Glorious Saint Patrick

Saint Patrick is a figure about whom much has been written but very little is know—in other words most of the stories we tell about Patrick are more legend than history.   Indeed for several decades many historians disputed the historical reality of Patrick or thought he was a combination of several individual persons.

Christianity had come to Ireland before Patrick.  Possibly as early as the late third century monks from Egypt and Syria sought the greater solitude of islands on the western coast of Ireland.  In addition trade routes from both western Britain and northwestern Spain would have caused some Continental Christians to settle in Ireland.  Some scholars maintain that Christianity had, in fact, taken a strong hold in the southern parts of Ireland by the earl fifth century, decades before Patrick arrived.  By the third decade of the fifth century there were sufficient Christians in Ireland for Pope Celestine I to send his deacon, Palladius, as Bishop there.  Unfortunately Palladius ran afoul of the King of Leinster, the south-east portion of the country and was sent back to Britain, his mission unsuccessful.

Palladius cannot be blamed for his failure.  Christianity was not an easy match for Irish society.  In the first place, the Irish had no towns or cities and Christianity is essentially an urban religion, or at least is organized on an urban plan with dioceses and deaneries and such.  And where do you build your churches if you don’t have towns?   And your schools?

But the complexity grows beyond that.  The Irish are a tribal society.  Every person belonged to a clan and the head of the clan ruled supreme.  The clans themselves were united by blood and marriage into super-clans or tribes. The heads of the various clans and super-clans each claimed for himself the title “king.”  Over this myriad of families and clans were four regional kings: Munster, Leinster, Connaught, and Ulster.  And over the four great kings, was the High King who made his capital, such as it was for a somewhat migratory people, at the Hill of Tara. No king, even the High King, really had any authority (except possibly force) over another king    Every time you turn around you have to deal with a new king.  And if King A likes you, his enemy, King B won’t.   In other words, there was no political infrastructure. 

Irish religion, like that the ancient Britons, was Druidism which was a combination of magic and spiritism.  The Irish saw the sacred everywhere—in certain groves of trees, in mountains, in holy wells.  They were convinced they lived in a world inhabited by spirits—the spirits of the dead as well as the spirits of nature.   They did practice human sacrifice, though not on the extensive scale as the Aztecs and some other societies. 

Under Brehon Law, women were equal to men and wives could divorce their husbands.  The law was harsh in its punishments, especially for thievery.  There were ten different types of marriage recognized by Brehon Law, depending on the various social standings of the partners and most marriages were easily dissolvable

Patrick himself was from an upper-class Romano-British family, probably located on the south-west coast of Britain.   His father was Calpurnius, a deacon and Decurion in the Roman Army. His grandfather had been a priest.  Yet Patrick as a young boy showed little interest in religion and was somewhat of a wild teenager. 

We have two authentic sources for Patrick’s life—both written by him.  The first is his “Confessions,” which he wrote to answer charges against him by the British bishops who were upset that he would not accept their authority over him and the Irish Church.  (It was heavily a matter of the British bishops wanting to get “their share” of the tithes of the Irish Church).  Patrick was determined to maintain the independence of the Irish Church.  In part this determination was based on the fact that Patrick had to make a lot of “adjustments” to make Christianity adaptable to the peculiarities of Brehon Laws and customs, including turning a blind eye to some of the irregular customs surrounding marriage. 

The second and shorter document which can be considered is Patrick’s “Letter to Coroticus.”  Coroticus was a Christian British chieftain, who regularly ran pirate raids on the east coast of Ireland looking for booty and slaves.  In a recent raid, Coroticus’s soldiers had come across a band of Patrick’s newly baptized converts, raped and enslaved the women and children and killed the men “still in their baptismal garments.” Patrick excommunicated Coroticus and his soldiers which enraged the bishops of Britain who saw his actions overstepping onto their boundaries.  

