More on "private" marriage

A few days ago, we had a discussion about Prof. Stephanie Coontz's op-ed about marriage.  I wrote, among other things, that:

[i]t seems to me -- and, certainly, I invite correction by experts -- that if Professor Coontz is suggesting (and perhaps she is not) that, "for most of Western history", marriage was a matter of merely "private" concern, a matter with which the relevant public authorities were not concerned, then her suggestion is not supported by the historical record.  It has, it seems to me, "for [all] of Western history", been the case that communities have regarded marriage -- its formation, incidents, nature, dissolution, etc. -- as (among other things) a matter of community concern.  The fact that the Church recognized as "licit" marriages contracted in a haystack does not, it seems to me, indicate otherwise.

At the First Things blog, Michael Fragoso -- a medieval studies student at Princeton -- has a long, detailed post responding in detail (and, it seems to me, thoroughly demolishing) to the Coontz op-ed.  Here's the intro:

Prof. Stephanie Coontz recently took to the pages of the New York Times to inform us that we do not need marriage as a legal institution. This is not the first time she has ridden rough-shod over marriage in the Times, and I doubt it will be the last. In this instance, Coontz is nothing short of dazzling in how adeptly she manages to misrepresent marriage and marriage law in Western history in order to bolster her destructive arguments.

In her description of premodern marriage law, she leaves a distinct impression that legal interference with marriage tended toward a restriction of individual liberty–preventing marriages when parents disapproved, preventing divorce, and so on. It’s a useful narrative for contemporary radicals who seek to undermine marriage. The trouble is that it has little relation to actual history. Here are some of her claims, and the facts against which they stand opposed.