BOOK: Saskia LETTMAIER, Spouses, Church, and State. Marriage Law in England and Protestant Germany from the Reformation until the Close of the Nineteenth Century [Beiträge zum ausländischen und internationalen Privatrecht; 143] (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2025), 415 p., ISBN 978-3-16-162493-3

ABOUT THE BOOK:

 

Saskia Lettmaier widmet sich der vielleicht bedeutendsten Transformation, die das Ehe(band)recht in den letzten 500 Jahren erfahren hat: Seiner Umgestaltung von einer einheitlichen, in der Hand der Universalkirche liegenden und von theologischen Denkmustern geprägten Ordnung hin zu einer Vielzahl von disparaten staatlichen Einzelordnungen, die von säkularen Leitvorstellungen geprägt sind. Am Beispiel von England und Preußen analysiert sie, wie und warum es zu diesem Wandel kam und warum die Veränderungen von Territorium zu Territorium unterschiedlich ausfielen.

 

Find more here.

 

BOOK: Jonathan SEELYE MARTIN, By Consent Alone Marriage. Law and German Romance, 1186–1210 (Toronto: university of Toronto Press, 2025), 232 p. ISBN 9781487560157, 70 Can Dollar

 

(image source: UTP)

Abstract:

The twelfth and early thirteenth centuries saw some of the most important changes to marriage laws in European history, the foremost being the decision of the Catholic Church to recognize consent as an overriding requirement for marriage. Though this revolutionary position promised far greater personal freedom and individual autonomy, these promises went largely unfulfilled. By Consent Alone explores the developing laws of marriage in this period through the lens of the “case” (Kasus), a short narrative form that asks its audience to judge the new laws against the larger ideology of free consent. The book compares literary depictions of romance and marriage in seven canonical German romances with cases in the historical record, focusing on legal questions of consent, coerced consent, impediments to marriage, spousal abuse, and divorce. It argues that medieval German literature advocated for an expansive definition of individual and women’s rights in marriage. Comparing the fictional depictions of marriage cases with historical law, By Consent Alone provides a unique window into medieval thought and the culture of marriage, often not as it was, but as it was wished to be. By Consent Alone reveals how medieval German literature responded to the evolving laws of marriage and consent in medieval Europe.

On the author:

is an assistant professor of German at Illinois State University.

Read more here. 

BOOK: Chanelle DELAMEILLIEURE, Abduction, Marriage, and Consent in the Late Medieval Low Countries (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024). ISBN: 9789463724074

(Image source: Amsterdam University Press)

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Middle Dutch term schaec referred to abduction with marital intent. This book explores this phenomenon to understand wider attitudes towards marriage-making in the fifteenth-century Low Countries. Whilst exchanging words of consent was all that was required legally, making marriage was a social process that evoked public concern and familial scrutiny. Abductions embodied contrasting evaluations of what mattered when selecting a spouse and resulted in polarized trials in which narratives on consent, coercion, and family strategy coincided and competed. Abduction, Marriage, and Consent draws from a wide range of legal records to assess how men, women, families, and authorities used, navigated, and dealt with abductions during this period. It contributes to debates on consent, family involvement, and women’s access to justice and demonstrates that abduction should be approached as a comprehensive social phenomenon, one that is crucial in the history of marriage and women’s social and legal status.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chanelle Delameillieure researches late medieval gender and family history with a focus on marriage, sexuality and the social history of the law. She is a tenure track professor of medieval history at KU Leuven.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

I. Perks and Perils of Being an Heiress

II. Abduction’s Who, How, and Why?

III. Consent in and out of the Courtroom

IV. What Authorities Did to Help

Conclusion

More information can be found here.

BOOK: Ermanno ORLANDO, Matrimoni medievali. Sposarsi in Italia nei secoli XIII-XVI (Rome: Viella, 2023). ISBN: 9791254692332

(Image source: Viella Editore)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Prima che il concilio di Trento (1563) lo codificasse rigidamente, nel basso medioevo il matrimonio mantenne a lungo una natura laica, mutevole e versatile, caratterizzata da una grande variabilità di pratiche e modelli. Pare quindi più opportuno parlare di matrimoni al plurale, abbandonando la visione univoca dell’istituto affermatasi solo dopo Trento.

