Folia Theologica et Canonica 3. 25/17 (2014)

IUS CANONICUM - Anne J. Duggan, The paradox of marriage law: from St Paul to Lateran IV (1215)

THE PARADOX OF MARRIAGE LAW: FROM ST PAUL TO LATERAN IV (1215) 193

sus) of those whose union is arranged should be sufficient. If that alone is absent, all the other solemnities, even including coition, are in vain.’20

Christian marriage thus emerged as a sacramentum made by the consent of the man and the woman who solemnly committed themselves to a lifelong so- cietas, usually, at least among the more affluent, preceded or accompanied by various declarations and celebrations to validate and support the union. Nicholas I had not summarily swept all such ceremonies aside, however, nor did he cancel parental consent, but he made them contingent on the consent of the two parties. Unlike the other sacraments, then, matrimony was not administered by a priest but made by the expressed will of the man and woman. There is evidence that Christian nuptials were blessed with special liturgies that emphasized the dignity of marriage and its place in Christian life

,21 but although widely practised and increasingly recommended, they would not be universally mandated by ecclesiastical law until the Council of Trent.

A vernacular treatise on betrothal/engagement (beweddunge), written before the Norman Conquest (1066), is an interesting example of lay outlook in England in the late tenth or early eleventh century (970/1030 x 1060). Its first clause read:22

esse recte alias inito matrimonio firmitatem vel ex eo natis liberis iura posse legitimorum aufer- ri, inter pares honestate personas nulla lege impediente consortium, quod ipsorum consensu at- que amicorum fidefirmatur (Theodosius and Valentinian, 428).

20 Ibid., 980: ac per hoc sufficiat secundum leges solus eorum consensus, de quorum conjunctioni- bus agitur. Qui consensus si solus in nuptiis forte defuerit, caetera omnia etiam cum ipso coitu celebrata frustrantur. The recent study by Weber, I. (‘“Consensus facit nuptias!” Überlegungen zum ehelichen Konsens in normativen Texten des Frühmittelalters’, ZRG Kan. Abt. 118 [2001] 32-66, at 34-40) seems to me to underestimate the long-term significance of the clear declaration that the consent of the parties was sufficient of itself.

21 Ritzer, K., Le manage dans les églises chrétiennes du Ier au XIe siècle, Paris 1970; cf. Molin, J-B. - Mutembe, P., Le rituel du mariage en France du XIIe au XVIe siècle, Paris [1974] 1-29, at 26-7, citing, among others, the Sacramentary of Verona (previously called the Leonine): Sac- ramentarium veronense (Cod. Bibi. Capii. Verőn. LXXXV[80]), ed. Mohlberg, T. C., 2nd edn. Rome 1966, nos. 1105-1110; the Liber ordinum of Silos: Sacramentarium veronense ( Cod. Bibi. Capit. Verőn. LXXXV[80]), ed. Mohlberg, T. C., 2"d edn. Rome 1966, nos. 1105-1110; the Roman Sacramentary: Liber sacramentorum Romanae ecclesiae ordinis anni circuii, ed. Mohlberg, L. C., Rome 1960, nos. 1449-1455. The Gregorian Sacramentary: Lietzmann, H. (Hrsg.), Das Sacramentarium gregoriannum nach dem Aachener Urexemplar, Münster 1921 (repr. 1958), no. 200; the fifth-century Statuta Ecclesiae antiqua, ed. Bruns, H., Canones apostolo- rum et conciliorum saec. IV, V, VI, VII, Berlin 1839.1. 143; and the Visigothic/Mozarabic Liber Ordinum from S. Domingo de Silos, cited from Ritzer, K., Le mariage dans les églises chrétiennes, 302-305 and 432—441.

22 For the Old English text, with modern English translation, see Whitelock, D. - Brett, M. - Brook, C. N. L. (ed.), Councils and Synods, with other Documents relating to the English Church, I/I-I/II. Oxford 1981. I/I, 427—431, at 429, 430, 431. These Anglo-Saxon instructions on the proper conduct of betrothals and weddings, Bewifmannes beweddunge, survive in their English form in two twelfth-century manuscripts: the invaluable Textus Roffensis (Rochester Cathedral Library, fols 94v-95r) and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 3 822 (originally from St Paul’s in London), fols 84r-86r.