Anca-Daniela Huţ, Marriage among 17th century boyar families of Wallachia and Moldova: between customary constraints and interest, în Sargetia, 1, 2010, p. 267-276 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Transylvanian Review, 2012
The article analyzes the matrimonial strategies of the Transylvanian Romanian rural elite in the second half of the 19th century. Based on unique historical sources, the analysis reveals various matrimonial behaviours and suggests explanatory models. The Transylvanian family of the modern epoch was based on logics and basic principles that were different from the current ones and operated on the following variables: indissoluble attachment to their land, excessive fragmentation of the property, the dowry, the transfer of assets from ascendants to descendants, similarity of social statuses, pattern of precocious marriages, a distribution of marriages according to the seasons, with more marriages concluded in winter, a high number of remarriage cases due to the death of one spouse, not to divorce. The variables used refer to a set of matters focused on the socioeconomic statute, on age, religion, gender, civil status, occupation, locality of origin and locality of residence of the spouses, on the value and composition of the dowry received upon marriage.
Women, Marriage and Family: The Position of Women in the Unity of the Family in Early Modern Europe
This study examined early modern period of the marriage was quite different than today. Women did not have a choice as to who they would marry and, most of the time, women did not even know the man before they wed. However, men were sometimes able to choose their bride. Marriage back then was not based on love; most marriages were political arrangements. Husbands and wives were generally strangers until they first met. If love was involved at all, it came after the couple had been married. Even if love did not develop through marriage, the couple generally developed a friendship of some sort. The arrangement of marriage was done by the children's parents. The arrangement of the marriage was based on monetary worth. The family of the girl who was to be married gives a dowry, or donation, to the boy she is to marry. The dowry goes with her at the time of the marriage and stays with the boy forever. After the marriage was arranged, a wedding notice was posted on the door of the church. Today, the man and the woman stand on the same sides of the altar as they did then. The wedding ceremony of today also includes a ring exchange, and the ring is placed on the fourth finger. In the early modern period a couple and their families would have a large feast after the wedding, this is still carried on in today's society with the wedding reception.
The aim of the present study is to sketch briefly the relationship between the ecclesiastical and secular elements of the marriage customs in the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Kingdom of Hungary and Principality of Transylvania with the help of the sixteenthcentury nuptial invitations preserved in the town archives of Beszterce (German: Bistritz; today Bistriţa, Romania), the specialist literature and ethnographic analogies. The common Hungarian and Latin designation for the betrothal and the church marriage (kézfogás/desponsatio) indicates that the two concepts had not separated completely. The terminological uncertainty can be explained by the slow implementation of canonical requirements: in practice the betrothal, adopted in the twelfth century, originating in Roman law, only gradually earned its place. The Reformation gave further impetus to doctrines proclaiming the binding force of betrothal, perhaps also connected with this is the fact that a binding form of betrothal also existed alongside that corresponding to today's version for a very long time in both Transylvania and Hungary. Betrothal accompanied by church ceremony in this case was followed as a second phase by a purely secular wedding feast. Only after the wedding subsequently became permanently embedded in the wedding feast did the church ceremony become the central element in the series of events.
The paper exploits the content of a very important document, found in the National Archives of the Republic of Moldova. Its valuable information enhances the insight into the private life of the late eighteenth century. The case study – which is the subject of the article - is based on a divorce act of 1795. It shows not only the law of the time, but also the particularities of the social and legal position held by women. In other words, this article identifies new aspects of private life, which can be analyzed both in terms of mentalities and that of gender relations.
Marriage and Family in Different Cultures Throughout History – A Historical Overview
2022
The essay provided an introductory overview on the role of marriage and family in different cultures throughout history. The cultures chosen are the Babylonian culture in the second millennium BC, the Egyptian culture during the first millennium BC, the culture of the Greek city states during the sixth and fifth century BC, Jewish culture during the Hebrew Testament times and early Judaism, the culture of the Roman Empire, the culture of Western Europe in medieval times and in modern times. It thus provided an overview of the diversity and complexity of the understanding and practice of the roles of marriage and family in different cultures at different times.