Nel volume si farà, pertanto, ampio riferimento non solo ai matrimoni legittimi e codificati, ma anche all’esteso ventaglio di quelli incerti e irregolari, come i matrimoni a tempo, le unioni di fatto, i matrimoni plurimi, le convivenze more uxorio o i rapporti concubinari; si passeranno in rassegna le diverse forme di unioni trasgressive, dal ratto all’adulterio, dai matrimoni finti e simulati sino a quelli violenti e forzati; si rifletterà, infine, sulle forme proibite o a stento tollerate, come i matrimoni interconfessionali, la promiscuità interreligiosa e le unioni con gli esclusi e i marginali.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ermanno Orlando insegna Storia medievale nell’Università per Stranieri di Siena. Fra le sue monografie ricordiamo Altre Venezie. Il Dogado veneziano nei secoli XIII e XIV (Venezia 2008); Sposarsi nel medioevo (Roma 2010); Migrazioni mediterranee (Bologna 2014); Venezia e il mare nel Medioevo (Bologna 2014); Strutture e pratiche di una comunità urbana. Spalato, 1420-1479 (Venezia-Wien 2019); Le repubbliche marinare (Bologna 2021); Medioevo migratorio (Bologna 2022).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prefazione

1. Introduzione

1. Paradigmi matrimoniali

2. Altre fonti, altri matrimoni

3. Una nuova stagione storiografica

4. Il matrimonio pretridentino: una pluralità di modelli

5. Variabili matrimoniali

2. Tra disciplinamento e indisciplina: il matrimonio pretridentino

1. Consensus facit nuptias

2. Il matrimonio consensuale nel diritto canonico

3. L’affermazione della teoria consensualistica

4. Un matrimonio aformale?

5. Il matrimonio nel diritto civile e la centralità della dote

6. La questione dei matrimoni clandestini

7. Verso il matrimonio formale: il concilio di Trento

3. Tempi, spazi e riti del matrimonio

1. Il modello ecclesiastico: storia di un sostanziale fallimento

2. La dimensione laica, familiare e comunitaria del matrimonio

3. Il modello notarile di matrimonio

4. Pubblico e celebrativo: il matrimonio aristocratico

5. Altre variabili matrimoniali

4. Dai preliminari alla scelta: mediazioni, modelli e reti

1. La funzione della famiglia e del matrimonio

2. Mediazioni e reti

3. La dimensione circolare e collettiva della mediazione

4. La scelta della sposa

5. Matrimoni incerti, irregolari e trasgressivi

1. Unioni incerte e controverse

2. I matrimoni a tempo e le separazioni di fatto

3. I matrimoni plurimi e in successione

4. I delicta carnis: ratto, adulterio e stupro

5. Adulterio e stupro nelle prassi giudiziarie

6. I surrogati del matrimonio (o quasi matrimoni)

1. Le convivenze more uxorio

2. I rapporti concubinari

3. Il concubinato tra tolleranza e reato

4. Il concubinato d’élite

7. Seduzione e finzione

1. Il finto matrimonio a scopo di seduzione

2. Imposture e raggiri

3. Simulazione e gioco

4. Il matrimonio delle beffe

8. Spose bambine

1. Pubertà e matrimonio

2. Tra infanzia e adolescenza: i signa indubitate pubertatis

3. La maturità psichica e biologica

4. Il matrimonio tra bambini

9. Matrimoni forzati e violenza domestica

1. Nozze forzate, nozze combinate

2. L’annullamento del vincolo propter metum

3. La violenza coniugale

4. Le sevizie come causa di separazione

10. I matrimoni misti

1. Le unioni interconfessionali

2. Cristiani orientali e matrimonio

3. Confronti

4. Affinità

5. L’impatto disciplinante del concilio di Trento

11. Il fascino delle unioni proibite

1. Il matrimonio interdetto: gli infedeli

2. Separazioni, matrimoni di fatto e conversioni

3. Promiscuità e trasgressioni

12. Marginalità e matrimonio

1. Il matrimonio con gli schiavi

2. Legami irregolari e surrogati

3. Il matrimonio con i lebbrosi

Bibliografia

Indice dei nomi e dei luoghi

More information can be found here.

