A Cultural History Of Marriage in the Renaissance and Early Modern Age 9781350086388, 9781350001831

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FIGURES

INTRODUCTION I.1

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I.3 I.4

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Louis (or Antoine?) Le Nain (c. 1600/03–48), Peasant Interior with an Old Flute Player, c. 1642, Kimball Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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Cornelis de Vos (1585–1651), Portrait of Anthony Reyniers and His Family, 1631, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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Giuseppe de Gobbis, The Convent Parlor, c. 1760, oil on canvas. Courtesy the San Diego Museum of Art, CA. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1526/30–69), The Peasant Wedding, 1566–9, oil on panel, Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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Raphael Sanzio (1483–1520), Engagement of the Virgin Mary, 1504, oil on roundheaded panel, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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Unattributed, Decorated Ketubbah, 1698, ink, gouache, and copper-plate engraving on parchment, Livorno, Italy, Private Collection. Courtesy Sotheby’s via Wikimedia Commons

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Jacobo Tintoretto (1518–94), Venus and Mars Surprised by Vulcan, second half of the sixteenth century, oil on canvas, Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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COURTSHIP AND RITUAL 1.1 Jewish betrothal/ceremonial ring, with house decoration, early fourteenth century, found at Colmar, France, in 1863, Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris. Photograph by Jastrow. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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1.2 Pieter van der Heyden (c. 1525–69), The Peasant Wedding Dance, after 1570, engraving, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1933. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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1.3 Peeter van der Borcht (1545–1608), Peasant Wedding, 1560, etching, the Elisha Whittelsey Collection, the Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1956. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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1.4 Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617), The Venetian Wedding, 1584, engraving, the Elisha Whittelsey Collection, the Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1949. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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1.5 Paul Christian Kirchner, Jüdisches Ceremoniel, c. 1700. Photograph by 19th era 2/Alamy Stock Photo

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RELIGION 2.1 Nuptial and Blessing of the Marriage Bed, fifteenth century, woodcut. Photograph by INTERFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo

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2.2 The Council of Trent, Trento, Italy. Photograph by SZ Photo/Scherl/Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy Stock Photo

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2.3 Francesco Gonin (1808–89) illustration from Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi (Milan: Tip. Guglielmini e Radaelli, 1840). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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2.4 Bernardino Licinio (1489–1565), Portrait of a Woman Holding Her Husband’s Portrait, c. 1530s, Pinacoteca of the Sforzesco Castle, Milan. Photograph by Mauro Magliani for Alinari/Alinari Archives, Florence/Alinari via Getty Images

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STATE AND LAW 3.1 Judith Leyster (1609–60), The Proposition, 1631, oil on panel, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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3.2 Jan Steen (1626–79), The Marriage Contract, 1668. Photograph by ART Collection/Alamy Stock Photo

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3.3 Martin Luther’s Marriage with Katharina von Bora, historical depiction. Photograph by Wilfried Bahnmüller, image Broker/Alamy Stock Photo

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3.4 Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies or The First Folio (London: Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard, 1623). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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3.5 An English fleet marriage before 1753, from Robert Chambers, Book of Days (London: W. & R. Chambers, 1864, 1st edition). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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THE TIES THAT BIND 4.1 Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506), Family and Court of Ludovico II Gonzaga, detail of left side, 1465–74, fresco, Camera degli Sposi, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua. © Scala/Art Resource, New York

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4.2 Anonymous, Portrait of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, fifteenth century, Madrigal de las altas torres, Convento de las Augustinas, Avila, Spain. © Album/Art Resource, New York

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4.3 Arithmetic, wool and silk tapestry depicting a banker making a loan transaction and recording it in a ledger, c. 1520. Photograph by Prisma/UIG/Getty Images

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4.4 Quentin Metsys (c. 1466–1530), The Moneylender and His Wife, 1514, oil on wood, 70.5 x 67 cm. Inv.: INV1444. Photograph by Tony Querrec, Musée du Louvre, Paris. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, New York

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THE FAMILY ECONOMY 5.1 School of Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–94), Celebration of a Marriage, fresco, San Matino dei Buononimi, Florence. © Scala/Art Resource, New York

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5.2 Domenico di Bartolo (1400/04–45/47), Education and Marriage of the Foundlings, before 1445, fresco, Ospedale della Scala, Siena. © Josse/Scala/Art Resource, New York

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5.3 Bernardino Poccetti (1548–1612), The Founding of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, right hand section, before 1612, fresco, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence. © Scala/Art Resource, New York

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LOVE, SEX, AND SEXUALITY 6.1 Marten van Cleve (1527–77/81), Blessing the Bridal Bed, 1547–81, oil on panel, Private collection. Christie’s via Wikimedia Commons

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6.2 Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69), Couple in Bed, 1646, etching, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. © The Trustees of the British Museum, London

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6.3 Hans Baldung (1485–1545), The Groom Bewitched, c. 1534, woodcut. Courtesy the British Museum, London, via Wikimedia Commons

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6.4 Paris Bordone (1500–71), Allegory (Mars, Venus, Victoria and Cupid)/Venus, Mars, and Cupid Crowned by Victory, c. 1560, Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna. Bilddatenbank KHM via Wikimedia Commons

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6.5 Anonymous (Master of the Moucheron family painting), Family Portrait of Pierre de Moucheron, Merchant in Middelburg and Antwerp, His Wife Isabeau de Gerbier, Their Eighteen Children, Their Son-in-Law Allard de la Dale and First Grandchild. Courtesy the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

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BREAKING VOWS 7.1 Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum (1553), draft, beginning of the section on adultery and divorce. © The British Library Board, London

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7.2 Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543), William Parr, Marquess of Northampton, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017. Photograph by Print Collection/Getty Images

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7.3 “My dotard husband gives not mee,” plate 2 from English Customs (1628). Courtesy the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC

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7.4 Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, Fränkische Galerie, Kronach. Photograph by Fine Art Images/ Heritage Images/Getty Images

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7.5 The Ranters Declaration, c. 1650. Photograph by Universal History Archive/Getty Images

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REPRESENTATION 8.1 Inkstand with busts of a couple and fede motif and inscription, c. 1500, Italian (probably Faenza), tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica), 8.25 x 20 x 27.94 cm (3 1/4 x 7 7/8 x 11 in.), John H. and Ernestine A. Payne Fund. © 2020 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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8.2 Dish with an allegory of Chastity and the arms of Matthias Corvinus and Beatrice of Aragon, Fletcher Fund 1946. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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8.3 Goblet with scenes of Virgil and Febilla, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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8.4 High-footed cup with the arms of France impaling Brittany, probably Venetian (Murano), Robert Lehman Collection, 1975. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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8.5 Jewel with gold letters spelling “Amor,” Franco-Flemish, the Cloisters Collection, 1957. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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8.6 Fra Filippo Lippi (c. 1406–69), Portrait of a Woman with and a Man at a Casement, c. 1440, tempera on wood, Marquand Collection, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1889. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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8.7 Cassone with the Conquest of Trebizond, Marco del Buono Giamberti and Apollonio di Giovanni di Tomaso, John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1914. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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8.8 Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis (c. 1455–after 1508), Portrait of Bianca Maria Sforza, c. 1493, oil on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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8.9 Jan van Eyck (c. 1390–1441), Portrait of Giovanni (?) Arnolfini and his Wife, 1434, oil on panel, The National Gallery, London. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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8.10 Hans Memling (c. 1430–1494), Tommaso di Folco Portinari; Maria Portinari (Maria Maddalena Baroncelli), c. 1470, oil on wood, Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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8.11 a and b Attributed to the Maestro delle Storie del Pane, Portrait of a Man (Matteo di Sebastiano di Bernardino Gozzadini?); Portrait of a Woman (Ginevra d’Antonio Lupari Gozzadini (?)), 1494[?], tempera on wood, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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8.12 Lorenzo Lotto (1480–1556/7), Venus and Cupid, late 1520s, oil on canvas, purchase Mrs. Charles Wrightsman gift in honor of Marietta Tree, 1986. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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CONTRIBUTORS

Andrea Bayer has worked in the Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1990. She is currently the Jayne Wrightsman Curator and the Deputy Director for Collections and Administration. Among the exhibitions she has curated are Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy (2004), and Art and Love in Renaissance Italy (2008–09). Most recently, she was the cocurator of the inaugural exhibition at the Met Breuer, Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible (2016). In collaboration with the Paintings Conservation department her projects include the study of Andrea del Sarto’s Borgherini Holy Family, which resulted in both a dossier exhibition and a publication (2016/17). Anna Bellavitis is Full Professor of Early Modern History and Director of the Groupe de Recherche d’ Histoire of Rouen University in Normandy, France. She is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France and a specialist in sixteenth-century Venice. She is currently working on a project on apprenticeship in early modern Venice, funded by French and Swiss research agencies. Her recent publications include Women’s Work and Rights in Early Modern Urban Europe (2018) and Gender, Law and Economic Well-Being in Europe from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century. North versus South? (2018), edited with Beatrice Zucca Micheletto. Cecilia Cristellon is a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt, Germany. She was research fellow at the Institute for European History in Mainz, Pisa University, Münster University, the German Historical Institute in Rome, and the Newberry Library in Chicago. She was fellow at Goethe University and at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Konstanz University. Her publications include Marriage, the Church and its Judges in Renaissance Venice (1420–1545) (2017). She is currently working on a monograph Negotiating Confession in Early Modern Europe: Mixed Marriages, Roman Congregations and the Administering of Religious Plurality in an Entangled World. Joanne M. Ferraro is the Albert W. Johnson Distinguished Professor of History Emerita at San Diego State University. Her publications include Family and Public Life in Brescia, 1580–1650: The Foundations of Power in the Venetian State (1993); Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice (2001); Nefarious Crimes, Contested Justice: Illicit Sex and Infanticide in the Republic of Venice, 1557–1789 (2008); Venice: History of the Floating City (2012); and “Making a Living: The Sex Trade in Early Modern Venice,” The American Historical Review, 118 (1): 30–59. She is the General Series Editor for Bloomsbury’s A Cultural History of Marriage from Antiquity to the Present. Martin Ingram is an emeritus fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. His publications include Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640 (1987) and most

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recently Carnal Knowledge: Regulating Sex in England, 1470–1600 (2017). His articles cover ecclesiastical courts, crime and the law, sex and marriage, religion, and popular customs, and the history of climate. A companion volume on sexual regulation in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century London is in preparation. Another major focus of his current research is the history of shame in comparative perspective, viewed primarily through the medium of English literature from Shakespeare to Jane Austen. Debra Kaplan is a senior lecturer at Bar Ilan University in Israel. She received her doctorate in History from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. Her work focuses on the Jewish communities in western Europe during the early modern period. She has written about Jewish–Christian relations, women and gender, communal rituals, autobiographies, and various aspects of daily life. Her book, Beyond Expulsion: Jews, Christians, and Reformation Strasbourg (2011) explores the relationships between Jews in Alsace and Christians in Strasbourg during the Protestant Reformation. Sara F. Matthews-Grieco is Professor of History and Women’s & Gender Studies at Syracuse University in Florence, Italy. She publishes on the history of women, family, and sexuality in Early Modern Europe; and iconographic literacy and the sixteenth-century market for prints. She is the author of Ange ou diablesse. La représentation de la femme au XVIe siècle (1991) and the editor of Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy (2010) and Cuckoldry, Impotence and Adultery in Europe (2014). She has articles in Renaissance Quarterly, Quaderni Storici, MEFR, Word & Image and essays in a number of collective volumes. Marjorie Elizabeth (Beth) Plummer is Susan C. Karant-Nunn Chair in Reformation and Early Modern European History in the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies at the University of Arizona. Her publications include From Priest’s Whore to Pastor’s Wife: Clerical Marriage and the Process of Reform in the Early German Reformation (2012) and, as coeditor, Archeologies of Reformation: Writing the German Reformation, 1517–2017 (2017) and Topographies of Tolerance and Intolerance: Responses to Religious Pluralism in Reformation Europe (2018). She is working on a book on Protestant nuns during the sixteenth century. Jutta Sperling is Professor of Early Modern History at Hampshire College, Massachusetts. She has worked on convent culture in late Renaissance Venice and comparative legal history in the Mediterranean. Her current research project involves the study of lactation imagery in early modern art. Her publications include, as editor, Medieval and Renaissance Lactations: Images, Rhetorics, and Practices (2013); and, as author, “Address, Desire, Lactation: On some Gender-bending Images of the Virgin and Child by Jan Gossaert,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch LXXVI (2015): 49–77; and Roman Charity: Queer Lactations in Early Modern Visual Culture (2016).

GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE JOANNE M. FERRARO

The six-volume Bloomsbury Academic Cultural History of Marriage series is designed for both students and scholars of history, gender and cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, and related disciplines. Its chronological boundaries and periodization are in accordance with the various other Bloomsbury Academic history series. While the volumes are implicitly Western and European in chronological perspective, the contributors have made strenuous efforts to make world comparisons where appropriate; to be mindful of religious differences where possible; and to reach across the disciplines. Together they offer a set of peer-reviewed original works of synthesis and interpretation that engage recent scholarship and use representative primary sources. With a uniform set of themes in mind, each of the six volumes contains the same chapter titles so that readers can explore a particular topic across the entire series. Each chapter offers an overview of a theme as well as a wide range of case material derived from original research. There are eight common areas of investigation. The volumes open with a chapter on the preludes to marriage in the way of courtship and rites. Two chapters follow, covering the evolution of law and practice in both the religious and secular spheres, respectively; examining how authorities made marital consent binding; and exploring the ways in which clerics and secular officials attempted to regulate the behavior of wives and husbands. The fourth chapter, “The Ties that Bind,” encompasses a broad spectrum of behavior, situating marital unions within the context of kinship groups and social networks as well as amidst alliances of property and power. Marriage as an economic contract and unit of production and reproduction is the general theme of the fifth chapter, “The Family Economy,” and includes the subjects of dowry and estate management as well as the role of wives and husbands in income-producing activities and child rearing. While marriage legitimized sexual relations, whether or not it included love in times past continues to be the subject of vigorous debate, particularly for the period preceding the eighteenth century. In the sixth chapter, “Love, Sex, and Sexuality,” historians tread cautiously, examining the quality of marriage and sexual relations on a case by case basis as well as reviewing expected, albeit ideal, norms in contrast to practice. Extramarital sex is also treated under this rubric and connects well with the theme of the seventh chapter, “Breaking Vows” through separation and divorce. Finally, the eighth chapter explores the myriad ways that marriage was represented in art, material culture, theater, and literature. The contributors have availed themselves of a wide array of both prescriptive and descriptive sources. Among the former are biblical, classical, and religious texts; legal treatises and legislation; and an assortment of mythological, literary, and artistic works. These documents and visual materials often represent the ideal templates of an age, such as the cloistered maiden, the faithful wife, or the successful husband. Among the descriptive

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sources are letters and diaries as well as court testimonies from archival repositories; ledgers and account books; ecclesiastical records of marriage and marital litigation; and for the Modern age, film as well as digital media. Their descriptions often transcend the ideal templates offered in prescriptive writings and afford insights into the realities of social experience. They shed light on human behavior and the ways in which women and men negotiated and contested the enforcement of formal laws and parental authority. It is important to note, however, that there are fewer such sources for the classical period, wherein scholars often must rely more heavily on artifacts, while the number of available textual sources steadily increases over time. In tracing the evolution of marriage over the long term, the series highlights no less than sweeping changes in its significance to religious and secular institutions, to family status and estate management, and to the affective desires of women and men. Marriage was not available to everyone; opportunities were heavily dependent on financial means. Further, gender and social class were important determinants of marital experience and thus are important categories of analysis throughout the series. In principle men enjoyed more freedom within the conjugal bond than women, and free people had more flexibility than slaves or serfs. Yet it remains important to nuance such generalities by devoting close attention to regional differences as well as to the social and political status of individuals. Contributors in Volume 1, covering Antiquity, for example, have found that in contrast to Greece or Rome slaves in Ptolemaic Egypt could marry. These scholars have also determined that consent to marry was important in the Greco-Roman world, but nonetheless elite men as well as elite women were obliged to respect the priorities of their families and given little choice in the selection of spouses. Their marriages were arranged without a period of courtship, an experience that might possibly evolve within the union over time. It was not a sacrament but, rather, a legal transaction that provided for the transfer of property and the reproduction of the male line. Beyond family interests, marriage was of central importance to both community and state; the primary means of creating new households and citizens. It was fundamentally a patriarchal institution. However, scholars in Volume 1 suggest that the happiest marriages were in feminine hands. The period between 500 and 1450, termed broadly the Medieval Age in Volume 2, witnessed a dramatic change in perceptions of the institution of marriage in Christian communities. The transformation was in large part a product of the growth of the Christian church both as an institution and as a primary organizing principle for European society. Between roughly the sixth and eleventh centuries prelates gradually converted the pagan tribes of the West to Christianity. Irish monks, with reinforcement from the Franks, fostered and defended the spread of the new creed in the face of non-Christian invaders, making it the majority religion. Religious men preserved classical scholarship and oversaw the administration of secular government. Importantly, they were the dominant sponsors of cultural advancement in art, philosophy, and political ideology, all infused with Christian themes. In the social sphere they slowly but persistently regulated marital life, insisting on free will, even for serfs, and that a valid marriage require the mutual consent of the couple. The philosophical, theological, and legal developments that unfolded between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries solidified the church’s position as a dominant force in social life, influencing sexual norms, family economy, relations between the state and the individual, and transforming both liturgy and iconography. Insofar as marriage was concerned several developments stand out: the establishment of incest restrictions that set the kinship boundaries for marriage; the insistence on

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free will; and the declaration that marriage was a sacrament, where the consent of the couple rendered it legally and spiritually binding before God. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries in particular witnessed changes in theologians’ understanding of canon law and with them the conjugal union became central to discussions about salvation. Marriage was both a spiritual and physical state of mind. Spiritually it was to reflect Christ’s loving relationship with the church, something that both the various members of the clergy and the laity could experience. However, while the clergy were bound by vows of celibacy, the laity were taught that monogamous marriage was the only place for sexual activity, and its sole purpose was for procreation. In the West a further proviso was established that veered away from the Gospels and the teachings of St. Paul: marriage could not be dissolved. This remained in stark contrast to both Greek Orthodox, Judaic, and Muslim traditions. The economic, intellectual, and religious reorganization of western European society that took place between 1450 and 1650, described generally in Volume 3 as the Renaissance and Early Modern Age, brought the parameters of marriage instituted by the medieval church under scrutiny. The period witnessed a commercial revolution that gave rise to a more literate and secular-minded professional class in Europe’s urban centers; the expansion of Europe to the Americas, Africa, and Asia; and a new approach to education termed humanism that, together with the scientific revolution, challenged medieval scholastic epistemology. With the rise of secularism both materially and intellectually, theologians and jurists debated over whether marriage was a sacrament or a contract. For many families it was a means of guarding or improving their social and political positions as well as their financial status. Thus parental control over the choice of their children’s spouses was tantamount, making notarial contracts essential. This more secular model of marriage challenged the church’s jurisdictional claims of primacy and conflicted with the religious mandate that only the verbal consent of bride and groom was required in order to make the union valid. For young couples, privileging the contract over the sacrament exacerbated the conflict over free choice and parental control. These tensions were particularly high among the classes of economic substance, such as the nobility or the commercial and juridical elites. The Protestant Reformation introduced a second challenge to the medieval parameters of marriage: the possibility of divorce. The practice was largely limited during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but nonetheless a dramatic conceptual break with the medieval past. Divorce in Protestant areas of Europe recognized the possibility of failed marriage. It was not necessarily under the sole jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. In some places secular consistories also heard petitions to dissolve marital unions. In Catholic areas, on the other hand, ecclesiastical tribunals sometimes granted a separation of bed and board, but the institution of marriage remained permanent in the eyes of God. Ecclesiastical courts also judged whether marital unions were legally valid and binding. Betrothals, promises to marry, and the marriage rite itself had unfolded throughout the Middle Ages in a variety of ways, reflecting both regional and confessional differences but also the urgency in some cases to have sexual relations prior to wedlock. When one partner, generally the man, reneged on the promise the litigation reached the ecclesiastical court. The flood of breach of promise suits and general confusion over whether couples were in a binding relationship led Catholic theologians to regularize the form of marriage at the Council of Trent in 1563. Prelates laid down some basic requirements: publication of the banns three times in the parish where the marriage would take place; the presence of a prelate and witnesses at the service; and the couple’s verbal expression of mutual consent.

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The marriage also had to be consummated and registered. Ironically, the regularization of marriage rites also led to a proliferation of petitions to annul unions, ostensibly because couples had not followed the prescribed form. The conflict between religious and secular models of marriage and between free will and parental control remained unresolved throughout the Renaissance and Early Modern Age and continued into the Age of Enlightenment, 1650–1800. The main issue, treated in detail in Volume 4, became whether marriage could be an affective bond and the fruit of love rather than an arranged match. Historians of that period are still debating whether marriage was a cold, business affair or filled with love and affection. Obviously no one model applies. However, the contributors in Volume 4 find that by the late eighteenth century there was greater emphasis on marrying for love, a trend that intertwined with historic economic developments and new Enlightenment ideals. Europe was expanding both economically and territorially, and there was a growing trend to allow free choice away from paternal authority. This did not break the religious stranglehold on marriage but it did attenuate it in some areas of the European continent. The Age of Empires, 1800–1900, also witnessed several changes in the domain of marriage. Generally, government and secular law took on greater influence in the regulation of conjugal unions than in the past. The introduction of civil marriage made registration by the state compulsory, a development that encouraged the practice of civil ceremonies. In some areas, however, common-law marriage prevailed over unions concluded under government supervision, while in others the influence of religion and religious rites remained substantial. The idea of romantic love, introduced in earlier times, featured prominently during this “Age of Romanticism,” particularly in literature and theater. Novel plots where lovers played a leading role more often than not ended happily. Nonetheless, in some parts of the world marriage was still arranged by the parents of the couple, keeping in mind the exchange and extension of wealth and labor power as well as the future of the family lines. The opportunities for premarital sex varied from place to place. Where individuals married young there was no room for romance or sexuality prior to the wedding. Southeast Asia, Japan, Polynesia, and parts of Africa, North American, and Europe afforded some ritualized opportunities for sexual experience before marriage in the form of “night courting.” Peers of the unmarried couple would supervise the activities in hopes of preventing unwanted pregnancies. In Western societies experiencing greater rural-to-urban migration and urbanization, the incidence of out-of wedlock fertility rose, reaching its peak in the latter half of the nineteenth century with the introduction of birth control. The stigma of such pregnancies, however, prevailed and contributed to the spread of sexually repressive codes both in Europe and its colonies. The later nineteenth century also witnessed an increase in divorce, signaling a weakening of marriage as an institution and presaging what was to come in the twentieth century. Perhaps the most sweeping change in the institution of marriage during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, featured in the scholarship of Volume 6, The Modern Age, is that it was no longer the central organizing principle of social life. With the increasing autonomy of individuals, many people have chosen not to marry, living life as singles or simply cohabiting with a partner. It is not uncommon for individuals to have multiple sexual relationships over their life cycles or for childbearing to take place outside of marriage. A variety of factors have undermined both marriage and close connections with kin. Among them, globalization, improved means of long-distance transportation, and shifting labor opportunities, developments that have resulted in people leaving their natal villages, towns, and cities to settle in other far-off places, where family bonds are less

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accessible and there is less social pressure to conform to tradition. In this context kinship groups have become less cohesive, and the extended family has given way to nuclear units or individual autonomy. Increasing opportunities for women in the labor force, especially during the twenty-first century, have also contributed to changes in the nature or necessity of marriage. Women are less dependent on having husbands and are more reluctant to subscribe to the rigid gender roles of times past. The second-wave feminist movement of the late twentieth century has been critical in challenging patriarchal authority and in defining new roles for women in family and society. More women are obtaining advanced degrees and participating in the labor force. Finally, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have also witnessed no less than a revolution in the recognition of the complexities of human sexuality. The LGBTQ movements have liberated individuals to have sexual relationships and bear children with preferred partners, and in many countries same-sex marriage has become legal. These dramatic changes have not come without turmoil, and religious leaders, politicians, civic authorities, the media, communities, and individuals continue to question the origins and meaning of marriage and to attempt to define its parameters and purpose. Thus Bloomsbury Academic’s Cultural History of Marriage constitutes a timely and important body of scholarship addressing the ongoing debates of a broad segment of society today.

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Introduction JOANNE M. FERRARO

Why marry? The question is timeless, one that any couple tying the knot contemplates prior to entering a lifelong commitment. The need for love and physical intimacy and the desire to forge affective ties, to have children, and to perpetuate the family line have all been among the common motivations to marry. However, during the period between 1450 and 1650 these personal and highly emotional desires were circumscribed by external forces that operated within a complex arena of economic, demographic, political, and religious developments. Moreover, social, religious, and cultural attitudes, including the constructed norms of masculinity and femininity, also impinged upon the possibility of marrying. Identifying those structural and cultural forces and the variety of ways that people responded to them therefore occupies a central place in scholarly study across the disciplines. Historians are busy examining ecclesiastical and civil records of marriage, annulment, separation, and divorce; nuptial contracts drawn up by the uniting families with the help of lawyers and notaries; family diaries; and criminal records that define illicit sexual behavior to learn about marital life in times past. This volume aims to provide a comprehensive picture of current research on the cultural history of marriage. Together with the contributors in the entire six-volume Cultural History of Marriage series, the authors here investigate a uniform set of practices, including marriage rites and customs; their social, economic, cultural and political meanings; and the attempts of church, state, and society to regulate such unions. They also explore the dissolution of marriage as well as alternative arrangements of domestic intimacy during the two hundred years between 1450 and 1650. Historians have assigned those centuries multiple descriptives, defending and debating them with vigor. Here descriptives such as Renaissance and early modern will be used selectively as they apply to the history of marriage. The former refers largely to the revival of classical models in art, history, and philosophy and the keen interest in humanistic study. Intellectuals wrote prescriptive handbooks on the subject of marriage that were filled with ideal templates for husbands and wives, while artists and artisans commemorated the unions of prosperous people with portraits, furniture, and material objects often based on ancient models and motifs. The later phases of the Renaissance, from 1500, are also referred to as the Reformation era or the early modern age. They were marked by dramatic religious change in the Catholic confession and the introduction of multiple Protestant denominations, European encounters with the Americas and Asia, the growth of state bureaucracies, and a resurgence of ecclesiastical authority in private life. In short, no less than sweeping changes underlie the context of the more specialized articles on the cultural history of marriage in this volume. Clearly this periodization, which applies to all the Bloomsbury cultural history series, privileges Europe and developments within Christian societies. Yet some of the authors here also make attempts to be more inclusive, providing comparisons with non-European societies and with the Jewish and Islamic faiths. This essay will provide the overall historical background for the chapters that follow. It introduces the range of

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A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

issues that scholars are examining, including the limits surrounding the possibility of marriage; its legal parameters; its place in religious theology and secular life; the ways in which it was regulated; and the kinds of alternative domestic arrangements people made outside the marital bond. Additionally this introduction identifies expected norms for husbands and wives as well as the quality of marital relationships. Finally, it will briefly treat the subject of failed marriage.

MARRIAGE PATTERNS During the two hundred years under study not everyone could afford to marry, a factor that shaped household formation.1 Children who remained in their natal households as part of extended families, or couples with financial resources that enabled them to set up their own households, had a better chance of marrying than those who did not. Nobles in extended families with more than one married couple under the same roof, for example, often fit this category, as did prosperous farmers or the scions of wealthy merchants and town oligarchs. However, the other 90–95 percent of the population lived

FIGURE I.1  Louis (or Antoine?) Le Nain (c. 1600/03–48), Peasant Interior with an Old Flute Player, c. 1642, Kimball Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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FIGURE I.2  Cornelis de Vos (1585–1651), Portrait of Anthony Reyniers and His Family 1631, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

under more precarious financial circumstances and were subject to cyclical periods of dearth and prosperity. For them marriage was more of a stretch. Steven Ozment has calculated, for example, that up to 40 percent of women remained single, the result of both social and economic disadvantages that limited their experiences.2 Although household formations were highly variable, scholars have attempted to outline some general patterns. In northwestern Europe, which included Britain, Scandinavia, northern France, and Germany, the custom of economic independence delayed age of marriage to mid- to late 20s, when couples were able to form their own nuclear households. In Protestant areas consistories required couples to have sufficient property in order to marry.3 Many young people went to work on the lands and in the households of the more fortunate in hopes of one day improving their chances of having a family of their own. However, 10–15 percent of the population did not marry at all. In Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, on the other hand, starting a new household was not a prerequisite of marriage. People tended to marry younger and live with one set of parents and/or perhaps another set of married siblings, or, alternatively, brides married much older, financially established grooms. In middle Europe, including central and southern France and parts of Italy, Austria, and Germany often two coresidential siblings lived together with their spouses, each marrying in their mid- to late 20s. But there was also a high percentage of people who did not marry at all. On the other hand in eastern Europe, such as Albania, Bulgaria, and the lands extending east to European Russia, most people married rather than become lifetime servants, and often several couples lived in the same household. Throughout Europe, there was greater incentive to marry younger where labor was in demand, while men tended to marry later in areas with few income-earning opportunities.

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A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

Demographic conditions also impinged upon marriage rates. The sixteenth century, for example, witnessed acute population pressure, high levels of inflation, and land shortages, factors that reduced nuptial rates and delayed the age of marriage or prevented it altogether. On the other hand, periods of demographic decline, the result of catastrophic mortality during famine years, plague epidemics, or the religious wars of the late sixteenth century, afforded a higher incidence of marriage because there were greater landed resources and employment opportunities. There was also a greater urgency to replenish the population. Thus, people married at younger ages during these cycles, a practice that extended the number of childbearing years for women. Social class helps refine this somewhat static picture of cyclical economic and demographic trends, for not all prosperous people married. On the contrary, often families wielding political power, whether in cities, towns, or amidst the rural nobility, practiced restricted marriage in order to consolidate and protect the family dynasty over the long term. In Venice, for example, the endogamous, constitutional elite that ruled the city for five centuries generally permitted only one son or one daughter to marry in order to conserve wealth.4 A large percentage of patrician daughters were housed in convents,5 while patrician sons not tracked for arranged marriage but still included in the family business firm sometimes secretly concluded informal, intimate relationships that often produced illegitimate offspring.6 People of economic substance, thus, were intent on designing strategies of inheritance and property transmission that best served their

FIGURE I.3  Giuseppe de Gobbis, The Convent Parlor, c. 1760, oil on canvas. Courtesy the San Diego Museum of Art, CA. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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families over multiple generations. For them it was important to limit the validation of new economic units and legitimate offspring in order to provide adequate inheritance for the future. Ultimately that often meant that marriage was not the product of love and attraction but rather was arranged by parents, guardians, and sometimes even extended kin to conclude social, political, and economic alliances of convenience that maintained or elevated the status of the family. Yet over the past half century historians have learned to be cautious about over-generalizing. Some scholars have effectively countered Lawrence Stone’s assertions that marriages were all arranged and were emotionally bleak.7 Personal attraction also played a role in matchmaking, and there was no set pattern that fit all situations.

THE MEANING OF MARRIAGE Irrespective of class, the solemnization of marriage was rarely an individual affair. Rather, the formation of a new economic unit, the exchange of property, and the acquisition of new kinship ties was a community one, solidified by rites, festivities, and material objects that evidenced its public nature (see Kaplan, Bellavitis, and Bayer in this volume).8 It forged complex relationships with the wider community that helped sustain the conjugal commitment. The smaller the community, the less private the union and the greater the participation of neighbors and kin in reinforcing traditional bonds and community cohesion. Among the many practices communities employed to regulate nuptial unions, at least among the lower classes, was charivari in France, rites in which neighbors expressed

FIGURE I.4  Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1526/30–69), The Peasant Wedding, 1566–9, oil on panel, Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

FIGURE I.5  Raphael Sanzio (1483–1520), Engagement of the Virgin, 1504, oil on roundheaded panel, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. Public domain via Wikimedia.

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disapproval of unusual betrothals, ridiculing the couple by making noise with drums, bells, horns, and chant.9 Widows who remarried in Florence were also subject to these rituals, which were called mattinate.10 Recent historiography has shown time and again that, in addition to higher authorities, villagers and neighbors in tight urban communities also sought control over the moral codes regulating marriage and sexuality.11 Public rites and popular traditions were as important as the legal procedures that established the bond. Thus scholars, including Debra Kaplan and Cecilia Cristellon in this volume, pay close attention to regional and confessional variations in the announcement of marital consent, the exchange of gifts and rings as well as other artifacts that served as symbols of the nuptial bond, and the ways in which family and community participated in the social drama that validated the new union between two individuals and between families and communities.12 Importantly, Kaplan and Cristellon underline the ways in which the marital promise became binding. Unless the betrothal took place within some dimension of the public sphere it could become a potential source of contention. Both the ecclesiastical and the secular courts throughout Europe were filled with such disputes. The promise was not necessarily a singular event, as is for example taking vows at the altar, but rather a process that evolved in stages and that involved other significant actors and actresses besides the couple. Kaplan and Cristellon underline the tensions between theological tenets and popular practice and demonstrate how important rituals were in all of the confessions, including Judaism.13 Family and community had a critical role in courtship and betrothal, where they regulated sexual morality and reminded the groom of his obligations. They participated in rites that symbolically enacted the union of property and kin, like toasting, gift-giving, processions, and celebrations. We are reminded of the very public nature of marriage in all confessions and its central place in local communities, all of which manifested regional variance. Art and artifacts also bound couples together publically by legitimizing and celebrating their unions (see Bayer in this volume). They provided graphic documentation of the couple’s mutual consent to marry. Rings and pendants gave material meaning to the promise, together with wedding gifts that celebrated both female chastity and fertility and the making of a new home. These artifacts celebrated the theme of love and family but also underlined the responsibilities of the spouses. Bayer’s study is more dependent on the extant artifacts of the wealthy, such as wedding chests, maiolica, glassware, precious metals, and painted panels. These objects belonged to prominent families whose unions held broader social and political meaning in their respective societies. The patrons of this opulent, material culture were intent on perpetuating the fame and fortune of their families over time. Often brides from wealthy families brought cash, goods, and/or property to the union. The material world of ordinary people, on the other hand, was more circumscribed, yet even in their case brides were expected to bring trousseaux of clothing, beds and bedding, linen, pots, and pans to more utilitarian if not symbolic ends. Besides trousseaux and other practical assets, the dotal contract itself underlined the material importance of marriage, and it is of central interest to historians studying customary laws and practices. Originally, in Roman times, the purpose of the bride’s dowry was to contribute to the costs of marriage, but it evolved in medieval times to become her legal share of her natal family’s estate. Rules governing dotal wealth varied widely across Europe (see Bellavitis and Sperling in the volume). The amount might equal or surpass that of male siblings’ inheritance. It was not just fathers but also brothers, mothers, aunts, and other kin that contributed to dotal wealth, for the well-dowered bride was a family asset.14 Jurists, clerics, and secular magistrates regarded dowries as

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A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

fundamental to the welfare of women, but laws varied from region to region on who held jurisdiction to administer the assets. In some places husbands had use of the resources but could not consume dotal wealth on penalty of repayment from their own assets. In the Republic of Venice widowers were entitled to a third of the dowry; while the remaining resources were earmarked for surviving children. Women with spendthrift husbands could sue them for damages, and the courts would intervene.15 In Florence dowries were so important to married women and their wider kinship networks that the city established a public Dowry Fund where families could deposit resources at the birth of a daughter for her place in the marriage market.16 Other cities established charities to assist the indigent with dotal resources. Overall dowry levels among the upper classes in Italy increased over the sixteenth century, giving women more leverage in the family economy.17 In places where conjugal funds were favored over patrilineal inheritance, as was the case in Greece, Portugal, and Spain, wives and widows had an important impact on the marriage market and the family’s financial status.18 In this volume Jutta Sperling offers a nuanced study of how dotal wealth impacted the quality of marriage as well as the financial status of women. She offers examples across confessions throughout the Mediterranean world to understand its significance as a determinant of women’s experience. In cities like Florence where women had little chance of property ownership families were more linear conscious and patriarchal. Venice, on the other hand, and its Mediterranean possessions at Naxos and Mykonos adhered to a mitigated dowry system, practicing bride price and fixed inheritance. The dowry, considered their share of inheritance, Sperling argues, was a strategy to dispossess women of property. Married women often lost free choice and the ability to administer income. Lisbon, in contrast, encouraged joint ownership and equal inheritance as did the Portuguese colonies in Goa and Brazil, while Islamic brides and women under the tutelage of Byzantine law received substantial gifts from their grooms even though land ownership was restricted. Islamic women were entitled to daily allowances that gave them the financial freedom to start businesses. This was in stark contrast to the Florentine tradition that limited women’s access to property. In the Florentine context, marriage, and female sexual honor, were vehicles for property exchange. Women, however, outside the marital bond, whether in informal partnerships or not, were subject to greater poverty and sexual exploitation, and the children born outside of wedlock were massively displaced.19

WHO GOVERNED MARRIAGE? Since biblical times the religious significance of marriage has always been paramount, but it was especially complex for Christians in Europe after 1521 because, after a thousand years of unity, the church splintered into multiple confessions. There was some continuity but also significant change.20 Both Catholics and Protestants maintained that marriage stabilized partners sexually, forging a spiritual bond. The union was considered the foundation of good citizenship, and by extension of good government and social morality. For both confessions the essential ingredient for a valid marriage was the mutual consent of the partners, the key element making the union binding in the eyes of God. Further, the couple were obliged to exchange their vows before a priest or pastor but also in the presence of parents and witnesses. However, while for Catholics marriage was one of the seven sacraments, Protestants gradually abandoned the sacramental nature of the bond, moving more in the direction of civil law (see Plummer in this volume). Martin Luther (1483–1546) still considered the nuptial union a divine ordinance, but

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Martin Bucer (1491–1551) went so far as to characterize it as a civil contract concluded under secular authority, even though the rites took place in the church. Protestants also elevated the state of marriage to a higher degree than their Catholic predecessors. Together with humanist intellectuals, they criticized the clerical ideals of virginity and celibacy, advocated closing cloisters and nunneries, and encouraged marriage and reproduction. They argued that marriage was the appropriate place for sexuality and that it prevented fornication. These were direct assaults on the prohibition for priests to marry as well as the restrictive marriage practices of the nobility and other social strata designing strategies of wealth conservation. The celibate ideal had in practice left a host of women living as concubines or in even less formal arrangements in precarious situations, together with illegitimate children. Protestant reformers argued that marriage would relieve women and children of such economic and legal insecurity. Their courts and consistories in Switzerland and south Germany condemned fornication and concubinage and enforced promises of marriage. Moreover, they criminalized unwed motherhood to a greater extent than hitherto.21 Marriage as a rite of religious significance or as a civil contract was among the key debates during the early modern age, as the arenas of secular power and bureaucracy expanded throughout Europe (see Plummer in this volume).22 However, it is important to keep in mind that despite the contested claims of church and state, or the demands of controlling parents, the need for love and physical intimacy often conflicted with both canon and civil law as well as the aspirations of authorities. The institution of marriage, thus, was ridden with tension owing, on the one hand, to the competing intrusions of ecclesiastical and secular authorities in private life and, on the other, to children’s resistance to the arranged marriages that their parents concluded. Clandestine, or secret, marriage was one form of rebellion, but much to the dismay of parents attempting to guard their secular interests, the Catholic Church validated those unions. Cohabitation among couples who for whatever reason did not marry also sometimes happened in some areas of Europe, but it was an arrangement in which women incurred greater risks than men, both because of its social stigma as well as because of the risks of unwed motherhood.23 Often they were constrained to sacrifice their honor and suffer poverty, and the children of such arrangements were stigmatized at best or abandoned. For these reasons legitimate marriage was considered the preferred state, and it became very important to identify what constituted a valid union in legal terms and by whose authority. By the fourth century CE in Europe the Christian church had assigned itself the duty of upholding moral standards by controlling what it defined as incestuous relationships and sex outside of marriage. It established impediments to the marriage of close relations in order to discourage kinship networks and factional endogamy (see Bellavitis and Ingram in this volume).24 The singular basis of marriage in Catholic theology was the mutual consent of the couple, a factor that countered the will of any family or clan. Yet the church did not attach the manifestation of that commitment to any specific protocol. The French were the first to regularize the sacred marriage rite during the eleventh century. The English were also normally marrying in church by the late fifteenth century. But elsewhere there was no defined way to get married. This is an important fact in understanding the subsequent tensions between changing theological requirements and popular practice, another central issue in scholarly study.25 Some couples took vows in church. Others were bound by the business contracts their parents had made when concluding the match. Still others began to live together and reproduce (see MatthewsGrieco’s analysis of premarital sex in this volume). The status, wealth, and reputation of

10 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

the family all impinged upon these various rites of courtship and ultimately on marriage itself. The lack of formal protocol caused considerable confusion when, for example, one of the partners, generally the man, denied that he had made a binding promise to join in wedlock.26 By the second decade of the sixteenth century Protestant reformers were condemning secret marriages, which they suspected were encouraged by sexual desire. They also denounced both clerical and lay concubinage.27 Secular governments in reformed areas intruded on these unions, challenging their validity with civil ordinances and lay-dominated marriage courts.28 They issued new laws requiring witnesses, parental consent, and rites performed in church in order to remove any ambiguity about the marital promise. Catholic areas, on the other hand, were still ridden with breach of promise suits, largely initiated by women who found themselves pregnant and abandoned. As a result, church leaders decided to impose greater uniformity on protocol by tightening the rules for marriage. With the Tametsi decree at the Council of Trent in 1562–63 theologians imposed succinct requirements: that the banns be published in the couple’s community three times; that the declaration of consent on the part of the couple be orally stated before the parish priest of one of the spouses and at least two witnesses; that the couple publically affirm their mutual consent; and that they register the marriage. The union also had to be consummated. While Catholic theology continued to stipulate that the only requirement for marriage in the sight of God was the mutual consent of the couple, it was now necessary for the parish priest to officiate and witness the commitment. The priest would celebrate the sacrament, while a wider circle of kin, friends, and neighbors became involved in the public commitment, the transfer of property, and the acquisition of new kin. Tametsi, like the Protestant reforms, in principle effected an important turning point in the legal history of Christian marriage by providing a theological dividing line between valid and invalid unions (see also Cristellon, Plummer, and Sperling in this volume). The flexibility in marriage protocol that had characterized the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries waned, to be substituted with formal validation by ecclesiastical authority. Assessing the effectiveness of these reforms in practice, however, has required ongoing and painstaking research. Two Italian scholars, Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni, launched a major initiative during the 1990s, gathering forty-four scholars (this author was a participant) in nine biannual seminars to compare the activities of the ecclesiastical courts and the practices of ordinary people. The authors’ findings were published in four volumes and shed important light on such issues as spousal relations, bigamy, marital legitimacy, and marital dissolution.29 Most of the data came from Italy, but there were also important studies of England, Spain, Switzerland, and Germany. Among the overall conclusions, based on the extant records of the ecclesiastical courts, were that the effects of Trent on marriage were slow, taking at least a generation to become tangible. Suits to recognize clandestine marriage declined. However, annulment petitions rose. Scholars continue to study these marriage practices in the various regions of Europe, often using primary sources outside the ecclesiastical courts, including the activities of secular and criminal tribunals, diaries, and notarial records. The evidence deriving from litigation in the ecclesiastical courts indicates that problems still remained after Trent with determining whether a marriage was legally binding. Catholic couples in Venice, for example, used the decree as an opportunity to declare they had never concluded valid marriages.30 Women in particular petitioned the Patriarchal Court claiming their parents or guardians had forced them to take partners

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they did not want by inflicting grave fear. They explained that they had consented by voice but not with their hearts. The court thus found itself with numerous petitions for annulment based on the argument of lack of consent. Other couples, though not as many, provided tantalizing narratives about sexual dysfunction to explain that their unions had never been consummated. In effect Tametsi had incentivized some people to dissolve their unhappy relationships. Beyond children’s resistance to arranged marriage, Catholics in Europe did not whole-heartedly greet the Tametsi decree for other reasons as well. Namely, it interfered with another highly prevalent model of marriage, one that served the secular interests of parents intent on controlling the family’s social, economic, and political status. The French nobility in particular upheld the priority of dowries and marriage contracts and challenged the authority of the church, even before the Council of Trent. In 1556 Henry II overturned canon law and gave parents the legal right to disinherit sons under the age of 30 and daughters younger than 25 that had made marital choices without their consent. These challenges to ecclesiastical authority grew in lockstep with the ambitions of the secular state in general and the French noblesse de robe in particular in the interests of legally safeguarding parental authority, lineage, and family estate management.31 The Ordinance of Blois followed in 1578, requiring priests to validate the ages of the marrying couple and obtain proof of parental consent. In a draconian move, the state criminalized filial disobedience and prescribed the death penalty for violators of the Ordinance. The trend to strengthen patriarchal rule in France continued throughout the seventeenth century to the point where by 1639 marriage was declared a civil contract, not a religious one. By the eighteenth century a partnership had developed between the Gallican Church and the absolutist state that tended to laicize family law, a trend that spread throughout many parts of western Europe and presaged the secularization of marriage in the modern age. During the same period Protestant marriage came increasingly under civil as well as ecclesiastical jurisdiction, in order to ensure it as both a spiritual and social institution. While the French case provides the most dramatic defense of the secular regulation of marriage, union by family contract enjoyed a long tradition, particularly on the Italian peninsula. Notarial agreements often preceded any clerical benediction and held the utmost priority. Artisans, workers, and peasant farmers alongside town oligarchs and regional princes went to notaries to record dowries, the exchange of consent, and wedding gifts. The practice was especially important to urban oligarchs in cities like Florence, Venice, and Brescia, where the leading families constituted endogamous, hereditary elites.32 The survival of these dynastic lines depended on wealth conservation and astute political alliances. They prioritized patrilinear descent and dotal property in forming political consortiums. Likewise in England the law protected patrilineal wealth with primogeniture, whereby one son inherited the preponderance of the estate and women could not inherit land earmarked for the patrilineal lineage. The contract, often between fathers of the betrothed, was as binding as the wedding ceremony and preempted the rites of engagement. Once again, the participation of the wider kinship group, who served as guarantors and arbiters of the agreement, was paramount. Because marriage contracts ultimately involved the disposition of property, which normally came under the jurisdiction of the civil courts, church and state became increasingly competitive over the control of nuptial unions. While the former sanctioned secret marriage, the latter sought to prevent those unions that jeopardized the material designs of the family dynasty. In theological terms whether marriage was a sacrament, a contract, or merely the expression of mutual consent depended upon religious confession. In Eastern Orthodoxy,

12 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

FIGURE I.6  Unattributed, Decorated Ketubbah, 1698, ink, gouache, and copper-plate engraving on parchment, Livorno, Italy, Private Collection. Courtesy Sotheby’s via Wikimedia Commons.

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a religion more prevalent in parts of the Ottoman Empire, including Greece, Albania, Serbia, Bosnia, and Romania, it was regarded as both a sacrament, or sacred mystery, and as an ordination. Marriage united a couple before God. However, while bride and groom conferred the sacrament in a Roman Catholic union by expressing consent, in the Eastern Orthodox Church the Holy Spirit bestowed the sacrament through the actions of the priest or bishop. The couple exchanged rings at the entrance of the church, followed by their crowning at the altar. In contrast, in Judaism God creates the contractual bond and the marriage takes place in two separate religious acts: a betrothal in the presence of two unrelated male witnesses and then the wedding. On the other hand in Islamic law, prevalent in approximately 18 percent of the Ottoman Empire,33 marriage was a legal and social contract between a man and a woman. The marriage might be arranged by parents or guardians but for the union to be legal bride and groom must give their consent. In conclusion, we see that there was no consensus among theologians and jurists of the early modern age over which authority— that of bride and groom; priest, pastor, bishop, or rabbi; God or the Holy Spirit; civil or social contract; or parental consent—validated the nuptial union. The norms, doctrines, and laws imposed from above differed from confession to confession, but in principle all agreed that the free consent of bride and groom was fundamental and binding, and parents were urged not to coerce children into arranged marriages.

THE EVIDENCE OF SOCIAL EXPERIENCE Legal norms are one dimension of the history of marriage. Whether or not they are respected, however, is quite another, and in this realm the behavior of individuals, the cultural traditions and rituals of a particular region, the economic behavior of the family, and the social pressures from neighbors, friends, and kin all made that history diverse and complex. A case in point is England, where popular experience afforded greater flexibility for children to give input in betrothal and marital agreements, but even among the aristocracy, upper gentry, and urban plutocracy there were variations in arranged marriage.34 Among Europe’s peasant and working classes there was greater opportunity to socialize in groups at festive occasions. As Sara Matthews-Grieco indicates in this volume, serious courtship often went on at night, when couples exchanged small gifts. Friends sometimes acted as go betweens during the courting process.35 In Jewish families women might play a greater role in the matchmaking process, even though it was traditional for fathers to arrange unions and conclude the symbolic exchange of property. The betrothed also played some role in whether to marry or not. Over the last several decades historians have identified a number of variations on marriage in early modern Europe, a factor that underlines the limitations both church and state had over nuptial vows. Among the variations were the clandestine unions briefly mentioned above. They were usually the result of social or religious mésalliances that the couple wished to veil from their parents or the community at large. Under the precepts of the Catholic Church, that consent was the primary criterion for a valid marriage, those unions were recognized by ecclesiastical authorities as legitimate. Nonetheless, clandestine marriage was treated differently from region to region. It persisted in Italy and England. In France, however, the prohibition of such unions was zealously enforced, and the consequences of disobeying were punitive.36 The same was true in Protestant areas of the Holy Roman Empire.37 There were also a number of forced marriages that took women by surprise. In those cases the arrangement by parents or guardians took place at the

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parish altar or sometimes in the home, and the priest overlooked the unwillingness of the bride.38 Bigamy, although a religious infraction persecuted by the Roman Inquisition, was also a persistent problem (see Cristellon in this volume). It was not necessarily committed intentionally but rather because the logistics of marriage in early modern Europe were sometimes complicated. Unlike today there were no computer databases keeping track of nuptial unions. Husbands with mobile vocations, such as sailors and merchants, might never return to their home bases. After a long period of absence some wives assumed them dead and forged new marriage ties only to be surprised by their return.39 Under those circumstances the ecclesiastical courts gave priority to the first marriage. Neither Trent nor Protestant reforms entirely eradicated premarital sex. It was difficult for secular authorities to regulate inheritance customs or confessional boundaries and for religious authorities to regulate sexuality. In particular, despite legal attempts to clarify marriage, breach of promise suits persisted well into the eighteenth century.40 They were often accompanied by accusations of seduction or rape, accusations that entailed a nuanced, complex rhetoric with legal ramifications.41 Namely, had the woman responded willingly to seduction or been forced against her will? Had she assumed that marriage would follow sexual relations? Ingram (in this volume) concludes that in England there was ambivalence toward prenuptial fornication, but after 1600 prosecutions increased and female chastity was increasingly emphasized. In England and throughout continental Europe the community played an important role in regulating sexual behavior. Nonetheless, it was difficult to control. There were a variety of informal domestic arrangements, some of them under the radar of the historian’s gaze. Among the most evident, however, was the practice of concubinage among both the laity and clerics of the Catholic faith.42 Protestants had discouraged such behavior by permitting clerical marriage, but in Catholic areas the practice persisted despite it being an offense. In the Venetian Republic such cases often rose to the surface, ironically, when women were summoned before the criminal courts with accusations of abortion or infanticide.43

THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WIVES AND HUSBANDS In principle, prior to the Protestant Reformation moral treatises and prescriptive writings viewed marriage from a patriarchal standpoint. Husbands were expected to materially sustain the financial lives of wives and children, to protect them, and to guide them by acting as good, Christian role models. Wives were expected to mind the household and to be responsible for nurturing and disciplining young children. They were also obliged to perform the conjugal duty of having sex and procreating with their husbands (see Matthews-Grieco in this volume).44 Above all they were admonished not to be unchaste but, rather, to guard their sexual reputations. Similarly in Judaism wives and husbands were to share responsibilities. With the advent of Protestantism, however, the patriarchal model was adjusted. Reformers maintained that husbands and wives were spiritually equal and that their lives together should cultivate harmonious companionship, love, and mutual respect. Nonetheless, the remnants of patriarchy persisted, for husbands carried greater authoritative weight, and wives were urged to defer and obey. Further, husbands were advised to be considerate to their wives but also to insist on their authority, even through mild physical coercion. Abusive authority, violence, infidelity, gambling, and excessive eating and drinking were all prohibited. Prescriptive writers of both confessions viewed the ideal marriage as one where the spouses were close in age, of the same religion, of similar social status, and approved of by family and friends.45

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Once again we must be cautious about prescriptive sources. The evidence from social experience derived from specific historical research shows variations in practice, and this has generated considerable debate among historians. One area of exploration considers the role of wives in patriarchal families. Barbara Harris’s study of aristocratic marriage in Tudor England has yielded a more complex vision of wifehood. Women’s roles evolved through the life cycle, from dependent young brides and mothers to more mature managers of their households. Moreover, Harris distinguishes between first and second marriages. Remarried women appear to have had more powers, acting as executors for their deceased first husbands and guardians of their children. Harris does not deny the importance of patriarchy, with its limits on women’s powers of decision and property, but nor does she construct a narrative of oppression. Instead she underlines the need to recognize husbands’ dependence on their wives to care for their families and estates.46 Likewise, Stanley Chojnacki’s study of the Venetian ruling class during the fifteenth century emphasizes the potential for spouses to develop love and affection. His work has also uncovered the importance of motherhood in patrician culture.47 In another study, Steven Ozment’s research on burgher society in Reformation Germany has yielded snapshots of intense emotional and companionate relationships between husbands and wives and between parents and children.48 These three historians, thus, have revised earlier notions of the early modern patriarchal family that characterized couples’ relationships as distant and cold. Another area of scholarly exploration has revolved around wives’ ties with their natal families. In some areas of Europe, such as fifteenth-century Florence, wives came under the custodianship of their husbands’ families, and relations between them and their natal families became somewhat detached.49 In Venice, on the other hand, some married daughters enjoyed intense emotional relationships with their natal kin, especially when they were in abusive relationships that required rescue.50 On the other hand, in early modern Italian Jewish families married women were expected to defer to their husbands rather than to their fathers.51

MARITAL DISSOLUTION Once again the laws regarding marital dissolution must be contrasted with the evidence of experience that results from close historical investigation. In terms of the former, briefly, Catholics discouraged separation and forbade divorce, while beginning in the 1520s Protestants—with some variation—recognized the need to address failed marriage through permanent dissolution. Most reformers in Germany and Switzerland were opposed to the Catholic solution of a separation of bed and board. In this arrangement the couple remained married in the eyes of God, yet reformers such as Luther argued that it removed any mutual obligation of commitment. In principle both French Reformed Protestants and English Puritans were in agreement with this. Among the two major non-Christian religions in Europe, Jewish law permitted divorce in cases of infidelity or violent abuse, but only husbands were able to initiate petitions. In contrast, divorce was possible in Islam, and it could be initiated by either husbands or wives. Catholic courts after the Council of Trent in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were filled with petitions for a separation of bed and table, important testimony to the phenomenon of failed marriage.52 Either spouse could petition an ecclesiastical court for such an arrangement, under specific grounds outlined in canon law. They included adultery, excessive force, gross neglect, or the desire on the part of one of the

16 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

FIGURE I.7  Jacobo Tintoretto (1518–94), Venus and Mars Surprised by Vulcan, second half of the sixteenth century, oil on canvas, Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Public domain via Wikicommons.

spouses to take religious vows. It was most often women who petitioned the court in cases of violence and neglect, while men were more inclined to accuse wives of adultery. In early modern Venice women took refuge in asylums for the “badly married” while the ecclesiastical investigations unfolded. They often brought in neighbors and kin to depose and verify incidences of abuse. The ecclesiastical court was reluctant to grant separations unless the wife was in grave danger. Often the patriarch would counsel the couple to continue to cohabit and to try to work out their differences for an additional three years before repetitioning the court. If a separation was granted, the property issues, included maintenance of bed and board, were turned over to the civil authorities. Joanne Ferraro has found instances where women in Venice were quite resourceful in dissolving their connections with abusive men. However, it was more difficult for patrician women to achieve these ends than the lower classes.53 Across the channel in England ecclesiastical courts, filled with adjudicators trained in both civil and canon law, were also hesitant to permit judicial separation, particularly to wives. In this volume Ingram underlines that only adultery and extreme cruelty were grounds for granting such requests. Wives granted a separation were entitled to a third of their husbands declared net income. However, payment was not guaranteed. In most cases offspring were placed under the tutelage of the husband.54 Protestants permitted divorce, though it remained rare, and some courts relied on civil in addition to ecclesiastical judges. In other cases the clergy remained in an advisory capacity, but they neither emanated laws nor arbitrated marital litigation. Among the

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causes for divorce were adultery, impotence, desertion, incompatibility, a sexually incapacitating illness, capital crime, and deadly assault.55 Luther recommended divorce courts that would use both scripture and secular law as guidelines. The Zwinglian church court in Zurich employed both clergy and laymen as adjudicators as did the divorce court in Basel. The Basel City Council enforced their sentences and also functioned as an appellate court. It heard mostly women’s petitions.56 Adultery was the most common cause for petitions to divorce, and the violators were fined. Injured spouses could expect some sort of settlement that might include property and/or cash. Some of the courts expected divorced people to wait up to five years before remarrying. Infidelity and abuse were legitimate grounds for Jewish wives to request a divorce from their rabbis, even though according to rabbinic law they did not have the right to initiate the petition. Wives could ask for a get, or divorce, but the husband had to consent. In contrast, the man could dissolve the marriage without her permission. Howard Adelman has argued convincingly that Jewish women had a range of powers to decide, despite legal limitations and customs. He has found that women were able to negotiate legal and social structures to their advantage in order to find fulfillment.57 In the Islamic faith either spouse could initiate a petition for divorce, either by repudiation (talaq) or mutual agreement (khul). The Koran permits spouses to part when they are unable to live in harmony. As Sperling demonstrates in this volume, Islamic women had greater flexibility than Christian wives, for example, to end their marriages.

