Annotation LXXXII
”Whoever dismisses [his] wife, except for the cause of fornication, and marries another, commits adultery.” — Matthew 19:9
Whether plurality of wives is prohibited by natural or by divine law.
Thomas Cajetan is accused by Ambrose [Catharinus], bishop of Compsa, [on the ground] that in the commentaries on Matthew, sifting this passage, he hints that a plurality of wives at the same time was never forbidden either by natural law or by the divine laws. And the words which afford such a suspicion are these: “Observe that from this [passage] Innocent the Third — [in the Decretals] Extra, On Divorces, chapter Gaudeamus — takes it that it is not lawful to have several wives. For if it were lawful to have several wives, [then] he who, without dismissing a fornicating [wife], took another, would not commit adultery, but would [merely] use marriage with the second [wife]. But in the text it is said that he commits adultery. And unless Mark had added ‘against her,’ Innocent’s argument would lack [its] scruple.”
Ambrose [Catharinus], in the fifth book of [his] Annotations, charging against Cajetan that elsewhere too he professed this dogma more clearly, defends Innocent’s argument, writing in this manner: “The argument of Pope Innocent the Third — a most holy and most learned man — is unconquerable. For he, condemning the plurality of wives, and forbidding [it] even to converted pagans (who, before they came to the faith, were thus joined [to several wives] according to their own laws), says thus: ‘This seems dissonant, and hostile to the Christian faith, since from the beginning one rib was turned into one woman, and Scripture testifies, “For this cause a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be two in one flesh.” He did not say “Three, or More,” but “Two”; nor did he say “He shall cleave to [his] wives,” but “to [his] wife.”’ And below: ‘Nor was it ever lawful for anyone to have several wives at once, except when it was granted by divine revelation (which custom is then reckoned to be lawful) — through which, just as Jacob [is excused] from lying, the Israelites from theft, and Samson from homicide, so too the patriarchs and other just men, who are read to have had several wives at once, are excused from adultery. Truly this veracious sentence is proved also by the testimony of the Truth, testifying in the gospel: “Whoever dismisses his wife and marries another commits adultery.” But if, [his] wife being dismissed, another cannot lawfully be married, [then] much more [is it so] with her [still] retained. By which it evidently appears that plurality is to be reproved in each sex, since they are not judged [to be] on unequal terms.’ These [things says] he in the chapter Gaudeamus, On Divorce. Nor does it avail that the Cardinal [Cajetan], meeting this argument, says that what Matthew says — ‘He commits adultery’ — is absolutely completed by Mark, who says, ‘He commits adultery against her.’ But what [is] this to the matter? Does he, I ask, who commits adultery against his [own] wife, therefore not commit adultery? Or does he who commits adultery not commit adultery against his wife? This was the nerve of Innocent’s argument: that if it were lawful to have several wives, surely he who — the first being dismissed — married another, would not commit adultery, nor would he commit adultery against her, because he would be using his own right, even if he did evil to her by dismissing her. Efficacious, therefore, is Innocent’s argument, and burdensome [inadequate] is the reply of the most reverend [Cajetan] — as the Philosopher said concerning Melissus.” These [things says] Ambrose [Catharinus].
It is worth noting here in passing that, when I searched among ecclesiastical authors — especially those who wrote on heresies — [to find] who among Christians had been the author of the aforesaid dogma [of polygamy], I found no one who asserted it except the one emperor Valentinian: who, as Socrates relates in the fourth book of the Ecclesiastical History, although he thought rightly about the Trinity and held catholic opinions on the rest, yet in this [matter] declined from the rectitude of the faith. For, whereas he had a wife Severa — or, as others read, Serena — from whom he had begotten Gratian Augustus, now a youth, he, retaining her, married also Justina, the daughter of Justus, captivated by the beauty of the maiden — a law being passed too, that it should be lawful for anyone to have two wives at once. And from this Justina was born Valentinian the Younger, who afterward reigned as Augustus together with the Augusti Gratian and Valens.
Julius Caesar caused a law to be made, by which it was lawful — for the sake of begetting children — to take as many wives as each wished to marry.