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Marriage in Medieval Culture: Consent Theory and The Case of Joseph and Mary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Irven M. Resnick
Irven M. Resnick
Affiliation:
Irven M. Resnick is Professor and Chair of Excellence in Judaic Studies in the department of philosophy and religion at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
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Extract

From the second half of the eleventh century, medieval Latin theologians and canonists wrestled with a number of questions related to sexual relations and marriage. Marriage is, characteristically, one of the avenues by which a society—especially a religious or holy community— attempts to define its boundaries. In this effort church authorities had, for centuries, proscribed both marriage and sexual relations between Jews and Christians. They had sought control over marital relations among Christian spouses by proscribing sexual contact before receiving communion, during Lent, or during a woman's pregnancy or menstrual cycle. They had also attempted to eliminate marriage among clergy, with occasional success, as part of an effort to define and control marital unions more effectively.

Type
Biblical Interpretation and the Construction of Christian Sexualities
Information
Church History , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , June 2000 , pp. 350 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2000

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References

1. For a collection of primary source materials, see especially Linder, Amnon, The Jews in the Legal Sources of the Early Middle Ages (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997), 237–38, 251–52, 255–56, 577–80, 599–602, 618–21.Google ScholarCf. Brundage, James A., “Intermarriage Between Christians and Jews in Medieval Canon Law,” Jewish History 3 (1988): 25–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. For the history of the attack on clerical marriage in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, see especially Barstow, Anne Llewellyn, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: The Eleventh Century Debates (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1982).Google Scholar Among the most outspoken opponents of clerical marriage during the eleventh century was Peter Damian, who was influential in developing its canonical definition. See Chasteigner, J. de, “Le Célibat sacerdotal dans les écrits de Saint Pierre Damien,” Doctor communis 24 (1971): 169–83, 261–77.Google Scholar

3. See Damian's, Peter argument on this point in his op. 17, De caelibatu sacerdotum, 3, in Patrologia Latina, ed. Migne, J.-P. (Paris, 1844–1865; hereafter PL), 145: 384D;Google Scholarand op. 18, Contra intemperantes clericos 1, PL 145: 388B.Google Scholar

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5. Even Peter Damian, a moderate reformer, was willing to recommend that the faithful avoid liturgical and sacerdotal functions performed by married or unchaste priests, resulting in a sort of “liturgical strike.” See Fornasari, Giuseppi, “S. Pier Damiani e lo ‘sciopero liturgico,’” Studi medievali 17, ser. 3 (1976): 815–32.Google ScholarFor a discussion of efforts to exclude married priests from liturgical functions and to deprive them of their benefices, also see Uta-Renate Blumenthal, “Pope Gregory VII and the Prohibition of Nicolaitism,” in Frassetto, Michael, ed., Medieval Purity and Piety: Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998): 239–67.Google Scholar

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7. In the early twelfth century, Ivo of Chartres (Panormia 3.103, PL 161:1153AB) insists that after ordination as a subdeacon or to higher orders, those who do not live chastely shall be excluded from their dignity. Marriage is certainly incompatible with the ministry of the altar. The Second Lateran Council (1139) had determined that marriage of clergy in major orders was null, and early-thirteenth-century handbooks of pastoral instruction clearly argued that clerical ordination to the rank of subdeacon and above was a canonical impediment to marriage. See, for example, Grosseteste, Robert, Templum Dei 16.3, ed. Goering, Joseph and Mantello, F.A.C. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984), 58.Google Scholar

8. Le Jan, Régine remarks, “Sécurité, amicitiae et puissance, tels étaient done les principes premiers qui déterminalent le choix d'une épouse au haut Moyen Age.” Famiile et pouvoir dans le monde franc, 292.Google Scholar

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10. For the most determined defense of the claim that the Gregorian reform was revolutionary in its effort to render the laity utterly passive in the life of the church, see Tellenbach, Gerd, The Church in Western Europe.Google Scholar

11. Although the emphasis on consent perhaps stemmed from a revived interest in Roman law, in antiquity the consent required to conclude a marriage was especially that of the pater familias or a woman's guardian. The consent of the betrothed partners was assumed. Although over time it would become possible to conclude a marriage even without the consent of the parent or guardian, such marriages were viewed as valid but quite improper. See Reynolds, Philip Lyndon, Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianization of Marriage During the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 22–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. For a good discussion of the conflict between lay and ecclesiastical interests in marriage in the twelfth century, see Duby, Georges, Medieval Marriage: Two Models from Twelfth-Century France, trans. Foster, Elborg (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

