood; (b) a central blessing
P. Fedele, ‘Vedovanza e seconde Nozze’, in Il matrimonio nella societ›a altomedievale
(Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’alto Medioevo, 24; 2
vols.; Spoleto, 1977), ii. 820–43 at 825. B. Jussen, Der Name der Witwe: Erkundungen
zur Semantik der mittelalterlichen Bu¢kultur (Ver•o·entlichungen des Max-Planck-
Instituts f•ur Geschichte, 158; G•ottingen, 2000), is less relevant to the current investigation
than might appear, perhaps surprisingly, since our general ideas about
history should be done are so similar. It tells an important monographic story about
the creation of the schema of di·erential afterlife rewards for virgins, widows, and
married people c.400 by writers like Jerome, the corresponding development in the
early Middle Ages of a distinct status group of women who had resolved not to remarry,
and the metaphor of the penitential Church as a widow. It is not really about
widows who remarried, as was normal and respectable. For canon-law background
see J. A. Brundage, ‘The Merry Widow’s Serious Sister: Remarriage in Classical
Canon Law’, in R. R. Edwards and V. Ziegler (eds.), Matrons and Marginal Women
in Medieval Society (Woodbridge, 1995), 33–48.
See above all S. Kuttner, ‘Pope Lucius III and the Bigamous Archbishop of
Palermo’ (1961), repr. in id., The History of Ideas and Doctrines of Canon Law
in the Middle Ages (London, 1980), no. vii, pp. 409–53; H. Schadt, ‘Die Arbores
bigamiae als heilsgeschichtliche Schemata: Zum Verh•altnis von Kanonistik und
Kunstgeschichte’, in W. Busch (ed.), Kunst als Bedeutungstr•ager: Gedenkschrift f•ur
G•unter Bandmann (Berlin, 1978), 129–47. Also useful are the article by J. Vergier-
Boimond, ‘Bigamie (l’irr‹egularit‹e de)’, in R. Naz (ed.), Dictionnaire de droit canonique,
ii (Paris, 1937), 853–88, and A. Esmein, Le Mariage en droit canonique, 2nd
edn.,rev.R.G‹enestal and J. Dauvillier (2 vols.; Paris, 1929–35), ii. 119–25.