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History of marriage

From EverybodyWiki Bios & Wiki


The history of the marriage is a branch of social history that concerns the sociocultural evolution of socially or legally recognized unions between people called spouses, from prehistoric to modern times. Research on the history of marriage crosses disciplines and cultures, aiming to understand the structure and function of the family from many viewpoints. The study of history has shown that marriage, like other family systems, is flexible, culturally diverse and adaptive to ecological and economical conditions.[1]

The history of marriage is often considered under history of the family or legal history.[2]

Prehistory

Indigenous Americas

Ancient world

Ancient Near East

The first recorded evidence of marriage ceremonies uniting a man and a woman dates back to approximately 2350 BC, in ancient Mesopotamia.[3] Wedding ceremonies, as well as dowry and divorce, can be traced back to Mesopotamia and Babylonia.[4]

According to ancient Hebrew tradition, a wife was seen as being property of high value and was, therefore, usually, carefully looked after.[5][6] Early nomadic communities in the Middle East practiced a form of marriage known as beena, in which a wife would own a tent of her own, within which she retains complete independence from her husband.[7] The Covenant Code orders "If he take him another; her food, her clothing, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish (or lessen)". The Talmud interprets this as a requirement for a man to provide food and clothing to, and have sex with, each of his wives.[8][clarification needed] However, "duty of marriage" is also interpreted as whatever one does as a married couple, which is more than just sexual activity. And the term diminish, which means to lessen, shows the man must treat her as if he was not married to another.

As a polygynous society, the Israelites did not have any laws that imposed marital fidelity on men.[9][10] Adulterous married women, adulterous betrothed women, and the men who slept with them, however, were subject to the death penalty by the biblical laws against adultery. The literary prophets indicate that adultery was a frequent occurrence, despite these legal strictness's.[9]

Classical Greece and Rome

See also: Marriage in ancient Rome and Ancient Greek wedding customs

In ancient Greece, no specific civil ceremony was required for the creation of a heterosexual marriage – only mutual agreement and the fact that the couple must regard each other as husband and wife accordingly.[11] Men usually married when they were in their 20s and women in their teens.[12] It has been suggested that these ages made sense for the Greeks because men were generally done with military service or financially established by their late 20s, and marrying a teenage girl ensured ample time for her to bear children, as life expectancies were significantly lower.[citation needed] Married Greek women had few rights in ancient Greek society and were expected to take care of the house and children.[citation needed] Time was an important factor in Greek marriage. For example, there were superstitions that being married during a full moon was good luck and Greeks married in the winter in honor of Hera.[11] Inheritance was more important than feelings: a woman whose father dies without male heirs could be forced to marry her nearest male relative – even if she had to divorce her husband first.[13]

There were several types of marriages in ancient Roman society. The traditional ("conventional") form called conventio in manum required a ceremony with witnesses and was also dissolved with a ceremony.[14] In this type of marriage, a woman lost her family rights of inheritance of her old family and gained them with her new one. She now was subject to the authority of her husband.[15] There was the free marriage known as sine manu. In this arrangement, the wife remained a member of her original family; she stayed under the authority of her father, kept her family rights of inheritance with her old family and did not gain any with the new family.[16] The minimum age of marriage for girls was 12.[17]

Europe

Further information: History of the family and Royal intermarriage

From the early Christian era (30 to 325 CE), marriage was thought of as primarily a private matter, with no uniform religious or other ceremony being required.[18] However, bishop Ignatius of Antioch, writing around 110, exhorts, "[I]t becomes both men and women who marry, to form their union with the approval of the bishop, that their marriage may be according to God, and not after their own lust."[19]

In 12th-century Europe, women took the surname of their husbands and starting in the second half of the 16th century parental consent along with the church's consent was required for marriage.[20]

With few local exceptions, until 1545, Christian marriages in Europe were by mutual consent, declaration of intention to marry and upon the subsequent physical union of the parties.[21] The couple would promise verbally to each other that they would be married to each other; the presence of a priest or witnesses was not required.[22] This promise was known as the "verbum." If freely given and made in the present tense (e.g., "I marry you"), it was unquestionably binding;[21] if made in the future tense ("I will marry you"), it would constitute a betrothal.

