MAKE SURE TO ONLY USE THE SOURCES GIVEN IN THE INTRUCTIONS
here are two articles
The ambiguity of the few surviving texts precludes categorizing them unequivocally as same-sex marital contracts, but it equally rules out pretending that they were simply business contracts, as previous commentators have tried to do. It is, in fact, possible to interpret them as business documents, but it would also be possible (if utterly mistaken) to interpret most premodern heterosexual mariage, agreements (especially prenuptial contracts among the wealthy) as business contracts. (Indeed, Roman law specifically spoke of heterosexual marriage as a “lifelong partnership.”) 172 Many aspects of the documents and the arrangements they prescribe argue forcefully against a simple partnership. In most of them there is no quid pro quo: it is not that one party provides capital or labor or land and in retur the other invests property or expertise or time. In each case it is simply a division of one person’s estate with another, apparently for purely voluntary and personal reasons. In most of them (for example, documents 1 and 2 following) it is specified that the two men will live together, which is hardly an ordinary commercial stipulation. In most there is mention of a personal relationship or emotional quality (e.g., the use of frater in No. 1, adoptivum fratrem in No. 3, amiciditate [sic] in No. 2, and the suggestion in No. 2 that the two must maintain the same frientis and enemies):
In the name of God. In the third year of the reign of our lord, Charles, the King of the Franks and Lombards, when he began to rule Lombardy, on the eighth of the kalends of July, in the fourteenth indiction [776 C.E.J!
Be it known that L, Rachifrid, a cleric, the son of Fredulo the merchant, do by this document establish, confirm and appoint you, Magniprand, a cleric, the son of Magnipert, to share my dwelling all the days of our lives that is, the parish house of my church. Saint Dalmatius, and my home within the city near
the same church, and my other buildings, and everything belonging to the said church in whatever way, and all the servants attached to it; you should live there and [share] control over the said church and its property, and should have the power of disposing of its servants, except for Magnuculus, a cleric. whom I had previously emancipated.
I.that as regards the said church of God, and all those things and persons belonging to it, you should be therein my partner [frater: see appended discussion of this word and germanus] and my heir, so that we should never at any time make division of the said church or the things or persons attached to it, either movable or immovable, but should, as I stated before, live there together, and possess and dispose of whatever belongs there.
And if I should predecease you, I ordain that the said church and all things belonging to it should come under your authority, and you may be able to do with them as you wish.
But if 1 outlive you, everything will revert to my control.
Wherefore I, Rachifrid the cleric, promise in your presence, the aforesaid Mashiprand the cleric, that if my brother [germanus meus] and I should ever attempt to evict you from the aforesaid church, or the buildings and other things or persons belonging to it, or should ever seek to deprive you of anything belonging to it, except as noted above, 174 or take in another man, including a priest, besides you [super], I bind myself and my brother or our heirs to recompense you, Magniprand the cleric, in the amount of one hundred gold sous, after which penalty the present agreement would remain in force. And as a witness to this document I have asked Philip, the subdeacon, to sign.
Executed in Lucca.
Rachifrid had a biological brother, as the document itself makes clear: this was not simply a way to obtain a collateral heir. The biological brother is referred to as sermanus, a different word from the one (frater) applied to Magniprand. In the surviving Luccan documents of the eighth century 175 germanus is consistently used for
a biological brother, 76 as opposed to frater, the traditional Latin term for a male “lover.” Frater sometimes occurs in conjunction with germanus, as in No. 38 (CE. 731): fratres germani. This distinetion was widespread and of long standing: in classical Latin both frater and germanus could mean a biological brother; frater was also used for nonbiological emotional relationships (like a homosexual lover), but germanus was not. Often they occurred together (frater germanus) to mean. “brother of the same parents”177 (e.g., in Cicero, Pro.Caelio
16.38; In Verrem 2, 1.128; cf. OLD, s.v., “frater”). In modern Italian the division has become trifold: frate, the most direct descendant of frater, refers chiefly to religious “brothers” but is also applied either to biological siblings (especially in the south) or to a friend, beloved person (amico, persona cara). Fratello, derived from it, is the most widely used term for a natal brother, but could also refer to a member of a religious order, whereas germano is used only for biological siblings (and for persons or things from Germany, though tedesco is more common for this. By contrast, soror is always used in the medieval Luccan vocabulary for sisters, even the female counterpart of germanus.
