Hi again to all:
Regarding John Parson's question about the sorts of churches--I'm not sure.
I think that they're ordinary parish churches, but as I don't have any
handy-dandy reference works here at the computer I can't check. But it's
something that I'll look out for.
Regarding Carol Symes's point that "most often" marriages were not
celebrated in churches in the Middle Ages--this is not at all clear from the
evidence. Certainly many late medieval English people *first* exchanged
consent (sometimes future, but often present tense) in a domestic setting
before relatively few witnesses. But fifteenth-century deposition evidence
indicates that a couple might exchange consent, according to the ritual
words, a number of times before different sets of people in the interests of
publicity. And certainly a domestic exchange of consent did not rule out a
later church solemnization. Helmholz argues, in *Marital Litigation*
(reference available on request!), that these domestic contracts were a
prelude to rather than a replacement for a church solemnization. Indeed
solemnization seems to act as a ratification of a contract previously (and
indissolubly) made.This makes the most sense of litigation evidence, which
makes it clear that in at least some cases a church solemnization occurred
or was envisioned as a normal step in the process, following a domestic
contract and banns read in the parish church(es). Whether people always, or
often, or only sometimes solemnized their marriages in churches is something
that we cannot discern from the evidence, though. (Well, we can discern that
they didn't always do it--but we do not know how common skipping this step
was.)
Shannon McSheffrey
Concordia University, Montreal
-----Original Message-----
From: Carol Symes <[log in to unmask]>
Marriages at the church door did occur during the Middle Ages, but most
often they were not "celebrated" at all. Marriages did not REQUIRE the
blessing of a priest before the reforms instituted at the Council of Trent,
{snip snip snip}
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