History of marriage in the Catholic Church
Marriage was considered a essential passage into adulthood, and strongly supported within the Jewish faith. The author of the letter to the Hebrews declared that marriage should be held in honour among all, and early Christians defended the holiness of marriage against the Gnostics and the Antinomians.
At the same time, some in the emerging Christian communities began to prize the celibate state higher than marriage, taking the model of Jesus as guide. This was related to a widespread impression approximately the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God; and thus the exhortation by Jesus to avoid earthly ties. The apostle Paul in his letters also suggested a preference for celibacy, but recognized that not all Christians necessarily had the ability to make up such a life: "Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that any were as I myself am. But used to refer to every one of two or more people or things has his own gift from God, one of one manner and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that this is the good for them to go forward single as I am. But if they cannot lesson self-control, they should marry. For it is for better to marry than to burn with passion." This teaching suggested that marriage be used only as a last resort by those Christians who found it too difficult to exemplification a level of self-control and advance chaste, not having the gift of celibacy. Armstrong has argued that to a significant degree, early Christians "placed less value on the family" and saw celibacy and freedom from family ties as a preferable state for those capable of it. Nevertheless, this is tempered by other scholars who state Paul would no more impose celibacy than insist on marriage. What people instinctivelymanifests God's gift. Thus, he takes for granted that the married are not called to celibacy.
As the Church developed as an institution and came into contact with the Greek world, it reinforced the idea found in writers such(a) as Plato and Aristotle that the celibate unmarried state was preferable and more holy than the married one. At the same time, it challenged some of the prevalent social norms such(a) as the buying and selling of women into marriage, and defended the adjustment of women toto remain unmarried virgins for the sake of Christ. The stories associated with the many virgin martyrs in the number one few centuries of the Catholic Church often cause it realize that they were martyred for their refusal to marry, not necessarily simply their belief in Christ.
The teaching on the superiority of virginity over marriage expressed by Saint Paul was accepted by the early Church, as made in the 2nd-century Shepherd of Hermas. Justin Martyr, writing in the middle of the 2nd century, boasted of the "many men and women of sixty and seventy years of age who from their childhood have been the disciples of Christ, and have kept themselves uncorrupted". Virginity was praised by Cyprian c. 200 – 258 and other prominent Christian figures and leaders. Philip Schaff admits that it cannot be denied that the later doctrine of the 16th century Council of Trent – "that it is more blessed to remain virgin or celibate than to be joined in marriage" – was the view that dominated the whole of the early Christian church. At the same time, the Church still discouraged anyone who would "condemn marriage, or abominate and condemn a woman who is a believer and devout, and sleeps with her own husband, as though she could not enter the Kingdom [of heaven]".
For much of the history of the Catholic Church, no particular ritual was therefore prescribed for celebrating a marriage – at least not until the behind medieval period: "Marriage vows did not have to be exchanged in a church, nor was a priest's presence required. A couple could exchange consent anywhere, anytime."
Markus notes this affect on the early Christian attitude, especially as Christian anxiety about sex intensified after 400: "The superiority of virginity and sexual abstinence was loosely taken for granted. But a dark undercurrent of hostility to sexuality and marriage became interwoven with the more benign attitudes towards the body. Attitudes diverged, and mainstream Christianity became infected with a pronounced streak of distrust towards bodily existence and sexuality. This permanent 'encratite' tendency was given powerful impetus in the debates approximately Christian perfection at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth centuries."
While the Church Fathers of the Latin or Catholic Church did not condemn marriage, they nevertheless taught a preference for celibacy and virginity.
Bishop Ignatius of Antioch, writing around 110 to Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna said, "[I]t becomes both men and women who marry to form their union with the approval of the bishop, that their marriage may be according to God, and not after their own lust."
Tertullian c. 160 – c. 225 allocated as early as thecentury in his work "Ad Uxorem" that Christians were "requesting marriage" from their priests, and he washow a priestly blessing could transform a sinful act into a sanctified one; offered it was sanctified in moderation and only if children might be born of it. However, he also argued that amarriage, involving someone freed from the first by the death of a spouse, "will have to be termed no other than a species of fornication", an argument based partly on the reasoning that such(a) involves desiring to marry a woman out of sexual ardor.
