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Thursday 13 April 2023 11.00 - 13.00
B-6 WOM08 Crime and Conjugality: Constructing Marriage in Pre-Modern Europe
Volvosalen
Networks: Criminal Justice , Women and Gender Chair: Sara Butler
Organizer: Krista Kesselring Discussant: Sara Butler
Krista Kesselring : Power and Possession: Forced Marriages in Early Modern England
Many people now deem child, early, and forced marriages to be violations of human rights, a significant change from centuries past. Historians have studied bridal abduction by would-be husbands as a feature of medieval societies, but rarely of the early modern. Force has not been absent from previous studies of ... (Show more)
Many people now deem child, early, and forced marriages to be violations of human rights, a significant change from centuries past. Historians have studied bridal abduction by would-be husbands as a feature of medieval societies, but rarely of the early modern. Force has not been absent from previous studies of marriage in early modern England, but studies have typically focused on the shifting balance between arranged vs free matches, or parental control vs individual choice, with the latter valorized as a sign of liberal modernity, amongst other positive developments. Yet, criminal court records indicate that bridal abductions continued into the early modern period and that authorities continued to use criminal law to police marriage formation. Canon law was the primary means of regulating marriage, but authorities had long criminalized some modalities of coercion in its formation and continued to prosecute some individuals for forced marriages, well into the seventeenth century and beyond. This paper focuses on efforts to deal with bridal abductions in the years of the English Revolution and then in its aftermath, years in which the political salience of marriage, consent, and contract became especially fraught. The paper draws upon the records of a previously ignored revolutionary-era commission to investigate ‘pretended marriages’ alleged to have been secured by force or fraud and then a set of post-revolutionary criminal court cases in which abductions resulted in executions – and potent articulations of the role of consent in legitimizing patriarchal unions and property relations. (Show less)

Mia Korpiola : Spousal Behaviour and Adultery in Sweden ca. 1600
After the Reformation, divorce after adultery was again permitted in
Sweden. According to ecclesiastical court practice, divorce was
automatically granted after a sentence of adultery in the secular
court. Thus, the evidence in secular courts became crucial
when wanting to extract oneself from a marriage using the
argument of adultery.

While pregnancy or catching spouses in ... (Show more)
After the Reformation, divorce after adultery was again permitted in
Sweden. According to ecclesiastical court practice, divorce was
automatically granted after a sentence of adultery in the secular
court. Thus, the evidence in secular courts became crucial
when wanting to extract oneself from a marriage using the
argument of adultery.

While pregnancy or catching spouses in the act of adultery
were considered to constitute largely cut-and-dry cases according
to law, some cases were more unclear and suggest longer spousal
tensions and distrust.

The paper will investigate how spousal behaviour was discussed
and what arguments were presented in such adultery cases in
Swedish courts around 1600. (Show less)

Gwen Seabourne : To Marry and to Burn: the English Common Law’s Response to ‘Petty Treason’ by Wives
This paper will consider a form of crime entirely and finally disruptive of conjugal relations: the killing of one spouse by the other, and, specifically, the killing by a wife of her husband. It will discuss the English common law’s response to wives accused or convicted of killing their husbands, ... (Show more)
This paper will consider a form of crime entirely and finally disruptive of conjugal relations: the killing of one spouse by the other, and, specifically, the killing by a wife of her husband. It will discuss the English common law’s response to wives accused or convicted of killing their husbands, and will include both an analysis of available medieval data on the prosecution and conviction of women for this offence, drawn from a study of the plea rolls and gaol delivery rolls of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, and also an exploration of two distinctive features of the common law’s response in theory and practice, from the later medieval period until the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century respectively.

The first of these distinctive features is the use of burning, a non-standard method of execution, for those women convicted of the offence. Although instances of wives allegedly killing husbands are relatively rarely encountered in common law sources, they are present in significant enough numbers to demonstrate that falling foul of the law of petty treason, and facing the possibility of death at the stake was a genuine risk for married women in pre-modern England.

The second distinctive feature to be examined is the partial theoretical assimilation of husband-killing with treason, which placed the husband-killer in a sub-category of ‘petty traitors’ alongside the servant who killed a master and the religious inferior who killed his prelate. This placing of the offence between ‘normal’ homicide and high treason might be considered a matter of arcane and obsolete legal doctrine, but it is important to note potential practical consequences of alignment with treason, both in terms of specific procedural differences between the prosecution of treason and homicide, and also in terms of entrenchment of the idea of such killings as particularly culpable, particularly harmful, and unworthy of mercy (aside from the late customary concession of strangulation at the stake, as opposed to vivicombustion). (Show less)

Justine Semmens : Definitions of Consent and Patriarchalism in Bigamy Appeals at the Parlement of Paris, 1523-1640
Early modern Christianity prized monogamous marriage as a fundamental component of a well-ordered society. In sixteenth-century France, prompted in part by the coregulated embodiment of patriarchalism in family and state, royal legists and jurists became more interested in the management of marriage through the systematic criminalization of formerly religious offenses ... (Show more)
Early modern Christianity prized monogamous marriage as a fundamental component of a well-ordered society. In sixteenth-century France, prompted in part by the coregulated embodiment of patriarchalism in family and state, royal legists and jurists became more interested in the management of marriage through the systematic criminalization of formerly religious offenses against monogamy. As part of this legal reform, the practice of bigamy, a form of fraud akin to blasphemy where a man or woman had more than one living spouse, came under closer scrutiny and was reclassified as a capital offense.
While jurisdictions across Western Europe increased surveillance and punishment of bigamy in the early modern period, the particularly aggressive and violent repression of the crime in France stands out from most other regions. Importantly, French criminal courts conceived of bigamy as a highly gendered crime that men perpetrated against women. Whereas the courts sentenced over seventy percent of convicted male bigamists to death or long terms of gallery slavery –unusually severe penalties normally reserved for the most serious of crimes like homicide – bigamous women were nearly absent from criminal prosecution. Judges were more likely to consider the very few women who did face bigamy prosecution as victims of socially or sexually weak husbands rather than criminals deserving of serious punishment.
Based on a methodical survey of sixteenth century and early seventeenth criminal appeals heard by the Parlement of Paris (the supreme court of France) this paper will argue that the legal definitions of consent and patriarchal responsibility, which were particular to French jurisprudence, offer a compelling explanation for the extreme gender dimorphism and strenuous repression of bigamy in comparison to the kingdom’s jurisdictional neighbours. This study identifies important nuances in the social constructions of patriarchy and has significant implications for our understanding of the gendered production of the early modern state. (Show less)



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