Read the document
“…it would be better if he remained apart and practised continence. But since this is practicable only in the case of men of high ideals, the best course if he is unable to be continent would be for him to marry.”
Gregory II, reply to Boniface · Letter of 22 November 726 (MGH Epistolae; Emerton's translation, Letter 14)
The infirm first wife remains his to support; the letter does not dissolve that bond.
Put it in context
This is a pope answering a missionary's practical question about marriage discipline, and the exchange survives in the papal correspondence.
The wording is important but not simple. The first wife remains alive and supported while the man is told he may marry. Whether the canon law of the period understood that as concurrent marriage, remarriage after separation, or an exceptional accommodation is the dispute named below.
What is disputed
Whether the letter contemplates a concurrent second marriage, a remarriage after separation, or an exceptional pastoral accommodation is genuinely disputed, and the answer turns on the canonical vocabulary of the period rather than on the English rendering.
How I read this record
This is my conclusion from the source, not part of the quotation.
The letter complicates any simple claim that the medieval church always handled every living-spouse case in the same way. It records permission to marry while an infirm first wife remains alive and supported, though the precise canonical category remains disputed.
Open the sources
- The Boniface correspondence at the Internet Medieval Sourcebook ↗ · Letter 14, Gregory II to Boniface, 22 November 726.