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C h a p t e r 2 Unequal Unions Many unions noted in the previous chapters were between partners of different social levels. Often an elite man formed a union other than marriage with a woman of lower status, either before marrying or while married to a woman who was selected for him for family, political, or economic reasons . This was especially true of monarchs and the highest aristocracy, among whom the practice continued well past the Middle Ages (and is not unheard of today). Considered from the standpoint of marriage as a central institution for the transfer of wealth, these unions were side affairs of little permanent consequence; but they were so common as to become a main avenue for social mobility. At the same time, they let class and gender difference reinforce each other so that relatively wealthy and powerful men could dominate those they felt to be their social inferiors through control of the group’s women. These women entered these sexual relationships for many of the same reasons that they might enter a marriage: economic or social advantage or personal desire. Long-term unions involved more than just sexual attraction: they often involved forming a household unit (even if the male partner did not live in it all the time). The partner, usually the man, who contributed more resources had more say over the terms of the liaison. In medieval Europe, men lost less in terms of public reputation by being involved in a union that was not considered marriage, and since their chastity was usually not as highly valued as that of women, they had less incentive to make a permanent bond such as marriage if the resources that the partner brought were not adequate. Social circumstances often dictated that the unions remain in the gray area on the margins of marriage. Perhaps such women would not always have married their partners had they had the opportunity, but the question is moot: the opportunity was not there. Unequal Unions 69 That such a pattern was pervasive does not mean that it was always the same. The relatively free access of men to women of lower status (but not of women to men of lower status) assumed different configurations under different cultural circumstances. This chapter will focus specifically on those unions that were not considered marriage because of the social or cultural distance between the partners, but it will consider widely disparate cases that have only a few features in common. In some such unions, the parties were not legally capable of marrying each other: for example, a slave and a free person, or a Jew and a Christian.1 In others—for example, a free servant and her master— marriage would have been legally possible but socially impossible (indeed, before the twelfth century, not all canonists agreed that it was legally possible).2 In the broadest sense, we can say that the pattern of higher-status men with lower-status women is a result of male dominance or patriarchy: men have generally had more sexual freedom and more economic options than women. This statement does not, however, explain very much. A somewhat more useful model in some societies is “resource polygyny.” Where it is an advantage for a man to have more children—especially sons—regardless of who their mother is, because they are potential heirs, because they can be valuable and unthreatening supporters for their legitimate siblings, or simply because it enhances their father’s masculine reputation, wealthy men can use their resources to support more than one woman in long-term unions.3 They can attract more women for short-term liaisons as well, but to the extent that offspring are intended, ongoing relationships are often involved. The church, of course, frowned upon these unions, and both ecclesiastical and secular law generally came to limit inheritance by children of women other than those born of a legally recognized marriage.4 Even when conceiving children was a consequence, welcome or unwelcome , rather than a goal, resources still had a great deal to do with the formation of status-imbalanced unions. Both free men and free women chose their partners under various constraints of economic need, parental pressure, and community attitudes. Men were much more likely to have control over resources than women, whether in the form of aristocratic ownership of land or a worker’s wages. Where women did have land or other resources, a male relative often exercised some sort of control...

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