13. “Natum Deum esse de Virgine credimus, quia legimus. Mariam nupsisse post partum, non credimus, quia non legimus. … Tu [Helvidius] dicis Mariam virginem non permansisse: ego mihi plus vindico, etiam ipsum Joseph virginem fuisse per Mariam, ut ex virginali conjugio virgo filius nasceretur. Si enim in virum sanctum fornicatio non cadit, et aliam eum uxorem habuisse non scribitur: Mariae autem, quam putatus est habuisse, custos potius fuit, quam maritus: relinquitur, virginem eum mansisse cum Maria, qui pater Domini meruit appellari.” Jerome, De perpetua virginitate B. Mariae, Adversus Helvidium 19, PL 23: 203B. Another possibility, namely that Joseph had another wife besides Mary who gave birth to these “[half] brothers of the Lord” was similarly excoriated by later authors, for whom Joseph's perpetual virginity and chastity became almost as important as Mary's. Cf. Haimo of Halberstadt Homilia 50, PL 118:294C; Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 3.28.3.Google Scholar

14. Reynolds, , Marriage in the Western Church, 342–43.Google Scholar

15. Jerome, , De perpetua virginitate B. Mariae, Adversus Helvidium 16, PL 23: 200C–201A.Google ScholarCf. Haymo of Halberstadt, Homilia 8, In vigiliis nativitatis domini, PL 118: 53.Google Scholar

16. Abelard remarks, “Non enim desponsari, vel matrimonium contrahi, nisi pari duorum consensu; nee aliter ipsa conjux vel uxor Joseph vocaretur ab Evangelista”; Sermo 1, In annuntiatione Beatae Virginis Mariae, PL 178: 381D.Google ScholarConsider too the explanation of the ninth-century Christianus Stabulensis, who remarks that “sponsus et sponsa a spondendo dicti sunt eo quod ante spondebant sibi cautiones matrimonii consentire et dabant fideiussores etiam annulo subarrabantur. Tali ergo modo desponsata erat maria Joseph non tamen in concupiscentia iuncta.” Expositio in evangelium Matthaei, PL 106: 1276.Google Scholar

17. Reynolds treats Augustine's understanding of spiritual marriage in chap. 11 of Marriage in the Western Church. For Augustine's view of marriage as a sacrament, cf. Schmitt, Emille, “Le Sacrement du mariage chez Augustin: Une Théologie baptismale de la vie conjugale,” Revue de droit canonique 42 (1992): 197–214.Google ScholarCf. also McNamara, Jo Ann, “Chaste Marriage and Clerical Celibacy,” in Bullough, V. and Brundage, J., eds., Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1982), 28.Google Scholar

18. The best study of this subject is Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

19. For Hugh's argument that Joseph and Mary were joined in a true marriage even though Mary never consented to carnal commerce, see especially his De virginitate B. Mariae 1, PL 176: 857–65.Google ScholarNote in particular his conclusion that while it is a great sacrament for two to become one flesh, as Christ and the church are one, it is greater still for two to become one in heart, mind, and soul (“Magnum igitur sacramenrum, Erunt duo in carne una, in Christo et Ecclesia; sed majus sacramentum, Erunt duo in corde uno, in dilectione una, in Deo et anima”; 864B). Mary and Joseph achieved this higher type of union. Cf. Summa sententiarum 7.1–7, PL 176:153D–60D.Google Scholar

20. See especially Dyan Elliott's appendices 1 and 5 in Spiritual Marriage.Google Scholar

21. Op. 56, De fluxa mundi gloria 4, PL 145: 812D.Google Scholar

22. “Jam tune enim in sacerdotibus figurabatur Christi et ecclesiae spirituale conjugium.” Ep. 12.3, PL54: 659A.Google Scholar

23. Cf. Hildebert of Lavardin (b. ca. 1055), Sermo 144,Google ScholarDe communi consensu, PL 171: 963–64.Google Scholar

24. Rupert of Deutz, De laesione virginitatis 15, PL 170: 558D.Google Scholar

25. Panormia 6.24, PL 161:1248. Ivo of Chatres lived ca. 1040–1115. My thanks to Professor Bruce Brasington of West Texas A & M for pointing out that, in the manuscripts of the Panormia he has collated to date, there is no evidence that Ivo contributed this rubric.Google Scholar

