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Conclusion
Synopsis
Behind all the detail, this book has developed some simple and
straightforward ideas which can be summarized in a small space as
a series of propositions.
Marriage symbolism is common in many religions. There are
some close parallels between medieval marriage symbolism and
the marriage/love symbolism of Hinduism in particular, but the
parallels are still closer with the ancient Hebrew idea of the people
of Israel as spouse of God, an idea which was of course a lineal
ancestor of Christian marriage symbolism.
Marriage symbolism was not preached to a mass public in the
early Middle Ages. Preaching became a system of mass communication
in the age of the friars and marriage symbolism was highly
developed in a genre of preaching from the thirteenth century onwards.
Only then did preaching about marriage symbolism reach
a huge public and become a social force in the same kind of way
that radio is today (that is, not so powerful as television, but still
a mass medium to be reckoned with). In marriage preaching the
symbolism rested securely on a literal-sense idea of marriage as
good and holy.
Augustine of Hippo developed remarks from the New Testament
into a strongly stated theology of marriage symbolism, deriving
indissolubility from the analogy between human marriage and the
union of Christ and the Church. A wide gulf separated this theory
from social practice for centuries, but by the end of the Middle Ages
it had turned into a social force underpinning the unbreakability of
the marriage bond.
Marriage symbolism conditioned the rules about who could become
a priest. It changed the meaning of wedding ritual from
within. In the thirteenth century it helped reclassify a class of minor
clerics as laymen.
Consummation was central to the idea of marriage in the later
medieval centuries. Symbolic reasoning going back to Hincmar