CONCLUSION In conclusion, the possibility of marrying and the quality of marital relationships differed from place to place in relation to customary and religious practices but also in terms of the individual experiences that only close historical investigation can identify. Over the last two decades the intense focus on the history of women’s experiences has shed important light on the nature of marriage in early modern Europe. Of note, it has attenuated more rigid notions of patriarchal control over wives and children by bringing to light the range of resistance and negotiation that underlay religious authorities’ calls for ideal behavior, and legal regulation and patriarchal families’ attempts to guard their social and political positions and their estates. Despite the moral, economic, and social parameters designed to regulate both marriage and sexuality, individuals still managed to assert their rights to happiness.58

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CHAPTER ONE

Courtship and Ritual DEBRA KAPLAN

One spring Sunday sometime between 1650 and 1670, a young woman, the stepdaughter of Moses the watchman, was to get married in the Jewish community of Worms. In that community, which was located in the Holy Roman Empire adjacent to the Rhine River, it was customary that on the day preceding the wedding ceremony, the bride and groom celebrate with their unmarried friends, after which the groom sent gifts to the bride in her home. After these two rituals, the sexton of the community called out in Yiddish, “The bride is going to the bath,” and the bride was accompanied to the bathhouse by several women in order to bathe before her upcoming wedding. The rabbi of Worms, Samson ben Samuel Bacharach, who had spent much of his life in Moravia, was opposed to holding the gift-giving and bathing procession on the Sabbath, even if the wedding was scheduled for the following day. According to Jewish law, it was not customary to receive gifts on the Sabbath, nor was it technically permissible to prepare during the Sabbath for anything that was to transpire after the Sabbath, including a wedding. Nevertheless, after consulting with the elders of the community, who assured him that “it had been that way for eternity,” even in the case of a wedding held on a Sunday, he relented and agreed to the local practice permitting both the giving of gifts and the procession to the bath on the Sabbath.1 This anecdote illustrates how marriage rituals in the early modern period comprised legal and theological components on the one hand, and popular elements on the other.2 This was not only true of Jewish weddings. Catholic and Protestant ceremonies similarly included both official confessional rites and popular practices (see also Cristellon and Plummer in this volume). The theological and legal frameworks of marriage differed among Jews, Catholics, and Protestants, and these differences were naturally reflected in the official marriage rituals of each faith. Yet as prior research on Catholic and Protestant marriage rituals have shown, the popular elements of these rituals were often quite similar. Many of these customs continued medieval practices symbolically enacting the transfer of property and acquisition of new kin.3 This chapter presents and analyzes courtship and marriage rituals in early modern Europe among Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish Europeans. This comparative analysis of three communities greatly enhances our understanding of how marriage was understood and celebrated in early modern Europe as a whole. As we shall see, the legal and theological dimensions of these rites clearly marked these three different communities as distinct, yet their respective popular features and practices indicate tremendous similarities between the groups, particularly those who were geographically proximate to one another. This chapter also discusses the inevitable tension between theological and popular elements of marriage, as is seen in the above example from the Jewish community, in which the local custom was at odds with rabbinic strictures of Sabbath observance.

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As scholars have argued, popular practices varied widely along regional and even local lines. Providing an overview of these rituals among members of three different religious communities is thus a daunting task.4 The article will draw on specific cases and examples that illustrate broader patterns associated with early modern marriage rituals, while pointing to some of the most important and interesting distinctions between different locales.

COURTSHIP One of the major historiographic debates about courtship in early modern Europe concerns the degree to which young individuals had the freedom to choose their own partners. In his monumental study of the family in England, Lawrence Stone argued that couples had little self-determination when it came to selecting a marriage partner.5 By contrast, Alan Macfarlane has argued that individuals in early modern England did have broad leeway to make individual choices.6 More recently, in her examination of marriage among more “humble” individuals in Kent, Diana O’Hara convincingly argues that the dichotomy between “constraint” and freedom in choosing a spouse is oversimplified. Rather, she examines marriage as taking place in an informal network of kin, friends, and community, all of whom had an interest in the match, as did the couple.7 As Susan Karant-Nunn has claimed in regards to Germany, the selection of a spouse involved a mix of the personal, emotional, and sexual preference of the couple as well as the practical, often economic concerns of the wider network of family and neighbors.8 Indeed, as Jutta Sperling has argued, the degree of personal freedom one had in choosing a mate was directly linked to local mechanisms for owning property. In Italy, where property was transferred via a dowry, marriages based entirely on personal choice were quite rare. Since such marriages involved the transfer of family property, matches were made with significant familial input. By contrast, in the Iberian peninsula, where joint ownership of property was extant, the family’s interests were protected, and marriage based on free choice was far more common.9 In those societies where marriage involved the transfer of property via a dowry, families and communities expressed their investment and involvement in the selection of a marriage partner in both formal and informal ways (see also Sperling in this volume). Jennifer McNabb has examined the role of family and friends in arranging marriages among wealthier families in sixteenth-century Chester, England.10 O’Hara’s work on Kent similarly demonstrates the importance of intermediaries, who often introduced young men and women to one another, and subsequently delivered messages and tokens between them. These rituals of gift-giving were central to the culture of courtship that she describes. Which gifts and tokens were given was dictated by both personal preference and socioeconomic status. A wide range of items, including money, clothing and leather, metal (including trinkets and rings), animals, foodstuff, household items, and letters and books, were exchanged.11 Women were often the passive recipients of gifts, with men frequently the active givers engaging in courtship. These gifts were often given to demonstrate intent to wed, and in some of the cases from Kent described by O’Hara, the acceptance of the gifts carried with it the assumption of an agreement to marry the giver. For example, Jane Bedford, who had accepted a bracelet, a gold ring, and other items from Oliver Symons, was forced to appear before a court and to restore the gifts she had accepted since she did not intend to marry him.12 Thus, the giving of gifts, though informal, was recognized as a ritual of courtship with a quasi-contractual dimension, reflecting a sincere intention to wed.

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Aside from the gifts they exchanged, young couples considering marriage often conducted informal meetings with one another. In Kent, courting men and women often lived in relatively close proximity, a fact that allowed them to meet with one another. Fairs, markets, stiles and gates were among the informal and liminal places in which these young individuals would meet as part of their courtship.13 By contrast, courtship practices among Jews often differed, as they did not always wed individuals who resided in a proximate region. While we do have examples of Jews marrying local partners, marriage between partners residing in different regions was not uncommon, a fact that means informal gift exchanges and meetings before formal betrothal could not have been the norm. Roni Weinstein’s study of Italian Jewish courtship stresses letters as a key matchmaking tool, with kin and other intermediaries making discreet inquiries as to the suitability of a match.14 The practices among Italian Jews were similar to those of Florentine Catholics. These couples did not meet informally, as their contemporaries did in England but, rather, secret negotiations between families were conducted, often with the help of intermediaries. These negotiations were concluded with a handclasp, the impalmamento, or in some cases a kiss on the mouth between the parents or kin who had contracted on behalf of the couple.15

BETROTHAL The next step toward marriage was the adoption of a formal betrothal agreement. In all three religious communities the shift from informal courtship to formal betrothal was marked by a public rite, though the venue and number of people in attendance varied extensively (see also Bayer in this volume). In Florence, a public male-only ceremony was held, in which the dowry was formally arranged and signed by a notary. This was followed by a festive party at the home of the bride, in which the notary formally solicited the couple’s consent to the marriage, an element that, as we shall see below, was deemed essential for the marital union.16 The formal betrothal ceremony, the sposalizo, included a nuptial ring, and the performance of this ceremony rendered the bride technically married, although the process was not considered finished until the public celebration, the nozze. In Kent, by contrast, the formal expression of intent to wed was often marked by drinking toasts in the presence of witnesses.17 In northern Germany, there was also a transition from informal negotiations between the couple and their families to the formal announcement of the couple’s engagement. During the informal stages, a young suitor asked his parents or two male friends to visit the relatives of the woman he wished to court on his behalf. The formal announcement, the Bekenntniss, could take place as much as one to two years later. To officially mark the betrothal the father of the bride filled a brand new bowl with beer. The groom would toast his bride-to-be and drink the beer, after which there was a festive party that lasted through the night. Next, formal negotiations over the dowry would commence. Once these financial arrangements were completed, the families drank lövelbier from a new vessel after toasting the bride. The groom would present the bride with the cup, which she would include in her trousseau. According to some sources, a festive meal, the löbde, was hosted by the bride’s father for the groom and his relatives later that day or several days later.18 These symbolic acts solemnified the financial aspects of the marriage. They involved exchanges between the bride’s father and the groom, the active parties in this transfer of property. The transition from the informal negotiation to the formal announcement was

22 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

enacted in the presence of family and community, who were interested parties. Moreover, their presence as witnesses ensured that this was a formal arrangement that could not be easily broken. The presence of a notary in Italy also served to formalize the contract. In Augsburg and southern Germany, the transition from courtship to formal betrothal was of shorter duration, lasting from a few weeks to six months. The woman who was being courted was typically passive; thus, when a young man serenaded a woman he was courting, she was to stay indoors, lest her sexual status be questioned.19 In northern Germany, by contrast, women could be active during the courtship negotiations but were often more passive once they were formally betrothed.20 The bride’s virginity, discussed at length below, was also highlighted in the northern German ritual for formal betrothal. The bride would provide her groom with a wreath of gold or silk, popularly understood as a symbol of her virginity.21 The bride’s virginity also constituted part of what the groom was acquiring upon his marriage and was thus highlighted during the betrothal ritual. Indeed, in southern Germany, a groom did not inherit the property from his bride’s family until after the marriage had been consummated.22 A formal ceremony marking official betrothal was also celebrated in premodern Jewish communities. The ritual is described by Juspe Schammes, the sexton of the Jewish community of Worms, in his Sefer minhagim (Book of Customs), in which he documented the rituals of his community. During this ceremony, a formal document called tena’im (literally conditions [of the marital agreement]) was issued.23 During that ceremony, which often took place in the house of the rabbi, the tena’im were read aloud, and an item was ritually passed between the families, who then broke a cooking utensil to symbolize the severity of breaking the betrothal agreement.24 This ceremony was referred to in Yiddish as knas legen (literally the placement of a financial penalty), since violating the agreement by breaking off the engagement would result in a fine being imposed on the family that broke off the match. Juspe explains that after the utensil had been broken, those who had assembled in the rabbi’s house would then go to the house of the groom to congratulate him; they could also choose to visit the bride in her home, where she would be dressed in Sabbath finery, and congratulate her. The fathers of the young couple would distribute Lebkuechen, a type of pastry. Several hours or days later, the groom would host a festive meal called the knas mahl (literally meal of the penalty). On the Sabbath following the knas legen, the groom was honored by being called individually during the portion of the services when the Torah was read aloud. Once called up, the groom, one of seven such weekly honorees, would recite a blessing over the Torah and remain present next to the Torah scroll at the center of the synagogue while a section of the weekly reading was read aloud. He would also give charity to the fund for the poor. He was further expected to send drinks of liquor to the young men of the community as well as to the communal leadership.25 In some communities a betrothal ring was given to the bride (Figure 1.1). These rings were adorned with houses on top, and were sometimes inscribed with Hebrew letters that congratulated the couple.26 The house motif was likely symbolic of the home that the bride and groom would be building together.27 There are several parallels between the Jewish and Protestant rituals described above. These include the public issuance of a financial agreement and the sealing of that agreement by ritually using or breaking a utensil, a symbol of the home and its contents. Among Italian Catholics, the notarial seal on the dowry at the sposalizo served a similar purpose. In addition, in all three religious communities, the transition to formal betrothal was marked by distributing food and alcohol and by the groom or bride’s respective families hosting their future in-laws. Finally, specific festive clothing or wreaths were used

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FIGURE 1.1  Jewish betrothal/ceremonial ring, with house decoration, early fourteenth century, found at Colmar, France, in 1863, Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris. Photograph by Jastrow. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

to single out the betrothed couple. The special food, beer, and clothing, together with lengthy celebrations, marked the event as a rite of passage. Although these patterns are undeniably similar, certain elements of the celebration served to distinguish between different religious groups.28 The locus in which the rites took place is one such example. In Protestant families, the financial negotiations between the families sometimes took place on church grounds.29 Jews, by contrast, conducted these rites in the synagogue or in the rabbi’s home, and publicly recognized the transition during the weekly reading of the Torah. Among Florence’s Catholics before the Reformation, ceremonies specifically took place in the home and intentionally did not include the clergy or the space of the church, for marriage was seen as an interfamilial, rather than a sacred, contract.30 In a similar vein, some rites contained religious references that were particular to a confession. Thus, the drinking of the lövelbier contained ritual prayers that referred to the Trinity, which set it apart from Jewish ritual. In the Jewish community, the special status of the couple continued to be marked throughout the period from formal betrothal through the period after the wedding. During that time, neither bride nor groom was to attend any rituals in the cemetery, other than if he or she was an immediate mourner.31 Furthermore, for the year following the wedding, the bride was not to wear the standard head covering of a married woman,

24 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

as it was also worn by mourners.32 The continued status of the bride was thus extended through dress. Among Italian Jews, the formal shift that took place after the drawing up and reading of the tena’im was followed by an extended period in which the groom gave gifts to his future bride. These gifts included chocolate and other food, jewelry (including rings), personal boxes, cloths, and prayer books. Such gifts were exchanged upon milestones leading toward the official marriage. Occasions for exchanging gifts included setting a date for the wedding, the visits of the bride or groom to the home of their future in-laws, ritual bathing before the wedding ceremony, and the bride leaving home for the wedding.33

THEOLOGY AND OFFICIAL WEDDING RITES As mentioned above, the celebration of marriage in all three religious communities included both popular and legal elements. Yet the participants in these rites, who were more familiar with ritual than with theology, did not view these different aspects of the ceremony as distinct.34 Indeed, the popular rituals began before the official wedding ceremony, and the official ceremony was also peppered with popular customs. Nevertheless, in order to highlight the distinctions and even tensions between popular and official celebrations I will discuss each on its own, bearing in mind that this separation is somewhat artificial when compared with the actual practice and experience of the participants. The Catholic Church defined marriage as one of the seven sacraments. It was unique among the sacraments in that it did not require the assistance of a priest but, rather, could be undertaken by two willing individuals on their own. The main focus of the medieval church was on ensuring the couple’s consent to their marriage; the church was flexible with the rituals contracting marriage and did not seek to alter local rituals and customs.35 This attitude shifted over time. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, particularly in France, marriage came to be viewed as increasingly sacral, a turn that was reflected in its ritual celebration. Thus, a priest’s blessing was incorporated into the ceremony in eleventh-century France, and by the twelfth century, the ceremony was conducted in front of the church door.36 In Germany, the latter practice was adopted much later, and as we have seen, while in England, synods held during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries required that marriages be conducted in a church.37 As we have seen, in Florence, weddings were contracted without clerical involvement until the Catholic Reformation in the sixteenth century. Even as the celebration of marriage became sacralized in certain regions, the church’s official position was to nevertheless view the church ceremony as a “corollary” to what was fundamentally a union of two consenting individuals and their wider families.38 Thus, cohabitation was sufficient to contract a marriage. In practice, clandestine marriages were quite common, especially among the lower classes. As James Brundage has described, cases concerning clandestine marriages were frequently litigated in ecclesiastical courts in various regions, including Nantes, Regensburg, and Augsburg; in the latter, nearly half of the marriage cases brought before the court during the fifteenth century involved clandestine unions.39 Thus, on the eve of the Reformation, Catholics’ formal wedding ceremonies differed by class and region, as all that was required was the consent of the bride and groom. Protestant reformers defined marriage in a completely different manner, as they only considered the Eucharist and baptism, not marriage, to be sacraments. By defining marriage as non-sacramental, the reformers placed it in the hands of secular authorities.

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Local governments took control of marriage, and marriage courts were established to deal with marital conflicts such as charges of adultery and violence (see also Ingram in this volume). Divorce and remarriage for the party that was determined to be not at fault were also instituted.40 Despite this theological position, reformers composed official Protestant marriage rites and presided over the ceremonies, which took place in church. In the formal marriage rites penned by Martin Luther, Luther retained several important medieval Catholic elements. Both rituals mention God’s creation of men and women, the institution of marriage by God, and the metaphor of Christ being wed to the church.41 An exchange of rings and vows in front of a priest at the altar was also a central component of this ceremony. In Augsburg, a priest conducted an official blessing in front of the church door.42 Yet the Lutheran rite also stressed the role that a woman was to play within her home. The rite reads: Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord; for the man is the head of the woman, just as Christ also is the head of the church … just as the church is subject to Christ, so too must women be to their husbands in everything.43 The man’s domination of his wife was justified through the citation of the story of the garden of Eden, in which Eve was made subject to Adam. By contrast, husbands were instructed to “love your wives, as Christ also loved the church.”44 The patriarchal family unit depicted in this religious ritual reflected Protestant teaching about women and marriage more broadly. Protestant handbooks regarding marriages and morals stressed the obedience that was due to the patriarch of the family, both by his wife and his children.45 This interpretation of marriage was accompanied by clerical marriage, which underscored the spirituality inherent in family life.46 Moreover, the Protestant position was coupled with specific political practices, such as the closing of many nunneries in Protestant cities. These actions limited women’s choices and held up marriage, including a woman’s deference to her husband, as a religious ideal.47 “Good” Protestant women were obedient wives and mothers, a teaching that was reflected in the words of the official Lutheran marriage ritual. Even among Calvinists, who stressed a “single-sex standard,” wives were to be subjugated to their husbands.48 Consent of the couple remained a key construct in Protestant marriages. Martin Luther stressed that marriage required the consent of both parties but also insisted that it be public. John Calvin and Huldrich Zwingli similarly legislated against clandestine marriages. In Calvin’s Geneva, marriages contracted without parental permission were rescinded, while in Zurich, Zwingli ruled such marriages to be invalid.49 To ensure that marriages be publicaly celebrated and recognized, each couple was required to inform the pastor of the parish church of their intention to wed. Marriage banns were announced, and priests were obligated by local governments to keep registers of all those who married and the witnesses that were present.50 Although the Catholic theological position on marriage did not change, in the wake of the Council of Trent, the church’s teachings on the process of getting married evolved, both in reaction to Protestantism and as part of internal church evolution and renewal.51 Thus, many of the marriage reforms adopted by the Catholic Church mirror the reforms adopted by Protestants, as demands for some of these reforms predated the Reformation.52 After fifteen years of discussion at the Council, in 1563 the Council enacted the decree Tametsi, which reiterated the centrality of consent to the Catholic wedding (see also Cristellon and Plummer in this volume). As Alexandra Bamji has noted, some of the

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elements of Tametsi echoed calls for reform issued at the Council of Florence in 1429.53 Yet the decree went beyond medieval norms and practice, and demanded additional aspects to the Catholic wedding. Said consent was to be given in front of witnesses, one of whom was to be the parish priest54; marriages without the presence of the priest were deemed invalid. Marriages were to take place in the parish church, and prior to the marriage, and banns were to be published.55 Like other Tridentine policies, much power was placed in the hands of the parish priest, who was also to record all marriages in his parish.56 In practice, the pace of implementation of the new requirements differed among regions. In Normandy, Tametsi was not received until the seventeenth century, while in England, Catholics received and published Tametsi in the nineteenth century.57 Elsewhere in France, local edicts went beyond Tametsi in their drive to eradicate clandestine marriages without parental control. While Tametsi did not require parental consent, by requiring a public wedding with the presence of the priest, the decree granted parents a great deal more control over their children’s marriages compared with the Middle Ages.58 Local edicts in France between 1556 and 1639 went beyond Tametsi, respectively outlawing clandestine marriages, raising the age of majority, and requiring parental consent for the remarriage of widows under the age of 25, under penalty of disinheritance.59 In Venice, both the Council of Trent and local clerics sought to enforce Tametsi, even announcing its parameters at Mass every Sunday during 1564, and on Christmas and Easter thereafter.60 Yet local couples also sought to make use of Tametsi in order to extricate themselves from unhappy marriages. Thus, women and men often claimed that they had not given their free consent as a means to obtain an annulment. For example, in 1610, a woman named Joannetta went to court, claiming that she had not wed freely but had responded “yes with her voice, and no with her heart,” out of fear of her mother.61 According to testimony, the parish priest was also aware of her reluctance to wed, and he too proceeded with the ceremony on account of Joannetta’s mother. In contrast to their Christian neighbors, the formal portion of the Jewish wedding ceremony did not evolve much during this era, as Jews were not engaged in a reformation. The legal components of the Jewish wedding comprised two discrete parts: kiddushin and nisuin. During the kiddushin ceremony, the groom gave the bride an object of value in front of two male witnesses. While the Talmud allowed men to “acquire” their wives through the giving of an object, a written contract, or through sexual relations, by the Middle Ages it was customary that the groom give the bride a simple ring in front of witnesses.62 As was the case among contemporary Christians, the ring was placed on the bride’s index finger, which was believed to be a direct route to her heart. This portion of the ceremony included two blessings, one of them over a glass of wine, and was performed before two witnesses. One of these blessings, which referred explicitly to the sanctity of marriage, was adopted in a longer form by French and German Jews during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. By the fifteenth century, it was also in use among Spanish Jews. The emphasis on the sacred nature of weddings was contemporaneous with and took place in the same region as that development among medieval Christians.63 Once the kiddushin ceremony had been completed, the couple would require a divorce should they regret their decision, even though the wedding ceremony had not been completed, not unlike the spozaliso described above.64 Whereas in the Talmudic era, there could be a gap of one year between the two portions of the wedding ceremony, by the Middle Ages it was more common for the two portions of the ceremony to be performed within minutes of one another.65 Nevertheless, in Rome, the kiddushin, or

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matrimonium, was performed a few months earlier than the nozze, the nisuin ceremony, as was the custom among contemporary Roman Christians.66 The nisuin ceremony involved the groom handing his wife the ketubbah, the marriage contract. Written in Aramaic, this document safeguarded the wife’s rights to food, clothing, and sexual relations with her husband. Though this document was largely formulaic among the Jews of Ashkenaz (northern France, Germany, and England; later eastern Europe), among the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa, specific and personalized conditions were often included in the ketubbah.67 Ketubbot were sometimes illuminated, and these often reflected trends in local art.68 The nisuin ceremony took place under a huppah, a canopy. In some communities, a prayer shawl, or tallit, was used as the canopy. In some locations, such as the Rhineland, a man received his prayer shawl on the occasion of his wedding. One reason for this practice, which dated back to the eleventh century, was explained by rabbinic exegesis of Deuteronomy 22:12–13. This interpretation noted that the biblical commandment to wear tzitzit, the ritual fringes that are found on a prayer shawl, was immediately followed by a reference to marriage. The juxtaposition of the two biblical verses indicated that it was after a man had married that he received his tallit.69 Thus, the use of the tallit highlighted his new marital status during the wedding ceremony. This, too, was a sign of the growing sacral nature of marriage, for a ritual item associated with prayer was incorporated into the wedding ceremony. Similarly, in medieval times, the ceremony was typically held in the synagogue. The wedding of widows would often be held in the outer courtyard.70 The distinctions between the weddings of virgins and widows, discussed again below, highlight a popular aspect of the wedding ceremony rather than a legal one. The nisuin ceremony concluded with the recitation of seven blessings in honor of the couple, again including a ritual blessing over a glass of wine. The couple then went into a room alone together, to symbolize their new status as husband and wife.

POPULAR PRACTICE: THE WEEK OF THE WEDDING The rituals of marriage described above are all relatively brief. However, in all three religious communities, wedding celebrations usually began before the formal rite, and continued after it; these “profane” celebrations could last for about a week. This week of festivities included lavish food and drink, and served as an opportunity for families to display their wealth.71 In fact, as Kate Lowe has argued, even the spiritual marriages of nuns to Christ comprised these elements. The marriages of “secular” and “spiritual” brides had parallel dress, liturgy, and exchange of rings. Moreover, the festivities surrounding a nun’s entry into the church and her wedding to Christ included feasts, dowries, and gift baskets from her family to the church.72 Although Jews and Christians issued sumptuary laws to regulate consumption, wedding rituals were nevertheless used to display the family’s social class and status.73 In the Jewish community of Frankfurt am Main, decrees were enacted that restricted anyone but upper-class families from celebrating certain wedding festivities. Thus, for example, a party known as the Manch Mahl was limited to those Jews who were in the highest tax bracket in the Frankfurt ghetto. Some wealthy families, both Jewish and Christian, even published broadsides and pamphlets in honor of their children’s marriages.74 Like the courtship and betrothal rites described above, popular wedding celebrations often differed from region to region. Given that even within a particular religious confession, ceremonies sometimes had distinctions between regions and even between

28 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

FIGURE 1.2  Pieter van der Heyden (c. 1525–69), The Peasant Wedding Dance, after 1570, engraving, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1933. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

localities in the same geographic region, I will focus on the broad themes within popular ceremonies that were common across Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant weddings in various regions. Specifically, popular customs stressed the importance of the wider public as participant-witnesses in the ceremony, and enacted rituals that playfully highlighted the bride’s sexual status and the groom’s new obligations toward his wife. During these rituals, time, space, and objects were used to convey the meaning of the events. Before their weddings, brides and groom of various faiths bathed ritually. In SaxonyWeimar, a festive meal was held after the Christian bridal bath, although at times this practice was skipped because of its expense.75 In Augsburg, the ritual baths of brides and grooms were celebrated by a party known as the Undertrunk, in which peers of the same sex drank alcohol and celebrated respectively with the bride and groom.76 As was mentioned at the beginning of this article, in the Jewish community of Worms, the sexton formally announced the bride’s procession to the bath, during which she was accompanied by two married women and her unmarried peers. An additional step in preparing for the wedding ceremony involved arranging the bride’s hair. Christian brides wore their hair loose during the wedding procession, and

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only after the procession did they don a traditional head covering for a married woman.77 Their loose hair symbolized their virginity, whereas covering their hair as married women highlighted their new sexual status. Single Jewish women also wore their hair loose and did so as they ushered the bride to the ritual bath. They then held a female-only ceremony for the bride before the wedding procession at which time the bride’s hair was braided.78 In early modern Worms, the braiding ceremony was attended by unmarried women and was presided over by the local rabbi’s wife.79 Nevertheless, references in contemporary Yiddish moral literature intended for women, such as the Brandtspiegel, termed the custom of braiding the bride’s hair a “superstitious custom.”80 This assessment highlights the tension that sometimes existed between legal and popular rituals, and between moralizing elites and popular culture.81 Brides also wore wreaths or crowns on top of their loose hair as an additional symbol of their virginity.82 Whereas a virgin bride in sixteenth-century Augsburg would wear a closed wreath, a woman who was known not to be a virgin on her wedding day was mocked by wearing a wreath fashioned out of straw, or else wore an open wreath, to symbolize her sexual status.83 Similarly, at the remarriage of Jewish widows, it was customary in some communities during the late medieval and early modern period to use a wide-necked glass rather than a narrow one.84 Like the wreaths in Augsburg, these customs utilized objects and ribald humor in order to symbolically highlight the bride’s sexual status, which was deemed an essential part of the transaction. Roni Weinstein claims that virginity was at the forefront of the Italian wedding ritual as well.85 In Venice, Jewish men who married widows were denied the honors bestowed upon a groom in the synagogue, and elsewhere in Italy, funny noises might be made by the crowd during such a wedding.86 This latter practice was similar to the charivari, the singing of mocking songs, which Christians enacted outside the home of a newly wedded couple when the groom was younger than the bride or had married a widow.87 In all three religious groups, the various parties, both prior to and following the wedding festivities, alternated between single- and mixed-sex celebrations. These rituals, which took place before, during, and after the day of the formal wedding, symbolically marked the bride and groom’s transition from single to married. One ritual in Ausgburg and other areas included the kidnapping and ransoming of the groom by the bride on the day of the formal nuptials.88 This was intended to symbolize the groom’s new obligation of monogamy, as in some versions of the custom, he was “kidnapped” by local prostitutes and ransomed by his bride. The kidnapping symbolized his transition from available to monogamous. A contemporary Jewish ritual also used ransoming as a symbol for the groom’s new obligations toward his wife. Celebrated by wealthy Jews in the Rhineland on the Sabbath after the wedding, this ritual, known as the Breileft, centered on the groom’s newly acquired prayer shawl. In an updated version of a medieval ritual, the groom left the synagogue in a procession and came to a party in which his new bride was seated around a table with unmarried female peers. He then threw his prayer shawl to his bride (or, in other variations, to a poor woman); he then ransomed his prayer shawl back. The prayer shawl symbolized the groom’s newly acquired religious and economic status, and this ritual of ransom used play as a means to convey his new status publicly.89 Other items were similarly used throughout the pre- and postnuptial ceremonies to highlight the changes in kin that were brought about by marriage. Thus, in a similar vein to transferring a prayer shawl back and forth between the Jewish bride and groom, wedding ceremonies comprised moments in which the couple would use shared bowls to signify their new shared household.90 In Florence, a ritual marking the bride’s entry as a

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FIGURE 1.3  Peeter van der Borcht (1545–1608), Peasant Wedding, 1560, etching, the Elisha Whittelsey Collection, the Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1956. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

FIGURE 1.4  Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617), The Venetian Wedding, 1584, engraving, the Elisha Whittelsey Collection, the Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1949. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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married woman in her new husband’s family was marked by “the ring game.” On either the day of the formal wedding, or on the following day, the father of the groom and other married men and women from the groom’s family would present the new bride with rings, often set with stones. On some occasions, brides could amass over a dozen rings. As Christiane Klapisch-Zuber has argued, the participation of married men and women, and the exclusion of unmarried women, rendered this ritual as one marking the bride’s new marital status and family network.91 The central celebration of the marriage was the wedding procession to the formal marriage. Nicole Belmont has discussed how the processions symbolized the process of the life-cycle ritual. The bride left her father’s home, stopped at the church for a blessing, and then arrived at the home of her husband or his family. This path thus mirrored the changes in kinship through a ritual walk.92 A key feature of the wedding procession was its public nature. This practice, known in Protestant circles as “going to church and street,” was at the heart of the wedding ceremony in the eyes of the common people.93 The public procession was essential to communal recognition of the couple’s changed status. Indeed, if ever witnesses to the marriage were required to testify before a court, they were chosen from among those who were present at the procession, rather than those who attended the ceremony. Like the presence of the parish priest and the banns issued before the wedding, processions ensured that the wider public was aware of the marriage. As Thomas Robisheaux has explained: Once a private affair, betrothal and marriage became a public ritual, carefully watched and supervised by the state and the church. Like any rite of passage, the rituals, in their mature form, performed a distinctive social function for the whole community: they separated a couple from their siblings and peers; prepared them, their kinsmen, and the whole community for an improvement in their status; and then incorporated them into the new web of kinship and property relations that came with marriage.94 The public procession was essential to marriage for Christians of various confessions, in city, town, and village alike. Throughout the nineteenth century processions were replete with noisemaking, whether with music, pistols, or shouting.95 Despite their insistence on a public wedding, municipal and clerical authorities opposed the raucous parties and wild processions, and Protestant reformers believed that “rowdy wedding processions had no place in the reformed Christian wedding.”96 Notwithstanding the official condemnation, the practice persisted, a further example of the tension between the theological and popular dimensions of marriage. In seventeenth-century Worms, Jews held two different wedding processions on the day of the wedding. The first took place on the morning of the wedding, before the ritual braiding of the bride’s hair. The sexton would announce in Yiddish that it was time for the “Mayen” ceremony.97 In this procession, the rabbi and males of the community, including the relatives of the groom, escorted the groom with musical instruments and lit torches to the Braut Haus, where the wedding would later take place. After the groom was seated, the musician and torch bearers went to the home of the bride, and escorted her, together with two married women, to the Braut Haus, where the rabbi led the groom to meet her. As she took her seat next to the groom, the onlookers pelted the couple with wheat, wishing the couple fertility. The groom was then escorted into the synagogue for morning prayers, while the bride went home and continued with other festivities, such as the braiding of her

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hair. Later in the day, a different procession led the bride and the groom to the kiddushin ceremony (see Figure 1.5). It should be noted that in contradistinction to Christian practices, it was customary for the bride and groom to fast on the day of their wedding and to treat it as a day of repentance.98 Thus, mixed in with the festivities and merriment was a somber tone.99 Similarly, at the conclusion of the official wedding ceremony, the groom tossed the glass that had been used for the kiddushin ceremony on a stone that jutted out of the wall where the wedding took place. This breaking of the glass was a commemoration of the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. In other locations, a black cloth was placed on the groom’s head to signify the mourning of the temple.100 These processions, like those which took place in Christian communities, were celebratory and noisy. In Worms, in fact, each of the various wedding celebrations was announced in turn by the sexton, who loudly invited the neighborhood to the various events in Yiddish. In the ghetto, in which Jews resided on one long street and a few connected back alleys, wedding festivities dominated the soundscape, as the ritual bath, braiding, blessing ceremonies, Sabbath celebrations, and wedding processions were announced up and down the street.101 The procession to the Mayen was filled with music and lights, and Juspe notes that even during those months when it was light outside, torches were lit in order to create merriment for the new couple. Despite the lack of formal banns, the presence of a larger public at these various rituals reiterated the contemporary

FIGURE 1.5  Paul Christian Kirchner, Jüdisches Ceremoniel, c. 1700. Photograph by 19th era 2/Alamy Stock Photo.

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sense that a wedding was to be celebrated in a larger network of community, kin, and neighborhood. The trend and even insistence on a public marriage among Catholics, Protestants, and Jews went beyond the desire, present since medieval times, to regulate clandestine marriage. Rather, in early modern Europe, one’s legal, social, and economic standing was directly tied to marital status. Members of guilds married as they progressed from apprenticeship to master. Couples could acquire citizenship through their spouse. Among Jews, communal honors such as being called to the Torah were frequently given to married men only. Moreover, in some locations, single Jewish men were not permitted to conduct financial transactions without the knowledge and consent of their parents. Finally, in some Jewish communities, the formal right of residence was granted through marriage, as citizenship was in Christian circles.102 The large role that the public played in the wedding ritual was thus reflective of the contemporary trend in which marriage transformed an individual within his or her larger community by according him or her different legal rights and new economic responsibilities. Indeed, Esther Cohen and Elliott Horowitz have argued that the parallels between medieval Jewish and Christian wedding rituals are not a “question of influence of one society upon the other but more of shared elements in a common culture that were put to use in two languages of ritual, operating in two contiguous societies.”103 The fact that Jews and Christians lived in a shared environment rendered the realities of and their attitudes toward marriage similar. Such similarities were inevitably given expression through ritual. And yet, I would argue that some of the parallels we see in this period go well beyond similar reactions to a shared environment. To give an example, one of the Jewish postnuptial ceremonies included a Sabbath meal at which honored guests sent the bride and groom glasses of wine or liquor. This celebration was known as the Sabbath of the Schenckwein.104 The term Schenckwein was used in Christian society to refer to gifts of wine sent to citizens and dignitaries on the occasion of various personal celebrations.105 The use of both the same name and of the same concept demonstrates that the parallels among Jews, Catholics, and Protestants also stemmed from direct knowledge of one another’s customs. Sharing an environment led to more than shared concerns: it led to conversations between neighbors, the presence of members of different faiths at one another’s ceremonies, and a subsequent borrowing and adaptation of modes of celebration.106

POSTNUPTIAL POPULAR RITES Directly after the formal wedding ceremony had been completed, the newlywed couple was often escorted to bed by friends and kin. In Augsburg, a ritual known as the Ansingwein, in which the bride and groom were encouraged with alcohol and song, was enacted.107 Although the magistrates attempted to halt this practice, it was soon reinstated. Similar rituals, in which the bride and groom were escorted to the bed in the presence of ritual items symbolizing sexual union, were performed through the nineteenth century. In Catholic circles, it was common to bless the bridal chamber, a practice that had been halted by reformers. Among German Jews, a similar practice took place. After the wedding celebration, the women escorted the bride to the bedchamber, where she handed out sweets and sugar. The men then escorted the groom to the bedroom, where he too handed out sweets, and they sang joyous hymns in return.108 While this evening was not the evening on which the marriage was consummated, the practice of publicaly escorting

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the couple to bed was prevalent in all three communities and highlights once again the sexual elements of the union. In a similar vein to the Protestant disdain for this ritual, Jewish communal leaders in Krakow sought to halt this ceremony. In a communal decree, they instituted a special prayer to be read in synagogue, blessing those women who refrained from singing as the bride and groom entered the bridal chamber.109 This example once again highlights how religious and communal authorities sought to tame and control those elements of the wedding they found to be disorderly or morally inappropriate. Perhaps ironically, although the public celebration of a couple’s nuptials was expected and even insisted on by religious and communal authorities, they nevertheless sought to tame those traditional popular elements of the celebrations in which there was a high degree of consumption or too explicit a reference to sexuality.

CONCLUSION Martin Luther described marriage rituals by noting that “every land has its own customs … let each city and land follow its own usage and custom, however they go.”110 Whereas Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism all had different theological approaches to marriage, the popular rituals celebrated in the early modern period differed more by region than they did across religious lines. Local trends, including the transfer of property and the understanding of the sacrality of the wedding, led to somewhat different practices in how courtship and marriage were conducted. Italian Jews and Christians timed their betrothal and marriage differently than their German counterparts, for example, although Catholic and Jewish clerics undoubtedly had distinct legal understandings of marriage. From courtship to postnuptial rites, early modern rituals were public expressions of that which was transacted in marriage. The acquisition of new property, the creation of new family ties, and the imminent sexual union of the couple were enacted through symbolic dress, processions, and transferring or sharing symbolic foods and objects. The focus on the public nature of the ceremony, as reflected through banns, witnesses, processions, and extended parties reflect the importance of marriage as a determining factor of both familial and communal status among the Catholics, Jews, and Protestants of early modern Europe.

CHAPTER TWO

Religion CECILIA CRISTELLON

PREMISE Both the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent (1545–64) initiated a process to regulate marriage, defining and limiting the rituals capable of conferring validity to an act whose celebration would henceforth be required to occur at a precise and identifiable moment. The static image of marriage that has emerged as a result has conditioned historians’ views and often led them to look for fixed forms and predictable processes in pre-Reformation and pre-Tridentine matrimony that, in fact, could only be found in circumscribed social classes and milieus, and even here there was a significant degree of variability.1 In light of this stationary idea of marriage, scholars have defined phenomena such as bigamy, concubinage, and stuprum (in its legal sense meaning the deflowering of a virgin or the seduction of an honest widow) as transgressive, imposing a moral classification and post-Tridentine and post-Reformation vision on a relational universe characterized by flexibility, adaptability, and experimentation.2 The first aim of this chapter is to restore complexity to the Renaissance marriage, presenting the various forms that it could assume and underlining the changes that the Council of Trent and the Protestant Reformation introduced in centuries-old practices that relegated them to the sphere of marginality and deviance. Eschewing the moral classifications deriving from the Council of Trent and the Protestant Reformation, I want to reinterpret practices such as bigamy, concubinage, and stuprum as social phenomena and analyze the extent to which contemporaries perceived them as transgressive—if at all (see also Plummer and Matthews-Grieco in the volume). Renaissance and early modern Europe was a laboratory of religious cohabitation and experimentation due to the Spanish Reconquista, the coexistence of Christians of varying

The author thanks Brett Auerbach-Lynn for the translation of this chapter from Italian. This text will make use of the following abbreviations: ASPV: Archivio Storico del Patriarcato di Venezia Curia, II, CM: Curia, Sezione antica. Causarum Matrimoniorum Curia, II, AMP: Curia, Sezione antica. Actorum Mandatorum Praeceptorum ASV: Archivio di Stato di Venezia ACDF: Archivio della Congregazione per la dottrina della fede (Roma) SO: Sanctum Officium St. St.: Stanza Storica DM: Dubia circa Matrimonia MM: Matrimonia Mixta

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rites, the division of Western Christendom following the Protestant Reformation, the advance of the Ottoman Empire after the fall of Constantinople (and the subsequent conquest of various eastern Mediterranean islands and much of Hungary), and the presence of numerous Jewish communities in various places on the continent. The diversity of nuptial practices and norms interacted with these phenomena, not only adapting to them but also conditioning and shaping them. My second aim here is to analyze how they did so.

PRE-REFORMATION AND PRE-TRIDENTINE MARRIAGE In the later medieval and Renaissance centuries, marriage was established through a process that, ideally, began with the promise of matrimony, continued after a time with the spouses’ expression of consent, and concluded with the wife’s relocation to her husband’s home (see also Kaplan and Plummer in this volume). Religious and secular authorities did try to regulate these phases, introducing the priestly blessing, ordering the publicizing of the contract by announcement in church and/or notarial registration, and, in the case of aristocratic marriages, by the posting of news of the union in government palaces.3 But the marriage process did not necessarily follow a preestablished form: the contracting parties and witnesses often attributed the same meaning or legitimacy to consent given in the present (constituting marriage) or for the future (constituting the promise of marriage). It was even possible for the wife’s transfer to her husband’s house to precede the expression of consent, or coincide with it.4 Furthermore, according to canon law the consent of the contracting parties alone, whether expressed publicly, privately, or in secret, was sufficient to render a marriage valid and sacramental. Consent did not have to be verbal; the marriage could be explicated over a series of steps, and it could even be implied by the couple’s continuous frequentation or cohabitation.5 Even the promise of matrimony followed by sexual relations constituted a fully valid marriage.6 Sites of marriage were also extremely diverse: the church, the inn, the well, the fields, the gondola, the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom, the stairs, the attic, the portico, even the prison cell.7 The importance of the domestic marriage was such that it had the power to combine elements of both religious and secular legitimacy, bringing into the home the figure of the priest and/or—in Italy—the notary.8 Nor did a nuptial blessing necessarily precede the stipulation of marriage; in fact, it often followed the celebration and/or consummation of the union. The marital rite called for no particular ministers; assuming this role could be the father of one of the betrothed or even the mother if widowed, a neighbor, a notary, a priest, or someone else. A male celebrant was considered more reassuring, but women were by no means excluded from the office. The celebrant did not even have to be Catholic: in Venice a Catholic couple was united in matrimony by the bride’s doctor—a Jew—“as God and your holy law command.” At the same time, the absence of a priest did not deprive the institution of its religious dimension; various elements might contribute to inserting it into the sphere of the sacred: an open tabernacle; an icon or image of the Virgin; a crucifix; the sign of the cross traced on the bride’s forehead or cut into the bark of a tree; an oath sworn on the Gospels; the invocation of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Some gestures were considered particularly important in the stipulation of the marital bond: the touching of the hand and the kiss in particular, but also the shared meal, drinking from the same cup, and the exchange of coins. These were symbolic gestures that alluded to the contract, the consummation of marriage, and the

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FIGURE 2.1  Nuptial and Blessing of the Marriage Bed, fifteenth century, woodcut. Photograph by INTERFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo.

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economic exchanges to which matrimony was intimately linked.9 In various regions of Europe—from England to Italy, from Germany to France and Sweden, there was widespread use of the blessing of the marriage bed, generally by the priest, to conclude of a festive procession that accompanied the event, sometimes all the way to the physical introduction of the couple into the bed.10 In Italian Jewish communities the accompaniment to the nuptial talamo also constituted an important stage of the ceremony.11 In Protestant areas the blessing of the marriage bed was banned as a superstitious practice associated with Catholicism. But when the rite’s abolition met with popular resistance, reformers tried replacing it with something more in tune with their own religious sensibilities, inviting the spouses to kneel in prayer in front of the bed before getting into it.12 In the case of interconfessional marriages, the ritual accompaniment of the couple to the marriage bed was severely deprecated by Catholic authors, who were quick to see the immissio thalami of a biconfessional couple accompanied by prayers and blessings as abetting fornication (with which they identified mixed marriages) and blasphemy.13 In the later Middle Ages secular and ecclesiastical authorities generally only interfered in nuptial matters when the marriage was a cause of strife and its stipulation not properly concluded. In such cases the ecclesiastical authorities imposed the solemnization of the marriage and the transfer of the bride into the marital house, or prohibited any publicizing of the marriage (meaning any claims to the binding nature of a marriage that an ecclesiastical judge had declared invalid). The secular authorities ordered reparatory marriages, gave jail sentences for stuprum (a term not necessarily implying violence and which in and of itself did not qualify as the crime of seduction, but could be an aggravating circumstance) or compensation via the funding of an appropriate dowry.14

THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION AND THE COUNCIL OF TRENT The Reformed churches and the post-Tridentine Catholic Church had to make an enormous effort to relocate the stipulation of marriage from the domestic sphere to the sacred and public space of the church, which previously had played at most a marginal role in the matrimonial ritual.15 In Protestant territories marriage was denied sacramental value and considered to be a secular matter falling under the jurisdiction of secular authorities, but it was also the first order of God. Preserving the institution of marriage was thus of primary importance in upholding the divine law. Marriage had to be celebrated with the approval of parents or guardians and in a public form. Town councils were made responsible for the rigorous control of morality and enacted severe policies to repress premarital sexuality, which was considered even after the promise of marriage to be fornication, a crime that, in the German-speaking territories as well as the Calvinist Low Countries and Anglican England, was deemed irreparable even by marriage. The betrothed were in fact subjected to careful scrutiny. A premature pregnancy could result in official charges of fornication, in contradiction to the entrenched belief that “matrimony purges all that has gone before,” which at the time was still respected in regions as far afield as Italy and Sweden.16 In reaction to Protestant matrimonial doctrine, the Catholic Church actually reinforced the sacramental conception of marriage and, with the decree Tametsi of the Council of Trent (1563), began to crack down on centuries-old practices (see also Plummer and Sperling in this volume).

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FIGURE 2.2  The Council of Trent, Trento, Italy. Photograph by SZ Photo/Scherl/Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy Stock Photo.

On the basis of the new dispositions, a valid marriage could only be stipulated in front of the parish priest of one of the two contracting parties and at least two witnesses. The ceremony had to be preceded by a public announcement on three consecutive Sundays and the act recorded in a specific curial registry. In specific cases—if the union was threatened by interference from parents or other authorities—these announcements could be dispensed with; if the marriage was inappropriate socially (as in the case of mésalliances) or morally (as in the case of mixed marriages), the union was recorded in a separate curial register dedicated to secret marriages. Although Tametsi underlined that the consent of the spouses alone was sufficient to make the marriage binding, the public nature of the union and the parish priest’s presence reinforced parental authority over marriage. In order to avoid family interference or other forms of external pressure, couples who could not depend on the parish priest’s solidarity might make recourse to the surprise marriage, practiced all over Europe and made famous in Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed. With the most varied expedients the couple-to-be exchanged the ritual formula in front of the parish priest, whose mere presence—not his consent—was sufficient to ensure the bond’s validity. Couples stood up during Mass in the presence of the community of the faithful, married at the bedside of the bride who pretended to be dying while her fiancé hid beneath the bed, or chased after the priest as he fled, plugging his ears so as not to hear. Such marriages, though condemned by the church and considered to be sinful, were to all intents and purposes valid.17 The most transgressive norm introduced by the Council of Trent was to deny nuptial validity to the promise of marriage followed by sexual relations, thus creating a deep

40 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

FIGURE 2.3  Francesco Gonin (1808–89) illustration from Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi (Milan: Tip. Guglielmini e Radaelli, 1840). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

rupture with customary law. Indeed, according to the unwritten yet binding laws of custom the promise of marriage legitimated sexual intercourse between spouses and the latter implied the promise. The community monitored the outcome of the union and the bride’s family had the right and duty to demand, even by force, that the couple live under the same roof. Despite ecclesiastical censure, the conception of marriage as a process and the social legitimacy of sexual relations between the betrothed couple may be considered a long-term phenomenon, documented as late as the nineteenth century.18

NULLITY AND SEPARATION; MARRIAGE AND VIOLENCE Catholic doctrine did not provide for the possibility of divorce and the stipulation of a new marriage: the bond was either indissoluble or null. A marriage could be null due to insufficient age—if the bride was younger than 12 or the husband younger than 14— impotence, a previous marriage, a solemn vow, the servile condition (meaning that one of the spouses was legally a slave at the time of marriage, unbeknownst to the other), or a forced marriage (see also Matthews-Grieco in this volume). This last situation was linked to the function that ancien régime society attributed to marriage, considered primarily as a means of establishing or consolidating an alliance, whether political, social, economic, or professional. As far as the choice of partners was concerned, families could subject both young men and women to severe physical and psychological pressure, which generally induced them to bow to the familial will. In implementing their marriage strategies, however, families did not necessarily neglect elements capable of making the union

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harmonious: an arranged marriage was not necessarily in contrast with marriage for affection19—a sentiment, moreover, which sixteenth-century medical treatises considered favorable to the fertility of the couple. Parents tried to arrange marriages that were also marriages of affection, taking into consideration aspects that might make the spouse appealing to their son or daughter (beauty, for example, was held in high regard, especially in the choice of the bride but also in that of the husband), or allowing the couple-to-be to spend time together “in the hopes that love would grow,” as one mother said.20 Parental authority was sometimes so effective that it prevented children not only from making a choice in conflict with the family’s politics but even from expressing their will or independent preference at all. A certain Giovanna, for example, desired in marriage by Martino, had no qualms about revealing her affection for him: This love lasted between him and me until the Feast of St. Victor … Many times I spoke in secret with Martin … who came to the villa out of love for me, to see me and speak to me, and he talked to me on the street while people were passing by, and we talked about how I loved him and he me. But the girl was unwilling to keep her promises because, she said, “I intended to marry the one my father gave to me, and if he had asked my father for my hand (in marriage) I would have married him, just like anybody else.”21 When another girl was called before the ecclesiastical judge and asked repeatedly to reveal her own feelings in marital matters, she managed to say only that “I want what my family wants.”22 It should be considered that girls often contracted marriage when they were still very young, between 11 and 14 years of age, and that a 15-year-old unmarried girl was already deemed at risk of not finding a husband.23 This lack of maturity helped make them vulnerable and easy to manipulate—which was precisely why many treatises on the good government of the family considered them to be ideal wives.24 When family members struggled to obtain the consent of their children or wards, the vehemence with which they proceeded to demand submission increased proportionately to the strength of their bond with the dissenting person in question. Fear of being “rebuked and abandoned” (which, in this specific case, was a fruit of the imagination and not based on an actual threat) led an illegitimate orphan to accept a husband chosen by her uncles,25 while the resistance of a widow’s only daughter broke down only when she was threatened with a knife.26 The various tools by which parents and guardians could apply pressure included the insistent demanding of consent (“he asked me to be content with it”27), the reminder that those who disobeyed their parents consigned their souls “to the house of the Devil,”28 the curse (which had a strong impact both because of superstition and because it subverted the traditional marriage ritual that assigned great importance to the parental blessing),29 beatings, disinheritance, and even incarceration. Abandonment and denial of inheritance represented a concrete threat, provided for by the statutes.30 And such a threat was not vain. No sooner had a sentence validated the marriage between a young woman and a man disapproved of by her mother than the latter dictated her will without mentioning her daughter, despite the fact that throughout the proceedings the girl had reiterated that she desired only “what my family wants.”31 When insults and threats, even very serious ones (threats of being burned alive, forced into prostitution, etc.), were not effective in bending the will of their daughters, parents did not hesitate to grab them by the hair, beat them with fists and sticks, and literally compel them to marry at knifepoint.32 With young men physical violence wasn’t always effective, but in order to oppose the socially inappropriate marriage of his adolescent son, a father could go to the

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authorities. One artisan asked the secular authorities to prohibit the woman in question— older than his son and a practicing prostitute—from taking the young man into her home. Contemporaneously he went before the inquisitor and accused her of using magic to trick his son into marrying her. Finally, as his son—“drunk with love”—continued to see her, the father managed to have him incarcerated.33 In ancién régime societies a man was recognized as having the right to a more or less limited use of violence, justified by the need to correct, instruct, or admonish his wife,34 who would be guilty of mortal sin if she did not honor and obey her husband.35 This right to violence was formalized by the statutes, defended in legal disputes, considered by judges, claimed by husbands in court, and, lastly, acknowledged by wives, independent of their social group.36 The statutes all agreed that a husband could beat his wife, diverging only in establishing the limits of permissible violence. Some only prohibited beatings where blood was shed, while others permitted these as well. Some condemned violence if it resulted in the permanent debilitation of a limb; others only when there were lethal consequences. “Since when can’t a husband beat his wife?” “You can’t say husbands don’t love their wives just because they hit them … if all the husbands who beat their wives were forced to get a separation, every man in the world would be separated.”37 These were the declarations of two husbands from Siena in 1604 and 1632, respectively. Wives did accuse their husbands of violence to justify requesting a separation, yet even when they denounced the cruelest forms of torture (being punched in the face to the point of risking losing an eye, beaten with a hot iron, threatened with weapons, etc.) they made sure to specify that such violence was “without just cause”38 or “excessive.”39 In cases of violence canon law gave a wife the possibility of separation from bed and board (which in Catholic areas maintained the bond of marriage intact and thus made a new marriage impossible), but only if the woman was in mortal danger.40 It must also be kept in mind that, both before going to trial and after a sentence granting separation, both the families and neighbors often attempted to mediate between the spouses.41 Thanks to this intervention cohabitation was often reestablished even after cases of brutal violence, often leading to its repetition.42 According to canon law spouses could separate in cases of adultery, contagious disease, spiritual fornication (if a spouse were a heretic or schismatic), or extreme cruelty (see also Ingram in this volume). While mere adultery on the part of the female was considered a sufficient motive to grant a separation to a man, in the woman’s case, according to the unwritten but binding law of custom, other elements had to be present to make a separation legitimate, such as the combination of excessive violence and either the husband’s failure to provide for his wife’s needs or guarantee a quality of life suitable for her social status,43 his squandering of her dowry, or his undermining of her domestic authority, for example, by keeping a concubine in the home and allowing the latter to beat his wife or give orders to the servants.44 In these cases, regardless of whether a favorable sentence had been handed down, the wife could return to her father’s home and had the right to recoup her dowry, which would serve to provide her sustenance.45 Spousal abandonment and prolonged absence, when combined with the husband’s failure to provide for his wife, was also considered a valid reason for separation. In the eyes of the laity such conduct rendered a marriage null and void and legitimated a new union, as also occurred in cases of adultery committed by the wife. Since the sixth century the ecclesiastical hierarchy had moved to affirm the principle of the indissolubility of marriage, which became the law throughout the Catholic Church in Pope Gregory IX’s Decretals of 1234. Yet this principle met with strong resistance on the part of the laity,

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FIGURE 2.4  Bernardino Licinio (1489–1565), Portrait of a Woman Holding Her Husband’s Portrait, c. 1530s, Pinacoteca of the Sforzesco Castle, Milan. Photograph by Mauro Magliani for Alinari/Alinari Archives, Florence/Alinari via Getty Images.

who considered marriage to be a union that could be made and unmade depending on the social contingencies of people’s lives. What the Council of Trent transformed into the crime/sin of bigamy, prosecuted by the Inquisition as an abuse of the sacrament, was most certainly not perceived as such until at least the second decade of the sixteenth century, not even by the ecclesiastical hierarchy which, despite declaring a second marriage to be null, did not consider it bigamous but merely invalid and generally refrained from punishing the spouse who remarried.46 Not only did the Protestant Reformation deny the sacramental value of marriage, it also admitted divorce (see also Ingram in this volume). Calvin recognized only adultery, impotence, and “malicious abandonment” as valid reasons for divorce, while Luther, Zwingli, and Brenz also admitted grave mistreatment and murderous persecution (insidia). The innocent partner was allowed to remarry. In truth, until the eighteenth century Protestant marital courts rarely granted divorce, more often working to bring couples to an accord. Separation, in fact, was often only temporary. Moreover, many requests for divorce on account of physical violence were rejected in view of the husband’s right/duty to discipline his wife, despite the fact that violence considered to be excessive could end up undermining the husband’s authority.47

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In the course of the eighteenth century changes in matrimonial values, stimulated by the lively debate on marriage and separation animated by the French Enlightenment and spread by a very successful genre of literature,48 had important ramifications on the issue of separation.49 The ideal of the family as a natural enterprise founded on relations of love gave greater legitimacy to the decision to end unions that did not correspond with the new matrimonial ideal.50 The affirmation of juridical ideas and tendencies that sanctioned the legitimacy of state intervention in nuptial matters helped weaken ecclesiastical authority over marriage and separation. The conjunction of these phenomena explains the wave of separations and divorces registered in the late eighteenth century.51

RELIGIOUS CONVERSIONS FOR MARRIAGE: INTERRELIGIOUS AND INTERCONFESSIONAL MARRIAGES In addition to the phenomena of multiple marriages and bigamy analyzed in the previous section, increasing mobility occasioned a rise in interreligious and interconfessional encounters that could lead both to marriages following one spouse’s conversion to the dominant religion of his or her partner, as well as to mixed marriages. The long history of European relations with the East is marked, among other things, by the conversion of Europeans to Islam for a variety of reasons: avoiding slavery after capture by the Turks, mitigating punishments for certain crimes that were milder for Muslim subjects,52 acquiring social advantages, but even as a means of liberation from an unhappy marriage, given that, according to Islamic law, conversion to Islam nullified any previous union.53 These conversions were often followed by a marriage in the new faith, regardless of the fact that the convert already had a wife (or husband) at home. If Catholic, the neophyte’s first spouse would not technically be able to remarry as long as his or her partner was living. This is what happened, for example, to a certain Bartolomea from Lucca. Her husband, who had converted to Islam and married a Muslim, wrote to her explaining his situation and inviting her to start a new life with another man.54 This, however, was not permitted by canon law, which provided for separation (and the concomitant patrimonial advantages) but not for annulment on account of either abandonment, a partner’s adultery (as a new marriage was considered), or spiritual fornication (in the case of apostasy).55 Islamic law permits mixed marriage only in cases where the women in question is not a Muslim. If instead a Muslim woman marries a non-Muslim man, the latter can be punished with death. This gender imbalance was motivated principally by the fact that inheritance is transmitted only through the male line and must therefore remain within Islam. The religious balance within families born of a mixed union was dynamic and influenced by gender factors, as we have seen, but also by the birth of children. In the case of one Cristina of Papadamiel, the husband did not demand his wife’s conversion until a year after marrying her, upon learning of her pregnancy.56 In some cases women created a secret bond between their children born in Islamic lands and their Christian religion of origin. One mother baptized her children with the help of a Greek slave and taught them to pray to Christ and the Virgin but not to make the sign of the cross, in order to avoid being discovered.57 In other cases, the conversion of Christian couples to Islam or marriages between converts probably indicated the desire to preserve the couple’s cultural and, possibly, religious traditions, despite outward adherence to the majority faith. This also occurred among the Moriscos in Spain after the forced sixteenth-century conversions, and among Jewish conversos (New Christians) in the Kingdom of Naples.

