Dist. 33, Art. 3, Q. 2
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/4/d/33/q/bon-sent-IV-d33-a3-q2
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### Question II. *Whether the repudiation of a wife ought to have been permitted.*

In the second place it is asked whether the repudiation of a wife ought to have been permitted. And that it ought not, seems [to follow]:

1. Because he who does not prohibit an evil, when he can, is held to be consenting; but the legislator was able to prohibit and did not prohibit repudiation: therefore he consented. But one consenting to an evil sins: therefore etc.

2. Likewise, evils are not to be done that goods may come: therefore neither are evils to be permitted, lest greater evils come: therefore he ought not to have permitted repudiation for the sake of avoiding homicide.

3. Likewise, husband and wife are equal as regards the law of the marriage-bed; but just as a husband can kill his wife, so a wife hating her husband can contrive even his death: therefore there is the same danger and the same right on either side. But it was not permitted in the Law that a wife repudiate her husband: therefore etc.

4. Likewise, in the time of the law of nature we do not read that repudiation was permitted, and in the time of grace likewise we read that it was prohibited; why therefore in the time of the written law was it permitted? — If you should say, as the Lord says, *for the hardness of their heart*; on the contrary: because they were hard, therefore, to break their hardness, the legislator imposed heavy burdens: therefore if it is grievous to dwell with a hated wife, it was fitting therefore that repudiation not be permitted.

**On the contrary:**
1. In the Law nothing ought to have been prohibited which ought not to have been punished, nor ought it to have been punished, except insofar as [men] ought to be made better, at least in deed, though not in charity; but if repudiation were not permitted, those men who were prone to homicide would fall into worse: therefore etc.

2. Likewise, no Sacraments were as perfect in the old testament as in the new: therefore neither [was] the Sacrament of marriage: therefore if the perfection in the Sacrament of marriage consists in indivisibility, then indivisibility ought not to have been perfectly commanded in the old law.

3. Likewise, if there were so great a closeness between husband and wife that they could in no way be separated; since fornication then would not be punished, all would become fornicators, and few or none would take wives: therefore if it was then commanded that legitimate seed be multiplied, repudiation ought not to have been prohibited.

### Conclusion.

> To avoid greater evils, the repudiation of a wife ought to have been permitted by Moses, that is, not punished.

**I respond:** It must be said that permission is fourfold: in one way through the privation of *precept*, and thus the Apostle permits the lesser good, because he does not command the greater good, as he permits virgins to marry; in a second way through the privation of *prohibition*, and thus venial [sins] are said to be permitted, because they are not prohibited; in a third way through the privation of *punishment*, and thus the repudiation of a wife is permitted, because it is not punished in the Law; in a fourth way through the privation of *restraint*, and thus all evils are said to be permitted by God, because He does not restrain [them]. — The first permission is on account of *the quality of the good*; the second is on account of *our infirmity*; the third on account of *the avoiding of greater evils*; the fourth on account of *the eliciting of greater goods*. Moses therefore permitted [it] because he could not prohibit this evil without a threefold evil following from it: first indeed a defect of the Sacrament, because they would not wish to take a wife; secondly, a multiplication of fornication; thirdly, homicide.

1. 2. From this the first two [objections] are clear, because Moses did not permit [it] except under compulsion, namely for the sake of avoiding a greater evil, whence there was in it rather *to suffer* than *to act*; but he who does an evil that a good may come, sins in doing [it]: therefore what was objected in the second place is not similar.

3. To that therefore which is objected, why it is not permitted to the woman, it must be said that in the time of the Law man and woman were not judged as equals, both by reason of *condition*, because man is the principle of woman, and by reason of *transgression*, because woman is the beginning of sin; therefore it was said to her in Genesis, chapter three: *You shall be under the power of [your] husband.*

4. To that which is asked, why rather in the time of that Law was it permitted? it must be said that for this there was a threefold reason: one, because the mystery of matrimony was not to be revealed to them entirely, because it was the time of the shadow; the second, because they themselves were imperfect,

whence they would not receive so great a burden; the third, because, [being] hard, they would not bear this burden and could secretly cast it off: and therefore it was not to be imposed.

To that which is objected concerning the breaking of hardness, it must be said that it had to be broken by a penalty which would not be the occasion of a greater evil, such as the obligation to such inseparability would have been; and therefore it ought not to have been broken in that way.

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