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Bigamy 145
the nuptial blessing was not a sacrament, though marriage itself
was, and that some sacraments could be repeated. One should
also mention Hostiensis’s suggestion that if one of the partners
in a marriage had been blessed at a previous marriage the unity
of flesh in the consummation of the second marriage would be
enough to communicate the blessing to the unblessed partner, so
that the second marriage did not require a reprise. Was this idea
also around in the twelfth century? The most likely overall hypothesis
is that Alexander III and Urban III were not themselves
absolutely clear in their minds and that it seemed safest to them to
stick to a rule deemed traditional.
A feeling that the blessing should not be repeated because it was
‘sacramental’ or ‘quasi-sacramental’, and a certain stigma attached
to second marriages, are the reasons for the rule given in the curious
questions about marriage in MS BL Royal 11. A. XIV (see below,
Document 3. 8. 20–1). It may be significant, though, that there is a
long passage nearby (3. 8. 19) which is full of marriage symbolism,
drawing out the significance of the placing of the principal blessing
shortly before communion in the mass:
...inthecommunionofthebodyandbloodofChristthelowestthings
are joined to the highest, that is, the human mind is joined to the body of
Christ, in fact to God himself. Since, therefore, marital union [copulatio]
signifies this joining, and indeed also the very union by which the same
deity is united to the humanity as one person in Christ, who is most truly
contained in the aforesaid sacrament [of the Eucharist], it was most fittingly
laid down that the blessing which has the principal place in marriage be
solemnly conferred before communion or the the reception of the same
blessed body, as the sign before the signified.
Whether or not symbolism had been important in the thinking
behind the rule originally, it was certainly important from the
thirteenth century on. The analysis in Thomas Aquinas’s widely
di·used commentary on the Sentences deserves close attention.
Esmein, Le Mariage en droit canonique, ii. 123 and especially n. 5; for Go·redus
see Erd•o, Storia della scienza del diritto canonico, 98.
Esmein, Le Mariage en droit canonique, ii. 124 and n. 3.
In the extracts below I translate and paraphrase from the Latin text given in
Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, qu. 3, art. 2, in
S. Tommaso d’Aquino: Commento alle Sentenze di Pietro Lombardo e testo integrale di
Pietro Lombardo. Libro quarto. Distinzioni 24–42. L’Ordine, il Matrimonio, trans. and
ed. by the ‘Redazione delle Edizioni Studio Domenicano’ (Bologna, 2001), 888–90.
For the commented text see Peter Lombard, Sentences, 4. 42. 7, ii. 508–9 Brady).