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By Edward J. Behrend-Martinez
In early sleek Europe the sacrament of matrimony represented a life-long dedication, and the Catholic Church authorised few grounds for the dissolution of an unsatisfied marriage. this kind of was once an unconsummated marriage due to the sexual impotency of 1 of the companions. Even then, an annulment used to be granted merely after a Church court docket had carried out a long research of the case, soliciting testimony from quite a few witnesses as good as from the aggrieved couple, and had subjected the allegedly impotent wife (and occasionally either spouses) to an intimate actual exam. Historian Edward J. Behrend-Mart?nez studied the transcripts of eighty-three impotency trials carried out via the ecclesiastical courtroom of the Spanish diocese of Calahorra in l. a. Rioja--an region incorporating either Basque and Castilian populations and together with city and rural parishes. From those files, he produced a close account of personal existence and public sexuality in those early years of the trendy period. The transcripts supply insights into the dynamics of day-by-day marital existence and the function that estate, gender, and private choice performed in marriage. additionally they exhibit information regarding clinical wisdom on the time and approximately modern knowing of the body structure and psychology of intercourse. undeserving for Marriage is the 1st research in English to handle the court cases of a Spanish ecclesiastical court docket and is a brilliant portrait of marriage and marital intercourse in early glossy Europe. it truly is crucial analyzing to an individual drawn to social heritage, gender stories, canon legislations, felony background, sexuality, and the heritage of divorce in Western Europe.
Read or Download Unfit For Marriage: Impotent Spouses On Trial In The Basque Region Of Spain, 1650-1750 (The Basque Series) PDF
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Extra resources for Unfit For Marriage: Impotent Spouses On Trial In The Basque Region Of Spain, 1650-1750 (The Basque Series)
Sample text
Diego’s case would have been in much better shape had all of his witnesses supported his claims. Christobal Pérez and María Maesto’s testimonies, because they were singular and effusive, could not have been very convincing in the face of the other witnesses and the doctor’s reports that attested to Diego’s impotence. After all, if the young couple had made love as loudly as Christobal claimed, why was there so much doubt as to Diego’s potency? Had Diego been fighting to prevent a separation based on a charge of spousal abuse, one favorable testimony generally would have won him the case.
If a lawyer could demonstrate, for instance, that a wife had had a miscarriage, he might then substantiate his client’s claims of potency. Witness testimonies could also be a way for a couple’s community to influence the court’s decision. This community included family and friends, local professionals, neighbor women and men. Even if ecclesiastical functionaries might not be able to decide whether a couple should continue living together or not, a consensus of neighbors’ opinions might decide the question in court.
The bishop had to enforce the church’s control over marriage formation and authority over legitimating who was and was not married. Because it was a sacrament, matrimony was to be treated, as much as possible, as a single momentous step. The Catholic Church throughout Europe had spent centuries wresting the legitimization of matrimony from the grasp of long-held customs and the aristocracy, and brought it into the doors of the church and cathedral. By the mid-sixteenth century it registered marriages in its books, and the church’s notaries kept track of profits Unfit for Marriage from the sale of marital dispensations.