Annotation LXXXI
”Whoever dismisses his wife, except for fornication, and marries another, commits adultery.” — Matthew 19:9
Whether it is lawful to repudiate an adulterous wife, and to marry another.
Thomas Cajetan, in the commentaries, so discusses the present passage that he seems to decree that it is lawful to repudiate an adulterous wife and to marry another. For he uses these words: “I understand, therefore, from this law of the Lord Jesus Christ, that it is lawful for a Christian to dismiss [his] wife on account of the carnal fornication of the wife herself, and that he can marry another wife — the definition of the Church always being safe[guarded], which hitherto does not appear. For the pontifical Decretals on this matter are not definitions of faith, but judicial [rulings] of fact. And the pontiffs themselves profess, as is plain — in chapter 4 On Divorces, and in the chapter Licet, On the Betrothed of Two — that the Roman pontiffs have sometimes erred in these judgments of marriages. Nor from these [things] should you understand that a wife also can dismiss a fornicating husband; because Jesus, who is true God, did not grant this — nor is the reasoning equal, as is plain; nor even in the old law could a wife repudiate [her] husband. Nor am I the first who [thus] understood the text of the gospel; since, a thousand years ago, blessed Ambrose, understanding [it] thus, taught the same on the first [epistle] to the Corinthians, chapter 7.” Thus Cajetan — in whose opinion very many of the ancient fathers are thought to have been, whose testimonies (usurped partly by catholics, partly by heretics, for the confirmation of this dogma) are these.
Ambrose, on the seventh chapter of the first [epistle] to the Corinthians, expounding that [text] — “I command — not I, but the Lord — that a husband not dismiss [his] wife,” etc. — says: “But there is understood [the exception], ‘except for the cause of fornication’; and therefore he did not add, as [he did] concerning the woman, that ‘if she departs, [she should] so remain’ — because it is lawful for a man to marry [another] wife, if he has dismissed a sinning wife; for he is not bound by the law in the same way as the woman [is]. For the head of the woman is the man.” The same [Ambrose], speaking a little earlier of the woman, says: “But if she cannot contain herself, because she is unwilling to fight against the flesh, let her be reconciled to [her] husband. For it is not permitted to a woman to marry [again], if she has dismissed her own husband for the cause of fornication or of apostasy — or if, an unlawful wantonness impelling [her], she seeks the [conjugal] use [with another]; because the inferior [party] does not use this law in every respect, by which the superior [does]. If, however, the husband apostatizes, or seeks to pervert the [conjugal] use of the wife: the woman still cannot marry another, nor return to him.”
Tertullian, in the fourth book Against Marcion, elucidating that sentence of Matthew from
chapter 5, teaches that Christ forbade the Mosaic divorce not altogether and wholly, but conditionally. For thus he writes: “I say that Christ now made the prohibition of divorce conditionally — that is, if someone dismisses [his] wife for this [reason], that he may marry another. ‘Whoever,’ he says, ‘dismisses [his] wife and marries another, has committed adultery’; and he who marries a woman dismissed by [her] husband is equally an adulterer, and for the same cause by which it is not lawful to dismiss [her] that another be married — [he,] taking as un-dismissed a woman unlawfully dismissed. For the marriage remains, which has not been duly dissolved: while the marriage remains, to marry [again] is adultery. So, if he prohibited conditionally to dismiss [one’s] wife, he did not prohibit [it] wholly; and what he did not prohibit wholly, he permitted. You have, therefore, Christ [as] a champion of the justice of divorce.”
Hilary, in canon 4 on Matthew, explaining that [text], “Whoever dismisses his wife,” etc., speaks thus: “Whereas the [Mosaic] law had granted the liberty of giving a bill of divorce by the authority of a document, now the evangelical faith has enjoined upon the husband not only the will of peace, but has even imposed [the burden] of a wife forced into adultery — if, by the necessity of [her] departure, she is to be married to another — prescribing no other cause for keeping [her] from [a new] marriage than that which would pollute the husband by the fellowship of a prostituted wife.”
The author of the Opus imperfectum, homily 32 on Matthew, has thus: “As he is cruel and unjust who dismisses a chaste [wife], so he is foolish and unjust who retains a harlot. For he is the patron of her turpitude who conceals the crime of [his] wife. We ought, therefore, to be imitators of God — that, as he deals with the Church, so we may deal with [our] spouse. For he will never forsake [her], unless she voluntarily pass over to heathenism and heresy. So too let the husband indeed dismiss a harlot; but otherwise let him chastise and keep a badly-behaved [wife].”
Chrysostom, homily 17 on Matthew, meeting those who complain that this law is burdensome, says: “Christ made this law light and easy. For he left to the husband one mode of expulsion, by saying, ‘except for the cause of fornication’; otherwise all [things] would return again into the same turpitude. For if he had commanded that a wife defiled with many [men] should nevertheless be retained by the husband, he would again have turned the whole business into a license for adultery.” Again, in the homily On Divorce, on the first [epistle] to the Corinthians, chapter 7, he so condemns divorce as to except the cause of adultery, saying: “For when a husband has dismissed [his] wife without the cause of fornication, [and] when another has married [the woman] cast out while the husband lives, [that second husband] shall be punished together with that ejected [woman].”