BOOK: Luke TAYLOR, Constructing the Family: Marriage and Work in Nineteenth-Century English Law (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022). ISBN: 9781487546526, pp. 424, $90.00

 

(Source: UTP)

ABOUT THE BOOK

In nineteenth-century England, legal conceptions of work and family changed in fundamental ways. Notably, significant legal moves came into play that changed the legal understanding of the family. Constructing the Family examines the evolution of the legal-discursive framework governing work and family relations. Luke Taylor considers the intersecting intellectual and institutional forces that contributed to the dissolution of the household, the establishment of separate spheres of work and family, and the emergence of modern legal and social ideas concerning work and family. He shows how specific legal-institutional moves contributed to the creation of the family's categorical status in the social and legal order and a distinct and exceptional body of rules – Family Law – for its governance. Shedding light on the historical processes that contributed to the emergence of English family law, Constructing the Family shows how work and family became separate regulatory domains, and in so doing reveals the contingent nature of the modern legal family.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Luke Taylor is an assistant professor at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law at Toronto Metropolitan University.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures and Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Ideology and Population Management 

A. Ideology

B. Population Management

Chapter 2: The Invention of Family Law in English Scholarly Legal Thought

I. Introduction

II. Blackstone, Legal Science, and the Productive Household

A. The “private œconomical relations”

B. Master and Servant

C. Husband and Wife

D. Blackstone and Nineteenth-Century Legal Thought

III. Household and Marriage in the Early Nineteenth Century

IV. The Influence of Jurisprudence

A. The Analyst: John Austin

B. The Historicist: Friedrich Carl von Savigny

V. The Influence of Statutory Developments

A. Divorce and the Legal Character of Marriage

B. Decriminalization and the Legal Character of Work

VI. Classical Legal Thought in England: Abstracting Contract and Subtracting Marriage

A. Consolidating Contract by Distinguishing Marriage: Pollock and Anson

B. Translating CLT into Taxonomy: Holland

VII. The Emergence of English Domestic Relations Law

VIII. The Emergence of Family Law

A. Cementing the Family/Work and Status/Contract Distinctions: Salmond

B. Family Law and Employment Law Emerge and Diverge

C. Family Law in the Textbook Tradition

IX. Conclusion

Chapter 3: Law and the Disarticulation of Work from Family Life

I. Introduction

II. Property, Poverty, and Wage Labour

A. Property: Enclosure, Households, and Work

B. Poverty: The Discipline of Work 

III. Wage Labour, Contract, and the Subordination of Workers

A. The Philosophical Basis of Coercion under Contract

B. Punishment and Performance

IV. Conclusion

Chapter 4: Women and Youth, Work and Family

I. Introduction

II. Women, Work, and the Domestic Sphere

A. Paid Domestic Labour

B. Unpaid Domestic Labour

III. Youth, Work, and the Paths of Apprenticeship

A. Early Modern Apprenticeship Law

B. Household to Employment: The Transformation of Traditional Apprenticeship

C. Household to Family: The Transformation of Parish Apprenticeship

IV. Conclusion

Chapter 5: Legislating Marriage

I. Introduction

II. Civilizing Marriage

A. Lord Hardwicke’s Act

B. Lord Lyndhurst’s Act

C. Civil Marriage Act

III. Incentivizing Marriage

A. Poor Laws

B. Compensation Statutes 

IV. Stabilizing Marriage

A. Divorce 

B. Married Women’s Property

V. Conclusion

Chapter 6: The Public Importance of Marriage in English Common Law

I. Introduction

II. Stretching the Bounds of Contract: The Action for Breach of Promise to Marry 

A. Heart Balm for Women (Only)

B. “It would be indelicate to expect that she should consent in words”

C. Expectations of Emotional Harm

III. The Status of Marriage in the Conflict of Laws

A. Marriage, Contract, and Deference to Lex Loci Celebrationis

B. Dissolution, Domicile and State Control

C. Domicile and Marital Validity

D. Dissolving the Status of Marriage

IV. Conclusion

