Dist. 35, Art. 1, Q. 1
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/35/q/bon-sent-IV-d35-a1-q1
----------------------------------------
### Sole Article. *On divorce.*
### Question I. *Whether it is licit to dismiss a wife for the cause of fornication.*

Concerning the first [question] it is shown that a divorce can take place for the cause of fornication.

1. *Matthew* nineteen: *If anyone dismiss his wife, except for the cause of fornication* etc.: therefore if He excepts this cause, the Lord's exception is also true; it seems that on account of this it is licit to dismiss.

2. Likewise, it seems *by reason*: because one spouse does not have power over the body of the other, except because he gives to him the power of his own body: therefore if, as far as it lies in himself, he withdraws it, he loses power over the body of the spouse. But this he does through fornication: therefore etc.

3. Likewise, the husband is not bound to be with his wife nor to render her the debt except by reason of the good of faith, nor conversely: therefore if by fornicating she breaks the good of faith, he is not bound to render the debt nor to cohabit: therefore he can dismiss her.

4. Likewise, one spouse by fornicating scandalizes the other, because it is «a deed less upright, affording an occasion of ruin»: therefore if everything that scandalizes a man can be set apart from himself, as is clear from *Matthew* eighteen: *If your eye scandalize you*: therefore etc.

**On the contrary:**

1. *Matthew* nineteen: *What God has joined let not man separate*; but spouses are joined by God: therefore they ought not to be separated by human judgment: therefore neither can a divorce take place for any cause.

2. Likewise, evil is not to be rendered for evil: therefore although a wife by fornicating injures her husband, the husband ought not to render her evil: therefore he ought not to cast her off.

3. Likewise, as the canons say, when both fornicate, one cannot be separated from the other; but the fault is greater when both fornicate than when only one does: therefore if a divorce cannot take place for the greater fault, neither for the lesser.

4. Likewise, on account of a defect of the good of offspring — as, for instance, if one party be sterile — the spouse cannot be dismissed: therefore if this [good] is not less than the good of faith, then on account of a defect of the good of faith the marriage is not dissolved.

5. Likewise, I ask, for what cause a divorce can take place rather from fornication than from another sin. If [it be said] because *she sins against her spouse*, she can sin likewise by detraction, by hatred; but if because *she divides the flesh*: therefore since in the sodomitical sin the flesh is not divided, it seems that on account of it a wife cannot be dismissed; which seems nefarious, since that [sin] is more against marriage.

Likewise, I ask: since in *repudiation* the husband and wife were not judged as equals, because the wife did not repudiate the husband; whence is it that in *divorce* they are judged as equals according to the laws? *Moreover*, what is the difference between divorce and repudiation?

> **Conclusion.** For the cause of a culpable and singular fornication a divorce can take place, at the request of the innocent party.

**I respond:** It must be said that, on account of fornication, it is licit for a divorce to take place between spouses, at the request of one party. — And the reason for this is that the Lord granted it; and the reason why He granted it is this: that to one not keeping faith — indeed breaking it — the husband is not bound to keep faith; and because [the offender] sinned directly against the matrimonial act, [she] ought to be punished in the same thing. The Lord therefore granted that a divorce take place, this being demanded by the equity of matrimonial law, which arises from this: that one party culpably injures the other by withdrawing the right which [the other] had over the body without injury to the other. Hence a divorce does not arise from just any fornication, but from that which is culpable and singular in one of the persons. If therefore she fornicate without fault — as, for instance, through violence, or through ignorance, when she believes the man with whom she has intercourse to be her own husband, or believes her husband dead and contracts with another — from such [fornication] no divorce arises. But if the fornication is not singular: either because the other party likewise fornicates, and cannot reproach the other for this; or also because one fornicates with the other consenting and prostituting [her], and then he is a partaker of the crime; or also with the other affording the occasion, as when he has repudiated her, and she has contracted with another — if both come to the faith, he is bound to take her back — or also with the other tolerating and dissembling, as when he knowingly has relations with her voluntarily after he knows his spouse to fornicate: in all these ways he becomes as it were a partaker of the crime; and therefore no injury is done to him, and therefore from such a cause a divorce ought not to take place; and if it be done from such a cause on account of a defect of proof, he who procures the divorce sins, because he unjustly withdraws the right from his spouse.

1. To that, then, which is objected — that the divorce is made by man — it must be said that this is false; rather it is made by God for a just cause. «For it is not man that separates, but God, whom the penalty condemns, whom the guilt accuses, whom the crime constrains».

2. To that which is objected — that evil is not to be rendered for evil — it must be said that if anyone dismiss his wife in vengeance for the injury, he certainly sins; but she ought to be dismissed for avoiding one's own scandal and for correcting the wife's vice.

3. To that which is objected — that it ought not [to be done] on account of the sin of both — it must be said that a divorce is not made unless with one party petitioning and one of the spouses repelling the other; and because, when both are guilty, [neither] has an action against the other — because, in that wherein he judges the other, he condemns himself, to the Romans, second [chapter] — but when the one is innocent, he can proceed: therefore it is not the same case.

4. To that which is objected — that a divorce is not made on account of a defect of offspring — it must be said that it is not the same case: because the fornicator sins against the body of the partner, but where there is a defect of offspring, it can be without sin, or at least without sin against the husband's body.

5. To that which is asked — why fornication separates — it must be said that it is a fault not only against God and against one's own body, but against the good of matrimony and against the act of wedlock and against the body of the spouse; for it is against faith and against the matrimonial act; she abuses moreover a body which is not her own, but another's: and therefore such a one loses the right of demanding the debt, and because this whole thing is in a sin against nature, therefore it is comprehended under fornication.

To that which is asked concerning repudiation, it must be said that *repudiation* and *divorce* differ, because *repudiation* was done for an undue cause, but *divorce* for a due one; and the former is *permitted*, the latter *granted*; they differ also because after repudiation they were not forbidden to marry, but after divorce they are forbidden; they differ also because the husband repudiated the wife, not conversely; whence they were not judged as equals, [whereas] in divorce they are judged as equals. — And the reason for this is that the woman, by the desert of the first sin, was made subject to the man; but after the reconciliation of Christ, in whom *there is neither slave nor free, male nor female*, entirely, as far as the law of the marriage-bed is concerned, they are judged as equals.