This is the eleventh in a series on marriage, love, and God.
Usually, marriage is referred to as a contract. The church definition of marriage that prevailed from the thirteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth was this:
Marriage is an indissoluble bond between a man and wife arising from the mutual exchange of authority over one another’s bodies for the procreation and proper nurture of children.
The contract of marriage is the mutual exchange by a man and wife of their bodies for perpetual use in the procreation and proper nurture of children.[1]
When I first read this years ago, my first reaction was “yecch!” I imagine you feel the same. Nevertheless, this definition of marriage was shared by the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant churches for most of that time. In my book, Made In Heaven?, chapter 3, I trace the development of the idea of marriage as contract. Basically, it was a concession to the mindset of the barbarian invaders of the dying Roman empire, for whom women in general and wives in particular were considered more like cattle than anything. Marriage involved a dowry (property the woman brought to the marriage from her father). Its purpose was children, especially boys, and therefore its essence was sex. If a wife displeased her husband, he could divorce her at will. The whole arrangement…
