Gregory to Adrian, notary of Palermo. Agathosa, the bearer of the present letter, has complained that her husband has been converted, against her will, into the monastery of Urbicus the abbot. Because there is no doubt that this pertains to the fault and to the reproach of that same abbot, we command your Experience to examine it by diligent inquiry, lest perchance he was converted with her consent, or she herself promised to change her state. And if you find this to be so, both provide that he remain in the monastery, and compel her, as she promised, to change her state.
But if nothing of these things is so, nor have you learned that the aforesaid woman committed any crime of fornication, on account of which it is lawful for a man to forsake his wife, then, lest her husband's conversion become for the wife left in the world an occasion of perdition, we will that you ought—every excuse ceasing—to restore her husband to her, even if he has already been tonsured. Because although the worldly law prescribes that, for the sake of conversion, a marriage can be dissolved with either party unwilling, yet the divine law does not permit this to be done. For, save for the cause of fornication, a man is by no reasoning granted to put away his wife, because after by the coupling of marriage of man and woman one body is effected, it cannot in part be converted, and in part remain in the world. (Cf.