One of the functions of churches from the Middle Ages was to register marriages, which was not obligatory. There was no state involvement in marriage and personal status, with these issues being adjudicated in ecclesiastical courts. During the Middle Ages marriages were arranged, sometimes as early as birth, and these early pledges to marry were often used to ensure treaties between different royal families, nobles, and heirs of fiefdoms. The church resisted these imposed unions, and increased the number of causes for nullification of these arrangements.[20] As Christianity spread during the Roman period and the Middle Ages, the idea of free choice in selecting marriage partners increased and spread with it.[20] In 1563 the Council of Trent, twenty-fourth session, required that a valid marriage must be performed by a priest before two witnesses.[23]

In medieval Western Europe, later marriage and higher rates of definitive celibacy (the so-called "European marriage pattern") helped to constrain patriarchy at its most extreme level. For example, Medieval England saw marriage age as variable depending on economic circumstances, with couples delaying marriage until the early twenties when times were bad and falling to the late teens after the Black Death, when there were labor shortages;[24] by appearances, marriage of adolescents was not the norm in England.[25][26] Where the strong influence of classical Celtic and Germanic cultures (which were not rigidly patriarchal)[27][28] helped to offset the Judaeo-Roman patriarchal influence,[29] in Eastern Europe the tradition of early and universal marriage (often in early adolescence),[30] as well as traditional Slavic patrilocal custom,[31] led to a greatly inferior status of women at all levels of society.[32]

The average age of marriage for most of Northwestern Europe from 1500 to 1800 was around 25 years of age;[33][34][35] as the Church dictated that both parties had to be at least 21 years of age to marry without the consent of their parents, the bride and groom were roughly the same age, with most brides in their early twenties and most grooms two or three years older,[35] and a substantial number of women married for the first time in their thirties and forties, particularly in urban areas,[36] with the average age at first marriage rising and falling as circumstances dictated. In better times, more people could afford to marry earlier and thus fertility rose and conversely marriages were delayed or forgone when times were bad, thus restricting family size;[37] after the Black Death, the greater availability of profitable jobs allowed more people to marry young and have more children,[38] but the stabilization of the population in the 16th century meant fewer job opportunities and thus more people delaying marriages.[39]

The age of marriage was not absolute, however, as child marriages occurred throughout the Middle Ages and later, with just some of them including:

  • The 1552 CE marriage between John Somerford and Jane Somerford Brereto, at the ages of 3 and 2, respectively.[40]
  • In the early 1900s, Magnus Hirschfeld surveyed the age of consent in about 50 countries, which he found to often range between 12 and 16. In the Vatican, the age of consent was 12.[41]

As part of the Protestant Reformation, the role of recording marriages and setting the rules for marriage passed to the state, reflecting Martin Luther's view that marriage was a "worldly thing".[42] By the 17th century, many of the Protestant European countries had a state involvement in marriage.

In England, under the Anglican Church, marriage by consent and cohabitation was valid until the passage of Marriage Act 1753. This act instituted certain requirements for marriage, including the performance of a religious ceremony observed by witnesses.[43]

As part of the Counter-Reformation, in 1563 the Council of Trent decreed that a Roman Catholic marriage would be recognized only if the marriage ceremony was officiated by a priest with two witnesses. The council also authorized a Catechism, issued in 1566, which defined marriage as "The conjugal union of man and woman, contracted between two qualified persons, which obliges them to live together throughout life."[44]

In the early modern period, John Calvin and his Protestant colleagues reformulated Christian marriage by enacting the Marriage Ordinance of Geneva, which imposed "The dual requirements of state registration and church consecration to constitute marriage"[44] for recognition.

In England and Wales, Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act 1753 required a formal ceremony of marriage, thereby curtailing the practice of Fleet Marriage, an irregular or a clandestine marriage.[45] From the 1690s until the Marriage Act 1753 as many as 300,000 clandestine marriages were performed at Fleet Prison alone.[46] The act required a marriage ceremony to be officiated by an Anglican priest in the Anglican Church with two witnesses and registration. The act did not apply to Jewish marriages or those of Quakers, whose marriages continued to be governed by their own customs.

In England and Wales, since 1837, civil marriages have been recognized as a legal alternative to church marriages under the Marriage Act 1836. In Germany, civil marriages were recognized in 1875. This law permitted a declaration of the marriage before an official clerk of the civil administration, when both spouses affirm their will to marry, to constitute a legally recognized valid and effective marriage, and allowed an optional private clerical marriage ceremony.

In contemporary English common law, a marriage is a voluntary contract by a man and a woman, in which by agreement they choose to become husband and wife.[47] Edvard Westermarck proposed that "the institution of marriage has probably developed out of a primeval habit".[48]

Since the late twentieth century, major social changes in Western countries have led to changes in the demographics of marriage, with the age of first marriage increasing, fewer people marrying, and more couples choosing to cohabit rather than marry. For example, the number of marriages in Europe decreased by 30% from 1975 to 2005.[49] As of 2000, the average marriage age range was 25–44 years for men and 22–39 years for women.

