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10 Introduction
topic) fundamental book, Rinc‹on’s El matrimonio, mistero y signo.
A main function of the present volume is to demonstrate the relevance
of Rinc‹on’s findings to legal practice and social history.
Rinc‹on prefers the word ‘Significac‹§on’ to symbolism. He wants
to emphasize that the connection between human marriage and
Christ’s union with the Church goes far beyond subjective ‘spiritual
sense’-type parallelism. Though ‘symbolism’ will be used
loosely to cover both kinds of meaning here, the distinction is worth
bearing in mind: it reminds us that in theological texts marriage is
linked to the union of Christ and the Church by a tight web of close
logical reasoning. The same is true of canon-law commentaries,
which Rinc‹on studies alongside the strictly theological texts.
It is rash but important to generalize about world history: if the
generalization is misleading, someone will point it out, but otherwise
no one will know either way. I would suggest, then, that there
is nothing in the world history of religions much like the developments
Rinc‹on describes. If Rinc‹on has made an exemplary analysis
of the theological and canon legal texts, marriage symbolism in literary
and mystical texts has been the object of studies distinguished
by literary sensitivity and a preoccupation with the paradoxes of a
gendered symbolism which both men and women could in principle
use for their relation to God. The bridal mysticism of Bernard of
See n. 32 ad fin. I have not found this book in the British Library, Bodleian Library,
or Cambridge University Library. There are copies in the Birmingham University
Library, the Biblioth›eque Nationale de France, in several German libraries,
and of course in Spain. More recently, see T. Rinc‹on-P‹erez [the same author, I
take it], El matrimonio cristiano: sacramento de la Creaci‹on y de la Redenci‹on. Claves
de un debate teol‹ogico-can‹onico (Estudios Can‹onicos, 1; Pamplona, 1997), chs. 1–3.
For marriage symbolism in connection with sacramentality see also Lawrence, The
Sacramental Interpretation of Ephesians 5: 32, which should in turn be bracketed
with S. P. Heaney, The Development of the Sacramentality of Marriage from Anselm
of Laon to Thomas Aquinas (The Catholic University of America Studies in Sacred
Theology, Second Series, 134; Washington, 1963).
‘Creemos fundamental distinguir entre simbolismo o paralelismo simb‹olico y
significaci‹on come tal. Lo primero, en t‹erminos gramaticales, equivale a una simple
yuxtaposici‹on del sentido m‹§stico y el sentido literal. Mientras que en la en la
significaci‹on come tal existe un subordinaci‹on o dependencia profunda del signo en
relaci‹on con la cosa significada’ (Rinc‹on, El matrimonio, misterio y signo, 270 n. 48).
Thus N. Cartlidge, Medieval Marriage: Literary Approaches, 1100–1300
(Cambridge etc., 1997), develops a persuasive argument that despite the exaltation
of virginity over marriage in some of the texts he studies they still make marriage
symbolize a ‘true drama of feeling’ and stand as ‘a paradigm of emotional commitment’;
‘the sponsa Christi-motif is much more than a rhetorical metaphor for
spiritual union: it is used to evoke a psychological process’ (159).
e.g. Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: ‘If monks wished to play