Marriage (The Mystery of Crowning)

The Orthodox Mystery of Marriage, known as the “Crowning” (Russian: Venchanie; Greek: Stephanoma), is a sacramental union of a man and a woman in which their love is sanctified and elevated to an image of the union between Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:25-33). The crowns placed upon the couple are understood as crowns of martyrdom — a call to sacrificial, self-giving love. While marriage is ideally indissoluble, the Orthodox Church permits divorce and remarriage in limited circumstances, applying pastoral economy (oikonomia).

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (with Russian Orthodox specifics noted)

Theological Foundations

Marriage as Mystery

Marriage is not merely a legal contract or social institution — it is a Mystery (tainstvo) of the Church, a grace-bearing event in which God unites two persons into “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5-6). The theological basis includes:

Genesis 2:18-24: God creates woman from man’s side, and the two become one flesh. Marriage is instituted by God in Paradise, before the Fall — it is part of the original, unfallen order of creation.
John 2:1-11: Christ’s first miracle at the Wedding at Cana sanctifies marriage by His presence and transforms water into wine — a sign of the transformation of natural human love into a sacramental union.
Ephesians 5:25-33: St. Paul describes marriage as an image of the relationship between Christ and the Church — “This is a great mystery (mysterion), and I speak concerning Christ and the Church.”

The Crowns as Crowns of Martyrdom

The most distinctive feature of the Orthodox wedding service is the crowning of the bride and groom. The crowns (ventsy in Russian; stephanoi in Greek) are placed on the heads of the couple during the central portion of the service. Their meaning is multivalent:

Crowns of martyrdom: The primary Orthodox interpretation is that the crowns symbolize the call to sacrificial love — to lay down one’s life for the other, as Christ laid down His life for the Church. Marriage is a kind of martyrdom (martyria = “witness”) — a daily dying to self for the sake of the beloved.
Crowns of glory: The couple is crowned as the king and queen of a new domestic church (domashnyaya tserkov’; Greek: kat’ oikon ekklesia).
Crowns of victory: Victory over the passions and temptations that would destroy the marital union.

(Schmemann, For the Life of the World, ch. 5; Meyendorff, Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective)

The Rite of Marriage

The Orthodox wedding service consists of two parts, traditionally performed together:

1. The Betrothal (Obruchenie)

The Betrothal takes place in the narthex or at the entrance of the church:

Exchange of rings: The priest blesses the rings and places them on the right hands of the bride and groom (Orthodox wear wedding rings on the right hand). The rings are then exchanged three times (by the best man or the priest), signifying the mutual self-giving of the couple.
Prayers of betrothal: The priest prays that God bless the betrothal and grant the couple faith, love, and concord.

2. The Crowning (Venchanie / Stephanoma)

The couple processes into the center of the church:

Prayers: Extended prayers asking God to bless the marriage, grant children, and preserve the couple in peace and unity.
Crowning: The priest places the crowns on the heads of the bride and groom, saying: “The servant of God [Name] is crowned unto the handmaid of God [Name], in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The same is said for the bride.
Epistle and Gospel readings: Ephesians 5:20-33 (the great mystery of marriage) and John 2:1-11 (the Wedding at Cana).
The Common Cup: The bride and groom drink from a common cup of wine — symbolizing their shared life, their shared joys and sorrows. This is not the Eucharist (in the ancient Church, the wedding was celebrated within the Divine Liturgy and the couple communed; this practice is preserved in some places but is not universal today).
The Procession (khozhdenie): The priest leads the crowned couple in a threefold procession around the analogion (lectern) on which the Gospel is placed, while the choir sings troparia including “O Isaiah, dance in joy” (Isaiya likuy), “O Holy Martyrs” (Svyatii muchenitsy), and “Glory to Thee, O Christ” (Slava Tebe, Khriste Bozhe). This circular procession signifies the eternal nature of the union and echoes the procession around the baptismal font.
Removal of crowns: The priest removes the crowns and reads concluding prayers.

No Exchange of Vows

Notably, the Orthodox wedding service does not include the exchange of vows in the Western sense (“I, N., take you, N., to be my wife/husband…”). The couple does not “marry each other” — God, through the priest, joins them. The couple consents to the marriage (consent is required), but the sacramental act is performed by the priest’s blessing and crowning, not by the couple’s mutual vows.

Indissolubility and Divorce

The Ideal

Christ teaches the indissolubility of marriage: “What God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:6). The Orthodox Church upholds this as the ideal — marriage is a lifelong, exclusive union.

The Pastoral Reality

Nevertheless, the Orthodox Church acknowledges that marriages can die — that sin can so corrupt the marital bond that it ceases to be a living sacramental reality. In such cases, the Church permits divorce and remarriage as an act of pastoral economy (oikonomia), applying mercy to human weakness.

