8. Marriage in the Middle Ages

18. THE DARK AGES

     These were the forces that drove civilisation into what has been aptly named The Dark Ages. The perceived sin and pervading shame, as sin continued, drove men, specifically Augustine, to a recommendation that male headship become an absolute and central dogma. Her desire for God, or for a husband, was all ruled, and decided for her, by men.

     From the seventh to the eleventh century in the Middle Ages, the people lived under the Feudal System and there was great wealth for landowners and privileges beyond measure. The labourers lived in great poverty and their circumstances were measured by the generosity, or not, of the lords of the manor. It was the feudal lord's acquisition first of any bride about to be married, that galled the families struggling to an honourable family life. Their daughters' submission to the will of the lord eventually forced rebellion that, not without great cost, ended the Feudal Power. If the priests could behave so masterly in the monasteries, why could not the lords in their manors? And so the manor lords lost their power.

19. THE NUNNERIES

     Priestly power and authority emanated from the monasteries, and even the nunneries could not function, or were not allowed to function, without the outside intervention of the priests for the sacramental roles. Of the nunneries, greater frugality of life was expected, for, of course, they were closer to nature, and had further to go towards perfection. They never had the power of authority that the priests had, and were subservient to them. Of the women's texts now available of the times, it is interesting to note that they concerned themselves more with the poor, but especially the women and children. (So today, some nuns decide to work invisibly amongst the poor, devoid of their habits and dressed like the everyday people). Chastity at that time, gave them both privileges and spiritual opportunities, but the unnatural longing for chastity, often broken in default, brought the heavy burden of perceived sin, and the usual denials that render sin worse. Life was full of denials for both, but femaleness was still a heavy burden and barrenness was a huge sacrifice. It was the priests who refrained from filling, but it was the women, desiring to be filled, who remained unfulfilled. Was it easier for the men or the women in this chastity? Susan Dowell calls this era The Way of Negation.

20. HOPE AGAIN

     In one of the see saw effects mentioned at the outset, at this time in history a torch was lit that soon spread over Europe that gave Christians hope again, for the absolute power of the elite began to wane. The stakes and burning fires, that had burned men's hearts as well as their bodies, and brought mutilation and calamity and loss and grief withdrew, in the face of expanding population, the ravages of war, and the making and moving of the boundaries of the new empires that were emerging.

     It is here that we take a deep breath, and note that priestly celibacy was not absolutely imposed by the church until the eleventh century, perhaps because it began to lose "popularity". Annie Matthews, with the authority of a church historian, explains that celibacy, the unmarried state for priests, was solely introduced to stop property being inherited by progeny, and going out of church control.

     Celibacy was a non married state, which some priests chose, but which was now made mandatory. Celibacy was not chastity, (no sex), but chastity was a state chosen, above celibacy, for some priests. The distinction between the two was now clearly made, and the church advised chastity for its priests. However the distinction soon became blurred again, though this division between celibacy and chastity for priests helps us understand the role that was required of some nuns in nunneries.

     Understandably, men, fathers, were outraged about many activities that happened under the umbrella of the church, none the least to their daughters, and they questioned whether the church could offer anything to Christianity.

     And from that time until the fifteenth century enlightenment returned. It was called the Age of Chivalry, and Kings swore to champion God and protect the ladies. Whether that proclamation from kings was for their own ends, or not, the ladies were gradually more valued. For a time, there was a more positive view of marriage after all the turmoil, and in the relative stability of the times, and with the rediscoveries of the classics, especially the Latin poetry of Ovid, from the happier times of the Roman Empire. Courtly poets celebrated the ennobling power of love, body and soul needed no longer to be locked in mortal combat, and so the ability to love was raised above that of the beast of the field. Then the church began to take on the more secular ideas of the times, because its power was waning, and it’s "back was not so much against the wall". It had to reach out, and so the world of letters began to move forward.

21. HOPE DASHED AGAIN

     However, we need to catch our breath again, for there were distortions that we can understand, considering the evolving of the sciences of the human body. In the works of the gender theology of Thomas Aquinas, we see the influence of the works of the pre Christian Aristotle, who believed that all human potential was present in the seed, and the only function of the female was as a sort of nesting box, or incubator. In the new age this gave a "scientific" imprimatur to the notion of the incompleteness or passivity of the female who contributed nothing to the intellect, or indeed any other part of the human frame. In fact, said Aquinas, the production of a girl child was an accident of the complete seed, because it was not in the "image of God". (We know now that the sex of a child is determined by the father.) Dowell remarks that although the woman's necessity could not be denied, in this argument, being the only nesting boxes around, it was foolish advice, that for all other activities, particularly intellectual, men would be better served by a male helpmeet! What a dangerous recommendation, and we can only wonder that the conclusions may have been different, if they had had truly scientific information at the time. Aquinas also recommended that all children be given to the father after weaning, at the age of three, or thereabouts, for education and training in the Christian life. So the stable relationship that nurtures the healthy development of the child, that we know so well today was not present, here in the twelfth century, and fell dead for three hundred years. The love poets of the time did not attempt to redirect marriage towards love, they turned to the exaltation of the adulterous union, and any thought of unity of family dissipated once more.

