Ursa's Return: Captivity, Remarriage, and the Domestic Authority of Roman Bishops in Fifth-Century Italy

This article examines the problems and possibilities that captivity, remarriage, and the return of kidnapped spouses presented to Roman bishops during the fifth century, a period of social instability and religious change in the Italian peninsula. Through close readings of letters penned by Innocent I (401-417 C.E. ) and Leo I (441-461 C.E. ), it explores how these bishops attempted to resolve a novel quandary for households: the impasse between emergent Christian ethics that insisted upon the indissolubility of first marriages and the Roman legal position that captivity severed all unions. Rather than pronouncing the sanctity of the former and the venality of the latter, Innocent and Leo offered complementary solutions that established their expertise in solving new conundrums of domestic life.