indeed, probably was not in origin, as some have supposed, a mark of servitude, but rather a form of bride-price, or arrha, that is to say, earnest money on the contract of marriage and so the symbol of it.[322] At first a sign of the bride’s purchase, it was not till later that the ring acquired the significance of subjection to the bridegroom, and that significance, later in the Middle Ages, was further emphasized by other ceremonies.  Thus in England the York and Sarum manuals in some of their forms direct the bride, after the delivery of the ring, to fall at her husband’s feet, and sometimes to kiss his right foot.  In Russia, also, the bride kissed her husband’s feet.  At a later period, in France, this custom was attenuated, and it became customary for the bride to let the ring fall in front of the altar and then stoop at her husband’s feet to pick it up.[323] Feudalism carried on, and by its military character exaggerated, these Teutonic influences.  A fief was land held on condition of military service, and the nature of its influence on marriage is implied in that fact.  The woman was given with the fief and her own will counted for nothing.[324]

The Christian Church in the beginning accepted the forms of marriage already existing in those countries in which it found itself, the Roman forms in the lands of Latin tradition and the German forms in Teutonic lands.  It merely demanded (as it also demanded for other civil contracts, such as an ordinary sale) that they should be hallowed by priestly benediction.  But the marriage was recognized by the Church even in the absence of such benediction.  There was no special religious marriage service, either in the East or the West, earlier than the sixth century.  It was simply the custom for the married couple, after the secular ceremonies were completed, to attend the church, listen to the ordinary service and take the sacrament.  A special marriage service was developed slowly, and it was no part of the real marriage.  During the tenth century (at all events in Italy and France) it was beginning to become customary to celebrate the first part of the real nuptials, still a purely temporal act, outside the church door.  Soon this was followed by the regular bride-mass, directly applicable to the occasion, inside the church.  By the twelfth century the priest directed the ceremony, now involving an imposing ritual, which began outside the church and ended with the bridal mass inside.  By the thirteenth century, the priest, superseding the guardians of the young couple, himself officiated through the whole ceremony.  Up to that time marriage had been a purely private business transaction.  Thus, after more than a millennium of Christianity, not by law but by the slow growth of custom, ecclesiastical marriage was established.[325]