MA&BIAGX
707
MABRIAOX
ties. The parallel of this marriage ceremony is seen
in the pall held over nuns while the consecratory pre-
face is being said at their clothing or profession. It
follows that the idea that this is a funeral pall and is
symbolical of the death of the religious to the world
is not historically justifiable.
The words of the priest, " Ego vos in matrimonium conjungo, which, though sanctioned by the Council of Trent, are apt to convey the false impression that the priest is the minister of the Sacrament, are not primitive, atanv rate in this form, and are only to be found in Rituals of comparatively recent date. In the medieval Nuptial Mass, and in many places until lon£ after the Reformation, the kiss of peace was given to the married pair. The bridegroom received it from the priest either directly or by means of the pax- board, or instrumentum paciSy and then per oaculum oris conveyed it to the bride. The misconception, found in some modern writers, that the priest kissed the bride, is due to a misunderstanding of this piece of ritual, no such custom is recorded m manuals ap- proved by ecclesiastical authority.
Oriental Marriage Rituals. — ^That of the Orthodox Greek Church may be conveniently taken as a model, for the others, e. g. the SjTian and Coptic rites, resem- ble it in many particulars. The most noteworthy feature in a Greek or Russian marriage is the fact that there are two quite distinct religious services. In the service of the betrothal a contract is entered upon and two rings are presented. A gold ring is gi\'en by the priest to the bridegroom and a silver one to the bride, out these are sulSequently exchanged between the fjarties. The second ceremony is that of the nuptials proper and it is generally called the crowning. The service is one of considerable length in wmch the parties again solemnly express their consent to the union ana towards the close of which a crown is placed by the priest on the head of each. The bridegroom and bride afterwards partake of a cup of wine previ- ously blessed and excnange a kiss. Marriages m the Greek Church take place after the celebration of the Liturgy, and, as in the West, the season of Lent is a forbidden time. It may be noticed that some rituals of the Western Church retain more positive traces of the ancient ceremony of the crowning than is pre- served in the wreath usually worn by the bride. Thus in a I^tin ritual printed for Poland and Lithuania in 1691 it is directed that two rings be used, but if these are not forthcoming, then the priest is to bless two wreaths (serta) and present them to the married pair. DuBCHESNE, Chrutian WonJiip (tr., 3rd editkm, London. 1910) 428-^34; Frkiaen, Oeachichte dca canoniachen Eherechta (Tubingen. 1888); Fkkisen, in Archiv. f. Kath. Kirehenrechi (Mainz, vol. LIU, 1885); Frf.isen, Manuale Lincoperue (Pader- born, 1906); Gautier, La Chevalerie (Paris, 1891), 341-450; Maskell, Monumenta RUualia (Oxford, 1882), voLI; Haxxi^ TINE, Zur GeachichU der EheschlicMung nach anotlsdchsiachen Recht (Berlin, 1905); Howard, A HuAory of Matrimonial In- atitutiana, I (Chicago, 1904). 291-383; Crttchlow, Forma of Be- trothal, &c (Baltimore, 1903); Watkins, HoluMatnmonu (Lon- don, 1895); Martisne, De A rUtquia Eccleaia Riiibua, II (Venice, 1788); DiECKHOFF, Die Kirchliche Trauimg (Roestock. 1878); Henderson, The York Manuale, publ. by Sdrteer Socibtt
i Durham, 1875); Lingard, Anglo-Saxon Church, II, cap i; loEDER, Die Schoaa oder Knieadxung (Gdttingen, 1907); Sohm, Trauunq tend Verlobung (1876); Frieddrro, Daa Recht der Eheachlteaauno (Leipzig. 1865); Sohm, Daa Recht der Eheachlies- $ung (Weimar, 1875); Binoham, Chriatian Marriage (New York, 1900).
Herbert Thurston.
Marriage, Sacrament of. — ^That Christian mar- riage (i. e. marriage between baptized persons) is really a sacrament of the New Law in the strict sense of the word is for all Catholics an indubitable truth. Ac- cording to the Council of Trent this dogma has always been taught by the Church, and is thus defined in. canon i, Scss. XXIV: " If any one shall say that matri- mony is not truly and properly one of the Seven Sacra- ments of the Evangelical Law, instituted by Christ our Lord, but was invented in the Church by men, and does not confer grace, let him 1)e anathema. " The
occasion of this solemn declaration was the denial by
the so-called Reformers of the sacramental charact^
of marriage. Calvin in his " Institutions , IV, xix, 34,
says : ** Lastly, there is matrimony, which all admit was
instituted by God, though no one before the time of
Gregory regarded it as a sacrament. What man in his
sober senses could so regard it? God's ordinance is
good and holy; so also are agriculture, architecture,
shoemaking, hair-cutting legitimate ordinances of
God, but they are not sacraments". And Luther
speaks in terms equally vigorous. In his German
work, published at Wittenberg in 1530 imder the title
' " Von den Ehesachen", he writes (p. 1) : "No one in-
deed can deny that marriage is an external worldly
thing, Uke clothes and food, house and home, subject
to worldly authority, as shown by so many imperial
laws governing it." In an earlier work (the ori^nal
edition of **De captivitate Babylonica") he writes:
"Not only is the sacramental character of matrimony
without foundation in Scripture; but the very tradi-
tions, which claim such sacredness for it, are a mere
jest"; and two pages further on: "Marriage may
therefore be a figure of Christ and the Church; it is,
however, no Divinely instituted sacrament, but the
invention of men in the Church, arising from ignorance
of the subject." The Fathers of the Council of Trent
evidently had the latter passage in mind.
But the decision of Trent was not the first given by the Church. The Council of Florence, in the Decree for the Armenians, had already declared: "The sev- enth sacrament is matrimony, which is a figure of the union of Christ and the Cnurch, according to the words of the Apostle: 'This is a ereat sacrament, but I speak in Christ and in the Church.' " And Innocent IV, in the profession of faith prescribed for the Wal- densians (18 December, 1208), includes matrimony among the sacraments (Densiger-Bannwart, "En- chiridion", n. 424). The acceptance of the sacra- ments administered in the Church had been prescribed in general in the following words: "And we by no means reject the sacraments which are administered in it (the Roman Catliolic Church), with the co-opera- tion of the inestimable and invisible power of Uie Holy Ghost, even though they be admini^red by a sinfm priest, provided the Church recognizes him^ , the for- mula then takes up each sacrament in particular, touching especially on those points which the Walden- sians had denied: "Therefore we approve of baptism of children . . . confirmation administered by the bishop . . . the sacrifice of the Eucharist. . . . We believe that pardon is granted by God to penitent sin- ners ... we hold in ];ionour the anointing of the sick with consecrated oil ... we do not deny that carnal marriages are to be contracted, according to the words of the Apostle. " It is, therefore, historically certain that from the beginning of the thirteenth century the sacramental character of marriage was universally known and recognized as a dogma. Even the few theologians who minimized, or who seemed to mini- mize, the sacramental character of marriage, set down in the foremost place the proposition that marriage is a sacrament of the New Leiw in the strict sense of the word, and then sought to conform their further theses on the effect and nature of marriage to this fundamen- tal truth, as will be evident from the quotations given below.
The reason why marriage was not expressly and for- mally included among the sacraments earlier and the denial of it branded as heresy, is to be found in the historical development of the doctrine regarding the sacraments; but the fact itself may be traml to Apos- tolic times. With regard to the several religious rites designated as " Sacraments of the New loaw ", there was always in the Church a profound conviction that they conferred interior Divine grace. But the grouping of them into one and the same category was left for a later period, when the dogmas of faath m ge&eiaLbe^pui
