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Feb 10, 2022 · Marriage was deemed to be acceptable as soon as puberty hit – for girls from around age 12 and boys 14 – so betrothals were sometimes made at a very young age. It is said that women first gained the right to propose marriage in Scotland in 1228, which then caught on in the rest of Europe.
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- Couples did not need to marry in a church – they could get married down the pub, round at a friend’s house or even in bed. In the Middle Ages, getting married was easy for Christians living in western Europe.
- You could get married as soon as you hit puberty – and parental consent was not required. Marriage was the only acceptable place for sex in the medieval period, and as a result Christians were allowed to marry from puberty onwards, generally seen at the time as age 12 for women and 14 for men.
- Having sex created a legally binding marriage. There were various ways in which a medieval couple could use words or actions to create a marriage. Consent to marry could be given verbally by ‘words of present consent’ – no specific phrase or formula was required.
- Married or not married? It is clear that there were misunderstandings. It could be difficult to know if a couple was married and they might even not agree themselves.
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Mar 18, 2019 · It is unclear whether more women entered religious orders during this period but it is known that nuns were illuminating manuscripts as early as the 10th century, there were female scribes by at least 1274, and more women seem to have been involved in book production in the 14th century than before.
- Joshua J. Mark
Nov 13, 2019 · News. How medieval marriages laws changed Western society. The Western Catholic Church’s influence on marriage and family structures during the Middle Ages shaped the cultural evolution of the beliefs and behaviors now common among Western Europeans and their cultural descendants, researchers report.
The basic principles, however, of that law from the late twelfth century into the sixteenth were deceptively simple: (1) Present consent freely exchanged between a man and a woman capable of marriage makes a marriage that is indissoluble so long as both of them live, unless, prior to the consummation of the marriage, one of them chooses to enter...
May 25, 2023 · Myth: Medieval people were filthy. Sure, it would take until the 19th century for the germ theory of disease to overtake the concept of humors and “miasmas” that could damage human health. But ...
Influenced by the culture of courtly love (first originating in southern France), romantic love took center stage in literature and art and in the royal courts of Europe. For the upper classes, arranged marriages are the norm, and so are annulments (for deals gone bad); lords were often known to marry for dowry (money and/or lands) and incest ...