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Indissolubility 81
and full bigamy or polygamy there are intermediate stages, not
necessarily clearly distinguished from one another: concubinage
where the woman was not just a mistress but had an ocial or
semi-ocial position, or was a wife but not in the fullest sense, or
where the line between wife and concubine was blurred.
The evidence of formularies gives a glimpse of what were presumably
regular social patterns and suggests that divorce was normal in
the barbarian West, and not only at the top of the social scale. The
following item in the formulary of Marculf is extremely significant:
Since not charity according to God but discord reigns between N. and his
wife N., and because of this they are in no way able to live together, it
was the will of each of them, that they should separate from the union of
marriage, and this they have done. They have consequently had written
and confirmed these two letters with the same content to be given to each
other, so that each of them should be free to do what they wish: whether to
enter the service of God in a monastery, or to enter into a marital union:
and neither should have to answer to their neighbour [proximi] forit.But
if either of the two parties should want to change this or make some claim
against the other one of the couple, they must pay a pound of gold to the
other, and, as they have agreed, they shall be kept away from their own
marriage and shall remain with the party they have chosen.
‘Neighbour’ here may be a clumsy way of referring to the other
party in the dissolved marriage, or to third parties, but it makes
no substantive di·erence. The meaning of the final clause is also
clumsily formulated. It seems to say that if one party tries to reverse
the agreement they must pay a penalty, and cannot interfere with
their former partner’s new relationship.
Thus it is hard to detect any influence of Augustine’s ideas about
marriage on the pre-Carolingian world. Conceivably this is because
of the state of the sources, but more probably the influence was
absent. No doubt Augustinian marriage symbolism found a place
of some kind in the consciousness of some learned men. Still, a
chasm separated it from social practice.
Cf. Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc, 271–4, and J. Ch‹elini, L’Aube
du Moyen A^ge: naissance de la chr‹etient‹e occidentale. La vie religieuse des la•§cs dans
l’Europe carolingienne (750–900) (Paris, 1991), 139, 140–1.
Marculfi formularum libri duo, ed. A. Uddholm (Collectio Scriptorum Veterum
Uppsaliensis; Uppsala, 1962), bk. 2, ch. 3, p. 273.
J. Gaudemet, Le Mariage en Occident: les m¥urs et le droit (Paris, 1987), 120
and nn. 46 and 47 for further references.