Nestorius and Nestorianism

NESTORIO and NESTORIANISM. —

I. LIFE OF N

Little is known about N. before his episcopate at Constantinople, because legend has embroidered much around his name. Born at Germanicia (today Mar'à) toward the end of the fourth century, he studied at Antioch and entered the monastery of Euprepios, situated in the vicinity of the city. If the Syriac legend is to be believed, he would have attended the lectures of Theodore of Mopsuestia, which is not certain, since Theodore was already a bishop in 392. It is certain, however, that N. knew the celebrated exegete personally and assimilated his doctrine, especially his Christological teaching. His knowledge of the sacred sciences was serious.

Chosen by Theodosius II to succeed Sisinnius (d. 24 December 427) on the throne of Constantinople, he took possession of the see on 10 April 428. At first he distinguished himself by his zeal against the heretics and induced the Emperor to issue a very severe edict against them (30 May 428). Only the Pelagians were not mentioned in it, undoubtedly because they were little known and few in number in the East. N. spoke forcefully against laxity of morals and against everything that seemed to him an abuse or an error; but sensible people could immediately observe that the reformer’s zeal was often indiscreet. He did, in fact, discover an error in the very title Θεοτόκος, commonly given to the Virgin in Constantinopolitan circles. One day, toward the end of 428, the priest Anastasius, one of his friends from Antioch, who had followed him to Constantinople, dared, while preaching in his presence, to attack that title directly (Socrates, Hist. eccl., VII, 32: PG 77, 802); but N., instead of reproving him, publicly approved him, to the great scandal of those present. From that moment the term Θεοτόκος became the object of bitter discussions. N., concerned, believed he had found the means of bringing everyone to agreement: he declared that both the expression “Mother of man” (ἀνθρωπότοκος) and the expression “Mother of God” (Θεοτόκος) could be accepted, provided that the union of divinity and humanity was maintained in Jesus Christ and neither one nor the other was suppressed. But he preferred not to use those terms, which were improper and dangerous, and to employ instead Χριστούκος (Mother of Christ), in which Christ indicated at the same time the two natures, humanity and divinity, strictly united with one another. The proposal was ingenious, but it could not satisfy orthodoxy. The discussions concerning the term Θεοτόκος that had taken place at Constantinople soon became known elsewhere. Their echo soon reached Rome and Alexandria. N. himself thought of informing the Pope about the new controversy, sending him some of his sermons. St. Cyril of Alexandria, for his part, well informed about the matter, began in 429 to denounce the new heresy, at first without naming its author, then writing to him directly in two letters, which received two contemptuous replies. St. Cyril then appealed to Celestine I, sending him a complete dossier, with a Latin translation, containing his letters on the subject, several extracts from N.’s writings, and a florilegium of patristic texts on the mystery of the Incarnation (spring 430). At the beginning of August 430, Celestine I convened a Council at Rome, which proclaimed the legitimacy of the title “Mother of God” given to Mary and rejected N.’s confused and tortuous explanations concerning the virginal birth. At the same time, in a letter of 11 August 430, the Pope threatened the innovator with excommunication and deposition if, within ten days of the notification of the Roman decisions that Cyril was to deliver to him, he did not retract his errors. N., who saw in Cyril a personal enemy, instead of submitting, as his friend John of Antioch advised him, believed it more skillful to ward off the threat hanging over him by urging the Emperor Theodosius II to convene an ecumenical council to discuss his case. Cyril, suspecting nothing, facilitated the maneuver by delaying too long in communicating Rome’s judgment to N.; when his envoys arrived in Constantinople, toward the beginning of December 430, an imperial decree had already appeared, dated 19 November 430, convening an ecumenical council for 27 January 431, the feast of Pentecost, at Ephesus (v.). N. refused to appear before the Council that Cyril had opened on 22 June 431, before John of Antioch and his followers, as well as the Pope’s legates, had arrived, and despite the protests of numerous bishops and of Candidian, the Emperor’s representative. This Council, regarded as the true one, pronounced the excommunication and finally decided on N.’s deposition; these acts were confirmed by the Pope’s three legates at the third session (11 July). This sentence was recognized both by the Emperor and by John of Antioch and his followers, after lengthy discussions between the two parties into which the Eastern episcopate was divided. N., now considering his battle lost, asked the Emperor to return to his monastery of Euprepios, and obtained permission to do so. He remained there for four years without changing his views; indeed, he sought to spread them as widely as possible, to such an extent that Celestine I was compelled to request that his exile be assigned to some remote place. The Emperor delayed until 435, when two imperial decrees appeared: the first condemned N. and confiscated his property for the benefit of the Church of Constantinople; the other ordered all his writings to be burned, imposed extremely severe penalties on the adherents of his doctrine, and gave them the name of Simonians, in memory of Simon Magus. From Petra the exile was soon transferred to the oasis of Egypt, and then to Panopolis. It was undoubtedly in the vicinity of that locality that N. died around the year 450–451, shortly before the Council of Chalcedon, to which, according to the Monophysite and Nestorian legends, he would have been summoned. One thing is certain: before his death, N. learned of the proceedings of the “Robber Council of Ephesus” and of St. Leo I’s letter to Flavian concerning the mystery of the Incarnation. According to what he himself recounts in his work The Book of Heraclides, he approved the contents of that letter and died convinced that Leo shared his opinion.

