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E. Jesus and
Christian weddings
http://www.stmaryscathedral.ca/gallery/images/stained_glass/window_f/panel5.jpg
In
this file, starting with the story of Jesus at a wedding, we will
consider other Christian Scriptures and then later writings about
weddings in Christiany, Roman Catholic,
Eastern Orthodox, pagan traditions up through the medieval era to the
time of Luther and the Protestant Reformation. For those looking for
a Christian ceremony from subsequent times, click on "Weddings
around the World" to "Weddings in Great Britain." Also
I might say that in each of the "Decades" from the
"1950s" to the "2000s or The New Century," I have
included ceremonies which I performed for a variety of people
including the following: Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists,
Methodists, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, agnoistics,
and perhaps even an atheist or two. Perhaps in asking me to perform
or attend their wedding, they could not have cared less what
organization ordained me to celebrate the wedding with them. But I
consider myself a Christian, often wearing a garmet
with Christian symbols or a plain robe of a medieval looking priest,
and I have sometimes wondered, "Does my presence as a Christian
at a wedding mean something special? Does the couple imagine that I
bring any magic to make their vows more lasting? Should I say any
more that that Jesus was once invited to a wedding, and he celebrated
with whoever invited him. So I shall do the
same."
So
let us start this section with Jesus; and if we should read the
canonical writers whose works comprise the New Testament, we discover
that Jesus went to weddings (John 2:1-11) where he did not serve as
priest; instead he reportedly turned water into wine, which was
more to do with his power over the world of nature than merely to
provide more wine for a host who had not brought enough wine for for so large or thirsty a guest list. Once at a
wedding, a host asked me if I could turn water into wine. I answered
that it was a sufficient miracle for me to pronounce a bride and a
groom as a "husband and a wife!"
My
research suggests that there need not have been any priest at the
wedding in Cana or in any other weddings in the First Century of our
era, for “no hint is preserved either in the Old Testament or the New
Testament, that a religious ceremony accompanied the wedding.”
More likely there were written contracts signed by
representatives of the two families (Towner 1996).
The wedding in
Cana has captured the attention of many interpreters for a variety of
reasons. One modern Biblical scholar imagined the event as if
“the marriage had already been contracted; the groom had gone to the
bride’s home to acquire his wife; the wedding procession to the
groom’s house had taken place and now the wedding festivities had
begun., This celebration could last for days, possibly even a
week….just was no stranger” (to these celebrants)…But when the wine
was gone, he turned water into between 120 to 150 gallons of wine not
to make up for the mistake of the host in calculating the thirst of
his guests, but to demonstrate in his first sign that “the wedding
feast with its new wine portrays the coming of the kingdom”
(Toussaint 46-50).
Jesus himself
taught a parable dealing with a marriage feast (Matthew 22:1-14). Was
it to suggest that he, himself, was like the “bridegroom”? The
purpose of the parable seems to appear at the end with the lines
“many are called, but few are chosen, ” but
hints of how to prepare for a wedding in the proper attire, the
proper attitude at the ceremony (calling) and arriving on time are
elements of a wedding etiquette, might today be useful to remember a
weddings in the 21st Century.
Matthew refers
to another wedding (Matt. 9:14 with the parallels in Mark 2:19 and
Luke 5:34) where an attitude of great joy should be with feasting as
at a wedding. By the time the Scriptures that became "The
Holy Bible" were written down, Jesus was himself taken to be
like that of the bridegroom at the wedding.
Surprisingly
none of the canonical gospel writers seem to focus as much on sexual
misconduct, as did the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures (see chapter
above on “Weddings of Adam and Eve." In discussions in
recent years regarding Dan Brown’s The DeVinci
Code,
some have imagined Jesus as more than a bridegroom in a parable. For
Brown or his readers, was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene? Having sex
and producing an hier
with her? Clearly, the early church did not give attention to that
dimension of Jesus’ life. Compared to St. Paul, in particular,
Jesus was less specific about sexual conduct, and sex was less a
focal point of his teachings than of his followers.
