Note 959 — Chapter VII · RISE OF ECCLESIASTICAL MARRIAGE: THE CHURCH ACCEPTS THE LAY CONTRACT AND CEREMONIAL

Pope Nicholas (A. D. 860), in his replies to the Bulgarians, who had asked his counsel concerning marriage rites, says concerning the nuptials: "First of all they are placed in the church with oblations, which they have to make to God by the hands of the priest, and so at last they receive the benediction and the heavenly veil." On this letter see Selden, Uxor ebraica, Lib. II, c. xxv, 179; Martene, De ritibus, I, 124, 125; Dieckhoff, Die kirch. Trauung, 47 ff.; Beauchet, Étude, 34. From this letter and the statements of the Fathers concerning the benediction, already mentioned, Meyrick, in Dict. Christ. Antiq., II, 1106, 1107, concludes, "There is no reasonable doubt that the place in which Christians were ordinarily married was a church, so soon as it became safe and customary for them to meet in churches for religious purposes, and that the way in which they were ordinarily married was by a religious ceremony," though especially in the East (Chrysostom, Hom. xlviii, in Gen., c. 24) the religious ceremony often took place in houses. But so far as western Christendom is concerned, the sources show that marriage in church was of slow growth. Jeaffreson, Brides and Bridals, I, 48, 49, doubts whether the Anglo-Saxons always celebrated marriage in their homes.