ABSTRACT

Canon Law on Marriage ( 12th c.) Marriage was one of the areas in which church courts, rather than secular courts, had jurisdiction over medieval Christians. The rules and precedents with which ecclesiastical courts worked in such cases were complex and at times contradictory. From the twelfth century on, the standard collection of these "canons" was Gratian's Decretals, a massive compilation of excerpts from Christian writers and church council decisions illustrating every aspect of Christian life, organized into series of hypothetical cases and their component "questions." The text below consists mainly of Gratian's summary statements; most of the explanatory quotations which make up the bulk of Gratian's book have been omitted here. Source: Corpus Juris Canonici, ed. E. Friedberg (1959). Tr. E.M.A.