Levitical prohibition on marrying a brother’s wife

The Levitical prohibition on marrying a brother’s wife is presented as a scriptural rule with immediate dynastic consequences: if Henry VIII’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon violated it, their union might be invalid and their failure to have a surviving child might be read as divine judgment. In the novel, the biblical argument does not settle the matter. It becomes a weapon in a dispute over the marriage, the succession, and who has authority to interpret religious law.

Scriptural Rule and Its Application

The rule is invoked through the account in Leviticus that a man who takes his brother’s wife commits an unlawful union and will be childless. Applied to Henry VIII, the argument depends on whether Katherine had already been married to his brother, Arthur Tudor, in a way that made her his widow in the relevant religious sense. The question of whether that earlier marriage had been consummated therefore becomes central: it bears on the force of the prohibition and on whether Henry and Katherine’s marriage can stand.

Anne Hastings brings the argument to Henry by connecting it to the couple’s lack of a surviving child. She presents Katherine’s pregnancies without a surviving heir as evidence that the marriage is contrary to scripture and cursed. The claim is political as well as theological: if the marriage is invalid, the legitimacy of its dynastic arrangements is also put in question. Margaret Pole regards Anne’s sudden command of theology with suspicion and believes someone has prepared her to use the argument, but the account does not identify who did so.

The Disputed Marriage and the Dispensation

Katherine tells Margaret that Henry has described their early marital relations to her, including Katherine’s account that she bled and that he consequently believed she had not been a virgin at her marriage to Arthur. Katherine says this has persuaded Henry that her earlier marriage was consummated and that she remains, in God’s sight, Arthur’s wife rather than Henry’s. The episode thus turns on conflicting accounts of an intimate past that cannot be independently established in the scene, yet has become consequential for the present marriage.

Margaret answers the scriptural challenge by pointing to the papal dispensation arranged before Henry and Katherine married. As she understands it, the dispensation was designed to cover either possibility: whether or not Katherine had been married to Arthur in the way that would trigger the prohibition. Katherine acknowledges that it existed, but says Henry has been troubled by the Levitical argument before and is again being made to fear that the marriage is unlawful. The dispensation is therefore a counterclaim, not an end to the dispute: its authority depends on whether the Pope’s judgment will be accepted.

Competing Religious Authorities

The later struggle over the marriage makes that unresolved question of authority explicit. The Pope publicly rules that Henry and Katherine’s marriage is valid and that Henry should live with Katherine as his wife. Yet Henry’s government asserts that the Pope has no authority in England. When the Church submits to the king, Henry claims power over its governance, laws, and courts, and the Pope is treated as subordinate within England. The Levitical rule is no longer only a question of biblical meaning; the institutions empowered to interpret and enforce religious judgment are themselves in conflict.

In 1534, Thomas Cromwell administers an oath of succession to the peers. Margaret understands that the Pope has ruled in Katherine’s favor, but the Pope has not excommunicated Henry, leaving her and the other peers to decide how to respond. Thomas More refuses the oath as it stands, despite Henry’s earlier promise not to test him on the matter. These events do not resolve the scriptural argument, but they show its place within a widening confrontation: royal declarations and oaths attempt to make a contested marriage and succession binding, while papal judgment and individual conscience remain rival sources of authority.

Significance

The prohibition’s force in the story comes from the way a general religious rule is made to govern a particular marriage and the future of a dynasty. Its application depends on disputed facts about Katherine’s first marriage; its effect is tied to the absence of a surviving child; and its resolution depends on competing claims by the Pope and the king. The argument therefore exposes how scripture, dispensation, succession, and political power can converge without producing a shared account of what is lawful.