We are getting a bit ahead of our story, however.  Patrick as a youth of about 16 was kidnapped by Irish pirates, brought back to Ireland and sold into slavery.  He spent about seven years as a sheep-herder in Antrim, in the north of Ireland.  During the long, lonely nights on the Irish hillsides, he rediscovered his faith and developed a life of deep prayer.  One night he heard a voice: “Your ship is ready.”  Patrick, at great risk to his own life, escaped and traveled as a fugitive 200 miles to Wicklow where he was able to talk a group of sailors to take him back to Britain.  While home he had a vision of an Irishman saying: We appeal to you, holy youth, come and walk among us once more.”  Patrick felt a vocation to return to Ireland with the Christian faith. He studied under Saint Germanus of Auxerre and was eventually ordained.   Returning to Ireland Patrick did not have an easy time of it.  If his mission was to succeed he could not afford to tie himself into the clan system as being identified with one clan would alienated him from others and yet, without being part of the clan system, he had not patrons or protectors.  He also faced tremendous opposition from the druids who saw him destroying the old ways on which they depended.  At the same time the bishops of Britain were very jealous that he would not accept their oversight of the Irish Church.  They were more than suspicious of his accommodating Christianity to the Irish ways and customs. 

A major part of Patrick’s strategy in winning converts was his appeal to women.  Winning the mothers to the faith, guaranteed the children.  He also made a point of aiming for slaves and did much to better their lots.  By the end of his life vast numbers of the Irish had been Christianized but it was a somewhat unique version of Christianity, differing from nearby Romano-Britain and from Rome itself.  The Church in Ireland had a different way of calculating the date for Easter than that followed by the Roman Church, meaning that the actual dates varied from one another from year to year.  The Irish monks also did not shave the crown of their heads in tonsure, but everything forward from a line from ear to ear.  Most disconcerting to the Roman authorities, was that the Irish made their confession to priests privately rather than to the bishop and did not perform public penance but ironically it is the Irish, not the Roman form of the Sacrament of Penance that has survived.  Because the Irish did not have cities and towns, Patrick organized the Church in Ireland according to the clan system.  Each clan had its monastic establishments for men and for women.  The religious head of the family, directly under the family’s chieftain or king, was its Abbot.  The bishop was a mere functionary to ordain and perform those actions limited to bishops.  All jurisdiction was given to the Abbot.  At times, such in the case of Saint Brigid of Kildare, the Abbacy was held by a woman and thus a woman directed the Church in and among her clan.   Roman Law gave no legal recognition to women or their authority but Brehon Law had no scruples.   The Irish church was also pretty sloppy on its canon law of marriage, tolerating divorce in many cases and following the Brehon Law that accorded validity to marriages in respect to the ten different types of marriage recognized in the Brehon Law.

It was only in the twelfth century through the ecclesiastical services of Saint Lorcan O’Toole and the political skuldullgery of Stronbow, King Henry II, and Pope Adrian IV that the Irish Church was brought into conformity with and canonical union with the Church of Rome. 

Change Hearts, Not Laws.

Ronit Elkabetz in Gett: The Trial

of Viviane Amsalem

Yesterday I heard on the radio an interview with Israeli film directors Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz as they discussed their film, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem.  The story is that of an Israeli woman, Viviane Amsalem, who wants a Gett—a rabbinical bill of divorce—from her husband Elisha.  Under Orthodox Jewish Law such a decree of divorce can only be issued if the husband ok’s it and Elisha won’t give Viviane her freedom from their loveless marriage.  What is even worse is that under this Orthodox Jewish system, the woman—Viviane—while practically speaking is the plaintiff seeking the divorce, actually becomes the one on trial in the procedure since the system is predicated on the exclusive right of the man to divorce the wife.  In Israel, despite it’s alleged separation of state and religion and despite the fact that the vast majority of its citizens, while Jews, are secularists, there is no provision for a divorce except that granted by a rabbinical court in accordance with strict Orthodox Jewish procedures.  Thus Viviane has no recourse.  The directors, who are brother and sister to one another, claim that there are currently about 45,000 Jewish women trapped in this situation where their husbands will not grant them their freedom. (While Israeli law has no provisions for secular divorce, Christians and Muslims can get their divorces from ecclesiastical (Christian) or Sharia (Islamic) tribunals as Jews get them from rabbinical courts. 

I am not a moviegoer.  I probably will not see Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem.  I also did not see Abderrahmane Sissako’s film, Timbuktu.  Timbuktu tells the story of the people of this ancient city in Mali during its occupation by the radical Islamic group, Ansar Dine, during the 2012 civil war in Mali. Ansar Dine imposed sharia law on the city demanding that women be veiled, stoning adulterers, amputating limbs for various crimes, outlawing sports and recreation activities, and imposing other harsh measures on the local population in the name of religion.

