Sacramental Woes And Theological Anxiety In Medieval Representations Of Marriage

290 Pages·2017·1.52 MB·English

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Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations
2016
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AAnnxxiieettyy IInn MMeeddiieevvaall RReepprreesseennttaattiioonnss OOff MMaarrrriiaaggee
Elizabeth Churchill
University of Pennsylvania, [email protected]
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Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, and the Religion Commons
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Churchill, Elizabeth, "When Two Become One: Sacramental Woes And Theological Anxiety In Medieval
Representations Of Marriage" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2229.
https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2229
This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2229
For more information, please contact [email protected].
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This dissertation traces the long, winding, and problematic road along which marriage became a
sacrament of the Church. In so doing, it identifies several key problems with marriage’s ability to fulfill the
sacramental criteria laid out in Peter Lombard’s Sentences: that a sacrament must signify a specific form
of divine grace, and that it must directly bring about the grace that it signifies. While, on the basis of
Ephesians 5, theologians had no problem identifying the symbolic power of marriage with the spiritual
union of Christ and the Church, they never fully succeeded in locating a form of effective grace, placing
immense stress upon marriage’s status as a signifier. As a result, theologians and canonists found
themselves unable to deal with several social aspects of marriage that threatened this symbolic capacity,
namely concubinage and the remarriage of widows and widowers. For, just as concubinage possessed
the dangerous ability to signify the one-to-one unity of Christ and the Church (and the pressure for exact
symbolic conformity prevented theologians from imposing a formal marriage ceremony distinguishing
the two), second marriages threatened to off-set the sacrament’s precarious numeric balance, wherein
Christ and his heavenly bride are forever joined as two unique but entirely unified entities.
This dissertation also contends that awareness of these problems was embedded in the larger medieval
discourse about matrimony, and can be detected in literary depictions of marriage, marriage-making, and
quasi-marital situations. It thus explores attitudes towards marriage in several prevalent literary genres,
with an eye towards how each genre handles the sacramental problems outlined above. While the these
literary treatments are all perceptibly impacted by the lacunae within sacramental discourse, they each
display this impact in specific ways, depending upon social context and wider generic features and
customs. In highlighting this discursive interplay, this dissertation finally seeks to illuminate the sense in
which what we think of as “marriage” is a highly constructed conceptual entity, the result of much
conversation, contention, and invention.
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Dissertation
DDeeggrreeee NNaammee
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
GGrraadduuaattee GGrroouupp
Religious Studies
FFiirrsstt AAddvviissoorr
E. Ann Matter
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Literature, Marriage, Medieval, Sacrament, Theology
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English Language and Literature | Religion
This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2229
WHEN TWO BECOME ONE:
SACRAMENTAL WOES AND THEOLOGICAL ANXIETY IN MEDIEVAL
REPRESENTATIONS OF MARRIAGE
Elizabeth Churchill
A DISSERTATION
in
Religious Studies
Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania
in
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
2016

Supervisor of Dissertation
Signature______________________
E. Ann Matter, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Religious Studies

Graduate Group Chairperson
Signature________________________
Annette Yoshiko Reed, Associate Professor of Religious Studies

Dissertation Committee
Rita Copeland Professor of Classical Studies, English, and Comparative
Literature
Kevin Brownlee Professor of Romance Languages
In memory of Dr. Lana Schwebel
1971-2007
Manibus date crustis plenis

ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A six-year dissertation project does not come to fruition without immense
support, and now, at its completion, I find myself with a series of “marriage debts” of an
entirely non-Augustinian nature. I am, first, deeply indebted to my committee: Kevin
Brownlee, whose encyclopedic knowledge of medieval literature is matched only by his
kindness; Rita Copeland, whose insight helped shape the contours of this project, and
whose attention to detail kept it in decent working order; and my advisor, Ann Matter,
who never stopped pushing me to make my work better, no matter how much I resisted. I
am also grateful to the esteemed and very busy scholars who took the time to talk shop
with me: Ruth Karras, Deanna Klepper, Max Cavitch, and Peter Hawkins. And my
thanks are always with Stephanie Nelson, my very first college professor, whose
creativity, generosity, and overall awesomeness are still inspiring me seventeen years
later.
I have been additionally blessed to undertake this endeavor with the reassurance
and encouragement of my wonderful family and friends: the Reverends Vanessa Payne
Rose and Kaji Dousa, Niels Dahl, Lucy Swanson, and Kim Crandall, all of whom always
picked up the phone. Molly Connors introduced me to the Richard Pryor quote that
opens my fifth chapter, and Marcus Elder never said no to a bit of Latin translation help.
And I have been so incredibly fortunate, throughout my doctoral program and the twenty
six years that preceded it, to have the unwavering support of my father, Jim Churchill, the
dad who will get on a plane and endure a six-hour layover in Iceland when he knows his
adult daughter needs him. Though he never managed to teach me physics or soccer, I
trust this dissertation will prove that he at least managed to pass along a talent for horrible
puns.
And of course, this dissertation would not exist without the constant love and
reinforcement of my handsome, brilliant, and kindhearted husband Luc, who has taught
me more about the goodness of marriage than an entire library could hold.
Finally, this dissertation is offered in memory of Dr. Lana Schwebel, my master’s
advisor and forever-hero, whose guidance, expertise, and inimitable wit have been
acutely missed at every stage of this project. I have paused heavily before composing
this dedication, as Lana always maintained that professional achievements should be
undertaken for ourselves, not out of indebtedness or as a tribute to others. However, I
hope she would see it as a fitting homage that her once fearful, airplane-phobic mentee is
writing this from the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, having finally acquired the love of
travel that so enriched Lana’s own life. It is therefore not so much this actual dissertation
that I dedicate to her but the growth and adventures that have come with it, all of which it
has been my deepest sadness not to be able to share with her. As her eager-to-please
former student, I still cannot help but hope that what I have produced would have met her
high standards, or at the very least she would have gotten a chuckle out of one of my
many ill-advised footnote puns. If not, Lana, I beg your indulgence.
iii
ABSTRACT

WHEN TWO BECOME ONE:
SACRAMENTAL WOES AND THEOLOGICAL ANXIETY IN MEDIEVAL
REPRESENTATIONS OF MARRIAGE
Elizabeth Churchill

E. Ann Matter

This dissertation traces the long, winding, and problematic road along which
marriage became a sacrament of the Church. In so doing, it identifies several key
problems with marriage’s ability to fulfill the sacramental criteria laid out in Peter
Lombard’s Sentences: that a sacrament must signify a specific form of divine grace, and
that it must directly bring about the grace that it signifies. While, on the basis of
Ephesians 5, theologians had no problem identifying the symbolic power of marriage
with the spiritual union of Christ and the Church, they never fully succeeded in locating a
form of effective grace, placing immense stress upon marriage’s status as a signifier. As
a result, theologians and canonists found themselves unable to deal with several social
aspects of marriage that threatened this symbolic capacity, namely concubinage and the
remarriage of widows and widowers. For, just as concubinage possessed the dangerous
ability to signify the one-to-one unity of Christ and the Church (and the pressure for exact
symbolic conformity prevented theologians from imposing a formal marriage ceremony
distinguishing the two), second marriages threatened to off-set the sacrament’s precarious
numeric balance, wherein Christ and his heavenly bride are forever joined as two unique
but entirely unified entities.
This dissertation also contends that awareness of these problems was embedded in
the larger medieval discourse about matrimony, and can be detected in literary depictions
of marriage, marriage-making, and quasi-marital situations. It thus explores attitudes
towards marriage in several prevalent literary genres, with an eye towards how each
genre handles the sacramental problems outlined above. While the these literary
treatments are all perceptibly impacted by the lacunae within sacramental discourse, they
each display this impact in specific ways, depending upon social context and wider
generic features and customs. In highlighting this discursive interplay, this dissertation
finally seeks to illuminate the sense in which what we think of as “marriage” is a highly
constructed conceptual entity, the result of much conversation, contention, and invention.

