Annotation XXIV

”Everyone who puts away his wife, except for the cause of fornication, makes her commit adultery.” — Matthew 5:32

On divorce.

Augustine, in the first book On the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, chapter 26, inquiring how far in this passage

“fornication” is to be understood, seems to be of this opinion: that he thinks it lawful for a divorce to be made on account of any sin whatever, whether of the husband or of the wife. For he writes thus: “From which it is understood that, on account of unlawful concupiscences — not only those committed in debaucheries with other men or women, but absolutely any whatever, which make the soul (misusing the body) stray from the law of God, and which perniciously and basely corrupt [it] — both a man may without crime dismiss his wife, and a wife her husband. Because the Lord makes the cause ‘fornication,’ which fornication (as was mentioned above) we are compelled to understand generally and universally — that is, that [fornication] of which it is said, ‘Thou hast destroyed all who fornicate away from thee’ [Ps. 72(73):27].” These words Augustine, in the first book of the Retractations, chapter 19, approves — referring the reader to what he wrote later on this question, especially in the two books On Adulterous Marriages, in which he determines that divorce is not lawful except on account of the carnal fornication which is [committed] in debaucheries.

Likewise, in the same book and place, he affirms that a divorce from the [marriage-]bed on account of carnal debaucheries is permitted, [but] not commanded. Which statement he condemns, in the same book and chapter of the Retractations, as contrary to the opinion of Solomon, who says, “He who keeps an adulteress is foolish and impious.” See below, Annotation 81.