Conclusion

Marriage, Family, and Work: Past and Present

Bibliography

Cases

Statutes

Books, Chapters, and Articles

Government Reports and Documents

Newspapers, Non-legal Periodicals, and Blogs

Parliamentary Debates

More information with the publisher.

GUEST LECTURE by Prof. Gisela DROSSBACH: Marriage in Church Law in England at the end of the 12th Century - 7 February 2023 - Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen (Center for Privacy Studies)

In this lecture Prof. Gisela Drossbach will demonstrate that the relationship between church and state in the Anglo-Norman realm favoured the extension of papal legal culture from the continent to England in the 12th century. In this ambiente the concept of marriage based on the consent of both parties, which pope Alexander III propagated by means of his rapidly developing decretal legislation, was able to prevail. This new form of marriage resulted in the protection of women who could no longer be forced into marriages, that they did not want. I will present three cases to show this clearly. But could this protection in fact be realized and would it last? It will be shown that a possible disadvantage for a woman was the fact that a form for the marriage procedure had not yet been adequately defined and there were many clandestine marriages.

If you wish to attend the lecture, please register here.

Gisela Drossbach will be visiting Centre for Privacy Studies in February 2023. She is a Professor of European Regional History at the University of Augsburg and has her research projects at the Leopold-Wenger-Institut für Rechtsgeschichte at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat and the Stephan Kuttner Institute of Medieval Canon Law in Munich. She wrote her ‘Habilitation’ about the “Hospital and Order of Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome (1198-1378)” (published 2005) and her PhD about the Bavarian author Konrad von Megenberg († 1373). Her research has been funded by awards from among others the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Gerda-Henkel-Stiftung. Furthermore she has received fellowships from the German Historical Institutes in Rome and Paris and she has been a visiting professor at Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Dipartimento di Italianistica e Filologia Classica in 2021. She holds positions of different commissions like executive secretary of the Historical Society of Swabia/Bavaria and member of the Advisory Board of the Iuris Canonici Medii Aevi Consociatio (ICMAC). Her expertise is in the field of medieval juridical manuscripts, medieval canon law, text/images relations, history of religious institutions and hospitals, and Bavarian History. In these fields she has published more than 17 books and nearly 100 articles.

Details:

Time: 7 Feb. 2023, 13

Place: Room 6B.1.62, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen.

Organizer: Centre for Privacy Studies

BOOK: Carolyn BAUGH, Minor Marriage in Early Islamic Law (Leiden: Brill, 2017). ISBN: 978-90-04-34483-9, €99.00

(Source: Brill)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Series: Studies in Islamic Law and Society, Volume: 41

In Minor Marriage in Early Islamic Law, Carolyn Baugh offers an in-depth exploration of 8th-13th century legal sources on the marriageability of prepubescents, focusing on such issues as maintenance, sexual readiness, consent, and a father’s right to compel. Modern efforts to resist establishment of a minimum marriage age in countries such as Saudi Arabia rest on claims of early juristic consensus that fathers may compel their prepubescent daughters to marry. This work investigates such claims by highlighting the extremely nuanced discussions and debates recorded in early legal texts. From the works of famed early luminaries to the “consensus writers” of later centuries, each chapter brings new insights into a complex and enduring debate. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carolyn G. Baugh, Ph.D. (2011), University of Pennsylvania, is Assistant Professor of History at Gannon University. In addition to scholarly articles, she has translated Ibn Khaldūn’s treatise on Sufism, Shifāʾ al-sāʾil fī tahdhīb al-masāʾil for the Library of Arabic Literature.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part One: The Early Formative Era 

