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The Christianization of Marriage Ritual in Late Antiquity: Ecclesiastical Rites at the Bridal Chamber*

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The Christianization of Marriage Ritual in Late Antiquity: Ecclesiastical Rites at the Bridal Chamber* Gabriel Radle THe Christianization of Marriage Ritual in Late Antiquity: Ecclesiastical Rites at the Bridal Chamber* Ancient literary works suggest that rites for marriage are as old as human civi- lization.1 Anthropologists claim this is because marriage is a true “life crisis” moment.2 THat is to say, in traditional societies, participating in marriage results in a dramatic alteration of an individual’s identity – their family ties, sexual norms, social responsibilities, etc. Across ancient societies, marriage was a rite of passage that was generally accomplished in multiple stages, including match-making arrangements, formal betrothal, and publicly-recognized cohabitation – usually carried out in that order and often with some amount of time (whether great or small) between each step. Each one of these stages tended to employ rituals rich in symbolism and social significance.3 Any discussion of early Christian marriage rites must attend to this simple fact: marriage, together with its ritual formation, is a human activity that existed long before the Church. THus, while early Christian authors identified marriage as a mysterion, or sacramentum,4 it must be underscored that this was primarily a theological claim applied to an old human social institution. What patristic authors declared about the sacramentality of marriage was precisely a soterio- logical and eschatological conviction: God’s action through his incarnation in Jesus Christ brought about a new creation that perfected and went beyond Eden, * I would like to thank the organizers and participants of the conference “Marriage and/as Metaphor in Christian and Jewish Traditions”, especially Aldegonde Brenninkmeijer-Werhahn and Oded Irshai, for the fruitful exchange of research and scholarly fellowship that this opportunity provided, and which the present article has benefited from. 1 See, for example, the oldest known love poems that allude to sacred marriage, as translated and discussed in Y. Sefati: Love Songs in Sumerian Literature: Critical Edition of the Dumuzi- Inanna Songs, Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1998. 2 C. Bell: Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 94-102, and bibliography. 3 On these stages and accompanying rituals in the ancient Greek context, see A.-M. Vérilhac/ C. Vial: Le mariage grec du Vie siècle av. J.-C. à l’époque d’Auguste, Athens: Ecole Française d’Athènes, 1998; J. Oakley/R. Sinos: THe Wedding in Ancient Athens, Madison, WI: Univer- sity of Wisconsin Press, 1993. For Rome, see K. Hersch: THe Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 4 Paul uses the word mysterion when describing the analogy of Christ’s marriage to the Church in Eph 5,31-32. For further reading on patristic discussions of the sacramentality of marriage, see for example. P. Reynolds: Marriage in the Western Church, Leiden: Brill, 2001; D. Hunter: Marriage in the Early Church, Minneapolis: Wipf and Stock, 1992. Marriage, Families & Spirituality 26, 49-64. doi: 10.2143/INT.26.1.3288949 49 © 2020 by INTAMS/Peeters. All rights reserved Marriage, Families & Spirituality 26 (2020) where marriage was first willed by God. THus, many early Christians viewed marriage as a vehicle for salvation and union with God, whether through real marriages with an actual human spouse or via allegories of marriage that likened salvation and the eschatological age to a nuptial union with God.5 THe symbolic potential of marriage was readily employed by early Christians in reference to the identity of Christ. Already in the first century – including among the evangelists, esp. Matthew and John, as well as in Paul – we see the tendency to view the relationship between Christ and the Church through the lens of a spousal rela- tionship (e.g. Mt 25,1-13; Jn 3,27-30; Eph 5,25-33), which of course represents a Christian development of Jewish exegetical trends, most concretely exemplified in interpretations of the Song of Songs,6 with early antecedents already in Hosea.7 THe analogy is no accident. Weddings triggered the biggest feasts known to the ancient world,8 and their entire focus was the uniting of two people together. THe joy and celebration of a wedding – and even the sexual union of a bride and groom – were an obvious choice for anyone looking for an icon of paradise and union with God.9 For all of this theologizing (and we might add debating10) over the nature of marriage (both real and imagined) within early Christianity, the extant theologi- cal and moral discussions rarely venture into proclamations about any norms by which Christians should form their marriage unions. Few prescriptions about a “Christian way” to get married exist for the early centuries. THis silence leaves 5 THe bibliography on this latter topic is vast. Examples include, inter alia, A. Rush: “Death as a Spiritual Marriage: Individual and Ecclesial Eschatology”, in: Vigiliae Christianae 26 (1972), 81-101; G. Anderson: “Celibacy or Consummation in the Garden? Reflections on Early Jewish and Christian Interpretations of the Garden of Eden”, in: THe Harvard THeological Review 82 (1989), 121-148; S. Brock: “THe Bridal Chamber of Light: A Distinctive Feature of the Syriac Liturgical Tradition”, in: THe Harp 18 (2005), 179-191; E. Clark: “THe Celibate Bridegroom and His Virginal Brides: Metaphor and the Marriage of Jesus in Early Christian Ascetic Exegesis”, in: Church History 77 (2008), 1-25; S. Klaver: “THe Brides of Christ: ‘THe Women in Procession’ in the Baptistery of Dura-Europos”, in: Early Christian Art 9 (2012-2013), 63-78. 