MARRIAGE is a contract by which a man and a woman enter into a mutual engagement, in the form prescribed by the laws of the country in which they reside, to live together as husband and wife during the remainder of their lives.
Marriage is treated as a civil contract even by those Christians who regard it as a *sacrament, and as typical of the union between Christ and the church. The religious character of the transaction does not attach until there has been a complete civil contract, binding according to the laws of tho country in which the marriage is contracted. The authority of the sovereign power in regulating and prohibiting marriages is 'therefore not affected by the super-induced religious character.
Among Protestants marriage has ceased to be regarded as a sacra ment, yet in most Protestant countries the entrance into the marriage state has continued to be accompanied with religious observances. These aro not however essential to the constitution of a valid marriage, any further than the sovereign power may have chosen to annex them to, and incorporate them with, the civil contract.
After the establishment of Christianity, in order to avoid the scandal of persons living together who were not known to be married, and also to *secure and perpetuate the evidence of marriage, where really con tracted, it became usual to make the marriage promise In the presence of the assembled people, and to obtain at the same time the blessing of the priest upon their union, except when one of the parties had been married before, in which case no nuptial benediction was anciently pronounced, the benediction once received by one party being considered sufficient to hallow the union as to both, unless by the distinction it was Intended to intimate that second marriages, though tolerated, were not sanctioned by tho church. So late however as the 12th century, in a docrotal epistle of Alexander III. to tho bishop of Norwich, the pope says, " We understand from your letter that a man and woman mutually accepted one another without the presence of any priest, and without the observance of those solemnities which the Anglican church is wont to obeervc, and that before consummation of this marriage he had contracted marriage with another woman, and consummated that marriage. We think right to answer, that if the man and the first
woman accepted one another de prtesenti, saying one to another, 'I accept thee as mine, and I accept thee as mine,' although the wonted solemnities were not observed, and although the first marriage was not consummated, yet the woman ought to be restored to her husband ; since after such consent he neither should nor could marry another." Private marriages, designated clandestine marriages by the clergy, continued to be valid till the Council of Trent, which, after anathema tising those who should say that private marriages theretofore contracted by the eole consent of the parties were void, decreed, contrary to the opinion of 56 prelates, that thenceforward all marriages not contracted in the presence of a priest and two or three witnesses should be void.
This decree, being considered se a usurpation upon the rights of the sovereign power, which alone can prescribe whether any and what formalities shall be required to be added to the consent of the parties in order to constitute a valid marriage, has never been received in France and some other Roman Catholic countries.
A marriage was clandestine if contracted otherwise than in public, that is, in fade ecdesite ; and it was called an irregular marriage if it was clandestine, or if, though not clandestine, it was contracted without the benediction of a priest in the form prescribed by the rubric, the intervention of a priest having latterly been required in all cases, even though one of the parties were a widower or a widow. Clandestinity and irregularity subjected the parties to ecclesiastical censures, but did not affect the validity of the marriage.