Many early
Christians believed that the end of the world would come in their
lifetime, and therefore they conducted their lives in expectation of
such an event. St. Paul, for example, did not call for those
who were already married when they became Christians to disavow their
vows for in “the opinion of Paul, that each should remain in his
calling, that one should remain single or married, as before, and
have wives as if one had them not. All these affairs of the
present after all are completely irrelevant, for he end is directly
at hand.”(Weber, 326). Sometimes it amuses me at weddings when
brides and grooms wish to have I Corinthians 13 read as if Paul wrote
if for such a ceremony.
St.
Paul wrote several times about marriage in the letters to the
churches he visited or wished to visit. He did not leave a
record as to having performed or being present at weddings; and Paul
might be very surprised to find how popular his poem on love (I
Cor. 13) is in wedding ceremonies; indeed, for the setting in
life of that poem was more for harmony within the church than what a
couple being wed should hear. Paul did explore the role of sex
and marriage in the lives of his converts. Similar to the teachings
in Judaism which strongly influenced Paul’s views in Christian
ethics, Paul emphasized the category of “holiness”, which “implies
separation; it is contrasted with passions attributed to the
‘gentiles who do not know God.” (I Thess. 4:5 cf. Meeks, 100).
Paul
wrote about Adam (Romans 5) as the one through whom sin came into the world. But he was
less specific as to how sin entered than some of the subsequent
patristic writers, like Origen, for example, who lived from
185-255 CE. Origen tried to solve the issue of temptation to
sexual sin by castration. Thankfully that solution did not find
its way into practice, and it was not accepted by the church;
and in Nicea at the time of
Constantine in the Fourth Century, the practice of castration was
condemned with more certainty than was sexual misconduct.
In the Gnostic
Gospels found written in the Coptic langage
in Egypt, one may find references to Adam (and Eve) as without
expression in the Garden of Eden. The authors of those gospels
are unlikely to have seen, as I did when inspired by Joel Rosenberg,
I wrote the file ," Adam and Eve's.Wedding" above (Cf. . Rosenberg’s
poem, “The First Wedding in the World” in the "Conclusion" below .)
A
very different perspective of a wedding is to be found in Revelation
19:9-10 as the “wedding supper of the Lamb” recently called to my
attention by my brother, Reid. In fact, on Amazon.com I just
discovered there a book, “The Lamb’s Supper: the Mass as Heaven and Earth.”
The apocalyptic background to the Book of Revelation may offer a
subsequent opportunity to consider this ritual, but I am not likely
to include it in future weddings I perform hereafter, and I
have not ever used Rev.19 in any previous weddings.
In
the Acts
of Thomas
there is imagery of the bridal chamber. Coptic Christians might have
the selection “Hymn of the Bride” at the wedding fest (6-7 as
“underlying the ascetic renunciation.” (Hunter, (2000), 209).
In
the Gospel of Philip, the author does not give us a wedding ceremony,
but he did leave an image of “the bridal chamber.” Somehow
there is a collage of other terms of “baptism” and “resurrection”
connected to the “bridal chamber.” However, lacunae on the
manuscript leave us uncertain of the meaning other than “A bridal
chamber is not for the beast, nor is it for the slaves, nor for the
women defiled;
but it is for the free men and virgins. ….”
(Spacing from Coptic text, cf. Wilson,
45).
In
the second century of the common era, a wedding contract KETHUVA
written for the wedding of Babatha of Maoza, born in the year 100CE, was found in a
cave otherwise connected with Simeon bar Kokhba. There is no evidence as to her
connection with Simeon, the leader of the second Jewish revolt against
Rome. Some considered him the
Messiah for a period, but important is the fact that there exists an
actual papyrus document which was found in a leather bag with other
documents concerning her.
Attached below is an English translation of an 2nd Century woman's
wedding contract:
“Babatha’s Marriage Contract
1. On the [thi]rd of
Adar in the consulship of
2.
3.