26. For a discussion of this difference for Anselm of Canterbury and Odo of Tournai, see my “Anselm of Canterbury and Odo of Tournai on the Miraculous Birth of the God-Man,” Mediaeval Studies 58 (1996): 67–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. Elliott, , Spiritual Marriage, 141.Google Scholar

28. See Ivo of Chartres, DecretaGoogle Scholar 8.20, PL 161: 588A; idem, Panormia 6.11–12, PL 161: 1246C; and Lombard, Peter, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, ed. Brady, Ignatius, 3rd ed. (Grottaferrata: Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras, 1971–1981), 4.29.1.4. For the classical source, see Digesta Iustiniani 23.1.7.1 and 23.1.12.Google Scholar

29. Baldwin, John W., “Consent and the Marital Debt: Five Discourses in Northern France around 1200,” in Laiou, Angeliki E., ed., Consent and Coercion to Sex and Marriage in Ancient and Medieval Societies (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1993), 258.Google Scholar Although it is true that in Gratian's Decreta certain texts (such as 27.1.3–4) draw attention to the difficulty of proving a woman's virginity by means of a visual or obstetrical exam, others indicate that a virgin suspected of fornication should undergo such examination before being readmitted to communion; see 27.1.5, Corpus iuris canonici, ed. Friedberg, Emil, vol. 1, Pars prior decretum magistri Gratiani, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1879), 1048–49.Google Scholar

30. See ep. 131 in the Epistularium Iohannis Sarisberiensis, ed. Millor, W. J. et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979), 227–36.Google Scholar For the Latin text with English translation, see English Lawsuits dom William I to Richard I, vol. 2, Henry II and Richard I (Nos. 347–665), ed. van Caenegem, R. C. (London: Selden Society, 1991), 387–404. Pope Alexander III finally declared in favor of Richard de Anstey (see van Caenegem, English Lawsuits, 396–97).Google Scholar

31. “[C]oniugium fieri inter consentientes spontaneos, non inter renitentes et inuitos.” Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae 4. 29.1.3.Google Scholar

32. “Verumtamen, qui inuiti et coacti coniuncti sunt, si postea ab aliquo temporis spatio sine contradictione et querimonia cohabitauerint, facilitate discedendi vel reclamandi habita, consentire uidentur; et consensus ille consequens supplet quod praecedens coactio tulerat.” Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae 4.29.Google Scholar

33. For a discussion of these works, see Constantine the African and ‘Alī Ibn Al-’Abbas Al-Mağūsī: The “Pantegni” and Related Texts, ed. Burnett, Charles and Jacquart, Danielle (Leiden: Brill, 1994).Google Scholar

34. Albertus Magnus, however, criticizes physicians who seek to establish a connection between pleasure during intercourse and female causality in procreation. See his De animalibus libri XXVI 15.112, ed. Stadler, Hermann in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, vols. 15–16 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1916–1920).Google ScholarHe notes, for example, that on the one hand the female and male both can enjoy and take pleasure in intercourse without sperm being produced by one or the other. On the other hand, in the female it seems that pleasure of intercourse (or even masturbation) provides the most suitable condition under which the female sperm can enter the womb (cf. De animalibus 15.52). More, the pleasure of intercourse is most often caused by the movement of the sperm (cf. De animalibus 15.80). Nevertheless, he records the testimony of some women who claim that it is even possible for the female sperm to descend to the womb and for them to become pregnant when they felt no pleasure in intercourse (De animalibus 15.145).Google Scholar

35. “Prostitutae igitur, quae pro solo pretio coeunt, nullam delectationem illic habentes, nichil emittunt nee gignunt.” William of Conches, Dragmaticon Philosophiae 6.8.6, ed. Ronca, Italo, Christianorum, Corpus, medievalis, continuatio (hereafter CCCM) 152 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 208.Google ScholarThe translation is from A Dialogue on Natural Philosophy (Dragmaticon Philosophiae), trans. Ronca, Italo and Curr, Matthew (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 136.Google Scholar

36. Vincent of Beauvais (ca. 1190–1264) adds: “To remain silent when one could protest is to consent” (Consentire … est tacere cum possis redarguere). De morali principis institutione 26, 52 CCCM 137, ed. Schneider, R. J. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995).Google Scholar