Two later Spanish documents, though not identical, present a somewhat similar picture of two men arranging a common household based more on affection and understanding than contractual commercial arrangements.
2. Document of 1031 from the Cartulary of Celanoval78
We, Peter Didaz and Munio Vandilaz, make a pact and agreement mutually between ourselves for the house and church of St. Mary of Ordines, which we jointly own and in which we share the labor, taking care of visitors and in regulating the care of, decorating and governing the premises, planting and building. And we share equally in the work of the garden, and in feeding and clothing ourselves and supporting ourselves. And we agree that neither of us may give to anyone else without the other’s consent anything, on account of our friendship, and that we will divide the work on the house evenly, and assign labor equally and support our workers equally and with dignity. And we will remain good friends to each other with faith and sincerity 179 and with other people [we will remain equally] friends and enemies all days and nights, forever. And if Peter dies before Munio he will leave Munio the property and the documents. And if Munio dies before Peter he will leave him the house and the documents.
L, Garcia de Perales, by virtue of the present document, affirm to those here and not here, that I take you, John of Perales, as I already took you, to be my adoptive brother, for the benefit of the souls of my mother and father, and I grant you half of all my patrimony … and generally of the entire inheritance which I have from my father or mother or family in the town of Berzeanos and in Perales.
In some less literate cultures of medieval Europe, where a document of this sort was not really practical, other forms of, same-sex coupling were tried. Two knights in a talels in the Gesta romanorum “loved each other” (mutuo se dilexerunt) and decided to form a bond182 by symbolically drinking small amounts of each other’s blood. The nature of the bond so created was that afterward neither would “divorce”1B3 the other either in prosperity or adversity, LB4 and whatever either one earned would be shared equally with the other. Then they “lived ever after in the same house. 185 One of them was wise and the other stupid, and the tale turns on their reproaching each other for following the “no divorce” rule so fanatically that they ended up facing death together. The wise knight argued that the foolish one ought to have trusted him when they faced a difficult choice, and the foolish one replied that, given their vow, he would have followed the wise one anywhere and the wiser one ought to have insisted. The moral of the story, as
it is passed on, is that the union of the two knights is a figure for the union of body and soul, one of which is wiser than the other.
This is precisely the sort of “blood brotherhood” anthropologists and others anxious to explain away the ceremony of same-sex union refer to, but it hardly, helps their case. Not only is the union in this case easy to interpret as homosexual in nature, but there is no mention of a church service, nor is the symbolic drinking of blood ever mentioned in the nearly eighty manuscript versions of the ceremony consulted for this study.
