Note 140 — Chapter XI · HISTORY OF SEPARATION AND DIVORCE UNDER ENGLISH AND ECCLESIASTICAL LAW

Thus, for example, Gratian accounts for the liberty of divorce and remarriage accorded in the letter of Gregory II. (confusing him with Gregory I.) by assuming that it was in consequence of a papal dispensation in favor of the English (Decret. Grat., dictum to c. 18, C. XXXII, qu. 7), although elsewhere he more sensibly rejects Gregory's action as unorthodox. Peter Lombard makes no mention of Gregory's letter and with Gratian rejects as false the passage of pseudo-Ambrose allowing separation and remarriage for adultery (Esmein, op. cit., II, 76); while others get out of the difficulty through the gratuitous assumption that pseudo-Ambrose refers, not to simple adultery, but to a case of incest committed by a woman with a relative of her husband, affinitas superveniens. Gratian will not accept this explanation, on the ground that, according to the theory of affinitas superveniens, husband and wife are treated alike. Yet, with delicious inconsequence, he proceeds to explain why pseudo-Ambrose had given the man alone the right to remarry in case of the wife's adultery, without granting the woman the reciprocal privilege. In the text of Ambrose, he says, the words vir and mulier are not employed in their proper sense, but figuratively. Each is used for man irrespective of sex. Vir is from virtus, and means man as a strong being resisting temptation; mulier is from mollities (softness), and it is used to denote the weak-minded man guilty of sin (Dec. Grat., dictum to c. 18, C. XXXII, qu. 7. Cf. Esmein, op. cit., II, 76; Freisen, op. cit., 582, 805). Ivo of Chartres, bent on sustaining the rigid theory of indissolubility, cites cc. 5 and 9 of the decree of Verberie in its favor, deliberately suppressing the clauses allowing the man to remarry (see his Decretum, X, 169; VIII, 189; also his Panormia, VI, 91: Geffcken, op. cit., 82); and Gratian, by adopting Ivo's text for c. 9 instead of the original, gets around a similar difficulty (Freisen, op. cit., 803). Celestin III. and Urban III. allowed the faithful spouse divorce and remarriage when the other becomes an infidel or a heretic; but the later canonists evaded this authority by claiming that these popes spoke merely as "simple doctors" (Esmein, op. cit., II, 80).

On the wide use of "metaphor" in the history of the church see Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, II, 217; and especially his Hist. of European Morals, II, 326, 327, 356-58.