Religion too often is about power and in both the Christian (and post-Christian) West and in the Islamic Mid-East and now in Jewish Israel, religious power has become entangled with civil law.  The Civil Law gives power to religious principles and value.  More and more in a post-Christian society such as our own this residual of religious power over people causes a deep resentment. 

Toothpaste does not go easily back into tubes.  It is unlikely that Christianity will again be the foundation for Western Society.  We need to make peace with that.  Jesus never said that we were to have that kind of power over “the world.”  It is somewhat hard to take off one’s crown, climb down from one’s throne, and drive a taxi to support one’s self, but that is more or less what we, as Church, are called to do. And while it may not be as much fun as were the grand days of the Ancien Regime, it is not a bad strategy for the future.  Nothing will regain credibility for the Church like putting ourselves at the service of all in need.  For all his charismatic personality, Mother Theresa had much more influence over people outside the Church than did Pope John Paul, or even John XXIII in his day. And the mission that Jesus gave us was never to change laws—even laws to protect the unborn or to insure the moral character of marriage—but to change hearts.  The world will not be bettered by changed laws that impose values on people without their assent, but change hearts and you will change everything.  

The Challenges Facing the Synod: Jesus, Paul, Teutberga, and Modern Family

The upcoming Synod of Bishops is stirring up quite a controversy over the possibility of changing the discipline on how the Church integrates into its sacramental life those who have been divorced and remarried.  While the New Testament is pretty clear on the prohibition of divorce, history has some lessons to teach us on the matter of how the Church has dealt with the matter throughout its history.  There has been a long tradition supporting the indissolubility of Christian marriages but it is not an unbroken tradition.  I mentioned in the earlier post that while Mark and Luke present the teaching of Jesus as an absolute prohibition of divorce and remarriage—saying that those who remarry are guilty of adultery—Matthew gives an exception to the prohibition, namely “unchastity”—presumably on the part of the wife.  This has usually been interpreted as the wife not coming to the marriage as a virgin.  This is particularly interesting as it is the reason that Joseph has for his original plans to divorce Mary until the Angel comes and assures him that Mary has conceived by the power of God (Matt 1:20). 

Paul takes a different approach than the Synoptic Gospels—and it is interesting because Paul’s letters are written before the Gospels and thus reflect an older practice in the Church.   Paul does not allow for the marriage of two Christians to be dissolved, but does permit it when one of the partners is not a Christian and attempts to hinder the Christian partner in the practice of his or her faith (I Corinthians 7:12-15).  Jesus’ teaching, recorded in the Synoptics, declares all marriages to be indissoluble; Paul restricts this to Christian marriages.   It is Paul’s teaching, not Jesus’, that has shaped the practice of the Church through the centuries where the Church has willingly dissolved marriages where one or both of the partners have not been baptized and where, therefore, the marriage has not been “sacramental.”  The Church does not annul these marriages but dissolves them, that is the Church recognizes that the first marriage did exist as a valid marriage but declares that since it was not a sacrament (one or both partners not being baptized and thus no sacrament, even for the baptized partner) it can be dissolved regardless of the teaching of Jesus to the contrary. 

I also pointed out a statement by Pope Gregory II in the eighth century that somewhat astoundingly permits divorce in the case of a wife who can no longer, for reasons of health, have sexual relations with her husband.  This statement is remarkable as it is the only papal statement I can find that permits divorce and remarriage.  Finally, I mentioned in the previous post the marriage/divorce/annulment of Lothair II of Lotharingia and his wife, Teutberga which marks a significant turning point in the Catholic approach to the dissolution of supposedly indissoluble marriages. I want to look more closely at this case. 

The first point, just to answer the obvious, is where in God’s Name is Lotharingia?  Lotharingia designates a medieval kingdom extending from Frisia on the North Sea in modern day Holland south through Burgundy, Provence, Lombardy and even part of Tuscany.  It spanned most of Holland, parts of Belgium, France, Switzerland and Italy and would include such modern day cities as Utrecht, Aachen (the capital), Liege, Cologne, Verdun, Strasbourg, Lyon, Marseilles, Geneva, Milan, Florence, and Siena.   It was created upon the death of Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne, when his three sons divided the empire with Louis’ son Charles the Bald being given most of what is today France, his son Louis being given most of what is today Germany, and his son Lothair being given this middle kingdom between the two brothers.  The name Lotharingia survives in “Lorraine,” that province which today belongs to France but which has been a source of fighting between France and Germany for over a century and which is famous for its quiche (which real men don’t eat).

