Patterns of Marriage
Patterns of Marriage
Foundation of Society. Marriage was the lived experience of most people during this period. Marital patterns and customs varied widely throughout Europe, but in all places and at all times the vast majority of women and men married at least once, and society was conceived of as a collection of households, with a marital couple, or a person who had once been a spouse, as the core of most households.
Delayed Matrimony. Marital patterns varied according to region, social class, and to a lesser degree religious affiliation. The most dramatic difference was between the area of northwestern Europe, including the British Isles, Scandinavia, France, and Germany, and eastern and southern Europe. In northwestern Europe, historians have identified a marriage pattern unique in the world, with couples waiting until their mid- or late twenties to marry, long beyond the age of sexual maturity, and then immediately setting up an independent household. Husbands were likely to be only two or three years older than their wives at first marriage, and though households often contained servants, they rarely included more than one family member who was not a part of the nuclear family. In most of the rest of the world, including southern and eastern Europe, marriage was between teenagers who lived with one set of parents for a long time, or between a man in his late twenties or thirties and a much younger woman, with households again containing several generations. The northwestern European marriage pattern resulted largely from the idea that couples should be economically independent before they married, so that both spouses spent long periods as servants or workers in other households—saving money and learning skills—or waited until their parents had died and the family property was distributed. This period of waiting was so long, and the economic requirements for marriage set so high, that many people did not marry until they were in their thirties, and a significant number never married at all.
Freedom of Choice. Did this late age of marriage mean that people had a greater say in who they married? This question has been hotly debated, particularly for England, which provides most of the available research sources in the form of family letters, diaries, and official records regarding marriage. There are many instances, particularly among the upper classes, in which there were complicated marriage strategies to cement family alliances and young people were more or less forced to marry whom their parents wished. Among the lower classes, neighbors and public authorities often helped to determine whether a couple would marry— the neighbors through pressuring courting couples, and officials by simply prohibiting unions between individuals regarded as too poor. Historians who have focused on the middle classes, however, assert that though couples may have received advice or even threats, they were largely free to marry who they wished.
Good Choices. In some ways this debate sets up a false dichotomy because both sides tend to focus on cases in which there was clear and recorded conflict between individuals and family or community. In the vast majority of marriages, the aims of the people involved and their parents, kin, and community were the same; the best husband was the one who could provide security, honor, and status, and the best wife was one who was capable of running a household and assisting her husband in his work. Therefore, even people who were the most free to choose their own spouses, such as widows and widowers or individuals whose parents had died, were motivated more by pragmatic concerns than romantic love. This consideration is not to say that their choice was unemotional, but that the need for economic security, the desire for social prestige, and the hope for children were as important as sexual passion. The love and attraction a person felt for a possible spouse could be based on any combination of these concerns.
Jewish Unions. The link, rather than conflict, between social and emotional compatibility was recognized explicitly by Jewish authorities. Jewish marriages in most parts of Europe continued to be arranged throughout this period, and the spouses were both young. Authorities expected love to follow, however, and described the ideal marriage as one predestined in heaven. Judaism did allow divorce, which was then sometimes justified on the grounds that the spouses had obviously not been predestined for each other.
Promoting Marriage. One of the key ideas of the Protestant Reformation was the denial of the value of celibacy and championing of married life as a spiritually preferable state. One might thus expect religion to have had a major effect on marriage patterns, but this conclusion is difficult to document, in large part because all the areas of Europe that became Protestant lie within northwestern Europe. There were many theoretical differences. Protestant marriage regulations stressed the importance of parental consent more than Catholic ones, allowed the possibility of divorce with remarriage in cases of adultery or impotence and in some areas also for refusal to have sexual relations, deadly abuse, abandonment, or incurable diseases such as leprosy; Orthodox courts in eastern Europe allowed divorce for adultery or the taking of religious vows. The numbers of people who actually used the courts to escape an unpleasant marriage were small, however, and apparently everywhere smaller than the number of couples who informally divorced by simply moving apart from one another. Women in particular more often used the courts to attempt to form a marriage, such as in breach-of-promise cases, or to renew a marriage in which their spouses had deserted them, than to end one. The impossibility of divorce in Catholic areas was relieved somewhat by the possibility of annulment and by institutions that took in abused or deserted wives; similar institutions were not found in Protestant areas.
Influences on Marriage. Social class had a larger impact than religion on marital patterns. Throughout Europe, rural residents married earlier than urbanites and were more likely to live in complex households of several generations or of married brothers and their families living together. They also remarried faster and more often. Women from the upper classes married earlier than those from the lower, and the age difference between spouses was greater among upper-class people. People who had migrated in search of employment married later than those who remained at home, and chose someone closer to their own age.
