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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1999-03 > 0921083357


From: John Carmi Parsons <>
Subject: Re: Medieval Marriage
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 11:29:17 -0500 (EST)


On Wed, 10 Mar 1999 Michelle.Murphy% wrote:

> Further to a comment a week or so ago on medieval marriage (i.e. that
> the minimum age prescribed by the Church for conjugal relations was 12
> years old), I was wondering: did that mean that ANY marriage made
> involving one or both spouses aged under 12 years could be dissolved
> at will, because a marriage was not seen as a true marriage unless it
> was consummated, and the Church would not recognise consummation if
> one or both spouses were aged under 12 years? Or was the practice of
> touching the groom (or proxy)'s bare foot against the bride's naked
> leg sufficient to consummate the marriage, and would it uphold the
> marriage if someone decided to try to maintain that it was not a true
> marriage?

Ever hear of Pandora's chest? First, be aware that there were TWO trends
of thought in the canon law of marriage in the Middle Ages. One, first
enunciated by the Italian canonist Gratian of Bologna ca 1140, held that
consummation WAS necessary. There were both Roman and Biblical precedents
for this. By the end of the 12th century, however, the Parisian canonists had
successfully argued that the reasoned consent of the parties (presumably
brought about by mutual attraction) was sufficient to establish an indissoluble
Christian marriage. The argument here rested heavily on the marriage of the
Blessed Virgin and St Joseph, which was of course never consummated; but was
anybody going to argue that the Queen of Heaven was not properly married?

In theory, the Church formally espoused the latter position for the rest of
the medieval period--still does, for that matter--but in practice it was
easier to obtain the dissolution of an unconsummated marriage than one that
had been consummated. Hence the charges and countercharges surrounding the
marriage of Prince Arthur of Wales (d. 1502) and Katherine of Aragon; if
the marriage had been consummated, it would have be easier for Henry VIII
to argue that he shouldn't have married his brother's widow. Hence, too,
all the kaffufle about hanging the sheets out the window the morning after
the wedding night. If you saw the Streisand film *Yentl*, you may recall
the scene in the bridal chamber when Streisand, disguised as the groom, was
careful to pour red wine on the bedsheets to make it seem that consummation
had taken place--the OT influence that found its way into medieval canon
law; likewise, in the 1980s film *A Wedding in Canaan*, the groom's mother
comes to pound on the door of the bridal chamber to ask if the couple have
done their duty because the wedding guests expect to see the sheets before
they leave.

The age of consent and conjugal relations complicated matters. A woman
could marry and undertake full conjugal life at the completion of her 12th
year. A man could do so when he was in his 15th year (i.e., past his 14th
birthday). These were arbitrary choices, taken over from Roman law which
recognized that girls reach physical maturity earlier than boys. But when
the niceties of Christian marriage teachings on consent and consummation vs.
non-consummation were also factored in, the possibilities for marriage
litigation multiplied almost exponentially--not to mention the intricacies of
reckoning consanguinity.

There are many cases in which it seems clear that couples or individuals
manipulated these various points in canon law if they wanted to have their
marriage annulled. The Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating
to Great Britain and Ireland, for example, contain many instances of couples
who "discovered" a link of consanguinity or spiritual affinity only after they
were married, and petitioned either for dispensation to remain married or for
divorce. Likewise couples who had been married before the age of consent, as
with the Arundel-Despenser marriage I mentioned last week. (Such couples could
argue not only underage marriage but also vows taken under coercion, which were
considered null and void.) Couples who married as children, below the age of
consent, and who subsequently refused to consummate the marriage, are also on
record as obtaining annulments.

Probably the most convoluted such case was that of the last Warrenne earl of
Surrey, who spent decades trying to shed his wife, Edward I's granddaughter
Joan of Bar. They were married in 1306 when both were underage; the earl
subsequently claimed (a) he had been forced to marry her against his will,
(b) that they were related within the prohibited degrees and had never got
a dispensation [his grandmother was a Lusignan half-sister of Henry III],
and (c) that before he married Joan, he had had carnal knowledge of her aunt
Mary, Edward I's daughter, six years older than himself, resident in the
Benedictine abbey of Amesbury from the time the earl was aged 1 and a professed
nun from the time he was 7. The first two excuses didn't work, the first
because the earl had consummated the marriage once both parties were of age to
do so (implying he did ultimately consent to it), and the second because a
dispensation had indeed been obtained. The third worked but only because the
papal curia wanted to avoid the scandal that would result if the couple did
remain married. (There is no reason to think the earl's story of an affair
with Mary was in any way true; it was very convenient that Mary was the only
one of Edward I's adult children who never married or had children, and by the
time he lodged the claim, in 1339, Mary and all her siblings were dead, so
there was nobody to be directly offended by what he said.)

As to the groom touching his foot to the bed, this was not a very widespread
custom, but was primarily used (and only in early modern centuries, not the
M.A.) as a symbolic way of consummating a princely marriage between kingdoms.
Usually the husband's ambassador would have the honor of performing this act;
I have also read of cases (e.g., George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-
Strelitz) in which the bride was put to bed fully dressed, and the ambassador
had to strip his foot and lower leg bare before inserting it under the
bedclothes.

John Parsons

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