About the Author

Lothar of Segni, Pope Innocent III (1160/1 – 1216), was busy with many things, including jockeying for control with the lords of Europe, and launching the expedition that turned into the disastrous Fourth Crusade. But in between all these duties, he had to reply to letters from his clergy asking for advice in hard cases, for example the case we see described in this letter to an Archbishop.

Pope Innocent III on a complex domestic situation

To Hugo, Archbishop of Siponto

We have learned from the letter that you have sent to us that a certain girl of your diocese was married to a man who was frigid by nature and brought into his home.   Since she could not be continent, she fell in love with a young man.  Before she had informed the church of her legal husband’s impotency she moved in with the young man who betrothed himself to her de facto and had sexual intercourse with her. When it came to your notice, you compelled the young man to leave the girl and to swear an oath that he would not keep her or have intercourse with her as long as her husband was alive, since the man and the girl had not been separated by a court judgment.   The first man took her back into his home again, but embarrassed by his impotency entered a religious order and a short time later died. The youth who had betrothed himself to the girl received her into his home and treated her as his wife.  When she bore him a child, he sought to leave her and marry another woman. You have asked us to instruct you what should be done in this particular case.

Since there are many things that are not legal in the beginning but afterwards, with the emergence of other facts, become legal, we mandate that, if the facts of the case are exactly as stated above, Your Fraternity through this Apostolic letter compel the youth to hold the aforementioned woman as his wife under the threat of ecclesiastical censure and without any possibility of appeal.

Innocent III.  Written in the Lateran, 1 April, 1204

(From the translation by K. Pennington)