xious both to preserve the marriage as an example and, just as importantly, to insert himself and his authority into the process. Thus when the marriage was dissolved what was of primary importance was not that the Pope's personal attempt at reconciling them had been rejected, but that his authority was recognized as essential to the final solution.
The clear political decision on the Pope's part was a forerunner of the more practical reduction of the number of degrees from seven to four that was produced by the Lateran Council in the following century. This sense of a political trade-off remains clear in the wording of Canon 51. "As the prohibition of marriage in the three remotest degrees is repealed, we wish it to be strictly observed in the oth
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