37. “Videmus enim raptas, reclamantes et plorantes violentiam passas, concepisse … apparet illas nullam in illo opere habuisse delectationem.… Etsi raptis in principio opus displicet, in fine tamen ex carnis fragilitate placet.” William of Conches, Dragmaticon Philosophiae 6.8.9–10, CCCM 152:209, trans, in A Dialogue on Natural Philosophy, 137.Google Scholar

38. A distinction perhaps rooted in Paul's comment at Romans 7:19: “Non enim quod volo bonum, hoc facio; sed quod nolo malum, illud facio.”Google Scholar

39. Magnus, Alberrus, De animalibus 1.458. The translation is from Albertus Magnus On Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica, trans. Kitchell, Kenneth F. Jr and Resnick, Irven Michael (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 1: 221. The problem of properly identifying female virginity plagued medieval physicians as well, since they were aware that it was possible, as Albert noted, to feign this condition.Google Scholar

40. See Lemay, Helen Rodnite, “Human Sexuality in Twelfth- through Fifteenth-Century Scientific Writings,” in Bullough, V. and Brundage, J., Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1982), 194.Google Scholar

41. See Heaney, Seamus P., The Development of the Sacramentality of Marriage from Anselm of Laon to Thomas Aquinas, Catholic University of America Studies in Sacred Theology, 2nd. ser., 134 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 7 ff.Google Scholar

42. Cf. Honorius of Autun, L'Elucidarium et les Lucidaires 2.51a, ed. Lefèvre, Yves (Paris: Bibliothèque des Écoles Francaises d'Athènes et de Rome, 1954), 426. For Herveus of Bourgdieu, cf. his Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians (PL 181: 1269).Google Scholar

43. “Utrum inter Mariam, et Joseph fuerit verum matrimonium.” Summa theologiae 3.29.2.Google Scholar

44. For example, cf. Decreta 27.2.4, 6,27.2.16–17;Google ScholarCorpus iuris canonici 1: 1064, 1066.Google Scholar

45. For sources, see Hecht, N. S. et al. , eds., An Introduction to the History and Sources of Jewish Law (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 134–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46. See Hefele, Charles Joseph, A History of the Councils of the Church, trans. Clark, William R. (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1896), 5: 236.Google Scholar Angeliki E. Laiou adds that the council's equation of betrothal with marriage was adopted as civil legislation only at the time of Leo VI (ruled 886–912). The punishment for sleeping with another man's betrothed was the same as for adultery, namely, the man's nose was slit. See Laiou, Angeliki E., “Sex, Consent, and Coercion in Byzantium,” in eadem, , ed., Consent and Coercion to Sex and Marriage in Ancient and Medieval Societies (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1993), 122.Google Scholar

47. Liber de restauratione monasterii Sancti Martini Tornacensis 33, ed. Waitz, Georg, in Monumenta Germaniae historica, SS 14 (Hanover, 1883; reprint 1963), 286–87. Herman's complete history is available in the translation of Nelson, Lynn H.under the title Herman of Tournai: The Restoration of the Monastery of Saint Martin of Tournai (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1996).Google Scholar

48. Rupert of Deutz, De laesione virginitatis 17, PL 170: 560.Google Scholar

49. See Gregory, PopeIX's Decretales 3.42.4 (Paris, 1561), cols. 646–47,Google Scholarquoted by Watt, John A., “Jews and Christians in the Gregorian Decretals,” in Wood, Diana, ed., Christianity and Judaism: Papers Read at the 1991 Summer Meeting and the 1992 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 100.Google Scholar The quodlibetal literature of the thirteenth century also addresses the issue of the forced baptism of Jews. See Dahan, Gilbert, “Juifs et judaïsme dans la littérature quodlibétique,” in Cohen, Jeremy, ed., From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997), 230–32.Google Scholar

50. Grayzel, Solomon, The Church and the Jews in the Thirteenth Century, vol. 2, 1254–1314, ed. Stow, Kenneth (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 6–7.Google Scholar For evidence of attempts to convert Jewish communities by the sword, see for example The Jews and the Crusaders: The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades, trans. Eidelberg, Shlomo (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977).Google Scholar

