Letter 1008: It speaks well of your proven and outstanding devotion that you consider my counsel worth seeking on matters that...

It is a mark of proven and the highest devotion that you judge my counsel too worth consulting on matters pertaining to your own episcopal office. In doing this, as I have said, you show no spirit of doubt but of love. Therefore, against the fault that you have indicated in your letter, I think you are rightly moved. For what man, even a layman, would not perceive that a marriage formed from the closeness of affinity is made not without grave stain? Hence, although a most just grief over the necessity of this very severity weighs upon our concern, yet he whom we desire to be saved in eternal things is salutarily dealt with harshly in temporal ones. It is fitting, then, that the man married to two sisters [germanae, full sisters] be struck not with an irrevocable anathema, but for the time being be separated from the church under the observances set forth. And since you indicate that this troubled man obtained the unlawful union of a second wife many years ago now, let the crime of incest, borne so long with impunity, suffice. Have no doubt here, as though out of fear of divorce: a separation is rightly judged lawful where the union was criminal. Therefore upon both of them, if it seems good, while they persist in so unhappy an obstinacy, pronounce the sentence of excommunication, until by a public profession of penance they withdraw from the criminal partnership. And then, with you showing mercy, let them receive the grace of reconciliation, as an example of fear arising from correction. I, for my part, have suggested to your sincerity what I believed to be reasonable, since you thought it worth so much to command it. It belongs to your authority, once the contrition of those in error has been observed, to temper the order of severity. Yet I judge that, if they are truly contrite, they will comply with the conditions written above.