Liberating Marriage in an Age of Heresy

Held hostage by feudal customs and threatened by the Cathar heresy, the institution of marriage at the outset of the twelfth-century in Latin Christendom was in urgent need of reform. Liberating Marriage in an Age of Heresy reveals for the first time the role St. Hildegard played in the Church's efforts to establish its jurisdiction over the institution and restore marriage to its Christian ideal. With little consensus on matters such as indissolubility and divorce, marital consent, contraception, clerical marriage, etc., the battle for marriage would not be easily won. Called out of her cloistered life and invested by the Church with the authority of an Old Testament prophet, abbess Hildegard, guided by mystical visions, reinforces the efforts of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the reforming popes to restore marriage to the institution God originally intended it to be. St. Hildegard was rediscovered by Latin scholars in the late twentieth-century after having fallen into obscurity for 800 years. The effort here demonstrates that this recently named Doctor of the Church has resurfaced at a critical time and her works possess a special relevance to questions facing the Church today.