Abstract
Georges Duby described medieval, Catholic marriage as the product of two competing groups of people, clergy and nobles, each with their own conflicting ideas of marriage. Clergy wanted indissoluble and monogamous marriage, while nobles wanted to divorce and remarry at will. This widely influential idea of marriage is extremely misleading. Clergy and nobles did not comprise distinct and competing camps, nor did they have opposing ideas of marriage. Instead, together, as members of the powerful families that dominated medieval Europe, these men and women created and implemented Christian marriage as monogamous and indissoluble. Using as a case study the scandalous marriage of a twelfth-century abbess, this article will demonstrate the flaws in Duby’s argument, and also we can learn about medieval marriage, and medieval society more broadly, by applying this new approach.
Twelfth-century Northern France offers important lessons for the history of marriage. It is a time and place that has been described as when and where modern (western) marriage was made. 1 By the twelfth century, the powerful families ruling Western Europe had long since abandoned the polygamous marital practices of some of their Germanic ancestors. They had forsaken as well the freedom to divorce and remarry without complying with the strictures of Christian marriage law, as both their Germanic and Roman ancestors had done. Instead, high-ranking noblemen and women of the twelfth century married monogamously and indissolubly, and referred their questions about marriage to the jurisdiction of the Church. This transformation in marriage practice matters most as a crucial step in the development of Western, European marriage, which not only required monogamous marriage but also limited inheritance of property and succession to titles to the children of these unions, exceptional behavior in the premodern world. How and why this happened remains the subject of considerable debate.
In essence, scholars have put forward three different explanations. One theory is that clergy imposed their concept of marriage upon a reluctant laity. 2 A second theory is that the laity allowed this imposition because it suited their interests. 3 A third theory is that the change took place as a compromise between laity and clergy, with gains and losses on both sides. 4 This article rejects all of these theories and offers an alternative explanation, one much more sympathetic to the latter two arguments, but not in full agreement with any of them. The three explanations all assume that we can clearly distinguish two groups, the clergy and the laity, each with a fixed kind of class consciousness and class ideology. It is simply not so, which means that a persuasive explanation must be framed in different terms.
Marriage as indissoluble, monogamous, and subject to the jurisdiction of the Church did not emerge as a result of a competition, or as a compromise between clergy and laity, between two different sides. Instead, it emerged as the result of a convergence of the complex and collective interests of powerful persons—families and individuals—whose interests cannot be classified into categories of those of the clergy or those of the nobles. The allegiances of these persons were not to any given class or order. 5 Certainly, clergymen or noblemen had a sense of shared identity with fellow clergymen or noblemen, but this shared identity did not necessarily always—or even often—inform their behavior concerning marriage. These powerful people, whether clergy or noble, made strategic use of the canon law of marriage, and did so to further their own interests, not because they identified themselves with other nobles or with other clergy. Sometimes motivated by religious devotion, sometimes by desire for land or power, or the desire to deprive someone else of their land or their power, powerful men and women played a complex game with the evolving law governing marriage. A complicated kind of compliance with that law was the net result. In order to understand this, we can and must turn to the sources, to law books and to chronicles, to charters and to letters, but first a large quantity of prior scholarship needs to be revised.
Revising prior scholarship means above all confronting one looming figure: Georges Duby. It is to this celebrated French medievalist that we owe the proposition that we can distinguish two classes of persons with two competing ideas of marriage. 6 His writing on marriage includes The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France and Medieval Marriage: Two Models from Twelfth Century France. 7 These books, so eloquently written, continue to have a profound influence, both because of the quality of the writing and the attractive simplicity of Duby’s explanation for the transformation of noble marriage practice. To offer Duby’s argument in brief, in the twelfth century, nobles and clergy had opposing models of marriage with opposing ideologies. Nobles wanted dissoluble marriage. They wanted marriage to be easily made and broken according to the wishes of the families involved, and especially so that husbands could rid themselves of unwanted wives at will. They wanted also the freedom to marry close kin, arranging matches between their children and someone on the order of a second or third cousin related by blood or by marriage ties. This they wanted so as to be able to keep property within the family. Clergy, meanwhile, wanted marriage to conform to theological principles and wanted at the same time to increase ecclesiastical control over marriage. They therefore wanted marriage to be indissoluble, allowing remarriage only after the death of a spouse. Suitable marriage partners to the minds of these clergy included no close kin, neither by blood, nor by marriage, nor any relationships created by godparentage, or even by sex. 8 The conflict between these two parties was resolved in the early thirteenth century, and in favor of the clerical model. Nobles finally recognized that marriages had to be monogamous and indissoluble, and on the terms offered by the Church: marriages could not end in divorce but could only be nullified, be recognized as something that had never been valid, and only by means of a Church-adjudicated annulment on the grounds of an impediment as defined by the Church. This arrived with something of a concession on the part of the clergy in that they agreed to consider fewer relationships incestuous, thus allowing nobles a wider range of choices in the selection of a marriage partner than clergy had previously endorsed. So argued Duby.
Duby’s model, on its surface, makes good sense. It makes sense to us that church officials would want to make marriage indissoluble and monogamous in accordance with their understanding of Christian doctrine and also their desire to control the marriage practices of noble families. It also makes sense to us that noblemen might want to be able to change to a new spouse, either because of a lack of a son and heir or for other dynastic or personal reasons. They would, therefore, have two opposing ideas of marriage and therefore be in conflict.
