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190 Chapter 4
The husband apparently remarried, as he was entitled to do after
the first marriage had been declared null and void. So far, so
simple. Complications began when the woman encountered a man
with whom she found she could have sexual intercourse. They got
married (whether or not after they had slept together, the letter
does not say). Her second man appears to have been the bearer of
the letter to the pope, asking for the marriage to be regularized.
It was not to happen. Innocent evidently felt that his hands were
tied by the principle of indissolubility. He could not decide the case
on sympathy, and drive a wedge through the whole principle of the
unbreakability of marriage. He therefore gave a decision that would
bear hard on the woman, who had apparently found happiness.
Characteristically, Innocent’s analysis was like a precision tool.
The annulment had been based on an empirical conclusion subsequently
falsified. The court had thought the woman was frigid,
unable to have intercourse with a man, and that had been proved
wrong. Consequently, the court’s verdict had to be reversed. Ecclesiastical
courts, even the papal court, were not deemed infallible
in annulment cases, any more than we think our secular courts are
infallible. The judges had to decide as best they could on the evidence.
They did not have the power to make a marriage invalid,
any more than a judge now has the power to make a man guilty
of murder. They could only declare the proven truth as they saw
it. If they were proved wrong afterwards, the judgment had to be
reversed. That would reinstate the first marriage, with one proviso.
The proviso is the rule that entry into a religious order dissolves
an unconsummated marriage. If the woman had really done that,
Innocent reasons, then the first marriage was dissolved. This would
not be an annulment, for it would have been a real valid marriage,
and a null marriage is a marriage existing only in appearance, but
still the marriage would cease to be one. On that assumption the
first man was free to stay with his new wife. On the other hand,
the woman would not be free to remarry because she would have
taken a vow of perpetual chastity. So her second marriage would be
invalid.
On the other hand, Innocent is far from sure whether the woman
did more than promise to enter a religious order. He clearly thinks
A small caveat here. One never knows exactly what lies behind such legal cases.
It is conceivable that the woman and her second husband actually wanted that
marriage declared null and the first reinstated. But it does not seem likely.