Drum prüfet, was euch ewig bindet : Ambiguitäten der Eheschließung in der frühneuzeitlichen Grafschaft Lippe

Abstract

In the early modern period, the question of how marriage was legally concluded was highly controversial. Unlike today's civil marriage, there was no single legal act that determined the point in time at which a marriage was valid. Rather, many different, even contradictory and ambiguous norms could apply to marriages: written as well as unwritten, spiritual as well as secular, sovereign as well as municipal. Depending on the normative basis, the legality of the marriage was determined either by the vows of the bride and groom, sexual intercourse, parental consent, the exchange of gifts, the shared meal, or the church wedding. Using the example of the early modern County of Lippe, Iris Fleßenkämper examines how contemporaries dealt with the variety of regulatory options in an area of ​​life that was fundamental to maintaining familial and social order.