     Because the nature of feudal marriages was not creation centred, but fall centred, any serious dialogue between the sexes was precluded once more. The poets, in the absence of love between spouses, in the twelfth century, turned their attention to Mary the mother of Jesus, and with the rich Christian mysticism, surrounding the doctrine of Mariology there is a legacy of lyrics to the devotion of Mary. She did inspire the ascetics with her chastity, but neither Christ, nor Paul gave her the ascendancy that was now part of her lot, and she became Our Lady, and Mother of God, and the personification of church as the Bride, and reached her zenith. In the elevation and celebration of this "perfect" woman, humanity, but especially women were denigrated once more. It was not until 1870 that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, i.e. the virginity of Mary's mother, was declared. The Pope was locked in the Vatican, and certainly drew attention to himself with the description of this new vision.

     Man's perverse view of women led them to use cement for constructions bound with the bones of virgins, like London Bridge, to insure them against ever falling down ("my fair lady"). There was a myth that espoused that the only buildings that escaped the fires of London were those that were built on virgin's bones.

22. DUALISM AGAIN

     So for the twelfth century, Dowell puts the two strands once more together, the Way of Affirmation, and the Way of Negation, now no longer just virginity, but Mary's virginity, as against the way of the Devil. She quotes Marina Warner's "The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary, 1976, "The immediate act of fusion, the one experience every human being has of combining two in one, is forbidden. The icon of Mary and Christ side by side is one of the Christian church's most polished deceptions: it is the very image, and hope of earthly consummated love, that is used to give that kind of love the lie. Its undeniable power and beauty do not heal: rather the human sore is chafed and exposed."

23. NEW GNOSTICS

     A new form of Gnostics, under Cather, and their disdain of sexuality, led to a permissive morality in practice, and their hostility towards marriage undermined further those still trying for Christian unions. Ascetic disciplines were required of the Gnostic hierarchy, but their dual system allowed less oppression of the simple faithful. Their emphasis on Wisdom being a female attribute confused the masses, and women who wanted higher esteem were granted this among the Gnostics. No wonder the church wanted to crush them. We know now, from the texts of the nuns, that they never promoted Mariology like the priests did. Perhaps they could see, from their gender point of view, the confusion that this new doctrine was causing when people were drawn to the elevation of women by the Gnostics, or the impossibility of it for female Christians.

     New forms of jurisdiction, new laws, a new sacramental character for marriage, all united to fight the Gnostics, and the stake and the torture chamber cast their shadow, and for another four hundred years men's heart were in great fear of the church until the reformation, in the sixteenth century.

     Marriage today without love is to most, unthinkable, in this country, but up until the thirteenth century, marriage was held in such low esteem and it was a matter for society. The rituals of marriage were made, rather like the old imperial Roman contracts were made, and the church wanted little to do with the institution as marriage and sex, for it belonged to the world. Despite efforts by Popes and papal reforms (1215) to bring marriage in under the wing of the church, to curb the abuse, with the destabilising of family life, and trivialising of divorce, the life of the community deteriorated. Perhaps the people were disenchanted with the role of the church, especially with their centuries old proclaimed views on sexuality and marriage. In the late fifteenth century romantic love was an idea being pursued. New powerful nations were gathering in the Feudal Fifes, and reform from within the church was imperative. German citizens were angry with the clergy's seductions of their daughters, and, with the emergence of the print media and common literacy, the monopoly on wisdom and learning from the monasteries was removed, and people began to doubt that piety was there either. This was the period of the Renaissance

24. MARRIAGE IN CHURCH

     Eventually the church prevailed, and instituted, in 1538, that a Christian ceremony was essential for a proper marriage and the announcing bans had to be displayed for a cooling period of time. Romantic love was now brought in from the cold, where it had flourished in adulterous liaisons. The public conduct of "til death do us part" marriage now became common. Piety, now released from its enclosure in monastic chastity, could now be pursued through civic duty in marriage and begetting.