Euthymius, the abbreviator of Chrysostom, on Matthew chapter 5, on that [text], “Whoever repudiates [his] wife,” etc., speaks thus: “Moses commanded [a man] to give a bill of divorce, lest afterward he might again lay hold of [a woman] now married to another man, as [if she were] his own — and hence would arise disturbances and seditions. But Christ, instructing them more gently by the aforesaid words, commands that they not repudiate [their] wife, except for the cause of fornication. And by ‘fornication’ he here means adultery. For he who repudiates his [wife] apart from the cause of fornication makes her to be an adulteress, when she unites with another man; and he who marries [a woman] thus repudiated by another commits adultery with another[‘s wife].”
Theophylact, on the 16th chapter of Luke, brings in Christ speaking thus: “For behold, concerning the dissolution of marriage the [Mosaic] law gave precept on account of the murderousness of the Jews. I, training [my] hearers toward more perfect [things], forbid divorce without a reasonable cause — not teaching [things] contrary to that [law], but rather perfecting its will.” And on Matthew chapter 5: “Christ did not abolish the Mosaic [law], but corrects [it], terrifying the man, that he may not without cause hold [his] wife in hatred. For if he has dismissed her for a just cause — namely, [as] fornicating — he is liable to no condemnation; but if without the cause of fornication, he is condemned. For he compels her to commit adultery. But also he who takes her [in marriage] is an adulterer. For unless he had taken [her], she would surely have returned, and been made subject to [her] husband.”
Augustine, in the book On Faith and Works, chapter 19, testifies that it is not manifest from the divine Scriptures whether he who, after dismissing an adulterous wife, has married another, is an adulterer. His words are these: “Whoever dismisses a wife caught in adultery and marries another does not seem to be equated with those who dismiss and marry apart from the cause of adultery. And in the divine sentences themselves it is so obscure whether even this [man] — to whom, indeed, without doubt it is lawful to dismiss an adulteress — is nevertheless to be held an adulterer if he marries another; that, as far as I judge, one errs [only] venially [in this matter].”
Chromatius, bishop of Aquileia, in the commentaries on Matthew chapter 5, when he was explaining that [text], “Whoever dismisses [his] wife, except for the cause of fornication,” etc., says: “By saying ‘except for the cause of fornication’ — [that] it is not lawful to dismiss a wife — he plainly shows how grave a crime of damnation before God they incur, who, through the unbridled pleasure of lust, wish — their wives dismissed without the cause of fornication — to pass over into other marriages. But just as it is not right to dismiss a wife living chastely and purely, so also it is permitted to dismiss an adulteress; because she has made herself unworthy of the husband’s fellowship — she who, by sinning against her own body, has dared to violate the temple of God.”
Zacharias, the first pope [of that name], decreed that a wife — [her] husband being rejected, who had defiled her sister — might marry another man, if she was unwilling to contain [herself]. And Gratian relates this decree in Cause 32, question 7, in these words: “Hast thou lain with the sister of thy wife? If thou hast done [so], mayst thou have neither. And if she who was thy wife was not conscious of the crime — [and] if she is unwilling to contain herself — let her marry in the Lord whom she will; but do thou, and the adulteress, remain without hope of marriage.” There is extant, in the same Gratian, in the same question a little before, a not dissimilar decree, which is believed [to be] of the Council of Elvira, permitting a husband — his wife, who mingled herself with the husband’s brother, being cast off — to marry another, in these plain words: “A certain [woman] slept with her husband’s brother; it is decreed that the adulterers never be coupled in marriage; but to him whose wife was defiled, lawful marriages are not to be denied.”
In the councils of Mainz and Tribur, as Gratian writes in the same place, there is another decree of the same kind, by which a man who has dismissed a wife married [by him after she had been] deflowered by [his] stepson is permitted to take another spouse. The words of the edict are these: “If anyone has slept with his stepmother, neither [of them] can attain
to marriage; but her husband can, if he wishes, take another, if he cannot contain himself.”
Ambrose [Catharinus], bishop of Compsa, in the commentaries on the first [epistle] to the Corinthians, and especially in the fifth volume of [his] Annotations, contends with many arguments that it is lawful for a husband, after repudiating an adulteress, to marry another wife; saying that it seems to him an exceedingly hard and unjust thing that an innocent man — meanwhile flourishing in age and prone to venery — through no fault of his own (nay, rather from another’s fault, and from an injury inflicted upon himself) should be compelled to change [his] state and to lead a perpetually celibate and mournful life, joined with the burning of lust and the affliction of childlessness — whereas it is neither lawful to be joined with an adulteress, nor to seek another.
