Matrimoni di antico regime. .

Daniela Lombardi. Matrimoni di antico regime.

(Annali dell'Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, Monografie, 34.) Bologna: Societa editrice il Mulino, 2001. 514 pp. index. tabl. bibi. [euro]28.92. ISBN: 88-15-08321-9.

The union of two people in marriage in the Italian regional states of the Ancien Regime was by no means a clear-cut, uniform process. Venue, class, custom, and the relative weights of secular, ecclesiastical, and community authorities all played intricate roles in the making of a new family household. In Matrimonjo di antico regime Daniela Lombardi, Associate Professor of Modern History at the University of Pisa, focuses on the highly complex problem of the way marriage was formed in Florence and the Tuscan state from 1490 to 1784. Her book is divided into two parts. Part 1 presents civil and canonical definitions of clandestine marriage. Part 2 assesses the reform of marriage rites put forth by the Council of Trent (1563) and examines the ways in which Catholics either adapted to or resisted the new Tridentine model. Canon law, ius comune, and theological treatises provide the documentary basis for a history of institutions and juridical perspectives, while ecclesiastical investigations from the diocese of Florence capture interesting snapshots of informal betrothals and the family conflicts associated with them. The result is an important new book on the social and institutional processes leading to marriage in early modern Italy.

Perhaps the central question, and source of conflict, in forming a marriage was whether the right to make and break an engagement belonged to parents, churchmen, or children. Parental consent was an important and highly coveted safeguard that protected family inheritance strategies and social status. During the late medieval period a marriage without it was considered invalid. Juridically it was conceived as a rapt de seduction or ratto, a form of abduction. However, during the first half of the sixteenth century this concept came under discussion. Civil theorists expressed some doubt over the validity of paternal consent, while canonists concluded that the absence of parents at a marriage was simply a sign that it was clandestine. After much debate, theologians at Trent decided that parental consent was not necessary to form a valid marriage and that a union, albeit clandestine, was only acceptable if the rites were celebrated publicly before a parish priest. Trent left little doubt about how the marriage r ites were to be performed, Lombardi argues, so most of the Tuscan ecclesiastical cases for the four decades after the celebrated council turned on the issue of the promise of marriage, a continued source of social conflict.

How binding was a promise of marriage? Who had the right to make one? Were children freer to chose partners after Trent? Lombardi draws no firm conclusions but maintains that the church wanted to liberate couples from the non-elite ranks of society, and particularly women, from paternal authority in order to assume control of marriage and sexuality itself. Elites appear to have been exempt from ecclesiastical intervention. Still, while the rites of marriage were firmly in place, the promise of marriage and characteristically long engagements created problems that took a long time to sort out. Women promised marriage in exchange for premarital sex, for example, turned to the courts for justice when their partners reneged. Sometimes the male partner was accused of stupro, or non-violent rape, an infraction that was difficult to prove.

Lombardi's study of the debate on non-violent rape during the eighteenth century is particularly illuminating and signals important changes. First, the long juridical tradition that had made women the victims of seduction and men responsible for either marrying them or providing dowries shifted. Women who engaged in premarital sex were to be punished and bear responsibility for any illegitimate offspring. In this context the promise of marriage, followed by sex, was no longer binding, especially in cases where there was social disparity. Moreover, the importance of parental consent of betrothal and marriage, eliminated after Trent, was now reintroduced. Second, it became easier to break a promise of marriage. Love, hate, compatibility, and changing one's mind all acquired more weight in the formation of a family. Couples avoided ecclesiastical court by making private agreements to break off engagements. Third, secular authorities absorbed the consequences of these important changes, as church authorities wit hdrew. The enlightened princes of the eighteenth century controlled marriage, rape, adultery, concubinage, and marital separation. They gave no binding importance to the promise of marriage. In Peter Leopold's Tuscany the ecclesiastical tribunals were abolished and substituted with a police force asked, among other duties, to solve marital difficulties

Daniela Lombardi greatly expands out knowledge of marriage formation in early modern Italy, offering us new perspectives. Matrimony has long been studied through notarial and testamenrarysources, but only recently have the activities of the bishops' courts in the Italian regional states come under intensive scrutiny. The history and law faculties at the University of Trent have provided the venue for international exchange for a group of scholars who, like Lombardi, aim to construct a broader vision of intimate relations, social conflict, and forms of control over matrimony and sexuality. Lombatdi's work is thoroughly researched and lucidly written. It offers us a comprehensive institutional and juridical history of marriage formation in early modern Italy, while bringing into focus in interesting ways the intimate lives of rural and urban Tuscans outside elite circles.