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Consummation 171
Consummation in marriage symbolism
These are points that need to be emphasized, but they lie somewhat
to the side of our central theme. As in the last two chapters, the effects
on law and through law on social practice will be singled out
for special attention. It is appropriate to end with consummation
because it is a central junction in the network of ideas explored in
this book. We have just noted its connection with ‘bigamy’ symbolism.
It is a common motif in the marriage symbolism transmitted to
the masses by preaching, as was noted in Chapter 1. (The formula
of ‘initiation, ratification, and consummation’ comes up again and
again. Confining ourselves to the six texts edited in Medieval Marriage
Sermons, we find it used as a basis for marriage symbolism in
Jean de la Rochelle (passim), Pierre de Saint-Beno^§t (paragraphs 4–
10), G‹erard de Mailly (5–7), and Guibert de Tournai (6 and 14).)
The present chapter will explore more closely its intimate links
with indissolubility, the theme of Chapter 2. There the e·orts of
Philip Augustus to extricate himself from his marriage to Ingeborg
of Denmark were briefly described. One of the lines he tried was the
following: the marriage was never consummated, and she will go
into a religious order, so that the marriage can be ended and a new
marriage becomes possible. Pope Innocent III was unimpressed,
but not because he rejected the principle. He was simply sceptical
about the alleged facts in this particular case: non-consummation
and the queen’s willingness to become a nun. Much of the current
chapter will turn on the case law made by Pope Alexander III that
the French king was trying to use for his purpose.
Consummation is also central in a genre that this study has deliberately
neglected as lying at some distance from social history:
scholastic theology. By way of compensation two ‘questions’ from
the later thirteenth-century theologian Ricardus de Mediavilla
are printed below as Documents 4. 2 and 4. 3. They show the
theological importance that he invests in consummation.
In the ‘question’ printed as Document 4. 3 Ricardus asks
whether the marriage of Mary and Joseph was perfect. From a
medieval theologian one would hardly expect anything but an un-
Here in a negative sense, symbolizing the stages of marriage to sin.
For a good bibliography on Richard, whose biography is obscure but whose
intellectual influence was great, see article on ‘Richard of Middleton’, in F. L. Cross
and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd
edn. (Oxford, 1997), 1396.