Indeed, despite considerable criticism, Duby’s interpretation of medieval marriage has had an immense influence, so much so that one of his critics has complained that the field is haunted by “the specter of Georges Duby.” 9 Seemingly regardless of compelling arguments and new evidence that challenge many of Duby’s assumptions, Duby’s picture of marriage in the Middle Ages remains in heavy use. 10 Most importantly, Jack Goody’s extremely influential writings drew upon Duby’s ideas to offer the argument that medieval churchmen developed an unprecedentedly broad definition of incest prohibitions as part of their plot to gain control over marriage and as a result weaken noble families and obtain their property. Goody argued these rules broke up holdings that families sought to retain by intermarriage and that these families responded either by open defiance or by seeking dispensations. 11 While scholars of medieval Europe have roundly rejected Goody’s thesis, 12 scholars in other disciplines continue to rely on Goody’s interpretation, accepting Duby’s general picture of marriage at the same time. To offer a few more recent examples of Duby’s influence, Martin Aurell applied Duby’s models to marriage in medieval Catalonia, with nobles adopting shifting strategies over time, 13 while Geneviève Ribordy stretched Duby’s model into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 14 Judith Hurwich used Duby’s model as a preview for her work focused mainly on the sixteenth century, 15 and Bruno Lemesle wrote of two opposing matrimonial strategies as revealed in the eleventh-century case of the three marriages of one Tiphaine: the noble marriage strategy involved marrying close relatives in pursuit of keeping their property together, while the ecclesiastical model forbade the marriage of close kin. 16 Additionally, one or the other of Duby’s books on marriage is quite probably the one book amateur history enthusiasts might read on the subject. Even without reference to either book, Duby’s structuralist notion of marriage as conflict between two opposing sides with two opposing models has attained a predominant role in how medieval marriage is thought about, and sets the terms and tone of discussion, both in the classroom and in scholarly writing.
Indeed, this dualist notion has proved so pervasive that even the most adamant critics of Duby’s models of marriage, such as Christopher Brooke, Christof Rolker, and David Herlihy, have continued to assess the sources in terms of clergy versus noble. 17 Much of this criticism is framed in opposition to Duby’s idea that clergy in the eleventh and twelfth century could have forced nobles, as a class, to do something they did not want to do. As Christopher Brooke argued in his The Medieval Idea of Marriage, to see medieval lay nobility as forced by the clergy to give up their idea of marriage in favor of the clerical model, is both strange and ahistorical. What happened instead, as Brooke explains, is that, “the aristocracy of Europe allowed the Church to take over almost completely the jurisdiction of the law of marriage.” 18 They did so, in fact, because it was in their interest, an idea we will return to.
Brooke’s interpretation accords nicely with Christof Rolker’s. As Rolker explains, Church and laity cooperated in a manipulation of the canon law of marriage. Nobles and kings willingly came before church officials to seek adjudication of their marriages, and these church officials in turn allowed for some flagrant abuses of the law. To quote from Rolker’s analysis: … the imposition of discipline and subversive uses of the law were closely interrelated. If the Church was able to extend her jurisdiction in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it was due to co-operation in which both sides gained something. The Church was able to have her marriage legislation applied in more and more cases and was increasingly accepted as a court of appeal for contested marriages; the noble families who invited ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the first place often received favorable judgments and had their marriage arrangements confirmed by the church. However, both sides also bound themselves: lay parties had in the long run to accept ecclesiastical jurisdiction even where it was not welcome, and the Church all too often had to accept abusive appeals to incest legislation, a burden that was only partly removed with the dramatic legal changes of the Fourth Lateran Council.19
In fact, there was nothing of the kind. As Constance Bouchard has written, and many other scholars have recognized, there was no such thing as “the Church” in the twelfth century: “‘the’ church did not exist as a monolithic entity.” 20 How indeed, can we think of a church operating in opposition to nobles during, for example, the papacy of Alexander III, who saw three antipopes elected against him? How could we think of Alexander and these antipopes as on one side, and the kings who backed Alexander and the emperor with his successive antipopes on another? Moreover, to quote Bouchard once more, “most bishops and powerful abbots, the sons and brothers of important noblemen, were in consequence more disposed to their families’ interests than otherwise.” 21 Indeed, “brother monk” was quite often just that. As Amy Livingstone has shown, noble families in the Loire frequently delegated family members to religious life, both monastic and episcopal, and that these positions often passed from uncle to nephew. 22 Further, such uncles and nephews did not forget about their family ties or family interests once they had taken up religious life. 23 Some even returned to the world. To offer one admittedly extreme example from another part of France, in 1167, Peter of Flanders was elected bishop of Cambrai, and served for several years. Like some other bishops at that time he was not consecrated, which proved most convenient when family interests recalled him from his post. In 1174, he resigned the episcopate, became a knight, married a widowed countess, and had a daughter with her. 24
Churchmen did not always or necessarily think of themselves as such. Nor did nobles. A nobleman did not automatically come to the aid of another nobleman when a churchman infringed upon his perceived rights or interfered with his marital desires. Indeed, quite the contrary. The fact that a cleric might also have been noble, or that an abbess might have thought more often of the needs of her natal kin than her convent sisters, is just one part of a broader whole of the very complex kinds of identity and interests lived and expressed by people in the twelfth century. As Theodore Evergates wrote, Duby failed dramatically in his effort to depict medieval society as a civilization that conceived of itself as divided up into categories of noble, clergy, and peasant. Duby’s own writings on the subject revealed not clear evidence for a tripartite model “but rather a cornucopia of sociological imaginaries.” 25 The scholarship of Evergates, as well as that of Bouchard and Livingstone, should be recognized as far more appropriate means of understanding medieval society and medieval marriage than that of Duby. Additionally, we can draw upon their arguments to abandon Duby’s two-sided model entirely in our assessment of marriage in medieval Europe. It is well past time to reject Duby’s idea that people in the twelfth century could be consistently divided up into two opposing camps, two opposing or compromising sides. People in medieval Europe conducted themselves with more nuance concerning marriage, and quite probably in many other avenues of life as well.