II. WRITINGS OF N

By imperial edict, his works were destroyed in their original language. They consisted of letters, discourses, and memoirs forming a kind of trilogy, composed after the Council of Ephesus, with the following titles: Teopaschita, Tragedia (or Storia), Libro di Eraclide. Apart from about a dozen sermons, some letters, and the Libro di Eraclide, of N.’s entire literary production only a few important fragments have survived in Greek, Syriac, and Latin; together with the complete portions, these make it possible to reconstruct N.’s exact thought in theological and especially christological matters (edited by F. Loofs, Nestoriana. Die Fragmente des Nestorius gesammelt, untersucht und herausgegeben, Halle 1905). Subsequently, the Libro d'Eraclide di Damasco was published (in Syriac by P. Bedjan [Leipzig-Paris 1910]; in French by F. Nau [Paris 1910]; in English by G. R. Driver and L. Hodgson: The Bazaar of Heracleides newly translated from the syriac [Oxford 1925]). The work appears to be authentic as a whole, although interpolations may be presumed, and it is divided into three parts: a philosophical-theological introduction on the various heresies, with emphasis on the different forms of Monophysitism; a lengthy commentary on the acts of the Council of Ephesus, in which N. seeks to demonstrate his orthodoxy and his agreement with the Fathers; and an account of the events that followed the Council of Ephesus up to the Conciliabulum of Ephesus in 449, whose acts he had come to know. In the course of the discussion, he continually reiterates his theory concerning the union of the two natures.

As an appendix to the translation of the Libro di Eraclide, F. Nau published a lengthy extract from the letter to the inhabitants of Constantinople, which appears to be authentic, was written after the «Latrocinio Efesino», and had already been mentioned by Philoxenus of Mabbugh. Three homilies on the temptations of Our Lord, found among the spuria of s. John Chrysostom and added by Nau to the Libro di Eraclide, are certainly authentic. The 52 homilies that P. Batiffol, relying solely on grounds of internal criticism, had attributed to N. must, however, be regarded as apocryphal. As for the twelve «anatematismi» opposed to those of s. Cyril, of which Marius Mercator prepared a Latin translation, very many critics (e.g., ed. Schwartz and E. Amann) do not consider them to be by N.

III. THE NESTORIAN HERESY

N.’s heresy is commonly presented as the denial of Mary’s divine motherhood. This is correct, but some observations are necessary. The denial of divine motherhood is merely a corollary arising from an explanation of the mystery of the Incarnation current in the Antiochene school from the second half of the fourth century onward, elaborated by Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia to combat Apollinarianism. According to this explanation, the human nature assumed by the Word, the Only-Begotten Son of the Father, was a true human person, a true concrete subject, subsisting in itself and autonomous, united to the person of the Word in a manner undoubtedly very intimate and ineffable, but which could only be extrinsic, moral, and relative—like that existing between two close friends who have one heart and one soul. This union is comparable to an indwelling (ἐνόλεμος) of the Word in the man Jesus. The man Jesus is the temple (νάδος) in which the Word dwells. It is an adherence, a conjunction, not a true union terminating in a true unity of being, individual, subject, self, or person. In Christ there is a true duality of persons: God, the Word, and the man Jesus. Each is the subject to which the operations proper to him are attributed, and these cannot be attributed to the other except in an “improper” and “abusive” manner, on account of the close union existing between the two. This is precisely the case that makes legitimate the title Mother of God given to Mary. Properly speaking, God the Word was not born of the Virgin. He is begotten only by the Father, from all eternity. Nevertheless, Mary may be called Θεοτόκος, Mother of God, because the one whom she brought forth, Jesus of Nazareth, is closely united to the Word, who in some manner communicated to him his personality, his “prosopon,” together with the divine titles of Lord, Son, and Christ, terms employed by the Council of Nicaea. In other words, what theologians call the “communication of idioms” (v.) or properties cannot properly be made either with reference to the name God-the-Word or with reference to the name Jesus of Nazareth, because the Word indicates only the divinity, and Jesus of Nazareth indicates only the man. That is why one cannot say that the Word was born twice and that Mary is truly Θεοτόκος.