Chapter One: Contextualizing and Conceptualizing Minor Marriage 

Chapter Two: The Early Compendia 

Chapter Three: Early Ḥanafī Thought 

Chapter Four: Early Mālikī Thought 

Chapter Five: Al-Shāfiʿī 

Part Two; Consensus, Consensus Writing, Post-Formative Era Writing, and Whether Consensus Matters 

Chapter Six: Consensus 

Chapter Seven: Writing Consensus 

Chapter Eight: Post-Formative Era Thought on Minor Marriage 

Conclusion: Does Consensus Matter? 

Appendix: Excerpts from the Early Compendia 

Bibliography 

Index 

More information with the publisher.

Book: Charlotte DE CASTELNAU L'ESTOILE, Un catholicisme colonial. Le mariage des Indiens et des esclaves au Brésil, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle (Paris: PUF, 2019). ISBN: 9782130800378, pp. 560, € 29,00

(Source: PUF)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Le Brésil a connu une colonisation catholique sous l’égide de la couronne portugaise. Le transfert du mariage chrétien dans ce monde peuplé d’Indiens, mais aussi d’esclaves africains sur plus de deux siècles, a été un élément essentiel de cette colonisation. Quelles ont été les stratégies de l’Église et des missionnaires ? Quelles furent les réactions de ces populations qui occupent des positions subalternes mais n’en sont pas moins réactives face à cette entreprise?Descriptions missionnaires faisant revivre le monde tragiquement disparu des Indiens du Brésil, réflexions théologiques et juridiques qui révèlent le cadre intellectuel dans lequel s’est opérée l’expansion de la chrétienté à l’époque moderne : l'auteure s'appuie sur une documentation d'une grande richesse qui révèle combien l’esclavage était au cœur des réflexions de l'Église. Enfin, l’analyse des pratiques montre à la fois la subtile faculté d’adaptation des missionnaires et l’extraordinaire capacité d’action des Indiens et des esclaves qui utilisent les instruments du droit canonique pour leurs propres intérêts.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charlotte de Castelnau-L’Estoile est professeure d’histoire moderne à l’université Paris-Diderot et codirige, aux Puf, la collection « Nouvelle Clio ». Elle a publié Les ouvriers d'une vigne stérile. Les jésuites et la conversion des Indiens au Brésil 1580-1620 (Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, Paris, 2000), Páscoa et ses deux maris. Une esclave entre Angola, Brésil et Portugal au XVIIe siècle, (Puf, 2019).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction – Les Chaînes du Mariage

Première partie – Le transfert du mariage chrétien au Brésil XVIe-XVIIe siècles

Chapitre 1 – Des alliances indiennes au mariage

Chapitre 2 – La papauté et la question du mariage des infidèles 

Chapitre 3 – Le débat sur les mariages brésiliens

Chapitre 4 – Formation de la société esclavagiste et « doutes » sur le mariage

Chapitre 5 – Remarier les esclaves : les enjeux d’une bulle pontificale

Chapitre 6 – Mariages indiens et missions capucines au XVIIe siècle

Deuxième partie – Le mariage dans la société esclavagiste (début XVIIIe siècle)

Chapitre 7 – Se marier : un droit pour les esclaves ?

Chapitre 8 – Rio de Janeiro 1680-1720 : soixante-quinze histoires de mariages

Chapitre 9 – Le mariage et les chaînes de l’esclavage

Chapitre 10 – Les « fils soumis de la très sainte Église » : esclavage et religion

More information with the publisher.

BOOK: William N. ESKRIDGE, Marriage Equality From Outlaws to In-Laws (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020). ISBN 9780300221817, 40.00 USD

(Source: Yale University Press)

Yale University Press has published a new book on the history of the marriage equality debate in the United States.