51. Consider for example the debate surrounding whether or not Jewish children could be forcibly taken and baptized without the consent of their parents. Here the question was not the consent of the child, but rather the presence of parental consent. It is instructive that Duns Scotus was willing to abandon consent as an essential condition for valid baptism in such cases. See his Opus Oxoniense 4.4.9.Google Scholar

52. Decreta 27.2.2, Corpus iuris canonici, 1063.Google Scholar

53. Decreta 27.2.16, Corpus iuris canonici, 1066.Google Scholar

54. Cf. Decreta 27.2.39, Corpus iuris canonici, 1074. This understanding can be traced back to the early church and became a common exegetical strategy. Thus, Joseph is called Mary's husband (vir Mariae) in an extended sense, as Scripture customarily calls betrothed men (sponsi) husbands (viri) and betrothed women (sponsae) wives (uxores). Cf. Christianus Druthmarus, Expositio in Matthaeum 1, PL 106:1274C; and Rabanus Maurus, Commentarium in Matthaeum 1, PL 107:735C.Google Scholar

55. Smaragdus, , Collectiones in epistolas et evangelia, PL 102:65A.Google Scholar

56. Already in the late second century Celsus provides evidence of a popular Jewish accusation that Mary bore Jesus not as a virgin, from a miraculous birth, but rather from an illicit union with a Roman soldier, Panthera. The Virgin Birth, then, appears as a convenient deception to conceal her sin. See Celsus on the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians, trans. Hoffmann, R. Joseph (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 57.Google Scholar Such unflattering depictions of the Virgin were also conveyed to medieval Jewish attacks on Christianity—so much so, that according to William Jordan, they were largely responsible for Christian attacks on the Talmud (identified as the source of such blasphemy) in Paris in 1240. See his “Marian Devotion and the Talmud Trial of 1240,” in Lewis, Bernard and Niewöhner, Friedrich, eds., Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1992), 61–77.Google ScholarCf. Schaberg, Jane, The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 170–72.Google Scholar

57. Augustine had proclaimed that Joseph was Jesus' father even though he had not had conjugal relations with Mary, because not coitus but love establishes the marital bond (“Non itaque propterea non fuit pater Joseph, quia cum matre Domini non concubuit; quasi uxorem libido faciat, et non charitas conjugalis”). Sermo 51, De concordia Evangelistarum Matthaei et Lucae in generationibus Domini 13, PL 38: 345.Google Scholar

58. See his Homiliae de tempore, PL 118:84B.Google Scholar

59. De divinis officiis 3.19, PL 170:78B.Google Scholar

60. Decreta 27.2.18, Corpus iuris canonici, 1067.Google ScholarCf. Makowski, Elizabeth M., “The Conjugal Debt and Medieval Canon Law,” Journal of Medieval History 3 (1977): 99–114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarJames Brundage examines the notion of implied consent underlying the theory of the conjugal debt in “Implied Consent to Intercourse,” in Laiou, Angeliki E., ed., Consent and Coercion to Sex and Marriage in Ancient and Medieval Societies (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1993): 245–56.Google Scholar

61. Elliott notes that the focus on the ability to consummate was relentless. If a woman could not be penetrated, surgery was recommended. While Pope Innocent III was willing to allow for the dissolution of a marriage in the event of a gross disparity in the size of the genitals, John of Freiburg later remarked that a wise woman told him that “very rarely was a man's penis so large that his bride could not accomodate it.” Elliott, Spiritual Marriage, 146.Google Scholar

62. Decreta 27.2.39, Corpus iuris canonici, 1074.Google ScholarFor this discussion of Gratian's position I am especially indebted to Penny S. Gold, “The Marriage of Mary and Joseph in the Twelfth-Century Ideology of Marriage,” in Bullough, V. and Brundage, J., eds., Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1982), 102–17;Google ScholarWerckmeister, Jean, “La Fidélité conjugale dans le droit canonique médiévale,” Revue de droit canonique 44 (1994): 17–34;Google Scholar and idem, “Le Mariage sacrament dans le Decret de Gratien,” Revue de droit canonique 42 (1992): 237–67.Google Scholar

63. Disp. 15, q. 1, in Les Disputationes de Simon de Tournai, ed. Warichez, Joseph, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, Etudes et Documents 12 (Louvain, 1932), 52–53.Google Scholar

64. “‘Consentire … est tacere cum possis redarguere.’” De morali principis institutione, 26, 52 CCCM 137, ed. Schneider, R. J. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995).Google Scholar