This is a complex question, since it varies from place to place and degree of compliance.
To be clear, I’m referring to the Christian churches (Catholicism and Protestantism, in all its various forms).
My understanding is that Catholic marriage did not necessarily require the presence of a priest (effectively, at least; I would think the doctrine would say otherwise); all that was necessary was for the couple to make a vow to each other. We see this in 17th century Spanish literature, for example, wherein a woman finds herself deflowered and deceived by a man who promised to marry her. In Latin America, it was possible to legitimize one’s children retroactively if they were conceived under a promise of marriage (if a couple made the promise but never actually went through the ceremony at all or not for many years).
Nowadays, in the US, at least, it’s become ‘common knowledge’ that marriage (for Christians) requires a priest or minister (except for the Quakers, apparently, as I learned in the gay marriage thread in GD). When did the connection become…concrete? What about in Europe or Latin America?
So, when did the churches first decree the necessary presence of a priest/ minister; was that decree followed, and when did it become cemented (if at all)?
In the Catholic Church the man and woman confer the sacrament of marriage on each other by their mutual consent. They act as the ministers of the sacrament, **not ** the priest. However, for validity, a marriage must also meet the requirements of “canonical form”. This basically means that the man and woman must exchange their consent in the presence of a priest and two witnesses. The priest is not there to confer the sacrament but to act as the Church’s official witness that the consent of the spouses was given willingly.
I think this requirement for canonical form originated in Europe with the Council of Trent and the *Tametsi * decree (mid 1560s or so?).
All of this applies to the Latin rite within the Catholic Church. I’m not sure about the Eastern rites within the Catholic Church, which have their own canonical rules and regulations.
I have a vague idea that the theology of the sacrament of marriage may be a bit different within the Orthodox churches and that there the priest may actually confer the sacrament, rather than the spouses. I’m sure someone else can give more detail. yBeayf?
I’m not so sure about the various Protestant churches’ views, especially since they generally don’t view marriage as a sacrament.
I should have added that the Catholic Church made the requirements of canonical form mandatory for Catholics throughout the world early in the 20th century with the *Ne Temere * decree.
Yep. In the absence of a priest, a couple can contract a marriage according to natural law, which essentially means it has the same status as marriage did in pre-New Covenant times, but it’s not until a priest performs the Crowning ceremony that a couple is sacramentally married.
An analogy is that it’s still possible for one to immerse oneself in a mikvah, or any clean body of water, and become physically clean, like one did according to the Old Covenant, but it’s only in the sacrament of baptism that one is spiritually regenerated and cleansed of sin.
The Church of England didn’t have a formal requirement for a marriage ceremony until the Marriage Act of 1753 - before that, a couple who had made any sort of public commitment to live together (usually by exchanging rings - what we would call “engagement” rather than “marriage” these days) were regarded as being married by the Church, and the actual ceremony was to give official blessing to a pre-existing state of affairs. The Church courts had the power to issue divorces and declare marriages invalid, but not having gone through the official marriage service in a church didn’t, of itself, count as grounds for anullment - as long as you had made some sort of declaration before witnesses, you were married.
The Catholic Encyclopedia article on Ritual of Marriage addresses this question in the section “Development of Marriage Ritual”.