Ursa's Return: Captivity, Remarriage, and the Domestic Authority of Roman Bishops in Fifth-Century Italy

Abstract

This article examines the problems and possibilities that captivity, remarriage, and the return of kidnapped spouses presented to Roman bishops during the fifth century, a period of social instability and religious change in the Italian peninsula. Through close readings of letters penned by Innocent I (401-417 C.E. ) and Leo I (441-461 C.E. ), it explores how these bishops attempted to resolve a novel quandary for households: the impasse between emergent Christian ethics that insisted upon the indissolubility of first marriages and the Roman legal position that captivity severed all unions. Rather than pronouncing the sanctity of the former and the venality of the latter, Innocent and Leo offered complementary solutions that established their expertise in solving new conundrums of domestic life.

The Transcendent Character of the Good

“…32 Robinson,Honest to God,30. 33 Robinson,Honest to God,32. among other objects" as Karl Rahner put it -and on a level with any other thing in this respect. 34 The idea of God as love has been developed more recently by Paul S. Fiddes.…”

“…31 The themes, claims, and images are familiar from Murdoch's true naturalism, and Robinson likewise gives centre stage to the concept of love, taking as his starting point Ludwig Feuerbach's claim that the true atheist "is not the man who denies God, the subject; it is the man for whom the attributes of divinity, such as love, wisdom, and justice, are nothing." 32 Robinson grants that this is very near to his own position in the sense that he is wanting to interpret theological assertions as assertions about human life, but he insists that this is not a form of atheism, for love thus understood is grounded in God. It is in this sense that we can agree with Dietrich Bonhoeffer that "God is the "beyond" in the midst."…”

“…31 And, to repeat, what we see determines which options for action we realistically can be said to have: "I can only act within the world I can see." 32 Whereas Sarah felt inclined to ask Emma how she was feeling because she noticed that Emma looked hurt, Anna was unable to act in this manner quite simply because she failed to notice the impact of Oliver's words on Emma.…”

“…31 Indeed, it was when English monarchs in the early 13th and 17th centuries decided that they had divine authorization to dispense with customary constraints that the clamour for establishment of formally legal rights went up. 32 Be that all as it may, it is surely true, as Mahmood Mamdani has observed, that "[w]herever oppression [or abuse] occurs -and no continent has had a monopoly over this phenomenon in history -there must come into being a conception of rights." 33 At very least every human society must hold the value of the lives of its members in some high esteem, otherwise it would not long survive.…”

“…31 Appropriate valuing is not simply a matter of articulating judgements concerning something; to value something appropriately can involve perceiving it in certain ways, having certain emotional responses to it, and having patterns of deliberation, desire, and activity that are shaped in response to it. 32 To be a moral agent is to be capable of asking whether something is good, that is, whether it is appropriately valued, and in what ways. Moral agency brings with it a capacity for reflexive evaluation of one's own and others' valuations.…”