The communication or exchange of properties is nevertheless legitimate with regard to certain designations which, in usage, indicate God and man at the same time, closely united, and which mutually communicate their natural personality, their physical “prosopon” (πρόσωπον φυσικάν), as N. expresses II. N. in fact distinguished two kinds of “prosopon”: the “natural or physical prosopon,” that is, the natural personality of each of the united natures, and the personality or “prosopon of the union” (πρόσωπον τῆς ἑνώσεως), which results from the union—a kind of fictitious and juridical personality, by means of which the divinity makes use of the “prosopon” of humanity and humanity of that of divinity. It was in this manner

that N. sought to preserve the unity of Christ: “The natures subsist in their ‘prosopon’ and in their nature and in the ‘prosopon of the union.’ As regards the natural ‘prosopon’ of one, the other makes use of it by virtue of the union, and thus there is only one ‘prosopon’ for the two natures” (Le Livre d’Héraclide, trans. F. Nau, Paris 1910, pp. 193–94). Mary may be called Χριστοτέλιος, because the term “Christ” is a name that indicates the two natures at the same time or, if one prefers, the “prosopon of the union.”

These are the broad outlines of the Christological system elaborated by N. in the Book of Heraclides and in his other writings. It rests on the philosophical principle that every concrete human nature is a hypostasis, a true person. For N., the terms nature (φύσις), essence (οὐσία), physical person (πρόσωπον φυσικὸν), and hypostasis (ἀπόσπασις) are synonyms. He had no notion of an individual nature abstracted from its suppositum; this is why he used concrete and abstract terms, masculine and neuter, indifferently. For him, the term God is synonymous with divinity. To say of Mary that she is Mother of God is equivalent to saying that she is mother of the divinity. In Jesus Christ there is not only another thing and another thing (aliud et aliud), but also another person and another person (alius et alius): “God has two natures, and one is he who clothes, another he who is clothed; he has two ‘prosopon,’ that of him who clothes and that of him who is clothed” (loc. cit.). This manner of expression is irreconcilable with the expressions of Scripture and the creeds, which speak of one and only one Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Father, who became incarnate by the Holy Spirit, was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered, died, and rose again. The Nestorian heresy is therefore essentially the denial of the true unity of Christ, the incarnate Son of God. It is an unfortunate attempt at a rational explanation of revealed dogma.

IV. NESTORIANISM AFTER N

The Nestorian heresy did not disappear with N. After the Council of Ephesus, it soon spread among the Churches of Syriac language, and especially in the Church of Persia (v. below).

Moreover, the Nestorian error has periodically tended to reappear in the Church. The Spanish adoptionism of the eighth century was a more or less disguised Nestorianism. In the twelfth century, there were scholastic theologians who, following Abelard, concealed a true Nestorianism beneath their philosophical terminology. In the eighteenth century, the two Jesuits Hardouin and Berruyer elaborated a Christological system that logically led to hypostatic dualism. The same must be said of Günther’s explanation (v.) based on the modern conception of the person, which would be constituted by self-consciousness. Although condemned, this psychological theory tends to reappear among certain contemporary proponents of the impropria assumptus homo expression. One of them, Leone Seiller, in the pamphlet entitled La psychologie humaine du Christ et l'unicité de personne (Rennes 1949), which was placed on the Index, went so far as to assert that the appellation Jesus Christ indicated, in recto, not the divine person of the Word, but the man united to the Word, the Homo assumptus. Only indirectly, in obliquo, would this name apply to the Word, to whom the man is united. The Homo assumptus would be not only really free but autonomous; he would retain his human Self, his psychological personality, which is said to be distinct from his ontological personality. All these innovations in the terminology consecrated by Scripture and by the conciliar definitions are dangerous and logically lead to hypostatic dualism, because, whether one wishes it or not, man is separated from God, contrary to the definition of the Council of Chalcedon.

