XIII. That a man should not be
a cleric if he has had a second wife
Let not any man who has married
twice become a cleric, for it is written: ‘A husband of one wife’ [1 Tim. 3:2;
Titus 1:6]; and again: ‘Let my priests marry once’; and elsewhere: ‘My priests
should not marry again.’ And if it is thought by some that if perchance someone
takes a wife before baptism, and after she has passed away marries another, he
is released by baptism, he definitely breaks the rule, since in baptism sins
are forgiven, but the number of wives taken is not wiped out, since, indeed, a
wife is married in accordance with a command of the law, to such an extent that
even in paradise, when the parents of the human race were joined together [cf.
Gen. 2:24–25], they were blessed by the Lord himself; and that Solomon could
say, ‘a wife is prepared for a man by God’ [cf. Prov. 19:14]; and the custom of
the Church shows that even all the priests of the Church keep this form. For it
is quite ridiculous for someone to believe that a wife taken before baptism
does not count, since we are taught that the benediction which is conferred
through the priest on bride and groom has not provided an occasion for
wrongdoing, but kept to the form of a law instituted by God from of old. For if
a wife married before baptism is not thought to count, then neither will
children who were begotten before baptism be held to be children. (“Siricus to
Himerius bishop of Tarragona, Directa ad decessorem, 385 CE,” in D. L. d’Avray,
Papal Jurisprudence, c. 400: Sources of the Canon Law Tradition [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2019], 159-60)
