The
sacramentality of marriage
We have already said that it
is difficult to claim the sacramentality of marriage on the basis of the New
Testament. Now we are going to find that a study of patristic literature leads
to the same result. The tradition of a nuptial blessing develops late; in fact,
even in the Middle Ages it retains an optional character, and it is still later
that we find an ontological interpretation of the indissolubility of marriage.
(a) For marriage entered
upon according to the contemporary laws, the first generation of Christians
gave no additional juridical or liturgical form. All recent historians admit
this. There is a passage in Ignatius of Antioch and another passage in
Tertullian which have at times been used to prove the contrary, but I think one
has to say that these attempts are quite unconvincing. It is only from the
fourth century onwards that we begin to see the clergy participating in
marriage festivities. The first text which indicates this, to my knowledge, is
a canon of the Council of Neocaesarea, which forbids priests from participating
in the celebration of second marriages. As we find in Augustine, the priest was
invited to the wedding as a witness, but no more. John Chrysostom? and the
Ambrosiaster speak of a benediction given by the priest to the new couple. In
the West he has, in addition, the responsibility of veiling the couple–a
tradition which we find mentioned by Ambrose and the Leonine and Gelasian
Sacramentaries. In the Orient, according to the information given us by John
Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus, a clergyman aids in crowning the couple
and in joining their right hands. This always remains, however, a private
affair within the framework of the family and home. It is only from the
beginning of the sixth century that we have a public religious ceremony and
then it is to be found in the framework of the mass. In the Orient it does not
occur until the reign of the Byzantine emperor Basil I, at the end of the ninth
century.
What, then, must we conclude
from these facts of history? First, we have to admit that the Early Church did
not conceive a new form of marriage; it simply took over and conventionalised
those local rites which it found. Secondly, we see that it is not an
ecclesiastical act of blessing which makes a valid Christian marriage, but each
marriage, contracted by either Christian or non-Christian according to the
ordinary civil laws of a given time and place, is recognised as valid by the
Church. In reality, during long centuries, the religious ceremony of marriage
was considered optional rather than obligatory. It was only after the ninth
century that in the East the emperor imposed the liturgical celebration of marriage
as a condition of its validity. In the West this step was not taken until the
Council of Trent.
(b) In any case it is not,
according to the Early Church, the nuptial blessing which makes of marriage a
sacrament. How then did the Church come to claim that marriage was a sacrament?
The fifth chapter of Ephesians did not inspire this idea, because, in the
patristic period at least, it was never used to interpret marriage. It was
Augustine, in his work De bono conjugali, who spoke of the sacrament of
marriage for the first time, but what does he mean by this phrase ?" First
of all we note that he does not make any direct allusion to the 'mystery' of
Ephes. v. 32. We can better appreciate the meaning of sacra- mentum in the
works of Augustine, if we consider first of all the conception of marriage
given in Roman civil law during the late Roman Empire: Nuptias non concubitus,
sed consensus facit. That is, it is the mutual consent of the couple which
makes the marriage valid. Augustine rendered the idea of consent by the word
sacramentum which had, in secular Latin, this idea among several other
meanings.
Nevertheless, the consent
which makes the marriage, according to civil law, is placed by Augustine in a
Christian framework; and in this context the consent receives a meaning which
is quite profound. The commitment of marriage is to last the whole of life.
Neither infidelity nor sterility permitted a marriage partner, says Augustine,
to break the sacramentum.
For Augustine, then, the
sacrament of marriage is nothing other than the ethical imperative of perpetual
fidelity, which is derived from the commandment of love preached by Jesus.
Augustine is a faithful witness of the teaching on marriage that we find in the
New Testament and in the whole of the Early Church. It is only with the
eleventh century that, in the West, the perspective changes. It is then that
one begins to speak of an ontological union which unites husband and wife in
the sacrament of marriage, and which cannot be broken; it is at this time, too,
that one begins to number marriage among the seven sacraments. The fact that
this interpretation of the sacramentality of marriage is, historically speaking,
so very late, hardly speaks in its favour. (Willy Rordorf, “Marriage in the New
Testament and in the Early Church,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 20,
no. 2 [October 1969]: 208-10)
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