Papacy, Monarchy and Marriage 860–1600

This book surveys royal marriage cases to explore how popes dealt with the marriage problems of kings, especially dissolutions and dispensations.

David d'Avray (Author)

9781107062535, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 March 2015

370 pages
23.1 x 15.2 x 3 cm, 0.64 kg

'Medieval marriages have been subject to a huge amount of scholarship. … Therefore one could ask, is there really need and space for yet another monograph of this … topic or can someone still find something that has not already been said by others? I would be tempted to answer those questions negatively but the book written by Professor David d'Avray from University College London proves my answer wrong … This book … is a welcome resource for university teaching because it deals with the most famous medieval marriage troubles and especially because it offers English translations of numerous documents otherwise accessible only in Latin editions … It offers a lot of new thinking also for experts on medieval marriages, marriage legislation, or medieval papacy.' Kirsi Salonen, Speculum

This analysis of royal marriage cases across seven centuries explains how and how far popes controlled royal entry into and exits from their marriages. In the period between c.860 and 1600, the personal lives of kings became the business of the papacy. d'Avray explores the rationale for papal involvement in royal marriages and uses them to analyse the structure of church-state relations. The marital problems of the Carolingian Lothar II, of English kings - John, Henry III, and Henry VIII - and other monarchs, especially Spanish and French, up to Henri IV of France and La Reine Margot, have their place in this exploration of how canon law came to constrain pragmatic political manoeuvring within a system increasingly rationalised from the mid-thirteenth century on. Using documents presented in the author's Dissolving Royal Marriages, the argument brings out hidden connections between legal formality, annulments, and dispensations, at the highest social level.

Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. A Gallican forerunner
3. Concepts
4. Polygyny
5. Emotional persuasion in a public sphere: Nicholas I and Lothar
6. Canon law subverts itself
7. Due process
8. Biological kinship
9. Spiritual kinship
10. Impotence and magic
11. Pre-puberty marriage
12. Physical impotence
13. Adult non-consummation and pre-contract
14. Henry VIII's biblical bid
15. Reception of dispensation: plaisance and Henri IV
16. Diverging trends: annulments and dispensations
17. Annulments and dispensations: two theological rationalities
18. Dispensations and their diplomatic
19. Ten theses and an argument
Documents
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD]