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4
Consummation
(a) Consummation and the Medieval Church’s Idea of Sex
Bigamy and consummation
A consummated marriage symbolizes the union of Christ and the
Church, an unconsummated one only the union of God with the just
soul. So if a woman marries a man but never has sexual intercourse
with him, and then after his death marries another man and does
sleep with him, her flesh has not been divided: she is uniquely his
in flesh and he uniquely hers. Thus the symbolism of the sacrament
of marriage is not defective, so if she dies, the man is no ‘bigamist’
and may become a priest. That is Innocent III’s argument in the
decretal Debitum.
Similar reasoning could a·ect the fate of married clerics in minor
orders. ‘Bigamy’ would normally lose them clerical status and
immunity, but if the wife’s previous marriage had not been consummated
(or, according to a strict interpretation, if she had never lost
her virginity), there was no problem. The man remained a cleric,
out of reach of secular criminal justice.
The historian of clerical privilege in France has studied practical
consequences in concrete cases. There was a cleric named Imbert
who had been put in a secular prison. The archbishop of Lyons
demanded that he be surrendered. The royal procurator objected
that he was a ‘bigamist’. The archbishop replied that Imbert’s wife
had not been married before, or that if she had, the marriage had
never been consummated. The procurator still thought that the
presumption of law was against Imbert, and it may have been to
avoid such an argument that another cleric called Perrin took an
extreme precaution. Since the friends of the girl he planned to
X. 1. 21. 5.
I follow R. G‹enestal, Le Privilegium fori en France du d‹ecret de Gratien ›alafindu
XIVe si›ecle (2 vols.; Biblioth›eque de l’ ‹Ecole des hautes ‹etudes, Sciences religieuses,
35, 39; Paris, 1921–4), i. 73–4.