The church and sexuality in medieval Iceland

Although the Church's regulation of marriage and sex was felt by all Germanic tribes, this subject can be studied most closely in Iceland because of the richness of its source material. Four problems are examined here, from literary, legal, and historical sources, namely marriage, divorce, clerical celibacy and extramarital sex. All three categories of sources agree that marriage was a contractual arrangement between the families of the bride and the groom, as known elsewhere among Germanic tribes. They likewise concur that divorce was possible and easily obtainable. Clerical marriage, among both bishops and priests, was seen as acceptable in the legal and historical sources; the literary sagas do not deal with this issue. That extramarital sexual activities were common, is clear from the legal and historical sources but, in contrast, the literary materials depicts Icelandic couples as largely monogamous and faithful. This discrepancy between the historical and literary sagas, both products of the thirteenth century, can be explained by the growing influence of the Church, which by this time was attempting to introduce clerical celibacy and marital fidelity into Iceland. The thirteenth-century clerical authors of the literary sagas, set in ancient times, provided models intended to improve the sexual behavior of their audiences.     

"It Was Never Good World Sence Minister Must Have Wyves": clerical celibacy, clerical marriage, and anticlericalism in Reformation England

The impact of the Reformation was felt strongly in the nature and character of the priesthood, and in the function and reputation of the priest. A shift in the understanding of the priesthood was one of the most tangible manifestations of doctrinal change, evident in the physical arrangement of the church, in the language of the liturgy, and in the relaxation of the discipline of celibacy, which had for centuries bound priests in the Latin tradition to a life of perpetual continence. Clerical celibacy, and accusations of clerical incontinence, featured prominently in evangelical criticisms of the Catholic church and priesthood, which made a good deal of polemical capital out of the perceived relationship of the priest and the efficacy of his sacred function. Citing St Paul, Protestant polemicists presented clerical marriage as the only, and appropriate remedy, for priestly immorality. But did the advent of a married priesthood create more problems than it solved? The polemical certainties that informed evangelical writing on sacerdotal celibacy did not guarantee the immediate acceptance of a married priesthood, and the vocabulary that had been used to denounce clergy who failed in their obligation to celibacy was all too readily turned against the married clergy. The anti‐clerical lexicon, and its usage, remained remarkably static despite the substantial doctrinal and practical challenges posed to the traditional model of priesthood by the Protestant Reformation.     

‘I'd do it for love or for money’: Vietnamese women in Taiwan and the social construction of female migrant sexuality

Drawing on an ethnographic research in Vietnam and Taiwan, this article seeks to contribute to the global scholarship on migration and sexuality. It reveals interesting contradictions between the seemingly homogeneous stereotypes of Vietnamese women's sexuality, on the one hand, and the multiplicity and fluidity of actual sexual practices in real-life contexts, on the other hand. First, the presence of a number of chaste migrant women in our study challenges the common stereotype of female migrants as hypersexual and promiscuous menaces on the loose. Second, we question the emphasis on women's material greed and instrumentalism in normative discourses about Vietnamese women's engagement in extramarital relationship. While for some women in our research, sexual liaisons outside marriage are indeed orchestrated for financial gains, for others, extramarital sex is principally sought as a form of self-actualisation or an exploration of sexual pleasure and freedom that is absent from their marriage. The article emphasises the highly contextual nature of sexual norms and practices as well as the intersectionality of race, class and gender in the social construction of female sexuality in the context of transnational labour migration.     

The history of marriage and the myth of Friedelehe

The idea that Friedelehe and Muntehe constituted two distinct forms of Germanic marriage was based upon an attempt to reconstruct common Germanic culture with scraps of evidence from widely different times and places. A thorough re-examination of the sources for the institutions that were posited, based on this now outmoded methodology, reveals no evidence that transfer of Munt, or guardianship, distinguished between two different types of marriage, except perhaps in Lombard Italy, under the influence of Roman law. The idea that marriage with a dos is a different institution from marriage without one is not attested until the Carolingian period.     

