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154 Chapter 3
the end of the whole prayer we find the following: ‘Note that the
clause“OGod,who...withsuchanexcellentmystery”to“O
God, through whom woman is joined to man” is not said in second
marriages.’
The Sarum manual cites Urban III’s decree (X. 4. 21. 3) about
the blessing of second marriages by the priest in such a way as to
imply that the decree was directed only at this one short clause.
The explanation given is that ‘the flesh that has been blessed draws
to itself the flesh that has not been blessed’ (56 Collins).
The manual has not finished. It seems it cannot leave the topic
of second marriages alone, for there is plenty more. The author
quotes pseudo-Ambrose’s negative comments about second marriages,
remarks that there are a number of blessings associated with
marriage, from that at the entrance to that of the marriage bed in
the evening, and returns to the question of which blessing should
be omitted.
Now his attention is on the prayer beginning ‘O God who by the
power of your might . . .’, which includes two more ‘O God who . . .’
clauses, including the one printed above in bold type. According to
this long rubric, each of these ‘O God who . . .’ clauses is a separate
blessing. One imagines, then, that the priest would make the sign
of the cross three times over the couple during this prayer.
It is the middle ‘O God who . . .’ blessing that must be omitted in
second marriages, we are told, and presumably on those occasions
the sign of the cross would be made only twice. The prohibition on
blessing such marriages has been reduced to the omission of this
short clause: ‘O God, who consecrated conjugal union [copulam]
with such an excellent mystery, so that you might prefigure the
sacrament of Christ and the Church in the covenant of a marriage.’
The reason for narrowing it down to this point is that only this
clause was about the symbolism of Christ’s union with the Church.
To put it another way: the interpretation of the prohibition’s rationale
as symbolic had the practical ritual consequence of retaining
almost all of the words of the marriage service apart from this brief
clause. It is a symptom that the symbolism is not just epiphenomenal,
not merely a surface coating: it has a·ected the social meaning
of marriage.
No accident, then, that the manual cites at this point the decretal
‘plures benedictiones sunt in nuptiis celebrandis .scilicet. in introitu ecclesie et
super pallium et post missam et super thorum in sero’ (56 Collins).