Divorce and the Family Law: Earlier History

Abstract

The Church’s law on marriage was in process of elaboration from the twelfth century on and formed part of the more general development of Canon law. In the twelfth century Gratian, a monk from Bologna, had collected together the Decretal decisions of the Popes on a range of spiritual and temporal matters and on the regulation of the bodies of the Church and their members. These were examined, discussed, and further collated by succeeding Popes (Innocent III, Gregory IX, Boniface VIII, Clement V) and compared and combined with Roman law’ to comprise what became known as Canon law.2 For Canon law the definition of a valid marriage was officially settled in the course of the twelfth century but the practice of marriage remained at odds with that definition in the continuation of older, popular traditions. The two schools within the Church — that of Gratian at Bologna and that of Peter Lombard and the Paris school — argued for different accounts. Gratian maintained that marriage was formed by the consent of the parties but only rendered indissoluble by consummation; Peter Lombard maintained that words of consent (verba de presenti) alone constituted both the marriage and the indissoluble bond.3KeywordsEarly HistoryCivil CodeTwelfth CenturyPolitical ObligationConstitutional NormThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.