B. About the Second Circumstance Excusing the Conjugal Debt Universally Taken

23. About the second main circumstance [n.11], which is, as I said, that one ceases to be obligated [to render the debt] by a stronger bond not to render it. I say that this has many cases:

First, if it tend toward the loss of one’s own well-being; for one is more properly bound to love one’s own well-being than to render the debt to the other spouse; for no one should make themselves useless as to human acts common to everyone; and always too should one ask for the debt in the way that one ought to want it to be rendered to oneself, and one would not want it to be rendered by oneself to one’s own harm and against the well-being of one’s own body.

24. Similarly, one is bound by a stronger bond not to kill a fetus in the womb of a pregnant woman, or not to be cause of an abortion, than to render this debt; therefore, where the danger of extinguishing a fetus or causing abortion is probable, one is not bound to render the debt.

25. Similarly, one is bound by a greater precept not to act in a way that offspring, which could otherwise be procreated healthy, would be born leprous than to satisfy in the now the will of a woman; and for the most part a child born at the time of menstruation is born a leper. Hence not without cause in the Mosaic Law ought he to die who goes to a menstruating woman, nor was death there inflicted save for a mortal and grave sin. It is not therefore probable that in the Gospel Law, which is the law of chastity, going to a menstruating woman would be less prohibited.

26. If you object, ‘    therefore a healthy person should not render the debt to someone leprous, because this would be both against the good of the offspring, which would be born leprous, and against one’s own well-being, which could incur leprosy from such an act, the opposite of which is contained in Gregory IX, Decretals IV tit.8 ch.1, where is written: “We thus far command that wives follow their husbands, and husbands their wives, who incur the disease of leprosy, and minister to them with conjugal affection, and that you [sc. canon lawyer etc     .] do not put off inducing them [to do this] with solicitous exhortation; but if they cannot be induced to it, you are more strictly to impose on them that they each observe continence while the other lives. But if they despise keeping the command, you are to constrain them with the bonds of excommunication;” and in the following chapter, “If a husband or a wife happen to become leprous, and the sick one demand the carnal debt from the healthy one,Scotus here, interestingly, puts both Latin adjectives for ‘healthy’ and ‘sick’ into the same masculine gender. ⁸⁹ then, by the general precept of the Apostle [Romans 7.2-3, I Corinthians 7.27-28, 39-40], ‘what is demanded must be paid’, to which precept no exception in this case is found” -

27. I reply that although a healthy or leprous spouse should render the debt to a leprous spouse according to these chapters [of the Decretals], yet it does not follow that the debt is bound to be paid to a woman at the time of menstruation, because there it is not only against the good of offspring, which would be procreated leprous, but it would be more against the good of offspring that they were never procreated; but from this mother it will never be procreated if she is avoided because of leprosy; and although this offspring not be procreated at the time of menstruation, it can be procreated afterwards at a fitting time, and then healthy; at the present time procreated leprous.

28. If you also object about the risk of leprosy in the case of a healthy spouse rendering the debt, it could be said that from that brief union it is not probable for leprosy to be incurred; but a long cohabitation is not prescribed, because a healthy spouse can from that be infected by a sick one. Let it also be that from such union infection of leprosy would be an object of fear in the healthy spouse, at least when rendering the debt frequently as often as the leprous one asked - I say that to such penalty has one obligated oneself in a contract of matrimony; hence too priests express the fact somewhere expressly on the door of the church.