Thomas Aquinas — "It is not lawful for a man to have more than one wife at a time."
It is not lawful for a man to have more than one wife at a time.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Marriage is an exclusive bond between one man and one woman — having multiple wives at the same time is morally and legally forbidden. The phrase 'at a time' is deliberate: it permits remarriage after a spouse's death but draws a hard line against concurrent plural marriage. Monogamy is not a cultural convention here but a binding moral requirement grounded in reason and divine order.
Relevance to Thomas Aquinas
Aquinas, a 13th-century Dominican friar, grounded all ethics in natural law — moral truths discoverable through reason reflecting God's design. In the Summa Theologica he analyzed marriage as ordered toward procreation, child-rearing, and mutual fidelity, functions he argued required exclusivity. Though Old Testament patriarchs practiced polygamy, Aquinas held that reason, fully developed, reveals monogamy as the rational and divinely intended norm.
The era
The 13th century saw the Catholic Church claiming sole jurisdiction over marriage law, having declared marriage a sacrament at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Meanwhile, contact with Islamic civilization — which permitted up to four wives — and the plain polygamy of Abraham, David, and Solomon in scripture created urgent theological tensions. Aquinas wrote to resolve them, anchoring monogamy in natural law and cementing Church doctrine against both traditions.
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