4. ...[that
you will be]
5. my wife [according to the la]w of Moses and the
“Judeans” and I will [feed you] and [clothe] you and I will bring you
(into my house) by means of your ketubba
6. and I owe you the sum of four hundred denarii (zuzin)which
equal one hundred tetradrachums (sorin) whichever
7. you wish “to take and to
.[….” from]… together with the sue amount of your food, and your
clothes, and your bed (?),
8. provision fitting for a free woman… the sum of
four hundred denarii (zuzin)
which equal one hundred tetradrachms (sil’in)
9. whichever you wish “to
take an to.[…” from]… together with the due amount of your food, and
your bed (?),
10. and your clothes, as a free woman. And if you
are taken captive, I will redeem you, from my house and my estate,
11. and I will take you
back as my wife, and I owe you your ketubba money…
12-13. [and if I go to my eternal home before you,
male children which you will have by me will inherit your ketubba
money, beyond their share with their brothers,]
14. female [child]ren shall dwell and be provided for from my house
and [from my estate un]til the time when
they will be [mar]ried. And if
15. >and if< I go the my eternal h[ome] before you, you w[il]l
[d]well in my house and be provided for from my house and from my
estate
16. [until] the time that
my heirs wish to give you your ketubba money. And when ever you tell me
17. [I will exchange this document as is proper]. Lacunae and fragments of letters
containing the warranty clause
18. [And I Yehudah son
of El’azar Khthousion],
I [ace]pt [all that] is written [above]”(
Kraemer, selection 62).
But what can we learn from this document? It may give strong evidence of
elements not only of Jewish wedding agreements but since the earliest
followers of Jesus were Jews and thereby serve to shine a light on
both religious aspects, which in this case would be the law of
Moses. In fact, in the Gospel
of Matthew, we learn that Jesus said he came to fulfill that law. So would this have been the very
kind of document Jesus could have read at the wedding in Cana? What interested me was the exactness of the amount
that Yehuda brought into the marriage as he
provided for “a free woman” named Babatha.
Also the provision in this time of
great turmoil when the wedding took place his pre-nuptial agreement
was to promise to buy her back in case she might be captured and
needed to be redeemed. Also of importance was the promise to take care of
her children, males who were also his
children would inherit their money “beyond their share with their
brothers” (l. 13 above) and
females, “until such time when they will be married” (l. 14). She would be taken care of it he died first (“go
to my eternal home before you”) and be supported by his heirs. I was surprise that there was no mention of the
possibility of a divorce or no prohibition of a re-marriage upon such
an event or upon death, in contrast to the Christian prohibition of
Tertullian in the comments below.
The early
Christian church father Chrysostom in the Second Century left
instructions in Homily 12 on Colossians 7 on “making preparations for
a wedding” clearly suggesting some of the wrong practices he found in
weddings of his day. He suggests “do not run from house to
house, borrowing mirrors and clothing…nor are you leading your
daughter in a parade…invite (only) people as you know who are
moderate…let no one from the theatre be present, since that involves
excessive and unseemly expenses...it’s annoying to invite
prostitutes…adorn the bride not with ornaments made of gold, but with
moderation and modesty and her usual clothes…let there be no uproar
nor confusion…let the groom be called; let him receive his bride. Let
the midday and evening feasting be filled not with drunkenness but
with spiritual pleasure”(Leyerle 258). Soon the issue
would arise when a class of Christians, ministers of the word,
presbyters and bishops, who were most often married from (80 -300 CE) were
to be models of conduct as examples to their flocks.
Tertullian,
an early Christian writer wrote that the union of man and woman is
“an institution blessed by God for the reproduction of the human race…for
the purpose of populating the earth.”
Tertullian argues that such a union should be done only once,
“For Adam was the only husband that ever had and Eve was his only
wife; one rib, one woman.” (Tertullian 400). The context of the
comment was a letter to his wife, whom he imagined might outlive him
in which he was urging her with all the legal training he could bring
to bear NOT to remarry. That would not be so useful today, even
after we seem to have followed the task of propagating the planet
beyond Adam and Eve’s imagination. I must intrude upon
Tertullian’s wisdom to comment that most of the weddings I perform
are for a couple; at least one has been married before. Here I
can note that in the last century, many pastors in America would not
do so.
