Ignatius, I think what Xantippe is refuting is the assumption many people make that sexual sin wasn’t as much of an issue in the Good Old Days, which is pretty naïve IMHO. Or perhaps just your idea that “In fact, for most of the first 1800 years, they were never allowed to be alone before entering into Holy Wedlock.”
She’s not stating that the majority of marriages were clandestine, BUT if they could take place at all, then obviously the people who entered those marriages had the opportunity to do so. If they were never allowed to be alone together, how could that happen?
**Exactly.
And check out the Old Testament.
See, for example Ruth 3 and Ruth’s activities with Boaz. (Hint: in Old Testament Hebrew, “feet” doesn’t mean feet, IYKWIM.)
Or check out the Old Testament legal regulations involving rape and marriage–the rapist is supposed to pay the whole bride price when marrying the woman he has raped, rather than getting a “discounted” non-virgin rate. The fact that they’d need to come up with a rule for this strongly suggests that it wasn’t a freakishly uncommon situation.
Just think about the practicalities of chaperoning large quantities of unmarried girls and young women. Certainly, wealthy families could manage to provide every young woman appropriate chaperonage (but there’d still be the issue of chaperones being corruptible or more loyal to the young woman than to her parents–see Pride and Prejudice in the episodes with Lydia Bennet and Miss Darcy), but in poorer families, it would simply be unworkable. In poorer families, girls would be coming and going on different chores and errands in the best case, and in the worst case, they might find themselves working as domestic servants and vulnerable to both other servants and the male masters of the house. Heck, think about how well chaperoned unmarried slave girls and women were, how protected they were from fellow slaves or whites. At a certain social level, in times, there was extreme vulnerability.
Or consider the current situation in Islamic countries with Christian minorities. Theoretically, women are “protected” in those societies–there’s modest dress and lots of rules. In practice, however, Christian and other minority girls and women are extremely vulnerable in that environment to being raped and/or kidnapped and forcibly married.
**
Also, note that many such people CLAIMED to have married secretly only after they were caught having sex, or perhaps after the “wife” was found to be pregnant. “No, we’re not guilty of fornication, we were married!” Especially among the rich and highborn, it would make a big difference if the child was legitimate or not, “illegitimate” kids back then had no rights at all in terms of inheritance of land, titles, etc.
Right.
The “official” Tudor version of history is that Catherine DID marry Owen Tudor clandestinely and he is listed as her “spouse” on the
Catherine of Valois Wikipedia page, however even within that article there is mention of the controversy. Note that the main reason Catherine would have married secretly, is because Parliament had passed a law, that made it illegal for any man to marry her without consent from the King. The King was actually still a child and it would have been his advisors who gave consent – and they certainly would not have consented to her marrying a minor Welsh noble.
It’s even a Catholic theology question, as to whether the marriage would have been valid anyway. From what I understand, IF they were married by a priest with faculties it would have been valid, because the Parliament had no jurisdiction over who the Church could marry. All it could do was punish the husband after the fact, but not actually prevent the marriage from taking place.
Anyway, the reason some people question this version is because the Tudor kings certainly would have motive to make this claim, since otherwise the first Tudor King, Henry VII, would have a bastard for a father.
It’s also become accepted historical fact that King Louis XIV of France secretly married one of his mistresses, Françoise d’Aubigné, after the death of his first wife, Maria Theresa of Spain. Françoise d’Aubigné is even listed as his “spouse” on the
Louis XIV Wikipedia page.
So if even members of royalty were not above marrying in secret, certainly I’m sure there were many of lower birth who did the same thing, or at least claimed to have. If they claimed to be married to justify having sex, then certainly this implies the drive to have sex wasn’t that much different back then.
**Right. It’s been a while since I’ve been up on my Tudors, but it always blew my mind how important clandestine marriages were to court politics.
Oh, and come to think of it, if I’m remembering correctly, Elizabeth I was very partial to unmarried men, so presenting oneself as unmarried had a lot of political value at court. **
There’s also much evidence in baptismal records compared to marriage records, that many brides back then were already pregnant at the time of marriage. One famous example being Shakespeare’s wife. Also note that “betrothal” was considered to be much closer to actual marriage than it is now, so a woman becoming pregnant during betrothal, was often not considered that scandalous.
Seriously, I am starting to wonder if maybe marriage is just not my “vocation”. On the other hand, I do know a woman who got married at age 40.