In any event, Lothair I, son of Louis the Pious, had several sons and further divided his kingdom, leaving the Italian lands to his son, Louis, the French/German lands to his son Lothair II, and Provence (the southernmost province of what is today France) to his son Charles.  Lothair II thus governed what is today the Netherlands, much of Belgium, and North west and central France. Lothair II had a long-time lady friend, Waldrada, (think Camilla Parker-Bowles) who came from an aristocratic but not noble family.  His father, Lothair I, required that he marry Teutberga (think Princess Diana) daughter of Boso who is variously described as the Count of Arles, Count of Turin, and Count of Valois.  Boso, for his part, wanted his daughter to marry into the Imperial Family and Lothair I saw the advantages of an alliance with this powerful noble from the south-eastern part of his realm.  There were problems, however, with this marriage.  Lothair loved Waldrada, not Teutberga (I don’t know; can you imagine screaming either name in the fit of carnal passion?); moreover Teutberga proved to be incapable of bearing children, leaving Lothair II without an heir.  Waldrada, on the other hand, bore Lothair four children, one of whom was a son; but an illegitimate son.  Damn.  Born on the wrong side of the blanket, Hugh (the son of Lothair and Waldrada), could not inherit.   But if Lothair could marry Waldrada, then Hugh would be legitimized, and could inherit.  How to do it in an age before speeding paparazzi in mad pursuit behind one’s chariot?  First Lothair accused Teutberga of unchastity—remember Matthew’s one out of a marriage?  Lothair claimed that she had been involved in an incestuous relationship with her brother, Hucbert (where do they get these names?  Were there no Baby Books to choose from?).  Teutberga was outraged at the claim against her character and backed up by Hucbert (who had a powerful army at his disposal) insisted on a trial to clear her name. 

Now, back then they didn’t do trials like we do.  They wanted something more entertaining and so they did Trials by Ordeal.  There were several ways to do this, but Teutberga submitted to “Trial by Ordeal of Water.”  She had to put her hand into a bot of boiling water and retrieve a stone at the bottom of the pot.  The hand was then bandaged.  At the end of three days, if the hand had not festered but was healthy (or healing at least) the accused party was considered innocent.  Teutberga passed the test and Lothair had to take her back as his wife.  Notice—there is not an appeal here to ecclesiastical authority, just a trial by ordeal to establish or clear guilt and, if established, end the marriage.  It was only when his first plan failed, that Lothair turned to the local clergy and asked permission to set aside Teutberg and marry Waldrada on the grounds of her alleged (but disproved) unchastity.  The clergy acquiesced.  A synod of bishops met two years later and confirmed the decision of the clergy.  But Teutberga fled to the court of her husband’s estranged uncle, Charles the Bald, and from there appealed to the Pope.  The Pope, Nicholas I, overruled the Synod and declared the marriage of Lothair and Teutberga valid.  Lothair had to take back his wife. This appeal to the Pope is one of the earliest appeals for the Pope to get involved in terminating a marriage. 

Historians are not sure what happened next to cause   Teutberga to change her mind, but she now wanted the marriage to be annulled.  Lothair went to Rome to speak personally to the Pope and the Pope—now Adrian II, agreed to terminate the marriage.  Unfortunately for Lothair, however, he died on the way home and never did get to marry Waldrada.  And so Hugh remained illegitimate and since he was illegitimate and could not legally inherit, Lothair’s kingdom should have gone to his brother Louis.  Louis, however, was busy with wars in Italy and the inheritance was stolen by his uncles, Charles the Bald and Louis the German, Lotharingia thus disappearing from the map.  It was a rough and tumble world. 

