Milton's divorce tracts

Milton's divorce tracts refer to the four interlinked polemical pamphlets—The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, The Judgment of Martin Bucer, Tetrachordon, and Colasterion—written by John Milton from 1643–1645. They argue for the legitimacy of divorce on grounds of spousal incompatibility. Arguing for divorce at all, let alone a version of no-fault divorce, was extremely controversial and religious figures sought to ban his tracts. Although the tracts were met with nothing but hostility and he later rued publishing them in English at all, they are important for analysing the relationship between Adam and Eve in his epic Paradise Lost. Spanning three years characterised by turbulent changes in the English printing business, they also provide an important context for the publication of Areopagitica, Milton's most famous work of prose.

Within a few years of the controversy that surrounded Milton, the contentious nature of the issue had settled. The Westminster Confession of Faith, which was written between 1643–52 by contemporaries of Milton, allows for divorce in cases of infidelity and abandonment (Chapter 24, Section 5). Milton had addressed the Westminster Assembly of divines, the group who wrote the Confession, in August 1643.

The immediate spark for Milton's writing of the tracts was his desertion by his newly married wife, Mary Powell. In addition to the testimony of early biographers, critics have detected Milton's personal psychosexual situation in passages of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. However, Milton's commonplace book reveals that he had been thinking about divorce beforehand, a fact that qualifies the biographical explanation.

The broader context lay in the hope that Parliament would reform England's virtually nonexistent divorce laws, which was unusual for a Protestant country. Having inherited Catholic canon law, England had no formal mechanisms for divorce (as in Catholicism, marriages could be annulled on the basis of preexisting impediments, like consanguinity or impotence, or separations could be obtained). However, divorce may have been unofficially condoned in cases of desertion or adultery. On the whole, England remained "the worst of all worlds, largely lacking either formal controls over marriage or satisfactory legal means of breaking it".

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