Dissolving Royal Marriages

2015

King Henry VIII's quarrel with the papacy over the annulment of his almost 24-year marriage to Catherine of Aragon is familiar to both popular and historical audiences. What is less well known is that papal interference in royal marriages dates as far back as the Carolingian era, although the tools popes used to defend the indissolubility of marriage evolved over time. As Henry discovered, annulment on the grounds of incest, especially when the church had already granted a dispensation on this matter, held little weight with the Roman pontiff in the 16th century. Not so in the ninth century. When King Lothar II sued for an annulment from his wife Theutberga on charges of incest (and curiously also the somewhat contradictory allegations of sterility and abortion, as well as sodomy, and becoming a nun), his skilled advisers exploited the confusion over forbidden degrees of relationship in order to secure Lothar a divorce. Admittedly, obtaining papal approval was not easy: in the process Pope Nicholas I excommunicated Lothar, Theutberga was ordered to undergo the ordeal of water, the couple had to reunite briefly twice, and it was under another pope altogether that the two were finally granted an annulment. Nevertheless, Lothar and Theutberga's divorce set an important precedent that allowed a handful of medieval royal couples to escape the bonds of marriage. This eminently useful book explains what happened between the time of Lothar and Henry in terms of canon law, annulments, papal intervention and incest laws in order to make Henry's request in the early 16th century not only untenable, but also antiquated.

The Plantagenet Chronicle, Vol. 26, No. 3, 2024, pp. 4-6.

We had a good turn-out for our 20 July mee􏰀ng with a few new faces. Prof Carole Cusack is the Plantagenet History Society’s Honorary President and head of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney. Carole took us through a history of divorce and annulment from the early years of the Chris􏰀an Church and how marriage changed over the years. Medieval divorce didn’t technically exist, though annulments were allowed.

Drawing on the extensive and underused body of legal records on marriage that exist in Europe's ecclesiastical and secular archives, Marriage in Europe, 1400-1800 examines the institution not just as it was theorized by jurists and theologians, but as it was lived in reality. A comparative history that examines England, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, the Low Countries, and Sweden, this volume features the extensive and meticulous research of twelve leading international experts in the field. Their essays make use of material from thirty-one European archives, as well as a range of canons and decretals, poems, letters, novels, and treatises, to offer a history of marriage, both Catholic and Protestant. Edited by Silvana Seidel Menchi, this collection is an essential resource for those interested in the history of marriage in Christian Europe.

A detailed study of the marriage arrangements for children of the King of England from the Norman Conquest to the deposition of Richard II

To Have and To Hold: Marriage and its Documentation is Western Christendom, Cambridge University Press, 2007

This 2007 book analyzes how, why, and when pre-modern Europeans documented their marriages - through property deeds, marital settlements, dotal charters, church court depositions, wedding liturgies, and other indicia of marital consent. The authors consider both the function of documentation in the process of marrying and what the surviving documents say about pre-modern marriage and how people in the day understood it. Drawing on archival evidence from classical Rome, medieval France, England, Iceland, and Ireland, and Renaissance Florence, Douai, and Geneva, the volume provides a rich interdisciplinary analysis of the range of marital customs, laws, and practices in Western Christendom. The chapters include freshly translated specimen documents that bring the reader closer to the actual practice of marrying than the normative literature of pre-modern theology and canon law. • Its sweep from 400–1600 with a sustained argument and demonstration • Its deliberate interdisciplinary approach • Its inclusion and critical analysis of English translations of many newly discovered engagement and marriage documents Contents 1. Marrying and its documentation in pre-modern Europe: consent, celebration, and property Philip L. Reynolds; 2. Marrying and its documentation in later Roman law Judith Evans-Grubbs; 3. Marrying and the tabulae nuptiales in Roman North Africa from Tertullian to Augustine David G. Hunter; 4. Dotal Charters in the Frankish tradition Philip L. Reynolds; 5. Marriage and diplomatics: five Dower Charters from the regions of Laon and Soissons, 1163–81 Laurent Morelle; 6. Marriage agreements from twelfth-century Southern France Cynthia Johnson; 7. Marriage contracts in medieval England R. H. Helmholz; 8. Marriage contracts and the church courts of fourteenth-century England Frederik Pedersen; 9. Marrying and marriage litigation in medieval Ireland Art Cosgrove; 10. Marriage contracts in medieval Iceland Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir; 11. Contracting marriage in Renaissance Florence Thomas J. Kuehn; 12. Marital property law as sociocultural text: the case of late-medieval Douai Martha C. Howell; 13. Marriage contracts, liturgies, and properties in Reformation Geneva John Witte, Jr; Index. Contributors Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir, Art Cosgrove, Judith Evans-Grubbs, R. H. Helmholz, Martha C. Howell, David G. Hunter, Cynthia Johnson, Thomas Kuehn, Laurent Morelle, Frederik Pedersen, Philip L. Reynolds, John Witte, Jr

