To Have and to Hold: Marrying and its Documentation in Western Christendom, 400-1600

Coeditor, To Have and to Hold: Marrying and its Documentation in Western Christendom, 400-1600 (Cambridge/London: Cambridge University Press, 2007) (with Philip L. Reynolds)
Description

This 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. After analyzing the foundations of Western marriage set by Roman law and Patristic theology, the chapters provide vivid case studies of marital documents and practices in medieval France, England, Iceland, and Ireland, and in Renaissance Florence, Douai, and Geneva.
Table of Contents

  • ​​Introduction
  1. Marrying and its documentation in pre-modern Europe: consent, celebration, and property – Philip L. Reynolds
  2. Marrying and its documentation in later Roman law – Judith Evans-Grubbs
  3. Marrying and the tabulae nuptiales in Roman North Africa from Tertullian to Augustine – David G. Hunter
  4. Dotal Charters in the Frankish tradition – Philip L. Reynolds
  5. Marriage and diplomatics: five Dower Charters from the regions of Laon and Soissons, 1163-81 – Laurent Morelle
  6. Marriage agreements from twelfth-century Southern France – Cynthia Johnson
  7. Marriage contracts in medieval England – R. H. Helmholz
  8. Marriage contracts and the church courts of fourteenth-century England – Frederik Pedersen
  9. Marrying and marriage litigation in medieval Ireland – Art Cosgrove
  10. Marriage contracts in medieval Iceland – Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir
  11. Contracting marriage in Renaissance Florence – Thomas J. Kuehn
  12. Marital property law as sociocultural text: the case of late-medieval Douai – Martha C. Howell
  13. Marriage contracts, liturgies, and properties in Reformation Geneva –​ John Witte, Jr
Reviews

“A marvelous contribution to our understanding of medieval marriage traditions based on an analysis of the documents that preserve them."
-- Journal of Interdisciplinary History

“In this valuable collection of essays … ranging in time from the late Roman Empire to the Reformation, and geographically from North Africa to Iceland, the complexities in both legal and social understandings of marriage come up again and again.  Questions raised by this international group of scholars concerning the exchange of property naturally occur, but they also describe changing approaches to gender relations, the status of the individual in relation to the community, the role of the Church and the competing of tradition and law, both canon or secular, make this an important volume.  This is a remarkably organic volume, even for a collection of essays on a linked topic.”
-- Journal of Law and Religion