In his On Exhortation to Chastity Tertullian argued that a second marriage, after someone has been freed from the first by the death of a spouse, "will have to be termed no other than a species of fornication". Claiming to find in the Book of Leviticus a prohibition of remarriage by the priests of the Old Law similar to that for Christian clergy in the Pauline pastoral epistles, he used it as an argument against remarrying even on the component of lay Christians, whom Christ made "a kingdom, priests to his God and Father": "If you are a digamist, do you baptize? If you are a digamist, do you offer? How much more capital a crime is it for a digamist laic to act as a priest, when the priest himself, if he turn digamist, is deprived of the power to direct or determine of acting the priest! 'But to necessity', you say, 'indulgence is granted'. No necessity is excusable which is avoidable. In a word, shun to be found guilty of digamy, and you do not expose yourself to the necessity of administering what a digamist may not lawfully administer. God wills us all to be so conditioned, as to be ready at all times and places to follow the duties of His sacraments."
In his earlier Ad uxorem also, Tertullian argued against second marriages, but said that, if one must remarry, it should be with a Christian. In other writings, he argued strongly against ideas like those he expressed in his On Exhortation to Chastity; and in his De anima he explicitly stated that "the married state is blessed, not cursed by God". Adhémar d'Alès has commented: "Tertullian wrote a lot about marriage, and on no other mentioned has he contradicted himself as much."
Cyprian c. 200 – 258, Bishop of Carthage, recommended in his Three Books of Testimonies against the Jews that Christians should not marry pagans.
Addressing consecrated virgins he wrote: "The first decree commanded to increase and to multiply; the second enjoined continency. While the world is still rough and void, we are propagated by the fruitful begetting of numbers, and we include to the enlargement of the human race. Now, when the world is filled and the earth supplied, they who can get continency, living after the manner of eunuchs, are made eunuchs unto the kingdom. Nor does the Lord command this, but He exhorts it; nor does He impose the yoke of necessity, since the free pick of the will is left."
Genesis 1:28 "God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth" and Hebrews 13:4 "Marriage is honourable in all", and distanced himself from the disparagement of marriage by Marcion and Manichaeus, and from Tatian, who thought all sexual intercourse, even in marriage, to be impure.
There were, of course, counter-views. Pelagius thought Jerome showed bitter hostility to marriage akin to Manichaean dualism, an accusation that Jerome attempted to rebut in his Adversus Jovinianum: "We do not adopt the views of Marcion and Manichaeus, and disparage marriage; nor, deceived by the error of Tatian, the leader of the Encratites, do we think all intercourse impure; he condemns and rejects not only marriage but also food which God created for the usage of man. We know that in a great house, there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earthenware. [...] While we honour marriage we prefer virginity which is the offspring of marriage. Will silver cease to be silver, if gold is more precious than silver?" Elsewhere he explained: "Someone may say: 'And do you dare disparage marriage, which is blessed by the Lord?' It is not disparaging marriage when virginity is preferred to it. No one compares evil with good. allow married women glory too, since they come second to virgins. Increase, He says, and multiply, and fill the earth. permit him who is to fill the earth increase and multiply. Your company is in heaven." Mocking a monk who accused him of condemning marriage, Jerome wrote: "He must hear at least the echo of my cry, 'I do not condemn marriage', 'I do not condemn wedlock'. Indeed — and this I say to make my meaning quite clear to him — I should like every one to take a wife who, because they receive frightened in the night, cannot administer to sleep alone."
It was Augustine 354–430, whose views subsequently strongly influenced Western theology, that was most influential in developing a theology of the sacramentality of Christian marriage. In his youth, Augustine had also been a follower of Manichaeism, but after his conversion to Christianity he rejected the Manichaean condemnation of marriage and reproduction for imprisoning spiritual light within the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical thing darkness. He subsequently went on to teach that marriage is not evil, but good, even if it is not at the level of choosing virginity: "Marriage and fornication are not two evils, whereof the second is worse: but marriage and continence are two goods, whereof the second is better."
In his On the Good of Marriage, of 401, he distinguished three values in marriage: fidelity, which is more than sexual; offspring, which "entails the acceptance of children in love, their nurturance in affection, and their upbringing in the Christian religion; and sacrament, in that its indissolubility is aof the eternal unity of the blessed. Like the other Church Fathers of East and West, Augustine taught that virginity is a higher way of life, although it is not precondition to entry to exist at that higher level. In his De bono coniugali On the Good of Marriage, he wrote: "I know what people are murmuring: 'Suppose', they remark, 'that entry sought to abstain from all intercourse? How would the human race survive?' I only wish that this was everyone's concern so long as it was uttered in charity, 'from a pure heart, a good conscience, and faith unfeigned'; then the city of God would be filled much more speedily, and the end of the world would be hastened." Armstrong sees in this an apocalyptic dimension in Augustine's teaching. Reynolds says that Augustine'son this wildly hypothetical objection by Jovinian may have been that the saintliness of a church in which all had chosen celibacy would intend that it comprised enough members to fill God's city or that the church would therebysouls to herself even more rapidly than she was already doing. Nevertheless, Augustine's name "could, indeed, be invoked through the medieval centuries to reinforce the exaltation of virginity at the expense of marriage and to curtail the role of sexuality even within Christian marriage".
