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1 results

  • 24 - Marriage: Law and Practice

  • from Conubium
  • Edited by Anders Winroth, Universitetet i Oslo, John C. Wei
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Medieval Canon Law
    Published online:
    13 January 2022
    Print publication:
    27 January 2022, pp 453-474

  • Summary

    Marriage posed problems of immense complexity for medieval canonists. They had the unenviable task of providing guidelines for how to partake in a complex, weighty, and dangerous matter. Marriage was considered sacred, divinely sanctioned, but at the same time it was all too worldly, rife with the risk of committing grave sins. Competing notions of how best Christians should marry in compliance with the teachings of the Old and New Testaments posed problems enough to cause endless difficulties for canonists. Even more problematic, if anything, was the fact that marriage was of immense importance in their society, a bedrock of social, economic, and political organization. All this led to myriad competing concerns. The solutions posed by medieval popes and canonists have had a mixed reception. They certainly failed to impress sixteenth-century reformers.