Medieval Weddings
Love and Romance
Courtly love!
Ah, it’s nearly Valentine’s Day, and love is in the air! And as thoughts of love so often turn to thoughts of marriage, we thought we’d have a little look at what marriage was like in the Middle Ages, particularly in Medieval England. Not that Valentine’s Day itself had much to do with love for most of the Middle Ages. Valentine was a Roman Christian who was clubbed to death and beheaded on the orders of the Emperor. The connection with romance and love comes from the late 1300s when Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a poem called The Parliament of Fowls, which states that Valentine’s Day is the day when birds choose their mates for the year. Chaucer being the poetic megastar of his day, this started something of a tradition, and in the 1400s we find a woman in Norfolk called Margery Brews writing to John Paston calling him her “well beloved Valentine”.
Romance itself, in the modern sense, is also something of a medieval invention. The most popular literature of the day, written in lengthy books and recited by troubadours and jongleurs in castles and taverns, were stories now known as “chivalric romances”. These were adventure stories about brave knights, who when they were not slaying giants or battling in tournaments were ‘romancing’ beautiful ladies. The concept of courtly love became popular, where knights would swear themselves to the service of some lady and would perform heroic deeds in her name, often while wearing some kind of token called a ‘favour’ – usually this was something like a handkerchief or other personal items she had gifted to the knight to remind him of her in times of need. It’s worth also saying that this concept of courtly love had very little to do with marriage, and indeed the most famous stories of courtly love involve a knight’s love for an unobtainable woman married to someone else! Probably the most famous example in literature is the love between Guinevere, the wife of King Arthur, and Lancelot, Arthur’s most famous knight. Medieval storytellers loved to tell not only of the excitement of romance but also the tragic consequences it could bring…
The Marriage Contract
Medieval marriages only rarely had much to do with romance though. They were primarily seen as alliances between families, building social links even at the lower end of the social spectrum, and as business deals that might net a family some nice profitable land or wealth. This was because it was traditional for a bride to bring a “dowry” to the wedding. The dowry was part of the woman’s inheritance from her parents and was promised to the groom by the bride’s family for “taking her off their hands”, so to speak. The dowry was traditionally given or promised publicly at the wedding ceremony, again, emphasising that this was as much a business contract between two families as a love match between two people. People, especially aristocrats but other families too, were generally looking for advantageous marriages for their children with a nice fat dowry or inheritance of land. Marriageable daughters were a valuable commodity in medieval England.
In England, unlike much of Europe at the time, women could and did inherit and own property and land, both from their parents and their husbands. Indeed, there was something called a “widows dowry” consisting of a third of all of a man’s property, including land, which went to his widow upon his death. This meant that a large number of women in Medieval England ended up inheriting land and business from their deceased husbands, and were often wealthy landowners in their own right. That said, husbands were supposed to exercise control over their wife’s land or property, which meant that widows were highly desirable matches for ambitious young men.
There were several rules, usually imposed by the Church, about who was allowed to get married. Contrary to many people’s ideas of the Middle Ages, marriages could not be contracted between relatives. Indeed, before 1215, anyone with a great-great-great-great-great-grandparent in common was not allowed to get married. This is incredibly restrictive in practice (much more restrictive that modern law), so after 1215 it was decided by the fourteenth Lateran Council that as long as you didn’t have a great-great-grandparent in common in didn’t count as incest – basically the same as today. This seems to have come about because it was becoming far too easy in high profile aristocratic weddings to find some “long lost relative” and annul a marriage that had become inconvenient for whatever reason! Of course, you could still get a papal dispensation to marry a closer relative than was normally allowed, which made for a handy bit of extra income for the Church! Godparents and in-laws also counted as relations for the purposes of marriage.
Another popular misconception about the medieval period is that people got married very young. This probably comes from the fact that marriages could certainly be contracted, and people betrothed, when they were very young indeed. For example, Isabella of France was betrothed to Richard II of England when she was just six years old and he was twenty-three years her senior! The actual legal marriage could not be performed until she was older, but betrothal was legally binding, and in this case helped to secure a valuable peace treaty between the two countries.