Affection and Assimilation: Concubinage and the Ideal of Conjugal Love in Colonial Korea, 1922–38

This article explores how selective application of Japanese divorce laws between 1922 and 1938, which obstructed Korean women from obtaining divorce on the grounds of concubinage, affected the meaning of conjugal relationships in colonial Korea. I argue that in this period affection and companionship emerged as critical components of a legitimate conjugal relationship among Koreans. This legal process, which I call the affectivisation of the female‐spouse, coincided with a popular penchant for romantic love shown in public media and popular novels. Challenging previous scholarship that treated the phenomenon of romantic love as contained in literary discourses, this article shows how literary and legal discourses mutually influenced one another. I further argue that this new ideal of conjugal love had an intricate relationship with overall colonial legal policy: it worked in conjunction (not antithetical) to the family state ideology of the Japanese empire and the family system that the colonial state was trying to implement in Korea. The qualitative transformation of the conjugal relationship contributed to firmer implementation of the family system in Korea and prepared Korean society for the full assimilation of the Korean civil laws in 1940.     

Fault, Breakdown, and the Church of England's Involvement in the 1969 Divorce Reform

The 1969 reform of the divorce laws was part of a wider trendtowards the relaxation of family law that took place in mostwestern countries in the 1960s and 1970s.In Britain, the legislationresulted only in a regime of partial no-fault divorce. Thiswas the result of a compromise between church and state, whichis investigated in this article using Lambeth Palace papersand the archives of the Church of England's Moral Welfare Council. In particular, we focus on the origins of and reasons for theprofound shift in the Church's views on divorce that occurredin the 1960s. These had as much to do with changing views asto the source of sexual morality and the difficulties of imposingan external moral code. However, because divorce law reflectsa view of marriage, it was impossible for the Church to acceptfull no-fault divorce, which would have meant divorce by mutualconsent and have threatened the idea of marriage as a vocation.The compromise reached allowed the Church to go on treatingChristian and civil marriage as compatible. ^*The authors' names appear in alphabetical order.     

The Case of Beatrice Brooke: Fictions of Law and Marriage in Caroline Norton's Lost and Saved (1863)

In comparison with her influential political essays on matters of child custody, divorce and marital property settlements, the novels of Caroline Norton remain relatively under-studied. The purpose of this article is to revisit one of these novels, Lost and Saved, published in 1863, and to do so more particularly as an exercise in literary jurisprudence. It argues that the story of Beatrice Brooke, the unfortunate heroine of the novel, is shaped in considerable part by the law; first, by the peculiar terms of a probate settlement which serves to preclude her marriage to her ultimately duplicitous lover Montagu Treherne, and then second, by the broader terms of matrimonial law in nineteenth-century England, the construction of which serves to delude Beatrice into thinking that an ‘irregular’ marriage to Treherne enjoys some residual legal force. Though the medium is very different, the critique of marriage presented in Lost and Saved is just as urgent as that engaged in Norton's more famous political essays.     

Reconstructing the past in medieval Iceland

Locating and dating sagas is a difficult but still important task. This paper examines the relationship between the Sagas of Icelanders, which are concerned with tenth‐ and eleventh‐century events, and the contemporary sagas of the mid‐thirteenth century. Drawing upon models from anthropology, it looks at how contemporary ideas permeated these historicizing texts and how genealogy and geography act as structures around which the past is remembered. The many political relationships which occur in Laxdæla saga are analysed in relation to those from contemporary sagas from the same area of western Iceland. Since it appears that there is relatively little in common between the political situations depicted in Laxdæla saga and those portrayed in the contemporary sagas, it is likely that Laxdæla saga and the contemporary sagas were actually written down in different periods. It is possible, therefore, that the Sagas of Icelanders give us a view of the past which originates earlier than is usually suggested.     

Divorce and social class during the early stages of the divorce revolution: evidence from Flanders and the Netherlands

In times of low divorce rates (such as the nineteenth century and early twentieth century), the authors expect higher social strata to have the highest divorce chances as they are better equipped to break existing barriers to divorce. In this article, the authors analyze data from marriage certificates to assess whether there was a positive effect of occupational class on divorce in Belgium (Flanders) and the Netherlands. Their results for the Netherlands show a positive association between social class and divorce, particularly among the higher cultural groups. In Flanders, the authors do not find this, but they observe a negative association between illiteracy and divorce, an observation pointing in the same direction.     