And these are the [testimonies] which I have read among catholic authors [as] worthy of note. But among heretical writers, Philip Melanchthon, in the Appendix of [his] Commonplaces, writes that in the ancient Church there was a custom that, after a divorce, it was lawful for the innocent party — the [other] spouse [still] surviving — to marry another. And, citing as a witness of this matter first of all Justin the philosopher and martyr — who, in the first Apology for the Christians to the Emperor Antoninus, praises a Christian woman who, when she had a husband seeking out every kind of lust, even against the laws of nature, resolved to be separated from the marriage; and when she was being drawn away from that purpose by her [friends], who urged that there was hope that at some time her husband would change [his] life and morals, doing violence to herself, she remained in the [married] life; but afterward, when she heard that her husband, having set out for Alexandria, was committing [things] much more foul still, deeming it wicked and impious to be held [bound] to so impure a spouse, sent him a bill of divorce and wholly severed herself from him, from the right of marriage and the bond of nuptials. To Justin he [Melanchthon] joins Origen, who in the seventh treatise on Matthew testifies that certain bishops were known to him who permitted wives who had made a divorce with [their] husbands to marry other men, lest something worse should follow thence. To these he wove in that noble Fabiola, celebrated in Jerome’s epitaph, who — her husband of monstrous lust being repudiated — passed to a second marriage.
But against all these stands the immovable faith of the Church, by whose authority it is established that a marriage, once it has been consummated, can in no way be dissolved, except by the death of one [party]. Which opinion, indeed, all theologians ancient and more recent have taught, the decrees of the pontiffs have approved, and at last the most holy Tridentine Synod, in the twenty-fourth session, confirmed — a new canon being promulgated in these words: “If anyone shall say that the Church errs, when she taught and teaches, according to evangelical and apostolic doctrine, that on account of the adultery of one of the spouses the bond of marriage cannot be dissolved; and that both [parties] — or even the innocent one, who gave no cause for the adultery — cannot, the other spouse [being] alive, contract another marriage; and that he commits adultery who, the adulteress being dismissed, marries another, and she who, the adulterer being dismissed, marries another — let him be anathema.”
Therefore, lest any scruple from the adduced sentences of the fathers — which seem to be opposed to this canon — settle in the reader’s mind: it is to be known that the catholic authors are distinguished in a twofold order. Of these, the former em-
[the former order] embraces [those] who indeed grant, counsel, and sometimes enjoin husbands to cast out of the house adulterous wives — especially incorrigible [ones] — and to repudiate [them]; but neither persuade nor permit [them] to take another spouse. It embraces also those who separate husbands from the bed and cohabitation of an adulterous spouse, but absolve no married [person], the other [being] alive, from the right of matrimony, from the covenant of nuptials, and from the bond of the sacrament. In this series are Hilary, Chrysostom, Chromatius, the author of the Opus imperfectum, Euthymius, Theophylact, and especially Augustine — who, in the book On Adulterous Marriages, and in very many other places, openly affirms that it is lawful for any chaste man (nay, even fitting) to cast out an adulterous wife; but that, she surviving, to enter a second marriage is never lawful for anyone.
In the latter order are placed those who teach a divorce of both kinds — that is, [both] from cohabitation and from the marriage-bond. And these too are divided into three classes: of which the first contains those who propose this position not as a sentence of firm determination, but as a probable opinion, to be sifted by the disputations of the learned, and to be judged by the authority of the Church — such as, in our age, were Thomas Cajetan, cardinal-priest, and Ambrose [Catharinus], archbishop of Compsa. The second holds those who permitted such repudiations, and sometimes commanded [them], sanctions and decrees being promulgated on these [matters] — not indeed general and perpetual [ones], but for a time; and that for certain nations and peoples, and only in [cases of] incest and certain other atrocious crimes — lest far worse and fouler [things] be perpetrated by those who could not tolerate such foul marriages. In the number of these are to be placed those bishops who, in the time of Origen, granted repudiations; likewise Pope Zacharias the First, and all those fathers who, in the provincial synods of Elvira, Mainz, and Tribur, established the same for their [own] provincials for that time. The third class, finally, comprises those who, by a certain and indubitable assertion, approved the license of both [kinds of] repudiation — such as Tertullian and Ambrose; although the Master of the Sentences, in the fourth book, distinction 35, judges Ambrose’s commentaries in that place to have been corrupted by forgers.
Let these [things], said in reply to those [testimonies] which are brought forward from catholic writers, suffice. But to those which have been adduced by the heretics, we reply very briefly: that Origen does not praise that deed of the bishops — nay, he says that they did [it] against the precept of divine Scripture, even though they permitted it lest worse [things] should follow. Justin, moreover, praises that woman because she made a divorce; but he does not say that she married another, the former husband [being] still alive — which was what Philip [Melanchthon] had to prove from that same author. Jerome, too, so far from approving Fabiola’s boldness, expressly professes that she acted against the law of Paul, nay of Christ — [in] that, ignorant of the vigor of the gospel, she married another, and was therefore guilty of sin. For he says: “But why do I linger among abolished and ancient [matters], seeking to excuse the fault of Fabiola, which she herself confessed by public penance?” Let these [things], said concerning divorce, suffice.