Lothair’s appeal to the clergy and Teutberga’s appeal to the papacy to resolve their marital dispute is one of the earliest  turning points in how marital breakups were handled.  I do not know of an earlier case—though there may be one or more—where the papacy became involved in this sort of dispute.  Up to this point, the Germanic kings and powerful nobles just pretty much put their wives aside and took another when either lust or politics led them to a more advantageous second marriage.  Pope Stephen III supposedly warned Charlemagne not to put aside his first wife, Himmiltrude, but Charlemagne did precisely that to marry Gerberga (sometimes called Desiderata for reasons we don’t have to go into here).  There is some dispute whether Himmiltrude was actually Charlemange’s wife or a concubine, but the letter of Stephen refers to her as a wife. And when Charlemagne put aside Gerberga to marry Hildegard of Vinzgouw there was not an appeal to Rome to validate the divorce. Two generations later, however, it was different when Pope Nicholas got involved in the dispute between Lothair and Teutberga, but it is important to note that Nicholas only did so at Teutberga’s appeal and not at his own initiative.  And it is interesting to see that Nicholas’ successor, Adrian, was willing to annul what Nicholas had not. Adrian’s decision was more a matter of political convenience than of worthiness of cause.  Nicholas’ refusal to annul the marriage, for that matter, may have been to please Charles the Bald who did not want to see his nephew free to marry and have an heir because he, Charles, planned on stealing the kingdom when and if Lothair should predecease him.  And he did steal it, of course. 

Just as a historical note, Lothair’s grandson by Waldrada was Hugh of Italy whose second wife was Marozia—the notorious mistress of one pope, mother and grandmother of two others, tying Lothair into that whole mess of the papal pornacracy.  You might want to check out the entries for Jan 15 and June 6 2015 by clicking Marozia’s name on the sidebar of the blog for more details on that sleazy affair. 

While Lothair and Teutberga’s marriage ended up being reviewed in Rome, this was because they were royals and there was much at stake politically.   People further down the social scale did not bother with such niceties when switching bedmates.  Or to put it more accurately, Popes (and even bishops) did not bother involving themselves with people further down the social scale when they wanted to leave one marriage for another.  Arrangements tended to be much more informal among the peasantry.  Germanic Law—which governed most of Europe, even down into Italy—at the time was well used to marriages being abandoned in favor of new ones and it would be centuries before a process of annulments evolved for the ordinary person in the pew.  And it would only be in the mid 20^th century that annulments became somewhat common.  But then—and mostly because of a combination of the emergence of a Middle Class in the 16^th century and of the influence of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic reforms coming from the Council of Trent—that the ideals of the Christian family solidified. 

Now we are in a difficult situation as what might be called the post-Christian culture begins to predominate in the Western world and that ideal of the Christian family is replaced by the social complexities caricatured in the television series Modern Family that we are faced with having to find pastoral solutions for what is today becoming the norm but which for centuries would have been unimaginable aberrations in family life.  What do we do?  Do we put our head in the sand and pretend that the world has not changed?  Do we shun and exclude those whose lives represent the post-Christian culture?  Do we just abandon our tradition and go with the flow and hey, as long as everyone is happy God is cool?  Do we accept the changed conditions and see it as a field for evangelization? 

The answer obviously is that we accept the changed conditions and see it as a field for evangelization, but how do we do this?  What does it mean to evangelize in a post-Christian culture?  What can we change and what must be unchangeable.  Various people on all sides have facile answers but the reality is not all that facile.  How does Joe Parish Priest deal with Cam and Mitch when they bring Lily for her First Communion?  How does he deal with Gloria and Jay when they bring Fulgencio Joseph Pritchett for baptism?  And what advice does he give Phil and Claire about Haley who is sleeping with her boyfriend and Luke who is finding out about masturbation?  The bishops have their work cut out for them at the synod.  Thank God for Alex; there is at least one normal person in the family.  Is this geek thing the new normal?  Not sure I like that either.  

Some Historical Reflections on Marriage, Divorce, Eucharist in the Catholic Tradition