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENT…………………………………………………………..III
ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………..IV

Introduction……………………………………………………………..1

Chapter 2: “Christian Marriage”: Biblical Elements of the
Equation………………………………………………………………………………………17
Tertullian and “the Mathematics of Marriage”……………………………………...24
Jerome’s Adversus Jovinianum: Subtracting the Sacrament………………………..43
Augustine’s Balanced Equation……………………………………………………….53
CHAPTER 2: BUILDING A MYSTERION: THE CONSTRUCTION OF
MARRIAGE AS A SACRAMENT...............................................................................80
Historical Considerations………………………………………………………………81
The Theological Process………………………………………………………………..96
The Sacramental Defect: Concubines and Widows…………………………………116
CHAPTER 3: THE BRIDE AND GROOM COME DOWN TO EARTH: THE
SACRAMENTAL THEORY OF MARRIAGE IN CANON LAW………………129
Ivo, Burchard, and the Christianization of Marriage Law…………………………130
Gratian and His Commentators……………………………………………………...144
Alexander III and the Consentist Solution…………………………………………..154
CHAPTER 4: SACRAMENTAL AMBIGUITIES IN THE LITERATURE OF
LOVE AND WAR.........................................................................................................171
Good Women and Better Theology: Marriage in the Chansons de Geste…………172
Romance Marriage and the Sacramental Alternative………………………………184
The Curious Case of Troilus and Criseyde…………………………………………204
CHAPTER 5: THEOLOGY AND “EXPERIENCE” IN THE LITERATURE OF
LAUGHTER..................................................................................................................214
Fabliaux………………………………………………………………………………..214
French Misogamous Literature………………………………………………………228
Later Medieval Comic Literature……………………………………………………236
CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................251
BIBLIOGRAPHY.........................................................................................................256
v
INTRODUCTION
“To her lord, or rather father; to her husband, or rather brother; from his handmaid, or
rather daughter; from his wife, or rather sister: to Abelard, Heloise.”1

In addressing her first letter to Abelard, Heloise presents him with both a
challenge and a personal history lesson, unspooling the various contradictory roles they
have accrued throughout their long and circuitous relationship. Her “brother” in the
Christian vocation to which they have mutually pledged themselves, he is also her
spiritual “father” via his founding of the convent in which she now serves as Prioress.
And while this latter position might also account for his status as her “Lord,” it is also
owing to another lingering tie which Heloise is particularly anxious he remember: their
furtive, pre-conversion marriage, which has rendered him always and forever her
“husband.”
Abelard, for his part, responds by tapering this list of personal entanglements
from three to one, reducing Heloise to simply his “dearly beloved sister in Christ.”2 Their
marriage, their famous affair, the complicated power dynamics that have shaped their
shared narrative: all of this, for Abelard, has been nullified by their religious vows,
through which he hopes to save both his reputation and his soul. From his perspective,
Heloise has ceased to be his bride the moment she became a “bride of Christ,” a point he
makes clear in the salutation of his final “personal letter.”3 Yet, in a sense, it is Heloise
who manages to have the last word in this dizzying negotiation, addressing her third letter
with an ironclad, irrefutable summary of their relationship: “To her only one after Christ,

