This chapter investigates the Benedictine Declaration of 1741, the so-called Benedictina, which affirmed that, in the Northern and Southern Low Countries, marriages between Protestants or mixed marriages contracted without the formalities prescribed by the Council of Trent were valid. It first analyses the case law that led to the promulgation of this papal document, paying particular attention to the communication between the local churches and the Roman congregations. Secondly, it examines how the information gathered for about 150 years by the Holy Office, the Congregation of the Council, and the Propaganda Fide were carefully selected by the legal consultants of Pope Benedict XIV and became a flexible resource for the purposes of normative production. Finally, it surveys the argumentative strategy of the Declaration, which assumed a performative character, although it claimed not to introduce any innovation.

This last aspect became a central feature of the Roman interpretation. About twenty years after the Benedictine Declaration, following a consolidated juridical opinion, the commissary of the Holy Office, Serafino Maccarinelli, emphasized that declarations as such did not intend to innovate, nor did they change the essence or nature of things, but explained them. They did not issue new laws, but merely manifested (declared) the ones that already existed. In doing so, Maccarinelli recalled a metaphor used by the jurist Prospero Fagnani. He compared the act of declaring with that of shaking out the grains of an ear of wheat: this action does not alter the grains or the nature of the wheat itself, which existed before the grains were extracted.