The Catholic approach to marriage and the termination of marriages is a bit more complex than those who say that the 2000 year tradition of the Catholic Church has had a consistent theology of marriage and has never allowed for divorce.  Theologians often make this mistake because they look at the theological tracts which set an ideal but overlook the civil law tracts and the secular literature which portray a reality that only too often is different from that ideal.  John Boswell, the late Yale historian who wrote about same-sex marriage in the Middle Ages (and offers a strong but not convincing argument that such unions were blessed by the Church) somewhat cynically points out that in the ancient and medieval worlds marriages were arranged because of property, in the middle were about having children and ended up being about love and contrasts this with the modern experience where marriages are arranged because of love, in the middle are about having children and end up being about property.  Cynical, but far too often, true.  Divorce is a fact in modern life and we as Church are going to have to deal with it.  Much like the phenomenon of same-sex attraction, another feature of modern life with which many are too uncomfortable to acknowledge, marital breakup has always been a part of society and while often swept under polite society’s rug, cannot be denied and must no longer be ignored. 
Let’s begin with the obvious.  There is a clear and absolute prohibition of divorce in the New Testament.  Mark (10:2-12), the oldest gospel and presumably the most accurate in its relaying the original words of Jesus, declares without qualification that any man or woman who divorces and then marries another, commits adultery.   Luke (16:18) repeats this absolute and unqualified prohibition.  Matthew, (5:31-32; 19:3-12) repeats it but with a qualification that permits a man to divorce his wife for reasons of (presumably her) unchastity but warns that whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.  Matthew also states that a man who divorces his wife for reasons other than unchastity forces her to commit adultery since the woman in that society would be all but required to seek a new marriage for economic and sociological reasons.  There was simply no place in Near Eastern society of the time for an unmarried woman other than a widow whose sons were obligated to shelter and protect her.  A woman whose husband had divorced her was legally a non-person and had no means of support except remarriage, concubinage, or prostitution. 
In addition to the gospels, Paul in 1 Corinthians (7:12-15) makes it clear that when the marriage of two Christians fail, they must either remain single or be reconciled.  If, on the other hand, one partner or the other is not a Christian and leaves the Christian partner, then the marriage is dissolved leaving the Christian free to marry.  The Christian partner, however, must not be the one to leave the marriage.  Paul makes it clear that this is not divine law—indeed his is not an exception consistent with what Jesus said—but his judgment, and it is the foundation for the so-called Pauline Privilege or Privilege of the Faith that even today permits a non-sacramental marriage to be dissolved.   This linking of indissolubility to sacramental marriages (marriages between two Christians) rather than to marriage itself is a significant shift away from the Gospel Teaching found in Mark and Luke.   
The teaching of the New Testament is pretty clear and, except for Matthew’s fudging it in his gospel, pretty consistent.  Marriage, or at least the marriage of two Christians, is indissoluble.  But that does not mean there was a clear theology of marriage from the first days of the Church.  Most Catholics are surprised to learn that the Church did not require a Church ceremony or the blessing of a priest for sacramental validity until as late as 1917.  Marriage was officially enumerated among the Sacraments only at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215—though that does not mean that various theologians had not spoken of it as a sacrament or that marriages before 1215 were not sacramental.  It was only in the 1215 Council that the Church definitively listed which rites were sacraments.  But the history of Councils and papal decrees is much more complex than one would think from reading the Christian scriptures. Divorce and remarriage were common in the Graeco-Roman world in which ancient Christianity found itself transplanted from Judaism.  Divorce, for that matter, was not difficult in the Judaism of Jesus’ day which is what triggered Jesus insisting that the separation of spouses was not part of God’s original plan but a concession made by Moses because “of the hardness of your hearts.”  Christians in the pagan societies that comprised the Roman Empire strived to live by different moral standards than those set by the culture and marital fidelity was among the chief values they set for themselves.  Indeed adultery was one of only three sins that were judged sufficiently grave to require absolution before the sinner was reconciled to the community and could again partake of the Eucharist. Compared to their writing on Baptism and Eucharist, or even martyrdom for that matter, the Fathers wrote comparatively little on marriage.  Athenagoras of Athens (c.190) and Clement of Alexandria (c 215) give witness to the common belief of their time that not only was marriage indissoluble in this life, but also in eternity and thus second marriages—even for those who were widowed—were at the least to be discouraged if not outright banned.
Clement actually gives us a rare positive view of marriage where he sees the family as the domestic church, the two or three (husband, wife, child) gathered in Christ’s Name where Christ is present in their midst. Most of what one finds in the Fathers about marriage is negative.  It is certainly not as pleasing to God as is virginity and married life is filled with troubles that distract us from God and the work he has set before us.  Paul’s magnificent insight of the relationship of the husband and wife being a visible sign of the relationship of Christ and the Church is overlooked.  Probably because there was no liturgical rite associated with marriage in these early centuries—wedding customs more or less followed the cultural patterns of the times—most Christians lacked a consciousness of its sacramental nature. That is not to say that they did not value it or did not live it well, but they most likely were not as conscious of its sanctity in the same way we are today.  At its best it probably seemed to be a concession to the weakness of human nature—and that is certainly the way that much of the patristic literature portrayed it.  That did not mean, of course, that divorce and remarriage were sanctioned. 
One important voice, however, that does record some openness to the issue of divorce was Tertullian.  Writing against Marcion sometime around the year 200, Tertullian declared that since Jesus himself (in the Gospel of Matthew) had given the exception of unchastity as an allowable reason for divorce, that there was no absolute prohibition of divorce; and implies that since the prohibition is not absolute there might be other reasons as well.  I think we need to be careful with his argument, however, for several reasons.  First, of course, is that his argument ignores Mark and Luke where the prohibition is absolute.  Secondly Tertullian was not writing about divorce but about Marriage, which Marcion and his disciples condemned as a corruption of our human nature.  (No wonder that the sect died out.) Since Tertullian was opposed to second marriages for those who were widowed, one cannot extrapolate from his support for divorce that he argued to permit remarriage for the divorced.  
The mass influx of converts that resulted from the Barbarian invasions of the fourth through the tenth centuries brought the Western Church face to face with a variety of cultures that all but swamped the barque of Peter on a number of levels, not least of which were marriage and family customs.  The Germanic tribes represented by the Franks, the Goths, the Visigoths, the Lombards and others had their traditional marriage laws and customs and were slow to give them up.  Most disturbing was the ease in which their magnates set aside one wife in favor of another whose family connections were politically more advantageous.  This led to a period in the early Middle Ages (the 4^th- 8^th centuries) in which divorce and second, third, fourth and fifth marriages was just a factor of political life despite the Church’s efforts to introduce its moral code.  It would also lead in the central Middle Ages  (the 9-11^th centuries) to the development of annulment processes which were more often a matter of politics than of remedying canonical irregularities. 