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Both groups also had strong endogamic tendencies, despite strong opposition to this from the dominant societies.58 In the Ottoman-ruled Balkans Christian couples could marry in front of the qadi, an Ottoman judge who also performed administrative and military duties, or the khoja, the Muslim religious authority. The Catholic Church disapproved of this type of ceremony, particularly those celebrated according to a religious rite it considered blasphemous, but it still considered such marriages valid and therefore indissoluble, even in places where the Council of Trent was not applicable and the parish priest’s presence was deemed unnecessary. The contracting parties, for their part, believed they could dissolve these unions and sometimes appeared before the kadi to “renounce” their marriage and continue on to a second wedding according to the Catholic rite—a practice which the Roman Catholic Church prohibited.59 As far as relations between Christians and Jews were concerned, contact between members of these communities was frequent and included courtship and sexual relations, despite the normative separation of the two groups and the severe prohibitions and punishments for such relations.60 Marriage could only ever be possible following the Jew’s conversion. In mid-fifteenth-century Venice, for example, the constant companionship of Leste de Meir, a Jew, and Silvestra del q. Bartolomeo da Lucca, a Catholic, soon evolved into the customary forms of Renaissance premarital courtship, including gifts, public kissing, and the consummation of sexual relations, with full approval of the girl’s mother. The public nature of the relationship soon provoked the intervention of the criminal magistrate, which condemned the young man to jail and a fine and Silvestra and her mother to the humiliating punishment of a public whipping in 1459.61 Leste was only freed from prison after receiving baptism, at which point he could marry Silvestra with no further canonical impediments. The prospect of marrying a Christian—the evident sign of a preexisting interreligious relationship—was often a catalyst for the conversion of Jews, particularly Jewish women.62 Within Jewish couples, on the other hand, the conversion of one spouse to Christianity often led the other to follow suit, given that the new convert’s “offer to the faith” of his or her children generally resulted in their being taken away from the Jewish partner.63 With the establishment of the Pauline privilege, canon law allowed a neophyte, even if already married, to marry a Christian if his or her unbaptized spouse, after being legally asked to do so on three separate occasions,64 was unwilling to cohabit with the convert, or to do so “without defaming the Creator” by trying to induce the Christian into mortal sin. In the first centuries of Christianity, as well as later in the missionary context, neophytes were not strictly prohibited from continuing to cohabit with an unbaptized spouse. In the case of Jews, particularly in Europe, over time their openness to conversion and peaceful cohabitation ended up coinciding in doctrine, with the latter being considered impossible in the absence of the former. The refusal to convert on the part of the Jewish spouse, who was formally questioned about his willingness, constituted in and of itself a valid premise for granting the Pauline privilege. The option of peaceful cohabitation was no longer contemplated. In case of the spouse’s irretrievability, the convert could be dispensed from the obligatory legal consultation, possibly substituted by a consultation at the gates of the Jewish ghetto in various cities. The institution of the Pauline privilege, in fact, ensured the Catholic Church a high degree of interference in jurisdiction over Jewish marriages. First of all, the male neophyte was banned from granting his still-Jewish wife the libel of repudiation (ghet), the divorce document that would allow her to remarry. This prohibition was often transgressed, but its contravention could cause the neophyte

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to be suspected of apostasy, as the ghet was considered a superstitious and “Judaizing” practice.65 From the time of Innocent III (1198–1216), moreover, the prevailing opinion had been that a marriage contracted in Judaism was dissolved not from the moment that one of the spouses converted but from the moment the neophyte married a Catholic, which in practice often led to dramatic consequences. In 1673, the Jew Stella Enriquez converted and received baptism with the name of Maria Rosa. Her husband refused to follow her into the new faith and instead married his own 17-year-old niece, Ester, but then converted himself five years later along with his niece/wife. In hopes that Isaac would follow her, Maria Rosa had never remarried; when he embraced Catholicism, the woman turned to the ecclesiastical authority to be rejoined to her husband, successfully.66 Her lack of consent to Isaac’s second union, in fact, had deprived the Pauline privilege of “just cause.”67 The Catholic and Protestant hierarchies were concerned less with marriages with the unbaptized, unions that the Christian churches considered null, than by marriages between two baptized persons of different confessions—mixed marriages in the legal sense of the term. Despite being prohibited and opposed by all Christian churches, such marriages were held to be valid if contracted in a binding manner. Mixed marriages occurred in every region in which members of different confessions lived in close contact with one another (contact that varied in frequency depending on the sociopolitical context): in Protestant states; states allowing two or more confessions; and, at least as far back as the seventeenth century, even in uniformly Catholic contexts like Italy. In places where the decrees of the Council of Trent had not been published, mixed marriages could be celebrated without the parish priest and were considered valid even by the Catholic Church. In Protestant or confessionally-mixed areas they were contracted before a civic official or Protestant pastor with dispensation from the competent consistory, but also before parish priests and missionaries, though they were officially prohibited from doing so. In Catholic territories where the Tridentine decrees had attained the status of law even among the laity, as was the case in the Italian peninsula, mixed marriages were celebrated only exceptionally by the consenting parish priest (who would have been subject to trial by the Inquisition for doing so); more frequently they occurred via a surprise marriage, but they also could be obtained through dispensations. Particularly interesting in this regard were the port cities that hosted heterodox communities that were either tacitly tolerated, as in Venice, or officially recognized, as in Livorno. For Catholics, dispensations mixtae religionis came under the jurisdiction of the Roman Inquisition. Jurisprudence on the matter was stimulated by the great dynastic marriages of the seventeenth century, such as those of the English princes. Dispensations of this sort were rarely granted and, initially (beginning in the seventeenth century), only in mixed religious contexts subject to a Protestant prince if the Catholic spouse could not marry a coreligionist of equal status, and on the condition that the Catholic partner be guaranteed freedom of worship and any children be raised Catholic.68 This last requirement, in particular, could come into conflict with the most consolidated gender imperatives and constitute a grave offense to patriarchal authority if the father did not belong to the dominant religion, as it did in Protestant territories where consistories required children to be educated in the Reformed faith as a condition for granting the dispensation. Precisely to obviate tensions that could arise in the matter, in the eighteenth century the statutes began to mandate that children be educated in the paternal religion, regardless of the official faith of the locality.69In the later eighteenth century requests for—and concessions of—dispensations from Catholic states became more frequent,

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likely in relation and reaction to changes provoked by the eighteenth-century reforms that had broken the church’s jurisdictional monopoly over matrimonial matters and that, precisely in those years, had been enacted in both the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Kingdom of Naples.70 In Catholic states the concession of dispensations was sometimes the result of the pastoral activity of local faithful, preoccupied for the spiritual well-being of mixed couples living in concubinage but also aware of the difficulty in finding a new husband for a woman who (often with her family’s support) had contracted betrothal with a Protestant, especially if that betrothal had resulted in a pregnancy. Bishops and parish priests who were closer to the faithful than their Roman superiors were aware that mixed marriages could actually perform a missionary function with respect to the heterodox spouse or, at the very least, ensure that the couple’s children be raised Catholic. A case from Genoa dating to 1770, in which a non-Catholic spouse’s exceptionally willing disposition toward the dominant faith induced the Holy Office to a precociously benevolent attitude, is particularly useful to illustrate the role played by parish priests, inquisitors, and prelates in partibus in the process connected to the concession of the mixed religion dispensation. In 1770, Francesca Maria, the daughter of the deceased Genoese consul in Nice, requested a dispensation to marry the Dutch Calvinist merchant Giacomo de Salle, already resident in Genoa for ten years, who had declared his willingness—as per the requirements—to allow his wife to practice Catholicism and bring up any children they might have as Catholics.71 Five consultors for the Holy Office were willing to consent to the marriage only “if the man first abjured his heresy,” while the other seven deemed it necessary to obtain more information from the Archbishop of Genoa, the decision eventually adopted by the Inquisition.72 The Genoese prelate replied to the cardinals’ requests after conducting an investigation, consulting with the parish priest, and officially questioning sworn witnesses—“knights most worthy, not so much for their nobility as for their rare piety.” Reasons of economic opportunity certainly favored the union, given that Giacomo was willing to marry Francesca Maria, the eldest of six sisters, with no dowry, as well as providing economic assistance to her family, which lived on a pension granted by the Genoese government. But Catholicism too would reap the benefits, for it was nearly certain that the marriage would lead to the conversion not only of the heretical husband but also of the children he had by his deceased first wife, conversions that were already underway. Of the children from his first marriage, in fact, one had died as a baby but had been baptized according to the Catholic rite and buried in the parish church. De Salle’s eldest son had converted at the age of 17 without any paternal opposition, and one of his daughters, with Giacomo’s approval, was being tutored by the parish priest in a process that would lead to her abjuration. Even the Genoese inquisitor testified to these efforts, he too was involved in the correspondence with Rome to resolve the case. There was also reason to hope that the two youngest daughters, not yet 7, would convert. Only the three eldest would not agree to do so, “because they are continually harried by their paternal grandmother … who lives in the same house with them.” Even Giacomo himself was “inclined to become Catholic” but was hesitating—according to the cliché— on account of his mother and his business in Holland.73 Once they obtained this information from the Archbishop of Genoa, the officials in the Holy Office in Rome informed him that the pontiff was inclined to grant the dispensation. But before communicating this decision to Giacomo, the prelate was to try to secure his conversion with “a serious and moving exhortation,” such that “setting aside all worldly interests he abjure his heresy and thus worthily dispose himself to receive the sacrament of matrimony.” If out of “vain respect for public opinion and other

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temporal concerns” he were to refuse, the archbishop should at least try to induce him to a secret abjuration, “promising him that it would not be divulged until such time as it can be done unconditionally.” If it proved impossible to obtain even a secret abjuration the dispensation would nonetheless be granted, “given the benefit that will result to … religion with the Catholic education for that the aforementioned Giacomo will allow the children of his first marriage, and the hopes that we have for his own conversion”— prerequisites whose verification was left “to the will and conscience” of the archbishop. The latter also had to guarantee that Giacomo allow Francesca Maria to worship as a Catholic and any children of hers to be brought up Catholic, and that he not dare to move his wife and children to non-Catholic lands. Giacomo had to commit to these conditions in writing, while his fiancée had to do her utmost to convert her husband. Lastly, the Genoese prelate had to ensure that the union not be a source of scandal.74 Little more than a year after the concession of the dispensation, the Archbishop of Genoa wrote to Rome that he had “had the consolation of receiving this week the abjuration of the husband, who because he is well known and well thought of by the nobility here has aroused feelings of universal satisfaction and tenderness.” Of the whole family now only Giacomo’s mother and one of his eldest daughters remained “in their obstinacy.” A few months later the archbishop wrote that he had obtained the abjuration of the latter as well, who, having been educated in Holland, was “more pertinacious in her errors, and the last to follow her father’s example.” Thus only the man’s mother held fast in her faith. But a year later the prelate could once again write to Rome in triumph and communicate how “for the public edification of the entire city, and my consolation … the mother of said merchant … visited by the Lord with a grave infirmity which continued to worsen, asked this previous evening, without any human exhortation, to abjure the impious sect of Calvin, and receive the holy sacraments.” She had demonstrated “such fervor and compunction” that all those around her were moved “in observing a true prodigy of the mercy of God.” After converting and receiving the sacraments, in fact—according to a commonplace of conversion narratives75—her health improved to the point that “whereas before she was expecting to die at any moment, there is now a well-founded hope for her recovery.” The archbishop concluded by underlining the missionary value of the mixed marriage since “the gain which has been made of this entire family” was to be attributed “after God, to the special grace that this Holy Congregation deigned to bestow on my supplications.”76

CONCLUSION In this chapter I have attempted to reconstruct the principal characteristics of preReformation and pre-Tridentine marriage, founded in a process in which the promise of matrimony legitimated the couple’s companionship and the latter implied the promise in the eyes of the community. People knew how to interpret the signs of consent from the ritualized affection exchanged by the couple, who could unite in marriage in a wide variety of forms—solemn and public, but also in secret, or without even verbalizing their consent. The Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent tried to impose fixed forms on marriage and relegate behavior that had previously been considered legitimate to the domain of sin and crime. The domestic sphere could be a theater of violence both at the moment of the stipulation of the nuptial bond—when parents or guardians did not hesitate to use force to turn their children or wards into the tools of family alliances—as well as during marriage. This was a violence which, to varying degrees, was

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considered legitimate and respondent to the husband’s right to correct his wife. Despite being permanent according to Catholic doctrine, marriage was in practice a soluble bond in case of the prolonged absence of a spouse, and the second marriages that resulted were tacitly accepted by the ecclesiastical authorities prior to the Council of Trent. While the Protestant Reformation did admit divorce, in truth it was granted only rarely, at least until the eighteenth century when even in Catholic territories separation (of bed and board, preserving the marital bond intact and thus preventing a new marriage) was granted with greater facility than in the past. This phenomenon was probably influenced by the new ideals of marriage and family formed by a literature sensitive to the spirit of the Enlightenment. Geographic mobility, the consolidated presence of communities of different faiths in Europe, as well as multiconfessional states, gave rise to interconfessional and interreligious encounters that molded marriage customs and norms. The eighteenth century marks an important moment of change in regard to these practices as well. On the one hand, processes of secularization would also influence legislation concerning interconfessional marriages, now more tolerated than in the past; on the other, the century witnessed the reinforcement of proselytizing campaigns targeting the conversion of Jews, a goal that could sometimes be achieved when marriage was a catalyst for conversion.

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CHAPTER THREE

State and Law MARJORIE ELIZABETH PLUMMER

In 1582, Daniel Hoffmann (c. 1538–1611), a Lutheran pastor, consistory court judge, and theology professor, published a sermon given the previous year at St. Mary’s in Wolfenbüttel (Lower Saxony) on the topic of a disputed marriage heard at the ducal consistory court in Helmstedt.1 In the course of discussing the proscribed text of Matthew 11 on John the Baptist’s imprisonment, Hoffmann introduced Herod’s oath to Salome as a way to discuss the dangers of false oaths and oaths given in passion, before outlining the case. Although Hoffmann never named the couple during his sermon, the case discussed is certainly that of Gese Boden versus Hans Eppers (or Öppers) heard before the Helmstedt consistory court numerous times between 1579 and 1580.2 In her accusation, the plaintiff claimed that her daughter, Gese Boden, was the promised wife of the defendant, Hans Eppers, because he had given her a half groschen in front of witnesses in a tavern before they had slept together.3 Later when the defendant refused to regularize this relationship or to publicly acknowledge her as his wife after the birth of their child, Gese Boden sought the arbitration of the Duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel and his consistory court to validate the marriage had taken place. Eppers did not disagree that he had had a sexual relationship with Boden but did deny that he had ever made her a promise of marriage either in the present or future. Over the course of resulting inquiries, Boden and Eppers each steadfastly held to their versions of what had happened and all attempts by the court to reach a definitive resolution of the case failed.4 The occasion for Hoffmann’s sermon was Eppers’ seeking to establish the truth of his testimony by swearing purgation by oath (juramentum purgatorium) in the church, a long-standing legal practice, to end all suspicion of his guilt. Standing before Duke Julius of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1528–89), who was present at this sermon, Hoffmann reminded Eppers of his duty to obey the state and the law by completing all the required legal steps constituting a proper marriage. Hoffmann then warned his audience to begin marriage with forethought and with a public engagement since unfortunately, as “one learns all too often from the examples found in the consistory,” not following the law and the commands of secular rulers on public marriages led to such unresolvable dilemmas and continued public disorder. While the case of Hans Eppers and Gese Boden is not unusual in sixteenth-century court records, Hoffmann’s call for the cooperation of state, church, and community in eliminating such contested marriages and his emphasis on the role of state and law in administering marriage represents a change from previous centuries. His argument certainly echoed a recent change in ducal policy on marriage. In 1578, Duke Julius observed that cases of “disorderly secret contracts,” such as those concerning business agreements, engagements, and marriage overloaded his weekly audience. Therefore, he decreed that

52 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

FIGURE 3.1  Judith Leyster (1609–60), The Proposition, 1631, oil on panel, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

no future contracts, including marriage, would be binding unless witnessed and entered into public record. In doing so, the duke applied the same rules for business and marriage contracts. This connection is not surprising considering the role that transfer of property, as seen in the dowry, and economic function of the household played in marriage.

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Julius was not alone in insisting on a formal registration of a contract. In 1596, Emden City Council issued a specific command that couples register their engagement with the city scribe and that they needed a marriage license to marry.5 What Julius and Emden expected was that any disputed engagements and marriages could be resolved by looking up the marriage notation in the public record if necessary or by presenting the unquestionable witness of a notary or pastor as to the intent of the couple. Implementing such a change from the previous emphasis on private consent as the basis of marriage in canon law was far from straightforward, as continuing cases such as Boden and Eppers’ indicate. As this chapter will show, changes in how couples entered marriages and conducted their married life during the early modern period gradually included the intervention of state authorities, such as city councils, territorial rulers, and monarchs, and the creation of secular and church legal systems to regulate engagements and weddings, marital life of couples, and the dissolution of marriages through divorce and death in many regions. During the fifteenth century, Italian humanists began a discussion about the place of marriage and family in civic life. During the next century, during the European Reformations, theologians and jurists in the universities took up this discourse in theological and legal texts. By the seventeenth century, the resulting amended and new civil, criminal, canon, and local law codes expanded the specifics of what constituted a valid marriage and outlined how couples were to enter marriage, including details of

FIGURE 3.2  Jan Steen (1626–79), The Marriage Contract, 1668. Photograph by ART Collection/Alamy Stock Photo.

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who could marry, when they could marry, who must witness and ratify the marriage, and where. And if a marriage failed, these same codes determined if and how the union could be dissolved. An increase in documentation of engagements, weddings, and marriages resulted from such changes in procedure. Legal requirements set up by church officials, city councils, monarchs, and other state authorities for keeping marriage registers to account for weddings, notarized dowry agreements, requests for marriage licenses, and/ or reading of banns in the case of engagement became more stringent and were moved away from church control to include civic and territorial officials. The creation of a standard public and legal definition of marriage and a process to enter into the state of matrimony took decades and centuries, depending on the region, as did sorting out who controlled what aspect of marriage. Location, type of state authority, and religious affiliation all played a role in the form of these legal codes and legal institutions established to uphold the emerging principle of marriage, as confirmed and policed by public officials rather than private consent. By the seventeenth century, legal scholars and most political authorities across Europe, regardless of confession, held the general expectation that the union of the couple should be confirmed by a designated public official, whether clerical or secular, in order for it to be recognized by secular authorities and/or church officials.6 Even so, local courts and communities, bowing to the continuation of popular practices, customs, and older legal and political systems, remained slow to adopt these concepts and standards.

THE KNIGHT, THE LADY, THE PRIEST, … A PUBLIC NOTARY AND A JURIST? During the Middle Ages, the categorization of marriage as a sacrament (sacramentum), in the theological discussions of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the compilation of canon law by Gratian in the mid-twelfth century, led to a new expansion, by the thirteenth century, under Pope Alexander III (1159–81) and Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) for the church to have the legal responsibility of regulating marriage. By claiming marriage as an important, and spiritually significant, step, twelfth-century theologians also claimed temporal jurisdiction over marriage, which brought regulating practice and marital law based on canon law before ecclesiastical courts.7 While the church sought to publicize marriages through banns and to encourage the presence of the clergy at all weddings, efforts to modify popular marriage rituals to include a priest did not entirely succeed, largely because the church regulations did not enforce clerical presence as necessary for a valid marriage (see also Cristellon and Kaplan in this volume).8 By supporting the validity of both verba de presenti (present consent of marriage) and verba de futuro (promise of future marriage) as legally binding vows and indissoluble promises of marriage, these reforms gave individuals who met the basic age criteria, and were not too closely related, considerable control over their own marriages while creating a single set of laws to determine whether a marriage existed or not. The attempt of church authorities to reform the institution of marriage met with limited success, because families and local civic and territorial authorities expressed concerns about the implications of individual consent alone constituting a viable marriage. Church acceptance of the consensual theory of marriage challenged the legal authority of nobles and city councils, while the new ecclesiastical laws undercut parental and familial rights by allowing individuals to circumvent familial constraint on choice of marriage partner.9 In addition, such a law had the potential for considerable abuse, leading church, royal,

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communal, and familial authorities to attempt to control marriage as much as possible through a variety of fewer regulation-bound measures.10 Thus, tensions developed between customary practice, family and state interests, and legal principles in how marriages were established and, in some cases, ended.11 One of the most notable points of conflict between these groups was whether or not a verbal consent given by the couple without witnesses constituted a valid marriage. In The Knight, the Lady and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France (1983), Georges Duby described how conflicts over the legitimacy of marriage centered on whose consent was necessary, the couple or their family, and whether a priest must be present at all weddings.12 During the high Middle Ages, mostly ecclesiastical officials, but also some community leaders and territorial authorities, used a wide variety of individual laws on marriage included in customary laws, remnants of Roman law, and canon law to determine what made a marriage.13 Even as canon law and civil law simultaneously developed throughout the Middle Ages, as seen in the work of Gratian, they created overlapping and contradictory legal definitions of what constituted a proper marriage and who got to judge when conflicts emerged within that union or between the couple.14 These systems did not provide consistent answers on marriage conflicts, and questions and overlapping legal and political jurisdictions often further complicated getting clear decisions in cases of conflicts between couples, their families, and other concerned parties. Beginning in the late Middle Ages, some men and women began bringing their marital problems to their local political authorities rather than to those of the church for arbitration, leading to secular courts sporadically hearing legal cases concerning marriage. This trend led toward involvement of secular authorities in regulating marriage throughout Europe, and the development of a specific marriage law inside and outside the church increased during in the fifteenth centuries. As Julius Kirshner argues, the first developments of a civil marriage law evident in the Italian cities and large towns, such as Florence, followed this development.15 As urban areas and territorial states developed bureaucracies in Italy, the Holy Roman Empire, and England they also expanded the use of scribes, civic officials, and jurists to adjudicate marriage matters. But, the complexity and lack of clear boundaries between all these different officials and laws did nothing to clarify what constituted a legal marriage or who got to determine that. By the sixteenth century, for instance, Lyndal Roper found that in sixteenth-century Augsburg that the city council, episcopal officials, guild masters, and heads of households all held independent definitions of the purposes and ramifications of marriage that made dealing with marriage issues difficult on a practical level, as legal courts sought to arbitrate between the needs of all groups.16 Clearly marriage, or lack of marriage, involved more than just the private relationship between a man and woman. Existing laws and practices surrounding marriage and accepted by families and communities by the early modern period created a permeability in the union that allowed many abuses, but also introduced a certain flexibility in what constituted a married couple. Since Catholic Church officials and local communities continued to recognize verbal acclamation or consent between two individuals as sufficient to forge a union, many couples ignored attempts by families or public officials to introduce a new process.17 Nonetheless, certain marriage rituals emerged as universally expected by the early modern rulers from the fifteenth century onward, as some aspects of legal and theological discussions of the significance of marriage converged with political ideals. Secular and ecclesiastical authorities sought to establish that a marriage should begin with the formal agreement between a man and a woman’s legal representative—usually her father or

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brother—followed soon thereafter by a public betrothal and exchange of gifts. Within a set amount of time and after the reading of banns, the wedding ceremony, including a bridal Mass or sermon presided over by a priest or pastor, was held at the door of, and eventually within, a church and was followed by a common meal and wedding celebration. The marriage was concluded with the consummation of the union and the establishment of a new household. In all cases the couple was expected to follow local laws and regulations on the exact details of these rituals. The particulars, however, could vary widely based on region and on the individuals.18 Who was allowed to marry was also increasingly controlled by officials of the church or state to confirm their fitness to marry. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the Augsburg City Council began to keep track of who married in the city and which citizens married outside the city.19 They also required foreigners to produce evidence that they had fifty gulden before they could apply to be citizens or marry a citizen’s daughter, and assumed that couples needed at least ten gulden to marry, considered sufficient funds to support themselves, financial hurdles that allowed the city some control over who married.20 By the late seventeenth century, any foreigners seeking to marry in Venice had to appear for a “matrimonial examination” (examina matrimoniorum) before they could be certified to be married before a priest. This allowed local officials to find out if the individual had been baptized and thus be allowed to marry in the church.21 While neither of these examples necessarily constituted a legal impediment for marriage, the creation of a bureaucratic step of going before an official to show evidence of moral or financial stability did introduce new officials into the process of marriage. The growth of state intervention in legal matters surrounding marriage became increasingly clear as the early modern period progressed. The resulting tension between church and state played out in numerous conflicts over issues ranging from broken and disputed marriage vows, arbitrating who could or could not marry, the proper conduct of weddings, property issues (dowry, dower, inheritance), marital conflicts, bigamy, dissolution of marital bonds, desertion, and many other things. These laws and regulations established the age of the bride and groom, the financial requirements for marriage, and numerous other details of who could and could not marry. By the seventeenth century, laws and decrees such as the Tametsi, the Hardwicke Act, and others promulgated by the Council of Trent, the English Parliament, and a host of other political bodies determined that a wedding had to be public with a larger number of witnesses, including a notary, rather than a private ceremony between the couple alone or in the home of the bride. This process of increased secular involvement in marriages begun in the fifteenth century became more prominent by the seventeenth century, but legal ambiguities still remained as moral norms remained fluid.

CHANGING RHETORIC ON MARRIAGE AND STATE The changes in moral values concerning marriage during the early modern period influenced and were influence by changing political philosophies, religious beliefs, and legal theories. Overlapping debates on what constituted the perfect state and relationship between ruler and ruled and on the role of sexuality and marriage in salvation thus mirrored and amplified discussions on what constituted a marriage and what was the perfect marital union. Thus, scholarly and textual discussions about the role of family and marriage in the state begun by humanists in the fifteenth century, reform theologians in the sixteenth century, and jurists in the seventeenth century were to have a profound

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direct impact on legal codes governing marriage as well as popular attitudes toward marital conduct by the mid-seventeenth century. These debates also found their way into artistic representations of marriage, state, and law in plays, poetry, histories, and visual arts. While these works often presented an idealized expectation of the perfect marriage, they also came to grapple with the moments when that perfection was not achieved, leading to the important role of rulers and courts as the arbitrators in moments of conflict. As state involvement in the legal jurisdiction over marriage accelerated in the fifteenth century, humanists, theologians, and jurists joined in the conversation of the role of state authority. In Italy, humanist authors such as Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459), Francesco Barbaro (1390–1454), Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), and others made a direct tie between citizenship, household management, and marriage based in part on reexamination of Latin and Greek texts discussing the connection between politics and family.22 The linking of a stable state to a stable, wellrun family largely adopted from Aristotle and Cicero also prompted a growing discourse on marriage and its inception as part of a broader concern about connections between state, law, and property. It is perhaps not surprising that weddings themselves became occasions to reinforce these ideas of the importance of marriage on law, citizenship, and state, as numerous occasional pieces written by humanists and produced by orators for weddings demonstrate.23 The Italian exploration of the classical discussion on family, marriage, and civic duty became a powerful cultural movement as it was carried to other regions of Europe. In the Low Countries, Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536) considered the social implications of marriage in his discussion of clandestine marriages confirmed by consent and his concern about divorce. In doing so, he leveled significant critiques at problematic elements of the regulation of marriage within canon law.24 His concern about marriage is also evident in the works of Juan Luis Vives (1493–1540) and Luis de León (1527–92) on the proper education of women and conduct of women as vital to the running of a household show the spreading humanist concerns about marriage, family, and gender in Spain, the Low Countries, and Spanish colonies.25 The connection to state and law become more obvious in other areas. In England, Thomas More (1478–1535), Thomas Elyot (c. 1492–1546), Edmund Tilney (1536–1610), and other English humanists explored the interconnections of state and family in their treatises on marriage, family, and state.26 Regardless of religious affiliation and vocation, most of these critiques from humanists showed a growing sense that some aspects of marriage should not be governed solely by canon law. Such calls for the secularization of marriage in intellectual tracts only increased during the Protestant and Catholic reformations of the sixteenth century. Although some scholars argue that in practice little substantive difference exists between the Catholic and Protestant definition of marriage and household, or the legal structure and customs of marriage in Protestant and Catholic regions, the evangelical reformers and theologians themselves considered their definitions and proposals on household and marriage a significant break from the traditional or Catholic model of household life. Reformers such as Martin Luther, and later John Calvin, proposed that marriage was not a sacrament and concluded that because of this conflicts and disputes around marriage should be administered by state authorities. His shift in placing marriage matters into the hands of the state was predicated on an understanding that it would change the way that marriage disputes would be handled. In 1530 Luther warned that, “as soon as we begin to decide to act as judges in marriage matters, the teeth of the millwheel will have snatched

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us by the sleeve and will carry us away to the point where we must decide the penalty. Once we have to decide the penalty, then we must also render judgment about the body and goods, and by this time we are down under the wheel and drowned in the water of worldly affairs.”27 For this reason, Luther advocated that clergy leave the arbitration of marriage law to those best equipped to make such decisions: the state. Luther’s position in 1530 had a great deal to do with how he viewed the organization of secular society into three estates—clergy, state officials, and householders—each with distinct duties and responsibilities that were interconnected and necessary for temporal order as well as spiritual salvation. Following Luther’s lead, sixteenth-century Lutheran theologians and commentators emphasized the responsibility of all three estates in instructing and controlling the estate of marriage since, as Caspar Huberinus argued, He then decreed that marriage also [was] good and placed parents and magistrates in His place and commanded [them that they] should give witness, rule over and protect this institution as the biggest persons on earth in the secular order and [that they should] guide, lead, and initiate the people into [marriage so] that men should conform and hold to these two governments.28 Because marriage stood at the forefront of society as the estate created in Paradise before all other estates and all segments of society—clerical, citizen and peasant, and government— arose from marriage, numerous Lutheran writers argued that a redefinition of marriage as secular rather than sacramental was necessary for a fundamental reconstruction of society itself.29 The Lutheran authors, therefore, set out to define marriage and to establish a unified ritual and process for the entry into the married estate.30 In doing so, Lutheran

FIGURE 3.3  Martin Luther’s Marriage with Katharina von Bora, historical depiction. Photograph by Wilfried Bahnmüller, image Broker/Alamy Stock Photo.

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pastors developed a new marital theology that radically redefined the place of marriage in society and in spiritual salvation. Luther emphasized that the first “state” was headed by the Hausvater (head of household). Just as Luther and other Protestant theologians made a case for showing that marriage was not a sacrament, Catholic theologians wrote to defend both marriage as a sacrament and to extend the role of canon law in its protection. The implication of this can be seen in the confirmation of the canon law at the Council of Trent.31 At the same time, some ritual changes were implemented to deal with some of the contradictions. In 1563, the Council of Trent established a set of regulations, known collectively as the Tametsi, that decreed that all marriages must be conducted by a parish priest with witnesses and that only a marriage blessed by a priest and following the expected rituals would be considered valid (see also Cristellon and Sperling in the volume).32 This decree effectively ended marriages begun on consent alone and theoretically bound all Catholic ecclesiastical courts to follow this decision. Although significant difference existed based on region and religion, growing state involvement in what Martin Luther would later term “marriage matters” in many states led to a need for the development of laws and institutions to help in the arbitration and resolution of conflicts. Across Europe and, with global contact and expansion, the world, political institutions sought to create defined laws, mandates, processes, and courts to standardize marriage in their localities. While many of the laws built on existing practices and laws, others ventured into new realms such as completely banning clandestine marriages and child marriages, and decisions concerning divorce came to be regulated in many Protestant regions by city councils and parliaments rather than church synods (see also Ingram in this volume). Political theorists, jurists, and legal scholars from both Catholic and Protestant perspectives soon took up the discussion of marriage, and they had very different legal responses as to what made a marriage and who should marry and why. The shift in theological and philosophical positions on the relationship between church and state occurred against the backdrop of the rapid development of new structures of states, including the proliferation of jurists and secular officials. By the seventeenth century, the work of these individuals in the creation, codification, and implementation of marriage law and regulations had a profound impact on who administered marriage, especially in Protestant regions. General legal changes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries influenced this process throughout Europe. The use of the printing press and growth of universities expanded the use of Roman law over customary law or popular practices during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Europe. Emperor Charles V, for instance, adapted Roman law in his Constitution Criminalis Carolina, to strengthen his jurisdiction over local political leaders within the Holy Roman Empire, including establishing universal concrete punishments for various sexual transgressions such as concubinage, adultery, and other marriage matters.33 Developing a standard body of legal texts certainly aided in defining some aspects of marriage law, but the texts did not necessarily provide clear universal answers because the questions asked of canon lawyers and professors were often complicated by traditional church law developed over previous centuries. The uncertain definitions of what constituted a valid marriage left jurists inside and outside the university much to write about in legal faculties as far flung as Salamanca, Bologna, Oxford, Montpellier, and Tübingen. Over time, the work of those in the courts and universities created increased consistency in marriage laws due to the ongoing consultations with judicial venues across numerous locations.34

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In some locations, such as many Protestant German towns and territories, jurists, theologians, and church superintendents cooperated in developing a civil marriage law that would serve their communities and would fit the developing theology on marriage. Some of the reformers, particularly Calvin, used their legal training to help shape the law itself.35 The shift in the role of the jurist was notable in how active university law faculties became as they generated a substantial manuscript trail when local courts, often run by clergy or secular officials rather than trained lawyers, contacted faculty by sending case notes for assessment and in return received opinions (consilia) in particularly difficult cases.36 Jurists also wrote dissertations on aspects of marriage law as part of their legal training and treatises on marriage as part of their ongoing scholarly debate in print.37 The same process can be seen in other locations as jurists found themselves serving as arbitrators of laws and customs in courtrooms and universities, although in this case working for both secular and religious courts. Thus, in Italy, for instance, civic and ecclesiastical courts consulted jurists and lawyers while arbitrating the complicated intersection of laws and practices in order to establish a communis opinio (common opinion) that could be applied in marriage cases facing litigation.38 This involvement of jurists in marriage law increased over the early modern period and led to a new genre of legal writing in which lawyers discussed their definitions of marriage and defended who got to be involved in determining valid unions. The number of works in England, Italy, Germany, and other European countries by jurists on marriage certainly proliferated by the late sixteenth century, as legal thinkers sought to sort out what constituted a valid marriage and how that was to be determined. One example includes Henry Swinburne’s (1551–1624, an English church lawyer), A Treaty on Spousals (published posthumously in 1686).39 As Sarah Hanley has argued, political and legal thinkers played a role in strengthening the concerns of families as being aligned with the state within the law.40 In this way, the French mirrored the theological arguments about family as a microcosm of state and the proper regulation of marriage as necessary. Thus, Jean Bodin (1530–96), a French jurist and political philosopher, certainly made the same connection between the state and the family as humanist scholars and Protestant theologians, and thus emphasized this in his Six Books on the Republic.41 The influence of studies of Aristotle on the theology of Spain can be seen in De sancto matrimonii sacramento disputationes (Disputations on the Holy Sacrament of Matrimony) written by Tomás Sanchez (1550–1610), a Cordoban Jesuit. This treatise had a significant impact on legal discussion on marriage in Catholic regions.42 With the ongoing intellectual discussion on the role of the state and the existence of various legal systems going on in philosophical, theological, and legal tracts it is no coincidence that these works would have a cultural impact. Implications of these discussions on the law, state, and marriage and the tensions with popular practices emerged in prose, fiction, poetry, and plays.43 A number of the plays written by William Shakespeare (1564– 1616), for instance, used the complicated legal and political implications of a troubled or contested marriage as a central theme, including Othello and Measure for Measure.44 In All’s Well that Ends Well, the question of what constitutes a valid marriage is at the heart of the play, as Helena is given in marriage to Bertram, son of the king of France, as part of a promise to be able to choose the husband of her choice after curing the king of his illness. The very unhappy Bertram, unable to escape the parental choice of his partner, opts instead to leave the legality of the marriage in an ambiguous position by refusing to consummate the union, stating in a letter to Helena “When thou canst get the ring upon my finger, / which never shall come off, and show me a child begot- / ten of thy

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FIGURE 3.4  Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies or The First Folio (London: Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard, 1623). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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body that I am father to, then call me hus- / band; but in such a ‘then’ I write a ‘never’.” In this way, Shakespeare highlights the ambiguous legal space in the definitions of what constitutes a binding marriage and leaves Helena between engagement and wedding.45 A similar development can be seen among the poets, writers, and playwrights in Spain, the Low Countries, and other regions as well.46 These works evoke the shifting norms and complicated relationship between practice and law that the theoretical works overlooked.

MARRIAGES BEFORE THE COURTS Broad secular and legal involvement in marriages did not stop previous practices, causing an enormous disparity in the assessments of early modern marriage law between those scholars looking at practice and those looking at legal codes. Conflicting legal definitions of marriage based on canon law, customary practices, and state mandates constituting a proper marriage still led to continued dilemmas over marriage and who had the right to define it.47 At the outset of her work on Reformation ritual, Susan Karant-Nunn writes, “of all the worldly rituals that the churches, Catholic and Protestant, have attempted to influence and incorporate over the ages, engagement and marriage have been the most resistant to change. In this inseparable, sometimes almost indistinguishable, pair of rites are incorporated society’s most personal interests—the economic and the sociosexual.”48 Yet, as Pamela Biel argues for the same time period and place, “individuals lost the ability to choose their future spouses without the approval of the wider social context, which in turn, came to be regulated by the state and its representatives.”49 Both these trends certainly reflect the contemporary experiences confronting rulers, theologians, and jurists throughout Europe. The laity would have been much more familiar with the ongoing developments in local marriage law than they would have been with the discussions by humanists, theologians, and jurists. Marriage and wedding statutes and mandates (Eheordnung, Hochzeitordnung) were promulgated by city councils and territorial rulers, and included as part of local church ordinances (Kirchenordnungen) produced by local theologians and church superintendents, sometimes in cooperation with local jurists.50 Although there is a certain consistency in many aspects of these ordinances, they do not constitute the creation of a single marriage law for the German-speaking part of the Holy Roman Empire. Differences existed in a whole range of areas: the age of majority for couples and thus the right to enter into a marriage without parental consent, for instance, varied considerably from 18 to 27 years old, depending on gender and location.51 These differences do not necessarily come down to religious affiliations. Indeed, in many places, such as predominately Catholic France and the largely Calvinist Netherlands, state authorities strengthened the parental right of consent in keeping with emerging discussions of the family as the foundation of state during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.52 Changes in the legal system in both the Catholic and Protestant regions of Germany were prompted in large part by new teachings on marriage and new expectations from the laity and civil authorities. John Witte, Jr. has argued that “it was the new concept of marriage introduced by the Lutheran Reformation … that provided both the new paradigm and the revolutionary situation needed to stimulate and justify these legal reforms.” Indeed, a long tradition of scholarship exists on changes in legal institutions and codes brought about during the Reformation.53 Yet the analysis of the legal system and court cases offered by social and cultural historians show different mechanisms and practices than expected. In addition, far more continuity between regions with different religious affiliations and diversity within coreligious regions existed than an examination

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of theology and legal treatise might lead one to expect. Part of the reason was that although Catholic regions retained canon law they often faced similar problems in terms of cases coming in front of courts as did their Protestant neighbors using civil and criminal law.54 In studies comparing Catholic and Protestant courts, Thomas Safley and Joel Harrington found that while the Catholic Church may have shared some of the same concerns over questions of adultery, secret marriage, and domestic violence, the Protestant authorities seemed more concerned with the correction and prevention of such transgressions than with evoking personal confession and repentance.55 Studies of legal courts have demonstrated the great concern of the church and secular authorities about human failure within the household and a desire to uphold the religious values of the household (see also Ingram in this volume). As a result, reformers devoted considerable resources to developing systems to enforce their new moral and religious codes. Legal institutions, such as the marriage courts, were created to ensure that those who transgressed these codes were brought to the attention of the appropriate authorities. Part of the reason for the inability of the ecclesiastical courts to maintain full control over marriage cases was that their previous control had never been complete. Since the late Middle Ages, communal and territorial courts weighed in on some types of marriages cases, especially those concerning property issues. But this careful division between spiritual and property matters became more fluid with increased discussions of the connection of family and civic duties during the fifteenth century. In these efforts, the older systems of marriage management by communities in customs and by the church in individual promises were dismissed by officials in favor of public sanctioning of marriage by secular authorities and validated by jurists if necessary. While the earlier ceremonies, customs, and rituals continued, the public certification of a union mattered most to the officials. In the case of a dispute, the actions once accepted as binding, such as private consent, no longer carried legal weight before a court. This progression can be seen in the Low Countries, particularly in the northern portion, where secular courts controlled aspects of marriage law by the fifteenth century.56 Thus, in addition to new legal codes and mandates during the early modern period, church officials amended and expanded the traditional ecclesiastical courts and introduced new consistory courts, and royal, territorial, and civic authorities expanded and introduced new secular marriage courts throughout Europe and locations where Europeans lived. The interplay between popular rituals, ecclesiastical courts, and secular civil and criminal courts remained complicated in areas where Catholic rulers reigned. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, most marriage litigation remained largely in the hands of ecclesiastical courts. In Venice, for instances, the Matrimonial Tribunal, staffed by members of the curia trained in canon and civil law, rather than the Doge heard the majority of matrimonial cases.57 Yet civil courts still played a role in these regions. After the passage of Tametsi, many Catholic city councils, legislative bodies, and kings either refused to implement the practice or used the rule in unexpected ways. Italian ecclesiastical courts, which had been flexible in mediating between canon law and local expectations, did begin to uphold Tametsi by the end of sixteenth century.58 A similar acceptance of Tametsi can be seen in Spain, although local customs and monarchical concerns often modified how it was used. Women, for instance, used royal courts to seek financial restitution for loss of honor by seduction, rape, and broken marriage promises by instituting lawsuits.59 Royal and ecclesiastical courts in Spain upheld marriage promises as equivalent to marriage vows when women argued “seduction by marriage promise” as the justification for premarital sexual relations, with or without a resulting pregnancy.60

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Although the Council of Trent had confirmed the centrality of the church in defining marriage and participating in rituals of marriage, this did not prevent secular courts in Catholic regions from expanding their activities in the legal disputes. They did so, however, using and expanding the function of previous secular courts to investigate and try aspects of marriage law. In Venice, after the late sixteenth century, local secular courts, such as the Court of the Prosecutors (Giudici del Procuratore) over financial issues and Executors against Blasphemy (Esecutori contro la Bestemmia), heard an increasing number of cases, including those on broken vows, thereby considering some aspects of these cases to be criminal cases.61 In this way, while no single marriage court existed yet in Italy, secular jurisdiction over marriage matters did expand. Even in France, the Catholic monarchy sought to bring jurisdiction over marriage under their control by strengthening rules on parental consent, and royal courts began to hear marriage cases about clandestine marriages during the early modern period.62 The French monarchy did not overtly forbid Tametsi but also did not seek compliance in the secular courts, thereby effectively undermining the ability of the ecclesiastical courts to implement punishments.63 Part of the reason for this unwillingness to return control of marriage to the clergy or to unspecified witnesses was that changes were already being undertaken in French law that had strengthened family control over children and secular control over the mechanism of certifying marriage, as a series of edicts on marriage emerging from Parlement from the mid-sixteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries demonstrate.64 Ultimately, a 1639 royal decree declared all marriages must be public, a requirement of Tametsi, while simultaneously strengthening the jurisdiction of parents and royal courts over marriage.65 Implementing new requirements for a valid marriage proved to be a long process that came up against popular customs and traditional practices with some differences based on the religious affiliation of the ruler. Protestant rulers certainly attempted to bring marriage under their control throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by passing new marriage regulations and laws. The first marriage orders were promulgated between 1525 and 1561 in Germany and Switzerland as city councils and territorial princes accepted the reform movement.66 The Geneva City Council gradually added numerous stages to the completion of marriage under its control, including registering the marriage, and explicitly made clear the need for public professing of vows before witnesses in its marriage ordinances issued between 1545 and 1576.67 In 1580, Holland began the process of transferring their marriage law from church to secular control.68 Over the last two decades, scholars have explored the impact of legal changes on marriage by examining local secular legal institutions, such as the marriage court, and analyzing court records for information on the interaction of individuals inconflicts over marriage. In the years after accepting the Reformation, Protestant towns and territories in the Holy Roman Empire set up court systems (Ehegericht) at the same time they implemented new marriage laws and moral norms in line with their social theology. Some of the earliest of these institutions were established almost simultaneous to declarations of accepting new Reformed theology: the Zurich marriage court was established in 1525,69 the Nuremberg secular marriage court in 1526,70 the Bern marriage court in 1529,71 and the Augsburg marriage court in 1537.72 Consistory courts, which consider marriage cases along with a host of other legal questions, and the separate marriage courts were staffed by some combination ranging from all-clergy to all-secular officials, to some mix of both. In Basel, reformers established the marriage court in 1529, with the city council confirming an outline of its functions

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and membership structure, including representatives from the city council, in 1533.73 The same process can be seen in other German and Swiss cities. Here as elsewhere, secular concerns about property, local interests, and familial dynamics played a significant role in aiding this gradual shift of cases concerning marriage from ecclesiastical jurisdiction to secular courts. In the northern Netherlands, independent secular marriage courts and laws did not emerge after reform; rather, cases went either to existing courts or to consistory courts, which in some instances reported directly, as in the case of the duchy of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel or Electoral Saxony, to a duke.74 While theologians and pastors may have participated in these courts, many dukes and city councils in Protestant areas in the Holy Roman Empire understood these individuals to be serving secular rulers in this capacity. In all of these instances, the marriage courts and consistory courts founded by such secular authorities took on the function once held by ecclesiastical courts. As the legal codes changed, personnel administering these courts were expected to uphold the stricter interpretations of the definition of marriage and married life. Initially, the actions of these courts did not always follow the rules in practice. As a number of recent studies have demonstrated, however, Protestant courts on the continent and in Britain upheld traditional marriage practices, especially secret marriages and those based on consent or promises, in the sixteenth century, favoring to confirm marriages even when clandestine, when faced with strong local custom and norms.75 Many transgressions against laws and norms, such as adultery, previously dealt with by the ecclesiastical courts, were instead brought before civil authorities in the sixteenth century. While there is some dispute about how complete this change was, it is clear that during the sixteenth century civil courts took an increased interest in marriage and the household. Thomas Safley argues that, unlike the previous legal systems, this new use of consistories and civil courts offered an alternative outside of the family for the solution of domestic problems. Regardless of the pace of legal change, one of the most interesting changes was the willingness of the civil and communal authorities to enforce the new view of the proper role of the family and to maintain social discipline based on the new code of ethics. Studies of legal courts have demonstrated the great concern of the church and civic authorities about human failure within the household and a desire to uphold the religious values of the household.76 As a result, reformers devoted considerable resources to developing systems to enforce their new moral and religious codes. Legal institutions, such as the marriage courts described by Roper and Safley, were created to ensure that those who transgressed these codes were brought to the attention of the appropriate authorities. In all these instances, the courts upholding the marriages went against the legal codes that called for the ending of such behaviors and methods of marrying. While decisions were often made in conjunction with familial and communal wishes, courts did attempt to implement new regulations in some instances. The end result was often a regional variation on the issues of parental consent and clandestine engagements that emerged in cases of disputed engagements.77 Thus, the mix of situationally bound arguments that emerge in such early modern cases created a surprisingly flexible institution that does weigh a number of issues in rendering a decision. Parental consent was neither universally upheld nor fully ignored and so the cases can develop along individual lines. As discussions on marriage focused on the spiritual, political, and economic implications of the establishment of a household, legal codes followed suit. It was only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that kings, dukes, city councils, parliaments, and other Protestant secular ruling bodies issued unequivocal statements that marriage was public and must be confirmed by specific steps, and that any marriage

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FIGURE 3.5  An English fleet marriage before 1753, from Robert Chambers, Book of Days (London: W. & R. Chambers, 1864, 1st edition). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

not following these steps would be considered invalid in reaction to continued lack of compliance in local courts. Holland strengthened its marriage laws in its Marriage Act of 1656.78 In Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, Duke Rudolph August and Duke Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Lüneburg reminded the Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel consistory court in 1699 to abide by the “territorial ordinances condemning secret marriage and outlining the required steps to a legally valid engagement” and commanded them to punish any violations, including those begun as promises of marriage, as fornication.79 In 1753, the English Parliament passed the Hardwicke’s Marriage Act establishing once and for all a standard and rigid legal and public policy on what constituted a marriage, which required the reading of banns, a marriage license, and a public church wedding.80 They instructed the court in future to treat such cases as cases of seduction and to punish the couple for fornication regardless of the circumstances, rather than try to figure out who was telling the truth (see also Cristellon and Matthews-Grieco in this volume). As all of these examples demonstrate, marriage law had increasingly become the business of state, even while religious authorities remained part of the rituals. Compliance with local customs in marriage courts began to shift in the seventeenth century as a greater attention was paid to following the regulations calling for specific public steps to be taken to regularize a marriage. As Susanna Burghartz has argued, it was not just secular intervention of civic officials and secular courts, but also a shift in moral norms that allowed new laws to call for stiff punishments for any premarital sex, regardless of a promise.81 This criminalization of what had been acceptable steps to marriage previously is one of the more notable developments in marriage law. Thus, unmarried pregnant women found themselves in a quandary, since seeking out courts

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brought as much punishment as did suffering the consequences of dishonor brought about by a failed marriage promise. Court officials found themselves with less leeway in helping women, such as Gese Boden, in this predicament. The room for appealing decisions narrowed as laws and courts came closer together in their intentions. Early modern marriage law was formed in an intricate process of negotiation between the actual practice of adjudications in the lower courts and the decrees and mandates from rulers. Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, the number of requirements for a valid marriage increased. While not all areas adopted all of these rules, discussions among theologians, civil officials, and jurists revolved around aspects of all of them, and all of them sought to move away from the previous concept of a marriage made by the consent and vow of two people that had been the previous norm. Thus, by the seventeenth century, officials increasingly were expected to determine whether a bride and groom met the basic requirements to enter a marriage, including that they were the minimum age of consent, what religion they were, if they were physically and cognitively able to understand the vows before a future marriage could be announced let alone conducted. Then banns needed to be read multiple times, parental consent documented, and a public ceremony announced. Once these hurdles were overcome, the wedding itself was expected to proceed in a certain order with a strong emphasis on a public recitation of vows spoken before a priest and agreements about property certified by a notary, both held before multiple witnesses. Only then, if the laws had their way, would a marriage be confirmed.82

CONCLUSION Even as legal historians such as Charles Donahue, John Witte, Jr., Richard H. Helmholz, and others have demonstrated the increasing sophistication, differentiation, and discussion in both canon and secular law codes on marriage, social and cultural historians, literary critics, and others have found how often these law codes failed to be fully implemented, generated divisive popular discussions, and created new cultural depictions of the failures and conflicts of marriage. Implementing the various visions of the ideal marriage proved much more complicated than expected in practice as secular courts came up against popular practices, existing legal traditions, and continuing customs. Contemporary scholars face a myriad of interpretations and methodologies when seeking to understand the influence of secular rulers and law on marriage. As with religious changes and statebuilding, the long-term developments and the continuity from the fifteenth century often resisted attempts to create new laws and new secular courts. The result in the early modern period was the increased overlap of jurisdictions and an often complicated implementation of new regulations as local officials continued to allow concessions to the older, popular marriage customs. In 1583, Daniel Hoffmann was already well acquainted with the contradictions in marriage in church, civil, and customary law and understood through his own training as a theologian, consistory court judge, and pastor how various constituencies defined, shaped, and accepted what they saw as a valid marriage. His ultimately futile attempt to resolve the case he had heard so many times was to bring the couple in front of all those communities concerned—the congregation embodied the social and economic community, the duke embodied the political community, and the crucifix embodied the community of believers—to urge them to pressure Hans Eppers to marry Gese Boden, the mother of his child. In the end, his attempt satisfied no one because it did not follow

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the ducal law or address moral concerns. Eppers refused that pressure, leaving Hoffmann with no recourse but a warning to others in his published sermon. His discomfort with the contradictions in the multiple legal opinions about whether a union by consent, such as that between Boden and Eppers described at the outset of this article, was a legal marriage was widespread throughout Europe in the early modern period. Clandestine marriages were only one type of marriage case confronted by courts between 1450 and 1650. The resolution of all of them remained contentious even as more parties entered to define what marriage was and who should enter it and when. Despite attempts by state officials, jurists, and others to standardize a legal code and ritual practice to prevent such conflicts, universal laws only emerged toward the end of the period and only then did state officials consistently treat violations of state protocols and laws in marriage as criminal acts and punish accordingly.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Ties that Bind ANNA BELLAVITIS

BETWEEN HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY Anthropologists studying the marriage patterns of non-European populations have had an important influence on the historiography of the European family. For Claude LéviStrauss, marriage was founded on the necessity to “exchange women” between families to avoid incest: the prohibition of incest was the foundation of symbolic thought. Maurice Godelier preferred instead to explore exchange in multiple directions: not just the

FIGURE 4.1  Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506), Family and Court of Ludovico II Gonzaga, detail of the left side, 1465–74, fresco, Camera degli Sposi, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua. © Scala/Art Resource, New York. Translated by Clelia Boscolo.

