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  • "Faire les nopces": Le marriage de la noblesse français (1375-1475)
  • Ruth Mazo Karras
"Faire les nopces": Le marriage de la noblesse français (1375-1475). By Geneviève Ribordy (Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2004) 207 pp. $44.95

Ribordy's study uses two sets of data, criminal pleas from the Parlement de Paris (48 cases over 100 years) and letters of remission (52 cases over 100 years) to evaluate the state of marriage among the French aristocracy in the later Middle Ages. Notably, she attempts to test Duby's thesis that the Church's model of marriage had prevailed over the competing aristocratic model by the beginning of the thirteenth century.1 The 141 pages of text include a rehearsal of well-known historical background on the theology and canon law of marriage, not necessary for the scholars who will form the audience for this narrowly conceived work. Such scholars will find few surprises, but they will find that Ribordy has mined sources that have not previously been used in studies of marriage (because their purpose is not to focus on it, they have to undergo heavy analysis to yield much information). Her method is a close reading of the texts rather than a statistical analysis, for which the database is too small. Hence, the value of the work is not methodological innovation but the testing of existing hypotheses against new information.

With regard to whether the lay aristocracy had adopted the Church's model of marriage, Ribordy notes that the laity placed great emphasis on betrothal, which was not really an important part of the Church model at all. Some of the laity treated betrothal as a marriage and had sexual intercourse following it; the Church treated this custom as marriage by words of future consent, which was indissoluble and binding if followed by sexual intercourse (58). The lay and ecclesiastical models do not seem too far from each other, although, as Ribordy shows, the laity evinced confusion about verba de presenti and verba de futuro (105). They, like Gratian (whose argument did not prevail within the Church) emphasized the role of consummation in any valid marriage.

By the fourteenth century, lay aristocrats were well aware of the Church's rules on consanguinity, and took steps to obtain the appropriate dispensation when needed. They also had accepted the doctrine of indissolubility (although clandestine marriages sometimes confused the issue) (73). They mostly followed the Church's command that marriages be performed by clergy, even though canon law did not strictly require it (96). The aristocracy agreed with the Church that children should not be married too young, but, Ribordy suggests, without really assimilating the Church's reasons. When individuals violated customary practice in this regard, they did not attempt to obtain a dispensation (81).

Ribordy concludes that the Church and the aristocracy in late medieval France were in agreement on many of the basic issues about marriage [End Page 90] (including indissolubility, the main area of contention for Duby). Yet they disagreed about the fundamental purpose of marriage—whether it be for the individuals involved and the sacrament or for the sake of the families, whose consent was important to the aristocracy if not to the Church.

Ruth Mazo Karras
University of Minnesota

Footnotes

1. Georges Duby, The Knight, The Lady, and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France (New York, 1983).

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