Unfit for Marriage
Subtitle: Impotent Spouses on Trial in the Basque Region of Spain, 1650-1750 (The Basque Series)
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
Published: March 15, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 208
ISBN-13: 9780874176995
Subjects: Social History; c 1600 to c 1700; c 1700 to c 1800; History - General History; History: World; Christian Church - Canon & Ecclesiastical Law; Europe - Spain & Portugal; History; Annulment; Annulment (Canon law); Divorce; Law and legislation; Marriage; Sources; Spain
Description: "Historian Edward J. Behrend-Martinez studied the transcripts of eighty-three impotency trials conducted by the ecclesiastical court of the Spanish diocese of Calahorra (La Rioja), an area incorporating both Basque and Castilian populations and including urban and rural parishes. From these records, he produced a detailed account of private life and public sexuality in these early years of the modern era." "The transcripts provide insights into the dynamics of daily marital life and the role that property, gender, and personal preference played in marriage. They also reveal information about medical knowledge at the time and about contemporary understanding of the physiology and psychology of sex. Unfit for Marriage is the first study in English to address the proceedings of a Spanish ecclesiastical court and is a portrait of marriage and marital sex in early modern Europe."--Jacket.