Marriage and Divorce in Canon Law

How the Orthodox canonical corpus governs marriage: the impediments that bar a marriage (degrees of blood kinship and affinity, spiritual kinship, and disparity of cult), the rules for the marriage of clergy (permitted only before ordination), divorce on the ground of the Matthean exception, and remarriage — the penitential second and third rites, the absolute maximum of three marriages, and the pastoral economy by which the Church applies all of this. The canons are read here as a therapeutic tradition, not as a marriage code; the underlying principle is oikonomia (see Pastoral Economy).

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Marriage in the Canonical Vision

The canons treat marriage both as a sacrament (the mystērion of crowning) and as an order to be protected by discipline. Their concern is less to define conditions of validity in a juridical sense — that is a Western preoccupation — than to identify the relationships that may not be sanctified, to keep the clergy within the order proper to their rank, and to provide a penitential path back for those whose marriages have failed. The dogmatic theology of the sacrament is treated at Marriage (Dogmatic Theology); this file concerns the canonical discipline.

The Canonical Impediments

An impediment is a condition that bars a couple from being crowned. The canons recognize three principal classes.

Kinship: Consanguinity and Affinity

Marriage is forbidden within certain degrees of blood relationship (consanguinity) and of relationship created by a prior marriage (affinity). Canon 54 of the Quinisext Council is the governing text: opening “The divine scripture plainly teaches us…” it forbids marriages within the prohibited degrees, drawing on Leviticus 18, and excommunicates those who contract them (NPNF II/14, Trullo Canon 54). Basil had already legislated the same ground: his Canon 87 (from Epistle 160 to Diodorus of Tarsus) forbids marriage with a deceased wife’s sister (NPNF II/8; Milash, on Basil’s canons). Later synods extended the computation of forbidden degrees considerably — the Tomos of Patriarch Sisinnius II (997) is the classic Byzantine tightening — and the precise outer degree permitted (commonly the seventh degree of consanguinity, and a corresponding degree of affinity) varies in detail across the local churches today, which apply the tradition through their own synodal regulations rather than one uniform rule.

Spiritual Kinship

Sponsorship at baptism creates a spiritual kinship (syngeneia pneumatikē) that is itself a marriage impediment, and one the canons rank above fleshly kinship. Canon 53 of the Quinisext Council establishes it: “Inasmuch as the spiritual relationship is greater than the union of bodies…” it forbids a man to marry the widowed mother of his godchild (NPNF II/14, Trullo Canon 53). Later Byzantine law extended the bar to further relations between the two families joined by sponsorship; here too the modern application is regulated by each autocephalous church.

Disparity of Cult

Marriage between an Orthodox Christian and a non-Orthodox is restricted by Canon 72 of the Quinisext Council: “An orthodox man is not permitted to marry an heretical woman, nor an orthodox woman to be joined to an heretical man” — and such unions, if contracted, are to be dissolved, on the ground that “things which should not be mingled” must not be joined (NPNF II/14, Trullo Canon 72). The same canon makes an exception for a couple united while both were outside the Church, one of whom afterwards comes to the faith (echoing 1 Corinthians 7). The strict letter of Canon 72 has been moderated in modern pastoral practice (treated below).

The Marriage of Clergy

The settled rule of the Eastern Church is that a man may marry only before ordination, never after. This is fixed at the most ancient stratum and reconfirmed at Trullo.

Apostolic Canon 26 permits marriage after ordination to readers and singers only: “Of those who are admitted to the clergy unmarried, we ordain that the readers and singers only may, if they will, marry” — implicitly barring it to subdeacons, deacons, and presbyters (NPNF II/14, Apostolic Canon 26).
Canon 6 of the Quinisext Council restates and enforces the bar: one ordained subdeacon, deacon, or presbyter may not afterward contract a marriage; if he does, he is deposed (NPNF II/14, Trullo Canon 6).
Canon 13 of the Quinisext Council secures the positive side of the same discipline against Roman practice: married priests and deacons are not to be compelled to separate from their wives. The canon opens “Since we know it to be handed down as a rule of the Roman Church that those who are deemed worthy to be advanced to the diaconate or presbyterate should promise no longer to cohabit with their wives,” and rules to the contrary for the East — deposing anyone who deprives a married cleric of lawful intercourse with his wife (NPNF II/14, Trullo Canon 13). Canon 13 is thus the canonical charter of the married Eastern priesthood.

The Episcopal Celibacy Rule

The bishop, by contrast, does not live in marriage. The discipline is carried by two distinct Trullan canons that are easily conflated:

Canon 12 of the Quinisext Council rules that a bishop may not continue to cohabit with his wife after consecration. It opens “Moreover this also has come to our knowledge, that in Africa and Libya and other places the most God-beloved presidents of those parts do not refuse to live with their wives, even after consecration,” and forbids the practice (NPNF II/14, Trullo Canon 12). Canon 12 does not require that a candidate have never married; it requires that conjugal cohabitation cease at consecration.
Canon 48 of the Quinisext Council is the provision for the wife herself: the wife of a man advanced to the episcopate is to be separated from him by mutual consent and, after his consecration, to enter a monastery situated at a distance from the bishop’s residence, where he is to provide for her support (NPNF II/14, Trullo Canon 48). The provision specifically for the bishop’s wife is therefore Canon 48, not Canon 12 — a distinction worth keeping precise, since the two are often cited interchangeably.

Out of this discipline grew the settled later practice of electing bishops from among the celibate (monastic or unmarried) clergy and widowers, which remains the norm.