It is also well past time to abandon Duby’s idea that these two sides had two competing ideologies of marriage. 26 Duby claimed, as mentioned above, to describe two competing models, but in fact what he did was to compare two very different kinds of models. As David Herlihy wrote in 1987 in his “The Family and Religious Ideologies in Medieval Europe,” Duby was in fact comparing “two quite different kinds of models” one prescriptive and one descriptive. One, that of the clergy, was a “set of rules or recommendations, which may or may not be respected” the second, that of the laity, was “a generalized portrayal of actual behavior” based upon on “chronicle accounts of elite behavior.” Such things do not lend themselves well to comparison. Most importantly, there is no evidence for a prescriptive noble model of marriage. “Nowhere is it suggested that the French lay aristocracy was bent on establishing norms for others to follow. Duby treats the two types of models as the same, and this clouds his analysis. To say that the two fused seems only to mean that behavior eventually influenced the norms that governed it, as it often does.” 27
This lack of evidence for a noble prescriptive model is to my mind a devastating critique. As there is no surviving evidence of an alternate noble prescriptive model, it is not at all appropriate to argue that nobles had one. In fact, what related evidence we do have points if anything in the opposite direction. To be sure, we suffer from an overwhelming imbalance of surviving sources in favor of clerical writings. Even so, scholars such as Evergates, Livingstone, and Bouchard have made use of charter evidence in particular to portray the medieval nobility in ways that offer no indications that they held to an opposing prescriptive model. The evidence we have, as Rolker and Brooke argued, shows more complicity than defiance. Moreover, we have plenty of evidence of moments when nobles disagreed firmly with canon law and with ecclesiastical authority on other matters. There was, after all, nothing like an Investiture Controversy over marriage. In the so-called Investiture Conflict or Controversy, Pope Gregory VII and his reforming followers found themselves engaged in a dispute with some secular rulers (and clergy) over what the law should be, over royal versus papal authority, over who had the power to appoint high clergy to their offices. 28 Secular and clerical opponents to the Gregorian reform did offer opposing ideology, both in their actions and in their writings. 29 We have nothing comparable for marriage. As far as we know, nobles did not, in writing or in deed, put forward any alternative models. If nobles disliked the canon law of marriage, they do not appear to have explored other options. They did not seek to marry with recourse to different rules or institutions. As a result, we can at very least tentatively assume that kings and nobles of the twelfth century by and large saw the canon law of marriage and adjudication of marriage by church officials as broadly acceptable, or at very least something that they could work with.
Moreover, clergy and noble did not function as two different and discrete categories of persons, as even Herlihy described them in order to argue that the nobles mounted no known opposition to the clerical idea of marriage. The ideologies of people in the twelfth century cannot be consistently divvied up into such neat categories as those of the clergy and of the laity any more than prescriptive and behavioral models can be effectively compared. The core of the problem with Duby’s argument is that it employed a structuralism typical of postwar French scholarship, a theoretical approach that has proved deeply problematic. Like Georges Dumezil and many other French scholars influenced by Claude Levi-Strauss, Duby believed he could analyze societies in terms of binary—or ternary—opposition. 30 Yet, such structuralism has been rejected in many other areas and specialists in medieval marriage should do the same. 31 Duby’s binary structuralism is wholly inappropriate for consideration of the complexities of marriage in the twelfth century. It is not productive to consider Duby’s portrayal of marriage as “broadly valid.” 32 Instead, if we can reject Duby’s ideas on marriage completely, and focus instead on seeking out why and how people, clergy and laity alike, responded to the law, looking in particular to local or familial interests—their often shifting interests—it will allow us to assess the “making of modern marriage” in new and revealing ways.
The Marriage of an Abbess
The role of individualized and shifting strategic behaviors in twelfth-century marriage practice is shown in stark relief when we apply the principles just discussed to an exceptional marriage that took place in 1160. There were, in fact, two rather exceptional marriages in the year 1160, one the scandalous marriage of an abbess, which this article will examine in detail, and the other the marriage of two young children. 33 This latter marriage united the five- (or seven-) year-old Prince Henry of England to his distant cousin the two- (or three-) year-old Princess Margaret of France. The marriage was a political coup for King Henry II of England, an impressive bending of the law to his advantage. 34 Indeed, a good deal of bending was necessary to give this marriage its legitimacy. The most recent and most relied upon canon law collections of that time prohibited the marriage of males under the age of fourteen and females under the age of twelve. 35 If clergy and their pope had been determined to impose their ideology upon the laity, this marriage could never have taken place. Instead, clergy, just like many of the laity, responded to this marriage according to their particular interests and dilemmas. Pope Alexander III, having just assumed the papacy with an antipope immediately raised against him by the Emperor Frederick I, 36 provided King Henry with a dispensation for this marriage in return, presumably, for Henry’s endorsement of his papacy. 37
While this marriage is not the focus of my investigation, even with this example we can quickly see how far we are from a world of two competing models and nobles versus clergy. Moreover, this marriage offers more than an example of the ways in which kings might succeed in getting papal help to bend the law. It is also an example of how, in the second half of the twelfth century, kings, nobles, and clergy so often ignored incest prohibitions when contracting marriages. These two children, like all of their parents, were related within forbidden degrees, and no one bothered with a dispensation about that. 38 As will be discussed in more detail below, the patterns of strategic use and abuse of incest prohibitions played a complex but quite revealing role in marriage practice in the second half of the twelfth century.
To return to the marriage of the abbess, in 1160, Matthew, younger son of Theoderic, Count of Flanders, took as his wife Marie of Boulogne, Abbess of Romsey. Marie was the last living legitimate child of Stephen of Blois, once king of England, and his wife Matilda, Countess of Boulogne. Matthew and Marie ruled Boulogne together for ten years, after which Marie retreated to monastic life once more, leaving behind two daughters who would inherit Boulogne from her. Chronicles, charters, and letters allow us to study these events in much more detail. In 1159, the Count of Boulogne, the wonderfully named William Longsword, died without any children, and no clear heir to his title. 39 In 1160, Matthew of Flanders took William’s sister Marie as his spouse and claimed Boulogne through her. Daughters like Marie could inherit Boulogne, and indeed many women had and would continue to inherit and rule Boulogne as countess, but Marie’s circumstances were rather exceptional. 40 She had, after all, been Abbess of Romsey at the time of her brother’s death, and the marriage—for those willing to call her union with Matthew such—caused a great scandal. How Matthew got Marie out of the abbey is not known, 41 nor do we know if Marie went willingly. Scholars and chroniclers often assume that Henry II played a role in Marie’s removal. 42 If we accept this view, his behavior could be seen as a reversal, as he presumably had once been eager to see Marie, the daughter of Henry’s predecessor King Stephen, take the veil. Marie’s retreat into religious life limited the number of possible rival claimants to the English throne. However, Henry subsequently appears to have found her more useful as a wife, as Boulogne, if not otherwise claimed, would have gone into the possession of the French crown.
