Art, obsession, and identity
To chart the history of marriage is to delve back nearly 4,000 years to Mesopotamia, when the first instances of wedlock uniting one man and one woman were recorded. But what exactly does the institution of marriage mean, and how has it evolved over the centuries?
Click through and find out how and when we began tying the knot.
Before marriage as we know it became a legally and socially sanctioned union, family groups in prehistory consisted of up to 30 people with several male leaders, numerous women shared by them, and children.
The earliest recorded evidence of marriage ceremonies uniting one woman and one man dates from around 2350 BCE, in Mesopotamia.
In time, the act of marriage became a respected ritual. In fact, people who didn't marry were penalized outcasts. Pictured is the famous portrait of the baker Terentius Neo and his wife, unearthed at Pompeii and now displayed at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli.
Marriage during the time of the ancient Romans and Greeks had less of a basis in personal relationships and more in social responsibility. In fact, the goal and focus of marriage in antiquity was intended to be reproduction, making marriage an issue of public interest. Pictured is the marriage of Alexander the Great and Roxana in 327 BCE.
Prior to the first millennium CE, a union between a man and a woman was seen as a good way of ensuring your family's safety. Intermarriage between members of different tribes took place frequently. This way you expanded the circle of people you could trust and rely upon during time of trouble or famine.
The Anglo-Saxons, for example, employed marriage as a strategic tool to establish diplomatic and trade ties. Peaceful relationships, fruitful trading accords, and mutual obligations could all be established with others by marrying them.
The association between marriage and fertility was strong. The etching on the lid of this Bronze Age urn is thought to represent the sacred spring marriage of the fertility goddess, identified by the stalk of wheat, and the fertility god (on the left).
The tradition of exchanging rings dates back 3,000 years, and it was the Egyptian pharaohs who first used rings to represent eternity. Later, the Greeks adopted the tradition of giving rings to their lovers to represent devotion.
Initially, marriage often involved multiple partners, usually female. The primary purpose was to bind women to men, and thus guarantee that a man's children were truly his biological heirs. In many ancient cultures, if wives failed to produce offspring, their husbands could hand them back and marry someone else.
Between the 6th and 11th centuries, marriages were invariably arranged. Rich parents in particular were keen to marry off their children to somebody as least as wealthy and powerful as themselves, and a carefully arranged union was useful for solidifying status, wealth, and power.
While marriage during this period was all about securing a political or economic advantage, one man, the Benedictine monk Gratian (died c. 1155), believed that the consent of the couple mattered more than their family's approval. Gratian is credited with underpinning consent as a central tenet of formalized marriage in his canon law textbook, Decretum Gratiani. The book, published in 1140, formed the foundation for the Church's marriage policies in the 12th century.
Monogamy became central to the notion of Western marriages towards the end of the 9th century. During this time, Christian churches began to take a more active role in the marriage process. By the 12th century, Roman Catholic theologians and writers referred to marriage as a sacrament, a sacred ceremony tied to experiencing God's presence.
As the Roman Catholic Church became a powerful institution in Europe, the blessings of a priest became a necessary step for a marriage to be legally recognized. However, it wasn't until the Council of Trent in 1563, prompted by the Protestant Reformation, that marriage was officially deemed one of the seven sacraments and the sacramental nature of marriage was written into canon law.
The views of Protestants and Catholics notwithstanding, women were still treated as a piece of property possessed by their husbands. The wealth, property, or land owned by a woman or her family was considered to belong to the man after marriage.
Slowly throughout the 16th century and with church blessings, the status of the wife improved. Men began showing more respect for their other halves. But the church still deemed men the head of the household, with their wives deferring to their wishes.
There are many versions of the exchange of wedding vows, but those traditionally recited date back to Thomas Cranmer, the architect of English Protestantism, and his 'Book of Common Prayer,' published in 1549, the title page of which is pictured here. It contains basically the words we are all familiar with— "to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer" etc.
The Clandestine Marriage Act of 1753 marked the beginning of state involvement in marriage. It was the first statutory legislation in England and Wales to require a formal ceremony of marriage whereby couples were obliged to get married in a church or chapel by a minister, otherwise the union was void. A formal marriage announcement was also required.
Throughout the 1800s, marriages were still often arranged (pictured). But it was during this time that society started to encourage young people to select their marriage partners based on their romantic attachments. The idea of being in love with the person you married was beginning to take hold, particularly in England and in France.
The Marriage Act of 1836 allowed for non-religious civil marriages to be held in register offices. Furthermore, this liberalizing moment also meant nonconformists and Catholic couples could marry in their own places of worship, according to their own rites.
The 1800s also witnessed the passing of another piece of landmark legislation, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857. Before 1858, divorce was rare. The 1857 act reformed the law on divorce by establishing a model of marriage based on contract rather than sacrament. Suddenly divorce could be carried out via legal process, though the proceedings were too expensive for most to contemplate.
Despite the passing of the Matrimonial Causes Act, the onus was still on the wife to prove "aggravated" adultery—that their husbands had been guilty of cruelty, desertion, bigamy, and other offenses. Incredibly, it was only with the passing in the UK of the Divorce Reform Act of 1969 that couples could cite marital breakdown as the reason for the split.
The Married Women's Property Act 1882 provided that wages and property that a wife earned through her own work or inherited would be regarded as her separate property.
The Victorians believed marriage should be based on love or companionship. Indeed, it was during this era that traditional social boundaries governing a union—for example, family-arranged marriages—were dismissed as outdated and distasteful. Exemplifying this outlook was Queen Victoria herself, whose marriage to Prince Albert was often cited as the perfect "love match." Pictured is a marriage taking place in London in 1860.
One of the primary reasons for getting married had always been to procreate and raise a family. But by the late 19th century, women began having fewer and fewer children. Indeed, couples started using rudimentary methods of birth control to limit pregnancies. During the Lambeth Conference of bishops in London in 1930, the Anglican Church cautiously allowed the use of contraception in marriage. The Roman Catholic Church reacted to this news by reiterating that it felt that contraception was a moral sin and, on New Years Eve 1930, officially banned any "artificial" means of birth control.
Marriage has adapted throughout time. The first ceremonies under the Civil Partnerships Act 2004 took place in the United Kingdom the following year and allowed same-sex couples and couples of whom one spouse had changed gender to live in legally-recognized intimate partnerships similar to marriage. The Act was amended to include opposite-sex couples in 2019.
In 2013, The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act was introduced in the United Kingdom. In 2015, the US Supreme Court made same-sex marriages legal in all 50 states.
Marriage is considered a cultural universe, with numerous ways in which a couple can enter into matrimony. And there are dozens of different traditions associated with marriage followed throughout the world.
Ultimately, however, and regardless of how a couple embrace wedlock, marriage is a bond between two people that involves responsibility and legalities, as well as commitment and challenge.
These core principles remain, where two people find in each other a soul mate, lover, possible co-parent, and best friend.
Sources: (BBC) (Ince) (The Week) (Britannica) (The Gospel Coalition) (Project Canterbury) (American Experience)
See also: Ways to maintain a strong marriage
Things you didn't know about the origins of marriage
How and when did we start tying the knot?
LIFESTYLE Society
To chart the history of marriage is to delve back nearly 4,000 years to Mesopotamia, when the first instances of wedlock uniting one man and one woman were recorded. But what exactly does the institution of marriage mean, and how has it evolved over the centuries?
Click through and find out how and when we began tying the knot.