medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
There are two issues here:
Abduction to force consent from the woman or her kin;
Clandestine marriages.
The latter were consensual but not approved by family.
The place to start for much of this - especially clandestine marriage -
remains:
Richard Helmholz, Marriage litigation in medieval England (Cambridge, 1974).
Much of the recent literature is indexed on the Feminae website:
http://www.haverford.edu/library/reference/mschaus/mfi/mfi.html
Abduction is under Kidnapping. Thus term raptus also applies as a keyword.
Clandestine marriages are under Marriage as a Subject heading.
Tom Izbicki
At 01:06 AM 10/28/2003 +0000, you wrote:
>medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
>Dunno if anyone fancies having a stab at this....
>
>AFAIK the official "church" possition in the middle ages was that marriage
>was a freely-entered contract between two people, but I presume it's not a
>myth that (at least amongst the nobility) there were plenty of arranged and
>political marriages where the parents mde the decisions - and the
>Anglo-Saxon law codes seem pretty clear that if someone "abducts" a woman to
>marry her (it's unclear whether this presumes that she is unwilling) that's
>a crime.... So, my question...
>
>If a noblewoman elopes with a commoner (someone who her parents wouldn't
>have approved of, and who could afford a reasonable endowment for her
>anyway), then has either SHE or HE committed a crime under cannon or secular
>law? And does this situation change through the Middle Ages?
>
>An obscure one, but I figured I'd see if anyone could help....
>
>
>KevinH
>
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Thomas M. Izbicki
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