Note 963 — Chapter VII · RISE OF ECCLESIASTICAL MARRIAGE: THE CHURCH ACCEPTS THE LAY CONTRACT AND CEREMONIAL

In all the early rituals the benediction is not allowed in case of a second marriage, at any rate unless the first marriage of one or both of the parties had not been blessed by the priest; and long paragraphs of the service are devoted to explaining the alleged reasons for this, and to the still harder task of showing how a second marriage can be a sacrament and yet less holy than a first marriage. This dilemma led to curious compromises, as in the service used at the marriage of King Ethelwulf with Judith, his father's widow, in the year 856; see the service in Pertz, Monumenta, leg., I, 420; and Dieckhoff, Die kirch. Trauung, 73, 74. On this topic compare the York, Sarum, and Hereford rituals in Surtees Society Publications, LXIII, 35-37, Appendix, 23, 24, 117, 118; and the Sarum (Salisbury) ritual in Maskell, Monumenta ritualia, I, 71-74; also Rituale romanum Pauli Quinti, 198; Martene, De ritibus, II, 121, 122; Excerp. Ecgberti, 91: in Thorpe, II, 110; Aelfric's Canons, 9; ibid., II, 347; Friedberg, Eheschliessung, 36; Schmid, Gesetze, 562; Bohn, Pol. Cyc., III, 319. Selden, Uxor ebraica, II, c. 30, maintains that the practice of celebrating nuptials before a priest was not general among primitive Christians. This is declared an error by Bingham, Origines, VII, 328 ff., who, like Dieckhoff and most ecclesiastical writers, holds that the custom was general and obligatory.