ABOUT THE BOOK

As a legal scholar who first argued in the early 1990s for a right to gay marriage, William N. Eskridge Jr. has been on the front lines of the debate over same-sex marriage for decades. In this book, Eskridge and his coauthor, Christopher R. Riano, offer a panoramic and definitive history of America’s marriage equality debate. The authors explore the deeply religious, rabidly political, frequently administrative, and pervasively constitutional features of the debate and consider all angles of its dramatic history. While giving a full account of the legal and political issues, the authors never lose sight of the personal stories of the people involved, or of the central place the right to marry holds in a person’s ability to enjoy the dignity of full citizenship. This is not a triumphalist or one-sided book but a thoughtful history of how the nation wrestled with an important question of moral and legal equality.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William N. Eskridge Jr. is the John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School. 

Christopher R. Riano is the executive director of the Center for Civic Education and a lecturer in constitutional law and government at Columbia University.

More info here

BOOK: Melissa J. GANZ, Public Vows : Fictions of Marriage in the English Enlightenment (Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 2019). ISBN 9780813942421, $45.00

(Source: University of Virginia Press)

The University of Virginia Press has published a new book on marriage in 18^th century England.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

In eighteenth-century England, the institution of marriage became the subject of heated debates, as clerics, jurists, legislators, philosophers, and social observers began rethinking its contractual foundation. Public Vows argues that these debates shaped English fiction in crucial and previously unrecognized ways and that novels, in turn, played a central role in the debates.

Like many legal and social thinkers of their day, novelists such as Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Frances Burney, Eliza Fenwick, and Amelia Opie imagine marriage as a public institution subject to regulation by church and state rather than a private agreement between two free individuals. Through recurring scenes of infidelity, fraud, and coercion as well as experiments with narrative form, these writers show the practical and ethical problems that result when couples attempt to establish and dissolve unions simply by exchanging consent. Even as novelists seek to shore up the legal regulation of marriage, however, they contest the specific forms that these regulations take.

In recovering novelists’ engagements with the nuptial controversies of the Enlightenment, Public Vows challenges longstanding accounts of domestic fiction as contributing to sharp divisions between public and private life and as supporting the traditional, patriarchal family. At the same time, the book counters received views of law and literature, highlighting fiction’s often simultaneous affirmations and critiques of legal authority.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Melissa J. Ganz is Assistant Professor of English at Marquette University.

More information here

BOOK: Bettine BIRGE, Marriage and the Law in the Age of Khubilai Khan - Cases from the Yuan Dianzhang (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017). ISBN 9780674975514, €49.50

(Source: HUP)

Harvard University Press recently published a book on marriage law during the reign of Khubilai Khan.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Mongol conquest of China in the thirteenth century and Khubilai Khan’s founding of the Yuan dynasty brought together under one government people of different languages, religions, and social customs. Chinese law evolved rapidly to accommodate these changes, as reflected in the great compendium Yuan dianzhang (Statutes and Precedents of the Yuan Dynasty). The records of legal cases contained in this seminal text, Bettine Birge shows, paint a portrait of medieval Chinese family life—and the conflicts that arose from it—that is unmatched by any other historical source.

Marriage and the Law in the Age of Khubilai Khan reveals the complex, sometimes contradictory inner workings of the Mongol-Yuan legal system, seen through the prism of marriage disputes in chapter eighteen of the Yuan dianzhang, which has never before been translated into another language. Birge’s meticulously annotated translation clarifies the meaning of terms and passages, some in a hybrid Sino-Mongolian language, for specialists and general readers alike. The text includes court testimony—recorded in the vivid vernacular of people from all social classes—in lawsuits over adultery, divorce, rape, wife-selling, marriages of runaway slaves, and other conflicts. It brings us closer than any other source to the actual Mongolian speech of Khubilai and the great khans who succeeded him as they struggled to reconcile very different Mongol, Muslim, and Chinese legal traditions and confront the challenges of ruling a diverse polyethnic empire.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bettine Birge is Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, with a joint appointment in the Department of History, at the University of Southern California.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Maps, Figures, and Charts*