Within religious communities, although marriage • was not officially permitted, permanent and abiding relationships were nonetheless a familiar part of life. St. Aelred of Rievaulx had several such relationships in his twelfth-century Cistercian abbey, and even appealed to the relationship between Christ and St. John as a
“marriage” by way of precedent. i86 Several poems survive from pairs of lesbian nuns of the twelfth century distinctly suggesting permanent relationships between them. 187
The ceremony itself, on the other hand, was known in the Middle Ages in many areas of the West, including some from which no versions*of the ceremony appear to survive (probably as the result of deliberate destruction: see p. 264). Gerald of Wales gives a vivid firsthand description of it in his “Topography of Ireland” (probably written in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century). 188
A proof of the iniquity [of the Irish] and a novel189 form of marriagel90
Among many other examples of their wicked ways, this one is particularly instructive: under the pretext of piety and peace they come together in some holy place with the man they want to join. 191 First they are united in pacts of kinship, 192 then they carry each other three times around the church. Then, entering
the church, before the altar, in the presence of the relics of saints and with many oaths, and finally with a celebration of the Mass and the prayers of priests, they are permanently ” united as if in some marriage. At the end, as ‘further
confirmation of the friendship and a conclusion to the proceedings, each drinks the other’s blood, which is willingly shed for this. (This, however, they retain from the rites of pagans, who customarily use blood in the sealing of oaths.]193
How often during the very act of this marriage is blood shed by treacherous and violent men so iniquitously and unjustly that one or the other remains all but drained of blood! How often in that very incontinent hour does a bloody divorce either I follow, precede, or even, in an unheard-of-way, interrupt the marriage itself
Although set in the context of Gerald’s obvious disapproval both of the “novel -form of marriage” and the violent Irish, this description of the ceremony as a wedding, conducted by a priest in church and accompanied by the Eucharist, is unmistakable, although it was apparently combined with the nonreligious rite described in the Gesta Romanorum. Its nature has long been obscured both by artful mistranslation 94 and a general unwillingness to recognize something as ostensibly improbable as a same-sex union. Whether there was enough knowledge of Greek in Ireland to support utilization of the Greek original of these ceremonies is the subject of lively debate among specialists; it seems, at the least, overwhelmingly likely that Gerald of Wales would have noted and commented if the ceremony had been conducted in a language unfamiliar to him, as Greek would probably have been.195 The most likely conclusion is that the ceremony was performed in Latin or Old Irish, and the text has been lost or destroyed.
Source 2
[BW
“What God Has Joined Together”
THE DEVELOPMENT OF NUPTIAL OFFICES
Before the year 1000, and more precisely before the intrusion of the pseudo-Isidorian decretals in canonical collections in the eleventh century, [ecclesiastical] blessing of a – marriage contracted by the laity was considered a favor. Under certain circumstances the church refused this favor without forbidding the marriage … or declaring it null. 1.
Perhaps because Roman weddings had never lost their putfic and religious character, the church saw no reason to interfere.
As late as the twelfth century, canonists saw the church ceremony as no more than a corollary to the public wedding, allowing therefore a considerable flexibility of ritual forms and regional diversity.2
The primary reason pagans had valued heterosexual matrimony had little meaning for Christians. It was not for sexual fulfillment, since that could have been obtained by pagans from slaves, prostitutes, or paramours,3 and would have seemed irrelevant or even disreputable to devout Christians. Even concerns about inheritance and biological posterity were too materialistic for the latter, and at the level of national or religious imperative, baptism effectively sidestepped the issue of birth” that had been so important to Jews and aristocratic Romans by incorporating into the Christian community adults of
Any background. This process perpetuated the ambiguous status of blood relationship and kinship in the New Testament.5 Although Jews were the “posterity of Abraham,” and could make liturgical so, I she darier di humantina, amost hiteral sense for Caritians. were both related to them in a more vibrant and spiritual way.
Indeed, the New Testament felt obligated to assert, against the many Christians who doubted the legitimacy and sanctity_of matrimony, that “Marriage is honourable in all, and the [marriage] bed undefiled,” although “honourable” (tifuos) was not exactly high praise.
Sporadic blessings and local offices of marriage no doubt existed in the early Middle Ages although the question has spawned lively controversy7_-but did not coalesce for centuries into a coherent or obligatory liturgical tradition in eastern or western Europe. Indeed, the most learned authority on the subject argued forcefully that for its first thousand years Christianity required nuptial blessings only for priests; for the laity, an ecclesiastical ceremony was an honor, only permitted to those being married to their own (free) class for the first time.§ Stevenson disagreed with Ritzer’s (better documented) conclusion that there were no standard nuptial liturgies before the eighth or ninth centuries, but the frequent references to the blessing of marriage he cited from the early Middle Ages do not indicate liturgies required for this purpose: Tertullian, Cyril of Alexandria, and other patristic writers were simply referring to the blessing of the bride. (There was also blessing of fields and of households among early Christians: this did not mean that they had to be blessed or were regarded as
“sacraments.”) In Chrysostom’s day
whatever form this blessing took occurred on the eve of the wedding ceremony; the marriage followed on the next day, in classical pagan style.
