MARftlAGC
706
MAftRIAGC
take thee, N. for my wedded wife, to have and to
hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for
richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death
do us part, if Holy Church will it 'permit, and thereto I
plight thee my troth." It is tolerably clear that this
troth-plighting originally formed part of a betrothal
ceremonial and recognized the possibility that the
Church might still refuse to confirm and bless the
union thus initiated. But as the words occur in the
modern service, where the parties have already eiven
their consent, where the marriage is consequently an
accomplished fact and the priest has said *'ego con-
juneo vos in matrimonium , they may readily cause
a difficulty. Needless to say that this particular
clause has been omitted in the Anglican *^Book of
Common Prayer".
Ancient Observances surviving in later Rituals, — ^The traces of the old betrothal ceremony in the modern nuptial Ordinals of different countries are many and varied. First the wedding ring itself, in accordance with the old Roman custom, seems to have been origi- nally a pledge or arrha given at the sponsalia by the bridegroom as the earnest of the future fulfilment of his share in the contract. At a later date however it probably became confused with certain Grerman cus- toms of *' morning gifts" after marriage and conse- quently was transferred to the nuptials proper. Further in many places it ultimately l)ecame and still remains the custom for bride and bridegroom to pre- sent each other mutually with rings as a pledge of fidelity, and this is in fact the symbolical meaning attached to the ring in the modern ritual of the Church, as the form for its blessing plainly signifies, i^erhaps the first trace of the use of two rings occurs In the early Spanish Ordines. Furthermore, while the use of the weoding ring has been retained among most, though not quite all, the rituals of the West, the man- ner of putting it on varies considerably. The English custom that the l)ridegroom should place it, first, on the bride's thumb with the words "in the name of the Father" — then on the index finger — '*and of the Son " — then on the middle finger — *'and of the Holy Ghost" — and finally on the fourth finger — 'SVmen'* — is found in medieval ceremonials in places as far separat-ed as Spain and Non^'ay, but it was by no means universal. In some places the priest puts on the ring, and elsewhere it was customary to place the ring on the bride's right hand. This was the case in the Sarum rite and it was retained among English Catholics until the middle of the eighteenth century. The reason so frequently assigned for the choice of the fourth, or ring, finger, \\z. tlvat a vein runs from that finger to the heart, is found in early non-Christian writers like Pliny and Macrobius.
A second survival which appears even in the concise Roman Ritual, is the hand-clasp of the married pair. This was a custom also in the pagan marriage cere- monial of Rome, and it is hard to say whether it comes to us through Roman or Teutonic traditions. Certain it is that the "hand-fast" constituted a sort of oath among most Germanic peoples and was used for the solemn ratification of all kinds of contracts (see Fried- berg, '*Eheschliessung", pp. 39-42). h\ many, and especially the German rituals, the priest was directed to wrap his stole around the claspea hands of the bride and bridegroom while he pronounced some words of ratification. This ceremony may often be noticed in medieval pictures of a marriage, e. g. the "Espousals of St. Joseph and our Lady ". This also is quite prob- ably of heathen origin for we find a reference to some- thing very similar in Arl)eo's " Life of St. Emmeram ", written before the year 800. It contains an account of a pagan woman summarily given in marriage to a Christian, her hand wrapped round with a cloak "as is the custom in espousals". A most elaborate cere- mony of this kind is prescribed in the " Rituale " com- pilea for the Christians of Japan in 1605. It was
noticed above that the "gifta", or fonnal surrender
of the bride, who thus passed from the *' xnund " of her
father or guardian to that of her husband, was re-
garded as the most essential feature of Anglo-Saxon
nuptials. This left its mark in the Sanim rite, and
something of it still survives both in the Anglican and
the Catholic ceremonial. In the former the minister
asks " Who giveth this woman to be married to this
man"; in the latter no question is put, but the
rubric still stands "Then let the woman be given
away by her father or by her friends".
Most remarkable of all perhaps is the nving of gold and silver by the bridegroom to the bride. This has been much modified in the Anglican "Book of Com- mon Prayer" which speaks only of "laying the ring upon a book with the accustomed duty to the priest and clerk"; but the Catholic rite, more closely follow- ing the Sarum, directs that gold and silver be placed with the ring and given to the bride w^hile the bride- groom says: "With this ring I thee wed; this g^ld and silver I thee give, with my body I thee worship and with all my worldly ^oods I thee endow ' ' . This action takes us back to Tacitus's account of German marriage customs. "The wife", he says, "does not present a dower to her husband, but the husband to the wife" (Germania, xviii). Undoubtedly this is a trace of the primitive sale by which the bridegroom paid a sum of money for the transference to him of the **mund" or right oi custody of the bride. Originally that money was paid to the father or guardian, but by successi\^ stages it became a sort of dower for the bride and was represented by the symbolical payment to her of "arrhse", the name by which the money thus given in the marriage ceremony is still designated. In certain branches of the Teutonic family, notably the Salians, this form of purchase of a bride was known as mai^ riage * ' per solidum ct denarium ". See for example the account of the nuptials of Chlodwig and St. Clotilde in the historj' of the so-called Fredegarius (c. xviii). The solidus was a gold piece, the denarius a silver one, and in the time of Charlemagne and later the solidus was the equivalent in value of twelve denarii. When the custom of coining gold pieces was given up in the ninth century, it seems that the solidus and oenarius were represented by their equivalent value, i. e. thir- teen silver pieces. Certain it is, in any case, that in Spain and in some parts of France thirteen pieces of money, known in PVench as the "Treiaain", are still blessed and given to the bride along with the ring. The ceremony was duly observed at the marriage of King Alfonso of Spain, in 1906 (see "The Messenger", 1906, 113-130).
To mention the many observances peculiar to particular provinces, for example the Hungarian cus- tom of taking an oath of mutual fidelity upon relics at the dictation of the priest, or the York practice by which the bride threw herself at the feet of her hus- Iwtnd if he gave her land as part of her dower — would here be impossible. We must not however omit to note the pallium or pall (French, pode)^ which in a very large number of dioceses was held over the mar- riedi pair, they in the meantime lying prone before the altar, while the nuptial l)enediction w*as pronounced in the Mass. The custom was retained until recently in many parts of France and is still observed in t^ie more ceremonious weddings which follow the Toledan ritual. This and the ** jugale ", or parti-coloured yoke of ribbon binding together the married pair, are men- tioned by St. Isidore of Seville, and it is not quite clear how far they are to be identified with the velum or flammeum of the bride in the Roman marriage. It is to be noted that according to certain rituals the pid- lium is completely to cover the bride but only the shoulders of the bridegroom. This seems clearly to be connected with the fact tliat, as already observed, the nuptial l)enediction is almost entirely devoted to the bride and consecrates her to her special responnbili*
