The Sacrament of Marriage - a Brief Historical Overview – Part III
The sacramentality of Marriage: 11th – 13th Centuries
Patristic sources
As already mentioned, there are no literal statements about the sacramentality of marriage in the patristic period. We can find some texts that talk about the sanctity of marriage, but even with this the basic ideas contained in these texts are different from the technical concept of the sacramentality of marriage developed by scholasticism.
Generally, the Church Fathers portrayed marriage using the miracle of Cana in Galilee. According to them, Christ blessed married life there and made it part of the order of salvation. Tertullian says that God protects the relationship between believers and grants them saving grace. Every time a marriage is made in the Lord, Christ himself creates this union with his presence. Where two Christians are joined, the Lord is present among them, and there is no place for the demon. But when Tertullian says all this, he is referring not so much to the very nature of marriage, but to the consequences it has for the moral life of Christian spouses.
Another Christian writer, Origen, spoke of the union of a man and a woman as a gift from God the Savior. This union is surrounded by God's charism, which should ensure the perfect unity of the spouses.
Pope St. Innocent I (early Fifth century) also says that marriage is built on God's grace, but he explained that the goodness of married life, based on the blessing given at the time of creation. We can also find statements that whoever deviates from marital fidelity loses God's grace. From all these statements, however, no theological consequences have been drawn about the very nature of marriage. The patristic pastoral concern was also revealed in the interpretation of the Letter to the Ephesians (5:21–32). When this text is cited, it is only done to describe the relationship of the Church with Christ. For the Fathers of the Church, this passage shows above all the moral and religious requirements of the married life of Christians.
St. Augustine was the one who described the symbolism of this Letter of St. Paul and who used the word sacramentum for this purpose. However, the content of this word for Augustine differs from what later theology developed. In marriage, it signifies the unbreakable bond of sacred obligations and therefore has the meaning of a sacred sign (bonum sacramenti - indissolubility). This sacramental compromise becomes deeper through the symbolism it contains. Therefore, marriage as a sign of Christ's union with the Church is inseparable. From the moment of marriage between Christians, their union is inseparable. For Saint Augustin, marriage is a sacrament because it is indissoluble, without blemish, and therefore holy. Saint Augustine insists that the indestructible unity and the ultimate compromise (sacramentum) depend on the very essence or the nature of marriage. It is a real sign of the mystery of Christ and of the Church.
At the beginning of scholasticism, the consequences of the concept of St. Augustine, finally reaching the concept of the sacramentality of marriage in the present-day sense.
The relationship between the marriage consent and the marriage act
The basic transition between patristics and scholasticism in the field of the sacrament of marriage could be described as follows: according to patristics, one must not destroy a marriage - one must not divorce; and according to scholasticism there is no way to do it. But to come to this conclusion, theologians had to deal with some fundamental problems about the very nature of marriage. One of the first problems the Church in the tenth and eleventh centuries had to solve was the question: On what does the validity of a marriage depends? What is the cause of its indissolubility?
As we have seen before, a specific way of understanding and living marriage in this era was the result of different concepts and cultures. Regarding the validity of marriage, on the one hand, there was the Roman concept of matrimonial consent, but it was also greatly influenced by the belief from barbarian peoples that the union was not valid without a bodily act. With the rediscovery of Roman law in the 11th century, theologians were able to reflect more deeply on marriage as a personal compromise (the idea of marital consent), but on the other hand, in Germanic and Frankish countries, the indissolubility of marriage depended on the sexual act. So, scholasticism asked itself the question of whether the marriage was created by the consent of two people or by a bodily union (intercourse)?
These reflections were supplemented by the first reflections on the sacramentality of marriage in the strict sense. The ideas of Saint Augustine were the starting point. The union of a man and a woman acquires its deeper meaning sacramentum because it is a sacred symbol of Christ's union with the Church.
The first element in this complicated theological picture that was resolved was the distinction between marriage and engagement. Many times, the engagement was treated as the equivalent of marriage if, despite various prohibitions, the bride and groom conducted the sexual act. The School of Chartres provided the first explanations in the beginning of scholasticism. Broadly speaking, this school distinguishes between an engagement as a project of a marriage that could be dissolved, although it was forbidden and punishable, and a marriage that was already unbreakable. In the end, Peter Lombard established the difference between the two realities. He called an engagement compromise in the future - for the future (sponsalia de futuro), and marriage a compromise in the present tense (sponsalia de praesenti). In this way, the first source of discrepancy was eliminated.
At the same time, the West rediscovered the classic definition of the Roman lawyer Ulpian: Nuptias non concubitus sed consensus (o affectus) facit - marriage is not created by intercourse but by mutual consent of the parties. This discovery of Roman law was against the sexual act theory. This resulted in two great schools at the time. In the middle of the 12th century, each of these schools developed its own synthesis. Gratian's decree synthesizes the concepts of canonists (the theory of act), and Peter Lombard synthesizes the concepts of theologians (theory of consent). Gratian (Gratian was a Medieval canon lawyer, author of The Corpus Juris Canonici) represented the tendencies of the Bologna school; Peter Lombard (Peter Lombard, was a scholastic theologian, Bishop of Paris, and author of Four Books of Sentences) of the Parisian theologians.
Gratian agreed that marriage consent creates a marriage, but this union can be dissolved if there has been no sexual act. In contrast, Peter Lombard preached that only marriage consent constitutes the sacrament of Christ's union with the Church, and therefore this marriage is inseparable, whether or not there has been bodily union. Gratian's decree and the Sentences of Peter Lombard had enormous authority in the Middle Ages, therefore church tribunals operated on one or the other theory. Some tribunals declared the marriage null and void, citing its failure to fulfill (consumatum) it, others declared it indissolubly. The final solution was provided by Popes Alexander III (Rolando Bandinelli, the famous canonist, Pope 1159–1181) and a little later Innocent III (1198–1216) and Gregory IX (1227–1241).
The solution was somewhat a compromise. Marriage creates a true and valid sacrament only by mutual consent (Paris school), but as long as this sacrament has not been completed by a corporeal act, it remains possible to dissolve it (Bologna school). However, this thesis should be well understood. The indissolubility of a marriage exists from the moment consent is given. If there has not been a sexual act, the relationship cannot dissolve itself. Only the act of jurisdiction of the Church can annul this marriage. The Church's dispensation is therefore the only act that justifies this solution.
It should also be recalled that in this era the indissolubility of marriage is not dependent on whether the marriage was contracted according to ecclesiastical form or according to local laws or customs. Only clandestine marriages are fought decisively, although these marriages were valid.
As a consequence of identifying consent as an essential element in the existence of marriage, the theme of marriage as a contract has emerged. The canonists of Bologna introduced this theme. Thomistic theology generally showed a reserve to this. However, Franciscan theology was not so critical. That is why Duns Scot's representative for this school makes it clear that marriage is a contract. This was the reason that since then, marriage has been theologically systematized from the point of view of the theoretical concept of contract. Thus, was born the classic and traditional treatise on marriage, which is a theological reflection that does not lead directly to the reality of marriage, but to its legal extrapolation. The legal aspects of marriage have been systematized theologically.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george