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exchange of women but also the exchange of men, and also the exchange of women and men with goods in a system of gift and counter-gift that generated situations of indebtedness that continued over time. Françoise Héritier, on the other hand, insisted on the different value of women and men in these exchange practices, emphasizing a theme that has moved from the anthropology of the family to the core of historical research on marriage, particularly in medieval and early modern Italy.1 Recently, Gérard Delille, an historian of the family during the early modern age, following Lévi-Strauss’s theses on the anthropology of the family, has decided to concentrate on the modality of marriage alliances rather than on parentage or the rules of transmission as common features of European societies. Delille tried to find a unifying element in European family behavior within the rules imposed by the Catholic Church to authorize marriages between relatives only beyond a certain degree of kinship. He concluded that the anthropological principle of the exchange of women persisted in medieval and early modern Europe. Available genealogies, especially for the elite, included unions between a brother and a sister, between an uncle and his niece, between an aunt and her nephew, between male and female cousins, and between a man and a woman from two different branches of a family with a woman and a man from two branches of another family. The different branches of two or more allied noble families exchanged their women, continually passing from one branch to the other so as to avoid the impediments imposed by the church, and began the cycle again from generation to generation. This practice of alternating branches could carry on for centuries. Between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries, exchanges between alternating branches can be found in many regions of western Europe. Economic considerations, prompted by hereditary systems, were obviously fundamental in the choice of consort. An only daughter, for example, with a rich inheritance always aroused interest. However, if we look at matrimonial exchanges over a long period, we observe that a marriage that promised a sizeable dowry balanced out a marriage concluded in the preceding generation, or the following one, with a small dowry. Even in the early modern era, it was through the use of violence—increasingly state controlled—that alliances were imposed that brought about significant imbalances in financial exchanges. The abduction of a young heiress or a private war between relatives was still common up to the sixteenth century.2 The Catholic Church, never having intervened in matters of inheritance, which remained the competence of the state, took control of marriage and incest, dictating general rules for the whole of Christendom. Such a system of alliances began with the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215, which established all the main rules for impediments to marriage due to blood lines (see also Ingram in this volume). With the obligation to marry beyond a certain degree of kinship, the council imposed an extreme and not very realistic exogamy, ending in the eighteenth century with Joseph II’s reforms of family law and then those of the French Revolution. Nevertheless, from the second half of the fifteenth century, ever more frequently the church agreed to dispensations for consanguinity for first cousins, so as to meet the needs of the European nobility. Through marriages amongst blood relatives, the nobility tried to limit the dispersion of their goods through the female line. At the same time, some countries going through the Reformation, such as England, returned to following the very limited impediments of the Old Testament.3 The changes in eighteenth-century laws solidified an actual evolution that had begun in the mid-seventeenth century. The frequency of exchanges between alternating lineages decreased dramatically. The family dynasty disappeared as a protagonist in the

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mechanisms of family relationships and alliances. Progressively, exchanges of sisters and unions between a widower and his son and a widow and her daughter disappeared. In the eighteenth century, consanguineous or related marriages were ever more frequent, as were unions that were completely exogamous.4 Delille’s research enabled him to verify marriage behavior over various populations, from the nobility of Provence and Spain to rural families in Apulia, from the butchers of Limoges to stone cutters from Fiesole. Nevertheless, the difficulty remains of knowing whether the participants had such a keen memory of the marriage alliances of the family, or whether they had been conscious of the bonds that had united them in the past. Private sources—diaries, correspondence, autobiographies—sometimes show a certain genealogical depth on the part of their writers. However, it is difficult to find any remaining evidence beyond the third generation. In some cases, the church’s doctrine of the impediments to marriage was reinterpreted by the participants. That is what happened in a seventeenth-century village in Normandy, where the impediments owing to consanguinity of the female line were given less importance compared to those of the male line.5 Other studies have offered a completely opposite reading of the system of marriage alliances of medieval and early modern Europe, maintaining that up to the eighteenth century marriage unions were mostly drawn up between people who had no blood ties between them and that, in fact, to find any form of regularity or structure is completely impossible. This is the thesis of David W. Sabean, Jon Mathieu, and Simon Teuscher.6 Europeans married each other for their own reasons, sometimes after looking for agreement from all parties, but not in order to follow some scheme of family ties based on rules of consanguinity. Nevertheless, something changed in the eighteenth century, when marriages between relatives, both by blood and by marriage, increased and family ties became stronger, a development which contradicts the notion that European societies were evolving towards ever-increasing individualism. Even if Catholic and Protestant marriages evolved in very different ways, most studies emphasize a general tendency both to reduce impediments to marriage between relatives as well as to agree to dispensations for them more easily.7 In both of the above approaches it is difficult and arbitrary to generalize. Marriages between relatives in late medieval and early modern Europe quite often happened for economic reasons, or for the need to keep assets, especially land, within the family. The great tenants of the Ile-de-France between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries practiced cross-sibling marriage (a sister and a brother with a brother and a sister; an uncle and a niece with an aunt and a nephew, etc.) in around 20 percent of all marriages. In Normandy in the seventeenth century, families working in the same economic activity— for example, wine makers and fruit sellers, propertied farmers, or qualified artisans— not only married among themselves but tended to arrange more marriages with the same families with whom they shared the same faith during the age of religious conflict. Therefore, marriage between relatives was a “pragmatic solution that stable families tended to adopt above all but not only to avoid dividing up the family assets.”8 “This solution took the form that the demographics of the family allowed when the union was planned. This explains why many of these unions were second marriages of widowers and widows with a close relative of the deceased husband or wife. It also explains why the second marriage of a widower or widow sometimes took place at the same time as the union of their respective children.”9

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TIES BEYOND BORDERS Besides following some scheme to form family ties, or to keep property together, marriages could also be a means of concluding political and economic alliances, of reuniting lands and sealing peace-treaties, or of obtaining privileges beyond one’s borders. Marriage alliances that created or consolidated merchant societies were currency in late medieval and early modern Europe, both at the local and international levels, and allowed the building of networks of relatives that could reach far and wide. The familiarity of strangers could come about at the level of a marriage alliance arranged between wood merchants from either side of the border between the Republic of Venice and the German Empire, or between Protestant merchants from Lyon and Geneva, but also on an intercontinental scale.10 A marriage, or a series of marriages, could allow entrance to a foreign country or ascent into a higher social class, sometimes at a pace not permitted to locals.11 Getting married across the border raised the problem of citizenship of one of the two partners, usually the bride, who moved to the groom’s country, a subject of debate among the law-makers of the Italian city-states.12 In the case of Venice, only one of the numerous laws on citizenship made explicit reference to female citizens. This is a law dated 1407: to resolve a situation of demographic crisis, owing to recurring epidemics, it automatically gave the citizenship de intus tantum (the lower degree) that in normal times could only be requested after fifteen years of residence to one who married a Venetam habitatricem Venetiarum (a Venetian female citizen residing in the Venetian Republic). Never officially repealed, this law is referenced in an article of the 1552 citizenship law, which reduced the number of years of residence required for citizenship de intus from fifteen to eight for those men who had married Venetian women. In the sixteenth century, men applying for citizenship often declared to have married a “Veneziana,” or to have “taken a wife in Venice,” or to have a “wife born in this city” and sometimes to have married a “citizen.” These families of immigrants were often very prolific: eight, ten, sixteen, up to the seventeen children born to the printer Vincenzo Valgrisi, a Calvinist sympathizer of French origin and bookseller devoted to Erasmus in the commercial area of the Mercerie. Men aspiring to citizenship mentioned their wives only when they were Venetian. To marry a Venetian woman was very useful, permitting settlement in the city thanks to the marriage and birth of numerous offspring. This was the best proof of their will to remain in the city.13 The transmission of citizenship by marriage was in fact quite a complex question. According to Martha C. Howell, legitimate children born to female citizens were presumed citizens.14 Perhaps this was true in late medieval Hanseatic or Germanic cities, but it cannot be said for Amsterdam in the seventeenth century, for example, where women who could gain citizenship independently could transfer it to their husbands but not to their children. In general, wives automatically acquired their husbands’ citizenship, but in certain cases they could also keep dual citizenship if this allowed them to keep hereditary rights in their city of origin. Men who married female citizens could often automatically acquire citizenship, or could more easily do so. This is what happened, for example, in Bruges and Leiden at the end of the Middle Ages, but also in Augsburg, in Amsterdam, in Naples, and in certain English cities in early modern times.15 The problem of dual citizenship and of the transfer of rights and privileges in the case of marriage between foreigners obviously created particular circumstances for princesses leaving their own countries to get married. A sovereign’s marriage was very often a marriage beyond borders with a foreign princess. Royal marriages and the circulation

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of princesses was one of the keys to European politics in early modern times, but every dynasty had its own special practices. Spanish royal practice can be called the Castilian model, founded on dynastic unification. This presupposed that brides were heiresses and therefore brought land to their marriages. As is known, the unification of Spain came about thanks to the marriage between Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469, depicted in Figure 4.2. The Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs pursued a marriage policy based on exchange, or double marriages, as in the case of Philip II with Elizabeth of Valois in 1559 and Charles IX with Elisabeth of Austria in 1570. The idea that the only possible bride for a monarch was a foreigner took hold between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the outcome of such a strategy was the creation of a singular European family of cousins, a structured and hierarchical network of relations that held power all over Europe, from the great powers to the small states and even across religious borders.16 In the case of the crown of Castile, hereditary laws were quite favorable toward princesses who could pass on to their children the hereditary rights to the throne of Castile and were also able to reign themselves. The transfer of land through the female line could be a means of dynastic recomposition, but it could also be dangerously dispersive. On the death of Isabella in 1504, Joanna of Castile, nicknamed the Mad, inherited the

FIGURE 4.2  Anonymous, Portrait of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, fifteenth century, Madrigal de las altas torres, Convento de las Augustinas, Avila, Spain. © Album/Art Resource, New York.

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crown as sovereign of Castile, and her father Ferdinand of Aragon had to return to his kingdom of origin. Until 1555, Joanna the Mad was thus the legal, if not the actual, sovereign of Castile. However, first her husband Philip the Handsome, followed by her father Ferdinand of Aragon, and then her son Charles V governed in her name and had her locked up. In the second half of the sixteenth century, we find a similar situation: a princess in the position of heiress, the first-born of Philip II, Isabella Claire Eugenie, was the declared princess of the Asturias and therefore heir to the throne following the death of her brother Don Carlos. The princess lost her right to the throne when a male heir, Don Fernando, was born in 1571. From the point of view of other reigning dynasties, the hereditary rights of Spanish princesses made them very promising matches. This explains the strong tendency to keep the marriages of the Spanish princesses within the dynastic circle of the Hapsburgs.17 French princesses did not have the same hereditary rights and, in this case, the problem arose not for kings’ daughters but for some of their wives. In 1491, the betrothal between Anne of Brittany and Charles VIII was agreed upon. The contract stipulated that the duchy would be inherited by the future son of the couple and would therefore be united to the kingdom of France. If instead a daughter should be born, the reunification would be in danger because according to Salic law a woman could not inherit the throne of France. A new marriage contract, stipulated in 1499, stated that, if there were no children, the duchy would go to Anna’s closest heir, that is, according to Breton law, to her cousin Jean de Chalon, Prince of Orange. If instead the couple had children, the duchy would go to the second born, son or daughter, while the first born, if male, would become king of France. In this second contract, Brittany would therefore keep its independence. In marriages such as that between Anne of Brittany and Charles VIII, the stipulation of a contract was the norm, but what appears particularly unusual is that the contract did not provide for the unification of the duchy with the realm. Anne of Brittany was the only remaining heir of the duchy; through this marriage contract she tried to rebuild its full autonomy. Having a male heir would have been the solution, but that did not happen. Because Anne and Charles did not have any sons, the heir to the throne became Francis I, from the collateral family branch of the Valois, who married Claude of France, Anne and Charles’s first-born daughter.18 It was Francis I who organized the marriage of the second-born, Renée of France, with Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. This was clearly a mésalliance, even if it could be justified by the need to renew a frail alliance between the great power of France and a small Italian duchy, in the context of the conflict between the Hapsburg and Valois dynasties for power in the Italian peninsula. In reality, Francis I mainly intended to put Renée in a position of weakness, for as second-born she could lay claim, according to her parents’ marriage contract, to the duchy of Brittany. When she returned to France in 1560 after the death of Ercole d’Este, Renée started the process to claim at least a part of her inheritance. A compromise was reached in 1570: Charles IX promised a sum of money and the duchies of Nemours and Montargis, but Renée never saw this fulfilled. They were faced with a dynastic marriage designed to exclude the bride from her rightful inheritance, while the sovereignty between the two branches of the Valois dynasty was in transition.19 Cases of marriages annulled after a ceremony in absentia were particularly complicated from the legal point of view, because the union was considered valid even though the marriage had not been consummated. This was the problem when, at the end of the fifteenth century, Barbara, daughter of the Margrave Albert Achilles of Brandenburg, married the Jagiellonian king, Wladislas IV of Bohemia, and brought the duchy of Glogau as her

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dowry. Wladislas IV renounced the duchy in favor of Matthias Corvinus but then refused to ratify the union with Barbara. The situation was very complex because even though unconsummated, the marriage was considered valid. The dispute lasted for decades, until an annulment was granted by Pope Alexander VI in 1500, but in the meantime Barbara had been kidnapped by her family to stop her from marrying beneath her princely rank.20

MARRIAGE TIES AND ECONOMIC NETWORKS The drawing up of marriage contracts with clauses relating to the inheritance of goods was not the norm in the customary laws of northern Europe. However, between the late medieval and early modern age this practice spread to various areas and was not only characteristic of reigning families. The need to intervene with rules of inheritance was considered necessary especially at times of economic uncertainty, when customary law no longer seemed sufficient to protect the widow and her offspring. Making marriage contracts and drafting wills were an efficient means of overcoming the shortcomings of the usual norms, as research on Flanders, England, and Sweden, among others, has shown (see also Sperling in this volume).21 In Paris, women brought a dowry to the marriage and husbands promised a sum that would go to the widow. A couple’s communal property was managed by the husband, but many documents indicate that in noblesse de robe families the wife had great freedom to take the initiative. This was also supported by the dominant practice of matrilocality, that is, the new couple more often than not went to live in the home of the wife’s family or nearby. In fact, household management was usually entrusted to competent and active women, allowing husbands to devote themselves fully to their careers. However, in case of financial disasters caused by profligate or reckless husbands, women legally had no say. For this reason the articulation of a marriage contract, a very common practice even in Parisian craftsmen’s families, guaranteed the rights of widows against a practice that left a lot of room to individual initiative and interpretations which did not always go in their favor.22 Where Roman law prevailed, marriage contracts and wills were the norm in the upper classes, but not exclusively. In Venetian family-run commercial companies, even the wives’ dowries were included in the businesses assets. In his will of 1507, Alberto Grifalconi declared that the capital of the company he had set up with his two brothers Giovanni and Gerolamo came to 38,617 ducats, which included Gerolamo’s wife’s dowry of 3,000 ducats. In 1556, the glassmaker Bartolomeo Bortolussi made out his will designating as heirs of the company his seven sons. He left legacies to his three daughters (two married, one a nun) and therefore all three were paid off for their share of their father’s inheritance. Another son, already independent, received no legacy. The Bortolussi brothers named one another as executors and heirs and asked their wives to continue to live with the family even as widows and to “leave their dowries in the household so long as they shall live with them.” At least six grandsons succeeded the brothers, but in the following generation the family company was divided and some of its members retired from commerce to devote themselves to offices and professions.23 The tie created by marriage had a long-lasting effect that went beyond the life of the spouses. The role of widows in the management of merchant and industrial activities, an image rendered in Figure 4.3, has been the subject of much research. Gemma Teresa Colesanti has found the account books of a Catalan lady merchant who lived in Sicily, Caterina Llull i Sabastida, widowed in 1471, of a merchant and nobleman, Joan Sabastida. Caterina’s first act was a court case, which she won, against the guardian named by her

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FIGURE 4.3  Arithmetic, wool and silk tapestry depicting a banker making a loan transaction and recording it in a ledger, c. 1520. Photograph by Prisma/UIG/Getty Images.

husband. This was only the first in a series of legal actions taken by her to ensure she had control of the assets and business affairs of her deceased husband. Correspondence with her sister Johanna, who remained in Barcelona, shows very clearly the administrative and financial competence of both of them, for Johanna too managed the family company in the absence of her brothers, often away on business. It is obvious that neither of them was acting as an amateur businesswoman, but they had received training from their family of origin, not only in financial but also in legal matters pertaining to commercial activities. Johanna’s commercial activities consisted essentially of the shipment of huge quantities of wheat and barley from Sicily toward Barcelona, while on the return journey the ships,

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including her own caravel, were loaded with Spanish products to be sold on the Sicilian market. Furthermore, she was very active in the slave trade from North Africa towards Sicily, as well as in making loans.24 The role of widows and sometimes also of wives as protagonists in the mercantile economy could be particularly strong in some historical conjunctures. At the end of the fifteenth century, the law for the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and at the end of the sixteenth century its extension into Portuguese territory, incorporated by the Spanish crown, resulted in a flow of Jews and converted Jews to other countries. Many foreign merchants, be they Jews or conversos, travelled to the French Atlantic ports, in particular Rouen and Nantes. The women from these commercial families, especially those of Spanish origin, were particularly active in business. These women were not only widows who had inherited the management of businesses but also wives who were named as representatives of their husbands, whose activities meant they were constantly on the move. Belonging to a community strongly characterized as much as by language and origins as by religion gave these women a central role, especially in the first period after migration, when the network of relationships was not yet strong and structured enough to trust outsiders to the family.25 In most cases, women involved in commercial activities or long-distance shipping activities were widows. In Antwerp, on the death of her husband, a beer brewer and hop merchant, Anna Janssens, not only carried on these activities but began an import-export activity with the Canaries and the Spanish peninsula together with her brothers and other important merchants and notable locals. She was also active in the building trade and finished her days as a money lender so that upon her death, in 1581, she was one of the richest residents of the city. The daughter of a rich silk merchant from Antwerp, Margrita van Valckenburgh, who had moved to Amsterdam and had been widowed, replaced her husband as a member of the East India Company and continued his business affairs with success. In 1624 she obtained the monopoly of the import of caviar from Russia for ten years and was the first and only woman to have the title of bewindhebber, active member of the East India Company.26 Endogamous marriages between families having the same profession were frequent in the world of the Renaissance book, and it was not unusual for brides to bring a dowry of printed materials and entire collections to sell, as well as of course a nice book of useful addresses and business connections. Guilds of printers and booksellers did not always admit women but some, such as that of the booksellers of Barcelona, founded in 1553, not only allowed widows but also unmarried daughters to inherit the management of the paternal workshop. Guild laws were very precise in these matters: if the master left both sons and daughters, the widow could continue to manage the workshop until her son was 18. But if there were only daughters, the widow could only remain as head of the company until her eldest daughter married. If the daughter did not marry, the widow could continue to manage the activity and then leave it to her daughter. In the eventuality of marriage, the company kept the name of the woman who continued to manage it with her husband.27 The collaboration of wives in the running of an artisan’s workshop, depicted in Figure 4.4, was provided for in the rules of the guilds, which, in general, authorized a widow to continue her husband’s work. From the point of view of corporative hierarchy, the presence of widows in the guilds was a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it approved and confirmed the role of master and head of the family, able to guarantee succession and protection for the family but, on the other, it enabled women to manage the affairs and property of the business in complete autonomy, an eventuality that would have to be controlled. For this reason, the rights of widows were strictly limited by guilds’

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FIGURE 4.4  Quentin Metsys (c. 1466–1530), The Moneylender and His Wife, 1514, oil on wood, 70.5 x 67 cm, Inv.: INV1444. Photograph by Tony Querrec, Musée du Louvre, Paris. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, New York.

laws. Often they could only manage the business for a limited period of time, or they were forbidden from taking on new apprentices. A new marriage for the widow caused even greater problems, and almost everywhere they were forbidden to marry a man outside the guild, while marriage to an apprentice was usually encouraged, for example, by providing exemptions from enrollment taxes or from the examinations for joining the guild. Widows teaching the trade to apprentices was not always authorized. In Poitiers, for example, this was not allowed in the guild of surgeons but was permitted for grocers and, in general, those in food-related trades. In some activities, the widow was in charge of purchasing raw materials but was not personally head of the workshop. In other trades she took direct charge of production, as in the case of printing, one of the trades in which widows throughout Europe are to be found as heads of publishing companies.28

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The ultimate reason for giving widows the management of the workshop was to guarantee the transition from fathers to sons, the legitimate heirs, so that the laws of the guild did not always authorize childless widows to take up the activity, or, if they did, it would be only for a limited period of time. Those who had the necessary technical knowledge and wanted to carry on for longer had to go to court. Many did just that, but the most effective line of defense was rarely the declaration of a working competence and pride in the trade. More often the women insisted that the work was of vital necessity so they would not end up destitute or on the street. In Barcelona during the plague epidemics of the mid-seventeenth century, the municipal order that prohibited childless widows from continuing their husband’s activity was suspended. This was an emergency situation, reminiscent of those during the wars of the twentieth century, when women were called upon to replace men in industry. As in those cases, once the emergency was over women were asked to step back and make room for new, male masters.29 Endogamous and exogamous behavior depended on a variety of factors that cannot be easily generalized. Reconstructing biographies and genealogies over many generations allows the historian to undertake in-depth analysis, which in turn must be evaluated within specific contexts and points in time. For instance, a plague epidemic can result in the limitation of the possible alliances between a group of craftsmen and their neighbors, a uniform set in terms of profession and often also in geographical terms, whereas the previous generation may have tried to broaden their relationships through exogamous marriage alliances.30 At times exogamy cannot be easily defined. In some cases, marriages between members of families who practiced different crafts could be explained with the social affinity of these crafts, as has been pointed out about the craftsmen at the Turin court who, in the seventeenth century, dealt with different aspects of the prince’s grooming, from his hairdressers to his jewellers and even his barbers. Exogamy linked to crafts happened within a context of social homogamy, between families of the same social milieu, and of endogamy linked to a workplace, such as the princely court.31 In the case of Venetian citizens, that is the middle class of craftsmen, merchants, and professionals, whose professional and identity traits were redefined during the sixteenth century, fairly widespread professional exogamy took place in the context of class homogamy and, above all, in a social class where the families themselves had a tendency to diversify their activities, taking advantage of all the opportunities offered by the city of the citizens’ class. These social and economic opportunities must be seen in the context of situations where social promotion to noble status was impossible. In the case of Venice, the patrician class was closed to newcomers from the end of the fourteenth to the middle of the seventeenth centuries. During the sixteenth century, a time of great economic growth, social mobility could only take place for Venetian citizens within the middle class and not among patricians. In practice, then, the only possible mobility towards the Venetian nobility was that allowed by marriages of daughter’s wedding patricians, a mobility that actually stopped with the bride and her children but could be useful to her entire family by changing their network of relations. At the end of the sixteenth century, the merchant Giacomo Ragazzoni married all of his nine daughters to patrician men, with dowries amounting in total to 130,000 ducats. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Anna Maria Bergonzi, daughter of a silk merchant, married with a dowry of 50,000 ducats the noble Francesco Grimani, and the patrician Girolamo Corner received from Caterina Tilmans, the daughter of a Dutch merchant, a dowry of 44,000 ducats. Marital alliances proved to be particularly useful in the rare cases in which access to the patriciate was open, and many of the families that were able to purchase the title

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between 1645 and 1718 were already related to patrician families by marriage. When the Zon family asked for and obtained admission to the Maggior Consiglio in 1651, they provided a list of sixteen marriages contracted with patrician families between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is likely that in order to gain recognition of one’s title as civis originarius, which was given to third-generation Venetian natives under specific conditions and allowed access to offices in the bureaucracy and in particular to the ducal Chancery, that it was useful to prove the existence of past marriages with members of the patrician class. In 1606, Gian Carlo Scaramella attached a list of women from his family who had married patricians over the centuries, along with the sum paid for dowries, to his petition for the status of civis originarius, almost as if to suggest that the family had paid its dues to the political class.32 A few years later, Alessandro Ziliol, a Venetian civis originarius with a patrician mother, wrote that “from now on, nobody will be able to gain in riches or in nobility by means of commerce,” accusing the patriciate of preventing social mobility in order to seize the wealth of the Venetian populace “by means of family ties.”33 For women, marriage was actually one way to gain access to the patrician class, but for the title to be passed on to the couple’s children, some very precise rules had to be observed. From 1422 to 1589 it was sufficient for the mother not to be a servant or a slave, but, from the end of the sixteenth century, new laws established that the mother’s family must not have practiced a mechanical craft for three generations, which gave rise to interesting enquiries on the social identity of the intended bride.34

WHAT WERE THE TIES THAT BOUND? Marriage was a target in the crossfire between church and state, both institutions concerned with identifying how and when the marriage bond was actually established. This concern was shared by both the Catholic and Protestant churches at the time of religious reform; it also found resonance with the needs of the European states, ever more concerned with exercising control over the sexual behavior of people. Both Protestant and Catholic areas reviewed marriage rituals in parallel fashion. This included ensuring the marriage took place in a given place and, for Catholic marriages, following the Council of Trent, transitioning from a marriage in stages to one formed in one single instance. Concomitantly, there was also the long-standing competition, destined to last for many years, between church and state to control marriage.35 Worthy of mention in this regard, is the case of France. Anne Lefebvre-Teillard concludes: “increasingly influenced by currents of political thought that considered marriage the ‘foundation of the families that make up republics,’ since the sixteenth century, the monarchy attempted to take juridical control of the process of making marriages, an area that had been the exclusive province of the church until the mid-sixteenth century.” The theorists of the French absolute monarchy, in particular Jean Bodin (1530–96), stressed the role of the family in the foundation of the state, headed by the king-father. This idea was not new, but at the time it was expressed in new laws that imposed, contrary to the decrees of the Council of Trent, parental control upon the marriage choices of children.36 The case of France, where Sarah Hanley refers to a family–state compact, must be seen as part of a general development, which included in its unforeseen and unwanted consequences the proliferation of so-called clandestine marriages, based upon different interpretations of the ways in which the marriage bond was established.37

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The question in the title of this section could take us very far down the road of religious and civil regulation of marriage, a topic dealt with in other chapters of this collection. It is, however, interesting to mention at least one other very different issue, still linked to the spheres of religion and, above all, to the legalization of marriage: the marriage of the peoples discovered and colonized by Europeans during this period. The destruction of every trace of the pagan past did not apply to indigenous marriage. It was not merely the adaptation of a Christian ritual to a different cultural context. Rather, the indigenous marriage had to be preserved as much as possible and transformed into a Christian marriage. Therefore, the most important question was whether the unions of indigenous people before their conversion were real marriages. In other words, to return to our initial question: what were the ties that bound? If the marriage was by consent, expressed in words and signs according to the rules of the society within which it was stipulated, if it was monogamous and implied cohabitation and the education of any children, and, lastly, if it was indissoluble then it could be accepted as legitimate. These concerns originated in the clergy’s careful reports on the matrimonial behavior of colonized people as well as the church’s intense rulemaking, which followed the Tridentine redefinition of Catholic marriage. Among the main impediments to accepting matrimonial unions prior to conversion—provided that the bride and groom had been converted and that therefore the problem of a “mixed” marriage had been resolved—were polygamy and marriages between blood relatives, both quite common practices among many native American peoples. In Mexico the tendency was that of accepting, as far as possible, preceding unions and, for example, of establishing that the only valid union was the first marriage, so as not to completely upset the indigenous social structure. However, to justify fully the missionaries’ intervention, a distinction had to be made between a legitimate marriage (verum) and a ratified marriage (ratum) that only conversion could transform into a marriage perfectum. The Brazilian case, on the other hand, was different in that it immediately presented the problem not only of indigenous people but also of the African slaves that might have left their spouses in their country of origin. The Papal Bull of 1585 authorized priests and Jesuit missionaries to marry converted Indian and African slaves—men and women—without taking into consideration their previous bonds. In fact, the Papal Bull had a much wider political significance, as it constituted an actual recognition of the existence of slaves owned by the Jesuits themselves and, therefore, gave them a free hand to Christianize without scruples a colonial and slave-driven society in which they fully participated.38 Forms of slavery, linked to pirate wars, existed in the Mediterranean world, too. In Sicily, if a husband’s capture exceeded ten years with no news of him the bishops granted a decree of presumed death and allowed a new marriage. More generally, the problem of marriage for those whose spouses were long absent arose all over Europe. Migration for work or war caused population movements, of men in particular, and identity checks were anything but rigorous at the time. In the cases of bigamy presented to the Tribunal of the Inquisition in Sicily, the accused were mainly men who practiced professions that required them to travel, from salesmen to workers hired by the day.39 Elsewhere, in France a prime example is the case of Martin Guerre, a farmer who in the sixteenth century returned to his village after years of absence to find another man in his home. His wife declared she had mistaken the other for her husband. Natalie Zemon Davis’s study of this case has been widely cited and has also been the subject of a popular film that raised questions about the problem of a spouse’s long absence.40

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CONCLUSION The ties that bound were many, of different kinds and of long-lasting consequences. This could sound obvious, as marriage is still a strong link full of consequences that go far beyond the lives of the spouses. During the late medieval and early modern period the characteristics and the implications of marriage were rethought and redefined by political and religious powers all over Europe and subsequently also in the American colonies. It is not easy to explain the marital choices of women and men of our past. Historians always try to find some kind of logic, or even strategy, but the reality is complex and often defies our understanding. Marriage implied privileges and duties, liberties and constraints. The wife of a merchant did not necessarily expect, or desire, to become the head of an international trading company one day, but if it happened, and when it happened, she was able to face it and to assume the responsibilities that her marriage had brought her. As we have seen all along in this article, marriage is a multifaceted topic that must be studied through a multidisciplinary lens. It has certainly been the foundation of European society for a long time.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Family Economy A Comparative Perspective on Legitimate Marriage, the Dispossession of Mothers, and the Displacement of Children JUTTA SPERLING

Much has been written on the history of marriage in the early modern period. Lots of scholars have investigated the intricate and sometimes contradictory historical developments that led to the marriage reforms of the sixteenth century in both Protestant and Catholic regions, which aimed at closing the gap between religious and secular understandings of marriage. Historians working on marriage in Jewish communities and Islamic regions have complicated our understanding of Mediterranean marriage cultures, and offered a comparative lens from which to assess the impact of women’s independent property rights and access to divorce on early modern patriarchies. Social historians of Renaissance Italy have shown how marriage based on dowry exchange functioned as an instrument of elite reproduction and social control; how it facilitated the dispossession of wives, daughters, and mothers in conjunction with agnatic inheritance patterns; and how it restricted women’s reproductive freedom. Early modern marital economies tended to separate biological motherhood from infant care, pushed extramarital reproduction to the margins of society, and offered the services of foundling homes as “charity” to poor, single, and disenfranchised women. The reintroduction of domestic slavery in Italy in the mid-fourteenth century aggravated these developments. Early modern historians have barely begun to analyze the intersections between ethnically and racially motivated slavery, gendered property rights, and the infraction of reproductive justice, but this chapter will attempt to outline some of these connections. In this contribution, I examine the history of early modern marriage and its discontents by critically investigating the gendered property exchanges that accompanied and legitimized it, and by analyzing foundling homes as sites that reveal the failures of “legitimate” reproduction under the conditions of patriarchy. The massive displacement of infants shows how concepts of honor, female poverty, and the sexual exploitation of slaves and servants worked together to produce ubiquitous child abandonment—a humanitarian tragedy with infant mortality rates hovering at about 95 percent. In part I, I focus on how various Mediterranean patriarchal legal systems delivered the dispossession of wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters while also highlighting the differential access to property of Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish women. The sources

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for my accompanying case studies consist of lawsuits from Florence, notarial records from Venice, and testaments from Lisbon involving female actors or beneficiaries. In addition to analyzing the gendered problems of “legitimate” marriage, I highlight the alternatives that presented themselves in the form of clandestine marriage and other informal partnerships, divorce, and same-sex unions. Above all, I focus on the Portuguese “Sonderweg” (special path) to early modern family formation with its surprisingly generous property and inheritance rights for women and its acceptance of informal domestic partnerships as legally and religiously valid marriages. Part II of this chapter is devoted to the study of foundling homes in seventeenth-century Lisbon and fifteenth-century Florence. Here, the investigation of pressures on nonconforming or impoverished mothers to part with their children and the charitable organization of wet-nursing arrangements is juxtaposed by a consideration of the positive effects of nonmaternal milk-ties that led to informal foster arrangements and alternative kinship models. I will show how despite the rather generous property rights of women in Portugal, poor and/or single mothers from Lisbon abandoned their infants at similar rates as their Florentine counterparts. The ubiquity of child abandonment in both cities indicates that it might have been the construction of marital “legitimacy” itself that led to the displacement (and frequent death) of unwanted children, a phenomenon that charitable organizations such as foundling homes perpetuated. Preferring to pay wetnurses rather than support single mothers, institutionalized charity reinforced patriarchal kinship models that questioned the degree to which mothers were related to their own children.1 A particular focus on female slaves and their children will bring my chapter to a close.

MARITAL PROPERTY ARRANGEMENTS, FEMALE INHERITANCE, AND ALTERNATIVES TO LEGITIMATE MARRIAGE Within the fragmented and multifaceted political, economic, and religious landscape of the early modern Mediterranean, women’s access to wealth differed considerably depending on their geographical and social location as well as the respective legal frameworks governing such access (see also Bellavitis in this volume). The uncontested position of upper-class Florentine women as the most disadvantaged property owners compared with their female counterparts in other regions of Europe and the Mediterranean has been written about by numerous historians, most recently Isabelle Chabot. In her book La dettes des familles: femmes, lignages et patrimoine à Florence aux XIVe et XV siècles, Chabot details how most women enjoyed only nominal ownership rights. Women’s dowries as well as their nondotal assets morphed into instruments of credit on their husbands’ and fathers’ properties, owing to the censure on wives’ independent business activities and the social pressure on widows to remain with their in-laws after the deaths of their husbands. Women’s frequent renunciation of their dowries, coupled with the rule that one-third of their dotal and nondotal properties be bequeathed to their husbands meant that the promise of female property ownership remained for the most part unfulfilled in Renaissance Florence. At the other end of the spectrum we find Portuguese women who automatically inherited from husbands and fathers, cosigned on their partners’ contracts, and were entrusted with managing their husbands’ businesses during their frequent absence overseas. Darlene Abreu-Ferreira and others have shown how Portuguese women’s property rights in western Europe

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were uniquely generous, despite the Lei Mental (1435) that limited women’s access to crown goods through the introduction of male primogeniture.2 Private forms of entailment emerged as well, even though women were frequently the beneficiaries of such morgadios.3 In addition, special royal grants (prazos) were reserved for women to be passed on in the female line, which were widely used to recruit wives for Portuguese colonizers in Africa and Asia.4 The system of joint ownership in marriage and equal inheritance for mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters was so ubiquitous that even aristocratic, lineage-conscious marriages by dowry and arras (groom’s gift) tended to treat all goods acquired during the course of marriage as governed by the “rule of halves” (carta da metade).5 Portuguese governors of Goa used women’s generous property rights in their efforts to convert Hindu women by promising instant protection under the “rule of halves” should they convert.6 In seventeenth-century Brazil, daughters of Portuguese colonizers became their fathers’ privileged heirs, because their reproductive lives could be more strictly controlled through arranged marriages with white sonsin-law, while sons tended to have mixed-race families with indigenous women.7 The Portuguese Empire is an interesting example of how white women’s generous property rights were employed to deliver the “whitening” of the ruling classes that colonial administrators were anxious to engineer. In between the two extremes—the advanced dispossession of women under Florentine statutory law on the one hand and the generosity of joint ownership and (almost) equal inheritance under Portuguese family law on the other—we find women in mitigated dowry systems and/or societies that practiced bride price and fixed partial inheritance. Examples of the former can be found in Renaissance Venice, where statutory law at least nominally tied a daughter’s dowry to her legitima, or equal share of her inheritance.8 Also, on the Cycladic islands of Naxos and Mykonos, daughters would receive houses from their parents upon marriage under reference to Byzantine law.9 Examples of the latter can be found in Islamic societies of the Mediterranean, where the groom’s gift to his bride (mahr or sadaq) qualified the marriage as valid, and where strict intestate inheritance rules guaranteed women 50 percent of the amount a man in the same kinship relation to the deceased would inherit.10 Strategies to dispossess women of their properties varied, but the dowry proved the most successful instrument in this regard. An ancient Greco-Roman institution, it always stood in uneasy relationship with the Roman maxim of equal inheritance of a father’s heirs.11 The anticipated payment of a daughter’s share of her inheritance upon marriage instead of her father’s death meant that she might lose out on all future accumulations of paternal assets, a problem that ancient Roman inheritance practice addressed through the emergence of collatio dotis. This instrument, which was used widely in regions influenced by Byzantine law such as southern Italy until the early modern era and beyond, meant that all assets shared at the moment of marriage could be recalculated at the death of the father.12 The medieval invention of exclusio propter dotem (the exclusion from inheritance after the receipt of a dowry) in northern and central Italian statutory law thus marks a momentous aberration from Roman law in that it abolished collatio dotis and guaranteed fathers the right to individually assess the share a daughter would receive at the moment of marriage.13 Statutory laws were deliberately vague in stating that a dowry should be “congruous” to her father’s and future husband’s station in life. It did not have to correspond to the legitima she could have claimed under Roman law (ius comune).14 This meant that sisters’ shares did not have to conform to their brothers’ shares nor to each other’s; “lucky” daughters could be awarded high

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dowries while their sisters might be sent off to convents for a fraction of the amount their married sisters received.15 The biggest problem with dowry as the predominant form of female property devolution was, however, that a daughter’s share was tied to marriage in the first place. Statutory laws guaranteed fathers the right to disinherit daughters who eloped, which practically eliminated the free choice of partners that Catholic marriage was supposed to be founded on.16 Also, husbands were granted the right to administer their wives’ dowries. In Renaissance Italy, a widow’s prospect to retrieve her dowry was thus directly dependent on laws regulating the husband’s duty to safeguard and guarantee his wife’s dowry. In Venice, where husbands needed to sign notarial contacts to secure their wives’ credits and separate courts were charged with assisting widows in retrieving their properties, women stood higher chances of becoming actual property owners than in Florence, where most female ownership remained virtual.17 In Islam, brides received substantial marriage gifts from their grooms as their independent property (mahr or sadaq). These portions were usually split between an advance and a deferred payment, with the deferred installment cashed out at the end of the marriage due to repudiation or the husband’s death. In addition, wives had the right to nafaqah, or daily alimony payments. If a wife did not receive the stipulated nafaqah, she could refuse to sleep with her husband.18 In his book Marriage, Money and Divorce in Medieval Islamic Society (2005), Yossef Rapoport has shown how women’s inalienable right to their mahr led to women’s business activities in the form of money-lending, while female land ownership became increasingly restricted in the Mamluk Empire.19 Also, the mahr was important in facilitating female-initiated, consensual divorce (khul), as wives would obtain their husbands’ consent by renouncing the deferred installment in exchange for divorce. By contrast, if a husband repudiated his wife, he had to pay out the remainder of the stipulated mahr. Despite the fact that the Byzantine dowry continued to exist in Islamic Egypt in the form of trousseaux, the groom’s brideprice (mahr or sadaq) became the legally binding marriage gift. To Florentine observers, used to cashing in on their wives’ dowries, this reversal of marital gift-giving became a mark of orientalizing “otherness.” In their joint travelogue Viaggi in Terra Santa, Lionardo Frescobaldi and Simone Sigoli comment at great length not only on polygamy but male- and female-initiated divorce as well as the groom’s gift to his wife. Sigoli was particularly horrified at the idea of a wife’s right to divorce if she remained sexually unfulfilled.20 Jewish communities tended to assimilate their marriage practices to the predominant form of gift-exchange in surrounding Christian or Islamic societies. In early medieval Cairo, Islamic, Coptic, and Jewish families exchanged both dowry and sadaq as early as the eighth century.21 Substantial gifts from the groom to his bride (hedna) preceded Islam and are documented for the fifth century in Jewish communities.22 Jewish couples in medieval Cairo also practiced khul or female-initiated divorce,23 but in contrast to Islamic law, Jewish husbands acquired usufruct rights over their wives’ trousseaux.24 In medieval Perpignan and Crete as well as in early modern Rome, Jewish families concluded marriage through dowry exchange in analogy to their Christian neighbors.25 In fourteenth-century Crete, a Jewish groom’s counter-gift tended to be substantial, perhaps echoing the fifth-century Byzantine hednon mentioned above.26 Also in terms of rites and ceremonies, Roman Jewish couples adapted to the Christian wedding process, split between the betrothal, the moment of ring exchange, and the wedding proper, celebrated by standing under the huppah (wedding canopy).27 But unlike their Christian

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counterparts, Jewish wives played a more active role in the family economy. They would manage their husbands’ estates after their death, did not need a male guardian to sign contracts, and obtained separation from room and board more easily than their Christian counterparts.28 Also in newly conquered Ottoman territories, such as Cyprus, Jewish (and Christian) wives made ample use of the Islamic court (kadi) to divorce their husbands and obtain the right to remarry.29 While both dowry exchange and bride price facilitated a lineage-conscious separation of property, joint ownership stands out as the mark of couple-oriented, companionate, and, most of all, consensual marriage. In the early modern Mediterranean, this form of marriage was most widely practiced in Portugal but also in Spain and Istria.30 Accompanied by equal inheritance, it meant that both spouses co-owned all assets accumulated during the course of marriage and inherited from each other at the death of their partner. Portugal’s strict intestate succession rules mandated that one-third of a married person’s assets go to the surviving spouse and one-third to their children, while the last third could be freely bequeathed to testamentary heirs (including the church). Aristocrats would reserve crown goods and other entailed properties for privileged heirs such as first-born sons, but they also nominated daughters on occasion.31 To facilitate such separation of goods, they practiced marriage by dowry and arras (the groom’s gift). However, testamentary practice reveals that noble husbands appointed their widows as universal heirs with astonishing frequency regardless of the “danger” of remarriage—in contrast to Italy, where such generosity was dependent on the widow’s renunciation of a second union and remained largely confined to middle-class testators.32 In Portugal, marriages among commoners were defined through the very practice of cohabitation, joint ownership, and words of present consent until the seventeenth century and beyond—i.e., long after the Council of Trent had introduced its reforms.33 A few case studies might serve to highlight the differences between lineage-conscious, agnatic inheritance systems such as the Florentine one and couple-oriented, bilateral ones such as the Portuguese one. Agnatic kinship systems restricted mothers’ rights to succeed from their children and widows’ rights to succeed from their husbands. It also severely limited inheritance rights of daughters due to dotal marriage. Bilateral kinship systems, by contrast, allowed for all of these options. Two randomly chosen registers of the Florentine Ruota Civile, or appeals court in matters of civil law, document the many fruitless attempts of women to claim inheritances from various relatives, often under reference to Roman law that kept the maxim of equal inheritance for all children alive. However, statutory law often prevented women from succeeding, because it was distorted by its heavy privileging of agnatic heirs. Daughters could not inherit from their fathers if any male agnatic heirs up to the eighth degree of kinship were alive. Likewise, mothers could inherit from their children only in the absence of their deceased son’s or daughter’s children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, father, paternal grandfather, paternal uncle, brother, sister, or brother’s sons—in other words, next to never.34 Similarly, daughters were prohibited from succeeding to their mothers according to Florentine intestate succession rules, in contrast to Venice, where maternal assets got distributed evenly among all children regardless of gender, unless the mother’s testament privileged certain heirs over others.35 Venetian intestate succession law also granted daughters the right to succeed to their fathers’ estates in the absence of brothers—but only in the absence of a paternal testament that most likely would have excluded them.36 Venetian testamentary practice thus abrogated the Republic’s relatively relaxed and residually Byzantine intestate succession rules for women, with

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the result of assimilating Venetian inheritance patterns to the more explicitly agnatic systems such as the Florentine one.37 In Florence, inheritance ties between mothers and daughters were tenuous at best. In 1533, Nanna, widow of Jacobj Jois Philippi de Castro Franco and wife of Jois Nicolaj de Medicis, appealed to the Ruota Civile to obtain the right to inherit from her deceased daughters Jacoba and Pulissena, offspring of her first marriage. Instead, she lost her case to Taddea and Dimitilla, daughters of her first husband’s brother Bastiani Jois Philippi de Castro Franco. Nanna claimed that Jacoba and Pulissena had not been endowed yet at the time of their father’s death and should have been entitled to their legitima. This was found to be true, but since she had not been granted guardianship over her daughters by her first husband and, in any case, had chosen to remarry she lost her case to her daughters’ nearest living blood relatives, which according to Florentine statutory law consisted of Jacoba’s and Pulissena’s paternal cousins instead of their mother. In their concluding rationale, the judges explained “the daughters of the [father’s] brother have a greater claim on the inheritance of the father … than Domina Nanna, with whom no blood bond exists.”38 The puzzling assertion that mothers lack blood ties with their children refers to an important maxim in ancient Roman family law that medieval Italian statutory legislators were happy to adopt: only fathers were thought to share consanguinity with their children; mothers were related to their children according to natural law but not according to civil law, which gave access to inheritance rights.39 Another case brought before the Florentine Ruota Civile illustrates this exclusion: Laudominia, widow of Jo. Franc. Laurentius de Cappuccis of Borgo San Sepolcro, claimed the inheritance of her predeceased son Alexandro but lost out to Alexandro’s half-brothers and their descendants from a prior marriage. Laudominia’s claim was based on statutory law from Cisterna, where the estate she hoped for was located, while the testamentary (and agnatic) heirs of Jo. Franc. Laurentius de Cappuccis referred to the statutory law of Borgo San Sepolcro, their deceased father’s town of residence, which would exclude Alexandro’s mother in their favor.40 According to the reasoning of Laudominia’s adversaries, Alexandro’s share should have been rejoined with his father’s estate and distributed among the rest of his agnatic heirs. Because of the perceived gap in Cisterna’s intestate succession law that did not automatically exclude mothers in favor of agnatic heirs, the judges decided on a “correction” of the ius comune they normally would have had to take recourse to (and which, presumably, would have granted Laudominia her rights). “For the purpose of preserving the principle of agnation,” they single-handedly declared Laudominia’s claims invalid.41 The fact that the Ruota’s judges discussed the pros and cons of this decision on five dense pages of legal reasoning shows that the exclusion of mothers from their children’s inheritance was by no means universally accepted, and that traces of resistance against this principle could be found as late as the sixteenth century among Florence’s highest court of appeal. Other court cases document how women were pitted against each other, when, for example, Constantia, Ludovicus’s mother, and Leonarda, his daughter-in-law, made mutually exclusive claims on Ludovicus’s estate for the purpose of retrieving their dowries.42 Sometimes, women’s claims, contracts, and testaments were dismissed and annulled for formal reasons such as lack of endorsement by a mundualdo, or male guardian. Antonia and Lucretia, for example, daughters of Hieronimo Detazzis and Ginevra Medio San Nicolaj, had hoped to inherit their mother’s estate based on her testament; instead, the testament was declared invalid and Ginevra’s estate

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passed to the husband of their deceased sister Maria.43 Only rarely did the Ruota decide in women’s favor, such as when they granted Maria Petri de Jacominis the right to stay in her house after the death of her son and the marriage of her daughters. Her husband’s heirs had tried to expel her from her house despite her husband’s testamentary provisions, which guaranteed his wife “victum et vestitum” (food and clothing) if she renounced to remarry and agreed to raise their children. Normally, the court reasoned, such provisions were valid for life, unless the widow comported herself dishonorably. They commented on Petri’s “deep love” for Maria in returning her dowry of 170 florins, and rejected her in-laws’ request that she vacate the house she had been living in, especially since they found it inappropriate to ask her sonsin-law to take care of her.44 This court case documents the tenuous status of widows’ rights, which could be infringed upon by aggressive agnatic heirs despite testamentary provisions in their favor. Portuguese testaments, by contrast, reveal how egalitarian and symmetrical intestate succession laws benefited mothers, daughters, widows, sisters, even mothers-in-law and granddaughters. Rather than abrogating such liberal rules in favor of Italian-style agnatic lines of descent, as Venetian testators might have done, childless testators from Lisbon exhibited great personal freedom in selecting universal heirs from among their friends, servants, and cognatic family connections (i.e., their wives’ relatives). In contrast to the programmatic exclusion of mothers from their children’s estates in favor of agnatic sidelines, Berardo Caldeira da Silva, who was unmarried and childless, affirmed that his mother was his erdeira forçada (forced heir) and universal heir.45 In another testament, Visentia Pedrosa recognized her husband as the forced heir of her terça (third part of her estate) and named him executor, but left everything else to her daughter Damiana.46 Pedro de Gorea da Silva acknowledged his mother Domingas as forced heir of twothirds of his estate but tried to disinherit her in favor of his wife Ana Marquis.47 The married couple Brites Luis and Francesco Gonsalez signed a joint testament in which they named each other universal heirs and executors, but also made provisions for Francesco’s mother, should her son predecease her. In that case, she would have had the right to claim Brites’s terça.48 In lots of other testaments, spouses appointed each other as universal heirs and executors.49 Portuguese law granted each testator the right to freely bequeath one-third of their estate to whomever they chose while one-third was reserved for the spouse and one-third for their children or parents, but the frequency with which childless spouses named each other universal heir speaks for the strength of the conjugal bond in matters of family finance. In Florence, this would have been unthinkable, where estates of childless men would have passed to their brothers, their brothers’ sons, their father’s brothers’, and their fathers’ brothers’ sons rather than their wives, sisters, sisters’ children, or maternal relatives in the absence of a testament. Moreover, the consensus with which Florentine testaments conformed to agnatic intestate succession rules is astounding, given the ubiquitously acknowledged right to testamentary freedom derived from Roman law. In Venice, where agnatic principles were mitigated by a greater recognition of wives’ contribution to the family economy, 50 percent of testators from among the artisan classes appointed their wives universal heirs and executors.50 Apparently, these widows were allowed to inherit their estates unconditionally, i.e., without having to make a commitment to “vedoare” (remain a widow).51 This is surprising, given the almost programmatic effort that earlier Venetian notaries had made in educating male testators to condition their bequests in this manner. Several testaments notarized by Nicola de

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Boerio in Cyprus and Venice show how he coached his male clients to request their wives’ lifelong widowhood. On June 23, 1362, Nicola Coffin appointed his “beloved wife,” the “most illustrious Princess of Armenia, Isabella de Aiacio,” as testamentary executor and heiress of his house and half of his assets, even in case of her remarriage. Asked twice whether he really meant to appoint her executor and leave her his estate without the condition of lifelong widowhood, Nicola Coffin affirmed his decision.52 Likewise, Guillelmus Faber named his wife Çoanna executor and universal heir even in case of her remarriage. He did not grant her testamentary freedom over these assets, though, as he entailed his estate in favor of his niece after Çoanna’s death, unless a child might yet be born to him.53 Bartholomeo Gritti seems to have applied Portuguese-style inheritance rules in appointing his “delightful and beloved wife” Maria de Caffa as his executor and heiress of “the third part of all his possessions.” The other two-thirds were to go to his daughter Margarita. Asked whether he really meant to make these provisions even in case of Maria’s remarriage, Bartholomeo revised his decision slightly, adding that Luca de Ferraria should become his executor if Maria remarried but that she should in any case enjoy her third part.54 He made no mention of returning his wife’s dowry or endowing his daughter—a true oddity in the Venetian context. In fact, Bartholomeo was aware of the fact that his testament openly contradicted Venetian statutory law. He concluded by expressing the wish that the intent of his testament be honored, even if it went against the “consilia, statuta et ordinamenta communis Veneciarum.”55 Giuseppe Boerio’s notarial acts as well as the middle-class testaments studied by Anna Bellavitis show how the exclusion of widows from their husbands’ estates was by no means a fait accompli in the sixteenth century.56 In the eighteenth century, finally, legal scholar Marco Ferro proclaimed that in Venice, widows could succeed to their husbands only in the absence of any “descendants, ascendants, and collateral heirs.”57 He pointed out that this was a deliberate deviation from Roman law; according to Venetian intestate succession rules, all a widow could aspire to were the return of her dowry or lifelong room and board in her deceased husband’s house.58 At long last, Venetian practices seem to have assimilated to the more thoroughly agnatic ones pioneered in Florence. In Portugal, the focus on the conjugal couple as an economic unit benefited widows as well as other female relatives, servants, and family friends. In particular, the relative weakness of agnatic lineage-conscious thinking in Portugal allowed for childless spousal heirs to distribute their properties as they pleased without regard to brothers and paternal uncles. In her testament, Luisa Alves bequeathed all of her real estate to her friends, the couple Francesco Coutinho and Maria da Conseição, justifying herself by pointing out that she inherited her houses from her husband instead of from her parents—in the latter case she might have felt an obligation to return these properties to her family of origin.59 Since she received her estate from her husband, she felt entitled to do with them as she pleased. In Renaissance Florence, Luisa would never have inherited her houses in the first place—neither from her parents nor from her husband. Also in Portugal, surviving spouses seem to have cultivated new intimate and possibly domestic relationships without formally engaging in a second marriage. Antonia de Campos, for example, mother of two sons who left Portugal to seek fortunes overseas, appointed her sister as heir of her sons’ portions since she lost all contact with them. Her free terça, however, went to a certain Manoel Tavares, whom she also appointed as executor. He supported her during her illness and would now be in charge of discharging her debts and making all funerary arrangements, the details of which she left up to him to decide. Since most testators were

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very specific about their spiritual legacies and funerals, the trust she placed in him to arrange everything “as he pleases,” suggests the kind of trust other testators would only express for their spouses.60 Daughters, sisters, granddaughters, and husbands-in-law also appear as universal or privileged heirs in Portuguese testaments, which, given the bilateral bend of Portugal’s intestate succession rules, is not surprising. Ioao Bocle, for example, appointed his sister Maria as universal heir, while naming both her and his nephew Ioao as coexecutors.61 In Florence, by contrast, his nephew Ioao would have been the privileged heir had he been the son of a brother. In another testament, Manoel Gonzales appointed his only daughter as universal heir.62 In Portugal, this was standard procedure, but in Florence only 28 percent of male testators preferred their only daughters to more distant male agnatic heirs.63 In the presence of sons, Florentine fathers ignored their daughters entirely, who would have had to be content with their dowries—in contrast to Portuguese parents, who divided their estates evenly among all children.64 Manoel Rodrigues, finally, bequeathed his possessions in Africa and India to his granddaughter, Mariana Lusida, while the rest of his estate was to be divided among his two sons and his surviving spouse, Maria Lusida.65 Royal grants of colonial estates in Africa and India to be passed in the female line are a particularity of Portuguese colonial politics and find no equivalent in Italy.66 Likewise, the prominent status of parents-in-law among Portuguese men’s heirs appears as an oddity from the point of view of Italian agnatic succession rules. Mateus Sobrinho donated a royal pension of 15,000 reis annually to his mother-in-law, Jnes Gonzalez.67 In their joint testament, Diogo Vas and his wife Maria em Gratia spelled out that if Maria’s mother were to outlive Diogo and Maria, she should receive Diogo’s terça that would have passed to Maria.68 In Italy, it would have been the wife’s in-laws who routinely profited from inheritance arrangements, never the wife’s family of origin. The legal and economic position of married women in Italian cities such as Florence and, to a lesser extent, Venice, was thus decidedly weak, especially in comparison with their Portuguese, Egyptian, and Turkish counterparts. Access to divorce played a great role in negotiating women’s rights, which in Islamic regions was taken for granted. Yossef Rapoport estimates that in Mamluk-era Cairo, 30 percent of all marriages ended in female-initiated consensual divorce (khul).69 In Portugal, where marriage was based on consent, cohabitation, community approval, and joint ownership, with no notarial dowry exchange or a public church ceremony necessary to legitimate it—even after the Council of Trent (1563)—informal separations might have been more common than would seem to have been possible, given the Catholic insistence on the indissolubility of the marital bond. Historical scholarship on the issue is lacking, probably due to the scarcity of sources, but this scarcity suggests in and of itself that the lack of a formal legitimizing process, which would have left a paper trail, might have presented ample occasion for informal separations, in addition to de facto separations due to men’s colonial endeavors. In Renaissance Venice, legal proceedings for separation from room and board were quite frequent, especially after the Council of Trent, when annulments due to coercion became a legal possibility. In her book Women, Sex, and Marriage in Early Modern Venice, Daniela Hacke documents the frequency with which the city’s patriarchal court granted women’s (75 percent) and men’s (85 percent) suits for separation and/or annulment after 1563.70 Similarly, Joanne Ferraro’s book Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice offers numerous case studies of women successfully suing for “Catholic style” divorce. Ferraro

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argues that after the Council of Trent, “coercion, the legal argument that offered the possibility of an annulment, became a dominant trope in Venetian marital litigation.”71 No such studies for Florentine couples exist, pointing one more time to the much harsher realities of marital life in a city where women’s dispossession had been carried out to an extreme. In reality, the famous Tametsi decree of 1563, with which Catholic Church reformers at Trent concluded their attempts at marriage reform, struck a compromise between those—mostly French and Spanish delegates—who advocated for the need of parental consent to marriage and those—mostly Italian representatives—who were determined to defend a prior definition of the marital sacrament as based on the partners’ mutual consent alone. The result led to a new definition of the validity of the marital sacrament. Tametsi decreed that a Catholic marriage had to be celebrated in the couple’s parish church after the publication of banns but would still depend on the couple’s freely—but now publicly—expressed consent (see also Cristellon and Plummer in this volume). Prior to the Council of Trent, such consent could be given privately, without the presence of witnesses.72 The legal insecurity deriving from the lack of proof of such privately given consent led to the phenomenon of “breach-of-promise” suits, in which women, many of them pregnant, took their ex-lovers to court, hoping to obtain a compensation for their loss of honor. It was this legal insecurity that Tridentine reformers aimed to abolish, following the lead of several secular governments issuing legal prohibitions against clandestine marriages and elopements from the beginning of the sixteenth century.73 With the requirement of a public church ceremony, Catholic reformers achieved their aim of abolishing the potential for confusion surrounding the validity of a marriage, but only at the cost of abolishing the institution of clandestine marriage itself. Up until 1563, the definition of the marital sacrament as depending on the couple’s mutual consent alone, which was seen as promoting church-sanctioned elopements, had provided an outlet for couples hoping to escape the strictures of arranged marriage. Such clandestine marriages occurred with astonishing frequency in Catholic Europe: in 1564, petitions for the retroactive acknowledgment of marriages conducted within the prohibited four degrees of kinship show that among Italian couples, approximately 15 percent declared to have married clandestinely, compared with 87 percent of all couples in Portugal.74 Given the ubiquity of dotal marriage in Italy, these rates are quite high and suggest a real need for an alternative to parent-controlled arranged marriage. However, the discrepancy between the frequency of clandestine marriages in Italy and Portugal is yet another way of documenting the two countries’ vastly different marriage cultures. In Italy, most marriages were by their nature a public affair insofar as they were accompanied and legalized through notarized dowry exchange. In Portugal, the de facto nature of marriage was based on the practice of joint ownership and the rather fuzzy notion of neighborhood recognition.75 In Italy, even the virtually propertyless engaged in dotal marriage, where charitable donations ensured that poor but deserving girls could still be married off “honorably.” The fresco of a Betrothal scene painted by the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio and commissioned by the Florentine confraternity Buonomini di San Martino is supposed to indicate—and promote—the economic nature of such marriages, with the groom receiving the dowry at the same moment as he places a ring on his bride’s finger (Figure 5.1).76 In reality, the dowry amounts offered were so small that they hardly alleviated a poor couple’s financial difficulties, but they were symbolically and legally important in fostering arranged, indissoluble, and thus honorable marriages among the

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FIGURE 5.1  School of Domenico Ghirlandaio (1448/49–94), Celebration of a Marriage, fresco, San Matino dei Buononimi, Florence. © Scala/Art Resource, New York.

urban lower classes in Renaissance Italy.77 Records from the Venetian notary Giovanni Figolin, who served the working-class neighborhoods of the Giudecca, show how the legal institution of a husband’s “insurance of his wife’s dowry” could be used to provide propertyless widows with a dower. On numerous occasions, Figolin notarized men’s quitclaims on their wives’ dowries, who declared “not to have received the dowry, but to nonetheless waive the right to it.”78 Such a quitclaim would entitle the widow to claim the return of her fictive “dowry” from among her husband’s estate upon his death, even though it had never been paid. It is remarkable that Venetian testators preferred to adopt dotal language by signing fake quitclaims in order to provide for their widows rather than directly bequeathing them portions of their estates. In Italy, where secular governments ratified the Council of Trent, clandestine marriages ceased to legally exist in the second half of the sixteenth century, but in Portugal, couple-oriented marriage continued to thrive in the absence of strict rules regulating its legitimacy. This very informality might have also promoted the acceptance of yet another alternative to arranged marriage: same-sex unions.79 Giuseppe Marcocci recounts how on August 13, 1578, eight men were hanged for having celebrated their marriage-like unions in the Church of San Giovanni a Porta Latina. Six of the men were Spanish, one Slavic, and only one Portuguese, but in all later communications starting with Montaigne’s reference to the case, all of the convicts are referred to as Portuguese or Portuguese marranos (converted Jews).80 The former is an interesting mistake, because it suggests that Montaigne, who visited Rome three years later, automatically thought of the men as Portuguese or had informants who did; the latter can be taken as proof of

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Ludwig von Pastor’s anti-Semitism and homophobia. Nonetheless, the repeated erroneous identification of the convicts as “Portuguese” is striking. Did the Church of San Giovanni a Porta Latina attract Portuguese men in particular? Or was Portuguese society known for its relative openness toward same-sex unions? After all, in his influential book SameSex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe, John Boswell argued that the Christian focus on the couple’s freely given consent and spiritual friendship in defining the marital sacrament— at the exclusion of consummation—provided room for experimenting with same-sex unions in the Middle Ages.81 It is certainly worth noting that within the context of early modern marriage reforms, Portugal was unique in maintaining its “liberal” approach to marriage despite the Council of Trent until the seventeenth century and beyond. Several testaments from Lisbon might help us gauge the degree of acceptance of male same-sex relationships or other forms of men’s homosociality: on March 26, 1650, Simao Valdur, a Flemish merchant residing in Lisbon, appointed his friend Francesco Perri as universal heir and executor, declaring that he was unmarried and did not have children or other forced heirs. He also left Francesco in charge of making his funerary arrangements, a sign of great trust and intimacy. In addition, he compensated two male servants handsomely for their service.82 The absence of any female legatee in Simao’s testament is highly unusual. In all other testaments in my sample, unmarried and childless men routinely mention female relatives or at least a female servant. Bastião Jansens, another unmarried Flemish merchant, wrote a similarly “male” testament, even though he did mention a few nuns and female orphans as recipients of charitable bequests. Most importantly, he appointed Pedro van der Nena, a merchant residing in Hamburg and remote relative, as universal heir, and Gilherme Rosem and Adriano de Sol as executors. Among his many other legatees, he took great care to recommend Ismael to his executors. He called him his “companheiro,” who had shown him great love and loyalty during his service. He left him the proud sum of one thousand gold cruzados—in addition to all of his undershirts.83 Did Bastião single Ismael out with such a generous and intimate bequest because they had a special relationship, or was the sharing of underwear a sign of a less normative gendering in Portuguese society? Other male testators left their shirts, jackets, and coats to “compadres” or poor friends as well.84 In almost all other regions of the Mediterranean, garments, jewels, and linen, if mentioned in notarial acts, were earmarked for female consumption in the form of trousseaux and legacies for relatives and friends.85 In my eyes, Montaigne’s error as well as the above-mentioned instances of publicly acknowledged intimacy among men converge to suggest that the more open and supportive environment for heterosexual consensual partnerships led to a greater acceptance of same-sex unions in Portugal.

