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Indissolubility 85
so at all. One cannot invariably infer a practice from legislation
against it, but as a rule of thumb the inference has much to be said
for it. The decree does seem to imply that a tolerance of polygamy
(or at least bigamy) was widespread enough in early eighth-century
society to provoke ecclesiastical condemnation. An educated guess
would be that at this time many men kept a semi-ocial concubine
alongside their ocial wife.
A generation after the Roman synod indissolubility found a tenacious
and powerful defender in Pope Nicholas I. He thwarted King
Lothar II’s attempted divorce from Theutberga with an intransigence
hard to imagine in the Merovingian era. It was already a sign
of changed times that Lothar got his clergy to make a canon-law
case. Pope Nicholas I paid it no heed. He acted like a thirteenth
century pope, except that an Innocent III would have laboriously
considered the precise canon-law arguments at issue. Otherwise,
it could have been Innocent III frustrating Philip Augustus more
than three centuries later.
Lothar II’s queen, Theutberga, had found another defender in
Hincmar of Reims, the marriage guru of ninth-century Francia—
Cf. R. Kottje, ‘Kirchliches Recht und p•apstlicher Autorit•atsanspruch: Zu den
Auseinandersetzungen •uber die Ehe Lothars II.’, in H. Mordek (ed.), Aus Kirche
und Reich: Studien zu Theologie, Politik und Recht im Mittelalter. Festschrift f•ur
Friedrich Kempf zu seinem f•unfundsiebzigsten Geburtstag und f•unfzigj•ahrigen Doktorjubil•aum
(Sigmaringen, 1983), 97–103 at 103: ‘Es mag sein, da¢ er Lothar und
seine Anh•anger besser durchschaut, ihre Motive klarer erkannt hat, als es uns die
erhaltenen Zeugnisse der Auseinandersetzungen erm•oglichen. Selbst dann ist als bemerkenswert
festzuhalten, da¢ er nicht nur auf die — wenigstens formal — rechtlich
begr•undeten Darlegungen der Partei Lothars nicht eingegangen, sondern auch seine
Urteile nicht mit •uberliefertem kirchlichem Recht begr•undet hat’. Kottje inclines
to the view that it was all about power for Nicholas, but the latter may have felt deep
scepticism about the case without wanting or perhaps feeling equipped to wade
into the quagmire of canon-law arguments. For a di·erent perspective see Nelson,
Charles the Bald, 199: ‘Subsequently, Theutberga revealed her state of mind [in
accepting a life of penance in a convent for alleged sins]: “I will say whatever they
want—not because it’s true but because I fear for my life”’. Letha B•ohringer argued
that ‘Lothar seine Gemahlin 857 aufgrund von Ressentiments verstie¢, deren
Hintergrund wahrscheinlich ein tiefer Konflikt zwischen ihm und iherer Familie
bildete. . . . Die mit dem Scheidungsgesuch Lothars befa¢ten Bisch•ofe . . .unterst•utzten
ihren K•onig . . . aus Loyalit•at’ (Hincmar of Reims, De divortio Lotharii
regis et Theutbergae reginae, ed. L. B•ohringer (Monumenta Germaniae Historica,
Concilia, 4, suppl. 1; Hanover, 1992), 17. Thus Kottje’s reading—that assertion of
papal power was the main reason why the divorce was prevented—should not be
regarded as the last word on this case. For a recent discussion of the Lothar II–
Nicholas I confrontation see Esmyol, Geliebte oder Ehefrau, 159–70.
Not an unqualified defender: B•ohringer points out that Hincmar ‘gestattet . . .
dem K•onig grunds•atzlich Scheidung und Wiederheirat (auch mit Waldrada!), wenn