If Henry welcomed Marie and Matthew as count and countess, others found the marriage completely unacceptable. Samson, Archbishop of Reims, excommunicated the couple, and Matthew’s father took up arms against his son. 43 Matthew seems to have reconciled with his family soon after, however, and fought in battles alongside his brother Philip in subsequent years. 44 In 1162, Pope Alexander III, in exile in Tours, wrote two letters about Matthew to Henri of France, King Louis VII’s brother, whom Alexander had just appointed archbishop of Reims following Samson’s death. 45 If Alexander knew about the marriage at the time of this first letter, he made no mention of it. Instead, he wrote to inform the archbishop that Matthew—who he described not as the count of Boulogne, but as the son of the count of Flanders—had removed and replaced two abbots in the city of Boulogne. 46 Intent on protecting ecclesiastical privileges where he could, Alexander firmly rejected the idea that a secular ruler might displace clergy from their offices. In a second letter to Henri, written eight days later, Alexander focused once again on the expulsion of the abbots, and this time did discuss Marie’s so-called marriage. Alexander explained that thanks to Henri’s information he was well aware that Matthew “the son of our dear son the noble count of Flanders, had illicitly joined himself with a nun dedicated to God, and an abbess, at his soul’s peril.” Alexander then explained that Matthew had not only, in so doing, offended God—who still required satisfaction—but that Matthew had added sin to sin by ejecting from their churches the two abbots, a matter that clearly remained of grave concern for the pope. Alexander told Henry to go to Boulogne and correct this iniquity, and mandated that Henri see that these abbots were restored to their churches, and that all that was wrong be corrected, “lest God’s punishment fall upon the county.” 47 What Henri, or anyone, did next is unknown. In 1168, Alexander wrote two more letters, ordering renewed excommunication of the couple and placing Boulogne under interdict, demanding that Matthew surrender Boulogne to Constance of France, the widow of Marie’s eldest brother, and also sister to Louis VII and Archbishop Henri. 48 Regardless, Matthew and Marie remained in control of Boulogne. Matthew even felt confident enough in his position that he threatened to invade England a year previously, in 1167, attempting to force Henry II to cede to Matthew’s control the county of Mortain, which Marie had inherited from her brother. 49 Henry resolved the conflict by offering Matthew 1,000 livres annually. 50
Marie, meanwhile, had given birth to two daughters, Ida and Matilda. How she felt about all of this is a mystery. Scholars hear from her directly only in one letter written to Louis VII in 1168, warning Louis against the machinations of Henry II. 51 This letter could be interpreted either as animosity against Henry II for his alleged involvement in her removal from her abbey or as Marie’s support for Matthew’s shifting alliances. In any event, if Marie wanted to return to monastic life she got her wish, and evidently with Matthew’s consent. Between 1169 and 1171, Marie resumed the veil and entered the Benedictine convent of Saint Austreberthe, at Montreuil-sur-Mer, which Matthew heavily endowed in her favor. 52 Austreberthe, a noble abbess of the seventh century, had refused marriage in favor of becoming a nun. We might imagine that this retreat was chosen in honor of that saint, but family contacts or political connections could better explain the choice. Left behind in the world, Matthew continued to rule Boulogne in the name of their daughters, who would inherit the county from their mother. In 1171, Matthew married Eleanor of Vermandois, whose sister Elizabeth was the wife of Philip of Flanders, Matthew’s brother. 53 Having joined Philip in supporting Prince Henry of England in his rebellion against his father, Matthew died in battle in 1173. 54 Philip of Flanders acted as guardian for the two daughters while they were young, and Marie died in 1182. 55 Ida, the elder daughter, married three husbands in succession. 56 The first two died quickly, and the third, who seems to have abducted her, was married at the time of the abduction and only obtained an annulment after he had married Ida. 57
How the marriage of an abbess took place, and why, and how her daughters inherited a title from her, is quite difficult to understand as a matter of law, and difficult to reconstruct with confidence from our sources. While a surprising amount of material on the marriage survives, we cannot, of course, assume that we have been left a complete record of events. Just because, for example, we know nothing of King Louis VII’s reaction to the marriage does not mean that we can assume that he did nothing. Moreover, as will be explained in more detail below, some of the sources, and also some of the secondary work on the marriage, include information that is suspect or unlikely, and should not be assumed to be accurate. Nevertheless, the overall picture is clear enough. The story of an abbess’s marriage, and the successful seizure of a noble title as a result of that marriage, is a story that defied the norms of the law, a thing that was admittedly easily done in the twelfth century, but it also defied legal practice. Many illegal things, such as consanguine marriages, were nevertheless done. To marry a nun and have her children treated as the legitimate heirs to a noble title was a thing not done, and yet, in this case, it was done. Such a story therefore offers a perfect introduction to the true complexities of marriage practice in the twelfth century and sheds light as well on the shifting interests that acted as the driving force in the making and breaking of marriage.
To begin with the relevant canon law, well before 1160, the marriage of an abbess—or even a mere nun—was illegal, no marriage at all. However flexible on other points, the canon law of marriage did not allow avowed nuns to marry. Marriage to a nun had been declared illegal and impossible as early as the eighth century, and the prohibition had recently been reemphasized in the midst of the Gregorian reforms, as a counterpart to the ban on clerical marriage. 58 In 1139, the eighth canon of the Second Lateran Council prohibited the marriages of nuns, declaring such marriages invalid and menacing violators with heavy penance as punishment. 59 Gratian, whose concordance of canon law was at this time well on its way to becoming one of the most important law books of the Middle Ages, similarly condemned the marriage of a nun, if in more complex terms. 60 Writing almost certainly prior to the council in 1139, 61 Gratian offered as examples all kinds of dire pronouncements against nuns and their would-be husbands, pronouncements ostensibly first issued by early popes and church councils, as well as venerable authorities such as Augustine, and also Roman emperors. 62 He cited these dozens of ancient and august authorities as declaring nuns who married guilty of adultery against God, ordering the strictest penance, limiting the possibility for reconciliation with the church, and even ordering the execution of men who married nuns. Nevertheless, Gratian appeared to give serious consideration to the question of the potential validity of a nun’s marriage. In the end, though, he sided with the majority of the authorities he cited in saying no. The marriage of a nun was no marriage, and she had to return to religious life. The Second Lateran Council and other subsequent legislation made this prohibition still more clear.