REPRODUCTION AND THE DISPLACEMENT OF CHILDREN Despite the relatively liberal approach to family life in Portugal, which gave greater visibility to women and provided for the acceptance of alternative models of kinship and forms of belonging, mothering could be just as hard in early modern Lisbon as it was in Renaissance Florence. Child abandonment was ubiquitous in both places, throwing light on the desperate situation faced by poor, single, and disenfranchised mothers.86 Charitable organizations aggravated the problem by systematically excluding single mothers from financial assistance that might have enabled them to raise their own children. Until the late eighteenth century, foundling homes preferred a costly and deeply inefficient model of placing unwanted infants with paid wet-nurses. Particularly striking is the fact that in

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both societies, the sexual exploitation of slaves and servants aggravated the problem of unwanted pregnancies. The absence of reproductive slavery propelled philanthropists to fund charitable institutions devoted to the care of foundlings that would have raised slave mothers’ offspring as free citizens. In Portugal, this worthwhile goal was hard to achieve. José António de Castilho Furtado de Mendonça, one of the administrators of the Santa Casa da Misericórdia in Lisbon, complained that abandoned black infants were resold into slavery instead of cared for by wet-nurses as free citizens.87 In Brazil, white foundlings received better care than their mestiço, black, and indigenous counterparts and had higher survival rates as a result.88 In Florence, where most slaves came from Asia or eastern Europe, the infants’ change in legal status seems to have presented fewer problems. Embracing the opportunity to discharge themselves honorably of their unwanted offspring, wealthy, slave-owning families ranked among the main sponsors of Florence’s Ospedale degli Innocenti.89 In both Lisbon and Florence, administrators of foundling homes emphasized the intricate connections between domestic slavery and child abandonment: staff at the Ospedale degli Innocenti denounced the sexual exploitation of slaves as a prominent cause of child abandonment, while Furtado de Mendonça highlighted the difficulties of raising free black children in a slave-owning, racist society. But chances of survival were slim for all abandoned infants. Among Florentine foundlings, mortality rates were modest at first, hovering at 27–32 percent in 1445–47, but rising to 53 percent during the plague year in 1450. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, they amounted to 68 percent.90 Still, the Innocenti can count as a relatively healthy environment compared with the foundling home of Santa Casa da Misericórdia in seventeenth-century Lisbon, where 565 or 93.7 percent of the 603 infants abandoned between January 1, 1672, and May 5, 1673, died.91 Of the 603 abandoned infants, 120 or 20 percent were lucky enough to have been matched with an individual wet-nurse; of those, “only” 82 or 68 percent died. The records of the Misericórdia paint a detailed picture of the plight of foundlings as well as the working conditions of wet-nurses. All infants were initially cared for by resident wet-nurses before they were taken home by a more permanent caretaker. However, as there were only thirteen resident wet-nurses on the Misericórdia’s payroll, each one of them took care of about forty-six infants on average during this time period, ranging from 126 for Pascoa da Silva and two for Caterina da Silva. This high average ratio accounts to a large extent for the high mortality rates. It is, in fact, astonishing that the thirteen resident wet-nurses were able to keep infants alive for an average of twentyone days before they died, waiting to be matched with a permanent wet-nurse.92 Children who died in the care of an out-house, individual wet-nurse stayed alive for an average of twelve months. Between June 10, 1670, and May 25, 1671, 420 infants were abandoned at the Santa Casa da Misericórdia; of those, 100 were matched with a permanent wet-nurse. Of those luckier ones, forty-five died, with an average life expectancy of one year. Twenty of the fifty-five survivors were eventually adopted, two of whom died at a later date; four additional ones were matched with salaried foster parents, four were picked up by their parents, thirteen were sent back to the foundling house without further notice, three were matched with a second wet-nurse without further notice, and for the remaining eleven we lack any information beyond the pick-up date of their wet-nurses.93 Again, this translates into a survival rate for all abandoned infants of 6 percent. In seventeenth-century Lisbon, the most widespread cause of child abandonment was single motherhood and/or poverty; sometimes, the children were “fruits of forbidden

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unions” or born to slave mothers. On August 2, 1670, baby Joanna was brought to the foundling home by a confraternity whose letter stated that “her father was overseas and her mother very poor.” She was wet-nursed by Maria da Silva and returned to the foundling house on July 3, 1673. A day later she was matched with foster parent Dona Mesia Manoel, who cared for several foundlings past the weaning stage.94 On July 15, 1670, two-month-old Luis was brought to the Misericórdia by his mother “who, because of her extreme poverty, couldn’t raise him.” Luis was first cared for by a resident wet-nurse, and on August 26, 1670, matched with Maria Ribeira, widow of Francisco Jorge. She nursed him for two years and returned him to the foundling home on August 31, 1672. Nine days later he was transferred to another wet-nurse but returned for burial to the foundling home on January 24,1673.95 Sometimes, wealthy anonymous parents arranged for their offspring to be cared for by the foundling home. On July 18, 1670, a newborn infant to be baptized by the name of Manoel was dropped off at the Misericórdia. In a letter, his parents promised to pay 2,200 reis in gold for his upbringing and added three clean shirts to their letter. Manoel was taken care of by resident staff Caterina de Olivejra and then wet-nursed by Maria Grasia. After two-and-a-half years of breastfeeding, he died on December 11, 1672.96 Sometimes, the skin color of infants was recorded, as, for example, on September 20, 1661, when Mattheus, “a little black boy,” was brought to the foundling house. He died eight days later.97 In October of the same year, the administrator of the Hospital of Santa Maria sent three-year-old Maria, “a little black girl,” to the foundling home, after she had been treated for an illness. No burial is recorded for her, so chances are she survived into adulthood.98 Infants who survived had to get used to a long list of changing caretakers: for example, on July 21, 1670, Magdanela was dropped off at the foundling home and assigned to resident nurse Izabel Cardoza; two days later, wet-nurse Caterina Joao, wife of Andrea de Antunes, took her home and raised her for two and a half years. On January 3,1673, Dona Antonia Tavares took her in, who served as a matchmaker for prospective adoptive parents. Indeed, within seven days, Dom Francesco de Castello Branco adopted Magdanela and “promised to treat and educate her well as if she were his own.”99 Sometimes, the children’s wet-nurses got attached to their charges and petitioned to keep the children without pay after weaning them. On January 9,1674, Manoel de Paiva and his wife Izabel Ferreira, who had breastfed little Izabel for two-and-a-half years, asked the administrators of the Misericórdia “to keep little Izabel because of the great love … [we] have for her … and because … [we] do not have legitimate children of … [our] own.”100 Other wet-nurses do not seem to have taken good care of their charges, or lost them due to illness within a short amount of time. Catherina Galvoa, wife of Agostinho de Fonsequa, picked up baby Joao on December 9,1670, but returned him on December 20. Joao would die eight months later. The same day Catherina returned Joao, she picked up little Natasia but returned her for burial on January 5, 1671. After an interval of eight months, during which she seems to have kept her milk flow going, Catherina was matched with baby Alberta on August 10, 1671. Alberta died on March 5, 1672. The same day she returned Alberta’s body, Catherina picked up a fourth foundling, Paulo, who would die within a few months as well.101 Costodia do Sacramento, a black wet-nurse, seems to have successfully nursed baby Patrisio, with whom she was matched on March 23, 1671. After weaning Patrisio, she picked up four further infants between June of 1673 and July of 1674, all of whom died in a short amount of time.102 Had her milk dried up as happened to Antonia Ferreira, who returned Baby Caterina after one month for this very reason?103

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All external wet-nurses on the Misericórdia’s payroll had to be married to exclude the possibility of spending public funds on the support of single mothers. Their contracts were, as was typical in early modern Europe, signed by their husbands or male proxies. Often, their partners were overseas in India or Brazil.104 The most common civil occupation listed was that of tailor,105 but the sources also speak of button makers or simply workers.106 The social and economic background of wetnurses was comparable to that of mothers who abandoned their infants. In fact, in a few rare cases, the Misericórdia’s clerks noted that salaried wet-nurses had managed to take home their own infants. Mariana da Conceira, wife of Manoel de Estavao, took baby Margarida home the same day she returned Carlos after having nursed him for two years. Margarida seems to have been Mariana’s own daughter, according to unnamed informants.107 This would have meant that she became pregnant while she took care of Carlos, dropped off her daughter at the foundling home after giving birth, managed to take her home and breastfeed her while being paid for her service. Such gaming of the system was to be avoided carefully by hospital administrators, as the logic of the foundling home dictated that single or poor mothers be separated from their children to free them for work as wet-nurses of somebody else’s children. Maria da Silva, for example, resident wet-nurse, was able to take her own daughter home after she had been breastfed and weaned by Francisca Ribeira.108 The massive displacement—and skyrocketing mortality rates—of unwanted infants happened in the name of a marital economy that required women, but not men, to avoid adultery and premarital sex, and that denied women who became victims of this double standard the opportunity to raise their own children.109 Only in late eighteenth-century Rouen did foundling homes start funding mothers instead of wet-nurses, with rapidly declining mortality rates.110 In Renaissance Florence, the reasons for child abandonment were similar to those in seventeenth-century Lisbon. In addition to poverty, babies were brought to the Ospedale di San Gallo because their mothers were nuns, prostitutes, and lovers of soldiers, or because their fathers simply refused to raise girls.111 Sometimes, mothers dropped off their entire families after the death of their husbands.112 Also, in the years between 1394 and 1434, fifty-two infants were explicitly marked as offspring of slaves.113 Domestic slavery, which was reintroduced in Florence and Venice in 1363, aggravated the problem of child abandonment. Philip Gavitt calculates that at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the vast majority of foundlings were born to slave mothers.114 In fourteenthcentury Italy, child abandonment, domestic slavery, and dotal marriage combined to produce a veritable “traffic in women”—and infants, we might add.115 Domenico di Bartolo’s fresco at the Ospedale della Scala in Siena shows how foundling care and the charitable sponsoring of dowries were thought of as two interlocking methods of poor relief that had honorable, arranged marriage as their aim (Figure 5.2). The charitable promotion of dotal marriage among the poor was presented as causally related to the separation of poor mothers from their children. On the left side of his fresco, resident wet-nurses are shown with multiple babies reaching for their breasts. Some play with their infants and hug them, some busily sign work agreements in the presence of men. At the center, a hospital administrator hands a swaddled infant to a nurse, while on the right side, a girl who survived into adulthood is married off to a young man. As in Ghirlandaio’s fresco (Figure 5.1), the groom puts a ring on her finger and waits for his reward in the form of a dowry, i.e., the sack of gold coins flashed by the hospital warden. In contrast to Ghirlandaio’s fresco, Bartolo

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FIGURE 5.2  Domenico di Bartolo (1400/04–45/47), Education and Marriage of the Foundlings, before 1445, fresco, Ospedale della Scala, Siena. © Josse/Scala/Art Resource, New York.

portrays dotal marriage not as an end in and of itself, but as a solution to the problem of child abandonment. In Bernardino Poccetti’s fresco (Figure 5.3), as well, the foundlings are shown to be rescued for a purpose: those who survive the Massacre of the Innocents depicted on the left and manage to be raised by resident wet-nurses would eventually have to line up in orderly fashion, showing proper gratitude to the foundling home’s administrators by studying, singing, and praying.116 In Lisbon, slave mothers were expected to raise their children such that domestic slavery did not necessarily fuel the foundling industry. Here, the colonial enterprise contributed to the problem, as child abandonment was often preceded by “wife abandonment.” Despite the relatively generous legal provisions for single mothers, who in theory were able to

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FIGURE 5.3  Bernardino Poccetti (1548–1612), The Founding of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, right hand section, before 1612, fresco, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence. © Scala/Art Resource, New York.

claim alimony payments from their children’s absentee fathers, more and more infants came to populate Portugal’s hospitals and foundling homes. By the seventeenth century, the main services an institution such as the Misericórdia was able to provide were the foundlings’ baptism and burial. However well meaning such charitable institutions were, their failure to keep infants alive shows the limits of a family economy that turned poor mothers into other children’s careworkers.

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CHAPTER SIX

Love, Sex, and Sexuality SARA F. MATTHEWS-GRIECO

Between the fifteenth and seveenteenth centuries, both church and state attempted to bring marital sexuality under institutional control. Erotic adolescent adventures and courtship rituals practiced in western Europe reveal the slow interiorization of social and emotional controls at all levels of society, parallel to the progressive extension of the period of sexually mature adolescence prior to marriage. In the lower and middling social orders, traditional courtship customs often encouraged prenuptial dalliance, in order to permit fledgling couples to explore their potential compatibility (and even potential fertility). When a couple was legally married and expected to practice full intercourse, sexuality still remained a subject of acute religious and medical concern. Conjugal relations were targeted by normative discourses: by religious strictures pronounced in the course of sermons or in the context of the act of confession; by medical lore handed down by word of mouth or in books of “secrets”; and by a proliferation of moral treatises on marriage. In the course of the early modern period, the marriage bed became an arena in which ecclesiastical preoccupations with carnal sin and the salvation of souls joined forces with medical precepts regarding judicious and responsible procreation. In Antoine Furetière’s Dictionnaire universel (1690, vol. 1), the word “Amour” is defined as being equivalent to mad lust and thus antithetical to marriage: “He married for Love, that is to say disadvantageously and blinded by passion.” It would not be until the 1772 edition of the Encyclopédie that marriage would be considered compatible with love.1 While sexual encounters in early modern Europe were primarily encouraged within the confines of holy matrimony, the testimony of ecclesiastical and secular courts, parish records, foundling home registers and personal memoirs reveals that the increasingly long, premarital period between reproductive maturity and marriage had its own culture of erotic experience. Generally subject to community control by peers or carried out within limits set by the married, adult establishment, the sexual adventures of the young were channelled gradually toward the marital model, with the expectation that they would culminate in the “legitimate” arena of conjugal concourse, where bedroom pleasures were authorized in the interests of a procreative norm.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR PREMARITAL SEX For young men of all social classes, the period of adolescence was one in which sexual experience was generally expected. Acquired though quasi-ritual gang rapes, brothel frequentation, the seduction of a servant, or a kept concubine, prenuptial experience

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was quasi-obligatory for young men and could bestow upon many a new bride a number of unforeseen consequences, such as illegitimate offspring begotten upon mistresses, or the even more discomforting gift of venereal disease. In the case of young women, however, social class imposed more nuanced possibilities. On the one hand, aristocratic girls, patrician women, and daughters born into the professional classes all tended to be married in their mid-/late teens (moving up to mid-/late 20s in the eighteenth century). As a result, they did not have much opportunity for amorous dalliance, as they were effectively promoted from childhood to adulthood with practically no intervening stages. On the other hand, their more humble sisters—especially those hailing from rural areas, the laboring classes, or the minor guilds—could look forward to a more gradual coming of age, with all its attendant pleasures and predictable perils. Information about adolescent and young adult opportunities for sexual activity prior to the “legitimate” arena of marriage can largely be found in accounts of courtship customs. These are described in personal memoirs, in autobiographical literature and correspondence, in trial records from church or civil courts concerning a broken promise of marriage, as well as in scandalized chronicles of local customs.2 Demographic records concerning bridal pregnancy and illegitimacy also provide statistics by which to judge premarital sexual practice.3 In fact, most nonconjugal heterosexual intercourse between nubile partners of the same social class was premarital, as the frequency of bridal pregnancies suggests, while many illegitimate births were the result of courtships that went astray.

Courtship customs What types of sexual experience might a young man or woman encounter prior to marriage? Knowledge about sexuality might be gleaned indirectly, by observing others. In this era where personal space and privacy were privileges reserved for the very few, parents, siblings, other relatives, servants, or friends might easily be observed (or at least overheard) in various forms of erotic activity that could range anywhere from mutual masturbation to full intercourse. Adolescent boys could obtain first-hand experience with few strings attached by seducing a servant or social inferior, or by paying a prostitute. Some girls were unfortunate in that they underwent unsolicited sexual encounters, but most young women would try to avoid first-hand experience until they reached an age at which flirtation and courtship gave them license to grant carefully calculated favors. In the lower social echelons (but even up to the lower gentry in England), these favors could take the form of semi-supervised nocturnal dalliance, where couples paired off after dances or were given parental permission to spend the night together by the fire or even in the same bed. As courtship progressed, the exchange of a promise of marriage was considered binding and bestowed upon the fledgling couple tacit permission to engage in full intercourse. In some regions, “fertility testing” was even considered essential to the success of a new family, and final marriage ceremonies were postponed until conception had occurred. Courtship among the well-to-do was generally a formal affair of relatively short duration and with little significance in terms of developing intimacy between the intended couple. The process usually followed one of two procedures. The first was the selection of a possible spouse by the young person’s parents and friends (often with the help of a professional marriage broker), after careful inspection of the candidate’s family status and financial prospects. If the results of this first selection were satisfactory, an initial agreement would be drafted with the candidate’s family and supporting “friends” with

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FIGURE 6.1  Marten van Cleve (1527–77/81), Blessing the Bridal Bed, 1547–81, oil on panel, Private Collection. Christie’s via Wikimedia Commons.

respect to financial matters. The prospective couple was then permitted to meet in order to find out if they found each other acceptable before things developed any further. If neither strongly objected to the other, the two usually deferred to parental wisdom and agreed to the union, the marriage contract was formally drawn up and signed, and wedding arrangements were made. In the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in England (somewhat later in continental Europe) a variant on the courtship practices of the quality entailed a man seeing or meeting a woman in a public place, such as at church or at a festive gathering. If he was interested he might approach her family and friends in order to have their permission to court her. Permission was usually given if a preliminary investigation on her family’s part determined that the aspirant was financially, socially, and personally suitable. At this point the courtship could officially be undertaken, with all the accessory rites and rituals of gifts, visits, conversation, billets-doux, and expressions of love and devotion, even including gradual sexual favors.4 Case studies of courtship relations among the “middling” social classes and lower gentry reveal that, in England, women generally enjoyed more freedom to conduct their own courtships with respect to other European countries, where such liberty was found only among servants, lower artisans, the urban laboring classes, and in rural areas. Whereas in France and Italy professional marriage brokers continued to be used by the bourgeoisie and aristocracy throughout the early modern period, in England unmarried men and women of the gentry and “middling” classes enjoyed a comparative autonomy. It would seem that, in all social levels except the very top, rituals of courtship in Britain often

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entailed the custom of bundling, a practice known in different regions of rural France as maraichinage or albergement, in Corsica as l’abracia or l’abbracio, and in Germany as kiltgang, where it was normally restricted to the lower social orders or rural areas.5 This custom entailed spending the night together in the woman’s place of residence, either with the parents’ tacit consent or surreptitiously. Intimacy could occur next to the fire in the kitchen, in a bedroom, or even in bed. Nocturnal frequentations could also take place between a single couple or “collectively,” with groups of young men and women pairing off for the evening, but remaining within hailing distance to ensure that no one transgressed the limitations set by local custom and sexual honor. Strong rules and doubtless well interiorized conventions surrounded the practice of night courting. Only a minority of cases resulted in pregnancy, the majority doubtless having recourse to other means of exploring compatibility, both emotional and sexual. A witness in Essex in 1576 was thus hardly scandalized by the amorous dalliance of a young couple, given the presumption that they were destined to be married. He testified to: the great familiarity between the same William Kennet and the same Agnes and hath seen them sit dallying and kissing together by the space of two or three hours, and also hath seen them lie together alone by the space of two or three hours, her father being at London two or three sundry times, upon one bed in their clothes in the night time in her said father’s house, not then present but his deponent being in bed by them too, of the which this deponent did think no offence for that they minded to marry together.6

Amorous license Physical familiarities in courtship generally presumed the prior exchange of a verbal promise of marriage, sealed by a handshake or kiss, and often accompanied by a token present from the future groom to his future bride. To be more firmly binding, an exchange of vows would be made in the presence of family, friends, and/or a clergyman, and toasted by the assembled company (see also Cristellon, Kaplan, and Plummer in this volume). This ritual procedure made the couple “married in the eyes of God,” even before the official marriage ceremony.7 Under these conditions, the woman could consign her sexual “honor” to the hands of her betrothed with relative impunity. Should she cede to him her body, the loss of her virginity would be compensated by marriage, which guaranteed a permanent state of sexual honor. Marriage was the only state in which female sexuality was legitimate: all other women—maids, spinsters, widows, and of course nuns—were supposed to live celibate lives.8 Sex before marriage was therefore considered the ultimate gesture and proof positive of commitment. In late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London, one in five claims by women against recalcitrant suitors cited full intercourse as evidence of a prior promise of marriage, without which they would never have permitted full access to their body.9 Similar premarital customs were to be found in most areas of Europe.10 In Italy betrothed couples (promessi sposi) would eat at the same table, drink out of the same cup, and even sleep together.11 In early seventeenth-century Piedmont, ecclesiastical documents reveal the pervasiveness of this type of dalliance, even before formal engagement: On Saturdays and holidays, which most Christians devote to rest and the service of God, it is usual for young peasants to stay up until late at night in the company of marriageable girls, and, pleading that their homes are too far away, they ask for hospitality, and seek to share the girls’ beds, which is commonly called “alberger”. Having made an agreement that their chastity will be respected, the girls do not refuse,

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since there is no opposition on the part of their parents: they light-headedly trust in the boy’s loyalty alone in the same bed, albeit still wearing their shirts. In spite of the futile obstacle of the shirt, it very often happens that sexual furore breaks down this ridiculous compact and forces the door of virginity, and that those who shortly before had been virgins become women.12 Indignant ecclesiastical condemnations of this practice were hardly exaggerating matters. The extent to which prenuptial sexuality was considered normal praxis can be deduced from civil and ecclesiastical court records. Case after case of disputes about broken promises of marriage reveal that women gave their bodies in exchange for masculine commitment. The depositions of spurned parties go into great detail as to what actually transpired, with abundant particulars as to the time, place, and circumstances of prenuptial intercourse. In 1535, in an attempt to substantiate his claim to the hand of Oretta di Giovan Battista Cerchi, Raffaello di Giuglielmo Cioni thus described the progression of their carnal encounters: The first time was in the mother’s room, sitting straight up against a chest because they [sic] were left alone in the house, although before in Florence and in [the countryside] villa before the betrothal contract I had done it with her between her thighs and had never put it in her, and this time at the foot of the chest I put it in her and she wiped herself with a handkerchief and I do not remember if she took the said handkerchief from her sleeve or from my pocket [N.B. embroidered handkerchiefs were traditional courting gifts from woman to man]. And the second time it was below the impannata [cloth paned] window at the head of the stairs because beginning to joke around with said Orreta’s mother we left and I embraced her like that, leaning up against the wall. The third time was in the bed, and another time at the foot of the same chest.13 In the course of the seventeenth century, throughout Europe, such courting practices began to come under systematic attack by both religious and moral reformers, intent on eradicating a deeply rooted practice. Denounced as a kind of “trial marriage,” courting customs that included a certain amount of sexual experimentation nonetheless remained hard to eradicate, mainly because they fulfilled a number of very practical purposes. Nocturnal dalliance permitted couples to determine not just physical and emotional compatibility, but could also determine the fertility of their chosen partner before they took the final step toward indissoluble marriage. Yet here too, social class and geographic location could determine the acceptability of such a practice. In 1601, Jean d’Arrerac, a magistrate from Bordeaux, described what he termed “the strangest custom in the world”: they marry their wives on trial. They do not record their marriage contracts in writing, and do not receive the nuptial blessing until they have lived a long time together with them [their female partners], having explored their moral character and understood, through experience, the fertility of their territory [metaphor for the women’s body]. This custom is contrary to the Holy decrees, and yet it is so deeply rooted in this people that you could deprive them of religion more easily than this custom.14 In regions that practiced trial marriage or fertility-testing, virginity was not the ultimate threshold of female honor. Of course it represented an important value as it constituted the ultimate control over female reproductive power and the guarantee of legitimate paternal descent, but in itself it was not considered as important as was the ultimate objective of intercourse: reproduction. Especially in rural areas, where large

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families usually had an economic advantage, presumed sterility was an acceptable motive to withdraw a promise of marriage.15

Carnal knowledge While night courting with all of its attendant sexual play seems to have been widely practiced, in most of Europe premarital pregnancy was not the norm, especially as both family and community normally expected couples to stop short of full intercourse. Yet kissing, touching, and other types of physical familiarity might be permitted, even expected, of a betrothed couple, and were indulgently witnessed by family and friends alike. Thus, a parish priest from Pisa declared, in 1568, that “Nardo [the future sonin-law] frequented his [the father’s] home and in his presence had fondled her, and at table he [Nardo] pulled his member from his pants and put it in Dianora’s hand.”16 No particular sense of sin or shame seems to have been attached to such public displays, witnessed by both the betrothed couple and spectators alike as quasi-ritual signs of future sexual entente and, above all, felicitous fertility.17 Insofar as nocturnal frequentations entailed a number of irresistible temptations, parents prudently elaborated a number of strategies to prevent premarital intimacy resulting in pregnancy. In England and Wales, a board was put down the middle of the bed, and some mothers provided their daughters with a “courting stocking,” consisting of a sheath that enclosed the girl’s body from the waist downwards.18 Functioning more as symbolic deterrents than actual obstacles to love-making, such devices nonetheless played an important role in the couple’s (parentally approved) nocturnal dalliance. Occasional slip-ups were, however, inevitable, as can be seen from parish records where a child is baptized only a few months after its parents’ marriage. Clandestine courtship and prenuptial pregnancy also provided an alternative strategy for young couples whose parents opposed their match, thereby coercing family consent by a fait accompli.19 On the whole, however, parental consent for courtship and marriage was little more than a formality among the laboring classes and domestic servants: young people of 26 or 28 years of age, who had worked for twelve or more years on their own behalf, would hardly have much use for a parental blessing, especially as there was no property to be withheld in case of disapproval.20 Whereas such customs certainly favored the compatible pairing of young men and women, not all courtships were quite so concerned with the woman’s feelings, and wooing might even begin with a rape (see also Cristellon in this volume). It seems to have been widely accepted that rape could lead to regular intercourse and eventually to marriage, as can be seen in many cases of broken promise of marriage brought to court.21 An example can be found in the trial of Artemisia Gentileschi (represented by her father Orazio) versus Agostino Tassi in Rome in 1612. Artemisia had been seduced, raped, and repeatedly “known carnally” between ages 17 and 18 by a man whose promise of matrimony proved untenable as he already had a wife. Her only hope of regaining some vestige of virtue— and therefore the possibility to marry someone else—was to have her father take her seducer to court and prove that his innocent virgin daughter had been cruelly misled.22 In the course of the early modern period, a clamp down on the part of both state and church with respect to sexual encounters preceding marriage brought about slow changes in premarital sexual mores, making it increasingly difficult for women to admit freely to sexual intercourse consequent upon a promise of marriage. Allegations of physical violence had to be put forth in order to inculpate the man and exculpate the woman, as is evident, for example, in the deposition of Caterina Chiga, who worked as a kitchen servant in Turin:

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The said Nicolao Bianco having entered said kitchen, greeted me, saying to me, “Good evening, my bride” and having seated himself beside me near the fire, he began to make illicit touches, that is, to my bosom, and kissing me and hugging me, he called me “my dear joy and bride.” Refusing him, I pushed him away, but he, having taken me by the arms, put me on the bed which served for me to sleep alone, in a room adjoining the above-named kitchen, and there he tore my blouse and had sexual intercourse with me and though I had used all my strength in order to defend myself so that man could not have sexual relations with me, nonetheless the greatest force was used by that same man, and illicit touches from the same having been made to me, on the modest parts, and also on the breasts, I was left half-alive and could not escape allowing him to vent his passions … Afterwards both of us went into the pantry and I immediately took out the wine for my mistress’s supper, we drank that same wine, he first and I after, and he was toasting me “to my wife,” and I toasted him “to my husband.”23 Legislation with respect to broken promise of marriage, prenuptial sexual relations and illegitimate pregnancy was to progressively put the burden of proof on the woman. By the eighteenth century, women were no longer seen as naïve victims of sweet-talking lovers, but systematically suspected of trying to snare a husband or a compensatory dowry from men whose (ab)use of a woman’s body was considered one of the traditional privileges of bachelorhood.24

Bridal pregnancy The incidence of premarital sexuality entailing full intercourse—either carried out in the context of tolerated courtship customs, or of rape/seduction followed by the legitimization of marriage—can be very approximately calculated thanks to statistics on bridal pregnancy. Also known as prenuptial pregnancies, bridal pregnancies occurred when a baby was conceived before the public celebration and/or legal registration of marriage and therefore—according to the convention adopted by demographers—appears in parish baptismal records less than eight months after the formal marriage ceremony. Bridal pregnancies often came about because the process of marriage took a long time, which meant that the committed couple had ample opportunity to develop their sexual relation up to full intercourse, well before official nuptials. Unlike bastardy, bridal pregnancy was widely accepted and tolerated, especially as the parents who conceived children before wedlock were generally respectable members of the community. Nonetheless, attitudes towards bridal pregnancy did vary in this period, ranging from blithe indifference to the mild penalties imposed during the height of the Counter Reformation and Puritan eras, when offending couples might be condemned to undergo a shaming ritual such as kneeling in front of the church with a lit candle, clad only in a shift. In seventeenth-century England, ironic or disapproving entries in parish registers testify to this brief period of intolerance toward bridal pregnancy. A scathing entry made in the marriage register of St. Botolph in Aldgate (London) in September 1618, records a lastminute wedding: “Georg Wilson, Glover, and Hellin Evans, a lewd and dissolute widow (who was delivered of a Child on hir wedding Night) this worthie Couple were married the Eight day of this Moneth.”25 Such attitudes were not to last long, as youthful desire and community tolerance for courting customs proved stronger than puritanical mores. There were a number of other types of premarital pregnancy. One type resulted in “forced” marriage, which could occur when marriage was not being considered by either partner and pregnancy was unintentional (see also Cristellon in this volume). When faced

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with a fait acompli, their families, neighbors, parish officers or local magistrates could impose marriage on the imprudent couple in order to maintain community honor and avoid the humiliation of poor relief.26 In communities where there were strong parish and neighborhood networks, women were thus relatively protected should they accept to have sexual intercourse with a bachelor partner of the same social class.27 A third type of bridal pregnancy appears when one partner—usually the woman— gets pregnant in order to impose marriage on the other partner. This type of premarital pregnancy is generally known as “spouse entrapment.” Finally, there is the “fertility testing” type of bridal pregnancy that has already been discussed, a precondition to marriage that occurred during courtship in rural or mountain areas, to assure all parties concerned that the couple would be fertile. Needless to say, the last three of these four standard scenarios behind bridal pregnancy—intercourse following promise of marriage, spouse entrapment, and fertility testing—easily risked slipping out of the channels of conventional courtship and into those of illegitimacy. Demographic studies of both bridal pregnancy and bastardy in early modern Europe reveal that these two phenomena are directly related to marriage customs and tend to go up and down together in relation to a number of factors, not the least being the strengthening or the relaxation of mores regarding gender relations and sexuality in general.28 Prenuptial pregnancies in England, where young people had more freedom in their frequentations, hovered between 20 and 30 percent (except for the period of moral crackdown in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century).29 In France and Italy, bridal pregnancy rates tended to range between a low of 5 percent and a high of 20 percent, according to rural or urban contexts (rural statistics tended to be lower than those in urban areas) and in function of the moral climate of the moment.30 In the case of remarrying widows, the rate of prenuptial pregnancies could be as high as 25 percent,31 a number which testifies to greater life experience and well-managed strategies in carrying off a remarriage, as opposed to the lower success rate of youthful courtships. Amongst the younger set, death, desertion, or indifference on the part of men brought dishonor upon many women, even up to half of those who aspired to become respectable wives.32 Statistics regarding prenuptial pregnancy cannot be confused with the real incidence of premarital sexual intercourse in early modern Europe. To begin with, the chances of conceiving from a single act of copulation between healthy individuals, between the age of 20 and menopause, is about 3 percent. This means that, on average, full sexual relations between a couple who have conceived may have gone on for weeks or months without any contraceptive precautions (or else precautions of scarce efficacy). Secondly, not all pregnancies managed to come to term; a child has to be born alive and live long enough to be baptized in order to appear in a parish register. Needless to say, the premarital pregnancies that have left traces in the records of early modern Europe are only the tip of an iceberg of young adult sexual activity, carried out long before the indisputable legitimacy of the marriage bed.33

MARITAL SEXUALITY Even when a couple was legally married and expected to practice full intercourse, sexuality still remained a subject of acute religious and medical concern. In the course of the early modern period, the marriage bed became an arena in which ecclesiastical preoccupations with carnal sin and the salvation of souls joined forces with medical precepts regarding judicious and responsible procreation. At the same time, civic and religious controls were

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FIGURE 6.2  Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69), Couple in Bed, 1646, etching, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

multiplied with regard to marriage and family formation, with the result that even the most intimate relations between individuals could not escape the moral and demographic priorities of church and state.34 Marital sexuality was to be further conditioned by the interiorization of normative discourses: by religious strictures pronounced in the course of sermons or in the context of the act of confession, by treatises on marriage, and by popular medical advice books. Of course conjugal concourse would also be affected by more subjective criteria, such as the compatibility of the couple, their desire to encourage or avoid conception, as well as their degree of religious observance, age, and experience.35

Seasonal nuptials Conjugal relations were affected, first of all, by religious restrictions. The Catholic Church counselled sexual abstinence on certain days (Sundays, religious holidays, and all fast days including Lent) which numbered between 120 and 144 in the sixteenth century. Consequently, marriages were not supposed to be celebrated on any of these days, nor on the vigil (eve) of any of these days. Although sexual relations on such dates were no longer considered a grave sin by the era of the Reformation and Counter Reformation, birth records nonetheless show that the western European population tended to respect these traditional periods of abstinence. Customary taboos and superstitions also had an impact on the annual cycle of conception and birth. In many areas of Europe, May was considered to be a month to be avoided, for the man who took a wife in the course of the month dedicated to the Virgin risked becoming subject to his wife. Carnival was yet another moment in which to avoid conception, as it was believed that a child conceived during this period of tomfoolery would be born quite foolish itself. Finally, the month a couple was married was often

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calculated in terms of the probable advent of a first child, for it was deemed prudent to avoid having an infant born in autumn or winter.36 If marriage and sexual relations followed a religious and seasonal calendar for conception, it follows that fertility followed a similar schedule. The whole of western Europe seems to have respected a universal low in conceptions occurring in March, due to the sexual abstinence demanded during Lent, while spring and early summer always remained peak periods. In 1778, M. [Jean-Baptiste] Moheau, in his Recherches et considérations sur la population de France, explained this procreative upsurge by observing that spring is the season when “a generalized sap circulates and insinuates itself in all bodies,”37 a botanical analogy whose roots lie in medieval representations of the body as a tree. Nonetheless, medical advice suggested avoiding procreation in the heat of high summer, for sexual activity was believed to heat up both the blood and the womb. Conjugal intercourse would thus risk reaching the critical temperature characteristic of passionate unions, where the fires of lust were thought to cause malformed children or sterility. But no matter what the season in which a couple might choose to marry or attempt to conceive, their primary obligation to family and society was to make children.

Honeymoon impotence Wedding rites were generally supposed to be restricted to the canonical hours of daylight, between dawn and noon. The reason was that marriage belonged to God, but also to the community, which is why it should take place in public view, at a time when families, friends, and the local community could participate in the event. Yet numerous weddings took place at midnight or in the wee hours long before dawn, and not just to avoid publicity or to carry off a clandestine union. Throughout this period, couples (or their families) feared to incur the enmity of jealous neighbors or jilted suitors, whose ill-will might cast a magic spell on the new couple and prevent the groom from consummating the union. This spell, often believed to be cast by a proxy at some point during the church ceremony, was the dreaded malifice of the aguillette, or “tying” of the male member by a cruel or jealous member of the congregation. The sixteenth-century surgeon Ambroise Paré denounced the “noueurs d’esguillette” in his treatise on the origin of monsters (1575), where he declared that those who practiced such an infamous deed were in league with Satan, violating the laws of God and marriage.38 Even at the dawn of the Enlightenment, this practice was still thought to pose a real threat to newlyweds. The Abbé Thiers dedicated two entire chapters of his Traité des Superstitions (1697–1704) to this threat. Here he departs from his usual agenda of denouncing such superstitions as “pagan” nonsense and affirms: “this spell is not a fantastical and imaginary spell but a real and effective enchantment.”39 Thiers gives no less than twenty recipes for curing such an affliction.40 One of these remedies suggests that the bridegroom piss in the keyhole of the church in which he was married, three or four mornings in a row, or piss through the wedding ring he had given his bride. A more violent method, which may had a certain cathartic value, required the young couple to be taken to a barn and tied to a pole, face to face, and whipped. After this they were untied and locked up together in the barn all night long, each with a substantial loaf of bread and a pitcher of good wine. When liberated at daybreak they would be found to be healthy, hearty, and “good friends,” in other words entirely cured.41 Fear of having the consummation of a marriage impeded by enchantment is one of the reasons that prebridal pregnancy remained firmly rooted in popular usage throughout early modern Europe, with the understandable conviction that a couple that had already

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FIGURE 6.3  Hans Baldung (1485–1545), The Groom Bewitched, c. 1534, woodcut. Courtesy the British Museum, London, via Wikimedia Commons.

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conceived could no longer be subject to a magic spell inducing impotence or sterility. Be this the prime reason for the longue durée of premarital practices, or a convenient excuse for the encouragement of courting customs that ensured a minimum of conjugal compatibility and fertility, belief in the nouement de l’aiguillette was to remain firmly ensconced in western Europe, at all levels of society, well into the eighteenth century.

Passion versus procreation The marital imperative of procreation was fraught with dangers, not least the peril of concupiscence. If passionate love was believed to cause the young to contract imprudent matches, much to the dismay of parents and kin, lust was equally feared in the marriage bed. How was a couple of newlyweds to temper the fires of carnal desire, presumed to be both natural and irresistible? Theologians, moralists, and medical doctors concurred that it was essential to offset the dangers of “natural” love (physical passion) with “Christian” love (mutual affection). Saint Jerome, one of the church fathers most often quoted on this matter, wrote: He who is too ardently amorous of his wife is also an adulterer. … The wise man must love his wife with judgement, not with passion. Let him curb his transports of voluptuousness and not let himself be urged precipitately to indulge in coition. Nothing is more vile than to love a wife like a mistress.42 During the Middle Ages, religious, medical, and moral authorities shared the opinion that sex was a sin if undertaken in any way, or at any moment, inimical to the possibility of procreation: indulging in sex for mere pleasure constituted lust.43 Renaissance theologians

FIGURE 6.4  Paris Bordone (1500–71), Allegory (Mars, Venus, Victoria and Cupid)/Venus, Mars, and Cupid Crowned by Victory, c. 1560, Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna. Bilddatenbank KHM via Wikimedia Commons.

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got around this somewhat untenable principle by affirming that conjugal intercourse was, above all, the fulfillment of a duty to God: in this matter, men and women were declared to be equal, and either one could demand of the other the payment of the “conjugal debt.” Nevertheless, “matrimonial chastity” (the strict control of conjugal passion) remained a principle advocated as much by the Catholic Church and its confessional as by John Calvin and the Protestants. Marital restraint was also strongly advised by medical advice books written by lay and religious “doctors,” such as Laurent Joubert and Scipione [Girolamo] Mercurio, and even by humanist authors of treatises on marriage, such as Juan Luis Vives and Stefano Guazzo.44 Moderation in conjugal concourse was thus counselled by all authorities: moral and medical, religious and lay, Catholic and Protestant alike. This notion also applied to the frequency of relations, generally calculated in terms of the ages of the partners, with more numerous encounters per week being conceded in youth, and about one per week in maturity. Even diet could have an effect on marital fertility: “hot” foods and spices (such as capon or pepper) accompanied by an excess of wine would not only act as an aphrodisiac but also risk having a contraceptive effect.45 Lust would cause the womb to get overheated (and “burn up” the male seed) or become slippery (whereupon the seed would not “stick”). For older husbands, “hot” foods conducive to coitus were pepper, pennyroyal, fresh meat, egg yolk, the testicles of a fox, and eastern saffron.46 Conversely, “cold” foods diminished the libido: anise, rue, lettuce, melons, and bitter grapes were all appropriate for the consumption of wives whose husbands were absent, as well as for widows, monks, and nuns, for whom chastity was supposed to be a way of life.47 Over and above decrying any unseemly passion in the marriage bed, religious, moral and medical authorities were to further reinforce the difference between passionate love and procreative sex by proscribing coital positions considered inappropriate for procreation (and thus automatically ascribed to lust).48 The canine position (coitus a tergo)—not to be confused with sodomy (anal sex)—was considered to be “against nature” as it imitated the coupling of beasts, thereby degrading man to the level of an animal. Mulier super virum was another prohibited position, as it reversed gender roles as created by God: women were supposed to be passive and subordinate, not active and dominating. Intercourse was only “natural” and “conjugal” when the woman lay prone on her back, with the man on top. Not only did this position reflect the divinely ordered gender hierarchy, ordained by God at the Creation, but it was also deemed to reflect the divinely ordered dominion of man over nature: the act of penetration was likened to the farmer’s tilling of the (female) soil, which he sows with the (male) seed.

Pregnant is perfect Throughout the early modern period, advice on conception was largely based on the theory of humors, according to which women were cold and wet (associated with the elements of earth and water), while men were hot and dry (associated with the elements of fire and air).49 There were two main schools in early modern procreation theory, both of which derived from classical Greek authors: Aristotle and Galen. According to Aristotle, there was only one sex—the male sex. The male sex was perfect and that which Nature (which always tends towards perfection) attempts to create at every conception. Women were the result of a failed attempt to create a male: a seed weakened by an inadequately “heated” sexual act, or a seed lodged on the female (left) side of the uterus. Insofar as women were imperfect men, their sexual organs remained internal, albeit a mirror image

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of those of man. Illustrations in anatomical textbooks and midwives’ manuals represent the female organs as an internal penis, complete with scrotum, while women’s role in generation was that of a passive vessel in which the active, perfect male would plant his seed.50 Galen differed from Aristotle mainly in asserting that women played more of a role in generation: women also had a “seed” that was necessary for optimum conception. While the most necessary ingredient in procreation (the homunculus, or embryo) was produced by the man, the female “seed” might ensure a better result, although it was not indispensable.51 Consequent upon the invention of the microscope, ovulation was hypothesized by William Harvey in 1653, and Leeuwenhoek was to discover sperm in 1677. But even in the later eighteenth century, schools of medicine still taught that it was the man that deposited a miniature human being in the womb, the woman’s part being limited to furnishing nourishment during gestation.52 Nonetheless, a shift in medical theory appeared around 1600: the triumph of Galenism asserted the “parity” of the two sexes in terms of their sexual specificity and the conjugal debt. Treatises on reproduction progressively removed the taint of impurity and uncleanness attributed to female physiological functions (notably menstruation and birth), even though woman’s cold and moist humors still defined her as being irrational and overly subject to her emotions. Medical science thus continued to underwrite the gender hierarchy, providing “scientific” justifications for women’s subordinate social role, especially her relegation to the domestic sphere.53 Both Galen and Aristotle were in agreement that pregnancy was the closest to perfection that the female sex was capable of achieving, which is why women were believed to have a much higher sex drive than men: they “naturally” desired to achieve completion (a full womb) by having intercourse and would do so, at any opportunity, until their goal was attained. This view of women as being “naturally” more libidinous than men would be used as a justification for many social and conjugal controls, but it is nonetheless significant that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries also began to assert the need for compatibility in marriage.54 The fraught process of procreation required a certain amount of collaboration between partners, as did the running of a household, where gender roles were divided between domestic and public duties. The Renaissance saw the proliferation of moral treatises on the family and household government, where the roles of husband and wife were laid out with respect to all of the obligations inherent to the running of the early modern home, including the work of producing children. Circulating in both manuscript and printed form, this genre had a great editorial success, and some of the most influential texts—such as Juan Luis Vives’s 1523 De institutione feminae christianae (Instruction of a Christian Woman)—were to be translated into all of the major European languages. This type of literature progressively created a model of the nuclear family in which husband and wife functioned as a working team. Even the titles of advice books, such as Edmund Tilney’s A brief and pleasant discourse of duties in Mariage, called the Flower of Friendshippe (London, 1568), underscored the mutual respect and affection that guaranteed the smooth functioning of the household unit. Not only the prosperity of a family but also the stability of society as a whole was increasingly seen to rely on the harmony between husband and wife.55 In the course of the seventeenth century, the proliferation of a new self-help genre responded to the needs of conscientious couples, anxious to engender children in an informed and responsible way. Sexual advice literature rapidly became a bestselling

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formula in England, France, Italy, Holland, and Germany, catering to the merchant and professional classes, and vulgarized by popular derivations aimed at a less sophisticated public. Little of this flood of popular medical literature was new, for most authors just culled unblushingly from medieval and Renaissance treatises. The novelty of this genre lay, rather, in the systematic targeting of an increasingly literate public via entertainingly written and affordable manuals. Most contained a hotchpotch of information, derived from an encyclopaedic tradition on marvels and monsters, scientific treatises on anatomy and surgery, midwifery manuals, recipes for medicinal cures (for impotence, sterility, etc.), suggestions for predetermining the sex of a child, and a plethora of other titbits. The pronuptialist and pronatalist agenda of these “how to” sex manuals was to treat conjugal love with a relaxed, functional, and practical approach, a far cry from the suspicious attitude of Puritan and Counter Reformation authorities. Accessible treatises such as John Pechey’s The Compleat Midwife’s Practice Enlarged (London, 1659) became a household reference book, while multiple re-editions of popular compilations, such as Nicholas Venette’s Tableau de l’amour conjugal (Amsterdam, 1675, first edition), and Aristotle’s Masterpiece: or, the Secrets of Generation Displayed in all the Parts Thereof (London, 1684), explained the medical theory behind the advice they proffered. These two latter manuals were destined to undergo numerous editions well into the nineteenth century, in all the major European languages. Both of these texts, like most self-help literature of this type, describe sex as being part of God’s plan for the preservation and multiplication of the species, and affirm that pleasure was both natural and necessary in ensuring a successful act of generation. Whereas Venette makes a point of referring to authoritative medical texts and distinguished authors, Aristotle’s Masterpiece aims at a less educated audience, but both of these bestselling manuals were to undergo an unprecedented editorial success, which says something about their having addressed the real concerns of generations of readers.56 While much advice on procreation was similar to that found in earlier books of “secrets,” the language does change significantly. The Tresor des pauvres (Lyon, 1527) described the technique required for mutual ardour in unequivocal terms: “ the man must arouse the woman by kissing and cuddling her and touching her breasts, her clitoris and her anus.”57 By the second half of the seventeenth century, the vocabulary of manuals such as Aristotle’s Masterpiece had mastered the art of allusive prose: “I do advise them, before they begin their conjugal embraces, to invigorate their mutual desires, and make their flames burn with a fierce ardour, by those ways that love better teaches than I can write.”58 This somewhat coy discretion is to be attributed to the larger audience addressed, in order to avoid overstimulating the erotic imagination of unmarried men or offending the sensitivity of blushing brides. The popular medicalization of sex in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries contributed to the erosion of the sense of shame associated with sexuality, departing from the lingering Christian perception of sex as being inherently sinful, and proposing in its place a matter-of-fact, medicalized approach to marital relations and reproductive intercourse. Procreation was thus considered an act in harmony with Nature as well as an act of obedience to God, who commands the faithful to “go forth and multiply.” Such medical advice doubtless played a key role in the development of companionate marriages in this period, and contributed to the increasing conviction among the social elites that a marriage of inclination, where sexual attraction was mutual, would be more likely to produce numerous, healthy offspring.