One of the issues which interested me in the "wedding album project" was when in the development of Christianity the idea of marriage with Christ evolved. One historian of Christianity offers an economic reason growing out of the wish to relieve family of dowry payments which a female child would encounter so some Christian families "found it convenient to dedicate their unwanted girl babies to the church (Brown 261). These women came to be called "brides of Christ" and served to give females a quest for holiness have "become the stereotypical representatives of the notion of "virginity" for Western readers (Brown 262).
Sometimes there were attractions by the monks who "sought female spiritual companions" seeking “susneisakai in Greek or subintroductae in Latin, "call-in girls," who “enjoyed a relationship of permanent companionship with a man who was neither father, brother, nor husband to them” …This caused alarm among the officials in the church. To combat this “hookup” Basil of Caesarea wrote a treatise entitled in English translation On the Preservation of Virginity “conjuring up the facts of sex so as to keep the female ascetics of his region at a safe distance from male soul-mates" (Brown 267).
One woman of the 4th Cenury named Macrina wore a ring with what she believed was a fragment of the Cross of Christ. It was also a doken of her bethrothal to a man who died and the wedding was postponed indefinitely. She considers herself a widow and remained faithffl to her intended bridegroom. "but the ring and its relic were also the pledge of the enduring presence of Christ, her true Bridegroom" (Brown 273).
www.wutsamada.com/msu/phl200/wolff8.htm
The most celebrated writer toward the end of the Roman Empire in the
Fifth Century (CE) was Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa who had a good deal to say
about sexual desire. He connected the sins of Adam and Eve in the
Garden of Eden with a sexual rebelling against God, and he also wrote
about a loss of control over the will which led to the expulsion from
the Garden. The life of Augustine is interesting for his Confessions are among the earliest writings of its kind in the history of Western Civilization and they reveal a great deal about his inner search for salvation that he did not imagine could come with marriage.
But Augustine had kept a
concubine for some years and had a child with her. But I could
find no proof that he ever had a wedding, or even a “secret marriage”
with the woman. Brown, an expert on Augustine, wrote that Augustin's own betrothen wife, a Milanese girl in her early teens, had lost him as a future husband on his conversion to the life of continence. (Brown 275).
But has his relationship with the concubine
endured and become known to his contemporaries, it probably would not
have caused dismissal from his office or excommunication from the
church. In his later years, Augustine seems to have come to
believe that women were of value to men as bearers of children.
But in his early writings, he seems to have found other reasons for
the attractions between men and women. Augustine wrote as well
about Psalm 45 discussed already in ‘Adam and Eve’s wedding.”
Augustine in “a variety of works, letters, sermons and polemical
treatises” postulated that the intent is to make a clear reference to
Christ, and the queen is “Christ’s church.” Then, the City of God,
Augustine points out that the virgin bride can be “no one other than
the church. (Hunter 296-297)
Augustine,
who read about prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures and considered
them as moral examples even though they were married, wrote that the
sexual union was not for pleasure but for bearing
children. Augustine seemed to respect what Freud would
later identify as the libido or the sexual drive in humans. So
he wrote that his followers were promised not only to a partner, but
each partner had a right to give sex when needed by the fell also
reminded their married hearers that they were obliged to give their
spouses sex when needed by the partner..
After the Roman Empire collapsed the leaders of the church in Rome made laws regarding marriage and its
validity. For example late in the 9th Century CE Pope Nicholas
I reported a wedding took place in a church, thereby suggesting that
the custom " of holding a marriage
in a church was not mandatory" (Carmody
29) .
