To Ramón de Rocaberti, Archbishop of Tarragona

Your fraternity has asked what you should do in a certain case, namely that B. de Belloloco and his wife Agnes had mutually sworn an oath that they would never ask for marital relations from the other. Now B. has asked her to return to the marriage bed insistently; she however has affirmed that she would rather become a Saracen and lose her soul than return to him. The adulterous relationship in which she lived after she left B, she willingly abandoned afterwards, and, subsequently, both the husband and wife promised and swore an oath of chastity.

We respond to your fraternity's question and through apostolic letters mandate that you warn both parties to observe continence and that you induce them both if they want to promise continence, you will send them both away without the other to live separately. However, if the man does not want to promise continence, you should compel the wife to return to him and live with him as his wife under threat of excommunication without appeal. She had, after all, committed two crimes: swearing a rash oath and adultery.

Pope Innocent III Written on the 20 June, 1203 at Ferentino