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When the Present Became Future: The Ambiguity behind the Consent in the Marriage Rite of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2018

Bryan Spinks
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Abstract

In a preparatory essay for the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation 2011, on the topic of marriage, Thomas Cooper questioned the long-held view that the question of consent in the Prayer Book tradition was derived from the older betrothal vow. Arguing from the Latin of the Sarum Use, ‘Volo’, he argued that ‘Will you ..?’ and ‘I will’ reflects the Old English present tense and is part of the marriage vow. This article questions Cooper’s argument, and instead argues that the use of ‘will’ as a future tense already in Middle English and used in betrothals pre-dates the Latin text. As a result, the separation of the consent (understood as an immediate future intention) from the qvow as in the 1979 American Book of Common Prayer and the Church of England Common Worship 2000 is entirely justified.

Keywords

betrothalde presentide futuromarriagevow
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , May 2018 , pp. 23 - 32
Copyright
© The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2018 

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Footnotes

1.

The Revd Dr Bryan Spinks is the Bishop F. Percy Goddard Professor of Liturgical Studies and Pastoral Theology at Yale Divinity School.

References

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6. Boethius, Ælfred, De Consol. Philos X, in Samuel Fox, King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon Version of Boethius De Consulatione Philosophiae (London: H.G. Bohn, 1864), p. 28 Google Scholar. My thanks to Dr Hugo Mendez for these references and advice on the change from Old English to Middle English, to modern English.

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8. See, for example, first person usage in: Heuser, W., ‘With an O and an I’, Anglia 27 (1904), p. 287 Google Scholar; Thomas Hampton to Thomas Stonor, 31 August 1462 in Carpenter, Christine (ed.), Kingsford’s Stonor Letters & Papers 1290–1483 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 59-60 Google Scholar.

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19. Stevenson, Kenneth, ‘Marriage’ in Paul Bradshaw (ed.), The SCM Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship (London: SCM Press, 2002), p. 300 Google Scholar. My italics. Cooper, ‘Wilt thou have this woman?’, refers to this in note 19, but only to the first part of the sentence. See also Stevenson’s comment in ‘Cranmer’s Marriage Vow: Its Place in the Tradition’, in Ayris, Paul and Selwyn, David (eds.), Thomas Cranmer: Churchman and Scholar (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1993), pp. 189-198 Google Scholar (189) where consent is derived from the old form of betrothal.

20. Manuale et processionale ad usum insignis ecclesiae Eboracensis (Surtees Society 63; Durham: Andrews, 1875), p. 26.

21. York Manual, BL, ESTC S108611. Accessed on Early English Books Online, 6 January 2015.

22. Winroth, Anders, ‘Marital Consent in Gratian’s Decretum ’, in Kathleen Cushing and Martin Brett (eds.), Readers, Texts and Compilers in the Earlier Middle Ages: Studies in Medieval Canon Law in Honour of Linda Fowler-Magerl (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 111–21Google Scholar.

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