|
David
d'Avray.
Medieval
Marriage: Symbolism and Society.
Oxford
U.P., 2005.
216mm x
138mm.
334pp.
Publisher's
recommended price
Hardback
ISBN 0198208219, £60.00
This study shows how
marriage symbolism emerged from the world of texts to become a social
force affecting ordinary people. It covers the whole medieval period
but identifies the decades around 1200 as decisive. New arguments for
regarding preaching as a mass medium from the thirteenth century are
presented, building on the author's Medieval
Marriage Sermons. In marriage preaching symbolism was central.
Marriage symbolism also became a social force through law, and lay
behind the combination of monogamy and indissolubility which made the
medieval Church's marriage system a unique development in world
history. Symbolism is not presented as an explanation on its own: it
interacted with other causal factors, notably the eleventh-century
Gregorian Reform's drive for celibacy, which made the higher clergy
like a third gender and less sympathetic to patriarchal polygamous
tendencies. Sexual intercourse as a symbol of Christ's union with the
Church became central, not just in mysticism but in society as
structured by Church law. Symbolism also explains apparently bizarre
rules, such as the exemption from capital punishment of clerics in
minor orders provided that they married a virgin not a widow. The rules
about blessing second marriages are also connected with this nexus of
thought.
The book
is based on a wide range of manuscript sources: sermons, canon law
commentaries, Apostolic Penitentiary registers, papal bulls, a gaol
delivery roll, and pastoral handbooks. The collection of documents at
the end of the book expands the source base for the history of medieval
marriage generally as well as underpinning the thesis about symbolism.
Readership:
Medieval European historians; students and scholars of social, and
gender history; those interested in the history of religious thought
and marriage.
Contents:
Introduction
1 Mass Communication
2 Indissolubility
3 Bigamy
4 Consummation
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.
|
|