When/where did the traditional marriage vow originate?

by xaliber

X, do you take Y to be your wedded wife, to live together in marriage? Do you promise to love her, comfort her, honor and keep her for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, and forsaking all others, be faithful only to her, for as long as you both shall live?

I do.

When and where did this vow originate? It sounds poetic, so I assumed this might have originated in Middle Age, but of course this is an uneducated guess.

If it were true, did earlier Christian societies have similar marriage vow?

Whoosier

I can take us a few centuries further back to the 14th-century Sarum Manual, which was a ritual book used in the English diocese of Salisbury and in other dioceses. The words of the Book of Common Prayer clearly derive from it. I’m not sure how much earlier the Salisbury goes. [Here’s a link to the translated text] (http://thepocketscroll.wordpress.com/classic-christian-texts/order-for-consecration-of-marriage-sarum-use/). Here’s the familiar part of the ritual:

N., do you wish to have this woman as a wife, and to esteem her, to honour, hold, and protect her, healthy and sick, just as a husband ought to do for a wife, and to forsake all other women, and to cling to her so long as your life and hers will endure?

The man shall respond: I so wish.

Then the priest shall speak to the woman in this way:

N., do you wish to have this man as a husband, and to obey him, to serve, esteem, honour, and guard him healthy and sick, just as a wife ought to do for a husband, and to forsake all other men, and to cling to him so long as your life and his will endure?

The woman shall respond: I so wish.

And then the woman is to be given away by her father or by his friends.

Then if she is a maiden, she shall have her hand uncovered, if she is a widow it is covered. The man shall receive her in the faith of God and she is to be served by his own [faith?], just as she has vowed in the presence of the Priest, and he shall take her by the right hand in his right hand, and thus shall give a pledge to the woman through words concerning her present, speaking thus with the Priest coaching him.

I N. take thee N. to my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us depart, if holy Church will it permit, and thereto I plight thee my troth.

The hand is drawn back. Then the woman shall say, with the Priest coaching:

I N. take thee N. to my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to be bonnair and buxom [obedient & kind], in bed and boord [board] till death us depart, if holy Church will it permit, and thereto I plight thee my troth.

gnorrn

The marriage ceremony in the 1549 Prayer Book reads as follows:

N. WILTE thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after Goddes ordeinaunce in the holy estate of matrimonie? Wilt thou love her, coumforte her, honor, and kepe her in sickenesse and in health? And forsaking all other kepe thee only to her, so long as you both shall live?

The man shall aunswere,

I will.

This was the first prayer book written in English. It's generally assumed to be largely the work of Thomas Cranmer, although he often worked by translating older Latin rites into English. I don't know what the Roman Catholic rite at this time would have been.