Nestorius and his place in the history of christian doctrine, Cambridge 1914; L. Hodgson, The metaphysis of Nestorius, in Journal of theological studies, 19 (1918), pp. 46-55; E. Amann, Nestorius, in DThC, XI, coll. 76-157 and in the posthumous article: L'affaire de Nestorius vue de Rome, in Rev. des sciences relié, 33 (1949), pp. 5-17, 205-44; 34 (1950), pp. 28-52, 235-65 (an incomplete study, in which various inconsistencies are noticeable: the author shows himself therein to be completely favorable to N.; cf. L. Ciccone, L'affaire de Nestorius vue de Rome di mons. E. Amann, Studio critico, in Divus Thomas Plac., 54 (1951), pp. 33-50); P. Galtier, L'unité du Christ: Être-Personne-Conscience, Parigi 1939; G. Bardy, in Fiche-Martin-Frutz, IV, p. 160 ff.; P. Parente, L'io di Cristo, Brescia 1951. Martino Jugie

V. THE NESTORIAN CHURCH OF PERSIA

Nestorianism, condemned at the Council of Ephesus (431), was accepted by the Church of Persia. The clergy of this Church was largely trained at the catechetical school of Edessa, where Nestorianizing tendencies then predominated. Hibâ taught there, following the doctrine of Theodore of Mopsuestia. Narsaj, an eminent Nestorian, was master of the school of Edessa from 437 to 457; then, expelled from that city, he founded in 457 the school of Nisibis (v.) in Persia, which became the spiritual center of the Church of that country. When the school of Edessa was closed in 489 because of its Nestorian doctrines, many teachers and pupils emigrated to Persia and spread Nestorianism there.

1. History

a) The Nestorian Church under the Sassanids (486-643). — Political factors also favored the penetration of this heresy. The Christians of Persia, in fact, had been suspected of treason against their country and persecuted on account of their religion, which was identical with that of the Roman enemy. Since at that time Monophysitism was viewed more favorably in the eastern part of the Empire, acceptance of the opposing doctrine, namely Nestorianism, appeared the most suitable means of separating the Persian Church from that of the Empire. A bishop of Nestorian tendencies, Barşawmâ, persuaded the king of the advisability of having Nestorianism accepted by the Christians of Persia. Thus, at the Synod of Seleucia in 486, it was accepted as the official doctrine of the Persian Church. It is true that the Christological formulas of the first synods, except for the highly suspect one of the Synod of 486, also allow an orthodox interpretation. But the fact that the Church of Persia venerates Theodore of Mopsuestia, N. and Diodore of Tarsus as its teachers shows how the formulas are to be interpreted. Nestorianism is clearly evident in Bâbaj the Great (d. ca. 628).

After the introduction of Nestorianism, the Church of Persia generally enjoyed external peace under the Sassanids; but there was the danger of the Church’s dependence on the Mazdean kings, and then many internal difficulties and continual disputes among the hierarchs disturbed the internal peace. Thus, from 522 to 539 there was an internal schism. To avoid similar difficulties in the future, the katholikós Abâ I, elected in 540, reorganized the manner of electing the katholikós. During his time the Nestorians endured a new persecution because of the war between Persia and the Empire. New difficulties arose at the beginning of the seventh century. From 609 to 628 it was impossible to elect a new katholikós.