Abbreviations

Introduction

I. The Age of Khubilai Khan and the Yuan dianzhang

1. The Historical and Social Context of the Yuan dianzhang

2. Yuan Administration and the Legal System

3. Origins, Contents, and Transmission of the Yuan dianzhang

4. Notes on the Translation

II. Chapter 18, “Marriage,” from the Yuan dianzhang: An Annotated Translation

5. Sections 1–2: Marriage Rites and Exchanges; Getting Married

6. Sections 3–5: Marriage between Officials and Commoners; Marriages of Military Personnel; Divorce

7. Sections 6–8: When the Husband Dies; Levirate Marriage Approved; Levirate Marriage Rejected

8. Sections 9–12: Secondary Wives; Marriage between Slaves and Commoners; Marriage of Entertainers; Marriage during the Mourning Period

Appendix A: Translation of Title Page of the Yuan dianzhang

Appendix B: Marriage Cases from Chapter 18 of the Yuan dianzhang in Chronological Order

Appendix C: Marriage Cases from Chapter 18 of the Yuan dianzhang with Dates

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index

More information here

BOOK REVIEW: Wolfgang BURGDORF on Gary FERGUSON, Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2016) in Sehepunkte XVIII (2018), Nr. 5

(image source: Cornell UP)

Wolfgang Burgdorf (LMU München) reviewed Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome by Gary Ferguson (Cornell UP).

First paragraph:

Die Ehe für zwei Menschen gleichen Geschlechts ist keineswegs erst ein Phänomen der jüngeren Geschichte. 2015 hat Guiseppe Marcocci in den Historical Reflections einen Aufsatz veröffentlicht: "'Is This Love?' Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome". Es geht dabei um die Hintergründe der Hinrichtung von acht Sodomiten in Rom 1578. Einer war Portugiese, einer Albaner, sechs Spanier. Insgesamt waren elf Mitglieder einer Gruppe von 27 oder mehr verhaftet worden. Die übrigen waren geflohen (25). Mindestens zwei Mitglieder der Gruppe hatten geplant in der Kirche des Heiligen Johannes am lateinischen Tor eine Ehe zu schließen. Die Beteiligten hatten sich eine Geheimsprache zugelegt, so dass sie in Gegenwart von Dritten über ihre sexuellen Aktivitäten sprechen konnten, ohne sich zu verraten (115). Aus den Verhören ergibt sich, dass die Mitglieder der Gruppe viele gleichgeschlechtliche sexuelle Kontakte hatten. Es handelt sich also bei den Verhafteten nur um die Spitze eines Eisberges (164).

Read the rest on recensio.net.

PODCAST: Marta Madero on her latest book (France Culture, La Fabrique de l'Histoire, 21 Mar 2016)

(image source: France Culture)

Marta Madero (Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento), whose recent La loi de la chair (Paris: PUPS) had been announced earlier on this blog, presented her work in an interview with Emmanuel Laurentin (La Fabrique de l'Histoire, France Culture).

The broadcast can be heard here.

BOOK REVIEW: Danna MESSER reviews David D'AVRAY (ed.), Dissolving Royal Marriages. A Documentary History 860-1600 (Cambridge: CUP, 2014) (Reviews in History)

(image source: CUP)

Danna Messer (Bangor University) wrote a review of David D'Avray (ed.), Dissolving Royal Marriages. A Documentary History 860-1600, published by Cambridge University Press, for Reviews in History.

First paragraph:

Arguably, no other institution in the Middle Ages and early modern era was as subject to as many legal disparities and disputes between royal and papal power as that of royal marriage. In fact, a royal marriage was far from a private affair. On the spiritual level, the marriage of a royal couple was to reflect the sanctity of the life union between woman and man at the highest strata. Kings and queens were models of marital behaviour who, theoretically, were expected to match the idealistic gendered expectations and roles associated with their positions as husbands and wives. On the secular level, royal marriages symbolised an alliance between kingdoms. Marrying into the ‘wrong’ dynasty and choosing to dissolve one union in favour of another that offered more potential — like power, wealth or the birth of legitimate offspring and, thus, successors — had political ramifications that often reverberated far beyond the boundaries of the individual kingdoms involved. The culture of medieval and early modern Europe before the Reformation was unique as nowhere else in the world were the sexual lives and personal relationships of kings and queens, men and women, so policed by an external entity like the Catholic church. Thus, at its heart, royal marriage was a fundamental issue that defined ongoing relations between Church and State for a number of centuries.

The full text can be accessed on recensio.net.
More information on the book on the publisher's website.

CFP: "Special Issue of Gender & History: Marriage’s Global Past"

Call for Papers

Special Issue of "Gender & History": Marriage’s Global Past

Deadline: 15 January 2015

Editors:

Sara McDougall, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY)

Sarah Pearsall, Cambridge University

This special issue of Gender & History explores marriage's global past from the medieval to the modern era. They solicit contributions that examine aspects of the history of marriage in societies and cultures throughout the world, with special attention to ideas and practices of monogamy and polygamy. Of particular interest is the role of gender in the construction and reconstruction of marriage. They also solicit papers that interrogate the relationship of marriage to various forms of power, including those of state, religious, and colonial institutions as well as the complicated dynamics of authority within households. They welcome both broad, comparative studies and more narrowly-focused ones.

Many imagine marriage as a timeless institution. In fact, as William Alexander wrote in 1779, in his History of Women, From the Earliest Antiquity, to the Present Time, “Marriage is so far from having been an institution, fixed by permanent and unalterable laws, that it has been continually varying in every period, and in every country.” This historian thus acknowledged both the shifting nature of marriage as an institution in a global context, as well as the ways that marriage profoundly shapes, and is shaped by, the role and status of women and men. This special issue similarly assumes varieties of marriages, in terms of both chronology and geography.

This special issue will also interrogate the profound interconnection of gender and marriage, especially with reference to issues of rank, race, age, nationality, culture, religion, and sexuality. Indeed, what might constitute “traditional” marriage in one context might appear radical in another. Indeed, while many contemporary scholars and advocates have called for a redefinition of what is termed “traditional marriage,” recent scholarship has also emphasized how very little is traditional about what is currently described in the Oxford English Dictionary as: “the formal union of a man and a woman, typically as recognized by law, by which they become husband and wife.”

One of the goals of this special issue is to explore how the idea of so-called “traditional marriage” took root and spread in many cultures. Often, of course, it did so even as local social practices deviated, sometimes notably, from this norm. Christian teachings beginning in the first millennium endorsed a particular model of marriage that became not only a centerpiece of Christian faith but also a potent political and social force across the world. In this model, marriage had to be exclusive and indissoluble, a monogamous and enduring commitment between one man and one woman. At that time and in subsequent centuries, as Christian teachings spread throughout the world, this model of marriage came into contact with cultures that had a variety of different ideas about the best ways to marry, and the purpose of marriage. Clashes between different practices of marriage lay at the heart of many early modern and modern encounters. This special issue of Gender & History hopes to offer new interpretations of this complex and fascinating history.

The volume will begin with a colloquium to be held 18-20 March 2016 at Cambridge University. Paper proposals (750 words maximum) are to be submitted by 15 January 2015. Invitations to present at the colloquium will be issued in February 2015. All those presenting must submit articles for pre-circulation by 15 January 2016. Participants will also be expected to read all the other articles and to participate fully in the two-day colloquium. This participation will include commenting on the paper of another participant, as well as more general discussions. After the colloquium, participants will be invited to submit their revised papers for publication. Those accepted by the editors for publication will be expected to submit their manuscripts by 1 September 2016. This timeframe will allow the editors to work with authors to produce the final text of the issue for publication in 2017.

Please send paper proposals to smcdougall@jjay.cuny.edu andsmsp100@cam.ac.uk by 15 January 2015, with "Marriage’s Global Past” in the subject heading.