Indexers select an article or essay at the beginning of each month that is outstanding in its line of argument, wealth of significances, and writing style. We particularly look for pieces that would be useful as course readings.

November 2009

Otis-Cour, Leah. "De jure novo: Dealing with Adultery in the Fifteenth-Century Toulousain."
Speculum 84, 2 (2009): 347-392.

It has often been asserted in scholarly literature that repression of wifely adultery in the Middle Ages was severe.  There  is, however,  overwhelming evidence—in customary law, court records, notarial documents and literature-- that, starting no later than the twelfth century, the tendency was toward clemency and reconciliation rather than exemplary repression.  This tendency  was clearly linked  to the Church’s growing insistence on marital indissolubility ;  if an unfaithful  wife could not be repudiated, discretion was a wiser option than repression.  A “divorce Italian style”—murder of the adulterous wife—was less common than has often been claimed, and royal letters of pardon, no guarantee of impunity, as they were subject to critical judicial review.  A  detailed analysis of one case of a “pardoned” wife-slayer who was in fact decapitated, by the Parlement de Toulouse, reveals the juridical reasoning that could be invoked to motivate rejection of such a royal pardon.  A popular “solution” to wifely adultery was reconciliation of the couple, officialized before public authorities or before a notary,in acts that sometimes stipulate a monetary compensation to the offended husband, but always include a promise on his part to treat his wife well in the future, for it had become the accepted wisdom by the fifteenth century that marital violence or negligence was a major cause of wifely adultery.  Husbandly adultery was taken seriously toward the end of the Middle Ages, especially when the adulterous relationship took the form of concubinage.  Enlightened elements of the late medieval world deemed that, compared to the draconian solutions of the past (Old Testament lapidation, the stake of Arthurian fame), contemporary society’s relative clemency regarding wifely adultery, along with its insistence on the accountability of husbands and emphasis on reconciliation, constituted a civilized, progressive solution to the problem of marital infidelity. [Abstract submitted to Feminae by the author.]

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