Common Trends. Along with significant differences, there were also similarities in marriage patterns throughout Europe. Somewhere around one-fifth of all unions were remarriages for at least one of the partners, with widowers much more likely to remarry than widows and to do so sooner than their female counterparts. The reasons for this disparity differ according to social class: wealthy or comfortable widows may have seen no advantage in remarrying, for doing so would put them under the legal control of a man again, and poor widows, particularly elderly ones, found it difficult to attract marriage partners. Women of all classes were expected to bring a dowry to their marriage, which might consist of some clothing and household items (usually including the marriage bed and bedding) for poor women, or vast amounts of cash, goods, or property for wealthy brides; in eastern Europe the dowry might even include serfs or slaves. This dowry substituted in most parts of Europe for a daughter's share of the family inheritance, and increasingly did not include any land, which kept property within the patrilineal lineage. Laws regarding a woman's control of her dowry varied throughout Europe, but in general a husband had the use, but not the ownership, of it during his wife's lifetime, though of course if he invested it unwisely this distinction did not make much difference. However, a woman could sue her husband if she thought he was wasting her dowry, and many courts took control of the wife's property from her spouse. The 1526 Law Code from the territory of Salzburg gives one example of how a woman could do this, as well as other provisions
“ROWLAND'S THE BRIDE”
There were many poems and prose works describing ideal wives and husbands or providing advice on domestic relations published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The following is a typical one.
You that intend the honourable life,
And would with joy live happily in the same,
Must note eight duties do concern a wife,
To which with all endeavour she must frame:
And so in peace possess her husband's love,
And all distaste from both their hearts remove.
The first is that she have domestic cares,
Of private business for the house within,
Leaving her husband unto his affairs,
Of things abroad that out of doors have been
By him performed, as his charge to do,
Not busy-body like inclined thereto.
Nor intermedling as a number will,
Of foolish gossips such as do neglect,
The things which do concern them, and too ill,
Presume in matters unto no effect:
Beyond their element when they should look,
To what is done in kitchen by the cook.
Or unto children's virtuous education,
Or to their maids, that they good housewives be,
And carefully contain a decent fashion,
That nothing pass the limits of degree:
Knowing her husband's business from her own,
And diligent do that, let his alone.
The second duty of the wife is this,* * *
(Which she in mind ought very careful bear).
To entertain in house such friends as his
As she doth know have husband's welcome there:
Not her acquaintance without his consent,
For that way jealousy breeds discontent.
Third duty is, that of no proud pretense,
She move her husband to consume his means,
With urging him to needless vain expense,
Which toward the counter or to Ludgate leans,
For many idle housewives (London knows)
Have by their pride been husband's overthrows.
A modest woman will in compass keep,
And decently unto her calling go,
Not diving in the frugal purse too deep,
By making to the world a peacock show:
Though they seem fools, so yield unto their wives,
Some poor men do it to have quiet lives.
Fourth duty is, to love her own house best,
And be no gadding gossip up and down,
To hear and carry tales amongst the rest,
That are the news reporters of the town:
A modest woman's home is her delight,
Of business there, to have the oversight.
At public plays she never will be known,* * *
And to be tavern guest she ever hates,
She scorns to be a street wife (idle one)
Or field wife ranging with her walking mates:
She knows how wise men censure of such dames,
And how with blots they blemish their good names.
Fifth duty of a wife unto her head,* * *
Is her obedience to reform his will,
And never with a self-conceit be led
That her advice proves good, his counsel ill:
In judgement being singular alone,
As having all the wit, her husband none.
When as the husband bargains hath to make,
In things that are depending on his trade,
Let not wife's boldness power unto her take,
As though no match were good but what she made:
For she that thus hath oar in husband's boat,
Let her take breech, and give him petticoat.
Source: Samuel Rowlands, The Bride (London, 1617).
regarding property in marriage. This action was clearly something done only as a last resort, as it meant a woman had to admit publicly her husband was a wastrel or spend-thrift. During the late medieval period, women appear to have been free to bequeath their dowries to whomever they chose, but in many parts of Europe this right was restricted during the sixteenth century to prevent them from deeding property to persons other than male heirs.
Sources
Eric Josef Carlson, Marriage and the English Reformation (Oxford & Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994).
Francis William Kent, Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence: The Family Life of the Capponi, Ginori, and Rucellai (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).
Richard Wall, Jean Robin, and Peter Laslett, eds., Family Forms in Historic Europe (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983).