Wyclif on the Felicity (Conditions) of Marriage

Abstract

Regarding marriage, John Wyclif defends the following position: strictly speaking, no words or any kind of sensory signs would be needed, since the consensus of the spouses together with God’s approbation would suffice for the accomplishment of marriage. But if words do have to be pronounced, then the appropriate formula should not be in the present, but in the future. In the following, I shall discuss Wyclif’s arguments by comparing them with some other medieval positions, as well as with some elements of contemporary theories of speech acts. It will appear that in his analysis of the only sacrament which is a “social act” in the literal sense of the expression, Wyclif (i) clearly acknowledges the central role of individual intentions behind (linguistic) conventions, and (ii) carefully distinguishes between the different, chronologically disparate acts involved in marriage and their respective (semantic, psychological and factual) felicity conditions.

A Cross-Cultural and Pragmatic Study of Felicity Conditions in the Same-Sex Marriage Discourse

“…The application of these conventional social procedures focuses on the study of how people of Christian and Muslim societies view, accept, or refuse the same-sex marriage (Tsohatzidis, 2007;Neill, 2009;Cesalli, 2011). Generally and as mentioned above, the majority of Westerners have a negative attitude toward gay marriage and homosexual relationships.…”

“…Consequently, when an officiant wants to apply this utterance in the course of same-sex marriage ceremony, this kind of 'marriage' cannot be performed by uttering the commonly used linguistic formula. Cesalli (2011) affirmed that such a formula cannot achieve what the officiant wants to fulfill because he cannot assign who will be the wife and who will be the husband or man, if the couple is two women or two men. Furthermore, the officiant or the judge cannot find an agreement between his declaration to the couple pronounce you husband and wife, and what he actually finds, two men, or two women, to perform his intention of declaring such a marriage.…”

“…In this regard, Searle (1969) stated that Austin (1962) did not give a full account of what is meant by the term conventional or what is meant by conventional procedures. Some researchers such as Sypniewski (2006) and Cesalli (2011) attempted to discuss these conventional procedures of the same-sex marriage; however, they did not discuss these convections in detail.…”

“…For example, Sypniewski (2006) discussed the context of these conventions within a wedding ceremony; whereas Cesalli (2011) focused on the linguistic conventions of the same-sex marriage only. Consequently, the researchers believe that one should fill this gap by discussing in detail Austin's FCs of the speech act of marriage, particularly the conventional procedures of the same-sex marriage.…”