Uncontrolled and largely undefined until the time of Augustus,
Uncontrolled and largely undefined until the time of Augustus, Roman marriage was nonetheless a parent to both public church and private rites, the former in principle and the latter in practice.
But because most medieval societies had come to see themselves as
“Christian” by the early Middle Ages, most social institutions like
marriage were also assumed to be in some sense “Christian,” even if in fact they were largely or entirely pagan in origin. Augustine considered nuptial blessings to be for the bride alone, to mark her change of status i.e., not to establish the couple or even to cement their unfon. 11
The teaching of the Roman church was ultimately, in part by default of a general ecclesiastical practice, that the couple married each other: the church at most witnessed and blessed (as it blessed everything from fields to swords) 12 Substantial scholarly debate has failed to clarify how early there was a heterosexual Christian marriage service,” and the very uncertainty and lack of evidence underlying this controversy is eloquent testimony to the low priority the early church assigned to the precise form of Christian celebration of matrimony, as is the insistence in the faurth and fifth centuries that priests be married in church-suggesting – that laypeople normally were not, and that even priests might forgo it if there were not a canonical requirement. (Priests in most areas even of Western Europe could licitly marry until the reform moventent of the eleventh century outlawed this.) This does not mean that no nuptial liturgies survive from this period, simply that they were not regular, and that their performance (or nonperformance) did
not
affect the legitimacy of the union. The Leonine sacramentary attributed to Pope Leo, 440-61 c..) called the observance Velatio nuptialis (veiling of the bride”), clearly perpetuating pagan Roman notions of marriage, and the ceremony consisted of a blessing of those involved, the exchange of gifts required for marriage, a long blessing for the bride alone, prayers about the union of the couple and their procreation of children, and the prayer Pater
mundi
conditor (*God, Founder of the world”), 13 The Leonine sacramentary was absorbed and supplanted in the following centuries by the Gelasian and Gregorian sacramentaries,1 rendering
this
early
witness of matrimonial custom somewhat moot. 5 The Gelasian sacramentary (seventh or eighth century), 6 by ament’s
contrast, did name its connubial rite Actio nuptials, and referred within it to marriage as the “yoke of concord, the chain of peace”; it
also included a blessing connected with offspring and freedom from the snakes of the, enemy, and Communion, suggesting an ecclesiastical context. 17 Nonetheless, according to Pierre Toubert, even in Carolingian times marriage was not regarded as a sacrament not only not in the well-defined Tridentine sense, but really not considered a sacrament. 18 The Carolingian bishop and theologian Hincmar of Reims appears to have been the first to combine consent with consummation as defining marriage, 19 but “not until the twelfth century did the church develop a systematic canon law of marriage and a system of courts able to enforce it.”20
Gratian’s picking up on this and insisting that consummation and consent were necessary for marriage raised, among many other difficulties, the problem of Joseph and Mary, who never consummated their relationship according to Catholic doctrine. The solution to this, according to Peter Lombard and other canonists, was that marriage actually depended on verbum de presenti (” present consent),21 but this in turn raised further problems. Some canonists finally gave up in disgust before the dilemma e.g., the Italian Vacarius reverted to the primitive notion that the traditio (handing over) of a woman constituted the key point of marriage but by and large Lombard’s notion of consensual marriage prevailed. 22
In the East the doctrine was a little clearer. Ecclesiastics, civic officials, and laypeople all regarded the priest’s role as formative: that is, a legitimate Christian marriage required the offices of a priest.23 This was probably due less to a deep-seated difference between East and West in the theology of marriage than to a more profound difference between the two halves of the Roman world in regard to the role of the church in quotidian activities. The Eastern hierarchy, supported by the Eastern emperors, generally took a