There were many areas where Christians and Jews influenced each other in the medieval period, often showing the predudice against Jews and therefore persecutions, but since both shared much of the same scripture, Christians were interested in Jewish texts and exegesis. Also Christians were aware of Jewish practices in weddings. Christians learned that Jews used rings in weddings, as for example "Jewish marriage occurred when the bride consented to mary by accepting the ring from the groom" (Snyder 25). That seems to sugest an influence from Judaism to Christianity. But I have not found the first instance of the use by Christians in weddings.
In the 11th Century the Eastern Orthodox Church split with the
Roman Catholic Church, but the two bodies of Christians came to
recognize the Seven Sacraments although the Eastern Orthodox call
them the"Mysteries." Marriage is
equally important in both branches of Christianity.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition the leaders of the church “demanded that the two partners
in a marriage should both be of the Christian Orthodox faith.
Marriage with a non-Christian was forbidden; if contracted, it was
declared illegal’’(Constantelos
24).
However, not until the 12th Century could I find a “text listing
marriage among the Seven Sacraments” (Fourth Book of the Sentences
of Peter Lombard). Lombard was important in establishing the view that more than "sexual relations and mutual affection" would be necessary in a wedding. He insisted that the bride and groom pronouce "words of the present," that clearly declare(d) their intent" (Snyder 26). It was not the ecclestiastical formlity or ritual act that made the marriage. In the 13th Century Thomas Aquinas affirmed that the sacrament of
marriage, was “a community of nature which God transformed into a
community of grace” (Carmody 29). But Aquinas and the Pope Alexander III, followed Lombard's influence in proclaiming the marriage "require the free-will consent of the two people" (Snyder 26). Meanwhile "the Jewish communituy agreed with the Christian Church that the personal bond of the couple constitutes marriage" (Snyder 28). Thereby a rabbi "does not 'marry' the bride and groom; they marry each other" Diamant 43-4). That common view of both Jews and Chrisians influenced the expression of wedding rituals of both tradtions, and it is echoed over and over in my discussion of weddings in the chapters below where vows selected by students, friends and faculty wish me to include the line..."
Meanwhile all over Christian Europe as churches and monasteries
were being built, many people still followed more ancient
ceremonies. I wondered if I might discover what were the ceremonies for union between a male
and female who were not Christians or between a goddess and her lover?
For me the search became most real during a journey to Ireland in
2010. Images of a goddess appear
in many different places on the island, sometimes in a field,
sometimes in a church yard, sometimes even in the iconography of
stained glass in a church building. For me, she (the goddess)
appeared most vividly in the Dublin Museum of Archaology
and in a book I found there by Concannon,
who wrote that “in Old Europe, anthropomorphic carvings and rock
paintings of the Great Mother have been discovered back to 25,000
BE…a naked goddess, often regnant” (19).
www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.goddessgift.net/images/GoddessSheelaNaGigReliefD-88.jpg
Images of the figure appear as "sheela,
Madonna and Hag (in the image above as Hag) capture three rolls or
"aspects of the goddeess-maiden, mohr, and crone" (Concannon
36) Also in Ireland we find rivers, such as the Shannon, the longest
in Ireland “named after Sinann,
‘yellow-hair goddess of the Tuatha De Danann, yearned for and sought after…and the
Boyne, named for the goddess Boann-a
reference to the cow Goddess” (Concannon
21).
www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.goddessgift.net/images/GoddessSheelaNaGigReliefD-88.jpg
Names for women, still used in Ireland, such as “Brighid”
suggests a fiery arrow, which has a Sanskrit rootbrihati “meaning ‘the
exalted one’. In her cosmic role Brigid
wast he goddess of he son, the moon, of
fire, divination and the laws of nature…” (24). The figures are also to be found even in churches, as in the image
below:
In the image above the goddess image was preserved in the window
of a Christian church, which might have meant the builders used a
stone older than the church building or perhaps to preserve the power
of the goddess, the stone was carved into a stone under a window to
make sure the powerful goddess appeared to support the building of
the new religion of Christianity which made its way to Ireland in the
6th Century, when St. Patrick brought a form of Catholic Christianity
to Ireland that preserved the high regard for and of women that the
Roman Church had not done. Another ancient goddess was "Medb"
whose name is a "cognae ofthe English word MEAD and may be found as a
root in many Indo-european lanugages, meaning something like "she who
intoxicates"...(Cahill 127). Now her
image can even be found on Irish currency as in the image below.