Among ancient Germanic tribes, the bride and groom were roughly the same age and generally older than their Roman counterparts, at least according to Tacitus:

The youths partake late of the pleasures of love, and hence pass the age of puberty unexhausted: nor are the virgins hurried into marriage; the same maturity, the same full growth is required: the sexes unite equally matched and robust, and the children inherit the vigor of their parents.[50]

Where Aristotle had set the prime of life at 37 years for men and 18 for women, the Visigothic Code of law in the 7th century placed the prime of life at 20 years for both men and women, after which both presumably married. Tacitus states that ancient Germanic brides were on average about 20 and were roughly the same age as their husbands.[51] Tacitus, however, had never visited the German-speaking lands and most of his information on Germania comes from secondary sources. In addition, Anglo-Saxon women, like those of other Germanic tribes, are marked as women from the age of 12 and older, based on archaeological finds, implying that the age of marriage coincided with puberty.[52]

Ancient China

Main article: Chinese marriage

The mythological origin of Chinese marriage is a story about Nüwa and Fu Xi who invented proper marriage procedures after becoming married. In ancient Chinese society, people of the same surname are supposed to consult with their family trees prior to marriage to reduce the potential risk of unintentional incest. Marrying one's maternal relatives was generally not thought of as incest. Families sometimes intermarried from one generation to another. Over time, Chinese people became more geographically mobile. Individuals remained members of their biological families. When a couple died, the husband and the wife were buried separately in the respective clan's graveyard. In a maternal marriage, a male would become a son-in-law who lived in the wife's home.

The New Marriage Law of 1950 radically changed Chinese marriage traditions, enforcing monogamy, equality of men and women, and choice in marriage; arranged marriages were the most common type of marriage in China until then. Starting October 2003, it became legal to marry or divorce without authorization from the couple's work units.[53][clarification needed]

Korea

The practice of matrilocality in Korea started in the Goguryeo period and ended in the early Joseon period.[54][55] The Korean saying that when a man gets married, he is "entering jangga" (the house of his father-in-law), stems from the Goguryeo period.[56]