Pope Gregory II declared in 726:

You have asked what is a husband to do if his wife, having been afflicted with an infirmity, is unable to have sexual intercourse with her husband. It would be good if he could remain as he is and practice abstinence.  But since this requires great virtue, if he cannot live chastely, it is better if he marry.  Let him, however, not stop supporting her, since she is kept from married life by her infirmity and not by some detestable fault. 

This is a pretty dramatic departure from the New Testament standards for marriage and, to be fair, while it is a comparatively early statement, it is quite exceptional in the long list of papal decrees regarding marriage.  Certainly by the canon law reforms of the 12^th century there was a consistent teaching on the indissolubility of marriage and there are any number of cases of matrimonial ruptures being referred to the Holy See for annulment.  The ill-fated marriage of Lothair II and Teutberga caused an annulment dispute from 857 until Lothair’s death in 869.  The fifteen-year marriage of Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine was annulled (on pretty shaky grounds) by the Archbishops of Sens, Rouen, Bordeaux, and Reims with the blessing of Pope Eugenius III in 1152.  Annulments were the Catholic way around the prohibition of divorce and were the things of royalty and the upper nobility where marriage and politics were linked; common folk could not get annulments and did not seek them but simply changed beds. 
Before we continue on, we should also look at the medieval Irish Church.  Despite the beloved mythology, Saint Patrick did not bring Christianity to Ireland.  By the time Patrick arrived in Ireland in the mid-fifth century the nation was already well on the way to being Christianized.  Current thinking places the introduction of Christianity to Ireland in the fourth century with monks from Egypt seeking solitude and refuge at what was then the edge of the known world. Patrick, and his predecessor, Palladius, were sent a generation later by Popes anxious to snap the Egyptian connection and bring the Irish Christians into the mainstream of the western Church.  It was a highly unsuccessful effort.  Until the 12^th century and the work of Saint Laurence O’Toole as Archbishop of Dublin, the Irish Church was all but independent of Rome and highly idiosyncratic in its practices.  It would take several postings to give an idea of just how much the Irish Church differed from the rest of Western Christendom but in regards to marriage suffice it to say that Brehon Law recognized ten different types of marriage between a man and a woman.  Moreover, polygamy was common and polyandry was not unknown. Divorce was acceptable by mutual consent and was not infrequent.  The Irish Church was not organized by dioceses but by the ancient clan system and authority was not exercised by bishops but by the familial abbot—or sometimes abbess—and thus it was not always easy for the Church to super-impose its ideals over the ancient clan traditions. Indeed, the social deviances of early and central medieval Ireland led to the Bull, Laudabiliter, the papal blessing for the English to come over and straighten things out in Ireland in 1171. 
As to what was happening in England and on the European continent during the early and central Middle Ages (c.350-1100), remember that the vast majority of people—98% of the population—were peasants who worked the land.  Their lives were simple and their education was nil.  Their priests were most often simply peasants themselves who had learned a little bit of Latin and who farmed their lands from Monday through Saturday in an effort to feed their own families. They had not gone to seminary.  They knew nothing of canon law.  Much of the time they did not even understand much of the Latin they read at the altar.  Marriage in this world was informal at best.  Church ceremonies were for the nobles.  In some cases, a blessing may have been given at the Church door upon a newly married couple, but formalities were, by and large, few.  We really don’t know what the success rate of marriages was for the working classes and no one bothered to keep records.  There does seem to have been considerable stability in the families but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a turnover in who was sleeping next to whom at night. Life-expectancy was low and women in particular often died very young, leaving their husbands to find a second or even a third wife.  In such cases where a man is noted as having a second or third wife we should not necessarily presume that he was widowed.  Where marriage was less than formal it is not unreasonable to think that partners at times simply up and left—or were thrown out for various reasons from adultery to infertility. 
