Marital debt

Marital debt, also called marital duty or conjugal duty, refers to a spouse's sexual commitment to the other, a concept that originated in medieval ecclesiastical law developed within canon law between roughly the tenth and fifteenth centuries. It grew out of a revival of Roman legal scholarship reconstructing Justinian's Code, and medieval church scholars such as Gratian of Bologna formalized it in canonical texts including the twelfth-century Decretum Gratiani, interpreting biblical passages such as 1 Corinthians 7 as grounds for marriage as a safeguard against sexual immorality. Gratian identified paying this debt, or obligation of sex, as one reason for marriage, creating a reciprocal sexual obligation between spouses sometimes termed a conjugal domicile. The doctrine applied equally to both spouses, who held equal rights to demand its fulfillment, and the obligation was held to take precedence over most other duties, even demands from a feudal lord or a religious commitment such as a crusade. The concept later influenced modern secular law, including France's Napoleonic Code, though contemporary human-rights perspectives increasingly question its compatibility with the principle of sexual consent. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/