     Once more though, the passage of attitude from the grim impositions of penance, to geniality and optimism was validated only by the male cultural perspective, and reflected only a male viewpoint, and although it was possible, in the re valued marriage, to be restored to spiritual and social dignity once more, women had no input into new assessment of themselves. They were still not returned to the point where Christ and Paul had left them.

     Luther in 1520 described marriage as an honourable state with certain conditions. Still, as we know, he loved the book of Romans and called it his Katy Boran, after the nun whom he eventually married, when his break from the priesthood was complete. He had seen what went on, on each side of the wall, and did not hesitate to reveal the iniquity.

     Luther replaced the virgins or celibates with the ideal housewife, a mutual society of help and comfort in marriage, where women became the helpers and comforters. Some would regard this as a tyranny less welcome than the requirement of a virgin, and Virginia Wolf's 1931 short story about killing the "Angel in the House", before a woman can achieve any sort of fulfilment, is regarded by this writer as a denial of all the godly virtues, and no better than the tyranny that men had, up til this place in history. It is still not the place where Christ and Paul left us.

     Luther's was a pervasive rejection of the Medieval Catholic culture, but it revived once more the split between the woman of diverse talents, in the Proverbs and the holiness of the woman in the Song of Songs, for he railed at the church for denying marriage, but fell into the denial for women, that they were only physically fashioned for the pleasure of a man, that man had broad shoulders in the image of God, and that marriage is the emergency hospital for the ill of human drives. Selective use of scriptural words has brought no little trouble to the church. Genesis 1:27 says

                  So God created man in his own image,

                  in the image of God he created him;

                  male and female he created them."

"Man" - first line - is (often) a generic word, and obviously defined by "male and female", - third line.

     It is disappointing that Luther's use of scripture was so selective in this area, but he was culturally affected by his time, and marriage had undergone so great a change that he could not see the clear path to go back to the New Testament teaching on this issue. May we also ask for scriptural integrity?

     Now the "matron of the home" (house angel) role opened up for women, although it was of course a much more restricted role than those for men. Clergymen's wives, after some dreadful humiliations, became the new elite among women. Adulterous wives were subject to the death penalty in Calvin's Geneva, and this cleaned up the casual and frequent divorce practices of the populous. There was no compassion.

                  The more flesh the more worms,

                  The more riches the more worry,

                  The more wives the more sin.

     These new clergy required these matrons to educate their children and here began the considerable push to educate women. This did not end arranged marriages but the new emphasis was on holiness and companionship and a more liberal role for women.

     However the sexist fears of those biased towards the medieval practices of old, or even the patriarchal system of the Old Testament were not overcome by the Protesters and so the hysterical witch hunts that arose in Europe and the New World of the seventeenth century were framed by conflicts of the Reformation. "When a woman thinks alone she is in great danger", was the new cry, and we saw in the play /film "The Crucible", how that small American east coast village, Salem, treated its families who tried to uphold the innocence of the accused women. Now there were new dangers and women realised the only safe haven was submissiveness in marriage. Single women, widows, independents and the new celibates were in peril of their lives, for the monasteries had been swept away, but so had the choice for celibacy or chastity for men or women.

     As the Christian church came from Judaism, and defined their new roles, so the protesting Protestant churches defined their roles as superseding the old Catholic church, which had in turn evolved from the Christian church. But in their defining, women were victims once more and the new roles and shifting religious values did not include them. Men regarded all this as progress but apparently women had some misgivings. It might have seemed to them that purity could only be obtained by passivity and some of the poems and literature of the time point to this old patriarchal mode again. Some of work of the women poets of the time is now being recovered and we know that they felt overwhelmed again. We can take heart, says Dowell, that the fifteenth century poet, Christine de Pisanne combined a vigorous campaign for women's education in her writing, while penning some beautiful love poems. God love and human love flowed sweetly into one another and they eulogised the fact that they could have a heavenly guide and an earthly companion. There were some exceptional women down through the ages that we are only just beginning to hear about. They were heiresses, and noblewomen, and abbesses, and they wielded enormous power over prevailing winds that wanted to overwhelm women. They were formidable, inspiring women, enjoying a degree of autonomy and independence. It might have been wealth that kept the perils at bay. They were havens in the storms, or lights in the darkness, that gave hope to the women who were relegated to the cottages and castles and convents and sculleries and who were given, and taken once more into marriage, with no say in the matter, for their own protection. To rebel against a Puritan father, or brother, or husband (patriarchy), was tantamount to rebellion against God, and therefore heresy.

25. ROMANCE

     It was the storytellers and the poets again, and not the clergy, who salvaged these treasures from the storms, steered the ideas of love for one another, once more back into mainstream at the end of the sixteenth century. It was a remarkable emergence which influenced society.