ye olde Catholic Impotence Index
1: Natural impotence
Definition: A “permanent and irremediable problem,†discovered on the wedding night. This covered more than erectile dysfunction: In the 16th century, French Baron d’Argenton had his marriage annulled because of his testicles, “which did withdraw inside his person when he turned over.†Incompatibility could also be taken into account: In 1613, Magdelaine de Charbonnier was allowed an annulment “on the ground that her said husband’s virile organ was so large as to be beyond any virgin to sustain it.â€
Grounds for annulment? Yes.
Meh.
That article has several things I take issue with. Celibate marriages continued to be highly regarded and honourable. St Brigit of Sweden and her husband were a famous 14th century couple, and my dear favourite nutcase of the 15th century, Margery Kempe, spent decades nagging her husband for one (he gave in eventually). 1570 is also quite firmly outside the Middle Ages and really, once you get Protestants running around all over Europe, the literature gets weird. I mean, the quoted book is
post-Trent, for crying out loud! Sloppy, sloppy.
Also, the article writer has fundamentally misunderstood the "duty" which impotence hinders. It's not a holy duty to have kids, it's the contractual duty to pay out what you promised.
Yes, in medieval theology, impotence is more a matter of contract law. Let's check out what Thomas Aquinas has to say, since he's infinitely more influential and also a medieval:
In marriage there is a contract whereby one is bound to pay the other the marital debt: wherefore just as in other contracts, the bond is unfitting if a person bind himself to what he cannot give or do, so the marriage contract is unfitting, if it be made by one who cannot pay the marital debt. This impediment is called by the general name of impotence as regards coition, and can arise either from an intrinsic and natural cause, or from an extrinsic and accidental cause, for instance spell, of which we shall speak later (2). If it be due to a natural cause, this may happen in two ways. For either it is temporary, and can be remedied by medicine, or by the course of time, and then it does not void a marriage: or it is perpetual and then it voids marriage, so that the party who labors under this impediment remains for ever without hope of marriage, while the other may "marry to whom she will . . . in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 7:39). In order to ascertain whether the impediment be perpetual or not, the Church has appointed a fixed time, namely three years, for putting the matter to a practical proof: and if after three years, during which both parties have honestly endeavored to fulfil their marital intercourse, the marriage remain unconsummated, the Church adjudges the marriage to be dissolved. And yet the Church is sometimes mistaken in this, because three years are sometimes insufficient to prove impotence to be perpetual. Wherefore if the Church find that she has been mistaken, seeing that the subject of the impediment has completed carnal copulation with another or with the same person, she reinstates the former marriage and dissolves the subsequent one, although the latter has been contracted with her permission.
[...]
In all contracts it is agreed on all hands that anyone who is unable to satisfy an obligation is unfit to make a contract which requires the fulfilling of that obligation. Now this inability is of two kinds. First, because a person is unable to fulfill the obligation "de jure," and such inability renders the contract altogether void, whether the party with whom he contracts knows of this or not. Secondly, because he is unable to fulfill "de facto"; and then if the party with whom he contracts knows of this and, notwithstanding, enters the contract, this shows that the latter seeks some other end from the contract, and the contract stands. But if he does not know of it the contract is void. Consequently frigidity which causes such an impotence that a man cannot "de facto" pay the marriage debt, as also the condition of slavery, whereby a man cannot "de facto" give his service freely, are impediments to marriage, when the one married party does not know that the other is unable to pay the marriage debt. But an impediment whereby a person cannot pay the marriage debt "de jure," for instance consanguinity, voids the marriage contract, whether the other party knows of it or not. For this reason the Master [Peter Lombard] holds (Sent. iv, D, 34) that these two impediments, frigidity and slavery, make it not altogether unlawful for their subjects to marry.
--
Summa, Supplementum Tertiae Partis, Q 58, A 1.
The above, especially "seeing that the subject of the impediment has completed carnal copulation with another or with the same person, she reinstates the former marriage and dissolves the subsequent one, although the latter has been contracted with her permission", coupled with what else I know about medieval marriage law, makes me highly skeptical of "relative impotence" as defined by the article. I've seen in many places the concept that impotence needs to be universal. There's a case of one poor bastard who, to prove his impotence, had to stand naked in court while a prostitute hired for the purpose attempted to seduce him.
The marital debt was the one aspect of medieval theology that was meticulously egalitarian. A wife had the exact same right to demand sex from her husband as he did from her, and if he couldn't "pay up", he was violating the marriage contract and it could lead to annulment in some cases. It's actually a very interesting topic of study.
There's so many more interesting and historically significant texts the article's author could have drawn on, and his interpretation was predictably shoddy and influenced by a modern beef. I give it a C-.
"Only for today, I will devote 10 minutes of my time to some good reading, remembering that just as food is necessary to the life of the body, so good reading is necessary to the life of the soul." -- Pope John XXIII
That could be in the Friday fight thread! XD
it's honestly appreciated.
)
