Milton's divorce tracts

Milton's divorce tracts refer to the four interlinked polemical pamphlets--The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, The Judgment of Martin Bucer, Tetrachordon, and Colasterion--written by John Milton from 1643-45 arguing for the legitimacy for divorce on grounds of spousal incompatibility. Arguing for divorce at all, let alone a version of no-fault divorce, was extremely controversial at this time, leading Milton to be publicly attacked by religious figures who sought to ban his tracts. Though Milton's tracts were met with nothing but hostility, and he later rued publishing them in English at all, they are important for analyzing the relationship between Adam and Eve in his epic Paradise Lost.

Contents

Context

The immediate spark for Milton's writing of the tracts was his desertion by his newly married wife, Mary Powell. In addition to the testimony of early biographers,[1] critics have detected Milton's personal psychosexual situation in passages of The Doctrine and Discipline and Divorce.[2]

The broader context for Milton's penning the tracts was his hope, given the intellectual ferment accompanying the English Civil War, that Parliament might reform the outmoded—really, nonexistent—English divorce laws. Having inherited Catholic canon law, England, unusually for a Protestant country, had no formal mechanisms for divorce: as in Catholicism, marriages could be annulled on the basis of preexisting impediments, like consanguinity or impotence, or separations could be obtained.[3] However, divorce may have been unofficially condoned in cases of desertion or adultery.[4] On the whole, in the words of one historian, England remained "the worst of all worlds, largely lacking either formal controls over marriage or satisfactory legal means of breaking it."[5]

Argument

The overarching argument of the four tracts is that private divorce by mutual consent for incompatibility is consonant with Christian Scripture, specifically Matthew 19:3-9, where Christ seems to specifically forbid divorce (see Christian views on divorce). Yet although buttressed by Scriptural authority, much of Milton's argument hangs on his view of human nature and the purpose of marriage, which rather than the traditional ends of procreation or a remedy against fornication, he defines as "the apt and cheerful conversation of man with woman, to comfort and refresh him against the evils of solitary life."[6] Milton argues that if a couple be "mistak’n in their dispositions through any error, concealment, or misadventure" for them "spight of antipathy to fadge together, and combine as they may to their unspeakable wearisomnes and despaire of all sociable delight" violates the purpose of marriage as mutual companionship.[6]

Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce

The fuller title of the first pamphlet is The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce: Restor'd to the Good of Both Sexes, From the Bondage of Canon Law. Its first edition was printed in August 1643, and then a much expanded, unlicensed second edition came out in 1644. Though Milton's full name appeared on neither title page, his name must have become affixed to the tracts for he was denounced in a sermon given before Parliament in August 1644. Milton's basic scriptural argument is that Christ did not abrogate the Mosaic permission for divorce found in Deuteronomy 24:1 because in Matthew 19 he was just addressing a specific audience of Pharisees.

Judgment of Martin Bucer

Published in July 1644, Judgment of Martin Bucer consists mostly of Milton's translations of pro-divorce arguments from the De Regno Christi of the Protestant reformer Martin Bucer. By finding support for his views among Protestant writers, Milton hoped to sway the members of Parliament and Protestant ministers who had condemned him.

Tetrachordon

Tetrachordon appeared in March 1645, after Milton had published his defense of free speech, Areopagitica, in the interim. The name in Greek means "four-stringed," implying that Milton was able to harmonize the four Scriptural passages (Genesis 1:27-28, Deuteronomy 24:1, Matthew 5:31-32 and 19:2-9, and I Corinthians 7:10-16) dealing with divorce. In this learned and dense Biblical exegesis, Milton suggests that in the post-lapsarian world the secondary law of nature permits divorce.

Colasterion

Meaning "rod of punishment" in Greek, Colasterion was published along with Tetrachordon in March 1645 in response to an anonymous pamphlet attacking the first edition of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Milton makes no new arguments, but harshly takes to task the "trivial author" in vituperative prose.

References

  1. ^ Cyriack Skinner, Life of Milton, in John Milton, Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Hughes (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003), p. 1038.
  2. ^ Annabel Patterson, "No Meer Amatorious Novel?" in John Milton, ed. Annabel Patterson (London: Longman, 1992), pp. 87-101.
  3. ^ Roderick Phillips,Putting Asunder (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 1-39.
  4. ^ William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties (London: 1634), p. 217.; Ernest Sirluck, "Introduction," in John Milton, Complete Prose Works, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), pp. 145-46
  5. ^ Lawrence Stone, Road to Divorce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 11.
  6. ^ a b Milton, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, in Complete Prose Works, vol. 2, p. 235

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1645 Poems
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