Nevertheless, the age you could marry at was much lower than today – 12 for girls and 14 for boys. This was thought to be the age at which puberty started, and it would not infrequently be the case that aristocratic boys and girls might be married off at this very young age.
Peasants typically married older, in their twenties. This was partially a matter of finances – it could take time to get enough money together for a decent dowry or for a man to be old enough to be able to support a family (children were the purpose of marriage, according to the Medieval church). Peasants also had to pay various fines in order to get married – this was called ‘merchet’, and was paid because a Lord lost a valuable worker from his land when a peasant woman married and went to live in a different village with her husband. Villeins, the lower ranking ‘peasants’ also needed their Lord’s permission to get married at all.
The Wedding Ceremony
A depiction of a wedding from 1350. Note the groom putting the ring on the bride’s finger
The two families, with the bride and groom at the head of the procession, would generally make their way down to church after breakfast, accompanied by their friends, well-wishers, musicians and so on. With the exception of wealthy aristocrats, it was rare to have special clothes made for your wedding – people seem to have worn their best clothing, whatever that might be. Royalty might have something specially made for the ceremony, but the idea of the ‘wedding dress’ was still a long way off. Particularly the white wedding dress, which is a Victorian tradition. White was associated with mourning in the Middle Ages and wouldn’t have been seen as appropriate for a wedding. Instead, green was the colour of love and blue the colour of purity, and both were popular choices, though not exclusively. In addition, garters and veils were not yet part of a wedding tradition but were simply ordinary parts of a woman’s everyday dress – respectable women in medieval England covered their hair with a veil, and garters were needed to stop your hosen (a bit like socks) from falling down!
Generally, from 1215 onwards, the priest would have publicly announced during a church service that the wedding was happening before the actual marriage, to give people a chance to arrange coming to the ceremony, or object to the marriage if there was any reason to (the bride and groom were related, the groom was already married, the wife was not a virgin…all valid reasons.) This is the origin of the banns, which we still practice today in a slightly different fashion. This public announcement was intended to prevent clandestine marriages, which had been banned by the Pope.
The actual “church bit” of a wedding was usually remarkably brief and would have seemed relatively unimportant to a modern observer. You didn’t even go into Church as a rule, the priest came out and blessed the marriage on the steps of the Church. Generally at this point the groom would give a gift called a ‘wed’ to the bride – this showed that he was consenting to be married, and if she accepted the gift that showed her consent (this was a vital part of a medieval marriage, which despite any societal or family pressure had to be seen to be between two consenting adults). The wed was sometimes a brooch but most commonly a ring. Unlike today, only the bride usually wore a wedding ring, and it was worn on the right hand rather than the left.
After the ceremony, there would be a big feast with music and dancing lasting long into the night, allowing the community to celebrate the marriage. Finally, there was the most important part of the wedding – consummation! According to many medieval thinkers (though not all), until a husband and wife had sex they were not really married. Indeed, many medieval thinkers said all that was needed for a marriage to have taken place was for two people to promise themselves to each other then have sex to “seal the deal” so to speak, and you were married. Young men were warned of the danger of trying to get girls into bed by promising them presents (even rings made of grass or daisy wreaths), as they might suddenly find themselves married if the girl decided to press the point. Technically, parental consent was not required in marriage until the 1700s in England, a change in the law that saw Gretna Green suddenly become the most popular place for weddings, as Scotland still had the medieval laws in place! Often, the new husband and wife were accompanied to bed by the guests to make sure that the “deed was done” and the marriage was all above board and legal. This is probably where the tradition of removing the bride’s garter comes from, as all your guests would still have been around while you got undressed for bed!
Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine
Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, the power couple of the 12th Century
One of the most famous medieval “love stories”, or at least a marriage story is the marriage between Henry II King of England (and count of Maine and Anjou and Duke of Normandy), and Eleanor of Aquitaine (Duchess of Aquitaine and Gascony and Countess of Poitiers).
Eleanor was initially married to the King of France, Louis VII from 1137 to 1152. She went on crusade with him, and bore him two daughters, but the marriage doesn’t seem to have been a very happy one. The strong-willed and independent Eleanor clashed with her excessively pious husband on numerous occasions and upset many of his barons. By 1150, despite an attempt by the Pope to reconcile them, their marriage was beginning to look hopeless, and to make matters worse, Eleanor was always giving birth to daughters instead of sons, meaning poor old Louis was left without a male heir to his kingdom. This seems to have finally convinced him that an annulment was the best thing for both of them – they “discovered” that they were third cousins a few times removed and had the marriage annulled, although the children were declared to be legitimate since they had married in “good faith”.
On her way home from her annulment, a few noblemen tried to kidnap her and force her into marriage so that they could control her huge tracts of land, but she had her sights set on the young Duke of Normandy, Henry Plantagenet. They married on the 18th May 1152, “without the pomp and ceremony that would have befitted their rank”. This is quite in keeping with Henry’s personality at least – he was notoriously scruffy and was said to dress more like a huntsman than a Duke. It proved a good match for both though – Henry became King of England in 1154, and by marrying Eleanor had control of the Duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony, some of the richest lands in France.
Unfortunately, domestic bliss was not something the couple were fated for. Both Henry and Eleanor were famous for their fiery tempers, and they argued frequently. In addition, Henry had a lot of affairs and fathered a huge number of illegitimate children, and by the 1160s, Eleanor separated from Henry and decamped to Poitiers, where she surrounded her self with troubadours and become one of the most important and influential figures in Medieval culture.
Henry meanwhile was having plenty of problems of his own, mainly caused by his gang of quarrelsome sons who were eager for some of their father’s land and power. In the 1170s, they launched a rebellion against him supported by their mother Eleanor. In 1173, Henry had Eleanor arrested and imprisoned, and she remained locked up in comfortable imprisonment in various castles for the next sixteen years until her husband’s death in 1189.
It had all started so promisingly, a seemingly perfect match between two powerful, fiery and irrepressible medieval aristocrats who managed to produce a whole brood of sons to inherit their lands after their deaths and who, together, built an Empire across Europe. But family squabbles led to the whole thing falling apart, and Henry died an embittered and broken man. Eleanor of course, survived to be an influential figure in the reigns of her sons, Richard the Lionheart, and John Lackland.
Divorce
As you can see from the story above, ending a marriage was difficult, but not impossible – for royalty at least. Divorce was essentially all but unknown in Medieval England and it required intervention from the Pope to end a marriage, meaning it was out of reach for most people. However, there were plenty of reasons that a marriage could be ended if they could be proved! It must be noted that domestic violence was not seen as sufficient grounds to end a marriage in Medieval England – both parties might be ordered to live separately, or pressured by the community into improving their behaviour, but they would not usually be allowed to remarry. Reasons that were valid were consanguinity (being related to each other), leprosy, adultery and impotence. Recorded cases exist of wives taking their husbands to court alleging they should have their marriage dissolved on the grounds of impotence. The law was quite clear on how the trial was to be conducted.
“After food and drink, the man and the woman are to be placed together in one bed and wise women are to be summoned around the bed for many nights. And if the man's member is found to be useless and as if dead, the couple are well to be separated.” Apparently, the optimal number of wise women was between 5 and 10, all of whom were to stand round the bed and offer helpful advice to the poor couple for the duration…which is unlikely to have helped much.
Amor Vincit Omnia - Love Conquers All
So be glad that if you choose to get married, you can do it today, with considerably fewer people standing round the marital bed, and less likelihood of rebellion, war and being locked up in a castle. Getting married in a castle though? That’s still something you CAN do: www.newcastlecastle.co.uk/venue-hire/weddings