How old is the tradition of marriage

Ancient Egypt, in theory, gave women equal rights, but it wasn't always practiced. Medieval women, on the other hand, faced dual responsibilities to religion and marriage. One nearly universal marriage tradition is that of the engagement ring. This custom can be dated back to the ancient Romans and Egyptians. It is believed that the roundness of the ring represents eternity. Thus, the wearing of wedding rings symbolizes a union that is to last forever.

In fact, it was once thought that a vein or nerve ran directly from the "ring" finger of the left hand to the heart. Many forms of marriage exist today:. The notion of marriage as a sacrament, and not just a contract, can be traced to St. Paul who compared the relationship of a husband and wife to that of Christ and his church Eph.

Joseph Campbell, in the Power of Myth , mentions that the Twelfth-century troubadours were the first ones who thought of courtly love in the same way we do now. The whole notion of romance didn't exist until medieval times and the troubadours. Pope Nicholas I declared in , "If the consent be lacking in a marriage, all other celebrations, even should the union be consummated, are rendered void. It has remained an important part of both church teaching and marriage laws through the years.

There appeared to be many marriages taking place without witness or ceremony in the 's. The Council of Trent was so disturbed by this, that they decreed in that marriages should be celebrated in the presence of a priest and at least two witnesses. The marriage took on a new role of saving men and women from being sinful and procreating.

Love wasn't a necessary ingredient for marriage during this era. Years later, the Puritans viewed marriage as a very blessed relationship that gave marital partners an opportunity to love and forgive.

It sure did. Marilyn Yalom, a Stanford historian and author of A History of the Wife, credits the concept of romantic love with giving women greater leverage in what had been a largely pragmatic transaction.

Wives no longer existed solely to serve men. The romantic prince, in fact, sought to serve the woman he loved.

Still, the notion that the husband "owned" the wife continued to hold sway for centuries. When colonists first came to America—at a time when polygamy was still accepted in most parts of the world—the husband's dominance was officially recognized under a legal doctrine called "coverture," under which the new bride's identity was absorbed into his. The bride gave up her name to symbolize the surrendering of her identity, and the husband suddenly became more important, as the official public representative of two people, not one.

The rules were so strict that any American woman who married a foreigner immediately lost her citizenship. How did this tradition change? Women won the right to vote. When that happened, in , the institution of marriage began a dramatic transformation.

Suddenly, each union consisted of two full citizens, although tradition dictated that the husband still ruled the home. By the late s, state laws forbidding interracial marriage had been thrown out, and the last states had dropped laws against the use of birth control. By the s, the law finally recognized the concept of marital rape, which up to that point was inconceivable, as the husband "owned" his wife's sexuality. Men who married men Gay marriage is rare in history—but not unknown.

The Roman emperor Nero, who ruled from A. In second- and third-century Rome, homosexual weddings became common enough that it worried the social commentator Juvenal, says Marilyn Yalom in A History of the Wife.

But Yale history professor John Boswell says he's found scattered evidence of homosexual unions after that time, including some that were recognized by Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches. In one 13th-century Greek Orthodox ceremony, the "Order for Solemnisation of Same Sex Union," the celebrant asked God to grant the participants "grace to love one another and to abide unhated and not a cause of scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of the Holy Mother of God and all thy saints.

In Catholicism, it is still believed that the Sacrament of Matrimony is between God, the man and the woman, while the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century CE re-valued marriage as a merely life-long and monogamous covenant between a man and a woman. During the Victorian era romantic love became viewed as the primary requirement for marriage and the rituals of courting became even more formal.

An interested gentleman could not simply walk up to a young lady and begin a conversation. He had to be formally introduced and only after some time was considered appropriate for a man to speak to a lady or for a couple to be seen together.

Once formally introduced, if a gentleman wished to escort a lady home from a social function he would present his card to her and at the end of the evening the lady would review her options and chose who would be her escort!

She would then notify the lucky gentleman by giving him her own card requesting that he escort her home. Almost all courting took place in the girl's home, always under the eye of watchful parents. If the courting progressed, the couple might advance to the front porch. It was also rare for couples to see each other without the presence of a chaperone, and marriage proposals were frequently written. Divorce has existed for about as long as marriage so although we've had a lot of practice at monogamy, we're still not very good at it!

The ancient Greeks liberally allowed divorce, but even then the person requesting divorce had to submit the request to a magistrate, who would determine whether or not the reasons given were sufficient. In contrast divorce was rare in early Roman culture.