With twelve interdisciplinary articles and a wealth of accompanying documents in translation, this book presents, in roughly chronological order, an analysis of sources for the making of marriage from 400–1600, prepared by many of the best people working on the topic. The introduction by Philip Reynolds sets out the goal of the collaboration, which is to answer: ‘how, why, and when pre-modern Europeans documented their marriages’. Examining dotal charters, marriage contracts, marriage litigation and property deeds, the contributors explain the values, processes and procedures involved in contracting marriage, seeking therein an understanding of the social changes surrounding these documents.
The articles are occasionally revisions or expansions of work published elsewhere, as is the case with the work of David Hunter, Laurent Morelle and Art Cosgrove; others include some passages from a previous article, as with Philip Reynolds. Frederik Pedersen, Martha Howell and Thomas Kuehn return to familiar territory as well. The individual findings are thus not always necessarily new, but this is a strength of the collection. What these contributors offer as a whole is all the more authoritative for the depth of research involved, and these are scholars who not only know their sources intimately but also perform brilliantly together. Combining such solid scholarship under one umbrella sheds light on the complex tangle of matrimonial practices in pre-modern Europe and provides a unique opportunity to grasp at change over time, regional variations, and deep traditions and concerns involving marriage.
We can see first of all what was and was not present in ancient Roman rituals, and conclude with what did and did not remain intact of medieval marriage practices at the hands of John Calvin in his Genevan marriage liturgy. We can learn what was consistent between late-medieval Douai and Renaissance Florence, and what was different about Occitan and northern French marriage in the twelfth century. Recurrent themes include a shifting emphasis on publicity, use of a handclasp or kiss in the making of a contract, the wide range of ways couples received and gave marital gifts, the role of the church, the use of oral or written contracts, and the emphasis on the role of the couple or their families in the making of marriage.
Pre-modern men and women regarded marriage as a process rather than a single event and practised marriage this way, despite the efforts of medieval theologians and canonists to encourage a focus on an exchange of vows, preferably with church participation and sanction. A proper, public marriage, as described in Frederik Pedersen's litigation records from fourteenth-century York, included marriage negotiations with the intended spouse's family, a present-tense exchange of vows in the bride's family chapel, and the solemnisation of the marriage before more than a hundred guests in the parish church, the banns having been announced on three previous Sundays (pp 310–311). Thomas Kuehn presents Renaissance Florentine marriage as a process involving three successive documents recording the betrothal, exchange of present consent and dowry (pp 392–403). For many of these marriages, a procession, the leading of a bride and her trousseau to her new husband's home, seems to have served as the moment at which spouses became completely, indissolubly married. This description fits the procedures described by Kuehn and also Cynthia Johnson for twelfth century Occitania (p 227). Reynolds discusses a related ‘handing over’ of the bride for Frankish marriages (p 123), as does David Hunter for Roman North Africa (p 103).
The collection also engages with Georges Duby's influential idea of two competing models of marriage: aristocratic, or secular, defined as endogamous, dissolvable and controlled by families; and the opposing ecclesiastical ideal of exogamous, indissoluble and based on the free consent of the couple. Some authors, such as Agnes S Arnósdóttir and RH Helmholz, prefer to view their documentation of marriage through other lenses. Arnósdóttir argues that Icelandic marriage documentation is better understood as a process of Christianisation than within Duby's model of a competition between sacred and secular. Art Cosgrove offers another example of Christianisation in Gaelic Ireland where, rather than continuing traditional practices of keeping concubines, divorcing wives and generally ignoring church regulations on incest, noble families in the later Middle Ages increasingly included in their marriage planning both a request for a dispensation and a contract stipulating that any children produced before the union was approved would still be treated as legitimate.
Responding to Duby's model, Helmholz demonstrates how the two competing models of marital documentation coexisted in England for centuries, making little reference to each other and not necessarily coming into direct conflict. For Helmholz, to ask which side was winning or won is not necessarily the most profitable question to apply to the sources. Both Helmholz and Pedersen present the English litigants and those seeking to contract a marriage as well-educated consumers, who made use of whichever type of court or contract was best suited to their needs, sacred or secular or both.
Cynthia Johnson confesses that her Occitan sources do not seem to provide any evidence that could either support or challenge Duby's model. She can, however, corroborate the work of another prominent scholar, the anthropologist Jack Goody, by demonstrating that the gifts described in documents she analysed were specifically designated as inheritances, and thus served as a form of premortem inheritance, supporting Goody's construction of dowry in those terms. Perhaps most importantly, she argues that the ‘Romanized’ dotal regime and its supposed disempowerment of women merits reconsideration.
One of the great pleasures of this collection is the possibility for comparison and contrast, the discovery of common themes or trends and of divergences. For example, the distinction between wife and concubine provides a recurrent thread throughout the collection. Judith Evans-Grubbs, who quotes the jurist Ulpian as arguing that the only difference between a wife and concubine is their rank (dignitas), shows how the legal and social role of concubines begins to change by the fourth and fifth centuries. At that time, matrimonial documents, which once had served only to record financial transactions, with increased Christian influence became an indicator of morality, proof of the man's intention to treat a woman as his wife with legal rights and legitimate offspring. This treatment of marriage tables or charters as moral as well as legal documents also appears in Roman North Africa, as presented by David Hunter, and the Renaissance Florence of Thomas Kuehn. In all three cases, contractual documentation distinguished an honourable marriage from a clandestine union or concubinage.
Faced with the wealth of information made available by this publication, the reader might only wish for more, for contributions covering other parts of the medieval west, such as Spain, Germany or Central Europe. Perhaps a second volume is in order? To make one small quibble, while Reynold's treatment of marriage law, liturgy and particularly dotation is excellent, the description of sources for ecclesiastical courts (p 40) denigrates the survival of records in northern France, Belgium and Germany. Most recently, scholars have also tapped into Italian ecclesiastical court records, with very promising results.
