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) 195

sing from the priest as written in the canons, and you have not endowed her with such dower as you could, whether land or moveables, gold, silver or serfs or animals, or with a penny or the value of a penny or a half-penny, according to your means, so that she should at least be dowered? If you have not done so, you must do penance on fasting days for three ‘quarantines’ [periods of forty days]).

Here was a similar emphasis on the requirement of public propriety and the honourable treatment of the wife, who should be dowered according to the man’s wealth, even if, for the very poor, a small token worth a halfpenny would suffice, and bride and groom should together receive a blessing from the priest at the church. Informal marriages were thus not invalid, but failure to conduct them solemnly attracted a penance of three months’ duration.

About a century later, a now lost pontifical from Normandy (Lyre, dioc. Év- reux), dated to the mid-twelfth century, shows how the declaration of consent was integrated into a fully developed ceremony, which combined numerous customary elements with the celebration of a nuptial Mass:25

Ante omnia veniant adjanuas ecclesiae sub testimonio plurìmorum, qui thoro maritali conjungi sunt, et requiratur consensus utriusque a sacerdote, et fiat recapi- tulatio de dote mulieris, et ponantur denarii aliqui in medium pauperibus dividendi, et tunc demum detur femina a patre vel amicis suis, quam vir recipiat in fide Dei et sua sanam et infirmam quamdiu vixerit servandam, et per manum dexteram teneat earn. [...] Deinde benedicat sacerdos anulum dicens [...] Hie accipiat sponsus anulum, et una cum sacerdote in tribus digitis dextrae mams sponsae im- ponat, dicens [...] Et sic imponat in uno digito sinistrae mams eumdem anulum: et ibi relinquat, ut eum deinceps in sinistra ferai [...] Post haec introducantur ecc- lesiam, [...]. Post haec introductis illis in chorum ecclesiae ad dextram partem, et statuta muliere ad dexteram viri, incipiatur missa de sancta Trinitate Benedicta sit [...].

(Before everything, let those who are to be joined in marriage come to the doors of the church in the sight of many witnesses, and let the priest ask the consent of each, and let there be a reciting of the woman’s dower, and let some money be set aside for division among the poor, and then let the woman be given by her father or his friends, and let the man receive her in God’s faith and his own, to keep her in health and sickness as long as he lives, and take her by the right hand. [...] Then the priest blesses the ring, saying [...] Let the husband (sponsus) take the ring and, together with the priest, place it on three fingers of the right hand of his

25 Molin, J-B. - Mutembe, P., Le rituel du manage en France, ‘Ordo IIP, 286-287 (cf. ibid., 34—35). Similar details appear a century later in the Sarum Missal, 413; ibid., n. 2-2, cites the inclusion in MS B (Bologna, University MS 2565) of the posing of a question about consanguinity and spiritual relationship: utrum hec conuencio inter illos legittime fieri posset, ne scilicet aut consanguinitate aut aliqua spirituali copula iuncta sint.