In spite of everything, the state of the Church during that first period was flourishing. A very active monasticism prospered, and the clergy received sound training in the theological schools of Nisibis and Seleucia. Missionary expansion toward the eastern part of the Persian Empire and also beyond the frontier toward India had already begun.

b) The Nestorian Church under Muslim rule (from 634 to the present). — With the invasion of the Muslim Arabs, the position of the Christians in Persia initially improved considerably. The Nestorians, being Syrians, were related to the Arabs; consequently, also because of their monotheistic religion, they were more acceptable to the Muslims than to the Persians. They could now convert freely to Christianity. Thus, from the beginning to the end of the eighth century, Christianity continued to advance. But gradually the burden of taxation and the social inferiority imposed on Christians by the Arab conquerors caused numerous defections. Christians not infrequently held high offices at the court of the caliphs, who had been established in Mesopotamia from 749 onward; this certainly also brought disadvantages, since influential Christians interfered excessively in the affairs of the Church. Under the Muslim regime, the Nestorian katholikós also became, to a certain extent, the civil head of his community, which increased the internal disputes surrounding his election to the throne, a position that was increasingly coveted.

Subsequently, the Church suffered greatly under the succession of various dominations and invasions. Under the Mongols, the condition of the Nestorians was relatively prosperous, especially during the time of the katholikós Jahballāhā III (1283-1317), who was of Mongolian origin. After him, the Nestorian Church rapidly declined. Nothing precise is known of its subsequent history up to the sixteenth century; the political disturbances, especially during the time of Tamerlane (ca. 1400), almost completely ruined II. Toward the middle of the sixteenth century, the movement toward union began (v. CALDEI).

c) The missionary expansion of the Nestorians. — This expansion, as already mentioned, began under the Sassanids. Many Christians fled to the distant eastern regions of the Empire during the persecutions, and the fugitives became messengers of the Gospel. Christian communities and episcopal sees are already found in the easternmost regions of Persia at the beginning of the fifth century. Toward the end of that same century, Christianity had already spread among the Turks and Huns on the banks of the Oxus, and not much later the Good News was also carried into Transoxiana. Missionary expansion reached its height under Arab rule. The bearers of the Gospel were above all monks, but also merchants, among whom there were likewise married priests; they were the ones who spread Christianity along the ancient trade routes into the most distant countries.

Christianity entered China as early as the first half of the seventh century. This fact is attested by the famous stele of Si-ngan-fu, erected in 783 (v. reproduction, vol. II, plate XI). The missionary activity of the Nestorians flourished especially under the katholikós Timothy I (780-823), who sent missionaries into Central Asia. Entire peoples, together with their kings, were converted. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries various Mongolian tribes were converted. The mission in China, however, which had ceased in the tenth century, was resumed in the thirteenth, when the Mongols, highly favorable to Christians, conquered that country. At the same time, the first Latin missionaries arrived there. After the collapse of Mongol rule in China in the second half of the fourteenth century, the missionary work of the Nestorians once again disintegrated. On the expansion in India V. MALABARESI.

2. Present situation

Of the Nestorian Church, once so extensive, very little remains today. Most of the Nestorians returned to the Catholic Church from the sixteenth century onward (v. CALDEI). Others fell under the influence of American Protestant missionaries (from 1830) or Anglican missionaries (from 1835, and more intensively from 1886). The Russian “Orthodox” also worked among the Nestorians from 1897 and converted some of them to “Orthodoxy.” During the World War many Nestorians were massacred by the Turks. Others fled from the mountains of Kurdistan to the plain of Mesopotamia, which was already occupied by the British. Today Nestorians are found in Iraq, Syria, Persia and India.

In Iraq, after the declaration of independence, serious excesses against the Nestorians occurred in 1933, and a large part of them fled to Syria. Their settlement became a concern of the League of Nations (the Assyrian question). About 30,000 of them remain. The patriarch Mār Sem'ôn XXI, educated at Oxford, had to leave the country in 1933.

In Syria, in the upper Qazirah (= northern Mesopotamia), there are several thousand Nestorians who fled from Iraq; in Persia there are about 9,000, chiefly in the region of Lake Urmiah. In India only 2,000 n. remain, called Mellusians, after the bishop Elia Mellus, who came from Mesopotamia and led a small number of Malabarese Catholics into apostasy.

