Untitled

Consummation 189
debate led to no practical di·erence. That would come later and in
a somewhat di·erent form, as will become apparent.
Contrasting cases from the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries
Between Alexander III’s decision in the late twelfth century and the
fifteenth century there is no new substantial change in practice as a
consequence of symbolic reflection. Then, after this long time lag
the speculation was translated into more social change. The process
seems to have begun in the fifteenth century but gathered strength
in the early modern period. The fifteenth-century changes will be
discussed shortly, but a good sense of the trajectory and its direction
can be obtained by confronting an early thirteenth-century case
with one from the early seventeenth century. The contrast brings
out more clearly than a detailed narrative the di·erence between
the period from the late twelfth century to the early fifteenth, on
the one hand, and the subsequent period (continuing to this day in
Catholic marriage law) on the other.
The thirteenth-century case had come to Pope Innocent III because
of its complexity and the unsolved legal problem it raised.
Because it set a precedent, it was preserved in the Decretals of Gregory
IX (X. 4. 15. 6), published in 1234. Innocent’s letter itself was
sent on 3 July 1206. It was addressed to the bishop of Auxerre,
as the ordinary responsible. The case turned on a woman who had
been unable to consummate her marriage.
The rules for annulments on grounds of impotence were followed.
Married women inspected her to determine whether she
really was unable to consummate a marriage, and concluded that
she was. The bishop annulled the marriage, and persuaded her to
make a promise to enter a religious order. Whether she simply made
a promise, or took a solemn vow and entered a religious order, seems
to have been empirically unclear to Innocent, who would go on to
give solutions for either case.
cyclopedia of Theology (London etc., 1995), 206–29 at 220. Dr Patrick Nold has in
hand a study of the whole problem, on the basis of unpublished opinions by theologians
consulted by the pope before his decision. He pointed out to me that the
question related to deacons and subdeacons as well as priests. Examining the ideas
of theologians consulted by John XXII, he has found interesting discussion of the
putative unconsummated marriage—at Cana in Galilee—of John the Evangelist.
That theme does not seem to play much part in the causal sequences studied in the
present book.
Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, ii. 706–7.