Marriages at the church door did occur during the Middle Ages, but most
often they were not "celebrated" at all. Marriages did not REQUIRE the
blessing of a priest before the reforms instituted at the Council of Trent,
when Alexander III's rules for the formation of marriage were modified.
Briefly, Christians could legally marry in two ways (so long as there was
no diriment impediment, like consanguinity): by the exchange of a form of
words spoken in the present tense (_in verbo de presenti_) or by words
spoken in the future tense followed by sexual intercourse. Many
communities liked to have public ceremony, but none was essential to the
formation of a marriage bond. As Charles Donahue, Jr. and others have
shown, many interesting complications arose as a result of the very liberal
twelfth-century policy. Before the 12th century, every diocese or region
had its own ideas about what constituted a marriage (ceremony, ring,
parental consent, priestly blessing, witnesses), but Alex3 decided that
these were inessentials.
In England (where the Reformation and counter-Reformation took on different
forms, obviously) one could still marry by the exchanges described above,
one of the many things that Shakespeare plays with in _As You Like It_,
when Rosalind/Ganymede marries Orlando in words of the present tense. This
would have been/is titillating and fun, but is not/would not have been a
valid marriage, since one of the participants was not revealing his/her/his
true status (_aetas_, another diriment impediment).
Carol Symes
Tutor in History and Literature
Harvard University
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