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Fertility and family planning How many children might a couple actually produce in the approximately twenty years of female fertility between marriage and menopause? The factors that determine natural fecundity are many. To begin with there are those particular to women. The conception of a first child usually occurred in conjunction with matrimony. Age at first marriage for women could vary from the canonical age of 12 to menarche around age 14 to nuptials as late as 28 to 30 years of age. Female fertility ceased at menopause, about 40 to 45 years of age in this period. These biological limits were further circumscribed by childbed mortality or the death of a spouse, which would interrupt the production of children until remarriage. Natural fertility was also conditioned by regular periods of abstinence: during the illness or absence of a spouse, during the wife’s menstrual periods, during pregnancy and throughout the lying-in period of thirty to forty days that permitted a woman to recover from labor. Should a woman breastfeed her own child or that of an employer, abstinence was also supposed to be observed until the child had been weaned (generally between 18 and 24 months of age). In the countryside families were not as prolific. Rural women tended to nurse their own babies, weaning them between 18 to 24 months of age. Many country women also worked as wet-nurses for urban families, which put a damper on their fertility as any new pregnancy would require them to return their charge to its family of origin. Both popular and learned medical theory held that women could not breastfeed and gestate simultaneously: the foetus would steal sustenance from the nurseling, and the wet-nurse would thereby defraud her employer. Birth intervals in the countryside thus tended to be farther apart, and rural women had less children during their twenty or so years of fertility: between six and eight children on average. Given the religious obligation of wives to allow their husbands access to their bodies, women had little recourse against pregnancy unless their husbands accepted to practice some sort of contraception (coitus interruptus, oral sex, mutual masturbation, or anal penetration) or yet again if the wife employed subterfuge, vaginal obstacles, or

FIGURE 6.5  Anonymous (Master of the Moucheron family painting), Family Portrait of Pierre de Moucheron, Merchant in Middelburg and Antwerp, His Wife Isabeau de Gerbier, Their Eighteen Children, Their Son-in-Law Allard de la Dale and First Grandchild. Courtesy the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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abortifacients.59 The perils of pregnancy were well known: women regularly died as a result of birth complications or postpartum fevers, and serial remarriages were the rule. In the year 1530, Guillaume Versoris had already been married no fewer than five times in under a decade. Nothing is known about the first wife, but the second, Jeanne Houdon, gave birth on April 9, 1523, and died a month later; the third wife, Loïse Barjelonne, whom he married on July 13, 1523, gave birth on June 8, 1524, and died on June 17; Guillaume then married a fourth time, on June 17, 1526, with Ysabeau Gallope who died ten months later, doubtless in childbirth. By 1530, when his journal ends, Versoris had been married to his fifth wife for three years but as yet they had no children.60 This massacre of wives and mothers, stimulated equally by natalist ideology and by Christian insistence on the conjugal debt, was to persevere until the later seventeenth to early eighteenth century, when a shift in attitudes brought about changes in marital sexuality and the more widespread use of (tacit) contraceptive practices in conjugal intercourse. The rise of affective individualism, an increased emotional and financial investment in children, and the husband’s growing concern for the health and well-being of his wife, were some of the principal factors that brought about the limitation of both conceptions and births within the family.61

CONCLUSION Self-help medical advice books such as Venette’s Tableau de l’amour conjugal and Aristotle’s Masterpiece, along with their many imitations, adaptations, and derivations, accorded to women the same capacity for feeling sexual desire as did men, and stressed the importance of mutual orgasm for the goal of conception. The vagina was seen as an organ in its own right rather than an internal version of the male member, while the role of the clitoris in facilitating the act of generation became a standard topos of reproduction theory. This view of reproductive sexuality, where husband and wife were equal in their need for sensual satisfaction, was, however, to undergo a radical change by the mideighteenth century, when female identity was reconstructed as being the opposite of the male sex (as opposed to being an “imperfect” version of the same), with no sexual needs other than the desire to become mothers.62 The Enlightenment ideals that increasingly relegated women to the realm of home and hearth, extolling the virtues of motherhood, piety, and moral probity as being “natural” to women, doubtless gave wives an increasingly important role in the context of the companionate household. Those characteristics of female biology once held to constitute a peril (sexuality and reproduction) became valorized as “differences” which made women good wives and mothers. At the same time, the emotional and sexual bonding of the companionate marriage was to redefine notions of legitimate and illegitimate sexual practice, identifying masculinity with heterosexuality and penetrative sex as the “best” and most “natural” sex. Yet the body was increasingly to become a source of shame. Feminine modesty and the censorship of common conversation would progressively preclude daughters from knowing what to expect on their marriage night or in childbearing, and the process of alienation of the libido from the physical self was well on its way to the heights it would reach with Victorian decorum and Freudian misapprehensions.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Breaking Vows Adultery, Marital Ill-Treatment, and Divorce in England,1450–1650 MARTIN INGRAM

One April morning in 1615 a Wiltshire tailor called Ansel Kerry went to Wilton fair. Eleanor Kerry, fourteen years his wife, stayed at home in the Salisbury suburb of Fisherton Anger. Two of the neighbors, Ann Streete and Elizabeth Giles, observed that she was visited by Thomas Sly, a man who had been married even longer than she. One of them, at least, had heard that he was Eleanor’s “old sweetheart” and was curious to see him. When a woman from Sly’s home town of Westbury came inquiring after him, the pair of neighbors went into the Kerrys’ house to seek him. As they went up the stairs, Ann Streete called out as usual, “Mother Ansel, where be you?” Receiving no answer, they carried on into the chamber, where they found Thomas and Eleanor lying together on the bed. According to their story, he had “his points untrussed,” while she was kissing him and “holding … [his] privy members in her hand in very filthy manner.” “Mother,” exclaimed the shocked neighbor, “this is well indeed!” Apparently unabashed, Eleanor retorted that “You would do so too … if he were your love as he is mine, for he was my husband by right before I married with Ansel.” Outraged by this effrontery, Ann Streete denounced her as a whore and as a result “raised a fame” that the couple were engaging in illicit sex. Hence the matter came to the attention of the authorities.1 Nowadays we are accustomed to the frequent divorces that are such a feature of modern Western society. When couples wed, we trust that they will be happy but know that the union may not last. Growing incompatibility, divergent career paths, meeting someone else, or simply falling out of love are among the many hazards that can wreck a marriage. When it occurs, marital breakdown can be traumatic for one or both partners and often has far reaching consequences, especially if children are involved. Yet people do not usually think of their behavior as reckless or amoral. They feel that they have a right, if not to live happily ever after, then at least to extricate themselves from a situation that is making them feel seriously unhappy, dissatisfied, or unfulfilled. More basically, they are buoyed up by a sense of personal integrity or authenticity that overrides their matrimonial commitments. Such an attitude is hinted at in the words of Eleanor Kerry and, as will be seen, she was by no means the only one to feel that she could justify breaking her vows. But, for the most part, the views we take for granted were at odds with prevailing wisdom in Eleanor Kerry’s day, and utterly alien to the laws underpinning marriage and the social customs associated with it that had evolved by early modern times.

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I The medieval church had developed remarkably strict views on sexual relations and marriage. Indeed its ideal was celibacy. Monks and nuns were vowed to chastity, and the secular clergy were likewise expected to live celibate lives. Marriage was for lay people, but its primary purpose was procreation. For the avoidance of sin and for their mutual comfort, wife and husband owed each other the “marital debt.” But there were many restrictions on sexual expression even within marriage, while the remarriage of widows and widowers, though not forbidden, was discountenanced. At the same time marriage was regarded as a sacrament and idealized as the earthly counterpart of the union of Christ and His church. While it was recognized that families had an interest in marriage, and young people were expected to defer to the wishes of their parents or other “friends,” dynastic considerations and matters of property were held to be secondary. The fundamental principle was the free consent of the couple. Remarkably, the blessing of a priest or a ceremony in church were not held to be integral to the act.2 It is true that in England and many other parts of Europe, church authorities prescribed that couples should publicize their intentions beforehand with the threefold announcement of “banns” and complete their marriage with a ceremony at the church door, followed by a nuptial Mass. Compliance with these ecclesiastical regulations was probably normal in most parts of pre-Reformation England, and secular celebrations further aided publicity. The bride and groom were led to church by their neighbors and friends, usually to the accompaniment of music, and it was customary to hold a wedding dinner afterwards. As the Reformation unfolded, successive versions of the vernacular Book of Common Prayer (1549, 1552, 1559) included a wedding service, which was now to take place in the body of the church but otherwise remained much the same. By this time, when people spoke of getting married, a wedding in church was normally what they had in mind. Yet it remained the case that a binding union could be made by the mere declaration of the couple in words of the present tense.3 In that sense it was perilously easy to enter the state of marriage. In contrast, the exit routes were few and narrow. The Catholic view was that a union, once created in the eyes of God, was indissoluble. Though the Eastern Orthodox Church was less rigid, this set Western Christendom firmly apart from Judaism and Islam—not to mention many other societies across the world, of which medieval Europeans had little or no knowledge.4 However, there were restrictions on who could marry, and unions that had been created in breach of these regulations could in principle be annulled.5 Children could be betrothed from the age of 7 years, on the understanding that they could repudiate the match before they reached the minimum ages for contracting a binding union, namely 12 for girls and 14 for boys. In practice, most people married much later. In England in the century before 1650, bridegrooms were usually in their mid- to late 20s. Brides might well be younger, especially at higher social levels. But even aristocratic women rarely married until they were at least in their late teens.6 The church also forbade unions between relatives. In 1215 the range of prohibitions was restricted to the fourth degree of kinship or affinity (see also Bellavitis in this volume). This still meant that third cousins could not marry. However, in the case of the more remote degrees it was possible to secure a papal dispensation. In practice, few people tried to get their marriages annulled on these grounds, and the opportunities were reduced as time went on. Henry VIII’s determination to annul his marriage with

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Katherine of Aragon led in 1534 to an act of Parliament affirming that the prohibitions laid down in the Old Testament book of Leviticus were divine laws that could not be dispensed with. In 1536, another act was passed declaring that the prohibited degrees were established not only by marriage but also by “carnal knowledge” outside marriage. This was evidently intended to facilitate Henry’s formal dissolution of his marriage with his second wife, Anne Boleyn, whom he executed for adultery. The point was that, before marrying Anne, Henry had had an affair with her sister Mary.7 Irrespective of royal matrimonial problems, the English reformers favored the adoption of the Levitical precepts as the yardstick of who could marry whom, but this left many uncertainties. The situation was eventually clarified in the Table of Kindred and Affinity, published by Archbishop Matthew Parker in 1563.8 Another means of dissolving a marriage was to claim that, although a couple had solemnized a marriage and perhaps had children, the union was null because either partner, or both, had made a prior present-tense contract (whether or not consummated). Again to suit the matrimonial strategies of Henry VIII—this time to secure his marriage with Katherine Howard—an act was passed in 1540 declaring that an unconsummated precontract was no longer grounds for annulment, but this position lasted only until 1549 when the measure was repealed.9 As the case of Eleanor Kerry suggests, the existence of an earlier unsolemnized contract, whether consummated or not, may have given some people a motive or a justification for adultery. But formally speaking, suits for the annulment of an established, solemnized marriage on the grounds of precontract were quite rare before the Reformation and became even less common later. What of marital misconduct? It was accepted that adultery in either party could be grounds for ending the marriage. But the most that the courts could offer was a separation “from bed and board” with no right of remarriage. By early modern times life-threatening cruelty had also been firmly established as grounds for separation. The remedy was available to either partner and was occasionally resorted to by husbands who claimed that their wives were trying to poison them. But mostly it was women who sued, and cases remained rare.10 Legally husbands had the right to “correct” their wives, by physical force if necessary. They were expected to act reasonably, and neighbors often rushed in to prevent what they regarded as undue violence, or “cried shame” on pitiless wife-beaters. Occasionally such egregious abusers were summoned before the courts and ordered to desist. But the authority that husbands were supposed to exercise inhibited too much intervention. The circumstances that underlay separation suits were usually extreme. Witnesses often described abusive husbands as “mad” or “frantic”; some would probably be treated today as mentally unstable. Even so, judges showed a marked tendency to favor reconciliation over separation. The abusive husband might be compelled to give guarantees to treat his wife better, but the partners were left in no doubt that it was their duty to remain together if at all possible.11 This extreme hostility to divorce came into question at the Reformation. Already ideas about marriage were shifting. Late medieval churchmen gave greater weight to marriage as a positive good for lay people rather than a second best to celibacy, and Renaissance thinkers in Italy and elsewhere reinforced this idea. As part of their fundamental reappraisal of Christian doctrine, Protestant reformers denied the sacramental nature of marriage. At the same time, however, they reaffirmed its social and political significance, stressing the role of family households as foundation stones of church and commonwealth. The new understanding of marriage led to altered views on divorce (see also Plummer in this volume). All the leading continental reformers allowed

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the right to remarry in cases involving adultery, since this was plainly stated to be a reason for divorce in the Gospels. Most, especially Zwingli, went somewhat further, while Bucer was the most liberal, in principle countenancing divorce even in cases of grave incompatibility.12 In practice the effects of these changes were limited. Special marriage courts, largely secular in composition, were set up in many Protestant states to administer the new rules. But the willingness of clergy and judges to contemplate granting divorces varied from area to area and also from time to time. Adultery and prolonged desertion were the main grounds on which marriages were dissolved. In contrast, cruelty was rarely, in itself, seen as sufficient cause, though many courts did take police action against abusive husbands. Everywhere in Protestant Europe divorce on whatever grounds continued to be regarded as regrettable in the extreme. Nowhere did it become commonplace. Meanwhile the Counter Reformation church continued to insist on the indissolubility of marriage. In Catholic areas ecclesiastical courts remained the most important tribunals in this sphere, though in France control over marital separations did gradually shift to the civil courts.13 Uniquely among Protestant states, England witnessed no major legal change, though the new thinking on divorce did lead to much debate. The closest that English Reformation leaders came to effecting a radical alteration was in the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum (Figure 7.1), a new corpus of canon law in line with changed Protestant understandings. While maintaining the traditional emphasis on reconciliation if at all possible, the Reformatio abandoned the principle of indissolubility. Strikingly, husband and wife were given equal rights to sue for divorce with the right to remarry. Permissible causes included adultery, desertion, deadly hostility, and prolonged ill treatment. But these and other proposals proved highly controversial, and they were decisively rejected in the last Parliament of Edward VI in 1553. An Elizabethan attempt to revive the Reformatio in 1571 likewise failed.14 But the matter would not go away. Adherence to the principle that adultery, at least, was grounds for the dissolution of marriage became a shibboleth among the more radical exponents of religious change in the mid-Tudor decades and the “hotter sort of Protestants” of later years. Miles Coverdale’s immensely influential translation of Heinrich Bullinger’s Christian State of Matrimony (1541 and later editions) included passages declaring that divorce for adultery was permitted by the word of God. Following this example, Elizabethan and Jacobean writers of “godly” household conduct books and treatises on marriage regularly advocated the idea. A proclamation of 1548 claimed that already “unlearned and evil-disposed persons” had disseminated among the population the notion that “a man may forsake his wife and marry another, his first wife yet living, and likewise that the wife may do to the husband … and that these things be prohibited not by God’s law, but by the Bishop of Rome’s law.”15 Meanwhile some lay people put the principle of remarrying after divorce into practice. In 1542 William Parr (Figure 7.2), the Marquess of Northampton, was parted from his first wife, Elizabeth Bourchier. Convinced that remarriage after divorce for adultery “stood with the word of God,” he seized the opportunity of the accession of the Protestant King Edward VI in 1547 to obtain a royal commission to examine his case and went on to contract marriage with Elizabeth Brooke, daughter of Lord Cobham. The Privy Council considered this a dangerous precedent and ordered Northampton to put her away, but in 1552 he was able to secure a special act of Parliament to declare his second marriage legal. In 1572 the Somerset gentleman Sir John Stawell, apparently with

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FIGURE 7.1  Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum (1553), draft, beginning of the section on adultery and divorce. © The British Library Board, London.

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the assistance of the Earl of Leicester and Lord Burghley, managed to induce Archbishop Parker to grant a license enabling him to remarry during the lifetime of his first wife, whom he had divorced for adultery. But Stawell himself admitted that the “common laws … of the realm” were against him; his former wife sued him over the issue; and he found himself called in question in the archbishop’s court of audience. He was forced to take elaborate measures to ensure that his son by his second marriage was able to inherit his estates.16 Though these cases were anomalous, they were not completely isolated. Another case involving Parker occurred in 1574. Dealing with a Northamptonshire land transaction, the common-law judge Sir James Dyer was startled when one of the parties claimed that the archbishop had issued a license that allowed him to remarry after his first wife had divorced him for adultery—a suggestion that the primate firmly denied.17 In 1588— though the matter only came to light in 1605—the soldier and essayist Barnaby Rich remarried despite the fact that his former spouse, whom he had divorced for adultery, was still alive.18 A contemporary Yorkshire preacher claimed that in the last decade of Elizabeth’s reign some leading personages in his home region and elsewhere were strong advocates of the licitness of divorce after adultery and that certain of the gentry had acted accordingly.19 In 1602 the principle was tested in Star Chamber in Foljambe’s case and decisively rejected.20 Meanwhile the church courts found themselves dealing with individuals brought in question for bigamy who justified themselves on the grounds that they had been judicially “divorced” on the grounds of their partner’s adultery.21 A cluster of issues to do with bigamy, divorce, and marriage licenses came to a head in Elizabeth’s closing years and stimulated a set of measures, ratified at the beginning of the reign of James I, to clarify the situation. In the Parliament of 1604, bigamy was made a felony subject to the death penalty, while the ecclesiastical canons of the same year strongly reaffirmed the ban on remarriage after separation for adultery or cruelty. The evidential requirements for securing a judicial separation were tightened up and successful plaintiffs had to enter into penal bonds undertaking not to remarry. That these measures applied to everyone was revealed shortly afterwards. Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, had been conducting a long-standing relationship with Penelope Devereux, wife of Lord Rich, and had had several children by her. In 1605 her husband successfully sued for a separation on the grounds of her adultery. Blount, by now Earl of Devonshire, procured a marriage ceremony with Penelope in defiance of the recent canons. He also wrote a treatise to defend his position. High in royal favor after his success against the Irish rebels, Blount no doubt thought that he could get away with it. In fact the king was furious, and the aristocratic couple were disgraced.22 Yet the issue of remarriage after divorce continued to be sensitive. In 1617 the Banbury Puritan, William Whately, published a book that stated unequivocally that desertion as well as adultery dissolved the marriage bond. The Court of High Commission took exception, and in 1623 Whately published a retraction.23 By this time, however, it was rare to find court cases in which ordinary people purported to think that remarriage was permissible after divorce. The restricted benefits of church court separations made the remedy an unpopular one. A further disadvantage was that marital break-ups inevitably involved issues of property that the church courts were ill adapted to deal with. As a result, couples on the point of marital breakdown sometimes looked elsewhere for help. Members of the aristocracy appealed to the Privy Council or might even petition the monarch directly. Less exalted people had recourse to justices of the peace—who might, for example, bind a husband over to maintain his wife adequately or to refrain from violent behavior—or to the equity

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FIGURE 7.2  Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543), William Parr, Marquess of Northampton, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017. Photograph by Print Collection/Getty Images.

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courts of Chancery and Requests and even to Star Chamber. In London the mayor, aldermen, or aldermen’s deputies might become involved, as also the governors of livery companies. Sometimes couples agreed between themselves to split up on the basis of written covenants. How common these various arrangements were is a moot point. Tim Stretton has assembled numerous examples, but they are drawn from all over England and from a wide range of courts over a period of 120 years. From a local perspective on shorter timescales, the tally is less impressive.24 Even less in evidence was the practice of “wife-sale,” made famous by Thomas Hardy’s literary representation in The Mayor of Casterbridge, as an unofficial, plebeian form of divorce. There are newspaper and other accounts for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but only a few sixteenthand seventeenth-century examples of anything remotely similar have been identified.25 Throughout the period, couples who lived apart without license from an ecclesiastical judge—even if they did not take up with anyone else—were liable to prosecution in the church courts, though enforcement was no doubt patchy and selective.26

II Closely related to the divorce debate was the issue of the appropriate punishment for adultery. This in turn was part of a wider debate among Protestant reformers about whether the law of Moses should be put in force in a reformed Christian commonwealth.27 Pre-Reformation writers had frequently invoked the severity of Old Testament laws as a rhetorical trope to demonstrate the degenerate leniency of their times. But now some reformers did indeed demand the death penalty for adultery. In continental Europe this line of argument did not conflict with the existing judicial context, since in many states adultery was regarded as a “mixed” offense—a civil crime as well as a sin subject to ecclesiastical censure—and death was among the sanctions deployed against egregious offenders. The reformer John Calvin had no hesitation in endorsing this principle, and in the 1560s Geneva witnessed a series of high-profile executions.28 In England the matter was much more contentious. It had long been accepted that adultery and other consensual sexual offenses were matters of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, to be punished with penance. In principle this could include penitential whipping, but by the early sixteenth century this had become rare. The usual procedure was for the culprit, carrying a lighted candle, to head the parish procession on a Sunday or major holy day, to kneel penitently during the first part of the Mass, then to present the candle either to the celebrant or before the principal image of the church. For greater humiliation, it was usually prescribed that the penitent should be dressed only in a shirt (men) or smock (women), at least on the first occasion if repeated acts of penance were imposed.29 To demand the death penalty for adultery was therefore a radical move. But leading Protestants in the reign of Edward VI united in advocating the measure. There was also some support among aristocratic laymen, who envisaged this as an excellent means of ridding themselves of adulterous wives. Probably because its creators sensed the dangers of this approach, the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum in fact did not go so far as to demand death for adultery, but it did prescribe punishments of great severity. In view of the failure to introduce this revised system of church law, an alternative course of action was to introduce draconian secular penalties by act of Parliament. But, though a sequence of bills was introduced in the later sixteenth century and on into the early seventeenth, the conservative instincts of MPs ensured that before 1650 none was successful.30

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Despite the failure of the Reformatio and parliamentary legislation, the earlier part of Elizabeth’s reign did see some notable efforts to ensure that convicted adulterers were treated as rigorously as existing law allowed. In the church courts, public penance was remodeled to suit the new Protestant context. Post-Reformation ecclesiastical penance either took place entirely in the body of the church, or the penitent was made to stand outside the door or in the porch as the people arrived, then summoned into the church during the course of the service to perform a ritual of submission, reconciliation, and reintegration. The standard penitential garb was to wear a white sheet and carry a white rod. Crucially, penitents were required to face the congregation and in an audible voice confess their sins and ask the congregation to join them in praying to God for forgiveness. Sometimes penitents were made to ask the congregation’s forgiveness, too. In addition, penitents and congregation alike were edified by an appropriate sermon or the official homily “Against Whoredom and Adultery.” Many judges and parish clergy at this time regarded it as of the utmost importance that the culprit should be brought to a true and sincere state of repentance, and they used all the means of exhortation that they had at their disposal to achieve this. Often culprits were not readmitted to the congregation until they had revealed “tokens of repentance.” Breaking down in tears was one such sign. In cases where a grave sin such as adultery was at issue, culprits were often required to perform penance more than once.31 In a further twist, it was common in some dioceses for judges to order that ordinary ecclesiastical penance should be supplemented or replaced by penance performed in the marketplace of the cathedral city or of the nearest sizeable town. Such marketplace penances had occasionally been ordered before the Reformation, but in the 1560s and 1570s they became much more common.32 Meanwhile many city and borough courts—secular as opposed to ecclesiastical tribunals—were using exhibition punishments against adulterers and other egregious sexual offenders. In London the use of such sanctions continued a long tradition, stretching back at least to the fourteenth century, while some pre-Reformation provincial towns and cities had also used public exhibition punishments against sexual offenders on an occasional basis. But in the 1560s and 1570s, many towns up and down the land had recourse to a punishment known as “carting” or “riding the tumbrel.” Offenders were placed in a wagon and trundled round the town in full view of the populace, usually on a market day when a great confluence of people could be expected. Metal basins were rung before them to attract attention, while the culprits themselves were often adorned with a placard announcing their offense. Alternatively, culprits might be exhibited on the pillory or at the market cross, wearing a paper cap announcing their offense. Sometimes offenders were whipped as well as being publicly shamed.33 In London, Bridewell Hospital had been founded in the reign of Edward VI to serve as a workhouse and penitentiary for the “idle poor.” From the beginning these were taken to include sexual offenders. Whether or not they were themselves poor, they were thought to promote poverty, profligacy, and waste. Prostitutes, pimps, and bawds were the main focus of attention, but ordinary sexual offenders, including adulterers of some substance, were targeted too. By the later part of Elizabeth’s reign the standard punishment that the governors of Bridewell meted out was a period of incarceration followed by a severe whipping. However, in the early seventeenth century legal opinion hardened against secular courts’ claims to jurisdiction over sexual offenders, unless it was sanctioned by parliamentary statute or based in unassailable local custom. This may help to explain why Bridewell’s involvement with sexual transgressors had waned considerably by the 1620s

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and 1630s. Meanwhile, in provincial towns, the use of carting and corporal punishment against sexual offenders was gradually restricted.34 Likewise the vigorous use of public penance that had characterized many church courts in the early part of Elizabeth’s reign eventually faded. Partly this reflected the increasing conservatism of the ecclesiastical authorities in response to the Presbyterian movement of the 1580s; partly it was simply that the zeal of reformation gradually gave way to the routine of everyday administration. By the early seventeenth century, even in serious cases penance was usually performed in church on only one occasion, and marketplace penances became rare. Prominent people were usually able to have the penalty commuted into a money payment for “pious uses” such as poor relief. By the 1620s and 1630s, adultery was still regarded as a grave matter and some offenders suffered exemplary punishment, but the penal regime was softer than it had been two generations earlier.35 Throughout the period, both the secular and the ecclesiastical courts were firmly embedded in local communities and relied heavily on ordinary people to report offenders. Courts and the clergy treated adultery as a grave sin, an offense both to God and the wronged partner. Preachers and moralists reminded their audiences of the plagues and judgments that God had visited on notorious offenders, whether in the Bible or in other times and places. What is striking is that ordinary people often seem to have shared these views, using such terms as “foul” and “filthy” to describe adultery. Even offenders paid lip service to these values—at least when they humbled themselves in court in hope of securing more lenient treatment. The mid-sixteenth-century musician Thomas Whythorne described how a married woman, in whose household near London he was giving lessons, hinted at her willingness to begin an affair; her husband, it seemed, was himself “one who loved change of pasture.” A friend told him he was “but a beast” if he did not seize this opportunity, but Whythorne primly told him that he feared that if he did he would incur God’s “heavy displeasure,” worldly troubles, an unquiet mind, serious financial outlay, and dependence on panders and bawds. “And last of all, I told him of the ill name that I should purchase thereby, whereby I should hinder myself very much, because no man would trust me to teach their children.”36 Despite the existence of such attitudes, local people’s responses to cases of adultery tended to be flexible and pragmatic. One reason why female adultery, in particular, was a very delicate matter was the stigma attached to a man whose wife had been unfaithful. If the worst insult that could be directed against a woman was to call her a whore, it was likewise devastating for a man to be called a cuckold. He thereby became the butt of hostile derision that could be readily evoked by signs and symbols and that could easily run out of control. It was a centuries-old conceit that a cuckold wore invisible horns, and to defame a man as such (maliciously or otherwise) neighbors would attach horns or antlers to the door or gable of his house, or more simply make horn signs with their fingers when they met him in the street. The underlying conviction was that a cuckold was less than a man. Either by failing to satisfy his wife sexually or through some other kind of negligence, he had lost control of her body (Figure 7.3). Small wonder that a man under such a slur was liable to respond violently, sometimes taking the matter out on his wife. Faced with the danger of stirring up trouble between husband and wife or among neighbors in the wider community, local people were often inclined to tread warily. Indeed such a stance was justified in terms of Christian principle. Had not Jesus refused to condemn the woman taken in adultery? (Figure 7.4)37 It was a commonplace of sermons and conduct books that, if the errant spouse was repentant, the wronged husband or wife should be prepared to forgive and forget. This was much more likely if the matter had not

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FIGURE 7.3  “My dotard husband gives not mee,” plate 2 from English Customs (1628). Courtesy the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC.

become a public scandal. Hence it was taken for granted that, before a case of adultery was reported to the courts, at least some informal efforts should be made to reconcile husband and wife. Clergymen were prominent among those who attempted to do so. Before the Reformation, all parishioners were expected to go to confession at least once a year, and priests no doubt often used this opportunity to intervene in cases where they suspected sexual transgression. Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline clergymen might also intervene to admonish or reconcile errant spouses, and there are plenty of examples of such action; but in the absence of compulsory auricular confession they were more dependent on being actually invited by an interested party.38 How were cases brought to the notice of the authorities? Pre-Reformation church courts drew their information from a variety of sources. Some cases were reported at visitations, when the bishop or archdeacon (or their officials) toured the parishes specifically to discover what was amiss. But it is clear that many cases came to the courts’ attention by more informal means, including the detective activities of the courts’ “summoners.” After the Reformation the visitation system was strengthened and systematized, to the extent that visitation presentments made on a parish-by-parish basis by elected local officials called churchwardens, assisted by “questmen” or “sidemen,” were the main means of initiating cases in the courts. This development altered the relationship between courts and communities and gave local people slightly more room for discretion in deciding which cases to report. Often neighbors living cheek by jowl, in crowded urban streets and small villages alike, showed a shrewd knowledge of what went on in their neighbors’ houses and were perfectly willing to voice their concerns if circumstances warranted. Thus, in 1574 the

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FIGURE 7.4  Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, Fränkische Galerie, Kronach. Photograph by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images.

churchwardens of South Stoke (Sussex) reported that a man did “use much the company of one Armstrong’s wife in our town which we do not well like of.”39 Thin walls, defective doors, and crowded living arrangements made observation easier. However, the darkness of night often made it hard to be sure exactly what was going on, while the dwellings of the better sort—including cellars, barns, stables, and other outbuildings—provided opportunities for evasion and concealment. In any case this was a society in which the sexes were by no means segregated; on the contrary, they were in close proximity in households, while married and unmarried women were commonly out and about at fairs, markets, and various kinds of outdoor employment. It was hard to keep track of all their movements. As will be seen, servants were important as principals in many cases of adultery. They were also prominent as witnesses and informers. In a dependent position and characteristically unmarried, they were apt to feel resentful when they saw masters and mistresses breaking the rules and were quick to spot suspicious signs. Moreover, servants talked among themselves, and in larger households gossip was soon rife. As against this, a sense of loyalty might incline them to turn a blind eye. But employers were perhaps prone to take this too much for granted, while servants’ loyalties might well be divided between master and mistress. If they did not report errant employers to the authorities or to their neighbors, servants might at least warn them to desist. In a Leicester case around 1600, the maidservant of the suspect woman—wife of the prominent mercer and borough councilor Thomas Manby—told her that “if she [should] see any more such dealing she would tell her master of it.” This case reveals how careless individuals could be of what their servants might see or at least hear. Her husband being away from home, Joan Manby entertained her lover overnight in the marital bed. Her maidservant lay in

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a truckle bed under the great bedstead, while the mistress’s young daughter slept below her. The servant heard “the party in bed with her mistress thank her for something, and her mistress said ‘No, I thank you, my good sweetheart.’” This sounds like mutual congratulations after satisfactory sex. But Joan evidently wanted more, and there followed a lovers’ tiff when the man proved “faint,” leading her to accuse him of going with other women. They eventually settled down to sleep, but the maidservant had heard enough and decided to rouse the household.40 This case among others illustrates the great difficulty of securing proof positive of adultery. In actions for separation and other “plenary” proceedings, the normal canon law rules of evidence applied. In the absence of a confession, proof usually required the eyewitness evidence of two unexceptionable witnesses. But recognizing the difficulty of proving an “act of darkness,” the law allowed that if two people looked through a window or other aperture one after another, this would count as simultaneous testimony. Deposition accounts of such behavior need to be understood in this legal context. There is a suspicion that sometimes such accounts were fabricated, that the truth was “tidied up”, or that the circumstances were deliberately set up to provide the necessary evidence—the early modern equivalent of the private detective bursting into a hotel bedroom to secure photographic proof of adultery.41 Even eyewitness testimony was not necessarily sufficient to show that a couple had actually had the “carnal knowledge” of each other’s body. Witnesses attempted to prove the point by the use of such phrases as his “breeches down,” her “coats [i.e., skirts] turned up to the navel,” “legs spread abroad,” “bare thighs,” and so forth. Some of these legalistic accounts of the sexual act verge on the comical. In a London case in 1611, a man testified that the husband had committed adultery with a certain woman “by the plain sight of such natural parts intermixed between them which serve for the act of generation and procreation of his certain sight and knowledge having been a married man.”42 A witness in another suit was far terser: he had seen “rem in re … one in another.”43 Often direct observation was lacking and it was necessary to rely on other evidence. There were many references to the creaking and jogging of beds. A Leicestershire witness tried to simulate the sounds of sex between Lawrence Goodman and Mary, wife of John Kelham in a wood in 1581: he “heard them kiss twice and … Mary sighing cried ‘oughe’.”44 In a London case in 1615, a servant reported that a man with whom her mistress was supposed to have spent the night was found to have “a beastly pair of sheets” on his bed the following morning.45 In the church courts both before and after the Reformation, most cases of adultery were prosecuted not by “plenary” procedure, requiring the use of witnesses, but summarily by “inquisitorial” or (as it was usually called in England) “office” procedure. This meant that people could be accused on the basis of “common fame” or general report circulating among their neighbors, which in turn was based on an accumulation of suspicious circumstances winnowed out by local gossip. Individuals brought to court in this way were required to answer on oath, which might well elicit a confession. If the accused denied the charges, he or she was ordered to undergo compurgation—that is, to produce a specified number of neighbors, of the same sex and social standing, who were prepared to swear that they believed the charges to be unfounded. How serious a hurdle this was depended on circumstances and varied over time. It seems that compliant oath-helpers were easy to find in late fifteenth-century London but much less so in many rural areas in the early seventeenth century. Compurgation fees were quite steep in any case. Defendants who failed the test were treated as guilty and punished accordingly. Those who “purged”

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successfully were restored to their “good fame,” but they were usually required henceforth to avoid the company of the individual with whom they were accused except in open and public places such as church or market. People who breached such orders could be prosecuted on that ground alone, without the need for further evidence of illicit sex. The governors of Bridewell and secular justices did not use these procedures as such, but similar principles to those that underlay them informed their actions on a common-sense basis.46

III Representations in drama and other forms of imaginative literature offer one approach to contemporary understandings of adultery. Here the emphasis is rather on court records (admittedly another form of representation), some of which provide rich narratives.47 Their patchy survival prevents the construction of long time-series of numbers of prosecutions; in any case, the relationship between prosecutions and the actual incidence of cases—or even of suspicions of wrongdoing—is highly problematic and by no means stable over time. That said, cases of adultery do seem to have featured more prominently on the church courts’ agendas in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries than they did in the early seventeenth. To an extent this was a relative matter. Increasingly the focus of concern was fornication—sex between unmarried people—rather than adultery. Before the Reformation the courts showed only limited interest in the sexual activities of courting couples. The fact that they seemed to be heading towards marriage was sufficient reason for neighbors, churchwardens, and questmen to turn a blind eye (though couples may have received some admonition from parish priests in the confessional). A century later things were different. The tensions associated with a steeply rising population and growing problems of poverty made local communities increasingly hostile to illegitimacy and convinced them of the need to control entry into the married state (see also Sperling in this volume). Symptomatic of this shift was that prenuptial fornication or bridal pregnancy, hitherto tolerated, was increasingly subject to prosecution, while the laws to deal with those who bore or begot bastard children were notably sharpened.48 The preponderance of adultery cases in pre-Reformation times was amplified by the fact that in certain jurisdictions the evidential hurdle for bringing cases to court was apparently very low. This was true in the commissary court of London in the closing decades of the fifteenth century, where it would seem that people might be brought in question on the slightest suspicion—a notable exception to the usual reluctance to prosecute. In 1495, for example, there were some 300 prosecutions for adultery, the number of persons implicated being far greater. Since it is doubtful if the total population of the city then exceeded 50,000, this represented a very high per capita rate. By the early seventeenth century, the filtering of accusations through the visitation presentment system, and a more legalistic ethos generally, had inevitably cut the numbers.49 There are nonetheless grounds for thinking that, in both London and the provinces, the incidence of adultery diminished somewhat between the late fifteenth century and the early seventeenth. One reason was the declining social acceptability of concubinage arrangements or, as contemporaries commonly put it, “keeping whores.” In the earlier period it was certainly very common for members of the aristocracy and gentry and other men of position and substance to maintain mistresses, either in their houses or in some convenient accommodation elsewhere. In London the same pattern extended further down the social scale, as it did also in certain regions in the provinces, notably Lancashire, Cheshire, Wales, and the Welsh borders. These patterns of behavior slowly succumbed to

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the inculcation of stricter moral standards, especially as “godly” Protestantism took hold in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Throughout the period, the high elites were more likely than the rest of the population to assume that prohibitions on extramarital sex did not apply to them—as instanced by the case of Penelope Devereux and Lord Mountjoy, already cited. But even they became more circumspect as time wore on.50 Cheaper than maintaining a mistress was to frequent prostitutes. In the late fifteenth century the sex trade flourished not only in London and its environs—including the notorious Southwark “stews”—but also in provincial towns and even some villages. In numerous inns and alehouses, women with the generic name of “tapster”—Agnes Tapster, Maud Tapster, and so on—plied a brisk trade, drawing ale and servicing men. For a variety of reasons such women were scarcely in evidence by the late sixteenth century. Even in London by this time, sex-trade professionals suffered constant harassment from the authorities, including the governors of Bridewell; the Southwark stews had been closed down in 1546. As might be expected, prostitution burgeoned in peripheral localities such as Clerkenwell as the metropolis grew apace from about 200,000 in 1600 to over 375,000 by 1650. But the vitality of the sex trade in and around London was at odds with its attenuation elsewhere in England. It should be noted that not only male but also female adultery was generated by this trade. Most of the brothels of early modern London were small-scale businesses with at most a few prostitutes residing on the premises. Brothel keepers or “bawds” maintained links with a wider circle of women and sent out for them as custom required. These part-timers included not only “gallant girls” but also “men’s wives”—characteristically married to tradesmen and shopkeepers, acting with or without their husbands’ connivance.51 Throughout the period, a common form of adultery was a liaison between the master of a household and a maidservant. Often encounters were opportunistic. At St. Mary Fenchurch (London) in 1495, a maidservant admitted that her master had had sex with her twice on the pallet in her chamber, each time on a Sunday when his wife was at church.52 No doubt some men felt that they had a right to demand sexual services from their female employees. When a Somersetshire woman preached a mock sermon to the effect that “all men that have wives of old age may leave their wives and lie with their maids,” she was presumably being ironic but at the same time reflecting what many men had long taken for granted.53 But by 1612, the date of this case, such an idea would have seemed decidedly old-fashioned. Local officers and other householders of substance, concerned by rising poor rates, had come to realize that stricter measures against illegitimacy, bridal pregnancy, and prenuptial fornication demanded that the older generation of established householders themselves should exercise restraint in their own sexual lives. Laura Gowing has argued that men in early modern England were rarely made culpable for their sexual transgressions and never defined by them; women, on the other hand, “were at the pivotal centre of the circulation of blame and dishonour for sex: responsibility was channelled entirely through them.”54 In fact the issues were a great deal more complex than this. Many churchmen attacked the double standard, emphasizing that adultery was equally sinful in either party—though they were sometimes willing to concede that from a worldly perspective greater “inconvenience” attached to female transgressions. Among the population at large, the double standard appears to have been a matter of degree. Men were frequently brought in question for their misdeeds, especially if they behaved outrageously.55 Adulterous men were often resentful to find themselves locked in loveless or hate-filled marriages, or simply that they could not spend more time

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with their mistresses. They often vented these feelings on their legal wives, abusing them or even ejecting them from the marital home. Husbands who believed that wives had been unfaithful were even more likely to be violent. Some even threatened to give their wife the “whore’s mark”—that is, to slit or cut off her nose. The wives of philandering husbands did not necessarily turn a blind eye, though often their first instinct was to confront the other woman rather than to challenge the husband himself. Publicly denouncing a woman as “my husband’s whore,” or words to that effect, was a stock form of defamation, especially on the streets of London.56 Some women physically attacked their rivals. A wife of Much Leighs (Essex) around 1617, having had “intelligence” that her husband frequented another woman’s company and finding her lurking suspiciously in the stable, beat her and tore her clothes.57 But some wives had no compunction in confronting their cheating husbands. “Go to thy whores!” was a stock expression of dismissive contempt voiced by outraged wives. Hence the rueful admission of a London man, cited to court for adultery with his maidservant in 1495, that “I had sorrow enough of my wife therefor.”58 It was not entirely unknown for wives to sue their husbands for separation on the grounds of adultery. Shannon McSheffrey cites the high-profile case of William Hobbys, principal surgeon to King Edward IV, who in 1476 confessed to many acts of adultery in the previous fourteen years in Calais, Saint-Omer, Southwark, the city of London, and elsewhere; two fellow-surgeons testified against him.59 Another London case in 1578 had previously been heard in the consistory of the French church. Jane, the wife of Peter Foye or Fowett, complained that “she had lived a long time with her husband in great misery by means of his disordered life in committing adultery and following taverns and evil companies.” She had been persuaded by the elders of the church to put up with his ill behavior “in hope of amendment.” But now she was determined to “depart from his company and not continue against her conscience with him nor help to cover such a foul fact as now was discovered of him.” The last straw was that her husband had admitted a relationship with a married Englishwoman, whom he had got with child four months previously and who was now visibly pregnant.60 In terms of legal consequences, social stigma, and domestic disharmony, the hazards of adultery were very great. This was true for both men and women, but the latter were especially vulnerable. So what impelled people to take the risk? Since the motives of the partners in adultery were by no means always similar, the permutations of motive and circumstance were numerous and it is impossible to do them full justice here. Some have been hinted at in cases already cited. A few examples must suffice to indicate some other major themes, one of which was undoubtedly frustration. A stock figure in ballads and other forms of popular literature was the “fumbling” husband, perhaps too old for his young wife and, at any rate, unable to satisfy her sexually or perhaps even get her with child. Such a woman might well be susceptible to the attentions of other men, as was Mary Daie of Whitechapel in 1575. Her neighbor James Forman attracted her attention from the street as she sat at work in a window. “I have had a good mind to thee a good while this twelvemonth and more,” he declared, “and I could never speak with thee till now.” Circumstances were briefly propitious: her husband was out “a-shooting,” Forman’s wife had gone into London, and his “folks” were in his garden drying clothes. Plainly the man was keen to bed Mary Daie. But it is equally clear that she had a definite reason for seeking solace outside her marriage, since he guaranteed to get her with child.61 A combination of neglect and unreasonable behavior seems to have been at issue in a London case in 1609. The wife claimed that her husband was a gamester who “useth much

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company,” frequented bowling alleys and taverns, and often brought his companions home. However, he was also of “jealous humor,” and when he was in drink or had lost money in gambling, he would either “upbraid or hit her in the teeth that she was over familiar with them,” or “quarrel with her because she did not bid them welcome.” Caught in this double bind, she found herself surrounded by young men with predatory designs. Unwisely her husband left London on business on December 23 and did not return till New Year. Save for some “sugar candy” that she munched with her lover on Twelfth Night, there is little sign of Christmas cheer. As the woman later admitted tearfully, she had “been sundry times tempted to dishonesty both when I was a maid and since I was married but I never yielded to dishonesty before now.”62 Many other cases could be cited of husbands’ absence or neglect giving rise to opportunities for female adultery, in London as in provincial England. The women’s lovers included not only visitors and neighbors, married or unmarried, but also men actually living within the household— servants, journeymen, music teachers, and so forth.63 Need of a more basic kind underlay other cases. In 1588 a North Bradley (Wiltshire) man had sex with a beggar woman in the presence of her husband, presumably in return for alms.64 Toward the other end of the social scale, Mary Newborough found herself adrift when her husband, a Somersetshire gentleman turned highway robber, was sentenced to death; though reprieved, he was kept in Newgate from 1596 till his death in 1603. Meanwhile his wife, having herself been detained in Bridewell for several months, set herself up as a high-class courtesan who flouted morality by riding in a coach to view the muster of the city militia at St. James’s. The outraged authorities had her indicted in the Court of Aldermen as a common whore and carted through London.65 The wives of menfolk in certain occupational groups, such as soldiers and seafarers, were particularly at risk, simply because their husbands were likely to be absent for lengthy periods of time. This emerges very clearly in east London, especially in Ratcliff Highway, Limehouse, and other riverine communities included within the vast parish of Stepney. The numerous motives that might induce women in this position to embark on illicit relationships may be readily imagined. A further possibility was actual rape. Edith Buckham, sued by her husband Richard for separation on the grounds of her adultery, claimed in defense that “by violence she … was urged by Albert Johnson … to yield the carnal knowledge of her body.” Since her husband had also had sex with her a fortnight before, on the eve of taking “his journey out of England beyond the seas” to Virginia, she could not be certain which of the two men was the father of her child.66 In the early part of the period, another occasion for female adultery arose from the fact that the pre-Reformation clergy were forbidden to marry and supposed to lead celibate lives. Christopher Haigh has downplayed the issue of clerical immorality, but recent work indicates that it should by no means be discounted. A significant minority of clergy were persistent or occasional offenders, and their concubines included married women. Some women may have been attracted by clerical charisma; others were won over by the financial or other rewards that clergy might offer. The situation was transformed from the reign of Elizabeth onwards, when the clergy were allowed to marry. Of course, individual ministers were still brought into question for committing adultery, but these were isolated instances rather than symptoms of an endemic problem.67 Whatever the circumstances, powerful sexual drives clearly underlay most adultery cases. Conventional moral standards were plainly of little concern to numerous male adulterers, some of whom were serial “whoremasters” or habitually engaged

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in predatory sexual behavior. Woman also occasionally admitted to powerful sexual impulses. In London in 1611, a witness described how, when he tried to persuade a woman to leave off “her lewd and ungodly courses of life”—she was suspected of adultery with at least two men, one of them married—she “made a pish of his words,” protesting that “no one man in England could content her.”68 But it was not always a matter only of raw sex: strong emotions or even romantic love were also at issue in some cases. This brings us back to the case of Eleanor Kerry. Though married to another, she had evidently never lost her feelings for her old “sweetheart.” Florence Archdeacon, a London woman, took such emotions one stage further, expressing them in what amounted to a personal ritual of remarriage. According to her lover, she had “renounced … her husband and … had plighted her troth to him … and in confirmation thereof had given him a ring.”69 The ultimate paradox was when individuals claimed a religious sanction for their adultery. At Melksham (Wiltshire) in 1622, Henry Cheevers and Mary Banfield made a written covenant to forsake their existing spouses and live as man and wife, “David and Jonathan.” Cheevers claimed that if she refused him her body she was not doing the duty of a wife, and the couple called their legitimate children bastards because their legal spouses were not “converted to the faith and were not in the state of regeneration.” Cheevers planned, “if this country would not suffer them so to live together,” to sell his goods and make a fresh start elsewhere, leaving “his own wife a base scab as he found her.”70

IV At this date such religious opinions were extremely unusual. They became more common during the civil wars and their aftermath, when the ecclesiastical courts were abolished, the church lost control, and radical religious sects proliferated. No doubt the unorthodoxy of the sects’ behavior—sexual or otherwise—was exaggerated by conservative opponents. But some cases are quite well documented. In 1647 the Wiltshire parish of Langley Burrell was acquired by the so-called Ranter Thomas Webbe. Around 1650, having become a widower, Webbe remarried but also began a relationship with the wife of the patron of the living. Allegedly he secured the seduction of his own wife by another man and took for himself a “man-wife” from a nearby village.71 Fears aroused by activities such as these, coupled with more general concerns about an upsurge of blasphemy, irreligion, and immorality, help to explain the passage by the “Rump” Parliament of the Adultery Act of 1650—finally fulfilling what had long been an aspiration of zealous Protestants. Among other provisions, this made adultery involving a married woman a felony subject to the penalty of death by hanging. Webbe and his mistress found themselves indicted but were acquitted by the trial jury—as indeed were most other individuals (comparatively few in total) who were formally prosecuted. Historians now recognize that the Adultery Act was by no means a completely dead letter. In London and perhaps elsewhere both men and women used it to restrain the behavior of errant husbands and wives, and their lovers and mistresses, by recognizances issued by justices of the peace. However, it seems that even in the circumstances of the Puritan Revolution there was little appetite to invoke the most extreme penalty in cases of adultery and in 1660 the act lapsed.72 This did not mean that adulterers could act with impunity, however. While the church courts (revived after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660) never regained their former vigor, they continued to mount prosecutions for adultery

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FIGURE 7.5  The Ranters Declaration, c. 1650. Photograph by Universal History Archive/Getty Images.

well into the eighteenth century in some areas. The growing number of civil actions for “criminal conversation,” whereby a wronged husband could recover damages from his wife’s lover, were another hazard.73 Meanwhile in the 1640s the poet John Milton had reopened another old debate. Though the breakdown of his own marriage to a 17-year-old in 1642 provided the

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occasion, Milton’s divorce pamphlets have to be seen in the context of the collapse of censorship and the challenge to Charles I’s government that made possible the expression of a wide range of innovative ideas about how society should be ordered. In 1653 the Nominated Assembly (disparagingly referred to as Barebone’s Parliament) was to legislate to make the formation of marriage dependent on civil registration. But Milton’s argument that the basis of marriage was companionship, and hence that divorce should be allowed in cases where the parties were fundamentally incompatible, proved far too radical. The principle of the indissolubility of marriage thus survived the civil wars and interregnum.74 It was only in the later seventeenth century that the dissolution of marriage with the right to remarry became a practical possibility, and then only on the basis of private acts of Parliament applying to individual cases. Obviously, such a procedure was available only to the titled wealthy and the very well connected. For ordinary people, divorce in the modern sense was to remain legally unobtainable for many generations to come.75

CHAPTER EIGHT

Representation Art Celebrates Marriage in the Renaissance ANDREA BAYER

INTRODUCTION In an oration on the occasion of the matrimony of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla of Aragon in Pesaro, Italy, in 1475, the humanist Pandolfo Collennuccio felt obliged to list the reasons that men might be against marriage, believing that wives were an impediment to “work, studies, and the contemplation of the truth.” He, on the other hand, saw the greatest benefits in marriage: “There can be no happiness without a wife and no one should be judged wise, as Aristotle says, who spurns so great a good of nature … God established marriage; nature beckons us to use and enjoy it; peoples agree upon it; and individual cities have founded rites and solemn ceremonies for it.”1 Sentiments like these account for the abundance of objects associated with marriage that artists created throughout Europe in the Renaissance, as communities of all kinds celebrated the union of two people and their families. As has been discussed elsewhere in this volume, marriage itself in this period could be fluid, informal, and clandestine. Even more reason to insist on the traditional rituals and outward manifestations that provided the visual demonstration of a marriage’s legitimacy. Indeed, the objects presented here helped to give that legitimacy a public forum. Gifts at betrothal and wedding; the outfitting of the bride; the decoration of a wedding chamber; the representation of the couple, were all important elements in confirming that this new relationship represented one of the most significant moments of one’s private life (see also Kaplan in this volume). Objects provided graphic assertion of the bedrock requirement of a marriage—that the participants had entered into it voluntarily, by declaring that they wished it. Inscriptions including Volo (I wish to), as well as fede (faith) proclaim the love and fidelity that people aspired to bring to their marriage. The virtues celebrated were of a long duration, and it is no surprise that, years after the ceremony itself, couples could commission portraits and other works extolling marriage. This chapter pulls much of its evidence from Italy, reflecting the research interests of the author as well as the abundance of material.2 However, I will draw examples from numerous other locations, such as the Netherlands, France, and England. Of course, geographical boundaries were often crossed, so that patron and artist could easily be from diverse places and cultures. In each case discussion will proceed from the objects

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themselves, focusing on their place within the ceremonies and exchanges for which they were created. While in some cases we can be quite sure of the meaning and function of these works of art, in others they remain open to interpretation. Perhaps the most famous such instance is Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of Giovanni Nicolai (?) Arnolfini and his Wife (Figure 8.9). Is it a marriage portrait? Several such examples are discussed in detail in the following pages.

