Married Life in the Middle Ages, 900-1300 by van Houts Elisabeth;

Author:van Houts, Elisabeth; [van Houts, Elisabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA - OSO
Published: 2019-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

Remarried Life and Sexuality

Before I discuss matters of sexuality and the relationship of remarried couples with their stepchildren it is crucial to reflect on the fact that in contrast with the courting and married life of first marriage couples, the getting married and married life of remarried couples is a bit of a blank in narrative sources. In particular, this is the case for the dichotomy in the portrayal of the widow as a result of the ambiguity about her in medieval society. Bernard Jussen’s portrayal of the medieval widow is a pessimistic one. Inspired by anthropology, he sees her as her former husband’s ‘relict’ who ideally should share his death (the extreme version of this thinking was the Hindu practice of widows being burned with their dead husbands) even though still alive.75 Alternatively she might be allowed, after a suitable interval, to start a new life by remarrying as a sort of repeat of the life she had led with her late husband. In this scenario some clergy feared that there was a risk that she might forget him.76 Medieval fictional literature had only two options, it seems. The widow was either the clerical ideal of the grief-stricken woman who spent the rest of her life in service of the memory of her late husband, or she was the topic of medieval satire as the sexually experienced woman who formed a threat to the social order. Yet, the sources at the heart of my analysis here offer a more nuanced picture than the ones offered by Jussen or medieval fiction.

Widowed men and women were not usually sexual novices when they remarried, so it is instructive to take a look at the sexual relationship of remarried couples to see what that can tell us about their married life.77 As I have discussed in Chapter 3, following the instruction of St Paul married couples owed each other sex and could not refuse a request for sexual intercourse from their spouse.78 When first marriages for elite women meant sexual intercourse at a relatively young age, if they had not been subject to other forms of sexual interference earlier, upon subsequent marriages sexual experience of intercourse must be assumed and was of course beyond doubt if children had been born from the earlier union. Neither Empress Matilda nor Constance had borne their husbands offspring, so in a sense it is remarkable that from a procreative point of view they were deemed acceptable marriage partners for their second husbands.79 Both Geoffrey of Anjou and Raymond of Toulouse took a gamble that the women were fertile and would produce children and grandchildren. As we have heard, both did, not one but three at least. What we have to bear in mind when we consider the second marriages of Empress Matilda and Countess Constance is that these were royal princesses who were not in their first youth when they married a second time. Not much older than young teens at their first marriage, they would hardly have been in a position to question any decision made on their behalf.

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