Dist. 37
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/37/q/bon-sent-IV-d37-littera
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### Cap. I.
#### *In which orders marriage cannot be contracted.*

There are, therefore, certain orders in which marriage can in no way be contracted, and if intercourse has intervened, a divorce is made — namely the priesthood, the diaconate, and the subdiaconate. In the others, however, it is permitted to obtain marriage, unless they have taken up the habit of religion, or have made a vow of continence. Whence Pope Leo: "Clerics, lectors, doorkeepers, exorcists, acolytes — if they are found outside a vow and the habit and are unwilling to profess continence — the Roman Church permits to take a virgin to wife, not a widow or a woman repudiated; because thereafter neither can they be promoted to the subdiaconate, nor can a layman who has obtained a wife who is not a virgin, or a twice-married man, [be promoted] to the clerical state." Likewise from the Council of Carthage: "It has been resolved that bishops, presbyters, deacons, and also subdeacons abstain from their wives; and if they shall not have done so, let them be removed even from ecclesiastical office; but the remaining clerics it does not compel to this." Likewise Pope Leo: "The law of continence is the same for the ministers of the altar as for bishops and presbyters; who, when they were laymen or lectors, were able lawfully to take wives; but when they arrived at the aforesaid grades, that began to be unlawful for them which had been lawful." Likewise in the Sixth Synod: "If any of those who approach the clergy shall wish to be joined to a woman by the law of marriage, let him do this before the order of the subdiaconate."

**A little note.** Likewise Pope Calixtus: "We altogether forbid presbyters, deacons, subdeacons, and monks to have concubines or to contract marriage; and marriages contracted by persons of this kind we judge, according to the definition of the sacred canons, ought to be dissolved, and the persons brought back to penance." Likewise Gregory: "Let them not presume to make anyone a subdeacon of a bishop, except one who has promised that he will live chastely; because no one ought to approach the ministry of the altar unless his chastity has been approved before he undertook the ministry."

### Cap. II.
#### *On those who kill their own wives.*

To these must be added the matter of the slayers of their own wives; concerning whom Pope Nicholas writes to Radulf, archbishop of Bourges: "Those who kill their own wives without a trial — since you do not add 'adulterous women,' or anything of this kind — what else are they to be held than homicides? And on this account they are to be brought back to penance; and marriage is altogether denied them." "Here Nicholas seems to permit husbands to kill their own wives for adultery, or for another thing of this kind; but ecclesiastical discipline bids that the criminal be struck with the spiritual sword, not the material one." Whence the same Nicholas: "Amid these matters your holiness took care to add: if anyone's wife has committed adultery, whether it is lawful for her husband to kill her according to worldly law? But the holy Church of God is never bound by worldly laws; it has no sword but the spiritual." Likewise Pope Pius: "Whoever kills his own wife without law and without cause and marries another, let him lay aside his arms and do public penance; and if he proves contumacious, let him be anathematized, until he complies."

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