BETROTHAL AND WEDDING GIFTS In much of Renaissance Europe, when a marriage was planned gifts, tokens, and adornment were frequently part of established rituals. The evidence for this from Italy is particularly rich. In Marco Antonio Altieri’s treatise Li nuptiali (Nuptials), written in the early sixteenth century and recording Roman wedding mores over time, descriptions of the ceremonies cover a wide range of such items. These included three rings given during the arraglia (pledging ceremony), along with a silver dish and a jug with armorial devices; clothing for the bride, as well as a chain, a diadem, earrings, a necklace, and a belt to be worn during the wedding Mass; and cassoni (bridal chests), opened and inspected for the linen stored in them.3 When the Florentine widow Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi (1407/08–71) wrote to her son in 1447 about his sister’s wedding, she spoke at length about Caterina’s gowns, their materials and decoration, and her hat and cap with feathers and pearls (all very intricate and expensive).4 The Venetian diarist Marin Sanudo (1466–1535), described numerous ostentatiously lavish betrothals and weddings amongst the city’s nobility, during which the giving and display of gifts were central. These events were notable because of their public nature, in which a master of ceremonies known as the ballerino presented the bride, and various sponsors (compare) gave gifts of silver or furs.5 Princely weddings had their own lavish rhythms, including extraordinary gifts. One such was the wedding, mentioned earlier, of Costanzo Sforza, who ruled in Pesaro on the Adriatic coast from 1473 to 1483, and Camilla Marzano d’Aragona in 1475. The festivities were captured in an account by an anonymous eyewitness and are known today through an illustrated presentation manuscript, probably created a few years afterwards.6 There were five days of celebrations, of which one included an afternoon of gift-giving to and from the couple. The author described the formal presentations: “They both awaited the first presentation, made by the Lord Duke of Urbino who gave them a very handsome antique-style silver flask with two fine confettiere of great value … All the gifts amounted to forty-three silver items, including sweet dishes, ewers and bowls, three bolts of crimson silk fabric, and around 30 carpets, all articles of considerable value.”7 When we shift from these descriptive (or prescriptive) texts to surviving objects themselves, we can see that many bear indications of their original commemorative functions for betrothals and weddings. A maiolica inkstand, made in Faenza around 1500, was decorated with busts of a couple (dressed in contemporary costume), an abbreviated inscription that, spelled out, reads, “I give you my hand, give me the ring [fede],” and the so-called fede motif itself, of two clasped right hands (Figure 8.1). A whole variety of objects, including rings and other jewelry, belt fittings, and many other pieces of maiolica include this same “fede” motif. Both the reference to a ring and the depiction of clasped hands represented the binding character of the couple’s promises, as when, for example, they joined hands before a notary and expressed their wish to

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FIGURE 8.1  Inkstand with busts of a couple and fede motif and inscription, c. 1500, Italian (probably Faenza), tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica), 8.25 x 20 x 27.94 cm (3 1/4 x 7 7/8 x 11 in.), John H. and Ernestine A. Payne Fund. © 2020 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

marry during ceremonies known as the impalmamento or toccamano. Dora Thornton has observed that Renaissance couples, both in northern and southern Europe, could be married in this way in a private room in their own home—Andrea Mantegna’s daughter Laura was one who did so in Mantua in 1486—and that the inkwell could have been made to celebrate just such a contract.8 Four surviving pieces of a set of maiolica made in Pesaro for Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary (r. 1458–90) and his second wife, Beatrice of Aragon (d.1508) include more complex, allegorical imagery relating to matrimony. One large dish shows the arms of both Matthias and Beatrice surmounted by a crown, with a scene below of a nude woman combing a unicorn’s mane and recumbent stags on a plateau behind (Figure 8.2). In the legends that grew up around the unicorn, it was said that only a virgin could tame this beast; a representation of the docile animal in her lap became an allegory of Chastity, the virtue essential to betrothal and marriage. Two silver unicorns were on display during the royal wedding banquet. Another dish in the set includes an image of boys gathering fruit, probably an allegory of Abundance, also appropriate for a theme of marriage and fertility. The marriage took place in 1476 and it is tempting to think that the couple commissioned this maiolica set—one of the most remarkable of the fifteenth-century—for the occasion. However, it may have been produced for the couple the following decade, perhaps at the behest of Beatrice’s cousin, Camilla of Aragon, who actively encouraged the ceramic workshops of Pesaro in the 1480s.9

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FIGURE 8.2  Dish with an allegory of Chastity and the arms of Matthias Corvinus and Beatrice of Aragon, Fletcher Fund 1946. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Splendid pieces or sets of glassware, adorned with armorials and other personalized imagery, were also commissioned for betrothals and weddings north and south of the Alps. Much of this glassware was produced in Venice, although scholars have suggested that Italian artisans may have produced some of it in France.10 A group of highly decorated blue and green-footed glasses may well be “betrothal goblets,” or coppe nuziali. Of extraordinary quality, the imagery of their enameled narrative friezes sometimes seems directly tied to marriage, as in a Triumph of Hymen (The British Museum, London), but in other cases can be ambiguous. An example of the latter is a wineglass or sweetmeat cup (confittiera) made in Venice between 1475–1500 (Figure 8.3). The artist painted scenes of the fable of the poet and magician Virgil and Febilla, daughter of the Emperor of Rome. In this tale, Virgil is thwarted in his attempt to seduce Princess Febilla and takes revenge in a horrifying manner, forcing her to place live coals between her legs from which the city was able to relight its lamps. The scene is clearly delineated on the cup. The imagery, in which a woman is made to suffer—and which seems the antithesis of the sentiments of marriage to a current viewer—may have led the Renaissance viewer instead to conclusions about Febilla’s sublime, chaste heroism, as she refused to sacrifice her virtue.11 Equally ambivalent imagery also appeared on marriage chests.12

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FIGURE 8.3  Goblet with Scenes Of Virgil and Febilla, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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Other glassware celebrated families. Two beakers of enameled and gilded cristallo, or colorless, glass were made in Venice around 1495 for members of the Behaim family of Nuremberg, and are decorated with their coats of arms (somewhat misunderstood by the Venetian artist) (Corning Museum of Glass, New York; private collection). The decoration of one glass includes images of Saint Michael and the dragon and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and it is likely that the pair was made for Michael IV Behaim (1473–1522) and Katharina Lochnerin (d. 1527), who were married that year. Katharina’s merchant father was involved with the trade between Venice and Nuremberg, perhaps accounting for the commission, which is our first evidence of the taste for Venetian glass in the German city.13 Four impressive pieces of cristallo glass—two cups on a high foot, a cup on a low foot (tazza) and a plate—with identical armorials of the royal arms of France impaling those of Brittany and decorated in enamel and gilding were probably made for Anne of Brittany (1477–1514) (Figure 8.4).14 Scholars have suggested that they may have been made for Anne of Brittany’s wedding to Louis XII of France in 1499. Contemporaries were aware of the pleasure that Anne took

FIGURE 8.4  High-footed cup with the arms of France impaling Brittany, probably Venetian (Murano), Robert Lehman Collection, 1975. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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in glassware (she was eventually to own a considerable collection of it). At the time of a visit to Lyon soon after the wedding, the city had a medal cast with a depiction of the king on the obverse and the queen on the reverse: the example cast in gold was offered to her in a Venetian glass goblet.15 Owners of such pieces might have displayed their glassware on a buffet table, or credenza, along with—and in contrast to—the heavy silver gilt vessels that they resemble in form and that were often installed there, as can be seen in many painted banqueting and marriage scenes. These glass vessels are further evidence of a love for Venetian—or Venetian style—glass, north of the Alps, including at the French court. A superb bronze bowl made in Milan around 1570 exemplifies the metalwork that adorned the credenza for feasts, and in this case may have been used for hand-washing during a wedding ceremony (The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). Known as the AnnoniVisconti Marriage Bowl, it was commissioned to celebrate the wedding of a leading merchant in the city, Giovanni Battista Annoni (c. 1545–90), and a member of the Milanese aristocracy, Silvia Visconti. Coats of arms of both families are represented, flanked by beautifully rendered storks, who represent Silvia’s daughters from her first marriage to Count Alfonso Cicogna. Cicogna means stork in Italian, and as the birds represent filial piety it is likely that this unique bowl was a gift from them to their mother and stepfather.16 From rings to pendants to expensive clothing, personal adornment was key to the celebration of weddings for both men and women. In Florence, the groom presented many of the smaller items of adornment in a compact chest, or forzerino, often quite exquisite in itself.17 The social history of these objects, especially jewelry, is particularly complicated, as families could purchase, or even rent, pieces for a limited amount of time. Bestowed on the bride, they might later be returned, perhaps when sumptuary regulations would begin to interfere with wearing them publically.18 Rings, above all, were tokens of marriage. In the illustrated manuscript documenting the wedding of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla d’Aragona, the god Hymen announces himself as the one who “places upright love / In the chaste hearts of bridal couples, and lights true ardour in tender hearts.” He goes on to describe his emblem as “two torches in a ring of burning fire, Two minds, two hearts, two fires, show / We are joined by diamond chains / Never loosened and always fitting.”19 The illustration on the page shows a gold ring with a faceted diamond; a comparable ring now in the British Museum, probably made in northern Italy in the fifteenth century, also includes a black enameled inscription, “Lorenzo a Lena Lena,” probably indicating that it was given by Lorenzo to a woman named Maddalena or Elena. A diamond was the preferred stone because of its adamantine quality, which made it a symbol of unbreakable fidelity. Other rings expressed such attachment in other ways: through inscriptions that became part of the design (Amore vole fe, or “love needs fidelity”), the clasped hands of fede, or facing profiles of the couple.20 Rings associated with Jewish betrothal and wedding ceremonies are particularly intriguing and somewhat enigmatic. Some six gold rings found in hoards dating to the fourteenth century in Germany (perhaps hidden due to persecutions during the Black Death in 1348) are topped by architectural bezels that either open to reveal the Hebrew initials for “mazel tov” (good luck), or have that inscribed elsewhere on the ring. Of them, four include hexagonal architectural elements, perhaps a reference to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which was associated with the Jewish temple. Scholars have hypothesized that such rings, which primarily represented the joyful consecration of the bride to the groom in a Jewish wedding, may also have reminded the participants of the destruction of the temple.21 Families may have prized the exchanged rings, or, instead, synagogues

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may have held them in a more communal fashion. Comparable rings of a later date, sometimes designed on a very large scale and with elaborate decoration, do not seem to have been suitable for wearing.22 Of the other jewels that were exchanged during betrothal and marriage, some of the most spectacular pieces are pendants and brooches. Several important examples, such as a delicate gold jewel with pearls and dangling gold letters spelling the word “Amor,” seem to be Franco-Flemish in origin (Figure 8.5). In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer described a gold brooch with inscriptions of a capital A and then amor vincit omnia, suggesting that similar jewels probably circulated widely.23 Italian paintings include many such brooches,

FIGURE 8.5  Jewel with gold letters spelling “Amor,” Franco-Flemish, the Cloisters Collection, 1957. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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FIGURE 8.6  Fra Filippo Lippi (c. 1406–69), Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement, c. 1440, tempera on wood, Marquand Collection, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1889. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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appended to headdresses, hung from necklaces and attached to shoulders. Some of the most opulent examples are found in Filippo Lippi’s Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement where the woman, probably the Florentine Angiola di Bernardo Sapiti, not only wears multiple rings but also has elaborately set jewels attached to her saddleshaped headdress, or sella, a large setting at her shoulder, and pearls worked throughout (Figure 8.6). Nancy Edwards has outlined an evocative inventory of the clothing that combines with the jewelry to such extraordinary effect.24 Angiola wears a red wool cioppa (an overdress, lined or trimmed with fur) that has cut sleeves. Underneath is an underdress (gamurra) of velvet brocade with woven loops of gold (alluciolato). The sella is atop a feather-covered cap, trimmed with pearls, and it supports a patterned swathe of fabric studded with pearls and little metallic spangles. Finally, and remarkably, the word LEALT[À] (loyalty) is worked in gold and pearls over her wrist band. All of these details are suggestive of a carefully garbed newlywed, but, as will be seen below, it is unclear whether we can describe Lippi’s innovative double portrait as a traditional wedding picture.

FURNISHING THE HOME A focus on Florence opens rich avenues for visualizing the decoration of a couple’s living quarters after marriage. The sixteenth-century Florentine painter and biographer Giorgio Vasari famously described the fifteenth-century tradition of the production of a pair of wedding chests (often called forzieri by contemporaries, but more commonly known in Vasari’s time, and afterwards, as cassoni), which would hold the bride’s linen and be installed in their new rooms, usually in the groom’s family home. Although Vasari recognized the importance of these chests, for him they seemed like “relics,” supplanted by other furnishings and decorations.25 Before his time they had been centerpieces of the camera, or chamber, a more personal space that inhabitants often referred to as “mia camera,” or “my chamber.” There they stood alongside other types of furniture and art in a room shaped by the owner’s tastes and interests. An important example is the camera decorated by Lorenzo Morelli in his family’s palace. In 1465, before his marriage, he had ordered a lettuccio, or day bed, with intarsia panels by the sculptor Giuliano da Maiano, a bed with inlaid panels, a mirror with a carved frame and two images of the Virgin Mary. Then, at the time of his marriage to Vaggia Nerli in 1472—when, in his words, he “took my wife home”—Lorenzo ordered an impressive pair of chests and a painted panel called a spalliera, designed to hang above them. The cassoni were constructed by the carpenter Zanobi di Domenico and then painted and gilded by the respected artists Jacopo del Sellaio and Biagio d’Antonio, working in a partnership (Lorenzo ordered other furniture at the same time as well).26 The two chests, now in the Courtauld Gallery (The Courtauld Gallery, London. F.1947.LF. 4,5), have extraordinary all’antica carving and armorials, and their principal painted panels depict two narratives of the Roman hero Marcus Furius Camillus. The spalliera was later divided in two pieces, with a half-installed over each of the chests (thus impeding their easy opening). Despite this alteration, these cassoni are rare examples of almost intact fifteenth-century furniture, whose history we can relate in detail. Similarly, the extraordinary cassone with a central panel depicting the Conquest of Trebizond, sometimes called the Strozzi Cassone, is a monumental and intact piece of furniture, including its original cover, decorated on both the exterior and interior (Figure 8.7). The exterior of the lid was coated with gesso and then painted, gilded, and

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FIGURE 8.7  Cassone with the Conquest of Trebizond, Marco del Buono Giamberti and Apollonio di Giovanni di Tomaso, John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1914. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

punched with a delicate pattern, making it appear to be a draped cloth. The interior of the chest is decorated with a stencil pattern of pomegranates and other motifs in emulation of a contemporary velvet brocade, and the back of the chest with a freehand version of a pattern imitating textiles as well. The end panels each include depictions of a hawk (or falcon) standing on a caltrop (a spiky weapon that destabilized horses on the battlefield) atop a banderole inscribed with the word MEZ[Z]E. Each of these is an emblem of the Strozzi family of Florence—“mezze,” meaning half, referring to the Strozzi half-moon, for example—and the chest almost certainly originated with that family. Thanks to recent technical examination, however, we now know that the central panel, which shows a unique and enigmatic scene of battle involving the Turkish cities of Constantinople and Trebizond, was probably inserted into this cassone (we do not know when) rather than being an integral part of it. While it cannot, therefore, be associated with any specific Strozzi betrothed couple it remains a item—remarkable and difficult to interpret—of Florentine interests in the middle of the fifteenth century. With its carefully inscribed depictions of two great Byzantine and then Ottoman cities, clashing armies in their eastern headgear, and the identification of one figure as the earlier Mongol Emperor Tamerlane (who was celebrated for a victory over the Turks), this imagery must have been of vital interest to Florentine merchants who watched as the Ottomans seized Anatolia, finally taking Trebizond on the Black Sea from the Byzantines in 1461.27 The Strozzi Cassone was painted by the most established Florentine partnership in this line of work, that of Marco del Buono Giamberti and Apollonio di Giovanni di Tomaso. The same workshop produced a more traditional cassone panel with The Story of Esther,

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probably in the same decade. Old Testament scenes were popular and are found alongside the more numerous historical and mythological subjects. Focusing on the moment of the marriage between the Jewess Esther and the Persian King Ahasuerus (Esther 2:17–19), this narrative had an immediate connection to the function of the wedding chest and, in addition, was an opportunity to present a woman as a model of virtue and loyalty.28 The biblical story is set in contemporary Florence, with the king riding in on horseback before a palace that resembles the mid-fifteenth-century Palazzo Medici, with, behind it, a great church not unlike the Duomo. The festivities themselves—the exchanging of rings and the banquet—take place in an outdoor loggia. The setting, the sumptuous wall hangings, and the stacked credenza of serving dishes and vessels would all have been recognizable to a Florentine bride and groom. Vasari described numerous other decorations for nuptial chambers, but as his narrative progressed into the sixteenth century, fewer included the great painted chests and more included painted panels of great sophistication that were hung around the walls, or above beds or day beds. Of these, one of the greatest examples is the chamber that Salvi Borgherini had decorated to celebrate the wedding of his son, Pierfrancesco (1480–1558), and Margherita Accaiuoli in 1515. The commission involved woodworkers as well as painters, in this case the architect Baccio d’Agnolo, who designed the walnut furniture, including chests with ornamental carving, a lettuccio, and paneling. But the room is famous above all for the group of paintings created by a consortium of artists headed by Andrea del Sarto, alongside Jacopo Pontormo, Francesco Granacci, and Francesco Bacchiacca.29 The sequence included fourteen scenes from the Old Testament narrative of the life of Joseph, as well as two devotional paintings. Very little of the room was left free of painted surfaces: they were inserted into cassoni, hung as spalliere above the chests, above the lettuccio, around the sides of the bed (tornaletti), and possibly over a door and the fireplace.30 Vasari praised the quality of the painting, especially Pontormo’s, which include some of his most inventive works, such as Jacob and Joseph in Egypt; a sense of its impact can still be felt in the National Gallery, London, where a group of the paintings now hang. As Vasari described it, the ensemble was threatened in 1529 when the entire city, ruled by an anti-Medicean, republican government, was under siege. Its owner— Pierfrancesco—was in exile in Lucca and his wife, Margherita, was left to oversee their property. Although the political situation in which she found herself is too complex to describe here, an agent of the city’s government came to her hoping to remove the panels and sell them to the king of France, with the aim of encouraging his support of the republic. Margherita was enraged and answered in a way that emphasized the private meaning that the works held for her: This bed, which you want for your private interest and greed for money—although you cloak your malevolence in false piety—this is the bed of my nuptials in honor of which my father-in-law Salvi made all this magnificent and regal decoration, which I revere in memory of him and for the love of my husband, and which I intend to defend with my very blood and life.31

PAINTINGS THAT CELEBRATE MARRIAGE: PORTRAITS Artists created portraits at many points during the rituals of betrothal and marriage, and some of the most significant portraits of the Renaissance were painted or sculpted with a purpose linked to marriage. However, research has also shown that a casual assumption

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of their function cannot be taken for granted and that the range of meaning of “marriage” portraits is actually wide and often ambiguous.32 Portraits demonstrating the beauty and health of a potential bride (and sometimes bridegroom) often preceded long-distance aristocratic and royal weddings. In England in 1442, Henry VI sent his painter Hans to portray the daughters of the Count of Armagnac for Henry’s evaluation, “in their kirtles simple, and their visages, like as you see their stature and their beauty and colour of skin and their countenances, with all manner of features.” In the following century, in 1505, when Henry VII was contemplating marriage with Joanna of Aragon, the widowed queen of Naples, he was insistent that a painter capture exactly “the visage and semblance of the said young queen as like unto her as it can or may conveniently be done.” Indeed, he demanded that the portrait be redone if not captured correctly at first.33 A most interesting example of this category of portraiture involved the Milanese artist Ambrogio de’ Predis and the nuptials between King Maximilian I (1459–1519), later Holy Roman Emperor, and Bianca Maria Sforza (1472—1510), the daughter of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza and the niece of Ludovico il Moro Sforza, de facto ruler of Milan. This marriage was of extreme importance to Ludovico, who offered an enormous dowry in exchange for an imperial investiture that contributed to his legitimacy as ruler. A German agent was sent to Milan on Maximilian’s behalf to observe the young woman as a possible bride (he saw her in church), and he took away with him de Predis’s charcoal or black chalk drawing of her. The agent later returned to Milan, pressing Marchesino Stanga, Ludovico’s confidant, for information about Bianca Maria’s lineage and dowry, and asking for another portrait, this one in color. He may have returned to Maximilian with the elegant portrait now in Washington (Figure 8.8), although by including a carnation—a symbol of betrothal—tucked into the sitter’s belt, the artist was imagining a desired outcome of the negotiations.34 Bianca Maria, shown in the strict profile of more conservative court portraiture, is extravagantly dressed and laden with jewels. Her long braided hair is wrapped in pearls and held in place by a jeweled cap, or coazzone. An impressive pendant jewel worked with the motto “MERITO ET TEMPORE” (With merit and time) is likely identical with one listed in the inventory of her trousseau. In addition, she wears a necklace of pearls and gems, a belt worked with the same, and a gown with Sforza emblems. All allude to her value as a Sforza bride. Although the drawn study de Predis had made to introduce her likeness to Maximilian has not survived, a sheet of silverpoint drawings on blue paper that includes the lower half of her profile at center, gives us an idea of the vibrant and lifelike manner in which he would have carried out this first, delicate task.35 Following a marriage by proxy in Milan in 1493, de Predis traveled with Bianca Maria to the residence of Archduke Sigismond of Tirol and his wife, Catherine of Saxony, where they waited for the arrival of her new husband (the couple repeated their vows in 1494 in person). There, the artist’s spontaneously sketched portraits of court women were discussed and admired. While many well-known portraits appear at first glance to be rather straightforward marriage paintings, two critical examples show the danger of any easy interpretation. The first, which we have already considered, is Fra Filippo Lippi’s Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement (Figure 8.6). Its importance in the history of Italian art is unquestioned, as in Italy it is “the earliest surviving double portrait, the first to place the female sitter in a notional interior, and the first to include a landscape background.”36 As mentioned, the young woman is bedecked with finery suitable to a bride, while the young

152 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

FIGURE 8.8  Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis (c. 1455–after 1508), Portrait of Bianca Maria Sforza, c. 1493, oil on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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man rests his hands on a coat of arms. The topographical nature of the view behind them suggests that we may be looking at their property in the Tuscan countryside. The meaning of the painting is more complex than this would suggest, and subject to continued interpretation. The identification of the coat of arms as that of the Scolari family (itself open to debate in the past) has led to two suggestions concerning the identity of the sitters. The more generally accepted is that the painting commemorates the couple Lorenzo di Ranieri Scolari and his wife Angiola di Bernardo Sapiti, who we now know were married in either 1438 or 1439. Katalin Prajda, in a study of the Scolari family, has pointed out anomalies in this interpretation, noting that the bride and groom were separated by at least twelve years in age, seemingly not the case in the picture, and that Angiola was not from a particularly wealthy family. She has suggested instead that the woman is the Scolari family member, probably Francesca Scolari, shown with her second husband, Bonaccorso Pitti, whom she married between 1442 and 1444.37 This identification posits, in a highly unusual way, the bride’s family as central to the meaning of the painting. There is currently no conclusive evidence to end this debate. Lippi has complicated and enriched the meaning of the work in various ways. When the viewer attempts to comprehend the architecture of the room in which the bride stands, the position of the groom becomes particularly ambiguous. He appears to float outside the window, almost as a symbolic presence. This may be an allusion to a verse in the Song of Solomon (2:9), in which the bridegroom (understood as Christ) “stands outside our wall, peeping in at the windows, glancing through the lattice.”38 Likewise, the carefully portrayed shadow of the man’s profile harks back to Pliny the Elder’s anecdote about the origins of art, specifically that of the inspiration for portrait reliefs in clay, which were, “first invented by Butades, a potter of Sicyon, at Corinth. He did this owing to his daughter, who was in love with a young man; and she, when he was going abroad, drew in outline on the wall the shadow of his face thrown by a lamp.”39 With both of these allusions, Lippi has introduced a literary note, one that seeks to suggest the underlying emotions of the couple’s situation. In addition, infrared reflectography of the painting, revealing initial drawing on the panel, has shown that the artist worked repeatedly to adjust the sitters’ hands and their gestures. At first, the man pointed upwards; in the painting as completed, his right hand makes a curious gesture, with the second and fifth finger stretched outwards, and the middle fingers bent inwards. This is a mano cornuto, understood since the ancient world, and commonly used as a ribald symbol of cuckoldry— surely not appropriate in this case. However, the gesture has a more general association as an emblem of fertility and, therefore, can be found legitimately in a nuptial portrait, placing greater emphasis on the desire for children than in most portraits commissioned for betrothals or weddings.40 Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of Giovanni di Nicolai (?)Arnolfini and his Wife is even more complex and uncertain in its meaning (Figure 8.9). This double portrait, probably of the Lucchese banker Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, painted in Bruges in 1434, never ceases to astound for its visual acuity and mesmerizing detail. Interpretations of the painting have varied widely, often focusing on whether it commemorated or recorded a wedding, and, if so, of what kind. The earliest mentions of it (1516, 1524) treat it as a double portrait, but a publication of 1568 amplifies that description, calling it, “a small panel … wherein was depicted an espousal of a man and a woman espoused by fides,” the term of the oath recognizable to us from its use on decorative objects.41 In a groundbreaking interpretation, Erwin Panofsky argued that the artist had captured a legitimate wedding (“a marriage certificate”)—meaning that the couple had willingly expressed their intent

154 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

FIGURE 8.9  Jan van Eyck (c. 1390–1441), Portrait of Giovanni (?) Arnolfini and his Wife, 1434, oil on panel, The National Gallery, London. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

to marry—but that the wedding was a private, even clandestine one, a very serious affair for young people in fifteenth-century Bruges.42 Scholars have considered this proposition from many angles, and, in 1994, Edwin Hall presented evidence that the couple were instead pledging themselves openly during the moment of betrothal. The touching of their hands (his left, her right), the early use of the term fides, or “troth,” to identify the scene, and the placement of the couple in a room with treasured furniture and before witnesses (as reflected in the mirror) all served to “express the requisite mutual consent of the couple to the promise of future marriage.”43 This ceremony was also known as the

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“sponsalia.” Alternatively, Lorne Campbell has argued that the earliest inventories should be considered reliable descriptions, and that the author of the somewhat later text may have offered an interpretation that was far less so. He casts doubt that any such ceremony is taking place, or that each element within the image has a symbolic meaning.44 It could be that Van Eyck has introduced us to a couple with the proper trappings of marriage and a well-appointed home, but not at a specific, initial moment in their relationship. It is salutary to remember that many couples and families commissioned portraits for occasions (often now lost to us) or purposes that were unconnected to their betrothals or weddings.45 Nonetheless, the gestures and context in Van Eyck’s great painting are remarkably evocative of the first of the nuptial rituals. By the later fifteenth century, painted portrait pairs could offer remarkable insight into the private family lives of the sitters. In the north, Hans Memling captured the likenesses of his fellow citizens and the important Italian community in Bruges. Chief among these was the Florentine Tommaso Portinari, the risk-taking manager of the Medici bank in Bruges from 1465 to 1478; he is also remembered as the patron of Hugo van der Goes’s monumental Portinari Altarpiece (Uffizi, Florence, c. 1480). Most probably at the time of his marriage to Maria Maddalena Baroncelli in 1470, Portinari commissioned their portraits from Memling (Figure 8.10).46 The painter had an exceptional ability to suggest the appearance of the 38-year-old groom and the 14-year-old bride and to capture a sense of life through the subtle play of light over their features and the movement suggested by their three quarter view. He alluded to their wealth and status in Maria’s fur-trimmed gown and elaborate collar of twisted gold and enamel. He also created a powerful sense of the sitters’ presence within

FIGURE 8.10  Hans Memling (c. 1430–1494), Tommaso di Folco Portinari; Maria Portinari (Maria Maddalena Baroncelli), c. 1470, oil on wood, Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

156 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

FIGURE 8.11 a and b  Attributed to the Maestro delle Storie del Pane, Portrait of a Man (Matteo di Sebastiano di Bernardino Gozzadini[?]); Portrait of a Woman (Ginevra d’Antonio Lupari Gozzadini [?]), 1494[?], tempera on wood, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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the illusionistic framing elements around the figures and in front of which Maria’s tall conical hat, or hennin, protrudes. These portraits did not stand alone, however. As the hands, held in a gesture of prayer, testify, they were the outer wings of a triptych, which originally included a devotional central panel, probably of the Virgin and Child. Memling used these pictorial elements to create unforgettable representations of the couple, also placing them in a specific social context. Artists of comparable portrait pairs often used symbolic details to expand their work’s references to love, marriage, and the family. A fascinating example of this latter approach is found in a pair of portraits from Bologna by an artist close to Lorenzo Costa who remains anonymous and is known as the Maestro delle Storie del Pane. The coats of arms identify the sitters as members of the Gozzadini family, probably Matteo di Sebastiano di Bernardino Gozzadini and Ginevra d’Antonio Lupari Gozzadini, and the painting likely dates to 1494 (Figure 8.11a and b).47 Seen in strict profile, these sitters do not engage with the viewer; despite this rather stiff formality, the imagery throughout the panels is “a dialogue … of the virtues of love.”48 The husband proffers a pink, associated with betrothal, and behind him we see symbols of erotic attachment and regeneration in, among other details, the falconer on horseback and a phoenix in flames on a tree stump.49 The woman in turn holds a fruit, possibly a quince, known as a marriage fruit, while behind her we see a unicorn, rabbits, and an ermine, all with complex meanings related to fertility and chastity. Their forms are set against an elegant but austere edifice, with a Latin inscription on the entablature that reads, “in order that our features may survive” or possibly that our “beauty,” in the sense of virtue, may survive. Every detail has been considered within the context of Matteo and Ginevra’s aspirations as a couple. One last, sixteenth century, example by the Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto (c. 1480–1556) demonstrates one of the ways in which portraiture could construct a narrative about marriage. In Lotto’s Portrait of Messer Marsilio Cassotti and His Wife, Faustina (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid), painted in the north Italian city of Bergamo in 1523, we see the groom about to place a gold ring on his bride’s finger. She, Faustina Assonica, is dressed in extraordinary finery, wearing a red gown often preferred by Venetian brides and jewelry that points to her knowledge of the classical past.50 Zanin Cassotti, the groom’s father and an important patron, commissioned the painting. He employed it to make a statement about his young son’s marriage—unusually Marsilio was only 20 years old at the time, much younger than the average groom—through a brilliant and unique device. Lotto included a mischievous Cupid hovering above the bride and groom, and laying an actual yoke—alluding to their responsibilities and conjugal ties—around their shoulders.51

PAINTING FOR MARRIAGE: POETRY IN PAINT In Italy, in the early decades of the sixteenth century, the beauty and sophistication of works created to celebrate marriages reached a sort of apogee. These paintings included both cycles of increasingly complex imagery and individual paintings. Two examples—one from Venice and the other from Siena—can stand as paradigms of these developments. The first is Lorenzo Lotto’s vivid and playful Venus and Cupid (Figure 8.12), painted in the 1520s for a patron in Venice, Lotto’s natal city, or in Bergamo (where he painted the marriage portrait discussed above). The depiction of Venus stretched out in her bower, accompanied by Cupid holding a myrtle wreath through which he urinates onto his mother’s torso, is the visual equivalent of a classical epithalamium, or marriage poem.52

158 A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN AGE

FIGURE 8.12  Lorenzo Lotto (1480–1556/7), Venus and Cupid, late 1520s, oil on canvas, purchase Mrs. Charles Wrightsman gift in honor of Marietta Tree, 1986. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

These poems—written by Roman authors such as Catullus, Statius, and Claudian, and ranging from the first century BCE through the fourth century CE—enjoyed a great revival in the Renaissance. Hundreds were written in the fifteenth century alone, many on the occasions of weddings at various courts.53 The imagery of Lotto’s Venus is dependent on the language developed in these poems. Statius viewed Venus as the primary goddess in celebration of a wedding, replacing Hymen. He suggested that Venus “unites the couple, sanctions the passions that brought them together, and increases their amorous desires.”54 Catullus created some of the most evocative poetic language of the epithalamium, as in his Carmen 61, in which he wrote of the bridal wreath with its “glossy-leaved myrtle,” and compared the delicacy of the bride to myrtle’s tiny flowers. He also wrote of the vine clinging to a tree (on display behind the goddess) as a metaphor of the married couple and tossed out some ribald jests as a way to ward off evil (the “giocoso” or jesting Cupid in the painting may play a similar role). The later Alexandrian poet Claudian came back to this imagery, writing that “myrtle wreaths adorn the portals, the couches are piled with roses, while cloth of scarlet dye, as befits a marriage, adorns the bridal chamber.” Even the white girdle, or strophion, wrapped under the goddess’s breast, derives from ancient sources and is identifiable as that which the

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Roman groom untied on his wedding night.55 Less easily interpreted is the snake under the blue cloth on which she lies. While the serpent could be ominous, alluding to the possible painful side of any nuptial (Virginia Tufte called this the “anti-epithalamium”), it might also be protective, as it was so often in the decoration of Roman houses.56 To this rich stratum of ancient poetic imagery, Lotto added an equally deep knowledge of contemporary Italian and Venetian customs. The urinating, or micturating, putto is found as well on fifteenth-century birth trays (deschi da parto) and was considered an augury of fertility and prosperity, on occasion sending out a stream of gold and silver. Venus wears a Venetian bridal tiara and pearl earring of the type described by Cesare Vecellio in his costume book, De gli habiti antichi et moderni … (Venice, 1590). She also wears delicate ties around her wrists; comparable examples in gold can be seen in other paintings, and each was called a laccio d’amore, or love knot.57 As has been often lamented, we are not able to identify for whom Lotto painted his Venus. This is particularly unfortunate, as the highly individualized physiognomy suggests that the features are a portrait of the bride herself. Paintings such as this often hung above the owner’s bed, where the Venetian collector Andrea Odoni displayed his fulllength nude by Savoldo (the author Marcantonio Michiel described it there in 1532). We can probably pinpoint the original owner of Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden) as his patron Girolamo Marcello, perhaps begun at the time of Girolamo’s wedding to Morosina Pisani in 1507.58 It is probable that Lotto’s painting was for a patron with similar taste and for a similar location. Contemporary authors wrote that such images stimulated married couples hoping for children and could have an impact on the beauty of the offspring.59 In one notable case, Domenico Beccafumi’s Venus and Cupid (The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, The University of Birmingham) we can identify both the patron and the original location of a painting of this subject. It formed part of a large cycle of paintings and furnishings, including a bed (lettiera), a frieze, and a bench with a chest, commissioned for the camera of the Sienese merchant and landowner Francesco di Camillo Petrucci (b.-1489); the Venus was most probably installed as part of the bed. The initial impulse behind this decorative scheme was probably Francesco’s wedding to Caterina di Niccolò Mandoli Piccolomini in 1512, but it was more likely to have been completed after the birth of their first son, Muzio Romulo Maria (b.-1517), and the themes of the paintings move in the direction of fertility and the creation of a family.60 Along with the Venus and Cupid, five other paintings from this cycle are known. They include three Roman Heroines (possibly part of the bench, or cassapanca) and two narratives of Roman festivals described in Ovid’s Fasti that may have been part of the frieze. In one of the narratives, the Lupercalia (Florence, Museo di Casa Martelli), male participants lash women with patches of goatskin, a ritual meant to ensure fertility. Ovid’s text, inscribed over a lintel in the architecture at the left, encouraged the women to accept this treatment: “Be patient under the blows of a fruitful hand, And soon your husband’s father will be a grandfather.”61 This is a reminder that behind so much of the imagery developed to extol the virtues of marriage was the ever-present, yearned-for outcome of the matrimonial bond: children and the perpetuation of one’s family.

NOTES

Introduction   1. Ferraro 2001a: 145–160; Hajnal 1983: 65–104; Laslett 1983; Quale 1992: 91–92; 133– 134.   2. Ozment 1983: 1.   3. Wunder 2016: 79.   4. Davis 1962; Ferraro 2012: 71–73.   5. Sperling 1999.   6. Cowan 2007; Ferraro 2008.   7. Stone 1977; among Stone’s many revisionists Houlbrooke 1984. Other respected overviews of marriage include Wrightson 1982; Ingram 1987; Cressy 1997.   8. Ferraro 2001a: 145; Bellavitis 2001; Burghartz 2016: 185–186. See also O’Hara 2000.   9. Davis 1975: 97–123. 10. Klapisch-Zuber 1985: 261–282. 11. Ferraro 1999, 2001b, 2008, 2018: 30–59; Ingram 1987, 2017; Ozment 1997; Astarita 1999. 12. Kaplan 2015. 13. See Weinstein 2004. 14. Chojnacki 2000b: 132–152. 15. Chojnacki 2000b: 95–114; Ferraro 2001b:135–154; Kirshner 1985: 256–303. 16. Kirshner and Molho 1978: 403–416; Kirshner 1978: 1–82; Chabot 2011. 17. Chojnacki 2000b; Ferraro 1993: 111–130. 18. On marriage in early modern Spain, see Poska 1998: 101–126. 19. Sperling 2010: 158–174; Ferraro 2008, 2018: 30–59. 20. Harrington 1995; Ozment 1983: 1–36; Plummer 2012. 21. Burghartz 2016: 179–183, 189, 192; Wunder 2016: 79–80. 22. Witte 2012. 23. Ferraro 2008; Lombardi 2016: 111–112. Cohabitation as husband and wife without legally marrying may have been less common in London; see Ingram 2014. 24. Goody 2000: 61. 25. For the most recent comprehensive study, see Seidel Menchi 2016. 26. See Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni 2006: 139, 159, 185; Lombardi 2001: 123–126; Brucker 1986; Ozment 1983: 25–26, 34; Safley 1981: 65, 73, 77. 27. Ozment 1983: 28–33. 28. Wunder 2016: 71–75; Burghartz 2016: 187–188; Van der Heijden 2016: 164–168. 29. Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni 2000, 2001, 2004, 2006. 30. Ferraro 2001b: 33–67. 31. Hanley 1987: 53–63, 1997: 27–52. 32. Ferraro 1993; Chojnacki 2000b; Kirshner 2015. 33. Kertzer and Barbagli 2001: xii.

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34. Macfarlane 1987; Trumbach 1978. 35. Ferraro 2001a: 148. 36. For Italy see Lombardi 2001: 75–85; for France, see Hanley 1987, 1997; Lefebvre-Teillard 2016: 264–265; for England, see Donahue 2016: 35–37. See also Seidel Menchi 2016: 330–340. 37. Ozment 1983: 36. 38. Ferraro 2001b: 33–67. 39. See Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni 2004. 40. For northern Spain see García 2014:186; for Italy, Lombardi 2001: 270–290. 41. Ferraro 2008: 5; Lombardi 2001: 410–412. 42. Ruggiero 1993; Di Simplicio 1994: 111–121, 183–241; Ferraro 2008: 166, 168–181, 183, 190–191, 202. 43. Ferraro 2008. 44. On the marriage bed and sexual identity see Ruggiero 2007: 21–24. 45. Ferraro 2001a: 152–153. 46. Harris 2001: 246–247, 2002. 47. Chojnacki 2000b: 153–182. 48. Ozment 1983. 49. Klapisch-Zuber 1985. 50. Ferraro 2001b. 51. Adelman 1998: 135–158. See also Weinstein 2004. 52. See for example Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni 2000. 53. Ferraro 2001b: 119–154; Ferraro 2000a, b. 54. Lawrence Stone 1990. 55. Ozment 1983; Phillips 1988; Burghartz 2016: 191. 56. Ozment 1983. 57. Adelman 2001: 300. 58. On how marriage as a conflicted base in social organization was portrayed in Renaissance comedy, see Giannetti 2009: 193–232.

Chapter 1   1. Schammes [seventeenth century] 1992: vol. 2, no. 227. Bacharach arrived in Worms in 1650 and died in 1670. The bath mentioned here is not a reference to the immersion in a mikveh (ritual bath) as was required of brides before their marriage according to Jewish law. Rather, this was a bath to prepare the bride for her wedding. See Zimmer 1980: 21.   2. Cohen and Horowitz 1990: 225.   3. Harrington 1995: 169–170; Sabean 2002: 96–97.   4. Roper 1985: 63; Karant-Nunn [1997] 2005; McNabb 2006: 62.   5. Stone 1977.   6. Macfarlane 1986.   7. O’Hara 2000: 30.   8. Karant-Nunn [1997] 2005: 6.   9. Sperling 2004: 67. 10. McNabb 2006: 66. 11. O’Hara 2000: 68. 12. Ibid., 77. 13. Ibid., 139–151. 14. Weinstein 2004: 73–99.

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NOTES

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

Klapisch-Zuber 1985: 183. Ibid., 183–185. O’Hara 2000: 37–38, 75. Karant-Nunn [1997] 2005: 22–24. Roper 1985: 87. Karant-Nunn [1997] 2005: 22–23. Ibid., 22–23. Roper 1985: 66. Weinstein (2004: 130–132) explains that the custom among Jews in Italy was quite similar. Schammes [seventeenth century] 1992: vol. 2 no 227; Sperber 2008: 151–157. Schammes [seventeenth century] 1992: vol. 2 no. 227. Sperber 2008: 158–165. See Sperber (2008: 158–165) for the history of these rings. They may have begun as reminders of the temple in Jerusalem, and then evolved to become betrothal rings. For a discussion of how small distinctions served as markers of identity during the Middle Ages, see Baumgarten 2014: 172–194. Roper 1985: 72–73. Klapisch-Zuber 1985: 186–194. Immediate mourners included those mourning the death of a parent, child, sibling, or spouse. The latter two categories had a shorter mourning period. Schammes [seventeenth century] 1992: vol. 2 no. 227. Weinstein 2004: 288. Cohen and Horowitz 1990: 225. Roper 1985: 64; Klapisch-Zuber 1985: 179. Cohen and Horowitz 1990: 234–235. Brundage 1987: 502. Cohen and Horowitz 1990: 232. Brundage 1987: 501. Safley 1984: 32–38. Karant-Nunn [1997] 2005: 15. Roper 1985: 66. Karant-Nunn [1997] 2005: 14. Ibid. Roper [1989] 1991. Wiesner-Hanks 2014: 72–104. Wiesner 2000; Leonard 2005. Davis 1975: 90–91. Brundage 1987: 552–553; Wiesner-Hanks 2014. Harrington 1995: 180–183. Brundage 1987: 561. Harrington 1995. Bamji 2013: 190. Brundage 1987: 563. Bamji 2013: 191. Bossy 1970. Brundage 1987: 565. Ibid., 564; Bamji 2013: 196. Hanley 1989: 9–11.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

NOTES

  60.   61.   62.   63.   64.   65.   66.   67.   68.   69.   70.   71.   72.   73.   74.   75.   76.   77.   78.   79.   80.   81.   82.   83.   84.   85.   86.   87.   88.   89.   90.   91.   92.   93.   94.   95.   96.   97.   98.

  99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

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Ferraro 2001b: 20–22. Ibid., 53. Grossman 2004: 49–51. Cohen and Horowitz 1990: 226–227. Divorce was permitted in Judaism. On Jewish divorce see Grossman 2004: 231–240. Grossman 2004: 49. Stow 2005: 915. Lamdan 2006. Sabar 1987. Kaplan 2015: 279. Cohen and Horowitz 1990: 246–247. Roper 1985: 74–75. Lowe 2002: 42–50. Harrington 1995: 201. Roper 1985: 75; Kaplan 2015: 297–298. Karant-Nunn [1997] 2005: 25. Roper 1985: 94. Ibid., 88. Davidovich-Eshed 2012. Schammes [seventeenth century] 1992: vol. 2 no. 227. Chovav 2009: 127. This is not to claim that there was a dichotomy between popular and elite culture. Rather, in these cases, the authorities opposed certain elements of popular culture. Feuchtwanger-Sarig 1987. Roper 1985: 88. Cohen and Horowitz 1990: 246. Weinstein 2004: 394. Cohen and Horowitz 1990: 247. Davis 1984. Roper 1985: 92. Kaplan 2015: 282–285. Roper 1985: 81. Klapisch-Zuber 1985: 231. Belmont 1982: 2. Roper 1985: 66. Robisheaux 2002: 116. Burguière 1982. Roper 1985: 99. The origin of this celebration was unknown to the rabbinic elite of the early modern period, and remains unclear to scholars (Zimmer 1980). See Sperber (2008: 183–193) for various explanations that late medieval and early modern rabbis offered for this practice, whose original meaning, like that of many popular customs, was unclear. Chovav 2009: 126. Sperber 2008: 160. Zimmer 1980: 20–21. Roper 1985: 79; Kaplan 2015: 290. Cohen and Horowitz 1990: 225.

164

104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110.

NOTES

Kaplan 2015: 293–294. Groebner 2002: 24–27. Baumgarten 2004; Kaplan 2013. Roper 1985: 92. Schammes [seventeenth century] 1992: vol. 2, no. 227. Chovav 2009: 128. Karant-Nunn and Wiesner-Hanks 2003: 115.

Chapter 2   1. Seidel Menchi 2001a.   2. For a clear distinction between pre- or extramarital, illicit sex, capable of satisfying the passions and guaranteeing sensual pleasure, and sex that was licit, marital, and aimed at procreation, see Ruggiero 1985. On the notion that “Marriage … never possessed the unity and stability in law, theology, or social practice that the modern defenders of tradition assume,” see and compare, Luebke and Lindemann 2014: 3.   3. For a reconstruction of the history of Christian marriage and the actions performed by religious and secular authorities to guarantee the publicity of marriage rites, see Donahue 2007.   4. On the lack of distinction between present and future, see Lombardi 2001: 200; Seidel Menchi 2001a: 35–42; McSheffrey 2004: 965. On pre-Tridentine matrimonial practices and the range of protocols, see Orlando 2010: 9–29, 59–112.   5. Cristellon 2017b: 49–58.   6. Esmein 1891: 245–262.   7. Seidel Menchi 2001a; Cristellon 2017b: 163.   8. For priests celebrating marriages in the home compare Roper’s Augsburg cases with Italian examples in Roper 1985: 67; Cristellon 2017b: 192; Lombardi 2001: 290. For the notary in particular, see Klapisch-Zuber 1987: 165–212.   9. Cristellon 2017b: 49–58, 164–166; Seidel Menchi 2001a. 10. Korpiola 2009: 60–65. 11. Weinstein 2004: 384–393. 12. Roper 1985: 92. 13. Duysseldorpii 1636: 195; Cristellon 2016. 14. Helmholz 1974; Donahue 2007; Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni 2001, 2004, 2006; McSheffrey 2006. 15. For the long-term persistence of a conception of marriage as a process and the social legitimacy of sexual relations between future spouses, see Pelaja 1994; Arrivo 2006, Romeo 2008. 16. Helmholz 2016: 144; Seidel Menchi 2016: 17; Lombardi 2016: 110; Korpiola 2016: 235– 236 Burghartz 2016: 177–179; Wunder 2016: 78–79; Van der Heijden 2016: 172. 17. Cristellon 2009. 18. Pelaja 1994; Romeo 2008 (regarding the early modern period). 19. Medick and Sabean 1984. 20. ASPV, Curia, II, CM, vol. 7, Andrea de Ballinio de Brixia v. Helisabeth filia Petri de Flandria, 1504. On theorists’ opinion regarding freedom of choice and the importance that individuals follow their own inclination to achieve human happiness, see Ago 1994: 192–193. Some sixteenth-century medical treatises identified the principal cause of sterility as the lack of pleasure women experienced during the sexual act. See Berriot-Salvadore 1995, particularly p. 379. On the forms of premarital courtship authorized (and supervised) by parents, see

NOTES

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

165

Flandrin 1975; Matthews-Grieco 1998: 53–99; Lombardi 2008: 126 and the bibliography referenced in Lombardi. ASPV, Curia, II, CM, vol. 9, Martino Cursio v. Giovanna di Giovanni de Liberalis de Arteno, 1507. ASPV, Curia, II, CM, vol. 9, Marco Antonio de Stefani v. Lucrezia q. Simonis Vacha, 1506– 07. Seidel Menchi 2001b. Barbaro [1416] 1915. ASPV, Curia, II, CM, vol. 12, Clara Marcello v. Francesco de Orlandis, 1512. ASPV, Curia, II, CM, vol. 18, Angeli Cerdoni v. Maria domine Ursule Furlane, 1520. ASPV, Curia, II, CM, vol. 7, Andrea de Ballinio de Brixia v. Helisabeth filia Petri de Flandria, 1504. ASPV, Curia, II, CM, vol. 9, Marco Antonio de Stefani v. Lucrezia q. Simonis Vacha, 1506–07. See in particular ASPV, Curia, II, CM, vol. 45, Lucretia Bondumier v. Hieronimo Mudazzo, 1546. For an example of a mother cursing her son if he were to marry a girl of whom she disapproved, see ASPV, Curia, II, CM, vol. 9, Domenico Michelis v. Andriana Bono, 1507– 09; another example of a mother’s curse is in Pedersen 2000: 109, note 6. See the example of Davis 2000: 113, who mentions the case of a Tuscan merchant bachelor, residing in Lyon, who disinherited his sister because she was guilty of marrying “without my consent and against my will,” and declared that he intended to nullify a bequest destined to another sister if she were to live with the wrong relative; see also Kirshner 2000: 119–214, 144 and note 69, who mentions a daughter whose father denied her her inheritance because she married without his approval. For examples of statutes that called for disinheritance on account of marriages concluded against parents’ wishes, see Kirshner 2000: 136. The same reasons justifying why children could be disinherited also authorized parents to deny them alimony, see Kirshner 2000: 134 and note 37. Also, Lombardi 2001: 42–59. ASPV, Curia, II, CM, vol. 9, Marco Antonio de Stefani v. Lucrezia q. Simonis Vacha, 1506–07. ASV, Notarile testamenti, busta 271, no. 569, testamentum domine Paule relicta q. Symonis Vacha, April 7, 1507. Atti Bernardus de Cavaneis. Tacit disinheritance “was hazardous, for the permitted party would likely bring an action to have the testament nullified.” See Kirshner 2000: 122. Another example of a mother trying to use her will to condition her daughter’s marital life is in ASV, Notarile testamenti, busta 271, no. 583, Testamentum domine Perine uxor ser Iohannis Vidutii, atti Bernardus de Cavaneis, April 19, 1515 (Pierina’s daughter, Polissena, is involved in the marital case conserved in ASPV, Curia, II, CM, vol. 13, Iohannis de Masonibus v. Polissena Vidutiis). ASPV, Curia, II, CM, vol. 18, Angeli Cerdoni v. Maria domine Ursule Furlane, 1520. Other examples are in Hacke 2001. ASPV, Curia, II, CM, vol. 21, Helisabeth filia Iohannis Buttarii v. Gaspare Ioannis Pistoris, 1522. This was according to Bartolus of Saxoferrato, one of the foremost European jurists of medieval Roman law. See Cavina 2011: 20–21. According to Azpilcueta, the author of one of the most authoritative confession manuals of the early modern period (Azpilcueta 1589: 196–197). See examples of statutes in Cavina 2011: 22; concerning legal disputes, see Minnucci 2000. Quoted in Di Simplicio 1994: 336, 331. Also see Di Simplicio 2000. ACDF, SO, St. St. M5p, 1698 Spoleto, 42. ASPV, Curia, II, CM, vol. 1, fascicolo 14, Michaelis Iustiniano cum Clara Matafaris, 1455; ASPV, Curia, II, CM,, vol. 6 fascicolo 16, Marietta Belapiera v. Giovanni Andreani de Nigris, 1498.

166

NOTES

40. Di Renzo Villata 1989: 1350–76. 41. Ferraro 1995; Ferraro 2001b: 120–133; Borello 2003: 156–194; La Rocca 2009. 42. See for example ASPV, Curia, II, CM, vol. 1, fascicolo 14, Clara Matafar v. Michele Giustinian, 1455. 43. ASPV, Curia, II, AMP, registro 23, Elena Contarini v. Benedetto Erizo, March 5–November 17, 1462. In ASPV, Curia, II, AMP, registro 13, Anna v. Matteo Trevisano, September 17– 18, 1451, the presiding vicar granted Anna the separation until her husband “offers suitable and sufficient surety, as determined by the presiding vicar, with regard to the indemnity and safety” of his wife’s goods and person. In ASPV, Curia, II, AMP, registro 16, Ermanno teutonico v. Agnete, June 5, 1454, the vicar decided that Agnete not be forced to return to her husband’s home “because of her husband’s great cruelty, for which he offered no surety.” See also Chojnacki 2000a. 44. Cristellon 2017b: 172–174 and 224–225 for the statistical data. 45. Lombardi 2008: 25; Orlando 2010: 90 and notes 106–107. 46. Cristellon 2017b: 166–172. 47. Wunder 2016: 73. 48. Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Heloise, for example, went through more than seventy editions in only twenty years. See Darnton 1988. 49. Traer 1980; Phillips 1980. 50. Watt 1989 and 1992. 51. Di Renzo Villata 1989. On these themes, La Rocca 2009. 52. Minchella 2014: 63. 53. Dursteler 2011: 16. 54. Meek 2000: 124–125. 55. Cristellon 2017a. 56. Bennassar and Bennassar 1991: 288. 57. Minchella 2014: 69. 58. Fernández Chavez and Pérez García 2009: 61; Mazur 2013. 59. ACDF, DM 1603–1722, XVIII, 1680 Belgrado in Turchia. 60. The degree to which this separation was entirely normative and incapable of preventing contact, exchanges, or mutual influence is thoroughly documented in Caffiero 2012. 61. Ruggiero 1985: 88, 144–147. Orlando 2010: 176–177. 62. Caffiero 2015. 63. Caffiero 2004: 111–257. 64. For the formula see Clericati 1706: 102–103 (Decisio XI, n. 24). 65. Caffiero 2004: 304–312. On the prohibition preventing Jewish woman from concluding a second marriage without having been repudiated by their convert husband, see Pullan 1983: 278–279, who cites an opinion of Leon Modena in this regard. For an example of the Roman Inquisition denying a neophyte’s request to grant his wife the ghet, see ACDF, St. St., M-5-m, 1754, Modena. 66. Gasparri 1951: 5:381 (N. 2850, S.C.C., Florentina, July 1, 1679). Also for this case see Marconcini 2016: 81–82. 67. The first to treat the question seems to have been Martin de Azpilcueta, called The Navarro, who wrote a widely used confessor’s manual in the sixteenth century. See Puthota 1958: 31. 68. Cristellon 2017a. 69. On mixed marriages in the German areas of the Holy Roman Empire, see Freist 2017, who dedicates significant attention to the conflicts concerning the problem of patria potestas.

NOTES

167

70. On eighteenth-century reformism and its influence on marital matters generally, see Lombardi 2001: 455–468; Jemolo 1972; Lombardi 2008:193–196. 71. ACDF, MM, busta 4 (1766–77), 1770, IV, Genova. 72. ACDF, MM, busta 4 (1766–77), 1770, IV, Genova, 282. 73. ACDF, MM, busta 4 (1766–77), 1770, IV, Genova, 282; 284, in particular for the letter of the inquisitor. 74. ACDF, MM, busta 4 (1766–77), 1770, IV, Genova, 284. 75. Fosi 2011. 76. ACDF, MM, busta 4 (1766–77), 1770, IV, Genova, 287.

Chapter 3   1. Plummer 1996: 101–104.   2. Landeskirchliches Archive Wolfenbüttel (hereafter LKAW), Konsistrialakten (hereafter as KA) V237, Konsistrialprotokolle, 201a–220b; LKAW KA V390, Konsistrialprotokolle, 93b–94a; LKAW KA V1955, Verzeichnis General Consistorium, May 8, 1580 and November 23, 1580.   3. For the exchange of coins as a popular method of signifying engagement and marriage, see Van Dülmen 1988: 82–84; Roper 1985: 96; Bärtschi 1950: 35–46; Bächtold-Stäubli 1914: 141–151.   4. Hoffmann 1581: A4b.   5. Karant-Nunn [1997] 2005: 34.   6. Herzog August Bibliothek (hereafter HAB): L272 4° Helmst. (5), Edict, June 5, 1578.   7. Harrington 1995: 48–59; Duby 1991: 20.   8. Brundage 1987: 190–191, 414–415, 435–437.   9. Duby 1991: 20–21; Donahue 1983: 146–147. 10. Brundage 1987: 546–550. 11. Donahue 2016: 33–36. 12. Duby 1983. 13. Kirshner 2015: 2–19. 14. Brundage 2009. 15. Kirshner 2015. 16. Roper [1989] 1991: 166. 17. Brucker 1986. 18. Korpiola 2011: 2–3; Karant-Nunn [1997] 2005: 6–42; Roper 1985: 62–65. 19. Stadtarchiv Augsburg (StadtAA), Hochzeitamt, Akten 1563–1809. 20. Stuart 1999: 87–88; Roper 1985: 72. 21. Rothman 2012: 108–110. 22. Haskins 2004: 125–127; D’Elia 2004: 123–129; Kohl and Witt 1984: 18. 23. D’Elia 2004: 51–82. 24. Reynolds 2016: 730–742. 25. Carrión 2010: 25–27; Poska 2005: 3–4. 26. Woodbridge 2001: 160–166. 27. Luther [1530] 1966: 266–267. 28. Huberinus 1561: E4. 29. Alberus 1546: B3b. 30. Plummer 1996: 108–161. 31. Witte 1999: 36–43. 32. Dyer 2003: 444.

168

NOTES

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

Hurwich 2006, 176. Mayes 2011: 33–35. Witte 1999: 74–75; Watt 1992. Pohl-Zucker 2017: 33; Falk 2006. Witte 1999: 53–73. Kuehn 2017: 2–9, 103–164. Swinburne 1686; Sokol and Sokol 2003: 97–99. Hanley 1989: 8–9. Lefebvre-Teillard 2016: 263, 283 n.4. Höpfl 2004: 196–197. For a discussion of marriage law in drama, see Mukheij 2006: 17–54. Among others, Bunker 2014; Dolan 2011; Sokol and Sokol 2003. Shakespeare, All’s Well that Ends Well, 3.2.56–59. Carrión 2010. Hoffmann 1581: E3a. Karant-Nunn [1997] 2005: 7. Biel 1996: 141. See, for instance, Elector Palatine Frederick III 1563; Nuremberg 1647. For more examples of marriage ordinances, see Sehling 1902–. Tietz 1969: 17; Van Dülmen 1988: 72. Van der Heijden 2016: 156. Michaelis 1990; Dieterich 1970; Sohm 1875; Friedberg 1865. Laqua-O’Donnell 2016: 76–108. Harrington 1995; Safley 1982. Van der Heijden 2016: 156–157; Ferraro 2001b. Cristellon 2017b: 33–35; Ferraro 2001b: 26–27. Kuehn 2017: 122–123. Barahona 2003: 121–155; Marilyn Stone 1990. Poska 2005: 89–97; Dyer 2003: 439–455 Ferraro 2001b: 22, 36, 136–154; Hacke 2004: 31–64; Guzzetti 2003: 256. Gerber 2012: 6–7. Reynolds 2016: 980. Hanley 1989: 9–11. Donahue 2016: 37–39; Lefebvre-Teillard 2016: 262–265. Plummer 1996: 106; Harrington 1995: 138. Witte and Kingdom 2005; Witte 1999: 91–92; Watt 1992. Van der Heijden 2016: 161–167. Köhler 1932. Harrington 1995: 39, 327n68. Safley 1992: 187–201; Köhler 1932: 320–329. Roper [1989] 1991: 165, 195. Burghartz 1999a: 41–56; Safley 1982: 164–165. Van der Heijden 2016: 159. McNabb 2006: 59–60. Roper [1989] 1991; Safley 1984. For England, see Ingram 1990. McNabb 2006: 62. Van der Heijden 2016: 170–172.

51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

NOTES

169

79. HAB: 136 Novissimi 8°, 7, October 18, 1699. See also HAB: 57.8 Politica (35), N1a–N2b (1593); HAB: L268 Helmst. (2), February 25, 1609. 80. Rickman 2008: 16; Stone 1992: 29–32. 81. Burghartz 1999b: 74–85. 82. Donahue 2016: 45.

Chapter 4   1.   2.   3.   4.   5.   6.   7.   8.   9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

See Lévi-Strauss 1949; Godelier 2004; Héritier 1981. Delille 2007. Ibid. Ibid. Ruggiu 2010. Sabean, Mathieu, and Teuscher 2007. Ruggiu 2010. Ibid., 241. Ibid. Occhi 2013; Martinat 2013; Trivellato 2009. Van Gelder 2013. Kirshner 2015. Bellavitis 2001. Howell 1998. Bellavitis 2002. Perceval 2007. Hugon 2007. Nassiet 2007. Zum Kolk 2007. Moeglin and Péquignot 2017. Howell 1998; Erickson 1990; Agren 2000. Descimon 2009; Lanza 2003. Bellavitis 2001: 271. Colesanti 2010. Brunelle 2012. Lis and Soly 2012. Solà 2008. Bellavitis 2018. Vicente Valentín 1994. Cerutti 1990. Cavallo 2006. Bellavitis 2013. Bellavitis 2001: 307. Cowan 2007. Seidel Menchi 2016. Lefebvre-Teillard 2016. Hanley 1989. De Castelnau-L’Estoile 2009. Messana 2008. Davis 1983.

