Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/114

 Marriage necessarily passed under this governing tendency. It became in the hands of the mediæval moralists a sacrament, one of the Seven Sacraments; all its incidents were frankly subject to ecclesiastical control; it was declared to be absolutely indissoluble; divorce from the bond of marriage was totally prohibited. A theory of marriage was expressed in the canons, which reflected the ideal of sacerdotalist thinkers rather than the wisdom of practical statesmen. This theory was formally and finally bound on the Roman Church by the Council of Trent. The contractual and personal aspects of marriage are completely subordinated to the ecclesiastical. The State and the individual are overridden by the Church. The Imperial element and the Teutonic element are absorbed by the ecclesiastical. In the Catechism of the Tridentine Council it is actually laid down that the presence of a priest is indispensable for the validity of a Christian marriage.

Such theoretical rigidity is not for this world.