‘Vows’ Review: Marriage, Love and Commitment

From the Wall Street Journal:

Somewhere around 1549, an English priest introduced love into marriage. Sort of. Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury during Henry VIII’s break with Rome, was the author and compiler of the English Book of Common Prayer, whose marriage rite—containing that familiar “love, cherishe, and to obey” and “til death us departe”—is the basis of the civil formula common to much of the contemporary English-speaking world. In codifying the marriage rite for what would be the new, independent Church of England, Cranmer preserved much of the medieval world’s earlier traditions about what husbands and wives were to swear to one another. But to these he added the promises “to love and to cherishe” (and, to the bride’s portion, more unsettlingly, to obey).

Read more here.