The Reading Medievalist, 2014

German History, 2019

Around 1069 four elite German men—Henry IV of Germany, Rudolf of Rheinfelden, Eckbert of Brunswick and Welf IV of Bavaria—tried to dissolve their marriages to their respective wives: Bertha of Savoy, Adelaide of Savoy, Immilla of Turin and Ethelinde of Northeim. This article argues that these men reinforced each other’s decision to do so. It further argues that a key, but previously overlooked, aspect of these cases is that three of these women (Bertha, Adelaide and Immilla) were closely related to one another. The first section focuses narrowly on Henry IV’s attempt to repudiate his wife Bertha and the rich documentation this produced. Then Henry’s actions are compared and contrasted with the contemporaneous attempts of Rudolf, Eckbert and Welf to end their own marriages. When viewed together, the attempted repudiations of Bertha, Adelaide and Immilla point to the declining significance of these kinswomen’s natal dynasty, led by Adelaide of Turin, and to the shifting political interests of Henry IV and other German nobles. Yet, partly due to the actions of Adelaide of Turin, it was hard for these men to ‘break up’ with their wives. In contrast to Ethelinde’s kin, who failed to prevent Welf from ending their marriage, Adelaide had sufficient political power to ensure that her daughters’ marriages were not dissolved.

Arthuriana, 1998

The represention of repudiation and remarriage in Fresne and Eliduc constitutes a vindication of feuda! dynastie politics over the church's efforts to regulate aristocratie marri ages.(SK) L ike the Tristan and Chrétien de Troyes's Arthurian romances, the Lais of Marie de France appear to ponder the question of the compatibility of love and marriage. When read through the optic of the theme ofcourtly love, the emerging vernacular literature ofthe late twelfth century seems to constitute a counter-ideology to. contemporary aristocratie practices. In this view, marriages contracted for political and familial gain excluded the possibility of true love, which by definition had to be unconstrained and freely chosen. The typical scenario of courtly love casts one woman between rwo men, husband and lover.Thus the adulterous love ofa Tristan and Iseut or a Lancelot and Guenevere is taken as normative, while the conjugal love ofErec et Enide or Le Chevalier au Lion appears anomalous, a sign of Chrétien de Troyes's dissent from courtly convention. ' ln this article 1 want to reconsider the the me of courtly love in the context of thehistorical practice of serial polygamy. During the second half of the rwelfth century, as Georges Duby has shown, the French feudal nobility repeatedly clashedwith church ideologues over definitions of marriage. In addition to the contestation berween ecclesiastical and familial authorities over the role of verbal consent versus physical consummation, the Church increasingly insisted on the indissolubility of marriage. This policy, part of the Church's move to regulate the lives ofthe secular nobiliry, directly targeted the serial polygamy typical of the first feudal age, when matches of political expediency were made and unmade with relative ease. The difference berween the marital poli tics of King Louis VII of France and those of his son Philip Augustus is instructive: in 1152, the former divorced his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, with impuniry, despite Pope Eugenius urs best efforts to reconcile ARTHURIANA 8.2 (1998) NOTES