6 For a review of scholarly opinions about ancient Jewish interpretations of the Song of Songs as a metaphor for the love between God and Israel, see the discussion and bibliography in D. Stern: “Ancient Jewish Interpretation of the Song of Songs in a Comparative Context”, in: N. Dohrmann/D. Stern (eds.): Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Cultural Exchange: Comparative Exegesis in Context, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, 87-107. 7 G. Hill: “Origin of the Marriage Metaphor”, in: Hebrew Studies 23 (1982), 169-171. 8 As Plutarch writes in Moralia, Quest. conv. IV.3, “of all the occasions for a banquet, none is more conspicuous or talked about than a wedding”. See P. Clement/H. Hoffleit: Plutarch: Moralia Volume VIII, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969, 335. 9 On the ancient religious tendency to use marriage as a metaphor of the divine-human encoun- ter, cf. M. Nissinen/R. Uro (eds.): Sacred Marriages: THe Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity, University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2008. 10 See, for example, D. Hunter: Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: THe Jovinianist Controversy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007; A. Guffey: “Motivations for Encratite Practices in Early Christian Literature”, in: THe Journal of THeological Studies 65 (2014), 515-549; G. Anderson: “Celibacy or Consummation in the Garden? Reflections on Early Jewish and Christian Interpretations of the Garden of Eden”, in: Harvard THeological Review 82/2 (1989), 121-148 50 G. Radle us to wonder if we might take the so-called Epistle “of Mathetes” and apply it to the wedding ceremony when it claims in the second century that Christians “marry just like everyone else” (γαμοῦσιν ὡς πάντες).11 In the absence of detailed descriptions of the early Christian marriage ceremony, we must piece together the echoes, hints, and allusions to weddings scattered across multiple sources in order to gain an idea of what marriage ritual among Christian communities looked like. Furthermore, this puzzle must be compared with the surviving evidence for non-Christian weddings in the same period, which can both help interpret refer- ences to ritual within the Christian sources, and also signal where Christian wedding practice may or may not have diverged from that of non-Christians. Late antique Christian texts reveal that many of the stages of the ancient pre- Christian marriage ceremony continued to be followed by Mediterranean peoples long after their adoption of Christianity. Not only were such traditions continued, but many of them, from betrothal arrangements to the customs of wedding banquets, gradually took on Christian interpretations and began to include the formal participation of clergy. In this short article, I will examine one of these moments, namely, the rituals performed at the bridal chamber, to inaugurate and accompany the couple’s consummation. Beyond the actual sexual intercourse itself, marital consummation in the ancient Mediterranean world could include a host of rites, such as symbolic torch processions to the bedchamber, rituals for bedding the bride, and the performance of song and dance outside the chamber before and even during the consummation. For the purpose of brevity, I will concentrate my focus here primarily on the practice of offering public speech and prayer at the bridal chamber immediately before the couple’s sexual contact therein. Speech and Prayer at Consummation Among Non-Christians in Late Antiquity Menander Rhetor, writing from Athens at the end of the third century, leaves detailed instructions on how to deliver speeches at weddings. While not compre- hensive in his treatment of the ancient wedding ceremony, his instructions to rhetors nevertheless single out two moments of particular ritual importance for a late antique “pagan” wedding. THe first of these speeches is delivered at a non- specified time during the celebration, possibly at the banquet, which was the longest portion of a wedding, at which guests feasted, musicians entertained, and family and friends offered salutations.M enander instructs that these wedding speeches should extol the families of the bride and groom, who were evidently in attendance. Ancient sources imply that wedding feasts were typically hosted 11 Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus 5.6. While the phrase alone is ambiguous whether it refers to the actual marriage ritual, it seems more likely the author originally intended to refer simply to the general act of getting married.
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