Getting Married in Late Medieval England and Poland
Abstract
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The aim of article is to examine the principles of and conditions for contracting a valid and successful marriage among members of the landed classes in fifteenthcentury England and Poland.
THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: An analysis of marriages contracted in medieval England and Poland was carried out using a comparative approach. Authentic fifteenth-century sources were consulted, such as the Paston letters in the case of England, and – for lack of a similar collection in the Polish archives – documents such as court records, episcopal statutes, annals or chronicles, and others, in the case of Poland.
THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The article first presents factors determining the choice of spouses, including socio-economic, political and emotional. Secondly, the ways of conducting prenuptial negotiations are presented. The final section is focused on the exchange of the marriage vows.
RESEARCH RESULTS: The comparison of practices related to marriage contracts in medieval England and Poland shows that even though love matches are less well documented than marriages of convenience, love did take precedence over custom in a number of cases in both countries, with the only absolutely necessary condition for contracting a valid marriage being verba depraesenti (the words of present consent) exchanged by the partners.
CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The added value of the analysis was to reveal certain differences between English and Polish literary cultures. While in fifteenthcentury England personal letters were written in the vernacular, in Poland the letters, as well as other historical sources, were still largely composed in Latin by professional writers. These still need to be translated into modern Polish and English if they are to be accessible to a wider audience.
References
Bennett, H. S. (1951). The Pastons and Their England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bogucka, M. (2004). Women in Early Modern Polish Society, Against the European Background. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Bruce-Boswell, A. (1936). Poland and Lithuania in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, The Cambridge Medieval History, vol. VIII, 556-586.
Capellanus, A. (1969). The Art of Courtly Love, ed. and trans. by J. J. Parry. New York: Norton.
Castor, H. (2005). Blood and Roses. The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century. London: Faber and Faber.
Davis, N. (ed.). (2004). Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, part 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gies, F. and J. (1987). Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages. Michigan: Harper & Row.
Haskell, A. S. (1973). The Paston Women on Marriage in Fifteenth-Century England. Viator, 4, 459-471.
Heyzmann, U. (ed.) (1875). Statuta Alberti Jastrzębiec episcopi Cracoviensis. In: Heyzmann U. (ed.). Starodawne Prawa Polskiego Pomniki [The Ancient Monuments of Polish Law], vol. 4, 73-74.
Hunt, P. (1962). Fifteenth Century England. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Kurtyka, J. (1997). Tęczyńscy: studium z dziejów polskiej elity możnowładczej w średniowieczu [The Lords of Tęczyn: A Historical Study of the Polish Elites of Magnates in the Middle Ages]. Kraków: Secesja.
Laberschek, J. (1999). Początki i rozwój miasta Szczekociny do końca XV w. Uwagi do genealogii Szczekockich herbu Odrowąż [Beginnings and Development of the Town of Szczekociny until the End of the Fifteenth Century. Notes on the Genealogy of the Szczekocki Family of the Odrowąż Coat of Arms]. In: O. Dyba, S. Kołodziejski, R. Marcinek (eds.), Patientia et tempus: księga jubileuszowa dedykowana doktorowi Marianowi Korneckiemu [Patientia et tempus: Studia Gratulatoria Dedicated to Marian Kornecki. PhD]. Warszawa: Ośrodek Dokumentacji Zabytków; Kraków: Regionalny Ośrodek Studiów i Ochrony Środowiska Kulturowego, 105-120.
Mikoś, M. J. (ed). (1999). Polish Literature from the Middle Ages to the End of the Eighteenth Century: A Bilingual Anthology. Warszawa: Constans.
Rej, M. (1956). Żywot człowieka poczciwego [Life of an Honest Man]. Wrocław: Zakład im. Ossolińskich.
Sułkowska-Karaś I., Kuraś S., Wajs H. (eds.). (1992). Bullarium Poloniae: litteras apostolicas aliaque monumenta Poloniae Vaticana continens, vol. 4, no 2368. Rzym-Lublin.
Szweda, A. (2001). Ród Grzymałów w Wielkopolsce [The Grzymala Family in Greater Poland]. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika.
Szybkowski, S. (2009). Kochali się, czy nie kochali? O trudnościach badawczych dotyczących ustalenia wzajemnych relacji uczuciowych między małżonkami w średniowiecznej Polsce (na przykładzie kujawskiej elity szlacheckiej z lat 1370-1501) [Did They Love Each Other or Not? On Research Difficulties Regarding Mutual Emotional Relations between Spouses in Medieval Poland (Using the Example of the Cuiavian Nobility from 1370 to 1501)]. In: B. Możejko and Anna Paner (eds.), Miłość w czasach dawnych [Love in Ancient Times]. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 131-146.
Szymczakowa, A. (2004). Gentry Marriage in the Late Middle Ages. Love or Strategy? In: Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae, vol. 9: Family. Warszawa: Fundacja Centrum Badań Historycznych, 65-88.
Szymczakowa, A. (2013). Obrazki z życia małżeńskiego (i nie tylko) w Polsce centralnej w średniowieczu [Scenes from Married Life (Among Others) from Medieval Central Poland]. In: B. Wojciechowska, W. Kowalski (eds.), Rycerze, wędrowcy, kacerze: studia z historii średniowiecznej i wczesnonowożytnej Europy Środkowej [Knights, Wanderers, and Heretics: Studies on the History of Medieval and Early Modern Central Europe]. Kielce: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jana Kochanowskiego, 347-355.
Szymczakowa, A. (2009). Skandal w rodzinie Orchowskich, czyli mezalians po polsku [A Scandal in the Orchowscy Family, or an Unequal Marriage in the Polish Context]. In: J. Dzięgielewski et al. (eds.), Veritati serviens. Księga pamiątkowa Ojcu Profesorowi Januszowi Zbudniewkowi zp [Veritati serviens. Studia Gratulatoria Dedicated to Father Professor Janusz Zbudniewek zp]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego, 715-728.
Watt, D. (2004). The Paston Women: Selected Letters. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
Wojciechowska, B. (2015). Małżeństwo w ustawodawstwie synodalnym Kościoła polskiego w późnym średniowieczu [Marriage Under the Synod Law of the Polish Church in the Late Middle Ages], Czasopismo Prawno-Historyczne, 67, 21-29.
Copyright (c) 2020 Dominika Ruszkiewicz
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish in this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain the copyright to their work while granting the journal the right of first publication. The work will be simultaneously licensed under a CC BY-ND license, which permits others to share the work with proper credit given to the author and the original publication in this journal.
- Authors may enter into additional, non-exclusive agreements for the distribution of the published version of the work (e.g., posting it in an institutional repository or publishing it in another journal), provided that the original publication in this journal is acknowledged.
We allow and encourage authors to share their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on personal websites) both before and during the submission process, as this can foster beneficial exchanges and lead to earlier and increased citations of the published work. (See The Effect of Open Access). We recommend using any of the following academic networking platforms:
