Marriage on Trial

5. Conclusion

5 Conclusion The Roman curia, with the pope, the bearer of the “fullness of spiritual power” (plenitudo potestatis), at its head, served as the “well of grace” for all Christians of the late Middle Ages, pure and simple. Not only did the path to lucrative ecclesiastical prebends of every calibre , from the office of a priest in charge of Mass at matins up to the cardinalate, lead through Rome; the papal court also produced “potere spirituale” (Arnold Esch) in the form of absolutions, dispensations, and indults. The complicated juristic prescriptions for how a “rightful marriage” (Paul Mikat) came about, based on the prescriptions of the Fourth Lateran Council about the banns of marriage as well as the marital impediments of kinship and on the papal decretals, had resulted in a flood of processes in partibus in the late medieval empire. of these marriage processes, only about three to five percent reached Rome and are reflected in the supplication register of the papal penitentiary . Between 1455 and 1492/1500, that number was 6,387 supplications from the German-speaking regions of the time. Up to eighty percent of the requests for pardon originated in the densely populated regions of southern and western Germany; the northern and eastern dioceses seem to have already turned away from the curial well of grace. Beyond the already reported conclusions, one gains a series of general insights into the social and legal history and the mentalité of the late Middle Ages from the supplications which have 337 338 Conclusion now been available for research for several decades. In addition, the supplication register of the penitentiary considerably expands the potential for investigation into diocesan jurisdiction. Prudery and Puritanism? To the claim that what later came to be characterized as Puritanism ruled the day in the sexual life of medieval men and women and that the relationship between married couples and lovers was dominated by prudery, it must be countered that there is little trace of that in the penitentiary supplications and in the official court records of late medieval marriage processes.1 Ever since twelfthcentury Europeans allegedly re-discovered love (Peter Dinzelbacher) and contemporary theologians had given some room for sexual lust, at least in marriage, some scholars now want to locate “a downright modern understanding of marriage” (Arnold Angenendt) in the late Middle Ages.2 The canonical principle that the consent of man and woman constituted a prerequisite for a valid marriage had apparently led to looser sexual practices, at least among men (but evidently not them alone), which showed fully “modern” qualities. From the still-surviving court records of diocesan marriage processes, one gets the impression of frequently uninhibited relations between the sexes , which were evidently practiced even before marriage at all levels of society. Understandably, young women made consent to sexual relations dependent upon at least a pledge of marriage. Clandestine Marriages—Very Widespread Clandestine marriage, in which couples lived together “without a marriage certificate,” was very widespread in late medieval Germany , even though, from the time of a decretal of Pope Clement V (1305–14) confirmed by the Council of Vienne, all couples who got married while knowing of a marriage impediment were considered automatically (ipso facto) excommunicated (Clem. 4.1.1). A gloss on the Decretum Gratiani, which no longer made permission by the fam1 . Cf. on this point, Angenendt, Ehe im Mittelalter. 2. Ibid., 75. Conclusion 339 ily to marry a prerequisite for the validity of a marriage, opened the door for the secret contraction of marriages.3 Apparently the officialate courts in many dioceses (such as Regensburg) turned a blind eye toward couples living together clandestinely. Despite the threat of excommunication, especially when a marriage impediment was present, the inclination to contract a marriage clandestinely appears to have been strong, above all among couples bound by a spiritual kinship. Clandestine marriage was distinguished from fornicatio in that, in contrast to occasional, illicit sexual relations, a will to be married was present in both partners. It is thus not correct for the German realm that clandestine marriage was a “legal abstraction” and amounted to merely an informal engagement.4 As is clear from this investigation of the penitentiary supplications, many couples lived together clandestinely and had children at the time when they submitted their request for pardon, regardless of an existing marital impediment. As Christina Deutsch has shown was also the case in the matrimonial judgments in Regensburg, the...