170

NOTES

Chapter 5   1.   2.   3.   4.   5.   6.   7.   8.   9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

Pomata 1996: 43–64. Abreu-Ferreira 2015: 52–60. De Lurdes Rosa 1995: 125, 165, 179–180. Boxer 1975: 75; Isaacman 1972; Coates 2001: 158. Gonçalves [1557] 1785: 186. De Souza 1995: 87; Cunha Rivara 1877: 514. Nazzari 1991: 25–31, 64, 130–131. Bellavitis 1998: 149–150; Bellavitis 2008: 37. Doxiadis 2011: 17, 23; Doxiadis 2010: 238–255. Tucker 1998: 53; Fay 1997: 42. Crook 1986: 60. Papakonstantinou 1998: 2–4; Mayali 1987: 7; Crook 1986: 69. Mayali 1987; Chabot 2011. Bellomo 1961: 169. Sperling 1999. Lombardi 2001. Chojnacki 1999; Bellavitis 2008: 63–67. Tucker 1998: 42–43; Rapoport 2001: 31. Rapoport 2005: 24–25. Sigoli [1384] 1862: 167. Rapoport 2001: 11, 23, 32–33. Ibid., 29. Rapoport 2005: 2–4. Ibid., 16. Winer 2006: 94; Stow 2001: 76; McKee 1995: 37. McKee 1995: 37. Stow 2001: 74. Ibid., 76–78. Hunt 2007: 189. Wessel Lightfoot 2010; Grbavac 2010. De Lurdes Rosa 1995. Sperling 2010; Bellavitis 2008: 114; Lumìa 1997: 111; Lumìa 1998: 46. Ordenações 1747: 35–36. Chabot 2011: 14; Sperling 2010. Chabot 2011: 19. Ibid., 31. Ibid., 41–66. Archivio di Stato di Firenze (hereafter ASF), Ruota Civile, reg. 4579, November 14, 1533, 425v. Pomata 1996. ASF, Ruota Civile, reg. 4579, December 6, 1532, 134r. ASF, Ruota Civile, reg. 4579, December 6, 1532, 136r. ASF, Ruota Civile, reg. 4579, July 14, 1533, 296r. ASF, Ruota Civile, reg. 4588, May 27, 1541, 47r. ASF, Ruota Civile, reg. 4624, January 6, 1572, 36r–37v. Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (hereafter ANTT), Registro geral dos testamentos, livro 3, January 20, 1650, 43r.

NOTES

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

171

ANTT, Registro geral dos testamentos, livro 3, August 17, 1650, 140r–v. ANTT, Registro geral dos testamentos, livro 3, December 16, 1649, 179r–v. ANTT, Registro geral dos testamentos, livro 3, June 16, 1632, 170r–v. ANTT, Registro geral dos testamentos, livro 3, undated, 121v–122r; August 14, 1650, 123r; September 9, 1649, 180r-181r; October 2, 1649, 182r. Bellavitis 2008: 114. Ibid. Lombardo 1973: 176–178. Ibid., 316. “Respondit quod volo quod ipsa tam viduando quam non viduando habeat tercima partem” (Lombardo 1973: 179). “Illa revoco et reduci volo ad ipsa consilia, statuta, et ordinamenta mea prout fieri poterit intencione servata” (Lombardo 1973: 180). Bellavitis 2008: 114, 158. Ferro [1778–81] 1845: 760. Ibid., 764. ANTT, Registro geral dos testamentos, livro 3, April 5, 1650, 144r-v. ANTT, Registro geral dos testamentos, livro 3, April 9, 1650, 160v-161v. ANTT, Registro geral dos testamentos, livro 3, June 8, 1649, 155r-v. ANTT, Registro geral dos testamentos, livro 3, September 6, 1649, 172r-v. Chabot 2011: 101. Ibid., 102. ANTT, Registro geral dos testamentos, livro 3, February 26, 1645, and March 3, 1646, 174r-176v. Isaacman 1972. ANTT, Belchior de Montalvo, cartorio 15, livro de notas 8, May 22, 1572, 76v-77r. ANTT, Registro geral dos testamentos, livro 3, August 1, 1650, 83r-v. Rapoport 2005: 5, 69, 83. Hacke 2004: 46. Ferraro 2001b: 66, 160. Sperling 2004: 75–77. Lombardi 2001: 14, 36, 54, 58, 65. Sperling 2004: 70. Albuquerque and Borges Nunes 1988: 216. Hughes-Johnson 2012: 3–30. Sperling 2009: 119–146. “Exceptioni dictae dotis non sie receptae omnino renuntians” (Archivio di Stato di Venezia (hereafter ASV), Notarile Atti, busta 5616, Giovanni Figolin, July 7, 1572, 11v; July 22, 1572, 38r; July 26, 1572, 41r; July 28, 1572, 43r). Ferguson 2016. Marcocci 2015: 38–39. Boswell 1994: 133–135. ANTT, Registro geral dos testamentos, livro 3, March 26, 1650, 153v-154r. ANTT, Registro geral dos testamentos, livro 3, September 19, 1649, 108r-111v. ANTT, Registro geral dos testamentos, livro 3, March 22, 1650, 146r; May 21, 1650, 210r (uncertain pagination). Rapoport 2005: 20–22. Braga 2011; Gavitt 1990.

172

NOTES

  87.   88.   89.   90.   91.   92.   93.   94.   95.   96.   97.   98.   99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109.

110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116.

Braga 2011: 224. Da Silva 2016: 286, 294. Origo 1955: 346. Gavitt 1990: 217–224. Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa (hereafter SCML), Entradas e baptismo dos Expostos, livro 006. SCML, Entradas e baptismos, livro 002; nos. 1–100, July 1, 1661–October 9, 1661. SCML, Conhecimento das Amas, livro 001, June 10, 1670–May 25, 1671. SCML, Entradas e baptismos, livro 006, August 2, 1670, 26v; SCML, Conhecimento das Amas, livro 001, July 12, 1670, 4r; July 3, 1673, 4r. SCML, Conhecimento das Amas, livro 001, 11v. SCML, Entradas e baptismos, livro 006, June 19, 1670, 22v. SCML, Entradas e baptismos, livro 002, September 20, 1661, 16r. SCML, Entradas e baptismos, livro 002, October 22, 1661, 16r. SCML, Entradas e baptismos, livro 006, July 21, 1670, 23v. SCML, Conhecimento das Amas, livro 001, January 9, 1674, 156v. See also ibid., December 28, 1670, 23r, 37r. SCML, Conhecimento das Amas, livro 001, 22r. SCML, Conhecimento das Amas, livro 001, 30v. SCML, Conhecimento das Amas, livro 001, December 10, 1671, 60v. SCML, Conhecimento das Amas, livro 001, 1v, 5r, 21r, 22v, 31v, 36r, 40v, 49r, 52r. SCML, Conhecimento das Amas, livro 001, 2r, 10r, 22r, 22v, 30r, 32r, 34v, 44v, 47r, 48r, 52v, 156v. SCML, Conhecimento das Amas, livro 001, 3r, 7r, 8r, 26v, 30r, 38r, 39v, 46v, 50r, 54r, 55v, 59v, 61v, 62r. SCML, Conhecimento das Amas, livro 001, May 18, 1675, 49v. SCML, Conhecimento das Amas, livro 001, September 12, 1673, 18r. Joanne Ferraro has shown in great detail how this double standard led to infanticide and the criminalization of mothers who were victims of sexual abuse (Ferraro 2008: 116– 150). Sussman 1982: 31. Ospedale di San Gallo, Balie e Bambini, reg. 7, November 13, 1412, 272v; reg. 9, September 6, 1427, 35r; reg. 9, March 13, 1431, 104r; reg. 9, February 19, 1425, 15v. Ospedale di San Gallo, Balie e Bambini, reg. 9, June 3, 1420, 70r; May 3, 1426, 18v. Ospedale di San Gallo, Balie e Bambini, reg. 6 (1394–1401), reg. 7 (1398–1412), reg. 8 (1413–25), reg. 9 (1425–34). Gavitt 1990: 207. Rubin 1975. Bullen Presciutti 2015: 220–221.

Chapter 6   1.   2.   3.   4.   5.

Unless otherwise stipulated, all translations are my own. For example, Cristellon 2010. Enfance abandonnée 1991; Laslett, Oosterveen, and Smith 1980; Schellekens 1995. Stone 1992: 7–12. On these customs in early modern Europe, see Burguière 2011; Cressy 1997; Da Moulin 2000; Ingram 1987; Ferraro 2001b; Flandrin [1975] 2014; Flandrin 1977; Lombardi 2001; Ruggiero 1985; Stone 1977.

NOTES

173

  6. Macfarlane 1987: 298.   7. Cf. Cavallo and Cerutti 1990; Cressy 1997: 316–378; Flandrin 1977; Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni 2001; Stone 1992.   8. Cavallo and Cerutti 1990: 77–78.   9. Gowing 1996: 165–166. 10. Dean and Lowe 1998; Flandrin 1980; Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni 2001; Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni 2006; Stone 1992. 11. Lombardi 1996: 215–250. 12. Cited in Hudry 1974: 95–100; translated and cited in Flandrin 1980: 34. 13. Lombardi 2001: 216. 14. d’Arrerac (1601: 243) cited in Desplat (1995: 249). See also Pierre de Lancre (1612) cited in Flandrin ([1975] 2014: 187). 15. Cavallo and Cerutti 1990: 80. 16. Lombardi 2001: 213–215. 17. For example, Cohen 1991: 169–191; Cohen and Cohen 1993; Ferraro 2001b; Flandrin 1975; Hudry 1974; Gottlieb 1980; Ingram 1987; Cressy 1997. 18. Hill [1984] 2005:184–185. 19. Gottlieb 1980. 20. Hufton 1995: 62–136; Hill [1984] 2005: 175–196. 21. For a European overview: Seidel Menchi 2016: 318–322. For the Italian example, see Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni 2001; Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni 2006. 22. On this incident, see Cohen 2000: 47–75. For partial transcriptions of this trial, see Christiansen and Mann 2001; Garrard 1989. On recourse to justice to repair female honor, see Cohen and Cohen 1993. 23. Cavallo and Cerutti 1990: 99. 24. Cf. Ferraro 2008; Ruggiero 1985: 16–44, 89–108; Lombardi 2001; Seidel Menchi 2016: 153–258; Arrivo 2006; Farge 1986: 7–100; Stone 1992: 83–231. 25. Adair 1996: 97. 26. On forced marriage, see also Ferraro 2001b: 33–68; Stone 1992: 83–104. 27. Cavallo and Cerutti 1990: 73–109. 28. Laslett, Oosterveen, and Smith 1980. 29. Cressy 1997: 277. 30. Flandrin 1975: 177–179; Pillorget: 1979: 212. 31. Lebrun 1998: 53. 32. Stone 1992: 53; Demars-Sion 1991; Ingram 1987; Phan 1975; Phan 1986. 33. Hitchcock 1987: 24–41. 34. Brundage 1987; Wiesner-Hanks 2014. 35. Payer 1993. 36. Shorter 1975: Appendix IV. 37. Lebrun 1998: 103–104. 38. Paré [1628 edition] 1954: bk. 33: 1049. On the longue-durée belief in magic impediments to the consummation of marriage, see also Duni 2014. 39. Thiers 1697–1704: 3:567–584. On Thiers, see also Laqueur 1990, and Simons 2011. 40. Delumeau 1978: 54–59. 41. Goulemot 1988: 22–30. 42. Flandrin 1979: 161. 43. On the medieval church and its attitude toward marital sex, cf. Brundage 1987; Flandrin 2006; Payer 1993.

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44. On the conjugal debt and marital chastity, see Flandrin [1981] 1986: 127–135; Makowski 1977: 99–114. 45. On the effect of diet on the libido, see Grieco 2010. 46. Giannetti 2014. 47. Lemay 1992: 78. For a more general view of medieval thinking on sex difference and generation, see Cadden 1993. 48. Brundage 1993: 81–93; Flandrin 1980. 49. On late medieval theories of procreation, see Bullough 1994: 31–45; Bullough 1973: 485– 501; Thomasset 1992. 50. Mercurii 1621: 14. This midwifery manual was to enjoy a century of success, with editions in various languages up to 1713. Laqueur 1990. 51. Horowitz 1987: 86–94. 52. Hitchcock 1987: 47. 53. Maclean 1977, 1980: 46. 54. On compatibility and gender order in marriage, see Amussen 1988; Eisenach 2004. 55. On the mutation of the model of marital relations in this period, see Amussen 1988; Bock 2002; Camden 1952; Frigo 1985; Gaudemet 1987; Hull 1982; Hull 1996; Kelso 1956; Richardson 2000; Seidel Menchi 2016. 56. Porter and Hall 1995: 52–53. On reproduction literature and theory, see also Fissell 2005; Park 2010; Simons 2011. 57. Berriot-Salvadore 1993: 214. 58. Porter and Hall 1995: 33–64, 44; Porter 1988: 22–30. 59. On contraception and abortion, see Flandrin 1970; McLaren 1990; Riddle 1992; Riddle 1999. 60. Flandrin 1979: 209. 61. Helmholz 2016: 122–152; Lombardi 2016: 94–121; Stone 1977: 221–481; Coontz 2006. 62. On this shift in the perception of female sexuality, see Perry 1991: 204–235; Vila 1995: 76–93; Lieselotte 1995: passim.

Chapter 7   1. Wiltshire and Swindon Archives (hereafter WSA), D1/39/1/43 (Bishop of Salisbury, Instance Act Book, 1616–17), fos. 91v, 127r; D1/42/30 (Bishop of Salisbury, Deposition Book, 1615–16), fos. 126r–127v.   2. Helmholz 1974: 26–30; Ingram 2017: 44–57.   3. Ingram 1987: 132–136; Ingram 2017: 51–52, 324–325.   4. Bonfield 2001: 106–108, 112–113.   5. Helmholz 1974: 74–100.   6. Ingram 1987: 128–129.   7. Carlson 1994: 67–71, 81–82, 87; the relevant acts were 25 Henry VIII c.22 and 28 Henry VIII c.7.   8. Carlson 1994: 93–94.   9. Carlson 1994: 82, 87; Ingram 2017: 324–325. 10. Helmholz 1974: 100–107. 11. Ingram 1987: 143–144, 180, 183–185; Hubbard 2012: 135–147; cf. Gowing 1996: 219. 12. Ozment 1983: 80–92. 13. Watt 2001 provides a useful summary. See also Ozment 1983: 92–98; Safley 1984: 25–37, 74–83, 96, 121–140, 163–165, 174–176; Watt 1992: 45–50, 121–162; Harrington 1995: 87–91, 260–270; Roper [1989] 1991: 166, 170; Bonfield 2001: 110–111; Korpiola 2016: 237–240.

NOTES

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

175

Carlson 1994: 73–79. Hughes and Larkin 1964: 422. Dibdin and Healey 1912: 62–69, 83–92. Baker 1994: vol. 2, 299. Capp 2000: 470. Bunny 1610: sigs. 2v–3v. Dibdin and Healey 1912: 58–60. Houlbrooke 1979: 71; Ingram 1987: 179. Rickman 2008: 111–139. Davies 1977: 575. Stretton 2007; cf. Ingram 1987: 149. Cross 1988: 205–206; Thompson 1991: 404–466; Haigh 2007: 170. Ingram 1987: 186–188; Ingram 2017: 327, 332, 358, 400. Avis 1975. Kingdon 1995: 116–142. Ingram 2017: 108–111. Thomas 1978. Ingram 2017: 312–321. Postles 2003. Ingram 2017: 337–354. Ibid., 302–304, 355–389, 424. Ingram 1987: 53–54. Osborn 1962: 81, 97. John 8: 3–11. Ingram 1987: 254; Hubbard 2012: 171. Ingram 2017, 327–328. Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Record Office (hereafter LLRRO), BR II/18/6 (Leicester Borough Records, Hall Papers Bound, 1585–1603), nos. 54, 55, 65. Ingram 1987: 244–245. London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA), DL/C/220 (Diocese of London, Consistory Court Deposition Book, 1611), fo. 653r. WSA, D1/41/3/23 (Bishop of Salisbury, Court Papers, Libels, etc., 1697–1703), no. 46. LLRRO, 1 D 41/4/348c (Leicester Archdeaconry Records, Court Proceedings), fo. 2r. Hubbard 2012: 125. Ingram 2017: 106–108, 206–207, 336, 341–342, 381–382. Dolan 1994; Gowing 1996; Turner 2002. Ingram 1987: 152, 219–237, 259–281. Ingram 2017: 182, 189–193, 197–198, 408, 422–423. Ibid. 423. Ibid., 125–126, 353–354, 357–358, 387–389, 413. Ibid., 193. Haigh 2007: 166. Gowing 1996: 109. Ingram 1987: 154, 302–303; Davies 1977: 576. Gowing 1996: 64, 74–75, 92–93; Hubbard 2012: 178–181. LMA, DL/C/225 (Diocese of London, Consistory Court Deposition Book, 1617–19), fo. 218v. Ingram 2017: 192.

176

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59. McSheffrey 2006: 166–170. 60. LMA, DL/C/629 (Diocese of London, Consistory Court Deposition Book, 1578–80), fos. 24v, 25r. 61. Ingram 2017: 383. 62. LMA, DL/C/218 (Diocese of London, Consistory Court Deposition Book, 1608–09), pp. 467, 480, 503–504. 63. Quaife 1979: 124–135; Ingram 1987: 250–251. 64. Ingram 1987: 251. 65. Ungerer 2003. 66. Fox and Ingram 2014: 29–30. 67. Haigh 1983; Ingram 2017: 239–266, 404. 68. Gowing 1996: 200. 69. LMA, DL/C/225 (Diocese of London, Consistory Court Deposition Book, 1617–19), fo. 241r–v. 70. Ingram 1987: 251. 71. Capp 2012: 136. 72. Ibid., 132–151. 73. Lawrence Stone 1990: 231–300; Turner 2002: 172–193. 74. Durston 1989: 18–20, 29–30, 98–100. 75. Lawrence Stone 1990: 308–322.

Chapter 8   1.   2.   3.   4.   5.   6.   7.   8.   9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

D’Elia 2004: 84. Bayer 2008a. Altieri [1506–13] 1995; Bayer 2008b: 4; Krohn 2008: 10. Krohn 2008: 9. Fortini Brown 2004: 141–145, 150–151; Labalme and Sanguineti White 1999: esp. 62–64; Thompson 2008: 147–148. Bridgeman with Griffiths 2013. Ibid., 100. Thornton 2008: 83–85; Musacchio 2008a: 100–102. Thornton 2008: 70–71; Wilson 2016: 104–109. Lanmon with Whitehouse (1993): 6, 8–12. McNab 2008: 93–94. Musacchio (2008b: 150–151) discusses the popularity of the imagery of rape scenes on Florentine chests. Thornton 2008: 96–97. The four are now divided between different collections. For an overview, see CrépinLeblond and Ennès 1995: 87–91. Otero Morán 2008: 186–187, 465–466. Warren 2008: 122–123; Warren 2014: 244–253. Musacchio 2008b: 127–136. For an introduction to this issue, see Krohn 2008: 103. Bridgeman with Griffiths 2013: 66–67. Musacchio 2008a: 100–102. Mann 2016: 144–146. An example in gold with enamel decoration now in the Metropolitan Museum (17.190.996) is sometimes dated as early as the seventeenth century, or as late as the nineteenth. Some

NOTES

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

177

scholars believe that most, if not all, of the large, elaborately ornamented rings now known are probably from the nineteenth century, inspired by the unearthing of the much earlier rings through excavation at that time. See Musacchio 2008a: 102, and Mann 2016: 144– 146. Krohn 2008: 102–103; for an overview of the subject, see Musacchio 2008b: 136–159. Edwards 2008: 255–256. The relevant passages from Vasari are found in Krohn 2008: 64–65. Campbell, Barraclough, and Schmidt 2009. For a complete overview, see Krohn 2008: 129–133; a discussion of the vexing issue of the iconography of cassone panels is found in Musacchio 2008b: 145–156. Campbell, Barraclough, and Schmidt (2009: 34–37) identifies the ways in which ancient history—including that of Israel—had an exemplary function both in painted cassone panels and in the vernacular chapbooks, or compendia, that were equally common in Florentine households. These paintings are now in the National Gallery, London; the Borghese Gallery, Rome; the Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence; and the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Bayer 2008b: 234–235; Braham 1979; Preyer 2006: 42. Debates concerning the decision by the Borgherini to create such an extensive cycle related to the figure of Joseph are found in the cited literature. For this well-known quotation from Giorgio Vasari’s Lives, see Bayer 2008b: 235; the scheme to send important works to Francis I in France is related in Elam 1993. For a discussion, see Fahy 2008: 17–27. For both quotations, see Campbell 2008: 58–59, 426. Boskovits and Brown 2003: 599; Fahy 2008: 21–22; Bayer 2011: 262–267. Bayer 2011: 262–263. Christiansen 2011: 96. Prajda 2013. Baldwin 1986. Pliny (77 CE) vol. 25, book 43: 152. Wright 2000: 96; for the Plinian anecdote and its relation to portraiture, see McHam 2013: 51, 233, 317, 329. Sale 2016. Some viewers have suggested that the young, married woman is pregnant, her ample gown stretched suggestively over her belly. See Hall 1994: 5. For his conclusions, see Panofsky [1953] 1971: 201–203. Hall 1995: 83. Campbell 1998: 174–211, esp. 198–204, concluding, “there seems little reason to believe that the portrait has any significant narrative content” (200). For example, almost a century later Lorenzo Lotto painted a Portrait of a Married Couple (The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg) in which the sitters surround themselves with accoutrements suggesting that they were passing through a trial in life, and certainly not the celebration of their marriage. Sprinson de Jesus 1998: 162–165. Pope-Hennessy 1987: 214–217; Edwards 2008: 261–263; Bayer 2011: 279–281. Ghirardi 2003: 53. Bayer 2011: 279. Brown 2009. Lucco 1997: 134–137. Christiansen 1986; Bayer 2008b: 321–323.

178

NOTES

53. 54. 55. 56.

D’Elia 2004. Tufte 1970: 58–59. Massi 2006. Tufte 1970: chapter 3; Roberts 2013: 99, 126, fig. 132, where a graffito carved next to the image of a sacred serpent warns against the snares of Venus. For a birthtray with this imagery, see Pope-Hennessy and Christiansen 1980: 10, and Musacchio 2008a: 152–153; for Vecellio, see Thompson 2008: 145–147; for a laccio d’amore see Bayer 2008b: 323. Anderson 1997: 222–225. Bayer 2008b: 232. Plazzotta 2007: 323–333. Ibid., 329.

57.

58. 59. 60. 61.

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Archival and Library Collections Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Florence, Italy Ruota Civile Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Venice, Italy Notarile. Atti Notarile. Testamenti Archivio Storico del Patriarcato di Venezia, Venice, Italy Curia, Sezione antica. Actorum Mandatorum Praeceptorum Curia, Sezione antica. Causarum Matrimoniorum Archivio della Congregazione per la dottrina della fede, Rome, Italy Dubia circa Matrimonia Matrimonia Mixta Sanctum Officium Stanza Storica Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon, Portugal Registro geral dos testamentos Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany 136 Novissimi 8° 57.8 Politica (35) L268 Helmst (2) L272 4° Helmst (5) Landeskirchliches Archive Wolfenbüttel, Wolfenbüttel, Germany Konsistrialakten: V237, V390, V1955 Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Record Office, Leicester, England 1 D 41/4/348c (Leicester Archdeaconry Court Proceedings, 1581) BR II/18/6 (Leicester Borough Records, Hall Papers Bound, 1585–1603) London Metropolitan Archives, London, England DL/C/218 (Diocese of London, Consistory Court Deposition Book, 1608–09) DL/C/220 (Diocese of London, Consistory Court Deposition Book, 1611) DL/C/225 (Diocese of London, Consistory Court Deposition Book, 1617–19) DL/C/629 (Diocese of London, Consistory Court Deposition Book, 1578–80) Ospedale di San Gallo, Florence, Italy Balie e Bambini Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal Conhecimento das Amas Entradas e baptismo dos Expostos Stadtarchiv Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany Hochzeitamt, Akten 1563–1809 Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, Chippenham, England

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INDEX

abandonment 42, 43, 98 children 84, 94, 97, 99 Abreu-Ferreira, Darlene 84 abuse 15, 16, 17 Accaiuoli, Margherita 150 Adelman, Howard 17 adultery 25, 59, 65, 119, 121, 122, 126–38 African slaves 138 agnatic kinship systems 87, 88, 89, 90 aguillette 110 Albert Achilles of Brandenburgh 74 Alberti, Leon Battista 57 Alexander III (Pope) 54 Alexander VI (Pope) 75 Altieri, Marco Antonio 140 American colonies 81 Amsterdam 72, 77 Anne of Brittany 74, 144 Annoni, Giovanni Battista 145 Annoni-Visconti Marriage Bowl 145 annulment 10–11, 44, 121. See also nullity Ansingwein 33–4 anthropology 69, 70 Anton-Ulrich, Duke of BraunschweigLüneburg 65 Antwerp 77 Apollonio di Giovanni di Tomaso 149 Apulia 71 Aragon 73 Archdeacon, Florence 136 aristocrats. See elites; nobility Aristotle 57, 60, 113, 114, 139 Arnolfini, Giovanni di Nicolao 154 arranged marriages 5, 41, 93, 97 arras 87 art 7, 139–40 paintings 157–9 portraits 151–8 artifacts 7, 139–40 betrothal and wedding gifts 140–8 home furnishings 148–50 attraction 5, 115 Augsburg 22, 25, 29, 33, 55, 56, 64, 72 Austria 73

Bacchiacca, Francesco 150 Baldung, Hans 111 ballerino 140 Bamji, Alexandra 25 Banfield, Mary 136 banns 25, 54, 56, 66, 120 Barbara of Brandenburgh 74 Barbaro, Francesco 57 Barcelona 76, 77, 79 Bartolo, Domenica di 98–9 Basel 17, 64 bastardy. See illegitimacy bathing 28 Bayer, Andrea 7, 21 Beatrice of Aragon 141 Beccafumi, Domenico 159 Bedford, Jane 20 beds 33, 36, 37, 103 Behaim family 144 Bekenntis 21 Bellavitis, Anna 84, 90, 120 Belmont, Nicola 31 Bergonzi, Anna Maria 79 Bern 64 betrothal 21–4 Biel, Pamela 62 bigamy 14, 36, 56, 124 birth tray 159 Blount, Charles, Lord Mountjoy 124, 133 Boden, Gese 51, 67 Bodin, Jean 60, 80 Boerio, Giuseppe 90 Boleyn, Anne 121 Bologna 59, 157 Book of Common Prayer 120 booksellers 77 borders 72–5 Bordone, Paris 112 Borgherini, Pierfrancesco 150 Borgherini, Salvi 150 Bortolussi family 75 Bosnia 13 Boswell, John 94 Bracciolini, Poggio 57

204

Brandtspiegel 29 Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, Duchy of 51, 65, 66 Braut Haus 31 Brazil 8, 81, 85, 95, 97 Breileft 29 Brenz, Johannes 43 Brescia 11 Breton law 74 bridal chamber 33 bridegrooms. See grooms brides 3, 7, 15, 27, 28, 29, 73, 77, 85, 120, 157 Bridewell Hospital 127, 133, 135 Brittany 74, 144 brooches 146 brothels 133 Bruegel the Elder, Pieter 5 Bruges 72, 153, 155 Brundage, James 24 Buckham, Edith 135 Bulgaria 3 Bullinger, Heinrich 122 bundling (night courting) 104 Burghartz, Susanna 66 Byzantine law 8, 85 Calvin, John 25, 43, 57, 60, 113, 126 Camilla Marzano of Aragon 139, 140, 141, 145 Campbell, Lorne 155 Canaries 77 canon law xv, 11, 15, 36, 44, 54, 55, 57, 59, 62, 122 carta da metade 85 cassoni 140, 149, 150 Cassotti family 157 Castile 73 Catherine of Aragon 121 Catholic Church 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 19, 23, 34, 38, 45, 46, 59, 63, 83, 109, 113, 122 Council of Trent 10, 11, 15, 26, 35, 38–40, 43, 45, 46, 49, 56, 59, 64, 80, 92, 94 Fourth Lateran Council 70 Inquisition 46, 47, 81 theology of marriage 9, 10, 24–5, 26 celibacy 9, 104, 120 Chabot, Isabelle 84 Chambers, Robert 66 charitable institutions 83, 84, 95, 97 charivari 5, 7, 29

INDEX

Charles I of England 138 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) 59, 74 Charles VIII of France 74 Charles IX of France 73, 74 chastity 14, 113, 120, 141 Chaucer, Geoffrey 146 Cheevers, Henry 136 Chiga, Caterina 106–7 child abandonment 84, 95, 97, 99 child bearing 117 child marriages 59, 120 children 1–2, 8–9, 11, 13–15, 17, 25–6, 27, 41–2, 40–8, 64, 72–5, 80, 84, 87–91, 94–8, 107, 110, 114, 116–17, 120, 121, 132, 136, 153, 159 abandoned 42, 43, 98 Chojnacki, Stanley 15 Christian commonwealth 126 Christianity 1, 9, 14, 46. See also Catholic Church; Protestants; Protestant Reformation sacraments 8, 10, 13, 24, 36, 54, 59, 92, 94, 120, 121 theology of marriage xiv, xv, 7, 9–11, 13, 19, 20, 24–7, 60, 112–13, 115, 117 church and state 56, 56–62, 80 Cicero 57 Cicogna, Count Alfonso 145 citizenship 72–3 civil contracts 8, 9, 11 civil law xvi, 8–10, 16, 53, 55, 60, 62–4, 67, 68, 81, 102, 122, 126, 138 civis originarius 80 clandestine marriage 9, 10, 13, 24–5, 33, 65, 68, 92–3 Claude of France 74 clothing 140, 146 coercion 14, 91 cohabitation 9, 24, 36, 42, 87 Cohen, Esther 33 coital positions 113 Colesanti, Gemma Teresa 75 collatio dotis 85 Collennuccio, Pandolfo 139 colonies 8, 57, 81–2, 85, 91, 98 commerce 75–7 common law xvi, 124 communis opinio (common opinion) 60 companionate marriage 115, 117 conception 113–14, 117 concubinage 9, 10, 14, 35, 59, 132 confession 129

INDEX

conjugal bed 33, 36, 37, 103 conjugal debt 113, 114, 117, 120 conjugal funds 8 conjugal relations. See marital sexuality consent 36, 94, 120 age of 67 parental 10, 13, 25, 48, 65 verbal 55 consilia (legal opinions) 60 consistories xv, 64 consummation 94, 110 contraception 116–17 contracts 9, 12, 27, 74, 75 conversions 44–6 conversos 77 Cordoba 60 Corner, Girolamo 79 Corsica 104 Corvinus, Matthias 75, 141 Council of Trent 10, 11, 15, 25, 35, 38–40, 43, 45, 46, 48, 56, 59, 64, 80, 91, 93 courts communal courts 63, 65 consistories xv, 65 Court of Prosecutors (Giudici del Procuratore) 64 ecclesiastical courts 10, 11, 15, 16, 24, 60, 63, 64, 129, 131 Ehegericht 64 marriage courts 60–7, 122 Matrimonial Tribunal 63 royal courts 63 territorial courts 63 courtship xiii, xiv, 7, 10, 13, 19, 20–1, 45 premarital sex 102–4 Coverdale, Miles 122 Cranach, Lucas, the Elder 130 credenza 145 criminal law 9, 11, 14, 45, 54, 63, 64, 67, 68 cristallo 139 Cristellon, Cecilia 7, 10, 14, 19, 54, 59, 66, 92, 104, 106, 107 cross-border marriages 72–5 crown goods 85, 87 crowns Spanish crown 73–4, 77 wedding crowns 13, 28, 73 cruelty 121, 122 cuckolds 128 Cupid 112, 157, 158, 159 customary practices 3, 7, 14, 17, 19, 26–9, 32–4

205

da Maiano, Giuliano 148 d’Agnolo, Baccio 150 Daie, Mary 134 d’Antonio, Biagio 148 d’Arrerac, Jean 105 Davis, Natalie Zemon 81 de Gobis, Giuseppe 4 de Predis, Ambrogio 151, 152 de Vos, Cornelis 3 death penalty 126, 136 del Sarto, Andrea 150 Delille, Gérard 70, 71 demographic conditions 4 desertion 56, 122 Devereux, Penelope 124, 133 dissolution 15–17, 56 divorce 16–17, 25, 40, 43, 45, 86, 87, 91–2, 119, 121, 138 Domenico, Zanobi di 148 Don Carlos 74 Don Fernando 74 Donahue, Charles 67 dotal systems 84, 92, 93, 97 double standards 133 dower 7, 56, 93 dowries 7–8, 20, 21, 22, 38, 70, 75, 77, 84, 85, 86, , 92–3, 97 Duby, Georges 55 Ducal Chancery of Venice 80 Dyer, Sir James 124 dynastic marriages 71, 72–5 early modern period 1, 9, 13, 15–17, 19–20, 29, 33–5, 53, 55–6, 60, 62–4, 65–73, 75, 82–7, 94–5, 97, 101, 103, 106, 108, 110, 113–14, 120–1, 131, 133–4 East India Company 77 Eastern Orthodox Church 11, 13, 120 ecclesiastical courts 10, 11, 15, 16, 24, 60, 63, 65, 129, 131 economic considerations 2–3, 70, 75–80 Edward IV of England 134 Edward VI of England 122, 127 Edwards, Nancy 148 Egypt 86, 91 Ehegericht 64 Elisabeth of Austria 73 elites 2, 4–5, 11, 16, 70, 79, 83, 84, 85, 102, 115, 133 Elizabeth II of England 125 Elizabeth of Valois 73 Elyot, Thomas 57

206

Emden 53 encounters, European 1 endogamy 77, 79 engagement. See betrothal England 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 20, 21, 24, 55, 56, 60, 66, 75, 103–4, 106, 107, 120 adultery 121, 122, 126–36 divorce 119, 121, 138 Hardwicke’s Marriage Act (1753) 56, 66 Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum 122, 123, 126 religious sects 136–8 Enlightenment xvi, 44, 49, 110, 117 Enriquez, Stella 46 entailment 85 epithalamium 157 Eppers (Öppers), Hans 51, 67 equal inheritance 85, 87, 91 Erasmus, Desiderius 57, 72 Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara 74 erotic experience 101, 102. See also marital sexuality; premarital sex Esecutori contra la Bestemmia 64 Europe xiv–xvi, 1, 3, 7–11, 13–15, 17, 19–20, 27, 33–4, 35, 38, 39, 44, 45, 49, 54–5, 57, 59–60, 62–3, 68–73, 75, 78, 80–1, 84, 92, 95, 97, 101, 103–6, 108–10, 112, 120–2, 126, 139–40, 141 examina matrimoniorum 56 exchange of women 70 exclusio propter dotem 85 Executors against Blasphemy 64 exogamy 79 Eyck, Jan van 140, 153, 154, 155 family economy 87. See also property rights family planning 116–17 family-state compact 80 fede 139 female sexuality 104, 113–14, 117 Ferdinand II of Aragon 73 Ferraro, Joanne 16, 91 Ferro, Marco 90 fertility 110, 113, 116–17, 159 fertility-testing 102, 105, 108 festivities 27–8 Fiesole 71 Figolin, Giovanni 93 financial constraints 2–3 Flanders 75 fleet marriage 66 Florence 7, 8, 11, 15, 21, 23, 24, 43, 55, 94, 97, 145, 148, 149

INDEX

property rights 83, 85, 86, 87, 90, 92 Ruota Civile 87, 88 Foljambe’s case 124 Forman, James 134 fornication 9, 14, 38, 132, 133 forzerino 145 forzieri 148 foundling homes 94–6, 97, 98, 99 Foye (Fowett), Jane 134 France 5, 9, 11, 13, 15, 24, 26, 60, 64, 71, 74–5, 78, 80, 104. See also Brittany; Normandy; Paris; Provence Francis I of France 74 French Revolution 70 Frescobaldi, Lionardo 86 funds, conjugal 8 Furetière, Antione 101 Furtado de Mendonça, José António de Castilho 95 Galen 113, 114 Gallican Church 11 gambling 14, 135 Gavitt, Philip 97 genealogy 70, 71, 79 Geneva 25, 64, 126 Genoa 47–8 Gentileschi, Artemisia 106 geographic mobility 49 German Empire 72 Germany 9, 15, 20, 21–2, 24, 26, 33–4, 54, 57, 60, 62–6, 72, 104 Ghirlandaio, Domenico 92, 97 Giamberti, Marco del Buono 149 gift exchange 7, 13, 20, 24, 56, 86 gifts 20–1 artistic creations 140 betrothal and wedding gifts 140–8 home furnishings 148–50 paintings 157–9 portraits 139, 150–7 Giovan Battista Cerchi, Oretta di 10 Giudici del Procuratore 64 Giuglielmo Cioni, Raffaelo di 105 glassware 142–5 Glogau 74 Goa 8, 85 Godelier, Maurice 69 Goltzius, Hendrick 30 Gonin, Francesco 40 Gowing, Laura 133 Gozzadini family 156, 157 Granacci, Francesco 150

INDEX

Gratian 54, 55 Greece 3, 8, 13 Gregory IX (Pope) 42 Grifalconi family 75 Grimani, Francesco 79 grooms 3, 7, 8, 13, 21–9, 29–34, 56, 67, 72, 81, 85–7, 92, 97, 104, 110, 120, 145, 148–53, 155, 157, 159 guardians 5, 10, 13, 15, 38, 41, 48, 75, 87, 88 Guazzo, Stefano 113 Guerre, Martin 81 guilds 77 Hacke, Daniela 91 Haigh, Christopher 135 Hall, Edwin 154 Hanley, Sarah 60, 80 Hanseatic cities 72 happiness 17 Hapsburg dynasty 73, 74 Hardwicke’s Marriage Act (1753) 56, 66 Hardy, Thomas 126 Harrington, Joel 63 Harris, Barbara 15 Harvey, William 114 head of household 55, 77 Hausvater 59 hedna 86 Helmholz, Richard H. 67 Helmstedt 51 Henry II of France 11 Henry VI of England 151 Henry VII of England 151 Henry VIII of England 121 Héritier, Françoise 70 historical records xiv, 1, 10, 51–2, 64, 84, 93, 95, 101, 102, 105–9, 132 Hobbys, William 134 Hoffman, Daniel 51, 67 Holland 47, 64 Marriage Act of 1656 66 Holy Roman Empire 13, 19, 55, 59, 62, 64 home furnishings 148–50 homogamy 93–4 honeymoon impotence 110–12 Horowitz, Elliott 33 household formation 2–3 household management 75 Howard, Catherine 121 Howell, Martha C. 72 Huberinus, Caspar 58 humanists 53, 56–7, 139

207

huppah 27, 86 husbands xiii, 1, 2, 8, 14–16, 25, 41–2, 72, 75–7, 84–8, 90, 91, 97, 113, 116, 121–2, 134–5, 136–7 Île de France 71 illegitimacy 4, 102, 132, 133 immissio thalami 37 impalmamento 21 impotence 110–12 incest 70, 71 India 8, 85, 97 indigenous peoples 81 infant mortality 84, 95–6, 97 infidelity 14, 15, 17. See also adultery informal relationships 4 Ingram, Martin 25, 41 inheritance 5, 46, 72, 75 equal inheritance 85, 87, 89, 91 Innocent III (Pope) 46, 54 Inquisition 47, 48, 82 interconfessional marriages 37, 44, 46–9 international marriages 72–5 interreligious marriages 44–6 intestacy 89, 90, 91 Isabella I of Castile 73 Isabelle Claire Eugenie, princess of Asturias 74 Islam 8, 17, 85, 86–7, 120 Islamic law 13, 44–5, 86 Italy 11, 15, 20, 22, 24, 34, 38, 47, 55, 56, 60, 71, 83, 86, 87, 92, 94, 104, 121, 139, 151. See also Florence; Genoa; Milan; Naples; Rome; Siena; Venice James I of England 124 Jansens, Bastiâo 94 Janssens, Anna 77 Jean de Chalon, Prince of Orange 74 Jerome (Saint) 112 Jesuits 60, 81 jewelry 140, 146, 159. See also brooches; pendants; rings Jewish law 15, 19 Jews 83–4, 93. See also Judaism conversion 45–6 courtship and betrothal 20–1, 22–4 expulsion from Spain and Portugal 77 property rights 87 weddings 12, 19, 25–7, 28, 29, 31–3, 34, 36 rings 145–6 Joanna of Castile 73–4 John the Baptist 51 joint ownership 87

208

Joseph II (Emperor of Austria) 70 Joubert, Laurent 113 Judaism 7, 13, 14, 15, 17, 120 juramentum purgatorium 51 jurists 59–60, 63 kadi 87 Kaplan, Debra 7, 36, 54, 104, 139 Karant-Nunn, Susan 20, 62 Kerry, Eleanor 119, 121, 136 Ketubbah 12, 27 khul 86, 91 kiddushin 26, 32 kinship and affinity 5, 8, 10, 11, 70, 84, 87, 94 prohibited degrees of kinship 121 Kirchner, Paul Christian 32 Kirshner, Julius 55 Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane 31 Knas mahl 22 Koran 17 Lateran Council 70 law. See Byzantine law; canon law; civil law; common law; courts; criminal law; customary practices; Islamic law; Jewish law; Roman law Le Nain, Louis (Antoine?) 2 Lebkuechen 22 Lefebvre-Taillard, Anne 80 legal procedures 7 Lei Mental (1435) 85 Leiden 72 Leeuwenhoek, Antonievan 114 Léon, Luis de 57 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 70 Leyster, Judith 52 licenses 66 Licinio, Bernardino 43 Limoges 71 lineage 11, 70, 85, 87, 90, 151 Lippi, Fra Filippo 147, 148, 151, 153 Lisbon 8, 84, 89, 94, 95, 97, 98 Llull i Sabastida, Caterina 75 Llull, Johanna 76 löbde 21 Lochnerin, Katharina 144 London 104, 107, 123, 126, 127, 128, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138 Lotto, Lorenzo 158–60 Louis XII of France 143 love 5, 112–13 lövelbier 23

INDEX

Low Countries 39, 57, 62, 73. See also Flanders; Holland; Netherlands Lowe, Kate 27 Luis de Léon 57 lust 112–13 Luther, Martin 8, 15, 17, 25, 34, 43, 57–9 Lyon 72, 145 Macfarlane, Alan 20 Maestro delle Storie del Pane 156 Maggior Consiglio 80 mahr 85, 86 maiolica 140, 141 Manby, Joan 130 Manch Mal 27 Mantegna, Andrea 69 Manzoni, Alessandro 39 Marcello, Girolamo 159 Marcocci, Giuseppe 93 marital conflicts 25, 56 marital debt 113, 114, 117, 120 marital promise 7, 55 marital sexuality 101, 108–9 coital positions 113 fertility and family planning 116–17 honeymoon impotence 110–12 passion versus procreation 112–13 pregnancy 113–15 seasonal nuptials 109–10 marriage age and 3, 11, 41, 116, 120 anthropological perspective 69, 70 child marriages 59, 120 clandestine 9, 10, 13, 24–5, 33, 64, 65, 68, 92–3 dissolution 15–17, 56 impediments 71 indissolubility 42, 91 legal definition 54, 55, 62 legal impediments 9, 45, 56, 71, 81 meaning of 5–8 registration 39, 53 religious sacrament vs civil contract 8–13 trial marriage 105 validity xiv, xv, 7, 8, 9 , 10, 13, 25, 26, 35, 36, 39, 53, 54, 55, 59, 92 variety of forms 2–5, 36 pre-Reformation and pre-Tridentine 36–8 marriage alliances 72–5 marriage chest 143 marriage contracts 7, 9, 12, 27 marriage courts 62–7, 122

INDEX

marriage licenses 67 marriage procession 31–3 marriage promise 7, 55 Mathieu, Jon 72 matrilocality 76 matrimonial chasity 113 matrimonial examination 56 Matthews-Grieco, Sara 9, 13, 14, 36, 41, 67 mattinate 7 Maximilian I (Holy Roman Emperor) 152 Mayen 32, 33 McNabb, Jennifer 20 McSheffrey, Shannon 134 medical theory 114, 115, 117 Mediterranean 8, 36, 82–7, 94 Memling, Hans 155–6 Menchi, Silvana Seidel 10 merchants 76–8 Mercurio, Scipione [Girolamo] 113 metalwork 145 Metsys, Quentin 79 Mexico 82 Michiel, Marcantonio 161 migration xvi, 77, 82 Milan 145, 152 Milton, John 138 missionaries 82 mistresses 133 mixed marriages 37, 44–9, 81–2 mobility 35, 44, 49 Moheau, Jean-Baptiste 110 Montaigne, Michel de 94, 95 Montargis 75 Montpellier 60 moral norms 7, 36, 40, 57, 67, 133 moral treatises 114 More, Thomas 57 Morelli, Lorenzo 149 morgadios 85 mortality 4, 83, 95, 97, 116 Mykonos 8, 85 Nantes 24, 77 Naples 72 native American peoples 81 Naxos 8, 85 neglect 134 Nemours 74 Netherlands 62 Newborough, Mary 135 night courting xvi, 104, 106 nisuin 27 nobility 2, 9, 11, 70, 87

209

noblesse de robe 11, 75 Normandy 26, 71 North Africa 27, 77 notaries 53, 56, 92 nouement de l’aiguillette 110, 112 nozze 21 nuclear households 3 nullity 40, 44. See also annulment nuns 27, 94, 97, 104, 113, 120 nuptials. See also wedding rites nuptial blessing 36 postnuptial popular rites 33–4 blessing the marriage bed 34, 36, 37, 103 Nuremberg 64, 144 oaths 36, 131, 153 false oaths 51 purgation by oath (juramentum purgatorium) 51 Odoni, Andrea 159 O’Hara, Diana 20 Old Testament 27, 70, 121, 126, 150 Ordinance of Blois 11 ordinances 8, 10, 65, 66 Kirchenordnungen 62 orgasm 117 Ospedale degli Innocenti 95, 99 Ospedale della Scala 98 Ospedale di San Gallo 97 Ottoman Empire 13, 36, 45, 87 Ovid 159 Oxford 59 Ozment, Steven 3, 15 paganism 81 paintings 157–59 portraits 139, 151–7 Panofsky, Erwin 153 Papal Bull (1585) 81 Paré, Ambroise 110 parental authority xiv, xv, xvi, 10, 11, 13, 25, 26, 39, 41, 48, 54, 65, 92 Paris 75 Parker, Matthew (Archbishop) 121, 124 Parlement 64 Parr, William, Marquess of Northampton 122, 125 passionate love 112–13 patriarchy xiv, xvii, 8, 11, 14, 15, 17, 83, 84 patrician class: Venice 4, 15, 16, 79 patriliny 8, 11 Pauline privilege 46

210

Pechey, John 115 penance 107, 126–128 pendants 7, 145 periodization 1 Perri, Francesco 94 personal freedom 1, 20 Petrucci, Francesco di Camillo 159 Philip the Handsome 74 Philip II of Spain 73, 74 pirate wars 81 Pitti, Bonaccorso 153 plague epidemics 79 Pliny the Elder 153 Plummer, Marjorie Elizabeth 9, 10, 19, 35, 36, 38, 92, 104 Poccetti, Bernardino 98 Poitiers 78 political philosophy 56, 60 family-state compact 80 household 2–3, 55, 59, 77 Pontormo, Jacopo 150 popular rituals 33–4, 37, 38, 103 population pressure 4 Portinari, Tommaso 155 portraits 139, 150–7 Portugal 77, 84, 87, 89–95 Lisbon 8, 84, 89, 94–95, 98 Portuguese colonies 8, 85, 91, 99 postnuptial rites 33–4 blessing the marriage bed 34, 37, 38, 103 Prajda, Katalin 153 prazos 85 Predis, Ambrogio de 151, 152 pregnancy xvi, 10, 38, 44, 47, 63, 66, 113–15 bridal pregnancy 102, 107–8, 132, 133 premarital pregnancy 106–108, 110 premarital sex 14, 38, 101–2. See also sexual status amorous license 104–6 bridal pregnancy 102, 107–8 carnal knowledge 106–7 courtship customs 102–4 pre-Reformation church 36–8, 48, 120, 126, 127, 129, 132, 135 Presbyterian movement 128 prescriptive literature 114–15, 117 primogeniture 11, 85 printing 59, 78 procreation 112–13 promise of marriage 7, 54 property rights 56, 83–4. See also inheritance prostitutes 102, 133

INDEX

Protestant churches 80 Protestant Reformation 1, 14, 15, 25, 26, 35, 36, 38, 43, 48, 57, 62, 64, 121, 126 theology of marriage 25 Protestants 8–11, 13, 16, 19, 23, 31, 34, 38, 46, 59, 60, 65, 113, 133 Provence 71 public rites 7, 28, 33, 67, 92, 110 purgation by oath 51 Puritans 136 Quaglioni, Diego 10 rabbis 13, 17, 19, 22, 23, 27, 29, 31 Ragazzoni, Giacomo 79 Ranters 137 rape 14, 63, 101, 106, 107, 135 Rapoport, Yossef 86, 91 Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum 122, 123, 126 Reformation era 1, 14, 15, 24, 25, 35, 36, 38, 43, 48, 57, 62, 64, 120, 121–2, 126 reforms Catholic 10, 14, 25, 54, 83, 87 Protestant 10, 14, 62, 83 registration of marriage 39, 53 regulations Eheordnung 62 Hochzeitordnung 62 marriage 54–55, 59, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 120 wedding 56, 62, 120, 145 religion. See also Catholic Church; Christianity; Islam; Jews; Judaism; Protestants; Protestant Reformation church and state 56–62, 80 mixed marriages 38, 44–8, 81 sacraments 8, 10, 13, 24, 36, 54, 59, 92, 94, 120, 121 theology of marriage xiv–xv, 7, 9–11, 13, 19, 24–7, 60, 112–13, 115, 117 religious sects 44–8, 81–1, 136–7 remarriage 25, 29, 87, 116, 120, 122, 124 Rembrandt van Rijn 109 Renaissance 1, 35, 45, 83, 85, 90–91, 94, 97, 112, 114, 121 artistic creations 139–40 betrothal and wedding gifts 140–8 home furnishings 148–50 paintings 157–59 portraits 139, 150–7 Renée of France 74

INDEX

reparatory marriage 38 Rich, Barnaby 124 rings 7, 13, 20, 22, 26, 140, 145 ritual 7, 24–7, 39, 55, 80 nuptial blessing 36 personal rituals 6 postnuptial popular rites 33–4 blessing the marriage bed 34, 37, 38, 103 sites of marriage 36 week of the wedding 27–33 ritual bathing 28 Robisheaux, Thomas 31 Roman law 75, 85 Romania 13 Rome 26 Roper, Lyndal 55, 65 Rouen 77 Rudolph August, Duke of BraunschweigLüneburg 66 rule of halves 85 Russia 3, 77 Sabastida, Joan 75 Sabean, David W. 71 sacraments 8, 10, 13, 24, 36, 54, 59, 92, 94, 120, 121 sadaq 85, 86 Safley, Thomas 63, 65 Salamanca 59 Salic law 74 Salutati, Coluccio 57 same-sex unions 93–4 Samson ben Samuel Bacharach 19 Sanchez, Tomás 60 Santa Casa da Misericórdia 95–6, 97, 99 Sanudo, Marin 140 Sanzio, Raphael 6 Sapiti, Gngiola di Bernardo 153 Scandinavia 3 Scaramella, Gian Carlo 80 Schammes, Juspe 22 Schenckwein 33 Scolari family 153 secret marriages 9, 10, 13, 24–5, 33, 65, 66, 92–3 sects 136–8 secular authorities xiii–xvi, 7–11, 14, 17, 24, 36, 38, 51, 56, 57, 58, 63, 66, 93 secularism xv, 36, 49 seduction 14, 35, 38, 63, 66, 101, 102, 106, 107, 136

211

seduction by promise of marriage 7, 54 self-determination 20 self-help literature 114–15, 117 Sellaio, Jacopo del 148 separation 43, 44, 45, 91, 121, 134, 135 Serbia 13 servants 3, 42, 80, 84, 89, 90, 94, 95, 101–3, 106, 130–5 sex manuals 114–15, 117 sex trade 133 sexual abstinence 109, 110 sexual exploitation 83, 95, 133 sexual relations. See marital sexuality; premarital sex sexual status 7, 14, 22, 28, 29, 34, 36, 39, 40, 45, 66, 104 Sforza, Bianca Maria 151 Sforza, Costanzo 139, 140, 145 Sforza, Ludovico Il Moro 151 Shakespeare, William 60–2 shame 106, 115, 117 Sicily 76–7, 81 Siena 97–8 Sigoli, Simone 86 slaves 81, 83, 84, 95, 96, 97, 98 social class 2–3, 4, 9, 11, 16, 27 solemnization of marriage 5, 38 Sonderweg 84 Southwark “stews” 133 Spain 8, 10, 27, 44, 57, 60, 62, 63, 71, 73, 77, 87 expulsion of Jews 77 Reconquista 35 spalliera 148 Sperling, Jutta 8, 10, 17, 20, 38, 59, 75, 132 sposalizo 21, 22 spouse entrapment 108 state involvement 56–62 Stawell, Sir John 124 Steen, Jan 53 stigma 9 Stone, Lawrence 5, 20 Strozzi family 149 stuprum 35 sumptuary laws 27 superstitions 109, 110, 112 Sweden 75 Swinburne, Henry 60 Switzerland 9, 15, 17, 64, 65 Symons, Oliver 20

212

taboos 109 talamo 38 tallit 27 Tametsi decree 10, 11, 26, 38, 39, 56, 59, 63–4, 92 “tapsters” 133 Tassi, Agostino 106 Teuscher, Simon 71 theology of marriage xiv, xv, 7, 9–11, 13, 19, 24–7, 60, 112–13, 115, 117 Thiers, Abbé 110 Thornton, Dora 141 three estates 58 Tilmans, Caterina 79 Tilney, Edmund 57, 114 Tintoretto, Jacobo 16 Trebizond 148–9 trial marriage 105 trousseau 7, 21, 86, 94, 151 Tübingen 59 Tudor period 15 Tufte, Virginia 159 Turin 79 Undertrunk 28 unicorn 141, 157 universities 53, 59–60 Valdur, Simao 94 Valgrisi, Vincenzo 72 valid marriage xiv, xv, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 25, 26, 35, 36, 39, 53, 55, 60, 92 Valois dynasty 74 van Cleve, Marten 103 van der Borcht, Peeter 30 van der Heyden, Pieter 28 van Eyck, Jan 140, 153, 155 van Valckenburgh, Margrita 77 Vasari, Giorgio 148, 150 Vecellio, Cesare 159 Venette, Nicholas 115, 117 Venice 4, 10, 11, 15, 16, 26, 29, 36, 56, 64, 72, 79, 97, 157, 159 citizenship 72–3 glassware 142 property rights 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 91, 93 Venetian Republic 8, 14, 72, 88 verba de futuro 54

INDEX

verba de presenti 54 verbal consent 55 Versoris, Guillaume 117 violence 25, 42–3, 48, 121 virginity 9, 22, 29, 105 Visconti, Silvia 145 Vives, Juan Luis 57, 113, 114 von Pastor, Ludwig 94 vows 9, 13, 54 Webbe, Thomas 136 wedding processions 31–2 wedding rites 7, 24–7, 39, 56, 80 nuptial blessing 36 personal rituals 136 postnuptial popular rites 33–4 blessing the marriage bed 33, 37, 38, 103 sites of marriage 36 week of the wedding 27–33 Weinstein, Roni 21, 29 wet-nurses 84, 94–7, 98, 116 Whately, William 124 “whore’s mark” 134 Whythorne, Thomas 128 widowers 8, 120 widows 7, 29, 77–9, 120 wills 75 Witte, John Jr. 62, 67 wives xiii, 1–2, 8, 14–17, 25–6, 41–2, 72, 74, 75, 77, 83–7, 89–90, 93, 105, 108, 113, 116–17, 121, 126, 133–5, 136, 139 Wladislas IV of Bohemia 74 Wolfenbüttel, St Mary’s 51 women Christian 17, 84, 86, 114 conduct 57 education 57 ideals 25, 41, 117 Islamic 8, 17, 83 Jewish 17, 29, 45, 83, 86 single 3, 29, 83, 84, 94, 95, 97, 98 wreaths 22, 29, 157, 158 Ziliol, Alessandro 80 Zon family 80 Zurich 17, 25, 64 Zwingli, Huldrich 17, 25, 43, 122



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