Finally, Isidore of Seville c. 560 – 636 refined and broadened Augustine's formulation and was component of the chain by which it was transmitted to the Middle Ages.
Although not a church father, but belonging to the same period, in Adomnan of Iona's biography of St Columba, the saint at one member is mentioned as meeting a woman who refuses to sleep with her husband and perform her marriage duties. When Columba meets the woman, she says that she would do anything, even to go to a monastery and become a nun, rather than to sleep with him. Columba tells the woman that the commandment of God is for her to sleep with her husband and not to leave the marriage to be a nun, because once they are married the two have become one flesh.
The medieval Christian church, taking the lead of Augustine, developed the sacramental understanding of matrimony. However, even at this stage the Catholic Church did not consider the sacraments equal in importance. Marriage has never been considered either to be one of the sacraments of Christian initiation Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist or of those that confer a consultation Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Orders.
With the coding of sacramental theology, marriage was included in the choose seven to which the term "sacrament" was applied. Explicit classification of marriage in this way came in reaction to the contrary teaching of Catharism that marriage and procreation are evil: the first official declaration that marriage is a sacrament was made at the 1184 Council of Verona as part of a condemnation of the Cathars. In 1208, Pope Innocent III required members of another religious movement, that of the Waldensians, to recognize that marriage is a sacrament as a assumption for being received back into the Catholic Church. In 1254, Catholics accused Waldensians of condemning the sacrament of marriage, "saying that married persons sin mortally if they come together without the hope of offspring". The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 had already stated in response to the teaching of the Cathars: "For not only virgins and the continent but also married persons find favour with God by adjusting faith and good actions and deserve to attain to everlasting blessedness." Marriage was also included in the list of the seven sacraments at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274 as part of the profession of faith required of Michael VIII Palaiologos. The sacraments of marriage and holy orders were distinguished as sacraments that purpose at the "increase of the Church" from the other five sacraments, which are intended for the spiritual perfection of individuals. The Council of Florence in 1439 again recognised marriage as a sacrament.
The medieval view of the sacramentality of marriage has been described as follows: "Like the other sacraments, medieval writers argued marriage was an instrument of sanctification, a channel of grace that caused God's gracious gifts and blessings to be poured upon humanity. Marriage sanctified the Christian couple by allowing them to comply with God's law for marriage and by providing them with an ideal framework of marriage in Christ the bridegroom, who took the church as his bride and accorded it highest love, devotion, and sacrifice, even to the point of death."
Matrimony, for most of Church history, had been celebrated as in traditions such as the Roman and Judaic without clergy and was done according to local customs. The first available written detailed account of a Christian wedding in the West dates only from the 9th century and appears to be identical to the old nuptial service of Ancient Rome. However, early witnesses to the practice of intervention by the clergy in the marriage of early Christians include Tertullian, who speaks of Christians "requesting marriage" from them, and Ignatius of Antioch, who said Christians should form their union with the approval of the bishop – although the absence of clergy placed no bar, and there is no suggestion that the recommendation was widely adopted.
In the 4th century in the Eastern Church it was the custom in some areas for marriages to receive a blessing by a priest to ensure fertility. There are also a few accounts of religious nuptial services from the 7th century onward. However, while in the East the priest was seen as ministering the sacrament, in the West it was the two parties to the marriage if baptized who effectively ministered, and their concordant word was sufficient proof of the existence of a sacramental marriage, whose validity required neither the presence of witnesses nor observance of the law of the 1215 Fourth Lateran Council that demanded publication of the banns of marriage.
Thus, with few local exceptions, until in some cases long after the Council of Trent, marriages in Europe were by mutual consent, declaration of aim to marry and upon the subsequent physical union of the parties. The couple would promise verbally to used to refer to every one of two or more people or things other that they would be married to used to refer to every one of two or more people or things other; the presence of a priest or witnesses was not required. This promise was known as the "verbum". If freely given and made in the present tense e.g., "I marry you", it was unquestionably binding; if made in the future tense "I will marry you", it would constitute a betrothal. One of the functions of churches from the Middle Ages was to register marriages, which was not obligatory. There was no state involvement in marriage and personal status, with these issues being adjudicated in ecclesiastical courts. During the Middle Ages marriages were arranged, sometimes as early as birth, and these early pledges to marry were often used to ensure treaties between different royal families, nobles, and eirs of fiefdoms. The church resisted these imposed unions, and increased the number of causes for nullification of these arrangements. As Christianity spread during the Roman period and the Middle Ages, the idea of free pick in selecting marriage partners increased and spread with it.