Marital debt
duty to have sexual relations with one's spouse
Marital duty (commonly referred as conjugal duty) is a spouse's sexual commitment to one another. The concept stems from descriptions found in canon law of medieval Europe.
History
During the later medieval period (10th to 15th centuries), a new scholastic way of thinking allowed the Church to solidify doctrine, leading to the formation of ecclesiastical law. This new wave of thinking stemmed from the revival and codification of some Roman laws. Particular works from Irnerius and his students in 1112 and 1125 in particular, reconstructed some laws of Justinian's Code. Work on laws allowed scholars to debate the issues like marriage as a sacrament. Biblical references to marriage, like that found in 1 Corinthians 7 alludes to it as a preventative measure for "sexual immorality." Scholars like Gratian of Bologna were quick to posit their theories on marriage. His 12th century work, Decretum Gratiani, became an early text example for other canon law studies and it is here where the earliest account for marital debt is found. In it, he writes that marriage arose from wishing to prevent further sin through fornication. Gratian is also quick to point out four main reasons people may have for getting married: that is for offspring, to pay the debt, or the obligation of sex, for incontinence, or to satisfy lust and for the sake of pleasure.
The public source identifies “Marital debt” as duty to have sexual relations with one's spouse. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Marital, debt and duty.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16034121. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1112 and 1125.
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This entry incorporates text from “Marital debt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.