Engagement prior to marriage – a short walk through the history of Romanian law
Social-Economic Debates, 2013
The main purpose of this paper is to point out the legal nature, purpose and effects of the engagement prior to marriage in nowadays Romania, and also in old Romanian regulations, dating from the beginning of the XIX-th century. Equally, for a complementary perspective, the engagement prior to marriage as a religious institution will be briefly analyzed. In the final part, a conclusion will be pointed out, regarding the social perception of the engagement and also the reasons that made it a contemporary institution in Romania, despite the fact that it is not found in most modern Civil Codes.
In each given society, the admissibility of divorce or its exclusion will result from the socially recognized function of marriage and its socially adopted form. It may thus be delimited by the procreation function of marriage, its binding and relation-creating character for the society, accepted religious role or its (public) moral aspect. In this paper I intend to present a very general overview of the issue using a test case – divorce imposed by the father of the spouse(s), especially of the bride – which, could help to show the decision of whether or not (and how) a marriage may be dissolved is directly linked the protection of the goods identified by the law-maker. By comparing the Roman and Greek (Athenian) model it is put forward that, all in all, they are not necessarily antithetic. Both -- proven by, among others, the case of Dionysia -- demonstrate the tension between the rule of law and the social power. The legal experts who developed the classical legal construct of Roman marriage, freely contactable and freely dissoluble by the will only of the spouses, clearly had in mind the protection of freedom to express this will by the spouses themselves, without any external influence considered undue. This influence was much more likely in the case of socially and legally weaker subjects, the women, and children, especially those in potestate.
CLUP, 2010
The constructivist approach of this volume underpins our desire to investigate what we have named 'layers of power' in Europe. By this we refer to the scales of social organisation that are present in all historical periods, regardless of the geographical, political, economic or cultural make-up of a specific society. The 'layer' of power that presents itself most self-evidently as the primary social unit in which human beings have coexisted, and which formulates the rules of that existence, is the family. It is in familial relations that "many of the most distinctive features of human life are most clearly and unambiguously illustrated" 1 . The family is sui generis a layer of power, as it contains mechanisms through which it influences intrapersonal and interpersonal concepts and activities. One of these mechanisms is marriage, an institution whose origins and early development cannot be pinned down conclusively, but whose omnipresence we experience daily. As a source of certain rights and duties within and outside the community, marriage, over time, has been converted into a matter of law. This chapter explores the development of marital law in Europe and compares different marriage laws which coexisted (and still do) in Jewish, western Christian and Islamic communities. Chronologically, it concentrates primarily on the medieval period as the crucial phase in the development of marriage law for all these religious groups, for it was then when these laws were refined from customary and ritual practice into codified legal acts. This, in turn, created the foundation for present-day marital legislation, thus contributing to a common European cultural heritage.
International Journal of Orthodox Theology, 2020
This paper deals with the redactive development of the byzantine rites of Betrothal, Coronation and Digamia according to the 16 th-17 th c. Slavo-Romanian Euchologia available at the Romanian Academy Library in Bucharest (=BAR). For this research 11 manuscripts and 5 printed editions of the Euchologion have been analysed. The oldest Slavo-Romanian redactions of the matrimonial rites have their roots in the liturgical tradition of the South-Slavs. These documents still preserve some archaic particularities (such as the Communion of the spouses, the procession of the newlyweds 136 Mihail K. Qaramah from church to their home, or the rite of blessing the bedchamber-regarding the rite of Coronation), that will be gradually abandoned by the Euchologia of the second half of the 17 th century. Based on the conclusions of this survey we will propose some possible liturgical reforms that may be implemented within the practice of the contemporary received tradition, such as the restoration of the Communion of the spouses or the recovery of certain archaic prayers, which were not included in the printed editions of the Euchologion and have been undeservedly forgotten.