Marriage

Question 1

How was a royal or noble marriage celebrated?

Answer 1

With feasting and tournaments. Peasant marriages had eating and drinking, like noble ones.

Question 2

Who did a marriage involve?

Answer 2

The bride and bridegroom and their families were at the centre of attention. Family and friends were witnesses. A marriage occured after much negotiation between Church and state, and frequent intervention from King and lords.

Question 3

How did economic factors influence marriage?

Answer 3

Expanding settlements and colonization, growth of towns and markets made the population more mobile leading to migration. People moved to find work or better prospects. For women, migration was often the result of marriage. Migration made for greater marriage choice.

Question 4

What is endogamy?

Answer 4

marrying within a close circle of families. Most common among urban patricians and nobles looking to consolidate wealth and power.

Question 5

What is exogamy?

Answer 5

Marrying outside a close circle of families, and it was widespread.

Question 6

About how far did women marrying outside the manor go?

Answer 6

15 miles.

Question 7

About what fraction of people married within their parish in Florence?

Answer 7

about 1/3

Question 8

When might a marriage cross language barriers?

Answer 8

When a merchant married someone in a place he was doing business. This was rare.

Question 9

When did the Church approve a betrothal? A marriage?

Answer 9

At age seven, and age 12 for girls, 14 for boys.

Question 10

What was most needed for a marriage to take place?

Answer 10

Economic means - access to land to make a living.

Question 11

What factors determined marriage age in northern Italy?

Answer 11

Men were not to marry until they completed their apprenticeship - mid to late twenties. In girls, purity and virginity were highly prized, so marriage while still a teenager was desirable.

Question 12

What did Alberti and his treatise on The Family advise for choosing a wife?

Answer 12

A list of well-born girls in the neighourhood should be made to pick from.

Beauty, family, and wealth should be considered. Beauty was body, manners, and mind.

She should be young, virtuous, and a fit mother and companion.

A medium-sized dowry was preferable.

Question 13

How did Alessandra Strozzi advise marriages?

Answer 13

She wanted her sons to marry someone from an old, distinguished wealthy family. Secure political connections. She should be pretty, healthy to bear an heir.

Question 14

What was the ideal state for a woman, according to the Church?

Answer 14

Virginity, though they realised children were needed to carry on the race and to avoid sin (be fruitful and multiply).

Question 15

In what context should sexual activity take place according to the Church?

Answer 15

Within marriage.

Question 16

What constituted a valid marriage according to Gratian in his Decretum (1140)

Answer 16

Consent and consummation

Question 17

What did Peter Lombard think validated marriage?

Answer 17

Present consent (as opposed to betrothal, which is future consent). He didn’t think consummation was needed. His views were adopted by Pope Alexander III and Poper Innocent III and were laid down by the Third Lateran Council in 1179 and the Fourth in 1215.

Question 18

How did the Church view forced marriages?

Answer 18

They were condemned.

Question 19

What did the church think of clandestine marriages?

Answer 19

Not fans. It should be a public event and published in the parish Mass. Priests were forbidden from taking part in them. They were nonetheless valid until the Council of Trent in 1563 said their must be a religious service to validate a marriage in Catholic Europe.

Question 20

What was the position on marriage between relatives?

Answer 20

In 1215, the Church made it illegal to be married to a relative closer than 4 degrees of consanguinity. It also applied to relatives by marriage and godparents.

Question 21

Was was one of the few reasons a woman could divorce her husband?

Answer 21

Impotence.

Question 22

Where was long-term concumbinage acceptable?

Answer 22

Spain, Siciliy, and Ireland

Question 23

How did most marriage liturgies go?

Answer 23

Consent was exchanged at the church door before Mass on Sunday (not on advent or Lent), and the bride was handed to the groom, the blessing and giving of the ring, and the husband’s gift to his wife of dower and money. After prayers the priest took them into the church for nuptail Mass, where they were blessed. If they had any kids, they were declared legitimate. Some places, like in Naples, the father had to give his daughter in marriage. Later, the nuptial chamber and bed, and couple were blessed before consummating the marriage.

Question 24

Who needed to consent to noble marriages?

Answer 24

The couple, but also the parents and families involved.

Question 25

How did the rising cost of dowries affect sons and daughters in noble families?

Answer 25

large percentages were sent to enter the Church as nuns or as bishops, archbishops, etc. This was especially true of large families. This cost a lot less than a dowry

Question 26

How did marriage affect upward social mobility?

Answer 26

Social status was somewhat fluid. A family could move up in status over a couple generations if they married into more wealth or status than their own. Often a rich family without status would marry a daughter to a poor noble family, and both benefitted.

Question 27

How might downward social mobility occur?

Answer 27

One of the partners may die, the marriage may be childless, economic and political problems may happen. Some women might have to marry downward to get married at all.

Question 28

How could marriages be political?

Answer 28

Often they were used as a way to make peace between warring groups, or a way to seal a treaty among rulers. In some places it was used to strengthen business ties.

Question 29

How did seigneurial right of wardship and marriage benefits kings and lords?

Answer 29

They were a source of patronage and finance. One might reward a courtier with marriage to an heiress, and would collect fines from wards that chose their own marriage. He could control the power of the Crown by making marriages advantageous to himself.

Question 30

How important was a dowry?

Answer 30

A dowry, made of property or money, was essential to marriage formation. Either paid by the family or the girl herself, a dowry was used to establish and maintain a household, as well as provide for a widow.

Question 31

What was the morgengabe?

Answer 31

Early Middle Ages. Morning gift. Given to the bride by the husband on the morning after marriage consummation. It gave the bride substantial rights in her husband’s property. This gift declined a lot as time passed in southern Europe. It was still customary up north.

Question 32

What determined the size of dowry?

Answer 32

The wealth of the family, the status within the family - a second daughter might not get a dowry as big as the first. If the family had a lot of sons, the parents might want to skimp on the dowry to save it for the sons’ inheritance.