Pope Stephen III: Don’t Divorce Your Wives

Pope Stephen III, To Charles and Carloman (Codex Epistolaris Carolinus 45), 769: “… we ourselves… implore you most solemnly – through the living and true God, who is the judge of the living and the dead, and by the ineffable power of His divine majesty and the dread day of future judgment, when all of us, princes and potentates of the whole human race will attend in terror, and also by all the divine mysteries and the most holy body of the blessed Peter – that neither of you brothers presume in any way to take in marriage the daughter of King Desiderius of the Lombards, and again that your most noble sister the lovable Gisela be not given to Desiderius’ son, and that you do not dare to divorce your wives in any manner whatsoever.”