In this form the goddess looks reflective and not fearsome. But what
interested me in the investigation of how goddess figures from ancient
Ireland were "tamed" by the influence of Christianity upon
the ancient culture. During my May journey through Ireland in 2010, I
was influenced by the theory that "unlike the continental church
fathers, the Irish never troubled themselves overmuch about
eradicating pagan influences which they tended to wink at and enjoy.
The pagan festivals continued to be celebrated, which is why we today
can celebrate the Irish feasts of May Day and Hallowee'en"
(Cahill (1998)149). Elsewhere in a footnote, one reads "the
first day of May, called Beltaie, was a
spring celebration distinguished by bonfires, mayhpoles
and sexual license...." (Cahill 149). Looking out the window of
our Mercedes bus in Western Ireland, I saw a much less exotic Ireland
and wondered where we might discover ancient rituals of a
goddesses who inspired the
ancestors of the Irish people of today, who sublimated their images
into banknotes or church window.
I imagined that marriage and wedding ceremonies reflected the powerful partnerships which existed
in Ireland among the Celtic peoples. For as a woman "passed from
the power of her father into that of her husband....the practice (in
"Gaul" at any rate) was for the husband and wife to pool equal amounts of money , and to share any
gains--at death, the surviving partner inherited everything"
(James 66). This practice seemed to shock Romans like Caesar, but it did not shock the subsequent Christian missionaries. How much of Ireland today is Celtic, how much is
influenced by the Vikings, all under the huge presence of Roman
Catholic tradition is a topic which I will continue to question.
In spite of my quest, I did not find a wedding ceremony as a text
or even clues in an icon, except the implication that the union of
the goddess with a male might lead to producing children or crops, as
in other places in the Celtic world of Europe. I must say that I
might have discussed the rituals of goddesses in several other places
in this "album project" such as in the comments on the
"Wedding of Adam and Eve" for the worship of Anat or Astarte were challenges to the Hebrew
prophets through the centuries of life in Israel. But being in
Ireland and reading there about the role of "pagan
festivals" made the quest to imagine a union with a goddess in a
religious ceremony all the more lively.
Meanwhile in the 13th Century
"The popular belief that simple fornication between unmarried
persons was neither a sin nor a crime persisted, although this had
been classified formally as heresy since 1287." "Several authorities maintained that when a woman
committed adultery, her husband was at fault and should be punished
as much or more than she was, but I have yet to see a case in which
that was done."
"Dowry represented the married woman's claim to financial
security, but that security might be jeopardized by her own actions
or those of her husband. The married woman who committed adultery
stood to lose her dowry, and the beneficiary in that case was her
husband, who received part or all of it as compensation for his
humiliation."
What were weddings like during the Middle Ages? In Italy the wedding had three parts as follows:
1. The first
portion consisted of the families of the groom and bride drawing up
the papers. The bride did not have to attend this part.
2.The second part was the betrothal, legally binding and involving a
celebration, when the couple exchanged
gifts (a ring, a piece of fruit, etc.), clasped hands and exchanged a
kiss. The "vows" could be a simple as, "Will you marry
me?" "I will."
3.The third part of the wedding was the removal of the bride to the
groom's home. The role of the clergy at a medieval wedding was simply
to bless the couple. Not until the council of Trent in the 15th
Century was a third party [as a priest] responsible for performing
the wedding.In the later Medieval Era, the wedding ceremony moved from the house
of the bride to the church. It began with a procession to the church
from the bride's house. Vows were exchanged outside the church, and then everyone moved inside for Mass.
After Mass, the procession went back to the bride's house for a
feast. Musicians accompanied the procession.
