Examining how marriage acquired a specifically Christian identity in the Western Church from the patristic through Carolingian periods, this text shows how theologians came to regard marriage as an ecclesiastical institution and how they developed a Christian theology of marriage.
This book examines the ways in which Western bishops and theologians during the first millennium A.D. affirmed that marriage is holy condition, and it shows how the doctrine of indissolubility both dominated and limited the Western Church's conception of marriage. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.