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Kings, Bishops and Incest: Extension and Subversion of the Ecclesiastical Marriage Jurisdiction around 1100

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Christof Rolker
Christof Rolker*
Affiliation:
Queen’s College, University of Cambridge
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Extract

If we set out to explore ‘discipline and diversity’ in the medieval Church, canon law presents itself as a possible starting point: canon law was first of all disciplinary law. Its history can be, and has been, told as an interplay of moral decline and reform, as a conflict between discipline and diverse customs, as a struggle between one eternal order and a multitude of transgressions. However, the imposition of norms is never a unilateral process; the success of a given set of norms is often shaped by an interplay between enforcement and subversion. In the present article, I want to explore this theme for a crucial phase in the history of medieval incest legislation and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction over marriage.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 43: Discipline and Diversity , 2007 , pp. 159 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2007

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References

1 Fournier, Paul and Le Bras, Gabriel, Histoire des collections canoniques en Occident: depuis les Fausses Decretales jusqu’au Décret de Gratien, 2 vols (Paris, 1931/2)Google Scholar; Le Bras, Gabriel, Lefebvre, Charles and Rambaud, Jacqueline, L’âge classique, 1140–1378: sources et théorie du droit, Histoire du droit et des institutions de l’Eglise en occident 7 (Paris, 1965)Google Scholar.

2 See Goody, Jack, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge and New York, 1983) (stressing that exogamy prevents property concentration)Google Scholar; Herlihy, David, ‘Making Sense of Incest: Women and the Marriage Rules of the Early Middle Ages’, in Bachrach, Bernard S. and Nicholas, David, eds, Law, Custom, and the Social Fabric in Medieval Europe: Essays in Honor of Bryce Lyon, Studies in Medieval Culture 28 (Kalamazoo, MI, 1990), 1–16 (domestic peace and ‘circulation of women’)Google Scholar; d’Avray, David L., ‘Lay Kinship Solidarity and Papal Law’, in Stafford, Pauline et al., eds, Law, Laity and Solidarities: Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds (Manchester, 2001), 188–99 (social cohesion)Google Scholar.

3 See Freisen, Joseph, Geschichte des canonischen Eherechts bis zum Verfall der Glossenlitteratur (Paderborn, 1893), 387–405 Google Scholar; Daudet, Pierre, L’établissement de la compétence de l’Église en matière de divorce et de consanguinité, France, Xime-XIIéme siècles: études sur l’histoire de la juridiction matrimoniale (Paris, 1941) Google Scholar; Corbet, Patrick, Autour de Burchard de Worms: l’Église allemande et les interdits de parenté (IXème-XIIème siècle), lus commune, Sonderhefte 142 (Frankfurt, 2001), 8–49 Google Scholar; and most recently d’Avray, David L., Medieval Marriage: Symbolism and Society (Oxford, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Constance Brittain Bouchard, Those of My Blood: Constructing Noble Families in Medieval Francia (Philadelphia, PA, 2001), 39, holds that tenth- and eleventh-century nobility did not abuse the ecclesiastical incest prohibitions in the same way as did later generations. Accordingly, her account of the divorce of king Henry’s daughters (ibid., 44) and the second marriage of Constance (ibid., 49) is very different from mine.

5 Duby, Georges, Medieval Marriage: Two Models from Twelfth-Century France (Baltimore, MD, 1978)Google Scholar, and idem, The Knight, the Lady and the Priest: the Making of Modem Marriage in Medieval France (London, 1984). For important criticism, see Bouchard, , ‘Consanguinity and Noble Marriages in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, Speculum 56 (1981), 268–87 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moule, Carolyn Janet, ‘Entry into Marriage in the Late Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, c. 1090–1181’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1983 Google Scholar; and Livingstone, Amy, ‘Kith and Kin: Kinship and Family Structure of the Nobility of Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Blois-Chartres’, French Historical Studies 20 (1997), 419–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Duby, Medieval Marriage, 45.

7 Bouchard, ‘Consanguinity and Noble Marriages’, esp. 278–9.

8 Eadem, ‘Eleanor’s Divorce from Louis VII: the Uses of Consanguinity’, in Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons, eds, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady (New York, 2002), 223–35, at 225.

9 Anselm, Epistola 365, in Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., S. Anselmi Cantuariensis archiepiscopi opera omnia, 6 vols (Edinburgh, 1946–61) [hereafter: Schmitt], 5: 308.

10 Greenway, Diana E., Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, 1107–1191, Records of Social and Economic History, ns 1 (London, 1972), xvii–xxiv.Google Scholar

11 Vitalis, Orderic, Historia ecclesiastica 8.23, in Chibnall, Marjorie, ed. and trans., The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, Oxford Medieval Texts, 6 vols (Oxford, 1969–80)Google Scholar [hereaften Chibnall], 4: 284; Anselm, Epistula 423 (Schmitt, 5: 369); Regesta pontificum romanorum ab condita ecclesia ad annum post Christum natum MCXCVIII, ed. P. Jaffé, rev. edn by S. Löwenfeld, F. Kaltenbrunner and P. Ewald, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1885–8) [hereafter Jaffé, Regesta], Paschal II, 6178 (PL 163,232).