Whatever the law said we have no way of knowing what might have typically been done about nuns who married in practice, as nuns appear to have married quite rarely in the twelfth century. 63 Marie is certainly the only married nun I have been able to find. Marie’s ancestor Matilda, the wife of King Henry I, had been able to assert that while she had lived in a convent before her marriage she had never taken vows. The marriage remained suspect nevertheless. 64 A noble woman who came before Alexander III to seek restoration of her marriage claimed similarly that she had been educated in a convent, but had never taken vows. 65 Toward the close of the twelfth century, Pope Celestine III approved the marriage of King Knut of Sweden to a woman who had entered a convent for protection and had worn a veil, as long as she had never taken vows. 66 Other women who wished to marry might have been able to claim they had taken monastic vows under compulsion. Marie, an abbess, could not claim the former, as an abbess would have certainly taken vows. However, she could have at least attempted the latter, and asserted that she had been made a nun against her will, but evidently she did neither. Nor, however, did she and Matthew and their children face the kinds of punishment described in the laws.
To understand why and how this happened, a more detailed analysis of our sources is necessary. In addition to the four letters from Alexander III on the subject, and a handful of charters, we can draw upon eleven chronicles written during the twelfth century or the very beginning of the thirteenth, four written during the thirteenth, and one from the fourteenth century. Two of these chronicles tell very strange stories, offering a dramatically different account of events from earlier sources, and will be examined separately. To begin with the chronicles written during the second half of the twelfth century, we have various accounts of Matthew’s union with Marie, written by clergy in and out of monasteries scattered around Northern France and England, with loyalties to various lords and kings. These clergy offer a range of views on the marriage, which they usually described as at least illegal or illicit, but sometimes also adulterous, contrary to divine law, or unheard of. 67 Some, however, record no shock or horror at all, simply reporting that Boulogne lacked a count and that the marriage of a nun was an effective solution to the problem. 68 We have, in short, clerical authors offering a range of different responses to a blatantly illegal marriage, a marriage that violated a seemingly inviolable law.
Beyond usually reporting that the marriage caused a scandal, these chroniclers leave us only hints as to how the marriage took place and how people responded. They say nothing at all about Alexander III’s reaction, nor do they comment on Louis VII, who must have taken a great interest in Boulogne as he struggled mightily against Henry II over control of much of France. Four twelfth-century texts cast Henry II of England in a leading role in arranging Marie’s marriage. 69 Three of the chroniclers report that Matthew’s father objected to the marriage and went to war against his son (one of these three included both Henry’s support and Theodoric’s objection). 70 One mentions excommunication, 71 and one the lifting of interdict on Boulogne, when Marie resumed religious life. 72 Three thirteenth-century texts and one of the twelfth-century chronicles report that Thomas of Becket, while still royal chancellor, opposed the match. They claim also that Thomas earned the enmity of Matthew as a result, and that Matthew had tried to assassinate Thomas when he fled from England to France and passed through Boulogne in 1164. 73
Subsequent interpretations of the story offer a surprising addition. Two sources, an unnamed chronicle written “during the reign of King John,” and a fourteenth-century genealogy of the house of Flanders, both claim that Alexander III gave Marie and Matthew a dispensation to marry. 74 This claim, on the whole, is easy to reject as nothing of the kind seems ever to have been done by a twelfth-century pope, and perhaps even by any medieval pope. Nevertheless, the very fact that two medieval chroniclers seemed to think that such a dispensation was possible is an important reminder of just how flexibly they understood twelfth-century popes to have been interpreting and applying canon law. Certainly, Alexander III had given Henry II a dispensation in 1160 for the marriage of his young son. It seems more likely, however, that the marriage of royal children, however young, was much more acceptable to Alexander than the marriage of an abbess. Moreover, nothing in the earlier sources suggest that Alexander III had in any way assented to Marie and Matthew’s marriage. Instead, there is a great deal of evidence that suggests mightily otherwise. In his letters, Alexander never calls the couple’s union a marriage, nor does he ever give Matthew the title of count. Instead, he describes Marie as a nun, and refers to Matthew not as count but only as the son of the count of Flanders and as excommunicate.
Nor is it surprising that Alexander III was unwilling, if indeed asked, to give a dispensation. If we examine his response to men and women in similar circumstances—if of lower and less politically sensitive social status—he does not seem at all likely to consider a woman known to be a nun as a suitable candidate for marriage. As Charles Duggan explains, when responding to the appeal of a noblewoman whose marriage her bishop had dissolved on the grounds that she had been a nun prior to her marriage, Alexander III decreed that “if it is not manifest and public that the woman had been a professed nun, her husband must be restored to her … ” 75 Marie, as abbess of Romsey, was indisputably known to the public as a professed nun, and so this suggests that Alexander III would have considered her marriage with Matthew impossible. And yet, his weak political situation seems to have tied his hands. He almost certainly gave no dispensation, but he could not take Boulogne from Matthew or from Matthew’s daughters. We do not know if he had any role in Marie’s return to monastic life, after ten years and two children.
The fact that Matthew retained his place in Boulogne regardless of excommunication, interdict, and Marie’s resumption of the veil offers a surprising account of a remarkably successful violation of a seemingly inviolable canon law. Even more surprising is the evidently easy succession of his daughters. As there are no other cases to compare this to, it is hard to know what exactly Marie or Matthew’s punishment should have been. What is clear is that they technically should have remained excommunicate until she repented and returned to the convent, which probably was the case. The law proclaimed as well, however, that their children should have been illegitimate and as a result ineligible to inherit from their parents, and in particular ineligible to inherit a noble title. Nevertheless, Marie’s children’s legitimacy and their rights as heiresses to Boulogne do not appear to have been contested, not even by Constance of France. Why that is so is certainly mysterious. Some scholars have assumed, without any evidence, that Alexander III legitimized the children as part of a deal that included Marie’s return to monastic life. 76 Certainly such an arrangement is possible, and certainly Philip II of France, known as Philip Augustus, later asked for and obtained the legitimization of his children with a woman Pope Innocent III refused to recognize as Philip’s wife. 77 As for Alexander III, perhaps no one asked him. In fact, if someone did ask, we cannot be entirely sure that the answer would have been no. Out of what Charles Duggan described as a keen interest in equity and compassion, particularly for illegitimate children, Alexander made concessions where he could. Nevertheless, Alexander did not do so in notorious cases, 78 and Marie’s marriage was nothing if not notorious. That said, perhaps Alexander III, for political reasons or out of compassion, did agree to a legitimation, or something like it. But it is also possible that such a thing as papal legitimation was not (yet) entirely necessary for succession, much as Alexander III himself would have preferred otherwise. 79
All this offers little evidence of Duby’s conflict between clergy and laity over marriage. Instead, it seems each of the principles involved acted in accordance with their own strategic interests, sometimes political, sometimes emotional, sometimes pragmatic, and sometimes spiritual. From a political standpoint, it is easy to understand why Pope Alexander III did not, at least as far as we know, do more to end this marriage, or to denounce Marie’s children as illegitimate. Until he reconciled with Frederick I, which only took place in 1176, he could not afford to seriously offend any of the kings, powerful counts, or archbishops who supported him. It seems that Henry II wanted the marriage, which may have been enough to protect Matthew in the early years—if in fact he needed any protection—and Matthew had his brother Philip’s support thereafter. If any other ruler, particularly Louis VII, wanted Matthew driven from Boulogne, we know nothing about it.
Leaving aside Alexander, why did no one else succeed in putting a stop to the marriage of an abbess? The chroniclers reported that Archbishop Samson of Reims, Thomas Becket, and Theodoric of Flanders all opposed the marriage, and Constance of France took advantage of the illegitimacy of the marriage to attempt to claim Boulogne for herself. We can discern in this a mix of political and ecclesiastical concerns, and these concerns do not line up according to which order of society each belonged to. Samson’s excommunication of the couple, an appropriate response by an archbishop as well as a man with strong political ties to the French king and French nobles, is not difficult to explain. The evident inability or unwillingness of Samson’s successor Henri of France to do more to end the marriage is harder to understand. As the brother of the king of France and archbishop he was an extremely powerful man, instrumental in Alexander III’s acceptance as pope in France. Indeed, Alexander III evidently heaped favors on Henry and could not “curb Henri’s excesses.” 80 As we know nothing of Henri’s relations with Marie or Matthew, we do not know what, if anything, Henri stood to gain or lose by leaving them in place. As for Saint Thomas Becket—royal chancellor who converted to the interests of ecclesiastical authority when he became Archbishop of Canterbury, disputed mightily with Henry II over the power of the crown versus that of the church, and died for it—he evidently opposed the marriage of Matthew and Marie even before he became archbishop, while still royal chancellor to Henry II. We do not know what Thomas’s alleged opposition amounted to, only that he might have suffered for it at the hands of Matthew, who tried, as mentioned above, to have Thomas killed. The only reasons we know of that could have led him to oppose the match while still royal chancellor, are spiritual. Finally, the claim that Theodoric of Flanders went to war with his son over the marriage is in some ways difficult to believe. Theodoric does seem to have been a pious man, perhaps, even pious enough to be affronted by the marriage of an abbess, but Boulogne had once belonged to Flanders, and it is hard to imagine that he did not see, and appreciate, the possible political advantages for his family. Certainly, he arranged marriages for his other children with the aim of extending Flanders’ control over its neighbors. If he did take up arms against his son, it would have been for religious reasons. 81
Our last known opponent to the marriage, Constance of France, may not have cared one way or the other about the marriage of a nun, but she did seem to want the county of Boulogne for herself. Her claims appear to have had much more to do with her own failed marriage. After the death of Marie of Boulogne’s brother Eustace, Constance married Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse, in 1154. By 1165 she had left Raymond, and wrote to her brother Louis, begging for his help. She explained that she had no food or money, that she had been mistreated by Raymond and wanted nothing further from him. 82 She was offered and accepted shelter at her brother’s court in Paris. Raymond, meanwhile, allied himself with Emperor Frederick and the antipope. In 1167, Raymond became engaged in a struggle over Provence with the count of Barcelona, and decided to marry the widow of the count of Provence to further his claim. 83 He sought and obtained an annulment for his marriage with Constance, not from Alexander, but from the antipope Pascal III. This complicated Constance’s position, as Alexander considered her still married to Raymond. In any case, the marriage to the heiress of Provence subsequently proved unsuccessful, leaving Raymond free. Constance, however, refused to resume married life with Raymond. As Alexander III explained in a letter to her brother Archbishop Henri in 1174, Constance accused Raymond of repeated infidelity. Alexander III wrote also that Raymond had renounced his bad behavior (including, presumably, the widow of the count of Provence) and urged Henri to extort his sister to return to her husband, which she seems never to have done. 84 In short, it seems quite clear that Constance had these matters on her mind when she made her claim to Boulogne. If she persisted in her efforts after 1168, we know nothing about it.
Meanwhile, those who seemed eager to help Matthew and his nieces maintain their claim on Boulogne operated on similar principles. We might at first glance be tempted to cast Count Philip of Flanders as a perfect exemplar of Duby’s model noble, eagerly manipulating the laws governing marriage, inheritance, and entrance into religious orders to the advantage of his family. There are, however, some quirks that Duby’s model cannot sufficiently explain. Notably, Philip had no children with his wife Elizabeth of Vermandois, but evidently did not want to annul their marriage. Without a son and unwilling to try a new spouse, Philip may have looked to Matthew both as his successor and for assistance in strengthening his family’s potential hold on Vermandois. This certainly helps explain Matthew’s marriage to Eleanor of Vermandois, and could also explain Marie’s return to monastic life, which necessarily had preceded the marriage with Eleanor. Matthew’s death in 1173, however, thwarted what we might imagine as Philip’s plan. Grieving, but evidently not ready to give up, Philip then had his last remaining brother Peter, the unconsecrated Bishop of Cambrai mentioned above, resign his post and marry. 85 This too did not provide the necessary heir for Flanders.
During all this time, Philip did not seek an annulment, in spite of the fact that he may have had more reasons than the lack of an heir to do so. At least according to two English chroniclers, in around 1174, Philip had caught his wife at adultery with a young knight. Philip tortured and killed the knight, but we do not know what, if anything, he did to Elizabeth. 86 Karen S. Nicolas suggested that if this did in fact happen Elizabeth was too wealthy an heiress to kill. 87 Possibly to compensate for her adultery, Elizabeth transferred the lands she inherited from her family to her husband in 1175. 88 Philip thus gained his family some extremely valuable lands, at least until Philip Augustus deprived him of them. 89 At the same time, Philip never found a male heir for Flanders. After Elizabeth’s death, Philip married Matilda of Portugal in 1183, but in 1191 Philip died, still childless, while on the Third Crusade. Flanders passed, on Philip’s death, to his sister Margaret, countess of Hainaut.
Philip did much of this, it seems, in hopes of sustaining a powerful dynasty in Flanders. If his actions did not secure a lineage, they do offer a compelling account of the kind of strategic behavior twelfth-century nobles and clergy alike engaged in. That Philip’s behavior sometimes resembles the kinds of “noble” actions modeled by Duby does not prove that he adhered to a noble idea of marriage. Further investigation might reveal that Philip’s decision to stay with Elizabeth until her death, usually understood as driven by economic considerations, could well be explained by some personal or religious wishes that do not fit Duby’s model. We have, in short, no evidence for the existence of two conflicting ideas of marriage. We find no Church arrayed against Philip as he supported the claims of his brother and nieces to Boulogne, nor do we find a class of nobles flocking to his defense. Instead, Philip’s behavior would be best understood using the same attention to personal or political interests as found with Matthew’s alleged opponents described above.
The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France
The marriage of Matthew and Marie and its aftereffects offers an extremely useful example of the complexity of marriage practice in the mid-twelfth century. While one man did manage to stay married to an abbess for ten years, and gain a county as a result, the tide was turning very much in another direction. The very exceptionality of this abbess’s marriage—as well as the succession of her illegitimate daughters—speaks to the increasingly successful dissemination of Christian ideas about marriage. At the same time, the overall success of Matthew’s stratagem shows how very flexibly and inconsistently these ideas were upheld. On one hand, legitimate succession to noble titles had become so deeply intertwined with marriage that despite the power of Flanders and Matthew’s evident skill in battle, it was only by marrying Marie that Matthew could claim Boulogne. On the other hand, in marrying a Bride of Christ, Matthew had most seriously violated one of the most central principles of the canon law of marriage and no one seems to have been able to prevent him, nor does he ever seem to have been punished, unless we take his death in battle as divine punishment for his sin.
With Duby’s models and categories stripped away, we can see how noble and clergy alike put marriage law to strategic use, both in the case of Matthew and much more broadly. To understand how this worked, we might think of the myriad ways in which wealthy Americans can, while paying at least some taxes, take advantage of the various legal loopholes known to the highest-paid tax lawyers to find ways to bend the law to their clients’ advantage. There was a great deal of that with noble marriage and remarriage. Canon law was a body of law that, as applied in this time and place, allowed for a fair amount of what looks to us like cheating. Nobles, kings, and emperors who wanted out of one marriage and into a new one sought annulment claiming some known or unknown or true or false impediment or, often, impediments. The “discovery” of an impediment such as consanguinity does not seem to have often been the real reason annulments were sought, but they were nonetheless on such grounds sought both by the principles and by other interested parties, and they were granted. Moreover, people of all stripes engaged in this exploitation of the rules. We know that this was not just a male enterprise. Women also took active part. 90 Nor was it merely a question of laity abusing canon law while clergy demanded that this law be upheld. Clerics played a variety of roles in these stories, sometimes that of the loophole-finding tax lawyer, sometimes that of the tax collector who accepted without objection the dubious returns he was presented with. The officials technically supposed to be requiring that taxpayers adhere to the rules looked the other way, and more. If some clergy demanded that some incestuous marriages be dissolved, the twelfth century is rife with many other noble and royal incestuous marriages, especially at the highest levels, and these marriages persisted unchallenged.
This analysis reveals a clear pattern of behavior in which violations of incest prohibitions were broadly ignored, allowing for many incestuous marriages. At the same time, nobles and clergy alike adhered more firmly to the rules about remarriage, seeking and obtaining church-sanctioned annulments when entering into a new marriage. 91 These two patterns require some explanation. In the twelfth century, French (including Norman and Flemish) nobles and kings consistently married in violation of the incest prohibitions, which until 1215 forbade marriages among a staggering number of kin. When it came to remarriage, however, the highest born men and women of the twelfth century worked within the system and sought annulments from ecclesiastical officials on grounds prescribed in the canon law. When ending one marriage and beginning another, even as kings, nobles, and clergy played with the rules, they still played the game. All the married people involved in this story who remarried also sought and obtained an annulment of the prior marriage from some ecclesiastical official or other. Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII of France are only the most famous example. 92 None of them remarried without an annulment, if sometimes retroactive, like that of Ida of Boulogne’s third husband, or granted by an antipope, as in the case of Count Raymond of Toulouse. Even while the chronicles describe such annulments as repudiations or desertion, there was always, in fact, an annulment. If what chroniclers reported more often reflected the real motivations for an annulment, such as the lack of a male heir, and if they did not always accurately report who had left whom, the fact remains that annulments were nevertheless asked for and obtained. The grounds for the annulment may have been fraudulent, but those seeking to remarry asked for and obtained church permission.
