To Have and to Hold

Marrying and its Documentation in Western Christendom, 400–1600

John Witte, Jr editor Philip L Reynolds editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:9th Aug '12

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To Have and to Hold cover

This 2007 volume analyzes how, why, and when pre-modern Europeans documented their marriages.

This 2007 volume analyzes how, why, and when pre-modern Europeans documented their marriages - through property settlements, prenuptial contracts, court testimony, church weddings, and more. The authors consider both the function of documentation in the process of marrying and what the surviving documents say about pre-modern marriage.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.

"...(T)he volume offers a rich analysis of marriage in the West and provides a particularly useful resource to the academic and less specialized audiences." Cristina Mitrovici, Comitatus
...a marvelous contribution to our understanding of medieval marriage traditions based on an analysis of the documents that preserve them." --Journal of Interdisciplinary Hisotry

ISBN: 9781107406278

Dimensions: 234mm x 156mm x 27mm

Weight: 740g

536 pages