I am reading the Lady, the Knight, and the Priest, which is a book about medieval marriage and it starts out with the most hilarious story of Philip I.
Note: Philip is the grandfather of Louis VIII who was Eleanor of Aquitaine's first husband.
Philip married his first wife, Berthe when they were relatively young. And they were married for a long time, 20 years, and she only produced one son, Louis VI (Abbot Suger's childhood friend). Philip was afraid he wasn't going to have an heir, and all hell would break loose and France would be broken apart (ie: what happened with Eleanor).
So, he decided to put Berthe in a castle in the middle of no where, a castle that technically belonged to her anyway, and essentially forget about her.
Then he decided he would marry Berttrade. But there were a few hitches, the first, Berthe was still alive and he was still married to her, and second, Berttrade was married to his vassal the Duke of Anjou.
Naturally, he married her anyway, and apparently, the only one who cared was the bishop of Chartres.
In the meantime, Philip I was in the middle of planning the first crusade, and when he called his vassals, and bishops, and knights to him, Bishop Chartres didn't show up. This was against every law there ever was, and everyone had a fit! So the bishop went to Rome to hang out with the Pope.
At the time there was a "prepare everyone's souls for the end of days" kinda thing going on with the clergy, so the Pope listened to the Bishop Chartres and his feelings about Philip's concubinage, and such, and they decided to excommunicate Philip.
This was a problem. If Philip, the king of France was excommunicated that means that all of his vassals and everyone else gets excommunicated too. Finally, after years of being married to a married woman while being married to someone else, people started paying attention.
Philip said it didn't matter, he didn't really care, and his sons were legitimate. His marriage was blessed by the bishop of Reims who crowned them.
So, everyone went on for a while, continued to be excommunicated, and Berthe died, Berttrade had three kids, and people started lobbying that the excommunication be removed. But, there was still the hang up that she was married to the Duke of Anjou.
The Duke of Anjou, apparently didn't really care. He was rumored to be quite the skirt chaser, and had four wives before Berttrade. In reality, he was probably the worst person in this situation. But, because he needed some cleansing of his soul, when approached by Bishop Chartres, everything was in line for him to make some startling accusations, and annoy everyone.
By this time Philip was old, and he was starting to worry about the afterlife and hell. The knowledge that he had sinned, or at least that others thought he sinned, weighed heavy on his mind. So, he renounced his relationship to Bertrade publicly, but their children were still legitimate, and they still lived as a married couple, it was only a formality.
The moral of the story is first, having the wife of another wasn't such a big deal back then. No one really took notice until their personal souls were in danger. And even then, it wasn't enough to make Philip think what he was doing was wrong.
Secondly, Bishop Chartres, just wanted to cause problems. He probably had a fight with Philip about something else, and wanted to get him back, and thought this was the best way to do it. And from a modern perspective on medieval times, it certainly sounds like they were doing wrong, but in reality, no one really thought they were.
Could it be that medieval people were more open about marriage than people today?
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