Did the early church accept lifelong, faithful concubinage? In Bryan Litfin's book, Getting to Know the Church Fathers, I was surprised to read the following about concubinage in the early church, in the context of Augustine's life before conversion:


  In Roman society, the practice of concubinage was widely accepted.  Even the Christian church was prepared to accommodate it as a kind of common law marriage so long as there was lifelong fidelity. (220)


In Augustine's case, he had no intention of lifelong fidelity, so the point is rather moot.  But in many places around the world, both historically and currently, government restrictions make it difficult or impossible for some men and women to be officially "married."  

My personal response might be to disregard the government's restrictions and consider a man and woman publicly committed to faithful monogamy as married, and not fornicating, particularly if they have a "church wedding."  But in the Dominican Republic, at least, where I periodically do some ministry, the church I work with insists that those living together while not officially (legally) married are committing adultery, despite the legal barriers preventing some from marrying.1

All that to say, this isn't idle curiosity.  Did the early church "accommodate" faithful concubinage, as Litfin says?  In what sense – was it in the musings of a single church father, or set down at an ecumenical council?  And if so, under what circumstances would it be allowed?



1. For more on these barriers, see this documentary or its trailer.
Pope Calixtus I, who died around 222, permitted the marriage of  high born women to men of a lower class, and even to slaves. This was contrary to Roman law, so the Pope was recognising as validly married people who by law were not married, and could not be married. 

The Catholic Encyclopaedia comments:


  Here again Callistus was rightly insisting on the distinction between the ecclesiastical law of marriage and the civil law, which later ages have always taught. 


Calixtus was unfortunate in that his principal biographer was his worst enemy, and rival, the antipope Hippolytus. In Book IX, chapter VII of his Refutation of All Heresies  he wrote


  For even also he permitted females, if they were unwedded,  and burned with passion at an age at all events unbecoming, or if they were not disposed to overturn their own dignity through a legal marriage, that they might have whomsoever they would choose as a bedfellow, whether a slave or free, and that a woman, though not legally married, might consider such a companion as a husband. Whence women, reputed believers, began to resort to drugs  for producing sterility, and to gird themselves round, so to expel what was being conceived on account of their not wishing to have a child either by a slave or by any paltry fellow, for the sake of their family and excessive wealth.  Behold, into how great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by inculcating adultery and murder at the same time!


It is clear that Hippolytus felt able to say that these "marriages" allowed by the Pope were adulterous, presumably as not legal, and also as a matter of consequence often  led to abortions. In deeming Calixtus a pope, and a saint, and Hippolytus an antipope, the later church may be said to have supported  Calixtus.

The seventeenth canon of the first Council of Toledo,(see Edward Landon) near Madrid, in the year 400, forbade any married man, whose wife was faithful, from also having a concubine, on pain of excommunication. However if a man was unmarried, then he could have a concubine. The thrust is restrictive, rather than permissive, it bans having a wife and a concubine, but this does not (of course) apply to single men.  

Pope Leo the Great (pontificated from 440 to 460) wrote many letters, including one to the French bishop Rusticus, in which he answers a number of questions put to him, the sixth of which was:


  Concerning those who leave the women by whom they have children and take wives.


and the answer was:


  Seeing that the wife is different from the concubine, to turn a bondwoman from one's couch and take a wife whose free birth is assured, is not bigamy but an honourable proceeding.


It seem that, although lifelong commitment to a concubine was acceptable, it was not required. A single man could keep a concubine and, if he chose to turn her out and marry a wife, then this was an honourable thing for him to do. Still, one woman at a time was the limit. Nevertheless it is clear there was uncertainty and variety of practice during the first few centuries.