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[20] Barbara Zymermanin’s Two Husbands Ludwig Schmugge n In the Later Middle Ages, canon law not only regulated the lives and careers of ecclesiastical persons, clerics, monks, and nuns but also had an enormous impact on the daily affairs of the laity. Even marriage, the most intimate relationship between men and women, was not beyond scrutiny, since it was viewed as a holy sacrament of the Church. The degree of supervision and interference is still apparent from the surviving records of thousands of matrimonial cases. These records were produced by the episcopal courts that operated in every diocese of Latin Christendom. According to the matrimonial law defined by late medieval councils and papal legislation, it was the task of the chief judicial officer (officialis) or vicar general (vicarius generalis) of the local bishoprics to handle all ordinary litigation relating to marriage. The supreme tribunal for spiritual matters at the papal court, the Penitentiary, was responsible for the granting of various marriage dispensations. In a period of less than fifty years, between 1455 and 1503, the scribes of the papal Penitentiary copied into their registers a total of 62,689 petitions involving marriage cases from across Western Europe. The documentation resulting from their efforts is now stored in the Vatican Archives.1 In the medieval Church, marriages between Christians, assuming they had been contractedaccordingtopropercanonicalform,wereindissoluble.Butatthesametime, there were many canonical impediments preventing men and women from contracting fully binding, sacramental marriages.2 The moral and juridical doctrines of the Church 289 1. E. Göller, Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie von ihrem Ursprung bis zu ihrer Umgestaltung unter Pius V. (2 vols. in 4 parts; Bibliothek des Preussischen Historischen Instituts in Rom 3, 4, 7, and 8; Rome 1907–11); L. Schmugge, P. Hersperger, and B. Wiggenhauser, Die Supplikenregister der päpstlichen Pönitentiarie aus der Zeit Pius’ II. (1458– 1464). (Bibliothek des Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom 84; Tübingen 1996). 2. For the impediments see J. Freisen, Geschichte des canonischen Eherechts bis zum Verfall der Glossenlitera- also did not condone any form of extra-marital sexual activity. Since medieval people did not always live up to the ecclesiastical standards, church courts were faced with a barrage of litigation between spouses, leading to countless investigations of improper behavior by married and unmarried couples alike. In the present essay, I will examine a single fifteenth-century case from Germany, which seems particularly suited to show the complexities arising from the requirements of church law on the one hand, and the social realities of spousal commitment on the other. In the past few decades matrimonial litigation has been studied rather intensely on the basis of local diocesan records.3 However, the pertinent documentation from the registers of the papal Penitentiary has been explored only occasionally.4 It is often difficult to match up local diocesan sources with the records in the central papal archives. The task has been accomplished by Paolo Ostinelli’s study of fifteenth-century cases from the diocese of Como in Northern Italy.5 But it is also worthwhile to explore those registered petitions of the Penitentiary which—due to loss—do not permit consultation of parallel sources in Rome and in local archives. Here I will examine a case submitted to the Penitentiary archives by a German petitioner from Würzburg, a diocese for which no documentation has survived in partibus, that is, in the local church. The diocese of Würzburg in southern Germany, one of the largest ecclesiastical territories in the Empire, was subdivided into 900 parochial churches.6 The bishop, simultaneously spiritual leader and political head of the duchy of Franconia, delegated his duties as supreme judge to an officer trained in canon law, the officialis curiae Herbipolensis . If we wish to consider the years between 1458 and 1471, based on a comparison with the neighboring diocese of Regensburg we can assume that the Würzburg court tur (Paderborn 1893, repr. Aalen 1963) 220–768; J. Gaudemet, Le mariage en occident. Le moeurs et le droit (Paris 1987) 195–219. 3. The fundamental study is by R. Helmholz, Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (Cambridge 1974). For more recent works on Italy, see Coniugi nemici: La separazione in Italia dal XII al XVIII secolo, ed. S. Seidel Menchi and D. Quaglioni (Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, Quaderni 53; Bologna 2000); Matrimoni in dubbio. Unioni controverse e nozze clandestine in Italia dal XIV al XVIII secolo, ed. S. Seidel Menchi and D. Quaglioni...

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