So long as the couple made the vows before a witness, the marriage
was valid--no priest had to be present. Weddings during the Middle Ages were considered family/community
affairs. The only thing needed to create a marriage was for both
partners to state their consent to take one another as spouses. Witnesses were not always necessary, nor was the
presence of the clergy necessary.
Weddings during the Middle Ages seem to have involved spoken vows and
witnesses to confirm them, but no priests were required. Thus
weddings were family events not in a church. Priests might have
attended but not in an official role.
If I could have arranged my "space-time" vehicle to take me back to the 15th Century, I would have gone to Florence. In fact, I loved Florence in the 20th Century. And no doubt the 15th would be just as good. The year was 1432, the season was the summer, at "Santa Maria sopra Porta, near the Guelh part" where the bridegroom was Piero of the Medici family and the bride was Gostanza. It would have been very hard to actually see the ceremomy, for most of the energy that summer was keeping track of all the gifts that were exchanged on this special wedding. He had sent the bride a large silver "basi, a kerchief of silk full of pears, a pearl necklase, a skein of thread, and two belts decorated with silver...."(Klapish-Zuber 35).
As for the trousseau, we find the catalog as follows:
A pair of pained chests, worthd 62 florins
A piece of damask, 70 feet long, worth 55 florinss.
a robe of white cloth decoraed with pearls, worth 25 florins.
An undergarment in green cloth, worth 15 florins.
A velvet headdressadorned with silver, worth 11 florins.
A piece of cloth for hankerchieves, worth 10 florins.
A tight dress with silk sleeves, worth 8 florins.
a coral wreath, worth 8 florins.
A small both with the office of Our Lady worth 6 florins.
200 florins in total" (Klapisch-Zuber 37).
So far, so good, but that was not all, a longer list amount added up to a thousand florins, which if had been in cash would have been easir, for a note had to be drawn which led to interest from the Commune's Bank.
Clearly, I never saw such gifts in my own 100 weddings. And usually I have tried to avoid any attempts in my own century to give advice about costs of weddings. I could guess that the least expensive wedding in which I took part was the cost of a 10 foot long subway sandwich and a case of beer served to the guests, what would that be? Perhaps 35 dollars, and the most expensive wedding was calculated by a father of the bride who told me his daughters's wedding cost forty thousand! But I just learned that the costs of William and Catherine's wedding in April at WestminsterAbbey will be about forty million dollars, about half of it for security to protect the guests from harm. So this Florentine wedding would be cheap by comparison1
So now to the 15th Century.
In the 15th Century(after the Council of Trent),
priests began performing weddings. Hence the settings of weddings
were more often thereafter in the nearest church. Artists
portrayed processions to churches from homes of the
bride. From that time priests gave the bride to the groom and at the
doorway of the church the vows were made then the guests went inside
the church for Mass. After Mass, the procession went back to the
bride's house for a feast. Musicians accompanied the procession.
In the 16th Century we find evidence of Luther’s
teachings about weddings and marriage.
In 1519, just two years after posting his famous “95 Theses, Martin
Luther wrote “A Sermon of the Estate of Marriage.” In that sermon he
cited "the wedding in Cana" (John 2). But the first
part of the sermon is an exegesis of Genesis 2:18-24, in which he affirms
that after God realized there was no suitable mate for Adam, he
created Eve and brought her to Adam, at which time he immediately
“felt a married love toward her” (Luther’s Works 44:8).Thereafter,
Luther discussed several kinds of love and told the bridal couple (and
his readers 500 years later) that the doctors of the church have said
that “marriage is a sacrament” in which two people becoming one flesh
(Eph. 5:32) and that the ceremony is a covenant of fidelity which
binds the two together.Luther reacted strongly to the wedding vow of his as
“I am thine, thou art mine” as content in
the ceremony itself at that time. One might assume that the sermon
which Luther (or his amanuensis) recorded was a part of the wedding
Luther challenged the vow above as wrong," for both the man and
woman, belonged to God, not to each other" ( Luther
11). This reader of Luther would have liked to have known
what music, if any, was played and what was on the menu of the feast,
but Luther left no clues. Luther also disavowed “secret marriages’ which were
not shared with the parents, for the parents have given food and
clothing and deserve to know something as important as a marriage. An
editorial note suggested that Luther was opposed to long engagements
and would have preferred that the three stages of a marriage,
engagement, wedding and consummation all took place on one day. Luther continued to think about weddings throughout
his life; certainly to be included would be his own wedding in 1525
to Katharina von Born. He also continued to conduct weddings for his
friends, students, and church members (Luther x), without wishing to
include marriage as among the sacraments.
