>Is this right? I always associated the institution of marriage as a
>sarcament with Cluny.
I cannot say too often:
the Church has no power to institute sacraments.
Sacraments are instituted by Christ.
If the Church, as opposed to Christ,
has instituted something,
it is not a sacrament.
When one talks about marriage being recognised as a sacrament, this only
makes sense in the context of a developing sacramental theology. Marriage
was, from New Testament times, described as a sacrament - it is so described
in Ephesians. But there was very little discussion as to what constituted a
sacrament, until the twelfth century. In the early Church, the word
sacrament has a variety of meanings and is rather a weak work.
'Sacramentum' is used several times in the Vulgate, to translate Gk.
'mysterion' (cf. Colossians 1:27, Ephesians 5:32 etc.) It is never however
defined.
St Augustine thought in terms of about thirty 'sacraments' - virtually every
distinctively Christian action he could think of, including the recitation
of the Lord's Prayer and of the Creed.
Hugh of St Victor (d. 1142) thought in terms of an even larger number of
sacraments, divided into three groups.
It was Peter Lombard (d. 1155) who arrived at the presently accepted list of
seven sacraments, limiting it to those which can be shown to have been
instituted by Christ (Sentences, Book 4, dist. 1, no. 2). The seven are,
Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Unction, Orders and
Matrimony. This list was accepted by Aquinas and formally affirmed at the
councils of Florence (1439) and Trent (1545-63).
So far as I am aware, Cluny had nothing whatever to do with the matter.
Elasticus.
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