论中国古代离婚的法律效力

离婚问题在中国古代历朝婚姻制度中都是无法回避的话题。从身份权、子女的抚养权、财产所有权以及再婚等四个方面考量中国古代离婚产生的相关法律效力,可见离婚制度虽历经千百年的发展,但始终保持着内在的连续性和统一性。同时,也可看出在中国古代离婚并不仅仅是个人生活方式的选择,而是会直接影响到社会伦理道德的根基和国家政权的稳定,因此各朝统治者都通过法律规制以期把离婚带来的负面影响最小化,从而服务于国家长治久安的统治目的。     

Divorce in early modern rural Japan: household and individual life course in northeastern villages, 1716-1870

Drawing data from the local population registers in two northeastern agricultural villages, this study examines the patterns and factors associated with divorce in preindustrial Japan. Divorce was easy and common during this period. More than two thirds of first marriages dissolved in divorce before individuals reached age fifty. Discrete-time event history analysis is applied to demonstrate how economic condition and household context influenced the likelihood of divorce for females. Risk of divorce was extremely high in the first three years and among uxorilocal marriages. Propensity of divorce increased upon economic stress in the community and among households of lower social status. Presence of parents, siblings, and children had strong bearings on marriage to continue.     

Coming of Age: Law,Sex and Childhood in Late Colonial India

This article revisits child‐marriage legislation in colonial India between 1891 and 1929 to re‐envision the ‘child’ as a subject constituted by laws governing sex, rather than as an a priori object requiring protection from patriarchal sexual norms. Focusing on the digital construction of the child in the twentieth century, this essay introduces a new angle from which to examine recent conclusions regarding child‐marriage reform in India. By drawing attention to an understudied figure, this article demonstrates the ways in which the problem of the child might transform understandings of the nation and its women; the universe of rights and the location of culture and the place of age as number in the formulation of legal subjectivities, colonial governmentality and humanitarian accounting in late colonial India.     

清代403宗民刑案例中的私通行为考察

男女私通在清代司法审理中占有相当的比重 ,表明它已构成当时不可忽视的一个社会问题。本文就当事者的年龄、婚姻、家庭状况以及他们之间的关系进行了数量统计和对比说明。根据案例的内容 ,把私通原因归纳为出于感情、家境困难或缺乏劳力、带有某种挟制性通奸和其他四大类 ,其中以前两类案例量最大、情况最复杂。并对私通产生的后果 ,传统道德、政府法律、婚姻家庭制度与私通的关系等等做了探讨。     

A gilded cage? Help and control in early Norwegian social policy

Between 1902 and 1972, Norway was the only country in Western Europe in which cohabitation without marriage was forbidden by law ("the concubinage clause"). Thirteen years after his arguably repressive clause was written into the criminal code, the Children Acts were introduced, giving Norwegian children born out of wedlock stronger social rights than in any other country at the time. Norway thus granted strong protection for children born outside marriage while extramarital sex in itself-in some circumstances- was forbidden. How can this paradox be understood? It has been argued that the Children Acts presupposed the concubinage clause, that the silk glove of the welfare state was only made possible by the iron fist of criminal law. This article studies the political debates preceding the two provisions and argues that both grew out of a particular understanding of the relationship between men and women. Extramarital sex was seen as something men did to women; thus, it could be argued that strengthening women's position in relation to that of men would lead to less immorality. Both the concubinage clause and the Children Acts were seen as means to this end.     

‘Partner in his Calamities’: Pastors' Wives,Married Nuns and the Experience of Clerical Marriage in the Early German Reformation

This essay examines what factors led the first clerical wives to marry former Catholic clergy and nuns to marry in the first decade of the Reformation in Germany and seeks to explain the difference that social class, geography and gender made in those decisions. In contrast to the later Reformation, when pastors married same or higher social status women, the majority of women who married former priests and monks during the 1520s were often lower or, in the case of nuns, significantly higher social status than their husbands. Women married clergy for a variety of reasons that were counterintuitive to typical marital strategies for economic security and social networking, since clergy had neither in the 1520s. While sharing a common experience, clerical wives' reasons for marriage to a pastor varied greatly depending on class, local decision about the Reformation and numerous personal factors. Using a variety of sources including letters, civic records, court testimony and published pamphlets, this article demonstrates that these women did exhibit a limited agency that ultimately helped shape larger social and political acceptance of clerical marriage.     