Strange as it may seem to us, the question of admitting those in irregular unions to communion is an entirely separate question from divorce.  Most people, whether in sound marriages or second unions, did not go to communion.  Ever. Reception of Holy Communion by the laity, especially the peasantry, had all but died out between the seventh and the tenth centuries due to the rigorous fasts required, the profound sense of personal sinfulness that was inculcated in the faithful, and an extraordinarily “High Christology” that encouraged a superstitious fear of Christ in his Eucharistic Presence.  In 1215 the Church had to require that the faithful receive Holy Communion annually. The fact that you need a law to make that happen means that it is not happening and that is why you make the law.  So while divorce (at least informal divorce) and remarriage (at least informal remarriage) was probably not rare it did not impact the communion question, at least until the time for the person in an irregular union to summon the priest for viaticum.  The exclusion of people from Holy Communion was not an issue in the Medieval period.  It was not rare for Pope or Bishops to place entire cities under interdict and the complaint was not that the living could not receive Holy Communion but that the dead could not be buried and Masses could not be offered to free them from purgatory.  Nowadays things are very different, of course.  The regular and frequent communions desired by Pope Saint Pius X have radically changed our Catholic culture.  We cannot conceive of going to Mass and not receiving Holy Communion.  There are some in the Church today who think that frequent communion has lessened our appreciation for the Sacrament.  But the 20^th and 21^st centuries have seen the greatest number of Catholics receiving the Eucharist since the sixth century and the collapse of the ancient Christian world.  The problem with frequent communion, however, is that those who are not free to receive the Sacrament—whether for the need of absolution or because they are not in full Communion with the Catholic Church—experience themselves as excluded and even shunned. None of this provides an answer to the questions facing the upcoming Synod on the possibility of admitting those in non-canonical marriages to Holy Communion.  The Church has lived with divorce and remarriage before, but not had the face the challenge, at least on a general scale, of admitting the remarried to Holy Communion.  This much we can do, however, and in fact must do.  We need to stop pretending that the challenge of integrating the divorced and remarried into the life of the Church does not exist.  It has existed in the past.  In the recent past, at least, we have not done well with it, and we must design a future for the Church that permits all people to find a place in the family of God without judgment or condemnation by the clergy or by their peers. I think it also means that we need to be far more proactive in supporting programs that help Catholics develop and live sound familial lives.  Marriage Encounter has been one wonderful way of “forming” couples and families in the vocation of Christian Marriage. We need to give Marriage Encounter, Teams of Our Lady, and other couple-based programs strong encouragement in our parishes.  But we also need to do far more. And the problem is not limited to married couples.  We presume that once baptized as an infant and catechized for First Communion, a Christian has all the tools he or she needs to live a life of discipleship when in fact there is a need to bring the principle of a life-long ongoing formation in Christian living into the lives of all those who sit in the pews Sunday after Sunday and then go about their lives through the week trying—or maybe not trying—to be Disciples.  I wish I could say that the clergy need to take this task as their own but my experience is that they are most in need of being called to discipleship.  It isn’t enough to read one’s Office and say one’s Mass—the fire needs to be rekindled from top to bottom in the Church today.