• DOI:10.2307/2846935
• Corpus ID: 38717048

Consanguinity and Noble Marriages in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries

@article{Bouchard1981ConsanguinityAN,
  title={Consanguinity and Noble Marriages in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries},
  author={C. Bouchard},
  journal={Speculum},
  year={1981},
  volume={56},
  pages={268 - 287}
}

• C. Bouchard
• Published 1 April 1981
• History
• Speculum

Between the ninth and twelfth centuries, ecclesiastics first developed the theory of marriage as a sacrament.* While powerful families continued to arrange their children's marriages, churchmen insisted that the free consent of the partners was the essence of a valid marriage. During this period, divorce gradually diminished until the only grounds for divorce was the discovery that the marriage had not been valid initially (this was technically an annulment rather than a divorce). A number of "impediments" could make a marriage invalid, such as the realization that one of the partners was already married to someone else, but the most commonly invoked impediment was consanguinity. During this period, consanguinity was defined increasingly broadly. In this paper, I shall explore the reaction of the French nobility to the church's definition of incest as residing within "seven forbidden degrees" and attempt to demonstrate that, at least in the tenth and eleventh centuries, powerful nobles gave serious attention to consanguinity when arranging their children's marriages.' A number of different considerations were doubtless involved in every choice of a spouse, considerations which determined whom out of a collection of eligible women a noble man would marry, but the issue of consanguinity often determined who was not eligible. Modern scholars have often remarked that, by the twelfth century, two hundred years after marriages within "seven degrees" were generally forbidden, a couple frequently ignored their blood-relationship at the time of their marriage, and indeed until such time as they decided for other reasons to seek a divorce. The divorce of Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152, on the grounds that they were related within four or five degrees something everyone seems to have recognized at the time of their marriage is only the most outstanding example.2 Such widespread (though by no means universal)