Long before Luther’s time the Roman Catholic Church
had established a vow of chastity for clergy; but Luther was also
aware that while many clergy affirmed chastity, they visited
prostitutes or kept mistresses. He points out that
in Christianity it was not a sin “not to marry and have children” as
he read in Hebrew Scriptures which he attributed to Moses. But
he says that both living in chastity or marriage were both states
decreed by God. When “marriage is given as a common gift to all but
chastity is reserved for he few as a very
special gift" ( Luther 17).
Luther also dealt with the issue of a Christian
believer being married to an “unbeliever,” which St. Paul had written
about as well. His comments might serve today as advice for
someone performing a similar wedding. Would there have been a
different ceremony when one person is of strong religious belief and
the other held no such belief? Luther noted that Paul observed in this circumstance
that what he wrote was his own opinion and that “these words are not
from the Lord but from himself” (Luther. 33). Hence if one partner is
Christian, then the non-Christian partner need accept all such
beliefs but should be “satisfied with the choice of the partner to be
Christian and does not object to or prevent his living a Christian
life….” (Luther 33).
Luther and Paul, for that matter, might be quite surprised to know
that the most famous of all passages which people planning a wedding
often as k me to read are from I Corinthians 13, for perhaps
both Luther and Paul knew that this chapter as we find it in the
Corinthian letters was on a topic quite other than marriage.
Luther did not consider marriage one of the Holy
Sacraments, and in Germany today about one third of children born
come to parents not yet, or ever to be, married.
Perhaps Luther would recognize the wedding dress of
this modern version of a 16th Century German wedding dress I found in
an issue of magazine sold on the Wedding section of Barnes and Noble.
I have written so little about the proper attire for weddings, even
though some interest in that topic was demonstrated in the New
Testament Gospel tradition. To offset my failures to notice the
important issue of what the bride should wear, then let the image
below redeem me. I hope my reader and Martin Luther would like i
Meanwhile in the 16th Century, John Calvin, in a
generation after Luther and strongly influenced by Luther, published his
own views in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, in which he
wrote that marriage was instituted by God as was demonstrated in the story of
Adam and Eve. He also held that marriage was not a Sacrament (Calvin 966), but marriage
was a way in which Christians could hope for salvation, at least by
not giving in to lust and avoiding fornication (Calvin, 258).
On a personal note, since I had been born and ordained in a branch
of the Christian tree which followed Calvin, I must say I did not
find his comments on marriage very helpful in discussing wedding plans with either students, faculty or friends.
I looked as well
at the Anglican tradition. There I found King Henry the VIII had a
series of weddings hoping for a male heir. But his son soon died and
was followed by Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. The Anglican
Church did not make marriage a sacrament, but a service for a wedding
became very influential in establishing the language used until this
century. (cf. "Weddings around the World" then
"Weddings in the United Kingdom"). At the end of that section, a reader may find the 20th Century version of the Prayer Book that goes back to the 16th Century and the same service that will be used in 2010 in Westminster Abbey for the Wedding of Prince William and his bide, Kate.
Comments on weddings in the various branches of
Christendom will be found elsewhere in "Weddings around the Wold"in "Weddings in Great
Britain," where the celebrated and important ceremony used not only by Anglicans is offered in full, the ceremony soon to be used in Westminster Abbey for Prince William and Meg. also "Weddings in Greece and Rome," contains the civil ceremony in modern Greek.
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