Note 1002 — Chapter VII · RISE OF ECCLESIASTICAL MARRIAGE: THE CHURCH ACCEPTS THE LAY CONTRACT AND CEREMONIAL

"Tunc sacerdos det eam viro dicens verbis latinis: Et ego conjungo vos in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen": quoted in Sohm, op. cit., 165, 166, from a Rouen ritual of the fourteenth century in Martene's collection. Dieckhoff, Die kirch. Trauung, 82 ff., takes a different view. The Rouen ritual, he holds, is not a typical service. The priest does not now gain an essentially new function at the nuptials. His office has always been necessary to a Christian marriage. In addition to his original power of joining in wedlock, he merely adds the function exercised by the father or guardian in the formal tradition. Moreover, Dieckhoff's position is supported by some rituals, which seem to show that development on the continent was not uniform in this regard. Cf. Scheurl, Entwicklung, 110 ff., who discusses the divergent views of Sohm and Friedberg.

The last stage of evolution has not yet been reached in the eastern church. In the presence of the priest the bride and groom betroth and give themselves in marriage. The priest merely prays and blesses: Sohm, Zur Trauungsfrage, 19 ff.; Zhishman, Das Eherecht, 128, 135, 692 n. 1, 694 n. 1. For the marriage ritual of the Greek church see Martene, De ritibus, II, 140-44.