The freedom to select a spouse and not have one imposed upon us is something we take for granted. Yet we’re still learning about the great personal and social benefits conferred by this medieval upheaval to ancient practice.
Western novels, songs, and films make many assumptions about love and marriage. Yet one underlying expectation continues to shock the non-Western world and once shocked our ancestors. This expectation is dispositive spousal consent: the belief that a marriage is valid because two individuals freely choose one another, rather than because their families or political authorities approve the match.
Traditional marriage existed (and still exists) as a contract between two men: the father of the bride and the father of the groom. The Christian, and later broadly Western, view of marriage introduced a striking reversal. Individuals were understood to possess both the freedom and the responsibility to choose their own spouse. If they consented to marry one another, no additional approval was required. This seemingly modest institutional change represented a profound reallocation of authority within the family and, ultimately, within society.
How did such a radical transformation occur? The Bible does not address spousal consent explicitly, particularly when compared to Christ’s clear teaching on divorce and remarriage, and there is no direct precedent for dispositive spousal consent in Jewish, Roman, or Germanic law. In a new working paper, my coauthor (also my husband) and I argue that the doctrine of spousal consent did not become widely developed or consistently enforced until the 11th and 12th centuries, after the Church had successfully established jurisdiction over family and marriage law. This development, we suggest, followed naturally from the Church’s long-standing insistence that a validly contracted marriage is absolutely indissoluble. When spouses are not permitted to remarry after separation or divorce, it is only coherent that the decision of whom to marry should rest with the parties themselves rather than with a third party such as a parent or political authority.
Because “freely given consent” is notoriously difficult to verify, the Church supplemented this doctrine with additional rules designed to protect its integrity. These included prohibitions on marriage between close kin, increases in the minimum age of marriage, and—most notably at the Council of Trent—the requirement that marriages be celebrated publicly before a priest and two witnesses. Together, these measures sought to ensure that consent was not merely formal but genuinely voluntary.
It is difficult to overstate the historical consequences of this vision of marriage: monogamous and indissoluble yet grounded in free consent. The Roman Catechism (1566), issued shortly after the Council of Trent, summarizes some of its social benefits. First, young people—especially men—would learn that “virtue and congeniality of disposition are to be preferred to wealth or beauty,” a preference that would redound to the good of society at large. Second, spouses “with no hope of marrying another” would be rendered less prone to strife and discord. A growing body of contemporary research builds on this insight, arguing that the Church’s “Marriage and Family Program” (often measured by reductions in cousin-marriage rates) reshaped Western psychology, fostering a greater emphasis on individual moral responsibility, cooperation between strangers, and ultimately the emergence of the medieval communes and democratic, participatory institutions.
This transformation can also be understood as a form of deregulation in the marriage market. Prior to the rise of spousal consent, marriage required parental permission, at minimum. Parents, even when acting benevolently, tended to select spouses in light of their own interests—such as securing grandchildren or support in old age—rather than those of their children. Modern empirical research on arranged marriages consistently confirms this tendency. By transferring decision-making authority to the marrying parties themselves, the Church realigned incentives within the family. Parents now had stronger reasons to invest in the moral and intellectual formation of their children, knowing that future marital choices would rest with them.
Alexis de Tocqueville observed this dynamic in his reflections on American society. He noted that dispositive spousal consent encouraged fathers to educate their daughters as well as their sons and produced marriages characterized by “deep, regular, and quiet affection,” in contrast to the “violent and capricious emotions” he associated with the arranged matches of the European aristocracy. It is not difficult to see which model of marriage is more conducive to long-term social stability.
What lessons does this history offer for marriage today? Much attention has been paid to the social dysfunction associated with unilateral divorce and the redefinition of marriage, but the history of the marriage market suggests several enduring principles. First, young people must be educated about marriage and its well-documented effects on long-term health, economic stability, and happiness. Encouragingly, recent initiatives—such as teaching the “success sequence” in public schools and some religious universities’ renewed focus on marriage education—aim to meet this need. Second, it is possible for public policy to accommodate human weakness without trivializing marriage itself. One plausible approach would combine more permissive separation rules with stricter limitations on remarriage, reducing incentives for frivolous divorce while preserving protection for spouses facing grave circumstances.
Finally, parents must recognize that they do not—and should not—control this most consequential decision in their children’s lives. Their task is formative: to cultivate well-formed consciences and equip children to make free, responsible choices. Contemporary forces—from widespread hormonal contraceptive use to pornography and cohabitation—can often obscure judgment in spouse selection. Addressing these influences is where parental responsibility now most clearly lies.
It is also worth reflecting on what a genuinely free marriage market has meant for romantic love itself. When spousal choice was controlled by others, compatibility and affection were secondary considerations, often displaced into extramarital arrangements such as Roman concubinage. By contrast, a system grounded in free consent made romantic love not merely permissible but socially productive—binding personal affection to public responsibility in a way that continues to shape Western society today. Whether one is dating, engaged, or married, the principle of dispositive spousal consent is something to celebrate this Valentine’s Day.
