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Consummation 199
argument, the intellectual situation was still fluid, leaving open
the possibility of a further crystallization of practical law in the fifteenth
century. Marriage symbolism in Hostiensis and the tradition
he represents is not a discourse of mysticism or a literary trope, and
it goes far beyond the allegorical interpretation of Scripture that
we find everywhere in medieval and patristic writings. As has been
argued throughout, it is a force capable ultimately of shaping social
practice, as we have seen it was in the case of indissolubility and
‘bigamy’.