Church and State

As the two most prominent institutions in Western European medieval society, the Church and the State greatly influenced marriage practices.

George Duby had argued that the legal definition of marriage derived from the desire to negotiate power between institutions.¹ In the early centuries of the Middle Ages, the Church sought to absorb pagan betrothal customs into Christian practices. Certain scriptural passages encouraged the absorbtion of pre-Christian marriage customs into Christian practices. 1 Corinthians 7:9 contains the phrase ‘better to marry than to burn.’ The burning here referred to lust, or the lack of self-control over one’s sexual desires.

In addition, ecclesiastical authorities noticed an opportunity to gain political power if placed in the role of adjudicator in the marriage disputes of the elite class. As an early test case for this, the Church’s involvement in the dispute over Lothar II’s repudiation of his wife established ecclesiastical authorities as legitimate authorities over the marriages of emperors.² The Fourth Lateran Council, convened by Innocent III in 1215, formalized this authority and embedded it in the legal frameworks of all polities in Christendom.³ In addition the Fourth Lateran Council confirmed marriage as one of the seven sacraments. D.L. D’Avray has noted that the Western European practice of political leaders submitting to Church authorities regarding their marriages and divorces remains unique in the history of monarchies.⁴ The positioning of the bishop at the center of the illustration of the marriage of Henry V and Catherine of Valois demonstrates the centrality of Church authority in royal marriages. Repeatedly, though, monarchs challenged Church authority when it came to their own desires for autonomy in their marriage choices. Henry VIII remains the most famous example, with his desire for marriage/divorce autonomy leading to a contest of authority that eventually subsumed Church authority underneath State authority in England.

At the more prosaic day-to-day level, the Church shaped people’s expectations for all aspects of marriage, from courtship to widowhood/widowerhood. The Church’s statements and policies on marriage coincided with the secular focus on offspring as the purpose of a marriage.⁵ From that initial goal, all the other expectations flowed. This can be seen in the popularity of Birth Trays as wedding gifts to the bride, such as the two profiled on this website the one with Diana and the one with prominent heraldic symbols. Significantly, the back of the Diana birth tray depicts an allegorical representation of Justice and includes heraldic symbols for the couple. In these two objects, the authority of the Church and State both contribute to the naturalized connection between marriage and producing offspring. At the same time, and somewhat paradoxically, the hagiographies of many female saints sought to connect the purity of pious virginity with the pro-social goal of marriage. The popularity of paintings of St. Catherine and St. Barbara as wedding gifts attest to this cultural blending. The cultural blending went even further by incorporating pagan themes and Muslim themes in the case of the wedding casket depicting ‘Moorish dance.’

For the Jewish tradition, the two wedding rings, one from Alsace and one from Erfurt, illustrate the power of the Temple as a metaphor for both the institution of the faith as well as the household of a marriaged couple.

Both of the major medieval institutions, Church and State, served to regulate marriages. Yet, as Ruth Mazo Karras has convincingly argued in Unmarriages, plenty of formations of unions existed that bent, or even ignored, the rules of marriage delineated by ecclesiastical authorities.⁶ The supposed rational order applied to adjudicating marriages often fell away as the pressures of diverse social situations created a constant need for making exceptions. The commonplace flouting of the rules perhaps explains the near absence of symbols of Church and State authority in the portrait of Arnolfini and his wife.