Divorce and Remarriage

The Matthean Exception

The Orthodox Church holds marriage to be ideally indissoluble — “what therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6) — yet, unlike the Roman Catholic Church, it permits divorce and remarriage in fact. The scriptural hinge is the Matthean exception: “Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication (porneia), and shall marry another, committeth adultery” (Matthew 19:9). The Fathers read the clause as recognizing that porneia genuinely ruptures the one-flesh union, and the tradition came to extend the grounds beyond literal adultery to other situations held to constitute a moral death of the marriage. The Church’s permission of remarriage is thus canonically an exercise of economy upon this foundation, not a denial of marriage’s indissolubility (see Pastoral Economy).

Basil’s Canons on Remarriage

Basil supplies the working penitential law. Two canons are central, and their numbering — verified here against NPNF II/8 and The Rudder — must be kept exact.

Basil’s Canon 4 governs successive marriages. It assigns the penitent of a second marriage (digamy) a penance (the tradition settling on roughly one year of exclusion from communion), and treats a third marriage (trigamy) far more gravely — no longer dignified with the name of marriage but called polygamy, “or rather a moderated [tempered/limited] fornication,” with a penance of several years (NPNF II/8, Letter 199, Canon 4; The Rudder, Basil Canon 4). The phrase “moderated fornication” belongs specifically to Canon 4 and to its treatment of third marriages — it is a tolerated evil, suffered by the Church to prevent worse, not a blessing. Basil invokes the Samaritan woman of John 4, “he whom thou now hast is not thy husband,” to show that what exceeds the bounds of second marriage forfeits the very title of marriage.
Basil’s Canon 9 records, and criticizes, the asymmetry by which custom judged husband and wife unequally in adultery and abandonment: a husband deserted by his wife was treated more leniently than a wife in the parallel case. Basil notes that this asymmetry is custom, not the Lord’s own teaching, which binds both equally — an early and important acknowledgment that inherited canonical custom can fall short of the Gospel standard it serves (NPNF II/8, Letter 188, Canon 9). Basil’s Canon 50 adds that “there is no law for a third marriage; a third marriage is not constituted by law. We look upon such things as the defilements of the Church” — third marriage being against the canonical norm yet tolerated by economy (The Rudder, Basil Canon 50).

The Penitential Character of the Rites

Because second and third marriages are concessions rather than the norm, the rites that solemnize them are deliberately penitential: the service for a second marriage omits the festal crowning prayers of the first and substitutes prayers of contrition, asking forgiveness for those who could not bear the continence of widowhood or the indissolubility of the first bond. The third-marriage rite is more penitential still. The somber tone of these services is the liturgical expression of the canonical principle that the Church tolerates what it does not celebrate.

The Maximum of Three

A fourth marriage is absolutely forbidden — the one firm outer limit. Basil’s Canon 80 classes repeated marriage beyond the permitted bounds as polygamy, “a thing worse than fornication,” with a fixed penance (NPNF II/8, Letter 217, Canon 80). The historical settlement of the limit was the Tome of Union (Tomos Henoseos) issued by the synod of Constantinople in 920 under Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos, which resolved the “tetragamy” controversy provoked by Emperor Leo VI’s fourth marriage: it declared fourth marriages null and sharply restricted third marriages (conceding them only within limits of age and childlessness). The maximum of three thus stands as established canon law.

Economy in Practice

The whole of this remarriage discipline operates by economy. The strict norm (akriveia) is the indissoluble first marriage; the permission of divorce and of up to three marriages is the Church’s condescension (synkatabasis) to human weakness, exercised by the bishop’s authority for the sake of salvation and never as an abolition of the norm. The mechanics of this principle — its grounding in Trullo Canon 102, its limits, and the bishop as physician of souls — are set out in full at Pastoral Economy.

Mixed Marriage Today

The strict prohibition of Canon 72 of the Quinisext Council (above) is, in modern practice, applied by economy across most jurisdictions, and the application varies notably by church:

Most jurisdictions permit, by economy, the crowning of an Orthodox Christian with a non-Orthodox Christian who has been baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity (most commonly a Roman Catholic or a Trinitarian Protestant), on condition that the marriage take place in the Orthodox Church and any children be raised Orthodox; marriage with the unbaptized is generally not blessed.
Practice differs in detail: jurisdictions under the Ecumenical Patriarchate and several others permit such marriages by economy with the conditions above, while more rigorist bodies — and the historic disposition of ROCOR — apply Canon 72 more strictly and are more reluctant to crown mixed marriages (consistent with ROCOR’s general tendency toward akriveia; see Pastoral Economy).
In every case the form is the same: the canon (72) is the norm, the economy is the application, and the bishop of the place determines what is granted.

References

The Rudder (Pedalion), compiled by St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and Hieromonk Agapios (first published Leipzig, 1800); English trans. D. Cummings, Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957 — esp. Trullo Canons 6, 12, 13, 48, 53, 54, 72; Apostolic Canon 26; Basil Canons 4, 9, 50, 80, 87
The Seven Ecumenical Councils (NPNF II/14), ed. Schaff and Wace — Apostolic Canons and the canons of the Council in Trullo with notes
Basil the Great, Canonical Epistles (Letters 188, 199, 217 to Amphilochius; Letter 160 to Diodorus for Canon 87), trans. NPNF II/8 — Canons 4, 9, 50, 80, 87
Scripture: Matthew 19:6, 19:9; John 4:18; 1 Corinthians 7:12–16; Leviticus 18
Tome of Union (Tomos Henoseos), synod of Constantinople, 920, under Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos (settling the tetragamy controversy; fourth marriages declared null, third marriages restricted)
Nikodim (Milash), Bishop, The Canons of the Orthodox Church with Commentaries (Pravila pravoslavne crkve s tumačenjima), 2 vols., Novi Sad, 1895–96
Patrick Viscuso, Sexuality, Marriage, and Celibacy in Byzantine Law: The Alphabetical Collection of Matthew Blastares, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2008
John Meyendorff, Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1975