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Conclusion 201
of Reims lay behind Pope Alexander III’s judgement that a nonconsummated
marriage could be dissolved by the entry of one partner
into a religious order. This decision had a social impact. Symbolic
reflection continued in its wake, eventually enabling popes
to dissolve unconsummated marriages in the light of instrumental
calculation.
Disclaimers
There have been so many studies of medieval marriage in recent
years that in this book it has been possible to develop an argument
and present fresh data without writing a general history of the
subject to provide context and balance. The general books that are
available complement each other well, so the danger of imbalance is
diminished. Ideally, this book would be read after or together with
Brooke’s Medieval Idea of Marriage, which looks at the subject
from many angles, without concentrating on one single thesis. The
present study is, however, monographic, not monocausal. I am not
saying that symbolism is all that mattered in the social history of
medieval marriage, far from it. Symbolism deserves a central place
in medieval marriage’s social history, not the central place (if such
exists). I have merely tried to show how powerful symbolism was
even outside the areas studied by historians of religious thought.
The main vehicles of symbolism’s power in the world, the world
outside texts, were preaching and law, both of which a·ected all
social classes and both genders (even the law being gender-symmetrical
to a greater degree than with the other great systems of
sacred law). Nevertheless, it seems likely that di·erent classes and
genders were a·ected in di·erent ways. Again, one would expect
urbanization to a·ect the overall picture. The evidence I have found
is, however, too patchy to pursue these lines of investigation systematically.
I hope someone in the future may do better.
So far as gender is concerned, this study has not contributed
much to the recent but already distinguished tradition of analysing
symbolism in gender terms. There are reasons. The Church as
bride of Christ is composed of men as well as women. The soul
as bride of Christ is the soul of a man as much as the soul of a
woman. The bride can stand for Christ and the bridegroom for the
Church. This in itself diminishes the impact of the symbolism on
real gender relations. Furthermore, the point of the symbolism ana-
The analogy between Christ and the Church could be taken both ways: Christ