3. Literature

It may be summarized as follows:

a) Era of the Christological controversies. — The first center of literary life among the Nestorians was the theological school of Nisibis, Narsaj (v.), called the “harp of the Holy Spirit,” left numerous poetic discourses distinguished by their beauty and elegance of style. The most eminent representative of the theology of Nisibis was the katholikos Mar Abá (540–52), who founded the new school of Seleucia. Among his disciples, Thomas of Edessa stands out. A serious crisis in Nestorian theology was caused by the head of the school of Nisibis, Hénaná (d. 610), who sought to introduce Alexandrian and Origenist theology into II. Alongside the theology of the schools, monasticism, with its ascetic works, was another force in the intellectual life of the Nestorians. Its founder was Abraham of Kaškar (d. 588), and the most eminent ascetic writer was Abraham of Netpar (second half of the sixth century). Historiography in this first period is represented above all by Mēšihā-zēkā, author of the celebrated Chronicle of Arbela (ca. the middle of the sixth century). Finally, the most important representative of Nestorian theology in the first period was Babaj the Great (d. ca. 628).

b) The Muslim era, up to 1000. — During this period Arab influence is evident, but also a new wave of Greek influence, which once again sought to bring about a revision of theology in an Alexandrian direction, without succeeding. The first important figure of this period was the katholikos Īśā-jahb III (650–57), known as a reformer of the liturgy. His collaborator 'Enānīšō' represents a monastic ascetic literature of a narrative character. His contemporary was also Sahdōnā, an adherent of Chalcedonian theology. From the middle of the seventh century onward, historiographical, juridical, and exegetical literature flourished. Simeon of Réwardāšīr (seventh century) was the author of a collection of canons; Elijah of Merv (seventh century) wrote an ecclesiastical history and a commentary on the Gospels; and the katholikos Hénanīšōr I (685–99) published a canonical collection. At the same time lived the eminent ascetic writer Isaac of Nineveh. Important theological writers of the eighth century were the katholikos Abá II (741–51), Hénanīšōr II (773–79), and the bishop Īśō-bōkt of Réwardāšīr.

The transition from the eighth to the ninth century represents the moment of the greatest expansion of the Nestorian Church and also the apogee of its spiritual and literary life. Among the theological writers, the great katholikos Timothy I (780–823) and his contemporaries Ephrem of Elam, Theodore bar Kōnī, and Īśō bar Nūn should be mentioned.

In the time of Timothy I, the theological opposition favorable to Alexandrian ideas was definitively overcome. In the field of ecclesiastical literature, the ninth century was rather an age of epigones who summarized what had previously been developed. In the exegetical field, Īśō-dād of Merv should be mentioned; in canon law, Gabriel of Bašrah and the katholikos Jōhannān V bar Abgar (d. 905).

The celebrated theologians of the tenth century were Elijah of Anbar, author of a doctrinal poem; George of Arbela, canonist and liturgist; and the anonymous author of a lengthy liturgical commentary, Explanation of the Ecclesiastical Service.

c) The second millennium. — Nestorian literature also experienced a new flowering in the second millennium, although less markedly than Jacobite literature, before the total decline caused by political disturbances. Of great importance for this favorable development of the spiritual life among the Syrians was the Byzantine expansion, which began in the second half of the tenth century.

Elijah of Nisibis (bar Šīnājā; d. after 1044) wrote a book to prove the truth of the faith. The thirteenth century brought a new flowering of poetry of a liturgical and doctrinal character. Its most notable representatives were George Wardā and the katholikos Jahballāhā II (1190–1222).

Jōpannān bar Zō'bī wrote, in poetic form, an exposition of Nestorian doctrine and an explanation of the liturgy. The last great Nestorian theologian of broad culture was 'Abdišō' bar Bērikā (d. 1318). The katholikos Timothy II (1318–22), author of a book on the seven Mysteries of the Church, should also be mentioned. For individual authors, V. le voci relative.

4. Doctrine

On the Christology of the Nestorians, V. SORA. As for original sin, it appears that the Nestorians do not admit that Adam’s guilt truly passes to his descendants; they generally teach at least that Adam’s sin had disastrous consequences for all humanity. As for sacramental theology, they admit that the Mysteries are a divine institution founded on the power conferred by God upon the Church and the priests to give supernatural Grace to human beings through sacred and symbolic signs. 'Abdišō' and Timothy II do know the sectarian number, but they partly enumerate other rites as Sacraments, omitting some of the true ones. The Nestorians lack Extreme Unction, and perhaps also Confirmation. As for the Eucharist, the Nestorian error appears to empty the meaning of the real presence in a dangerous manner. Secret Confession, in use in the early period, later fell into disuse. Marriage appears to be regarded as a Sacrament.

Guglielmo de Vries