Early period Marriage was considered a necessary 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 honor 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 a guide. This was related to a widespread belief about 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 live such a life: "Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is 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 exercise a level of self-control and remain abstinent, 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 instinctively choose manifests 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 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 as the buying and selling of women into marriage, and defended the right of women to choose to remain unmarried virgins for the sake of Christ. The stories associated with the many virgin martyrs in the first few centuries of the Catholic Church often make it clear 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 Paul was accepted by the early Church, as shown 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 specific ritual was therefore prescribed for celebrating a marriage – at least not until the late
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".
Church Fathers Markus notes this impact on the early Christian attitude, particularly as Christian anxiety about sex intensified after 400: "The superiority of virginity and sexual abstinence was generally 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 about 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". 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 part 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 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 undertake (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 subject 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 increase to the enlargement of the human race. Now, when the world is filled and the earth supplied, they who can receive 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 choice of the will is left".
Jerome (c. 347 – 420) commenting on Paul's letter to the Corinthians wrote: "If 'it is good for a man not to touch a woman', then it is bad for him to touch one, for bad, and bad only, is the opposite of good. But, if though bad, it is made venial, then it is allowed to prevent something which would be worse than bad. ... Notice the Apostle's carefulness. He does not say: 'It is good not to have a wife', but, 'It is good for a man not to touch a woman'. ... I am not expounding the law as to husbands and wives, but discussing the general question of sexual intercourse – how in comparison with chastity and virginity, the life of angels, 'It is good for a man not to touch a woman'". He also argued that marriage distracted from prayer, and so virginity was better: "If we are to pray always, it follows that we must never be in the bondage of wedlock, for as often as I render my wife her due, I cannot pray. The difference, then, between marriage and virginity is as great as that between not sinning and doing well; nay rather, to speak less harshly, as great as between good and better". Regarding the clergy, he said: "Now a priest must always offer sacrifices for the people: he must therefore always pray. And if he must always pray, he must always be released from the duties of marriage". In referring to Genesis chapter 2, he further argued that, "while Scripture on the first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days relates that, having finished the works of each,
God saw that it was good, on the second day it omitted this altogether, leaving us to understand that two is not a good number because it destroys unity, and prefigures the marriage compact". Jerome reaffirmed ("God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth") and ("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, 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. Let married women glory too, since they come second to virgins.
Increase, He says,
and multiply, and fill the earth. Let him who is to fill the earth increase and multiply. Your company is in heaven". Mocking a monk 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 material 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 a sign of 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 given to everyone to live 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 everyone 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 this as an apocalyptic dimension in Augustine's teaching. 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". Although not a church father, but belonging to the same period, in
Adomnan of Iona's biography of
St Columba, the saint at one point 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.
Medieval period Sacramental development 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 character (Baptism, Confirmation,
Holy Orders). With the development of sacramental theology, marriage was included in the select 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
Synod of Verona as part of a condemnation of the Cathars. 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 right faith and good actions and deserve to attain to eternal 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 aim 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 model 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".
Liturgical practice 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. 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. 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 intention to marry and upon the subsequent physical union of the parties. The couple would promise verbally to each other that they would be married to each 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; As Christianity spread during the Roman period and the Middle Ages, the idea of free choice in selecting marriage partners increased and spread with it. Even after the Council of Trent made the presence of the parish priest or his delegate and of at least two more witnesses a condition for validity, the previous situation continued in many countries where its decree was not promulgated. It ended only in 1908, with the coming into force of the decree. In the 12th century,
Pope Alexander III decreed that what made a marriage was the free mutual consent by the spouses themselves, not a decision by their parents or guardians. After that, clandestine marriages or youthful elopements began to proliferate, with the result that ecclesiastical courts had to decide which of a series of marriages that a man was accused of celebrating was the first and therefore the valid one. Though "detested and forbidden" by the Church, they were acknowledged to be valid. Similarly today, Catholics are forbidden to enter
mixed marriages without permission from an authority of the Church, but if someone does enter such a marriage without permission, the marriage is reckoned to be valid, provided the other conditions are fulfilled, although illicit.
Counter-Reformation )
1490–1576, c. 1543,
Reign 13 October 1534 – 10 November 1549, Presided over part of the
Council of Trent In the 16th century, various groups adhering to the
Protestant Reformation rejected to different degrees the sacramental nature of most Catholic
sacraments. In reaction, the
Council of Trent on 3 March 1547 carefully named and defined the Catholic Church's sacraments, the teaching that marriage is a sacrament − from 1184, 1208, 1274 and 1439. Recalling scripture, the
apostolic traditions and the declarations of previous councils and of the Church Fathers, the bishops declared that there were precisely seven sacraments, with marriage one of them, and that all seven are truly and properly sacraments.
Desiderius Erasmus influenced the debate in the first part of the 16th century by publishing 1518 an essay in praise of marriage (
Encomium matrimonii), which argued that the single state was "a barren way of life hardly becoming to a man". The theologian
Josse Clichtove working at the
University of Paris interpreted this as an attack on chastity, but Erasmus had found favor with Protestant reformers who acknowledged the argument as a useful tool to undermine compulsory clerical
celibacy and
monasticism. On 11 November 1563, the Council of Trent condemned the view that "the marriage state is to be placed above the state of virginity, or of celibacy, and that it is not better and more blessed to remain in virginity, or in celibacy, than to be united in matrimony". And while Catholics upheld the supernatural character of marriage, it was Protestants who viewed it as not a sacrament and who admitted divorce. The decree
Tametsi of 1563 was one of the last decisions made at Trent. The decree effectively sought to impose the Church's control over the process of marriage by laying down as strict conditions as possible for what constituted a marriage. John P. Beal says the Council, "stung by the Protestant reformers' castigation of the Catholic Church's failure to extirpate clandestine marriages", issued the decree which had become "the scourge of Europe". In 1215 the
Fourth Lateran Council had prohibited marriages entered into
clandestinely but, unless there was some other
impediment, considered them valid though illicit.
Tametsi made it a requirement even for validity, in any area where the decree was officially published, that the marriage take place in the presence of the parish priest and at least two witnesses. This revolutionised earlier practice in that "marriages that failed to meet these requirements would from the time of the promulgation of the decree be considered invalid and of no effect"; and it required that the priest keep written records, with the result that parents had more control over their children's marriages than before. It also instituted controls over the marriages of persons without fixed addresses ("vagrants are to be married with caution"), "regulated the times at which marriages could be celebrated, abolished the rule that sexual intercourse created affinity, and reiterated the ban on concubinage". For fear that the decree would "identify and multiply the number of doubtful marriages, particularly in Protestant areas, where 'mixed' marriages were common", the council hesitated to impose it outright and decided to make its application dependent on local promulgation. In fact,
Tametsi was never proclaimed worldwide. It had no effect in France, England, Scotland and many other countries and in 1907 was replaced by the decree
Ne Temere, which came into effect universally at Easter 1908. ==Validity of marriage in the Catholic Church==