Towards a New Era of modernity? : late scholastic speculation on bigamy and polygamy

By the 16th century, canon law had long established a regulatory structure for the institution of marriage. Likewise, jurisprudence had developed a solid doctrinal system to deal with the numerous legal issues that marriage presented. Thus, it should come as no surprise that late Scholasticism offered very little in terms of totally new solutions to the most relevant problem areas. Nonetheless, the late Scholastic contribution to the specific area of family law was anything but trivial, not only because of its influence on the practice of law during that time, but also because of its importance in the history of legal thought. From this point of view, the jurists/theologians of the siglo de oro left a fundamental legacy to the subsequent doctrines of natural law and the Enlightenment through the methodology they employed. The aim of this article is to provide an initial account of how exponents of the siglo de oro examined the complex issue of bigamy (more correctly, polygamy), which was of enormous practical impact in an era that was characterized by a high number of secret marriages. As innovators of Thomistic thought during the Counter-Reformation, they reflected on the problematic contrast between pluralitas uxorum and the natural ends of marriage. While they primarily relied on biblical texts and the word of Saint Thomas Aquinas, to a lesser extent they also considered the auctoritates of the ius commune. Though there were some differences of opinion to be found among the various authors, late Scholastic speculation on this issue generally came to defend the traditional stances of the Church. As such, it was not the formulation of particularly original solutions that characterized this period, but rather the skill and insight that thinkers exhibited in philosophizing on what was rationally justifiable and in discussing the pros and cons of the issue.