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  • Sex Crimes, Honour, and the Law in Early Modern Spain: Vizcaya, 1528-1735
  • Ivan Cañadas
Barahona, Renato , Sex Crimes, Honour, and the Law in Early Modern Spain: Vizcaya, 1528-1735, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2003; cloth; pp. xxi, 274; RRP C$63; ISBN 080203694-5.

In this study of almost 350 legal cases from the northern-Spanish region of Vizcaya in the early modern period, the author explores the viability of legal avenues for women whose sexual honour, economic wellbeing, or marital prospects had been compromised through seduction, abandonment, or rape. Barahona's research is invaluable for bringing to light the importance of rank, occupation, economic standing, educational level, and ethnicity, and place of residence, as manifested during these trials.

The focus is primarily on the crime of estupro ('defloration'), understood as the loss of virginity by an unmarried woman, a loss for which the man bore liability. Barahona examines the language used in such depositions, which tended to reinforce expectations that the man was active, the woman passive and pressured into yielding. The particulars of sexual contact, beyond formulaic implications of consummation, were generally glossed over, in what at times might have been cases of coercion, or rape. In practice, a standard case of estupro would involve a woman who sued a man after he reneged on a promise of marriage, and where public awareness of this abandonment, accompanied by loss of virginity – and hence the stigma of dishonour, with or without the added economic and cultural burden of children – damaged her subsequent prospects of marriage. [End Page 189]

Barahona's study shows the role not simply of rank, as such, but of a quite developed materialist standard, whereby the relative social standing of plaintiff and defendant had to be determined. Of central importance where damages were sought, was the young woman's social standing – not simply in the sense of her prior sexual reputation, but, rather, how much she was worth, based on whether she was a servant or someone of independent means, and based also on the property that she or her relatives could provide her as a dowry; by these means, the courts determined what the plaintiff's marriage prospects might been to begin with, so as to determine adequate compensation. Barahona documents the viability of this legal recourse, even taking into account the degree of prejudice suggested above, which enabled plaintiffs to obtain some redress, and hence, he suggests, to regain a measure of standing or respect within their community.

The study also addresses a range of factors and social practices, including cohabitation; a widespread popular custom that could result in relative ease of abandonment by men who tired of a sexual partner; it persisted, 'even well after the Council of Trent', which had banned private marriages (p. xx). When a case of cohabitation, known in Spanish as amancebamiento, was brought to trial, however, Barahona finds that it was usually not to punish people who had failed to enter into a Church marriage, but, in fact, to deal with priests, or as a means to return a flagrantly adulterous man to his lawful wedded wife. The latter frequently involved the forced separation of the adulterous couple through the banishment of the 'other woman', but also, interestingly, a 'monetary remedy' given by the man to that woman to assist her in starting a new life.

Barahona identifies important trends or tendencies, among them the social inequality that was frequently a motive or means for irregular relationships and exploitation; for instance, the disparity in age between men and women, and very often, the relative poverty or lower social standing of the woman, who could be tempted, cajoled, or coerced, into socially-damaging sexual relations. Such social disparity also affected trials, or at least, depositions by defendants about the credibility and social standing of plaintiffs. Having said this, however, Barahona finds that while compensation sums awarded tended to be well beneath what was sought, 'most plaintiffs did not walk away from litigation empty-handed', and 'nearly all defendants were held monetarily responsible for their actions' (p. 148).

The drama of early modern Spain abounds in honour-killings – 'wife murder plays', 'peasant honour plays', and...

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