Read the document
Si quis dixerit, licere Christianis plures simul habere uxores, et hoc nulla lege divina esse prohibitum: anathema sit.
“If any one saith, that it is lawful for Christians to have several wives at the same time, and that this is not prohibited by any divine law; let him be anathema.”
Council of Trent, Session 24, Canons on the Sacrament of Matrimony · Canon 2, November 11, 1563
The canon in the standard English (Waterworth) with the Latin.
Put it in context
The canon asserts that divine law prohibits the practice and attaches an anathema to the contrary claim. It does not reproduce the biblical or theological reasoning behind that judgment.
That omission is worth noticing, but it cannot bear more than it says. Conciliar canons often state conclusions without printing their full argument, so the broader Tridentine sources also have to be examined.
What is disputed
That a canon does not print a proof text does not establish that its conclusion rests on tradition rather than exegesis. Conciliar canons routinely define or condemn without reproducing the reasoning, and the council's broader theological sources have to be examined separately.
How I read this record
This is my conclusion from the source, not part of the quotation.
Trent makes the prohibition a formal doctrinal boundary while leaving the claimed divine law uncited in the canon itself. The document establishes the authority of the rule more directly than it displays the exegesis behind it.
Open the sources
- Session 24 at papalencyclicals.net ↗ · The canons on matrimony; Canon 2.