The grounds for ecclesiastical divorce include:

Adultery (porneia): The explicit exception given by Christ Himself (Matthew 5:32; 19:9).
Abandonment: One spouse’s prolonged, willful abandonment of the other.
Threats to life: Encroachment on the life or health of the spouse.
Other grave circumstances: The fullest authoritative list is Russian: the 1918 Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church (“On the Grounds for the Dissolution of the Marriage Union Sanctified by the Church”) recognized, among others, adultery, a spouse’s falling away from Orthodoxy, unnatural vices, incapacity for marital life, leprosy or syphilis, prolonged unexplained absence, malicious abandonment, and attempts on the life or health of the spouse or children; the Bases of the Social Concept (2000, X.3) adds AIDS, medically certified chronic alcoholism or drug addiction, and abortion performed by the wife without the husband’s consent. The grounds are not exhaustively defined by ancient canon law and vary by jurisdiction.

The decision to grant an ecclesiastical divorce is made by the diocesan bishop.

Second and Third Marriages

The Orthodox Church permits second and third marriages, but with a penitential character:

A second marriage is blessed with a modified service that includes penitential prayers acknowledging the failure of the first marriage. The tone is less festive than a first marriage.
A third marriage is reluctantly permitted — “even unto a third” — but with even more penitential prayers and a clear sense that this is an extreme concession to human weakness.
A fourth marriage is absolutely forbidden. St. Basil the Great, in Canon 4, says of a third marriage that it is “no longer described as marriage at all, but as polygamy; nay rather as limited fornication” (Basil, Canonical Epistles, Canon 4; trans. NPNF II/14); his Canon 80 treats “polygamy” — understood by the Byzantine canonists Zonaras and Balsamon to mean a fourth marriage — as “brutish and altogether inhuman,” worse than fornication. The case of Emperor Leo VI the Wise (886-912), who attempted a fourth marriage, caused a major ecclesial crisis (the Tetragamy controversy), resolved by the Tome of Union (920), which definitively prohibited fourth marriages (Council of Constantinople, 920, Tome of Union).

(Council of Trullo [Quinisext, 692], Canons 3, 87; Basil the Great, Canonical Epistles)

Intermarriage with Non-Orthodox

The Canonical Norm

Canon 72 of the Quinisext Council (Trullo, 692) prohibits marriage between Orthodox Christians and non-Orthodox (including heretics and schismatics):

“An orthodox man is not permitted to marry a heretical woman, nor an orthodox woman to be joined to a heretical man. But if anything of this kind appear to have been done by any, [we require them] to consider the marriage null, and that the marriage be dissolved… But if any one shall transgress the things which we have decreed, let him be cut off.”

(Quinisext 692, Canon 72; trans. NPNF II/14. The same canon, following 1 Corinthians 7:12-14, allows an existing marriage to stand when one spouse of a non-Christian couple later comes to the faith.)

Pastoral Practice

In practice, many Orthodox jurisdictions today permit marriages between an Orthodox Christian and a baptized non-Orthodox Christian (Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant), subject to certain conditions:

The wedding is performed in the Orthodox Church by an Orthodox priest.
The non-Orthodox spouse agrees to have the children raised in the Orthodox faith.
The non-Orthodox spouse is baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity.

Marriage to an unbaptized person is generally not permitted. Marriage to a non-Christian is canonically prohibited.

The application of these norms varies significantly by jurisdiction:

ROCOR has historically maintained a stricter practice, more closely following Canon 72.
The Greek Archdiocese (Ecumenical Patriarchate in America) and OCA have generally been more lenient in permitting mixed marriages under the conditions described above.
Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate): Practice varies; the Bases of the Social Concept (2000, X.2) permits marriage with a baptized non-Orthodox Christian, provided the marriage is blessed in the Orthodox Church and the children are raised Orthodox, while regarding spiritual unity of the spouses as the norm.

(As of 2026; jurisdictional practices change over time and should be confirmed against current diocesan guidelines.)

The Domestic Church

The family unit formed by marriage is understood as the domestic church (domashnyaya tserkov’; Greek: kat’ oikon ekklesia) — St. John Chrysostom calls the household a “little church” (Chrysostom, Homilies on Ephesians, Homily 20; trans. NPNF I/13). The home is to be a place of prayer, an icon corner, the reading of Scripture, and the Christian formation of children. The parents are the first priests and teachers of their children.

References

Council of Trullo (Quinisext Council, 692), Canons 3, 72, 87 (trans. NPNF II/14).
Basil the Great. Canonical Epistles, Canons 4 and 80 (on remarriage; trans. NPNF II/14).
Council of Constantinople (920), Tome of Union (on the Tetragamy).
Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, 1917-1918. Decision “On the Grounds for the Dissolution of the Marriage Union Sanctified by the Church” (1918).
Meyendorff, John. Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective. Crestwood: SVS Press, 1975.
Schmemann, Alexander. For the Life of the World. Crestwood: SVS Press, 1973, ch. 5 (“The Mystery of Love”).
Chrysostom, John. Homilies on Ephesians, especially Homily 20 (trans. NPNF I/13).
Pomazansky, Michael. Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. Platina: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1994.
Russian Orthodox Church. Bases of the Social Concept (2000), ch. X (esp. X.2-X.3).