If the Christian Church had stopped at admiring the continence and rare self-restraint of men who for Christ's sake led unmarried lives, much evil woidd have been avoided. As it was, the Christian mind passed on from such admiration to an undervaluation of the married life; celibacy was a sign of greater virtue; second mar- riages were looked on with disfavor ; and marriages of clergymen became unlawful. The heretics Marcion and
Tatian went even so far as to rail against marriage ; as Simon Magus is said, on the other hand, to have taught in his day a plurality of wives, and the Gnostics and Manichajans rejected marriage altogether. But what was really the view of the early Church is best seen in the canons of the Gangran Synod, held about A.D. 370, where it is decreed: "1. If any one reproach marriage, or have in abomination the religious -woman that is a communicant and sleeps with her husband, as one that cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven, let him be anathema. 4. If any one condemn a married presbyter, as if he ought not to partake of the oblation when he performs the liturgy, let him be anathema. 9. If any one live a virgin, or in chastity, as abominating marriage (while he lives in a retired state), and not for the beau- ty and sanctity of a virgin life, let him be anathema. 10. If one of those who live a virgin life for the Lord's sake insult those who are married, let him be anathema. 14. If any woman, abominating marriage, desert her husband, and will become a recluse, let her be anathe- ma." (See ixXso la&ac Taylor's Ancient Christicmitij.') At this very same time, however, marriage became a sacra- ment. One may ask how it came to pass that a kind of life which was looked on as being not the best one, and which had to be renounced in the Western Church if a married man would receive ordination, could come into the category of baptism, the eucharist, and the other acts which, in process of time, took the name of sacraments. Without going into an extended answer to this question, it may be said that the passage of Paul already cited (Ephes. v, 32) calls it a mystery, which Jerome's Vulgate renders by sacramentum. It was, in fact, peculiarly holy, as symbolizing Christ's union with the Church. But the word sacramentum had for a long time no definite sense, and marriage was not so called until the time of Augustine. Nay, that great writer had so vague an idea of its religious meaning that he does not hesitate to call the polygamous marriage of the patriarchs in the Old Testament a "sacramentum plu- ralium nuptiarum" {De bono coiyiiffii, cap. 18), which, he says, " signified a future multitude subject to God in all the nations of the earth, and so the sacrament of a sin- gle marriage [i. e. between one pair] in our time signi- fies the unity of aU ours [our Christian Church], which is to be subject to God in the one celestial city." The passage itself, howeven, in the E])hesians, which we have referred to, does not, in a fsiir interpretation of it, call marriage a mystery, but gives that name only to Christ's leaving the Father and becoming one with his Cliurch. As for the rest, the Catholic theologians have held widely diverse opinions about the matter and foiin of marriage. One opinion has been that the consent of the parties expressed in words constitute both the matter and the. form; another that the bodies or persons of the contracting parties are the matter, and the words ex- pressing consent the/orm. See Matrimony.
Marriage being a peculiarly sacred transaction, and having the religious impress put on it, questions rela- ting to its celebration, the persons capable of contract- ing it, its dissolution, its renewal after the death of one of the parties, and tlie like, came under the control of the clergy. Accordingly we find in use in the early Church a special ecclesiastical form for the celebration of matrimony. The fathers, TertuUian, e. g., considered marriage, contracted without the participation of the Church, as tolerated by the law of Eome, as almost r. sin. Later it was sought to make marriage an exclu- sively religious institution, and this it finally became, and so continued until the days of the Reformation. The civil law gradually restricted itself to the regula- tion of the material interests connected with marriage, leaving the Church to regulate the conditions imder which it could be contracted. As gradually the re- ligious impress put on it brought to the door of the clergy the settlement of questions relating not only to its celebration, but also to the propriety of its dissolu- tion, its renewal after the death of one of the parties,
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and the like, the State was content to lend the Church the secular arm for the enforcement of the decisions of the ecclesiastical courts. The principles of the law con- cerning marriage thus became a part of canon law in the Romish Church, and received final settlement by the Council of Trent, which not only established marriage as a sacrament in the most solemn manner (Cone. Trid. sess. 24, Mat. can. 1 : "Si quis dixerit, matrimonium non esse vere et proprie unum ex septem legis evangelicre sacramentis a Christo instltutum, sed ab hominibus in ecclesia invcntum neque gratiam conferrc : anath. sit ;" see also I, can. 7, Cat. Rom. 2, 8, 3, 23, 20 sq. ; Conf. oi-thod. p. 183), but referred the question of its validity exclu- sively to the Church. The remains of these and simi- lar laws have almost disappeared in Protestant England in our own times ; the act of 1857 (cited as 20 and 21 Vict. cap. 85), with its amendments, destroys all juris- diction of courts ecclesiastical in matters pertaining to marriage, except so far as marriage licenses are con- cerned, and constitutes a new court, which is called the court for divorce and matrimonial causes. See Wool- sev. Divorce and Divorce Legislation (New York, 18G9), p. "174-178. .