Middle Ages

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Islamic World

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Medieval Europe

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Early Modern period

Enlightenment Europe

North America

20th century

21st century

References

  1. ↑ van den Berghe 1979, p. 50.
  2. ↑ for the historiography see Frederik J. G. Pedersen, "Marriage" in Kelly Boyd, ed. (1999). Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing vol 2. Taylor & Francis. pp. 766–68. ISBN 978-1-884964-33-6. Search this book on
  3. ↑ "The origins of marriage". The Week. January 1, 2007. Retrieved December 8, 2019.
  4. ↑ Naranjo, Robert. "Marriage in Ancient Mesopotamia and Babylonia". eHistory.osu.edu. Ohio State University. Retrieved December 8, 2019.
  5. ↑  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Marriage". The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
  6. ↑ Template:EncyclopaediaBiblica
  7. ↑ William Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in early Arabia, (1885), 167
  8. ↑  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Husband and Wife". The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Template:EncyclopaediaBiblica
  10. ↑  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Adultery". The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 WILLIAMSON, MALCOLM (1998). The Sacred and the Feminine in Ancient Greece. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-12663-2. Search this book on
  12. ↑ "Greek Women: Marriage and Divorce". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 2021-06-28.
  13. ↑ "Marriage, a History." Psychology Today, 1 May 2005
  14. ↑ "Magnus Hirschfeld Archive of Sexology". Erwin J. Haeberle.
  15. ↑ Frier and McGinn, Casebook, p. 53.
  16. ↑ "Roman empire.net marriage". Roman-empire.net. Archived from the original on 12 February 2009.
  17. ↑ Treggiari, Susan (1993). Roman Marriage: Isusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian. Clarendon Press. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-19-814939-2. Search this book on
  18. ↑ McSheffrey, Shannon (2006). Marriage, sex, and civic culture in late medieval London. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-8122-3938-6. Search this book on
  19. ↑ "St. Ignatius of Antioch to Polycarp (Roberts-Donaldson translation)". Earlychristianwritings.com. 2 February 2006.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 Pernoud, Régine (2000). Those terrible Middle Ages: debunking the myths. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. p. 102. ISBN 978-0-89870-781-6. Search this book on
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Excerpt from Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London Archived 23 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine "the sacramental bond of marriage could be made only through the freely given consent of both parties."
  22. ↑ "Marriage Records". Exploregenealogy.co.uk. 29 October 2007.
  23. ↑ Esparza Zabalegi, Jose Mari (March 2010). "Matrimonios a lo Navarro". Nabarralde Kazeta (7): 45.
  24. ↑ Hanawalt, Barbara A. 1986. The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England. Oxford University Press, Inc. Pg 96
  25. ↑ Hanawalt, pp. 98–100
  26. ↑ 33. Young, Bruce W. 2008. Family Life in the Age of Shakespeare. Greenwood Press. pp. 21, 24, 28
  27. ↑ John T. Koch, Antone Minard. 2012. The Celts: History, Life, and Culture. ABC-CLIO. p. 495
  28. ↑ Young, Bruce W. 2008. Family Life in the Age of Shakespeare. Greenwood Press. pp. 16–17, 20
  29. ↑ Greif, Avner (2005). "Family Structure, Institutions, and Growth: The Origin and Implications of Western Corporatism" (PDF). Standord Univeristy. pp. 2–3. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 September 2015. Retrieved 2015-11-20.
  30. ↑ Levin, Eve. 1995. Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900–1700. Cornell University Press. pp 96–98
  31. ↑ Levin, 1995; pp. 137, 142
  32. ↑ Levin, 1995; pp. 225–27
  33. ↑ Stone, Linda. (2010). Kinship and Gender. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, pp. 231–36, ISBN 0-8133-4402-6 Search this book on ..
  34. ↑ Schofield, Phillipp R. (2003). Peasant and community in Medieval England, 1200–1500. Medieval culture and society. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan. p. 98, ISBN 0-333-64710-6 Search this book on ..
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 Laslett, Peter. (1965). The World We Have Lost. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 82, ISBN 0-415-31527-1 Search this book on ..
  36. ↑ Coontz, Stephanie. (2005). Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage. New York: Viking Press, Penguin Group Inc. pp. 125–29, ISBN 0-14-303667-X Search this book on ..
  37. ↑ Kertzer, David I and Marzio Barbagli. (2001). The history of the European family. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. xxii, ISBN 0-300-09090-0 Search this book on ..
  38. ↑ Lehmberg, Stanford E. and Samantha A. Meigs. (2008). The Peoples of the British Isles: A New History: From Prehistoric Times to 1688. Lyceum Books. p. 117, ISBN 1-933478-01-2 Search this book on ..
  39. ↑ De Moor, Tine; Van Zanden, Jan Luiten (2010). "Girl power: The European marriage pattern and labour markets in the North Sea region in the late medieval and early modern period". The Economic History Review. 63: 1–33 (17). doi:10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00483.x.
  40. ↑ Hermann Heinrich Ploss; Max Bartels; Paul Bartels (1935). Woman: An Historical Gynæcological and Anthropological Compendium. London: William Heinemann (Medical Books) Ltd. p. 129. ISBN 978-1-4831-9419-6. Search this book on
  41. ↑ Bullough, Vern L. (2014-06-03). Adolescence, Sexuality, and the Criminal Law: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Routledge. p. 37. ISBN 978-1-317-95499-6. Retrieved 18 October 2015. Search this book on
  42. ↑  Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "History of Marriage" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  43. ↑ West's Encyclopedia of American Law, 2nd Edition. Thomson Gale, 2005. ISBN 0-7876-6367-0 Search this book on .
  44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 Witte, John Jr. (1997). From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition. Westminster John Knox Press. pp. 39–40. ISBN 978-0-664-25543-5. Search this book on
  45. ↑ Leneman, Leah (1999). "The Scottish Case That Led to Hardwicke's Marriage Act". Law and History Review. Archived from the original on 6 July 2008. Retrieved 8 June 2008.
  46. ↑ Gillis, John R. (1985). For Better, for Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present. Oxford University Press. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-19-503614-5. Search this book on
  47. ↑ "Marriage|LII / Legal Information Institute". Topics.law.cornell.edu. 19 August 2010. Archived from the original on 25 March 2011.
  48. ↑ Westermarck, Edward Alexander (1903). The History of Human Marriage (reprint ed.). Macmillan and Co., Ltd., London. ISBN 978-1-4021-8548-9. Search this book on
  49. ↑ Vucheva, Elitsa. (30 July 2013) / Social Affairs / Europeans marry older, less often. Euobserver.com. Retrieved on 5 September 2013.
  50. ↑ Tacitus (by commentator Edward Brooks). 2013. The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus. Project Gutenberg. Footnotes 121–122.
  51. ↑ Herlihy, David. (1985). Medieval Households. Harvard University Press, pp. 73–5, ISBN 0-674-56376-X Search this book on ..
  52. ↑ Green, Dennis Howard and Siegmund, Frank. 2003. The Continental Saxons from the Migration Period to the Tenth Century. Boydell Press. p. 107
  53. ↑ "Danwei". Retrieved 7 October 2014.
  54. ↑ Molony, Barbara (2016). Gender in Modern East Asia. Routledge. p. 22. Search this book on
  55. ↑ 김선주. "연애와 혼인 사이". National Institute of Korean History (in 한국어).
  56. ↑ Lee, Bae-yong (2008). Women in Korean History. Ewha Womans University Press. p. 19. Search this book on


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