Sexuality primarily aimed at procreation and was only licit between wedded spouses. This broad ethical precept should suffice to steer the reader in the right direction, for its implications are self-explanatory: no sex outside of marriage, no sex for non-reproductive purposes.
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It was only during the 10th and 11th centuries that the Church started to assert exclusive jurisdiction over marriage, and during the 12th and 13th that canonists established a legal definition of Christian marriage which lasted for centuries. Since then, matrimonial validity rested only on the free consent in exchange of vows of the groom and bride, as long as they were legally allowed to marry.
The church distinguished two types of vows (or types of consent to marriage) that were on equally binding: the betrothal, during which a couple promises to marry each other in the future (marriage “per verba de futuro”), and the exchange of vows in the present tense (“per verba de praesenti“). A promise of marriage in the future could be broken, unless the couple had intercourse.
If they had, they were legally married. Consummation made a betrothal a legally valid marriage, which could no longer be broken. A lot of confusion arose from this definition of marriage and many cases heard by ecclesiastical courts concerned people on who disagreed on what had happened had they talked and fornicated, or exchanged promises of marriage in consummated the union?
Since Pope Alexander III (1159-81) had established matrimonial validity on consent only, a couple married per verba de praesenti need not consummate the union to complete it. The exchange of promises in the present sufficed. However, the non-consummation of the unions needed to be voluntary to keep the marriage standing. It was this possible to be legally married and to never consummated the marriage if both partners had taken vows of chastity. “Chaste marriages” often characterizes the lives of lay saints.
If either spouse was incapable of intercourse the marriage could be dissolved. Impotence (masculine and feminine) a physical impairment rendering sex (and thus procreation) impossible, was considered an impediment to marriage, enabling the annulment of the union after a trial. Many writers warned that impotence was difficult to assess and that many used it as an excuse to find a new spouse with whom their affliction was miraculously cured. To obtain an annulment of the marriage for impotence, sufficient proof just had to be brought in court (witnesses were especially important), and the spouses should have unsuccessfully tried to consummate their marriage for a minimum of three years.
Outside of betrothed couples and married couples, people who had sex with each other were committing a sin of fornication, the gravity and consequences of which depended on certain circumstances.