12 Greenway, Honour of Mowbray, xix.

13 Anselm, Epistula 424 (Schmitt, 5: 369–70).

14 Ivo, Epistula 261 (PL 162, 265–6); see C. Warren Hollister, Henry I (New Haven, CT, 2001), 263.

15 Crouch, David, The Beaumont Twins: the Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, ser. 4.1 (Cambridge, 1986), 15–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 See e.g. Fliche, Augustin,Le règne de Philippe Ier, roi de France, 1060–1108 (Paris, 1912), 36–77 Google Scholar, Sprandel, Rolf, Ivo von Chartres und seine Stellung in der Kirchengeschichte, Pariser Historische Studien 1 (Stuttgart, 1962), 102–12 Google Scholar, and Becker, Alfons, Papst Urban II. (1088–1099): Herkunft und kirchliche Laufbahn, MGH Schriften 19.1 (Stuttgart, 1964), 192–205 Google Scholar. The most influential account is still that of Duby, Medieval Marriage, 29–45; for a more balanced view, and corrections to Duby’s model, see e.g. Moule, ‘Entry into Marriage’, 32–45, and Nugent, Christopher Brooke, Lawrence, The Medieval Idea of Marriage (Oxford, 1989), 119–26.Google Scholar

17 Bruguière, Marie-Bernadette, ‘Canon Law and Royal Weddings, Theory and Practice: the French Example, 987–1215’, in Chodorow, Stanley, ed., Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Monumenta iuris canonici, Subsidia 9 (Vatican City, 1992), 473–96, at 482.Google Scholar

18 Ivo knew that at Clermont Philip was excommunicated for ‘incestuous adultery’, but never mentioned this in the king’s lifetime (against Duby, Medieval Marriage, 41). Neither Ivo nor Urban claimed that Bertrada and Philip were related (against Brooke, Idea of Marriage, 122–3).

19 Ivo, Epistulas 15 (PL 162, 27).

20 See e.g. Hugh of Lyon (PL 157, 518) and Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiastica, 8.10 (Chibnall, 4: 186). On Fulk’s marital affairs cf.Halphen, Louis, Le comté d’Anjou au XIe siècle (Paris, 1906), 169–70.Google Scholar

21 Ivo, Epistula 13 (PL 162, 26). Bertrada married Fulk before 24 April 1090 as can be seen from an unpublished charter, no. C363 in Olivier Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou etson entou rage au XIe siècle, 2 vols (Paris, 1972), 2: 226–7.

22 Against Duby, Medieval Marriage, 41.

23 Urban II, Jaffé, Regesta, 5469 (PL 151,354), written 27 October 1092.

24 Sprandel, Ivo von Chartres, 103–6.

25 Becker, Urban II., 195.

26 An instructing parallel case is ivo, Epistula 18 (PL 162, 31–2). See also Epistulae 16,148, 155, 161.

27 Ivo, Epistula 46 (PL 162, 5 8–9). Both Sprandel, Ivo von Chartres, 187 and Becker, Urban II., 198–200, dated the letter 1096 or 1098 but thought 1098 most likely. However, the letter mentions that the king was supported by the archbishops of Reims and Sens, i.e. Rainaud of Reims (†21 February 1096) and Richer of Sens (†27 December 1096). From Richer’s death to March or April 1098 the see was vacant Eptstula 46 cannot have been written in this time, and it is extremely unlikely that Daimbert of Sens (consecrated in spring 1098 by the pope) participated in the planned schism. Fliche, Philippe I, 56–7 argued that Epitula 46 was written in 1095 and that it explained why Urban refrained from confirming Hugh’s excommunication until the Council of Clermont. However, it seems more likely to me that Philip reacted against the papal excommunication rather than the legatine.

28 Duby, Medieval Marriage, 54.

29 Bertrada appears as queen in at least two royal charters after 1104: nos 157–8, in Prou, Maurice, Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, roi de France (1059–1108) (Paris, 1908), 395–6 Google Scholar; an Angevin chronicle reports that she was received as queen in the Anjou in 1106, where these charters were issued ( Delisle, Leopold, ed., Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France 12 [Paris, 1877], 486 Google Scholar). Compare also Prou’s charter no. 168 and the document C441, in Guillot, Comte d’Anjou, 2: 273 (dated between 1106 and 1109).

30 While stories like those related by Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiastica 8.20 (Chibnall, 4: 262) are presumably fictitious, charter evidence suggests that Philip’s scope of political action was seriously limited by the ecclesiastical sanctions (Fliche, Philippe I, 62).

31 Suger, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, ed. Henri Waquet, Classiques de l’histoire de France au Moyen Age 11 (Paris, 1964), 46–8. In a clearly apologetic stance, Suger glosses over Constance’s first marriage.

32 Ivo, Epistula 158 (PL 162, 164).

33 Ivo, Epistula 175 (PL 162, 178).

34 Both Anselm’s and Ivo’s letter collection contain numerous letters dealing with marriage, e.g. Anselm, Epistulae 238, 297, 365, 419, 427, 435 or Ivo, Epistulae 16, 18, 45, 99, 129–30, 148, 155, 161, 170, 188, 211, 225, 229, 232, 246, 261.

35 In the case of Ivo, for example, there are only two cases (Epistulae 158 and 261) where he successfully dissolved an existing marriage on grounds of consanguinity, and clearly he did so at the request of the parties in both cases.