Author Philip Reynolds examines how marriage acquired a specifically Christian identity in the Latin West during the first millennium after Christ. Beginning with Jesus, everything the Christians did, including getting married, began a process of differentiation. Christians did not invent marriage, but they did redefine it, thereby hoping to solve the inherent problem of reconciling secular, carnal sexual relations with a holy and sanctified state of being, one that would ultimately become a sacrament. This twofold aspect of the Christian marriage was a formative principle throughout the...

Marriage in the Western Church examines how marriage acquired a specifically Christian identity in the Western Church from the patristic through Carolingian periods. It shows how theologians came to regard marriage as an ecclesiastical institution and how they developed a Christian theology of marriage. The first part of the book deals with marriage and divorce in Roman and Germanic law. Other parts deal with marriage and divorce in ecclesiastical law, with the Latin Fathers' distinction between the divine and human laws of marriage, and with the customary stages by which persons...