more active role in worldly matters than did most Western ecclesiastics, and it is hardly surprising that this involved the institution of marriage, a public and social event. “The relatiortship between husband and wife and their legal posterity is not part of the law of nature, but of the state,” opined an eleventh-century mánual of Byzantine law.2 On the other hand, neither a church ceremony nor a written document was required if the marriage was publicly
announced to friends, or in cases of common-law marriage where a couple lived together and enjoyed carnal relations.25 In the eighth century the Eclogues acknowledged marriage without any written document if either (a) blessed in a church or (b) announced to friends; hey also recognized the common-law marriage of a man with a woman with whom he lived openly and had intercourse. 26
“Marriage,” they added, “is established by mutual [literally,
“exchanged* agreement; the addition of a dowry is not essential. ™27
Dowry had in the East been very much a matter of social rank in any event laws specified the rank above which a dowry was essential for marriage.28
In both Latin- and Greek-speaking Europe the lack of celerity in developing an official Christian liturgy doubtless reflected- the persistent ambivalence Christians especiall ascetic leaders.felt about the mostly worldly purposes of matrimony. In the East. prominent churchmen such as Chrysostom viewed matrimony not as the mode God chose to people the world, but simply as a control for human weakness: “marriage is the remedy for concupiscence,”29 In the West, even a church blessing did not remove the putative impurity of human carnality: couples were generally instructed to refrain from consummation for at least three nights after the ceremony,30 and in some areas the couple, being impure even after observing this injunction, could not enter a church for up to thirty days after the ceremony.31 The *beloved apostle,” John, had offered the assessment of those who accepted the message of Jesus unmarried Himself and of exceptional biological heritage that they were “born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man…
,.132 «The Christian endowment of marriage with sacrality
acted not in conjunction with its carnal aspects, but rather as a neutralizer of the sin inherent in them.133 (See below on the ambivalence betrayed in early marriage rituals themselves.)
This does not indicate, of course, that humans in Christian societies did not marry simply that they tended to follow ancient ethnic customs, some of which matched Roman law, and hence became church law, which generally looked to Roman jurisprudence for its models while others did not. The Lex Romana Burgundionum
Romans living under Burgundian rule), for example, stated that “consent makes marriage (nuptias],” although it also demanded that a “nuptial gift” be “solemnly acknowledged to avoid any suspicion about the legitimacy of the children.”34 The laws of the Burgundians themselves (i.e., as opposed to those of the Romans living under their rule: see, e.g., sections 66, 69, 86) required payment to the bride’s family, which, according to Hans Wolff,35 amounted to bride-purchase. The Germanic custom of Morgengabe (morgengifu among the Anglo-Saxons), the payment of a sum in addition to the bride-price on the morning after the wedding, was obviously a residuum of paying for the woman’s virginity, which could not be sold until the husband had verified that it existed. This custom was dissociated from its origins in the High Middle Ages, and became merely a part of regular prenuptial – property arrangements. Diane Hughes notes that “in the Early Middle Ages, consummation [N.B. not consent, which would have been enough at Rome] made a marriage and Morgengabe was its sign. “36
The difference between Romans paying a dowry and Germans offering a bride-price probably has less to do with the supply of women than with conceptions of the nature of marriage: for Romans until sometime around the third century c. it was the transfer of a woman from one family to another. Later it was a question of establishing a relationship between families. For Germans it was simply the purchase of a wife. If no Roman families were involved-e.g., in the case of slaves or foreigners a permanent union was simply a contubernium, living together, in the eyes of Romans.37 For Germans, legitimate marriage was possible for just about anyone.
Throughout the early Middle Ages (until the great canonical reforms of the twelfth century, which finally defined marriage more carefully) “Betrothal was a contract of alienation, concluded like commercial contracts, between the groom and the clan or tutor of the bride, by means of which she was sold into marriage. “38
