"In the more interesting area of contraception practiced by a willing person or couple, economic motivation is as old as the ‘’paupercula’’ of the penitentials. But not much is said on this motivation by the thirteenth-century canonists and theologians. The decretal ‘’Si aliquis’’ is taken from Burchard, but Burchard’s reference to “the poor little woman” is not picked up-possibly for no better reason than that it occurred in the portion of Burchard devoted to [[confessional] interrogation rather than in the collection of canons where ‘’Si aliquis’’ was embedded. Of the thirteenth-centurywriters I have examined, only Hostiensis makes reference to an economic impulse in contraceptive practice, and he only obliquely touches the subject. Commenting on marriage, he warns against contraception and then adds, “Let the offspring be gratefully received whether it be a boy or a girl; give thanks to the Creator and do not murmur even in the face of exceeding poverty” (‘’The Golden Summa’’ 4, “Marriage,” 19). In the first quarter of the fourteenth century there is the first reference to economic motive by an important theologian. Peter de Palude, a Dominican moralist of standing, notes that the husband’s motive in coitus interruptus may be to avoid having “more children than he can feed” (‘’On the Sentences’’ 4.31.3). His statement is repeated in the fifteenth century by St. Antoninus of Florence, the German Dominican John Nider, and the Franciscan Trovamala. This verbatim repetition is, or course, only evidence that Palude did not seem so farfetched that a later writer had to excise or explain his observation. Independently of Palude, Panormitanus also supposes that “some do this because of poverty” (Commentary 5.12.5). With such authorities making or repeating the assertion that poverty may lead to contraception, it may be concluded that the case was familiar to the theologians; how often it was encountered in fact is a matter for speculation."