Freedom to divorce or protection of marriage? The divorce laws in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in the early twentieth century

In the period 1909-1927, new laws concerning divorce and marriage were enacted by the Scandinavian countries. Both at the time and more recently, these laws were considered as "liberal" as they promoted greater freedom to divorce based on individuality and gender equality. In this article, the authors first analyze the changes in these Family laws in the early twentieth century. Then, the authors study the effect of these laws on divorce and marriage patterns. As these laws did not modify the trend in divorce rates, the authors ask why this was the case. The authors' conclusions are that the laws were more concerned with preserving the sanctity of marriage and maintaining social order than with promoting individual freedom and gender equality.     

清代中期婚姻行为分析——立足于1781—1791年的考察

本文主要依据中国第一历史档案馆所藏乾隆朝刑科题本婚姻家庭类档案中收集的个案资料 ,对 18世纪中后期中国的婚姻行为包括初婚年龄、离婚表现和再婚状况做了初步分析。研究结论表明 ,在当时社会 ,女性早婚是比较普遍的现象 ,男性中早婚和晚婚两种现象并存 ;离婚是人们尽可能避免的 ,离婚中 ,丈夫休妻和嫁卖妻子为主流 ;丧偶妇女再婚和守节并存 ,中青年丧偶妇女再婚比例较高 ,但守节也有一定比例     

20世纪80年代的婚姻法律与婚姻家庭变迁

颁布于中国全面改革开放起步时期的1980年《婚姻法》,反映了国家在婚姻家庭领域的法制重建以及社会转型带来的家庭婚姻制度的变化。在社会上引起较大反响的主要有三个方面:第一,明确了夫妻财产制,人们的个人财产权利意识增强;第二,实行计划生育政策,但由于重男轻女思想的影响,使性别选择问题更突出地表现出来;第三,明确把感情破裂作为离婚的条件,但“感情破裂”的衡量标准很难掌握,司法部门在处理离婚案件时仍有很大困难。总之,1980年《婚姻法》是一部承前启后的法律,它既是对1950年《婚姻法》的继承与发展,又通过20年的司法实践,为2001年《婚姻法》的修正案的制定作了法律上的铺垫。     

古巴比伦婚姻习俗若干问题的再考察

长期以来,法制史家和亚述学家分别依据《汉穆拉比法典》有关婚姻的条款和古巴比伦时期有关婚姻的文献来研究古巴比伦时期的婚姻习俗,然而,他们的研究方法以及某些结论值得商榷。童养媳、婚约、聘金以及离婚权等问题的研究表明,只有将《汉穆拉比法典》有关婚姻的条款与古巴比伦时期的婚姻文献相结合,才能研究古巴比伦时期的婚姻习俗问题。上述问题的研究还表明,古巴比伦妇女在婚姻中处于被动地位,商品经济对婚姻影响很大。     

Reflections on the History and Historians of the black woman’s role in the community of slaves: enslaved women and intimate partner sexual violence

Taking as points of inspiration Peter Parish’s 1989 book, Slavery: History and Historians, and Angela Davis’s seminal 1971 article, “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves,” this probes both historiographically and methodologically some of the challenges faced by historians writing about the lives of enslaved women through a case study of intimate partner violence among enslaved people in the antebellum South. Because rape and sexual assault have been defined in the past as non-consensual sexual acts supported by surviving legal evidence (generally testimony from court trials), it is hard for historians to research rape and sexual violence under slavery (especially marital rape) as there was no legal standing for the rape of enslaved women or the rape of any woman within marriage. This article suggests enslaved women recognized that black men could both be perpetrators of sexual violence and simultaneously be victims of the system of slavery. It also argues women stoically tolerated being forced into intimate relationships, sometimes even staying with “husbands” imposed upon them after emancipation.