Question One. Whether Matrimony is Suitably Defined as ‘The Marital Union of Man and Woman Retaining, between Legitimate Persons, an Indissoluble Life’

1. “After this one must note” [Lombard, Sent. IV d.27 ch.2].

2. About this twenty seventh distinction I ask two questions: first about the definition of matrimony that the Master puts in the text [ibid. ch.1], whether it is fitting when he says that matrimony is the marital union of man and woman retaining, between legitimate persons, an indissoluble life.

3. It seems that it is not:

Because union there is taken either for passive union or for relation:

Not in the first way, because it passes when the act passes, and ceases when the act of the contracting parties ceases, and it does not remain, but matrimony remains. Likewise, every passion in the category of passion has some form or some term that is induced in the passive subject; but it is not possible to grant any term introduced by this union, because nothing is new save a respect of reason.

Not in the second way; first because a relation is not a term of motion or change, but this union is the term of a preceding motion or change because after the change it is present and before not; second because although ‘the road from Athens to Thebes is as the same as the reverse’, Physics 3.3.202b8-14, yet the relation is different and diverse from here to there and conversely [Ord. IV d.13 n.68]

4. Therefore in the same way there will be two relations here, one of man to woman and the other conversely; and then it would follow that there were two matrimonies, or that matrimony is not essentially one.

5. The opposite is plain from the Master in the text.

I. To the Question

6. The answer to this question is clear in accord with what was said in the fifth conclusion of the preceding question [d.26 nn.56-67], because this definition of matrimony must be understood according to what it is explained to be in the definition or description set down there. And if matrimony is taken properly for the union, then this sort of union must be understood to be the same as obligation. And if it is taken for the preceding contract, then the union can be taken for the act of joining or the passion that includes both acts, namely the interior and exterior act, of the persons joined by the act.

II. To the Initial Arguments

7. To the argument [n.3] I say that, when understanding matrimony properly, union is understood there as a relation. And when you say that it would be the term of a motion or change, this does not follow, because the change, which was there, was according to an act of will, not leaving behind any induced term, and according to an act of causing an exterior sign, from which again nothing is left behind.

When it is said that relation is not the term of motion, this is true perhaps of a relation coming from within. But if one wish to say that there are relations of wills there from the mutual obligation, then it would have to be said that the union would be a respect coming to the will from without and not from within, just as it is not by my will that the Religion of Blessed Francis is a Religion, but this is an extrinsic respect. Likewise, this obligation [sc. of matrimony], as it is a certain relation, does not come from within to the persons obligated, because such respect does not exist by the nature of the extremes or wills obligating themselves. And if the respect is not real but only a relation of reason, then it is only a certain ordination, namely one according to justice, which ordination is in him who has the power of law; for God himself, who as legislator ordained that contract and that obligation to come to be, retains it in his ordination such that there is only a change according to reason there, just as is plain in other obligations and lordships; for lordships are not real entities but real relations, and we only love lordships and such powers of law or such jurisdictions because of that for which they are, as for pleasures or honors or the like.

When you say, secondly, about doubleness [n.3] that there will be a double relation and a double union, I concede it; and therefore is it called, not any union, but a mutual union, because the contract includes two parts, namely the consent of this person and of that, and in both persons also there are two acts, namely interior and exterior, or an intrinsic one and an extrinsic one signifying the intrinsic one.