Untitled

176 Chapter 4
helped deflect theological tradition into a new channel. The following
fascinating comment by Stephen Langton caught Sir Maurice
Powicke’s acute eye long ago:
We say that it is not our business nor is it possible to define how far
[quantum] the pope can go. For who would have dared to say before the time
of pope Alexander that a woman who had not consummated her marriage
could transfer herself to the monastic life? Who would not have denied that
the lord pope, in the light of the saying in the gospel, ‘whomsoever God
hath joined let no man put asunder,’ could give dispensation in a matter of
this kind? But afterwards when the decretal was issued, any man who had
previously denied it would say that the lord pope could dispense.
Alexander’s decision was unexpected but it did not come out of
nowhere. A long tradition of thought about symbolism, consummation,
and indissolubility lies behind it and makes sense of it.
Alexander must have been aware of this tradition if only because
it showed itself in the most influential canon-law text of his time,
Gratian’s Decretum. The relevant passage is in the section on the
conversion of married people to the religious life, the part of the
work directly relevant to the case Alexander decided.
(b) The Dissolution of the Unconsummated
Marriage: From Hincmar to Alexander III
‘One flesh’ and the ‘great mystery’
Perhaps the ultimate origins of the developments described here
lie in the ‘one flesh’ passages in the Gospels combined with St
Paul’s ‘great mystery’ passage at Ephesians 5: 32. Did a marriage
where the couple had not become one in flesh mirror the marriage
of Christ to the Church as perfectly as after consummation? The
eventual answer given in our period should not astonish us, in view
of these New Testament passages, with which clerical writers about
marriage were naturally familiar. Nevertheless, it was a long time
before theological thought turned in this direction. The process has
been traced in a fundamental and little-known paper by the legal
historian Jean Gaudemet, and the next few paragraphs are largely
apr‹ecis of his findings.
Langton, quoted in F. M. Powicke, Stephen Langton (Oxford, 1928), 140.
Pars II, C. 27, q. 2, c. 7. e.g. Matt. 19: 5.
‘Recherche sur les origines historiques de la facult‹e deromprelemariage