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Bigamy 153
Textually, however, the di·erence between first and second marriage
seems to come down to one section of one blessing. The
section is the part in which marriage is compared to the marriage of
Christ and the Church. The canon of the mass is completed and the
Lord’s Prayer is said. In a normal mass the Agnus Dei (‘Lamb of
God who takest away the sins of the world . . .’) and the kiss of peace
would follow, but the marriage liturgy inserts special blessings at
this point, after a prayer to God to help the new union. The words
are as follows, with the blessing that especially concerns us in bold:
Let us pray. O God, who by the power of your might made everything from
nothing, who, after ordering the first elements [exordiis] of the universe, established
for man, made in the image of God, the inseparable assistance of
woman in order that you might give to the female body a beginning from
male flesh, teaching that what it was pleasing to establish from one it
would never be right to put asunder: O God, who consecrated conjugal
union [copulam] with such an excellent mystery so that you might
prefigure [presignares] the sacrament of Christ and the Church in
the covenant [federe] of a marriage [nuptiarum]; O God, through
whom woman is joined to man and a social bond ordained from the beginning
has bestowed on it that blessing which alone was not removed either
by the punishment of original sin or by the sentence of the Flood: look
favourably on this your maidservant who is to be joined in the partnership
of marriage and asks to be strengthened by your protection. May the
bond of love and peace be in her: may she marry as one faithful and chaste
in Christ: and may she continue to follow the example of holy women. May
she be lovable as Rachel was to her husband: wise as Rebecca: long-lived
and faithful as Sara. [The prayer for the bride continues for some lines.]
The Sarum manual seems to di·er from the anonymous author
of the questions in MS BL Royal 11. A. XIV (Document 3. 8)
by omitting still less of the ritual for a first marriage. Instead of
leaving out the whole blessing, the Sarum rite seems to cut only the
few words that I have printed in bold. Before these words in the
manual we find the note: ‘Here begins the sacramental blessing’,
and after it the words ‘Here the sacramental blessing ends’. At
The Latin really requires ‘quod quod’ here, but the second ‘quod’ may have
been omitted because it is inelegant.
I am emending the edition from ‘tua que’ to ‘tuaque’ as the sense requires.
For what follows see too Stevenson, Nuptial Blessing, 80–1. By his account the
Hereford and York rites are in line with the Sarum rite, the only one I have examined
myself. ‘Hic incipit benedictio sacramentalis’ (53 Collins).
‘Hic finitur benedictio sacramentalis’ (54 Collins).