The conjugal debt and medieval canon law

Marriage in Western European society was the preserve of the Christian Church throughout the later middle ages. The law of the Church played a significant role in the formation of doctrine concerning that institution, including the sexual relationship of spouses. Adopting a debt-model of conjugal relations, the canonists maintained that each partner owed marital coitus to the other. The lawyers emphasized the mutually binding character of this obligation, and consistently dejended the right of spouses to exact their marital due, insisting that this duty could be abrogated only by mutual consent. As heirs to an ascetic patristic tradition, however, the lawyers tended to be suspicious of fleshly pleasure. A peculiar and ambivalent doctrine resulted from this tension between an appreciation of the intrinsic goodness of the married state and a distrust of sex, one of its major constituents.     

Concubinage and marriage in medieval canon law

The medieval canon law adopted an ambivaient attitude toward concubinage among the laity. While the canonists disapproved of concubinage on moral grounds, they sought to assimilate the status of the concubine to that of the married woman and thus to legitimize concubinous relationships. In this process of assimilation the canonists made use of the institution of clandestine marriage, which created problems of its own. The crucial difficulty lay in constructing a satisfactory system of proof, so that it would be clear whether or not a given couple should be treated as married, or whether they should be considered legally as unmarried. The Council of Trent abolished lay concubinage and clandestine marriage, but thereby created a system of marriage law flawed with defects almost as serious as those experienced under the medieval law.     

The development of the conjugal bond in late medieval Bohemia

In late medieval Bohemia the focus of the family became more and more the relationship between husband and wife at the expense of the husband's male kin group. Where the tie of loyalty to one's male lineage and its future welfare prevailed, disposals of property after death restricted a widow's rights only to her dowry. The law of the land and custom generally supported this practice. However, more and more from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth century men gave their widows greater social security and authority over their estates and children, in the process excluding their own male kin. These conclusions arise from a numerical analysis of dowry contracts and last wills and testaments in three modest sized towns in Bohemia. The analysis shows that most men ensured their widow's secure title to the family inheritance either alone or jointly with their children. It also shows that the rate of property arrangements favouring the wife increased in the course of the centuries examined.     

The development of the conjugal bond in late medieval Bohemia

In late medieval Bohemia the focus of the family became more and more the relationship between husband and wife at the expense of the husband's male kin group. Where the tie of loyalty to one's male lineage and its future welfare prevailed, disposals of property after death restricted a widow's rights only to her dowry. The law of the land and custom generally supported this practice. However, more and more from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth century men gave their widows greater social security and authority over their estates and children, in the process excluding their own male kin.These conclusions arise from a numerical analysis of dowry contracts and last wills and testaments in three modest sized towns in Bohemia. The analysis shows that most men ensured their widow's secure title to the family inheritance either alone or jointly with their children. It also shows that the rate of property arrangements favouring the wife increased in the course of the centuries examined.     

Sexual morality and canon law: The evidence of the Rochester consistory court

Material which survives from the Rochester consistory court during the middle years of the fourteenth century makes it possible to examine the manner in which canon legal theory on offences against sexual morality was implemented in practice. The officials at Rochester were adhering to general canon legal principles by assigning penance according to a ‘hierarchy of sin‘, and they were using the discretion allowed to them to make individual judgments in each case. The use of penances other than penitential beatings was related both to contemporary views on the suitability of different forms of penance for those in authority, and to the actual gravity of an offence. Priests' delicts were regarded more seriously than those of the laity. The court did not display any bias against women when assigning penance, and often treated men more harshly.     

The canon of the Tibetan Bonpos

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

The canon of the Tibetan Bonpos

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

Islamic law and the social context of exchange in the medieval middle east

Islamic law purports to be unchanging and valid throughout the Islamic world. Nevertheless, a close examination of the medieval Islamic law of sate shows that the concept of local knowledge plays a considerable part in it On the one hand, the distinction between legitimate exchange and usury depends on the adequacy of the information available to the purchaser of goods or services; on the other hand, this stress on information leads to insistence that transactions must conform to the local custom of the merchants. Local custom thus comes in, as one might say, through a side door as a source of law, without being explicitly recognised as such.     

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.     

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.     

The road network of medieval England and Wales

The medieval road system of England and Wales has never been studied in any detail. This article attempts to bring together the cartographic evidence of the Gough and Paris maps and the more indirect evidence of three royal itineraries. This will suggest first which Roman roads were still in use in medieval times, and second what new lines of travel had come into use, thus distinguishing between the paved Roman roads which were still usable and the new routes which made and maintained themselves.     

The magic of early medieval ritual

Whether, and how, we ought to study early medieval rituals has been much debated recently, including in the pages of this journal by Geoffrey Koziol and Philippe Buc. This paper is intended as a contribution to this debate, and argues that rituals' written or spoken interpretations are not a simple rendering of the ritualized actions' 'meanings' in words and must therefore be analysed separately, not conflated with the possible effects of performance. Ritualized acts thus had two loci: the short-term experience of the embodied performance, and the long-term struggle over interpretation in speech and writing, both of which need to be explored with appropriate methodologies. Whilst the textuality of our sources thus needs to be taken seriously, it is proposed that we can also say something about the possible or even probable characteristics of early medieval ritualized acts as the medium of bodily postures and gestures used for demonstrative public interations between power holders.