Page:Fourie v Minister of Home Affairs (SCA).djvu/54

Rh the publication of banns before the church ceremony was insisted on and this was made the general law of the Church by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Only marriages which took place ‘in the face of the Church’ were regarded as ‘regular’ marriages.

But marriages resting on the consent of the parties alone, so-called ‘irregular’ marriages, were nevertheless valid although the parties thereto were subject to ecclesiastical and secular penalties. Secret or clandestine marriages, which often gave rise to great scandal, were thus valid. Eventually the need for reform became irresistible and at its Twenty Fourth Session in 1563 the Council of Trent passed a decree, the famous Decretum Tametsi, which, after reciting that clandestine marriages had been held valid, though blameworthy, declared that for the future all should be deemed invalid unless banns were published and the parties declared their consent before a priest and at least two witnesses. The decrees of the Council of Trent did not become law in the Northern Netherlands but the principles of the Decretum Tametsi were adopted in the various provinces thereof. The Political Ordinance of 1 April 1580, which was enacted by the States of Holland, provided in section 3 for banns to be published, on three successive Sundays or market-days, in church or in the council chamber of the city or town where the intending spouses resided,