1 Domino suo, imo patri; conjugi suo, imo fratri; ancilla sua, imo filia; ipsius uxor, imo soror: Abaelardo,
Heloissa. Abelard and Heloise, Epistolae, Patrologia Latina 178, col 181. All English translations taken
from The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. Betty Radice (New York: Penguin, 1974).
2 Heloissae dilectissimae sorori suae in Christo, Abelardus frater eius in ipso. PL 178, col 187; Radice, 56.
3 Sponsae Christi servus ejusdem. PL 178, col. 139.
1
from his only one in Christ.”4 For, while Christ is certainly the common denominator in
their newfound religious bond, so too is he abundantly present in their ties as man and
wife, given the sacramental principle that “husbands are to love their wives just as Christ
loves the Church.”5
At the heart of this correspondence is one of the most contentious social and
theological questions of their day: what it meant for two people to be married to each
other.6 Like their contemporaries, both Abelard and Heloise arrive at strikingly divergent
answers to this question, creating a set of competing perspectives that are neither
internally coherent nor mutually exclusive. For Abelard, matrimony was a source of both
legitimacy and public shame, rectifying the disgrace of Heloise’s out-of-wedlock
pregnancy while simultaneously destroying his chances as a public scholar.7 On a deeper
level, it was also a double-edged spiritual sword, expiating the sin associated with the
“wretched pleasures” he enjoyed with Heloise just as it gave these pleasures dangerously
free reign over his soul.8
Heloise, who shares Abelard’s concerns about the public aspect of their marriage,
is famously far more apprehensive about the “chains” that public matrimony would place

4 Unico suo post Christum unica sua in Christo. PL 178, col 191; Radice, 63.
5 Ephesians 5:25.
6 The zeitgeist quality of Abelard and Heloise’s letters, and their tendency to take up what seem to be stock
roles culled from contemporary discourse, lead to a longstanding debate about whether their
correspondence was real, or whether Heloise herself was a real person. These doubts were largely put to
rest with Peter Dronke’s seminal article “Abelard and Heloise in Medieval Testimonies,” and are in fact
irrelevant to my argument, as it is the very contextual nature of their perspectives which I wish to
emphasize.
7 As a cleric in minor orders, Abelard was expected, though not required, to remain unmarried. Both he
and Heloise discuss this problem at length in a conversation he relates in his Historia Calamitatum; Heloise
confirms, though slightly amends, this version of events in her first letter to Abelard.
8 Throughout his letters, Abelard draws strikingly little distinction between his and Heloise’s pre-and-post
marital sexual encounters, describing them universally as base and sinful. The reference cited above is
drawn from a particularly brutal moment in his second letter to Heloise: “I took my fill of my wretched
pleasures in you, and this was the sum total of my love.” Abelard, Epist. 5; Radice 85.
2
on her freely-given love, particularly through its introduction of material and financial
affairs.9 And yet, while she too purports to feel shame for the lusts they indulged
together, it is these very chains that provide a substitute for the physical union she and
Abelard can no longer enjoy, binding them together as her lingering desires persist
unsatisfied and unrequited. For Heloise, their conjugal ties exist above and beyond the
existence of Abelard’s genitalia, a view potentially due to the fact that she imagines their
marriage in a way that Abelard never does: as a sacrament.10 It is this bond, and its
implication of indissoluble person-to-person unity, that underlies her salutation to
Abelard at the start of her second letter, in which they are “unico” and “unica” to each
other. It is also, however, the source of this statement’s central asymmetry, for while
their marriage bond has rendered them “unicus/ unica in Christo,” Abelard is now also
rendered “unicus post Christo,” via the subsequent “marriage” of Heloise’s religious
vows.
If both Abelard and Heloise struggle to resolve these ambiguities, it is perhaps
because, in the hazy theological atmosphere surrounding their letters, there were no easy
answers to be found. Writing some forty years after the attempted divorce and temporary
excommunication of Philip I, during which the Church strove to assert its claims over
marriage as a sacred union, Abelard and Heloise were still a decade shy of Peter
Lombard’s definitive declaration of marital sacramentality, in which marriage became

9 In her first letter, Heloise plaintively assures Abelard that she sought “only you, nothing of yours,”
deriding women who, in seeking a husband of means, offer themselves “for sale.” She also revises
Abelard’s version of her reasons for rejecting marriage, explaining that one of her main reasons for doing
so was her preference of “freedom over chains.”
10 Heloise is the only one to refer to their marriage as a sacrament, and does so only once: “Cui quidem
tanto te majore debito noveris obligatum, quanto te amplius nuptialis foedere sacramenti constat esse
astrictum.” PL 178, col 184.
3