While kings and nobles and clergy complied with the letter of the law in seeking and granting annulments for marriages, as just described, what they did with incest rules when getting married is far more complex. Almost everyone involved in one way or another in Abbess Marie’s marriage had married within degrees prohibited by the church. The kings, queens, and nobles who played a role in this case were all kin by blood or by marriage, or both. For example, Henry II of England’s marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine and King Louis VII of France’s prior marriage to Eleanor, as well as his subsequent marriage to Constance of Arles, all fell within prohibited degrees. 93 So, too, did Louis VII’s third marriage, to Adela of Champagne, and the marriage of Henry II and Louis VII’s children. Moreover, the “marriage” of Marie of Boulogne and Matthew of Flanders itself violated the incest rules. At the same time, these forbidden relationships were rarely challenged. Marrying within prohibited degrees appears to have been common practice in the twelfth century, especially at the highest levels of society. 94 Some of these people’s marriages were annulled, at least ostensibly for this reason, and sometimes against the wishes of one or both of the parties, but such was not the case for the kings, queens, and nobles under discussion here. Politics and power seem to have most to do with explaining why so many technically illegal marriages were allowed to persist. Perhaps, also, so many marriages remained unchallenged because so few of the highest born laity could afford to point the finger without risk of having their own marriages subject to scrutiny. Such, indeed, was the situation for Henry II and Louis VII, whose consanguineous marriages in effect cancelled each other out. 95
As for members of the clergy, they sometimes even took the opposite tack from what the law seemed to call for and urged couples to persist in consanguine marriages, as when Pope Eugenius III did everything in his power to reconcile Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII despite their being married well within prohibited degrees. 96 As Elizabeth Brown argues, Eugenius probably let political concerns over the unity of France outweigh his concerns over the dangers of consanguine marriages. 97 Even notoriously meddlesome clergy like Thomas Becket kept mum about Henry II’s incestuous marriage, not to mention, of course, the marriages of his sometime protector Louis VII. 98 Moreover, clergy were not the only whistle-blowers, when politics or other considerations did not interfere. Sometimes, it was laymen who sought the annulment of another layman or woman’s marriage. Louis VII, for example, drew the ire of Bernard of Clairvaux for making use of consanguinity laws to dissolve or prevent marriages that did not suit him politically. Bernard, writing in 1143 to Bishop Stephen of Perneste, complained that Louis VII claimed consanguinity in his efforts to prevent the marriages of the son of Count Theobald of Champagne to the daughter of Count Theodoric of Flanders, and between the Count of Soissons and the daughter of Count Theobald. Bernard found this behavior especially egregious in someone like Louis, who had himself married his own close kin.99 In addition to Louis, some clergymen and noblemen together brought down some marriages, sometimes against the wishes of at least one of the parties. Some clergymen and noblemen together allowed technically illegal marriages to remain intact, without dispensation, sometimes against the wishes of at least one of the parties.
Viewed in full, especially when considered alongside the detailed studies of Constance Bouchard or Amy Livingstone, 100 the overwhelming number of twelfth-century consanguineous marriages that persisted without dispensation and without annulment offer important evidence of a complex game in which a large number of the participants bent some, but far from all, of the rules. The result was still a marriage pattern that was broadly in keeping with the ideal of indissoluble monogamy subject to church jurisdiction, even as church officials themselves were sometimes quite unwilling to insist on upholding these rules. In 1215, Innocent III would considerably narrow the field of play, severely restricting the canonical definition of incest. Even so, dispensations and annulments would continue to provide kings, queens, and nobles with ample room to maneuver, and be maneuvered, within a legal system that allowed for annulments while adhering to the principle of indissoluble monogamy. However flexible, this system still yielded a remarkable transformation in noble marriage and inheritance practice in Medieval Europe. Perhaps, it was this same flexibility that made it possible.
To conclude, when studying noble marriage practice in the twelfth century, we find powerful people of all stripes playing fast and loose with marriage law in ways that suited their shifting strategic interests. These interests allowed for some complex patterns of behavior to develop. In the second half of the twelfth century, popes, clergy, kings, and nobles all allowed many incestuous marriages to take place but at the same time insisted on annulments before remarriage. Indissoluble monogamy with an escape clause, for example, the “discovery” of an incestuous relationship, seems to have ultimately suited their collective interests.
All this is far messier than a noble model of dissoluble marriage versus an ecclesiastical model of indissoluble marriage. Instead, there was one way in which medieval, Christian marriage was done, and it was done by a group best understood not as churchmen or nobility, and certainly not as churchmen versus nobility, but a group best defined as the powerful people of Europe: churchmen and nobility alike, men and women as likely to be at odds with each other as laymen among laymen and as clergy among clergy. Christian, monogamous, indissoluble marriage as the unique source of legitimate offspring was a collaborative creation of the men and women at the top of the social hierarchy. This collaborative creation was applied, was lived, and revised, by the powerful persons who acted to define the limits of Christian marriage, and also acted to stretch and restrain these limits.
As for why all this happened, let us return to Christopher Brooke. Brooke argued that the idea of monogamy and the various church teachings that limited the possible number of legitimate heirs were both eventually recognized as in accord with the interests of noble and royal families. To quote Brooke, “Fundamentally the Church aimed to establish Christian monogamy for life; and the central point of the story seems to be that as the generations passed the lay aristocracies of western Europe, and even their monarchs, came to see a great advantage to themselves in monogamy.” 101 Nobles, like clergy, wanted marriage to be indissoluble and monogamous. There is a great deal to this notion, and stripped clean of the idea of these two allegedly distinct groups with their distinct ideologies, it works admirably. To rephrase Brooke slightly, Christian theology expressed a high ideal of monogamy and western nobles and clergy exploited it as the defining feature of their marriage law as well as their inheritance law. The powerful people of Europe, clergy and laity alike, saw the canon law of marriage as useful to their interests. Perhaps most importantly for an understanding of why they did so, we must recognize that they had a very different idea of law than we might expect. They saw the canon law of marriage as an ideal rather than something that required absolute adherence, and eagerly engaged with it. If the circumstances described above seem messy, they must have seemed preferable to the constant outbreaks of civil war and the succession crises that plagued earlier periods before church-sanctioned monogamous marriage became bound up with inheritance. Canon law, and law more broadly, even, was flexible, too malleable to be feared by the strong. Prohibitions were a tool to use against the weak, or to bring down the powerful. Acceptance of Christian marriage law promised salvation, promised sex without sin, and so much more.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Ruth Karras, Miriam Shadis, Amy Livingstone, Mary Anne Case, Anne Duggan, Theodore Evergates, Peggy Brown, James Whitman, Andrew Romig, Arnold Franklin, Jay Diehl, Neslihan Senocak, Janine Larmon Peterson, the organizers of the “Medieval Marriage: Law and Society” session at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women in June 2011, and the anonymous reviewers, whose critiques greatly improved this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.