Abstract

Mixed marriages contradicted the Catholic Church's doctrine that a man and a woman joined in matrimony constitute one body and one spirit. This article is based on debates that took place in the Roman congregations ( the Holy Office, the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith, the Congregation of the Council) and the Papal Penitentiary. These debates integrated with contemporary normative and prescriptive sources, are used to analyse how the catholic Church's policy on mixed marriages reflected the concept of a set of bodies - the individual body, the family, the political body and the ecclesiastical body - that was understood as a harmonious unity subject to a ruler who did not acknowledge the possibility of deformity and who feared exposure of the whole body to contagion from impurity. This policy was characterised by a crucial ambiguity inherent in execrating a union with the heretic. Such a union was simultaneosly considered both illicit and valid - a sin and even a crime against the flesh ( delicta carnis) but also a sacrament because of the partners' common baptism.

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