07/10/2026
A little history of medieval marriage:
Although marriage was in some ways a secular practice, by the 9th century it was being regulated by the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which gradually added rules—no bigamy, no marriage to relatives (including god-kin), no divorce, annulment allowed in limited circumstances. By the 12th century, having established it as a sacrament, canon law increasingly became interested in what actions constituted a binding marriage.
The formula settled on had to include s*xless marriages (since Mary and Joseph had never had s*x), so it was agreed that marriage could be contracted in 2 ways: an exchange of words of the present tense (“I marry you”) or words of the future tense (“I will marry you”) followed by in*******se. Priestly blessing was not mandatory.
But this created lots of problems with clandestine marriages. Episcopal courts often had to deal with cases of disputes about marriage, and there was a lot of minute attention given to what the exact words said were, whether s*x came before or after, if there were witnesses, and so on. It was theoretically possible after a man died, for a second woman to emerge claiming to have had a prior clandestine marriage and a child, which if proven in court would invalidate a second marriage and bastardize the children of the second marriage.
By the 13th century, to reduce this problem, bishops began to press people to marry in a church in a formal, public ceremony with witnesses. Parish priests were encouraged to announce the banns for three weeks ahead of time, to publicize the upcoming nuptials and allow prior spouses to come forward and object. (That’s the origins of the Hollywood cliché about “If anyone knows a reason why these two should not be joined in marriage, let him speak now or forever hold his peace”—that formula I think is Anglican). If the banns were announced and no objections raised at the time, church courts tended to reject claims of prior marriage without strong evidence.
So it’s not quite as simple as Church authorities trying to seize power. It’s also a response to increasingly complicated questions of who was and wasn’t married, who was eligible for marriage, who would be allowed to separate and remarry, who could inherit property, and how to square social practice with various Biblical statements. Pushing it toward formal ceremony solved a lot of problems.
