Canon XIV.
If
any woman shall forsake her
husband, and resolve to depart from him because she abhors marriage,
let her be anathema.
Notes.
Ancient Epitome of Canon
XIV.
Women who keep away from their husbands because they
abominate marriage, anathema to them.
Hefele.
This canon cannot in any way be employed in opposition
to the practice of the Catholic Church. For though the Church
allows one of a married couple, with the consent of the other, to give
up matrimonial intercourse, and to enter the clerical order or the
cloister, still this is not, as is the case with the Eustathians, the
result of a false dogmatic theory, but takes place with a full
recognition of the sanctity of marriage.
Van Espen.
It would seem that the Eustathians chiefly disapproved
of the use of marriage, and under pretext of preserving continence
induced married women to abstain from its use as from something
unlawful, and to leave their husbands, separating from them so far as
the bed was concerned; and so the Greek interpreters understand this
canon; for the Eustathians were never accused of persuading anyone to
dissolve a marriage
a vinculo
.
This canon is found in the
Corpus Juris Canonici
,
Gratian’s
Decretum
, Pars I., Dist, xxx., c. iii., but in
Isidore’s version, which misses the sense by implying that a
divorce
a vinculo
is intended. The Roman Correctors do not
note this error.