WORLDLY MARRIAGES

(Quoted from the book: ) If you allow me, dear, I would like to tell you now -since I expounded on worldly marriage and its Heavenly model- a few words about divorce... We were talking before about the Early Church Fathers. About how some of them interpreted worldly marriage as a restoration of the true marriage, the one which had taken place in Heaven, under divine auspices. These Christian sages supposed that worldly marriages would be infallible, in the sense that they would reunite the original spouses. Hence, they considered divorce inadmissible. They did not count on the mistakes one would predictably make when recognising their predestined spouse among the crowd of potential candidates. John Milton, the great English poet, coming after Shakespeare and Donne, did count on those factors, Blanca. This led to the curious incident where if some Early Church Fathers put forward the concept of love predestination as an argument against divorce, Milton, in the seventeenth century, did it in favour.

https://www.amazon.com/Love-letters-widower-mystery-ancient-ebook/dp/B07CMG3HY3

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TO DIE OF LOVE

Image
(Quoted from the book:) Talking about the Arabic ideal of chastity, Blanca, is talking about Udhra love, which is how courtly love is known in the Arab world. The name comes from a tribe who flourished between the seventh and eighth century in the Southeast of the Arabian Peninsula, in a remote valley in Yemen. The Bedouin tribe of the Banu Udhra, the “Sons of Virginity”, produced many poets; with the peculiarity that Udhra poetry is monothematic: it deals with one single issu e, spiritual love. But, in addition, the Udhra poets practiced what they preached: they became famous for cultivating the type of love they put into verse; a pure and chaste love, so intense (its intensity came from its purity) that it was said they “died of love”. The Arabic chronicles of the time tell about Udhras dying of no particular infirmity, but of love towards their lady. Otherwise, my dear, Udhra love verged on mysticism, on religion, to the point that orthodox Muslims denigrated and accused it of inter...
Read more

INTRODUCTION by Xavier Perez-Pons

Image
ANNOUNCEMENT AND DISCLAIMER On a spring afternoon in the year two thousand, I happened to wander into a bookshop in the old Barri Gòtic in Barcelona. The owner was busy taking books from two large wooden boxes. I was curious, so I asked him if I could have a look. The books were in Catalan, Spanish, French, and English, some of them illustrated, most of them filled with underlinings and pencil notes on the margin; there were also a couple in Portuguese and some other in Italian. They were of all sorts of literary genres, although I could spot a common subject. I asked the owner where he had gotten these boxes. They had belonged to a man that had recently died; that is all he knew. He had bought them at an auction, along with other private libraries and lots from all over the place. I asked him to give me a price, and I took the whole lot home. Actually, that is not true. There was more to the lot than those two boxes. There was a third one. A third box, which...
Read more